in america 11 part 5 - 2006 october-november

work & days: a lifetime journal project

San Diego October 3 Here's my house. It's lighter here at 7. A sheet of light reflecting from an upper window of the condos opposite appearing on my bookcase. Oh little place. It's ugly. The agaves are scorched and moldy, the windowlessness is bad. I was happy to remember my slippers. Had forgotten where the bowls go until I had one in my hand washing it. When I arrived last night, hauling up the big black suitcase - letting the housecleaner Jeanne haul it up - and the new little white case full of journals - and my shoulder bag with the Mac's green light - and a plastic bag with milk and a lot of mail - my key would not enter the lock, or turn when I had worked it in. Corroded. So then I went down to look for WD40 in the office and ran into Nora, beautiful Nora. There's that small reserve when I haven't seen her for a while. I keep listening and replying and she relaxes. "I had to let three people go." She's losing Viejas because there's new management, a man who says people are motivated by greed and fear. The way it turned out, in short, is that I had to check in with Nora before I could enter. And then unpacking, distributing stuff into its nooks, opening mail, pulling in second packets and sending notes to say I got them. Hard hot shower. Now: Wash jeep, clean house, new chair, softer bed (foam), gym, packets, 147 lb, energy, better memory, no aches, bp down, think about Rowen's account (ask Nor), repaint this room white?, [College] hours (workshops, notes), insurance, bike carrier. What do I want to say about the trip. The pilot said as we left Vancouver that we'd be traveling at 41,000 feet. I hadn't known how high that is. We were over the Gulf Islands and I was looking down frightened for a moment, the buildings were so small. Later I asked the stewardess what's the highest domestic flights go. She said 42,000. At 14,000 people wd pass out without the pressurization. They keep cabin pressure at 8,000', which is Denver. When the pressure is less than that the fizzy drinks won't pour. There was a flight a few days ago where it took the whole flight to get the cart down the aisle. And when did she say the diet Coke fizzes up - only the diet Coke? What I liked most to see - we were lower after a while - were the little yellow patches that were aspens or poplars. They'd be fitted into notches and crevasses in mountain slopes. Suburban developments in concentric curves like Aboriginal paintings or a Pearly King's coat covered with buttons, or an embroidered carpet. Should I start sketching, I'm suddenly wondering - to be more visual again - to get ready for films. - Intention, through the winter to find out what's the best shape I can be in, gym for a year, yoga, learn about memory, weight, Kum Nye. Watch aches and deal with. Susan's in flood she says. Is she there because she feels me containing her   Am I   no She has permission   In early love   There are things about me she really likes   And some of them are in writing   And some are rescues   Should I look for that permission from her   no I have it nowhere else  no Will you explain   moon, As, completion, improvement Do you mean I am feeling more permission   The way I've been a bit more active   Is there any more you want to say about this   no 4 About Tom, I hear and feel footsteps on the roof, there he is in a red long-sleeved t. He's not the thin young man he was when I left. 10 lb under the ribcage. He launches into his new schedule, overtime on weekends and work on Saturdays maybe 'til Christmas. Wants to stay in his room. My heart hurts. I'm going to leave, I'm saying to myself. Get up and fight. Sit opposite for that. Emotional starvation. Little hopes. Four years. Why doesn't it occur to you. He says amicably that we can find a place right away, and he's even been thinking we could live together. That's a little extreme, I say and go sit next to him and put my head on his shoulder. The rest of the evening I'm all over him. I want to kiss, he wants to talk. He's talking a streak, wants to go on doing it. This morning I'm looking at Craigslist and the Reader. Was out early on my bike looking at places. Earlier transcribing 1985. Note from Jam saying her bank has transferred. 7th Saturday, Starbucks. So far: gym twice, hard biking twice. Tom every night. House searches, Craigslist, the Reader, bike. Susan irritated and accusing. Transcribed 50 pages of 1985, anguish about Jam and them, heavy conflict about Michael. Notebook with earlier physics and other notes in a large hand, journal in a very small hand, back to Joyce. How it is with Tom. The first evening was best. He was going on about working 6 days a week and loving his room and wanting to stay in it. I jumped up and made a speech and afterward laid my head on his shoulder like a little girl glad to be back with her dad. Since then it's been his tight room that I always want to flee out of. He's not excited about my house hunt. When I lie down with him he crosses his legs immediately. Talks on without noticing whether I'm interested. I called him on it, "There's no presence in the room," and since then he keeps saying there's now presence in the room though there is not. Today I've lent him the jeep so he can get to work for 6, first time I've done it - gas and having enough saved to fix it if he breaks it. Last night I came home fried and bleak. I can't do relationships, I need to get