Work and Days: In America: vol 12 - part 1 2006 November-December

in america 12 part 1 - 2006 november-december work & days: a lifetime journal project

San Diego 10 November 2006

I want:

To be fully engaged
To get my bp down
To be beautiful, not so harsh-looking
To do whatever I can to keep memory good
To have my work used
For my kids to be well
To be the right weight and strong and have a lot of energy

Other things I could want:

To have enough money to live somewhere better
To be able to work the way I can with the Being about work
To make films the way I've imagined
To travel, to be in the country
To have the journal succeed
To have Being about succeed
To have better conversation, exciting company
To have more fun
To not have to drudge at gardens
To either quit [the college] or make it higher level
To be honored in my family
To dress very well
To be famous in the right way
To be very healthy and strong till I die
To open possibilities for perceiving world
To have Mary be better company, to like her
To not be stuck and dull with Tom, either to have it exciting or to be done with it in a correct way
To be able to build something important
To help Luke and Rowen in any way I should
To be funny
To know I'm at stretch again in the right projects

Do you want to add some to come through, to be integrated, to construct, Ellie
More? no

A Friday afternoon. It's sunny but cool.

Close to finishing AG - the last long volume turns out to be 62 pages transcribed already, facing pages left. I could start formatting it probably.

* What duties

Packet 4's and 5's and evals
At Taft clean up the vine and dig up camellias
One turn at Dawne?
Better care of 5th Ave
Shop for Scott

* Money:

Find out about retirement
Insurance for jeep
Get money from G&F
Transfer from savings, Rowen's cash
Investment advice

* Before res:

Get magazine out
Design new one
Workshop notes
Lectures
Buy computer?
Learn Final Cut Pro
Vis tapes
Bike for Tom
Bike rack

* Furniture for T:

End table
Console
Kitchen loveseat
Bistro table
Washable bedspreads
Pot for papyrus

* How:

Get rid of TV
Bike rack and bike trails
Learn to swim to be able to kayak
Shop for clothes
Yoga
Meditation
Med visions
B vit
Meat and veg

12

The blue sofa - it cost $360 and I said he had to promise not to look at the price. [Chile Pepper 9 loveseat, Carnegie slate, Sidney Chambray]

What I don't like about Tom as a householder: he doesn't put things away. If he uses the sugar he leaves it on the counter. He doesn't recycle. He won't keep the garbage in the pantry and then there are coffee grounds scattered. He left the kitchen floor muddy for days. He leaves the venetians down and closed. He wastes food because he doesn't notice what he has. He eats badly and very messily.

What I like: he's humoring me about furnishing, he loves the Mission side table, sat staring at it yesterday. He praises the house on and on. Doesn't need a kitchen table. Hands out money freely. Cuddles and kisses. Loves the right things in the architecture and the furniture.

Louie yesterday morning a light voice, laughing. I sent her the journal piece where she beats up her mom and sees the crystal in a tree.

Susan last night snuck through the house to smoke in the yard. She was sitting on the steps with her flashlight. I heard the church bells chiming midnight on her end.

I was at Tom's house from 7 to 7. We didn't watch TV. I cleaned, made breakfast. He put on his una boots and was happy that his feet felt better. We went to the farmer's market and I bought an orchid and an African blue basil. Took stuff home. Then it was time to go for the sofa. The sofa! The blue sofa. Why was I avid for that sofa.

Love woman got turned on. Is turned