away from his bludgeoning endless turned-off compulsive talk, there's no attention in him for me. And then on the other side Susan who has attention but is offended and suspicious if I'm not just right. I'd love someone to just love me and be interested in me, or just give attention. Joyce who'll never come again. Know I'm just looking back and need the new thing, the way I was wailing and fretting about losing Jam and didn't know the new things that would take hold and be more wonderful than anything before. I'm not interested in Tom anymore. I'm not interested in Louie anymore. I should just trust these facts and not regret them. I still love Luke. I love my jeep. I'm not interested in [the college] anymore. I still like doing gardens. I miss my house and my life there and being known and want to stay someways connected in Van, but I'm not interested in old friends. The journal is interesting. I'm into decline and need to study it. Still love traveling. I'm not happy when I don't look like love woman. Here are my facts owe 7500 fr G&F, of that 3000 left for computer and other 1000 in F21, insurance and teeth 21,075 in Ro's account. jeep is paid for, no urgent fixing, just insurance. 1300 every 4 weeks = 16,900 p/a 435 fixed expenses/mo have gardens to take care of strong, little aches but alright 10 Oct My eyes are sore-surfaced again after these days of all day packet writing. It's 4 and I've done as much as I want to, the day is over. No gym today. 12 When I brought supper to his hotel last night and we were kissing hello in the elevator my hands went up to his shoulders with - here I'm stumped what to call it - it's a sensation like pressure but it's not pressure - a light touch with as if a pressure inside it? Behind it? An erotic intendedness, intentness. I was realizing I hadn't touched him that way in years, or anyone. How could something like that leave me without my noticing. We were on his bed eating. He was making an effort, not motoring, not playing music, not turning on the TV. Asking me questions. I talked about Laura and then he talked about work a bit, not motoring. Then we did what we've never done, just petted. He got my pants down, so that people in A seats in descending airplanes could see his hand creeping about in my thinner-than-it-was fur, and later very lusciously stroking my bum cheeks. I'd brought organic rye bread, salmon and salad in my glass bowl. It's a relief that he's been paying for gas, because it means I can relax and give back. I could often make him supper this winter. Susan. Since she went accusatory about my well-meant sweet-hearted explanations after the bad event of the phone call Tom interrupted, I haven't written her and have been wondering whether I'm getting even with her for dumping me. Sometimes dipping in and feeling myself out. Turned off and yet a thin little voice saying, Isn't her company ...? I don't want that accusing guilting got-to-be-careful girly bind on my days. Another Louie, no. But ...? So this morning there's a note. She says she accepted my apology, I'm not accepting hers? It didn't feel like an apology, but am I going to say that? I don't think so. I'm still turned off. Should I reply at all? The gym. It's been 4 visits I think, and I feel athletic. Still finishing Laura and then there's Madeline. With 8 it's taking 10 days at least. Taft tomorrow? 15 Friday. Cold. Brought out the heater today. Last night when I was transcribing and about to watch Grey's anatomy an email back from S saying, You there? Meaning, can I phone. I didn't want to speak to her at that moment and didn't reply, which implies I'm not there, which is a lie. So today I'm feeling a little discussion going on offside - back and to the right is where I feel it - that is saying I'm being sleazy, she can feel when I'm here and it's sleazy to evade as I did. I should say I'm here but I don't want to talk now. Why I don't do that - here's the blur she was actually accusing me of last time though she didn't name it this way. It's a mushy spot in my head, I want to watch TV means I want to zonk, and I'm ashamed of that, and at the same time I'm feeling pressured and therefore have a right to evade. 14 Didn't finish that thought yesterday. Can I pick it up this morning. 1. She uses me in fantasy and that is an illegitimate pressure. 2. She's my only hope of being pressed into better consciousness than my present dull state. 3. I don't want what happened with Louie, guilt and grievance. 4. I want, I need, I crave, someone to be interested in me, which she sporadically sort of is. Other topic - the job of the last quarter. Having to think out how to make the decline look like [sketch] rather than [sketch]. That's from a book that says do 2 hrs of aerobic 4 days a week and an hour of weights 'til it hurts 2 days a week. Theory is that this will reset default shutting-down process by turning on repair C10. Benefits - better circ, therefore better memory, alertness keep bone not falling because better neural resp more mitochondria better nourished therefore more energy   Can I have those results with less? Because that would take the whole day.   exercise currency - more than [the college] intimacy newness mental stretch style 15 UCSD 7 in the morning on a Saturday. Library doesn't open 'til 10, my lab doesn't open 'til 10, the coffee shop doesn't open 'til 8. It's not warm. Rained last night. Mist in the valley as we came up Gilman Drive. Fresh smell of eucalyptus. Sun on the trees. Crows. I peed on woodchip around the side of the library entrance. This is going to be a long cold hour. - No, I knocked on the Caffé Roma door and got let in. Now what. Two hours. What'm I doing today, going to try scanning slides with a high-power scanner. How long should I wait before I buy fcp [Final Cut Pro]. How soon can I get movies transferred to DVD. Shd I apply to CC for that. Is it too soon to be writing Orpheus before I'm working with images. Should I be looking at Youtube. - It's clouding over. Only 9 o'clock, is it going to rain as I'm walking across. Yes. Not good. 16 At the gym Friday I was lying back over the bolster, just lying back, and when I lifted my head I was hit by heavy nausea. Then again. And yesterday in the arts library again though much lighter when I bent to look at magazines on a low shelf. It's still there today. Is it a heart blockage? Is that why my left shoulder and arm are always slightly aching? I dreamed I was telling a long story whose conclusion I couldn't remember. While I was speaking I was searching ahead for some little feel of what it was. It was a story about meetings with a young man I called a kid though later I said he was finishing his MA. I was telling it in his presence. The story was that at the beginning of the summer I had been wanting this kid, though casually, and had had visits with him across my kitchen table, and then later something. There'd been some good ending about a true love. One of the things I said was that I had been living in Joyce - that the world had been Joyce. I write dreams with so little interest now. It used to be that I was searching them for directions, and now I think vaguely that I could watch them for how a dream develops from one thing to another, how structure riffs off previous structure. A book yesterday called The philosophy of neuroscience, that says a lot of what I say, for instance about 'mental rep,' though maybe to different purposes, ie some kind of anti-reductionism. 17 What is it since last Friday, this illness - now it's slight but scary because I don't know what it is. Will I say something about the Georgia Street place. I don't want to jinx it. I'll say how happy I was yesterday. A love nest I said. Should I worry that I want it more than Tom does? He's happy in the West Park Inn. He'll love it when he's in it - I keep assuming we have it. What makes it a love nest. It's a bit of a cave on the side of a cliff, a perch. There was a young cat wandering on the walkway. Honeysuckle on the rail. Beautiful double stairs, broad beautiful steps with a handrail down the center, European. Black and white harlequin tiles on the kitchen floor, tile around the sink. Green and white tile in the bathroom. The most amazing thing, French doors in the kitchen that open directly onto the walkway. The kitchen a white galley, with that black and white diamond-tiled floor opening onto terrace and then air - oh! There's the way kitchens are placed alongside each other so the bed-ends of the flats are as far away from each other as they can be, and the way this one has the glass knob on the closet door. The slight line of indent where the walls meet the ceiling. The exquisite storage area that keeps the bathroom door from opening into the main room. Was there a window above the tub? The ironing board behind its narrow door in the kitchen. The phone niche. The white mantle though the fireplace is plastered shut. Space the width of a desk next to the closet with its clean hardwood floor. The off-street quiet. The scent of grass. There'll be birds. A Brazilian pepper tree. The fact there's already irrigation on the sunny edge of the garden below. North Park as neighbourhood. A wilder edge of Balboa Park 2 blocks away. Bike lockup on the rail. He'll miss: maid service, greeters at the desk, his view of the park, the neighbourhood he got bonded with, A/C, cable, the cachet of paying $1300 a month for a hotel room, the urbanity of the streets. What will he like: the noir space, sitting on the grass, me cooking I hope, the classiness of the architecture, the cat, getting out his mom's stuff from storage, the connection with Haddon Heights, the bathtub. Note from Jam. When she notified that her bank had transferred I thought, should I thank? No, but I'll tell her what it's already being used for, and then at the last moment I thought to attach a photo of Ro on the computer researching the camera. She replies that the lakes brimmed. 18 This week Tom and I have met after work and watched Katie Courec's news on his bed, happy. Do you think we're going to get it?   Will it be good for us to get it   Will they trace his old addresses   no Will she run a credit check   no Has she already decided   She wants to have it done   YES So he'll move Nov 1   Will he like it as much   Will he like it more   Will it be a foundation we can build on     Was Susan hurt   no She's going to wait to reply     Is he going to be able to give up his storage   YES Will he be there for years   YES Does it mean we're not moving to Berkeley   Is that okay   Will he get involved in North Park   Will he continue to be able to afford it   Should he buy a car now   no Should we do two single beds   Good ones   Will we like the owner   Will she like us   YES Will she want me to do the garden   Don't bring it up yet   But plant a passiflora   Will the neighbours be okay     Do you want to comment   Ellie is gaining strength and coming through This place is right   We'll be happy there   Because I've been loyal to Tom   Have I been supporting him at my expense   And is it going to pay off now   YES Comment more   shattering the structure, coming through mourning into (esoteric knowledge) HP Say more about HP   indecisive strength comes through into organization, ducks in a row For instance publishing   And influence   I'll be willing to promote my work   YES Will that be settling for too little   no More?   in money you'll come through into action after slow growth More effective in making money   YES I already am, but you mean more     Is Tom going to keep his act together   More   integration, of money and the Work on not withdrawing Do you want to say anything about work in the next couple of days   balance deep change with practical overview Deep change, do you mean bookwork   One card   writing You want me to do more bookwork about writing   Do you mean Body and cosmos   no Something with the journal   no Take on the Orpheus writing   no Something I'm not already doing   Sentence   unconscious processing end of illusions that lead to withdrawal Connect uncon/dissociated stuff   YES Use writing to do it   Do you want to say where to start   delayed subtle recovery in relation to your father Do I have a hook to pull me into it   Organizing practicalities of love woman's anger In relation to Tom   no Work   Writing   Thinking what I need and don't have and why not 19 They approved Tom. It's ours. Tomorrow I'll go on the bike and measure as best I can without the key. Nov 1. 21 I come into a room where they are watching TV. It's my footage! I shot it not long ago, how did they get it? Everyone's very absorbed. I'm looking at the camera movement. Mostly I like it. It's being broadcast from a station in Montreal. When I wake I'm startled to remember I haven't really shot it. It was cinema verité of a young girl in her family. - What was that. I feel like she savaged me. She's not going to cop. That's the end of that. It says no. It was her tone - it was contemptuous. She was treating me like a stupid person. She's mad at me. Is she right about the transmigration of 'energies'? She wants reincarnation and is somehow imagining it, someway I couldn't grasp.   My heart is shocked as if it took a blow. Did she stop because she felt her argument was defeated. And then she turned it into contempt. And then when Tom came after work and I drove with him to see the neighbourhood, first he wanted to keep on driving since he'd had the car today, second he had the A/C on and snarled that I was being critical when I wanted the window open instead, then he was saying something facetious in his Johnny Cool voice, then he cut off my suggestion about taking Robinson, then another suggestion about turning up over the bridge. Etc. Then he got into so intense a conversation with Harry that I wondered whether they're going to be fucking behind my back - it was the way I was invisible to Harry. So what I'm feeling is alone, there's no one. That mood. Has Tom ever fucked a man   no Is he going to fuck Harry   no In that big double bed   no 22nd The phone rang when I'd phoned Tom after work and he was going to arrive. How come you have your phone on the hook, she said. I'll call you back, I said. Called after I'd written the sentence above. She had worked and gone for a walk in the forest, thought it's long enough now. She was in her warm yellow room with reflections on the black glass. My room darkened as we talked. She chided me for snarking about Lise, said how perfectly Lise works with her, how she gets it right. I said I was sad not to have been able to do that for her. And from there the big sore thing tumbled out, how I haven't been right at [the college] since that semester. Millie, she said. You too, I said. I failed as an advisor that semester and I'm not good with failure, I don't persist, I fade back. I was speaking at the edge of tears. I failed in different ways with the two of you, with Millie it was naivete, with you it was emotional weakness. I lost credibility with Margo, I lost credibility in the college as a whole. I had been on a roll. She said, You were in situations that were new to you and you learned from them. Next time you'll do it differently. I said I'm not getting another chance, I haven't had that kind of students since. She said, maybe you haven't seen your students the same way. I said You and Millie were the only students I've had who could read neuroscience, I shouldn't have blown it. I said I'd thought of it as a video game, I failed at that level and got knocked back to a lower one, and so now I don't want to teach. She changed the subject and I brought it back. I'm still vibrating. She said she wanted to know how to assuage it. I said I don't want to assuage it, it's grief, I need to feel it, I need to cry. I knew it was true and she wouldn't get me there and no one will and I'm likely not going to be able to get there on my own. It was important to see it. She said when I tell her things that way it melts something in her. I said I like her sharpness but I'm not used to being wrong. I say to myself, I can't handle it so it's over, I'm off the hook. She said, Should I take that seriously. I said No, because of the way I'm laughing. I was laughing a lot at the end. It was a relief to be confessed in so many ways. She said We are both waiting to see whether it's safe to feel the other matters to us. - Aware I'm not quoting accurately. Noticed my voice had changed. Said the last two weeks have been hard. Feeling there won't be forgiveness where I sleaze, where there's a blur. We're getting to know each other she said. Now my first thought isn't that you're trying to harm me, I said, That is getting to know you. You talk in terms of semesters, will you still be there in February she said. I think it the other way around, I said, you'll be involved in a new thing. So here it is Sunday morning and bright, 8:30. I'm going to Lakeside for 11. What else. Finally finished that very long little journal, 145p, May to March after Rowen was born. Into the next one and then a couple of shorter ones and then I can edit AG and start transcribing DR. She's going to do a PhD. 25 Louie picked her mother up at the airport and it wasn't a big day since therapy, she said. Aw. Her mother was such a good energy in her. So why does she have to give it up. Because she needed to project existing hate and anger to protect it. With me it was more direct, I felt the blank refusals in my mother herself, I went up against her and tested her. But the good energy of adoration is a huge loss. The hugest. Will you talk to me about that, could I live in the good energy again   Are you able to tell me how   come through, improve the search for generosity Become what she isn't   no Find something that gives to me   The way Louie used to   no The way Joyce did   Yes that restored me   True intimacy   Restore love by true intimacy   You mean earned and tested   No magic, no lies   YES Build love where it's possible   Is Mary as bad as I think she is   Is Rowen right to skirt me the way he does   no Is Susan truly my friend now   She has grown into it   YES Do you want to say more about this   no Transcribing spring 1986. In May I start working in the garden, Michael gets the house on Jackson, I'm suddenly thin, suddenly avid in a project, happy. Before that such a quagmire of grief, anxiety, reading notes, fruitless observing. From that point, one year into AG, good things tumble in - power; friendship with Louie; sex with Rob; art invitations to Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco, London, Melbourne; money; car; the MA; and then starting to taper into the new things, a level more earnest, the doc and Tom in GW. My raring 40s. The dedicated 50s, the serious 50s. The lost 30s. The shallow 20s. The confident but bored 60s? So far. These evenings Tom lays his head on my shoulder, he takes off his jeans so he can peel off his support hose and his dirty socks, then lies with me in his little boxers that have his balls peeking out innocently soft. We kiss a lot, many times hello, many times goodbye. I wanted to look after him today. Amvets. Comforter, flannel sheet, pillow, pillowcases, bathmat, flannel p.j.s. Looked at furniture. Ralph's for supper, meatloaf, mac and cheese, salad. I'm stage 1 hypertensive. Noticed today that there's thinner but wider hair under the outer wing of the eyebrow. 26 My beautiful eyelids are slumped and crumpled. Tom's though are deep and clear. The skin on his face is firm and pink and it glows. It looks 40. But his neck looks 60. I don't know how old 60 is. It seems to be older than I thought it would be. When I'm here alone in the mornings I watch myself nervously for signs of illness. When I'm with Tom in the evenings I'm all well. Email from Mary last night about my journal online. She's intimidated? As if. How did I get so powerful and strong, she says, at 14 and 15. "Very much in control." "You used the guys." So what's most salient for her is whether I'm more than she is? It's not a warm note - "so alive and in control" - it doesn't say you're such a darling and you write so well, I love that you wrote it all down and am proud you kept it and transcribed it and made this of it. Would you say it's resentful that she didn't have what I have? Mary's known for generosity but she doesn't have free admiration. Her note is mostly saying why do you have it and not me. She doesn't mention the writing. That's remarkable, isn't it? She asked what I think of it and I said what she should have said, that it's honest and I like myself for that, that it's brave, that I'm off the rails about boys and that's where my weakness shows, that the writing is good. The answer to why do you have it and not me is, what can you do this moment to take it for yourself. "Accepts, rejects, compromises, and FEELS," that was accurate. My confidence was remarkable, my grip, she's right about that, I wholly know what I think. I don't lose my voice in adolescence. Do I ever lose it? No. In my 30s I break it up because I want something more. When I finish transcribing AG I'll be into DR and that's where I want to know what happened. I want to know whether breaking myself that way was necessary, whether it was done to me, whether it was nothing but waste and wreckage, whether it was correct and heroic. It began in London with Roy. It was the era too. 27 Friday 9 o'clock. I've already transcribed my 10 pages. They were good ones toward the end of the volume. Hegel and VW, a lot of flow and happiness. Yesterday when I came from the gym the sun was a dusky rose circle mild and pretty and the light very soft. There's a fire somewhere, I knew. (It's a big one in Riverside County.) (Saying 'Riverside County' like a Californian.) Was back at the gym after the mysterious illness. Scared of hypertension, found a site that's a doctor's text, complete summary of diagnosis and treatment. It said I'm still very low risk. Relieved. I was watching myself as if I could have a heart attack any minute. Susan last night. I lay on the couch talking almost two hours. She laughed when I told her the story of taking acid and burning Mary's photo of me. That was good. She likes stories. Began with the story of cutting my hair when I was 32. She cut hers a little younger, had had it down to her elbows. What color was it? It was starting to come grey but it was brown. She did it because she was fed up with men, I did it because I wanted a different kind of power than it gave me, I wanted to be able to write. When I spoke to Tom last night I was officious and speedy he said. I said it was gym head. Was it? Probably not. I was trying to figure out how to move him on a Wednesday when he has to go to work at 5 and check-out time is eleven. Tuesday night - I fetch him from work, we bring the rent and pick up the key, we go to the place and empty the jeep, go back to his room and pack everything he isn't taking to work into the jeep and move it. He goes to bed in the usual way. Comes home from work to the new place. Doing this kind of planning I feel my blood pressure rise. 28 This morning transcribing July 1986 I started transcribing as written, lower case, dashes, ampersands, single quotes, spaces. It is slower, it's laborious and would be laborious again when I format into html. Is it worth it to keep the texture of the thought. Regularizing it am I disrespecting somewhat the person I was. It's as if I think myself superior to her, am somehow in competition with her - that's so isn't it - I'm the one with the PhD, I'm the one who wrote Being about - she's just a floundering woman obsessing in attachment confusion and rivalry, I'm beyond that - she was caught in minuteness, I don't do that, I ride more accurately and confidently over the top - I want to say I hate her inferiority, her humiliation - (I'm tracking that, though. I do hear but ...) This is interesting. Tracking it accurately has made me become it more, so that it is that state making me see the attitude I had. So should I redo the whole of AG in lower case - yes. 29 Finished that vol this morning, leaves a couple of travel notebooks, 2 coil books and one long red and black. I've been doing it instead of student letters, so rebellious. The faint queasy-dizzy feeling is still here - whatever it means. Tom is feverish today - it means his foot has tipped - I'm saying he has to go to the VA clinic Tuesday. 1st November I put the key into Tom's hand and said You go down and look at it and I'll stay here and start unloading. Then he lay on the mattress and looked while I whipped everything out of the garbage bags onto shelves. He's at work thinking about it. It was Hallowe'en night. Eleven years ago we were in Ramona having supper after our first trip to the back country - was it? I thought of the moment driving back from our first little trip, the one to the Cove. We were on what I now know is the Pacific Highway - or was it - almost home to the hotel. Tom had been talking about the clothes in Wings of desire and I was noticing something about myself, a tone in the way I was speaking to him. Confident and tolerant? Unusual comfort. Just now I said to myself, did I know? Big sigh. I came in last night to move him and he was flat on his bed. I was all energy. I had found it, negotiated it, had the phone connected, investigated cable and SDG&E, lent money, paid deposits, shopped for bedding and towels, gone for the key - been available and determined for two weeks, endured stress of uncertainty, even at the last moment there was still suspense about whether I'd be able to go away with the key. I was all energy and carried everything down to the jeep while he filled bags. He likes it. We like the same kind of architecture. He left Christopher Alexander on the mantle. He said it suits his soul. I think that's true. He is also liking to imagine himself respectable in it, an identity. My energy is for wanting to be love woman in it - that's the way to say it though I begin by saying I want to be with him somewhere. That part doesn't matter to him. He noticed last night that he was always saying I not we. I want to make it beautiful. I'm hungry for a house. My motives are mixed. Will he write there? Will I open up there? Will he? Will we be there for years? Will he have enough money to keep it going? Will you talk to me about that   Was I feeling the reality of something   no Was I feeling his fear   no The actual emptiness of the relation   NO Is the place right for him   YES Is he truly glad to be there   It was fear of something   Fear of being stuck with him   no Has he cheated on me   no I'm afraid he has   Was it fear of vulnerability   Will you tell me   a reserve, illusion, withdrawal from struggle I've withdrawn a lot   YES Can I unwithdraw now   Afraid of giving up reserve   That's what this place signifies   Honor being scared and confess it   Anything you want to say   YES act to come through into responsibility with evasion Can I do that   Is he ready   Do you want to say more   overview of betrayal to recover action More   be generous, don't withdraw, do the Work with feeling Does sex matter in this   no Are the upstairs neighbours going to be a problem   In what sense   4w Are they gay   no Is anybody there going to want Tom   no Want to say more   passage from difficulties, losses, practical, deep change Description of what has happened   no What needs to   Losses need to happen   Losses that have already happened need to be felt   (Death) Will Tom die there   no Will I   yes Will I have a heart attack   no A stroke   no Cancer   no Kidney failure   no Do you mean I'm going to literally die there   no Say more?   quick action inspiration adventure Were the things he was saying true   Do you mean die into a new period   More?   no 2 At Tom's last night I was antsy and then heartsore. We were lying on the bed I'd made him on the floor looking at the cold bare room. He'd thought to buy flowers at Whole Foods and there were small sunflowers in the fireplace alcove in his thermos. The cat had come in testing the space at every step, tail expressing every thought. We could see into two other rooms from where we lay. When the fridge stopped it was quiet. What was the matter with me, I said I was frightened. I couldn't tell of what, except that Tom had been doing what he does, pumping with positive talk. When I waited for him after work I saw he didn't have his backpack. He had forgotten it at work. He'd lent the keys and not gotten them back. Then after he'd had someone bring the keys and taken the jeep to go for the backpack and gone to storage for his TV, he came to get me and lost his keys again. All of that scared me but it started earlier, when I phoned him at work and he wanted me to call the cable company that moment to make sure there'd be cable last night. That shocked my heart. He's addicted it means, he needs TV to keep him shut down, we'll never have realness again - is how I felt it. And then last night he didn't insist on TV and I was the one who wanted to run. I said my heart has had to tighten its belt so much it is going to take a while for it to loosen up. - ACE Hardware to cut keys, out front there was a garden bench, not bad, $60. Now it is below Tom's window looking at the moon. I did my laundry and put together some supper and came home. 4 Sparrows, hummingbirds, a flock of pigeons over the dip, a bluejay, a hawk that might have been the falcon that landed on the laundry frame in the garden. A sulfur yellow, a monarch, a white. Quiet Saturday. We sat on the bench in the sun, bacon and eggs. The floor is already dirty. 5th [Photos, Balboa Park from the roof, downtown through fog] 6 Weekend at Georgia St, all day yesterday. Tom said layers of tension dissolving. We were lying on the couch yesterday and I had to think what to call it, our two single beds in an L in the corner, perfect arrangement, perfect height to lie looking out across the dip toward the grand white-trunked ancient eucalyptus pinking at nightfall - we were lying next to each other diagonally across the corner of the couch, each with our head on one pillow and our feet on another. He was stroking my head. It was sublime. Our keeping company has been fraughtful he says. Yes. I don't see him though I peer at him. He praises the place, praises me for finding it, declares he's happy, declares he loves me. When he declares I split. I feel myself both going along with it, pleased, reassured, and holding off against it, trying to feel an alternative truth. The split feeling is an ongoing unease. - Here, I sat up straighter because I am about to say something else. It's always this way: I'm feeling the blankness of our company, that we have no interest in each other and I should leave; and then he says something that makes me feel it's alright, I'll stay with him. I'm not attentive enough to notice what it is he does - I'm thinking he manages me in those moments. As I'm writing this I'm feeling that both the thought that I'm going to leave and the management and obedience are shallow. There's a miasma we're in together, and they are phenomena of that miasma. I bustle in the kitchen wiping surfaces, putting things away, sometimes cooking. I'm bothered by for instance the way he leaves the cream cheese on the counter after he uses it and spills coffee grains when he makes coffee. These things feel piggish as if he's perceptually stupid, doesn't see what he's doing. What else. The way he kisses sometimes, I don't like to refuse these kisses because they seem to be young, I wonder whether they're the way they are for a good reason, a sincerity like a boy's devotion, but they are stupid-feeling, he glues his mouth onto mine in a dumb unconscious way - is that the way to say it. What else. He got his cards and the Casual labor notes from storage yesterday. I think his living there could be the beginning of the realness I imagined eleven years ago, for him and between us. And me? I was realer then. Wasn't I? I was not so blank as I am now, I was fighting and learning. He said he's been faithful and he has never hurt me and he wonders whether this exquisite place is what he earned for that. I've been deferred. That's scandalous. It's scandalous that I've been willing to be deferred. When I imagine this place I don't imagine anything for me, except that I'm given that hand on my head. Could there be something for me   YES Can you explain to me   Can it be my best possibility   As good as if I were on my own   love woman, excluded child, decision, to liberation That's what it's about   Finish that   YES Does that have implications for work   improvement, completion, winning, recovery I should do meditation   Gym   Is he going to go on disability   Is he going to have enough money   Should I find him a computer   Do you want to say more about this   feminine, valor, overview, love woman Haven't I done a lot of that   Finish it   Live it and revise it   And my work here is different   Tell me in one word   writing (Kc) Transcribing 1992 first the passages about being in Valhalla and then when I get home about having a crush on Dave Carter and Louie's freaking and her book passages and the general ickiness of all of that. I love the writing about my country and hate the muck we were in, which feels like revulsion about Louie. Was that necessary? Did we have to do that to get through? Did we get through? YES Will Tom and I have to get through some ickiness   Does he have major work to do   no His major work was stabilizing practically   It's a huge accomplishment   YES Will you tell me what his next step is   shame (5s) Feel it   YES That's the first thing   And the main thing   Nov 24 06 - Dec 18 07 [Tim Stephens on Astral Reflections]: standing in the world - best year to launch - may continue something started in 2000-2001. (Something new begun in 2005-2006 that isn't working, abandon.) Work hard and slow last 18 mo, grinding destiny in career since 1995 - this luck cycle solves it - start Dec 06. 7 Tuesday morning, anything? Santa Ana days, yesterday a baking noon. It's a free week, was at Eliz's yesterday, will have to shop for Scott, half day back at Taft. Otherwise - transcribing dense stuff, Louie's book, visions, crashes, hardly any real life. Next res - what. 8 Nancy Pelosi being interviewed on PBS by a woman journalist. It was confirmed this evening that the dems have the Senate as well as the House and a lot of governors. Rumsfeld resigned today. I went to Tom's house to watch the 6 o'clock news with him, he put his head in my lap and I stroked his hair while we watched Katie Courec interview the first female House Leader and the female best field reporter in Iraq, Lara Logan. 9 Loki this morning. I was trying to teach him by interrupting him every time he used a dualistic formation - that's a lazy way to say something. We were at the rail at the seafood café in Point Loma. He's very heady and speedy though he also noticed what was in front of him, pelicans, an egret, a harbour seal, an unusual duck with a long neck. He was talking about 'mind' and 'body' and I was trying to show him how to think it better. He was talking about 'stimulus' and 'information' and something 'being relayed' and a representation and all the usual and I could see dimly that in his way there is always a gap between what he thinks of as body and what he thinks of as mind. I was seeing that he's quick and heady but conventional, more conventional than Nathalie and not as intelligent. He had an enthusiasm he's promoting, something about myth and collective dynamics, but he's wrong about both, he doesn't have a platform. And yet he's a good clear body and head, his martial arts give him that. And Nathalie's with another Asian guy, her Philippino arts instructor. Something about trying to do a vis of quantum entanglement at the Banff Centre. Almost done transcribing the 1992 (and a short 1989 at the same time). This morning there was a nice exact concise picture of a grad seminar in the department. It was in the midst of mess and agony with Louie like a clean island of real life. There were good sections where I was speaking to and as my own book - one where it told me why and how to write the MA. I've forgotten that I can call up that. Dear large one, can I call you up now? Are you still different from this one?   (Deep breath.) Is there something you'd like to say?   (Silence, in which I'm feeling myself.) Are you wanting me to be silent in you?   (Silence, queasiness.) Eat first? (string) yes   - Hello.   (Just silent physicality, pressure at the forehead.) Is it you?   You're not going to speak to me that way anymore?   no   Am I wrong to hate Louie in that time   no Was there something going on I didn't know about   And there still is   Is Louie more false than I am   no Is she more avaricious than I am   YES More of her intelligence is in service to avarice   Would I be right to hate that   no The cunning it serves   YES She loved about me that I could disconnect her from it   Is there a sin I have that's as bad as that   no As consequential   Can you say what with one card   Ellie's Myself   I am a sin   You mean this self   It's of the nature of ego   Is the larger self the self of the whole   YES Extending sentience outside the body     I'm not energized enough   Forgot to say that Loki tried to read parts of my diss, he said, but the way it was written was too unusual for him. And this: a week ago on the embodiment list Adrian asked me about Lise's quote on the epistemology page and about love as knowledge generally. I wrote the list with six books recommended with a line about each, and links to the web worksite and to Being about. I had one email from a mature woman doing art and Merleau-Ponty in Ontario, MA student, and no comment on the list. The week before there had been a lot of back and forth comment to and from a young woman who had asked an ignorant question in a letter with a lot of misspelling. The men were preening. If they can't do that with me they'll ignore me. If one of them publicly acknowledges me the others will. There has to be a breakthrough. Will you show me who can read it?   YES Is it someone I know already?   no     volume 12 in america volume 11: 2006 january-june work & days: a lifetime journal project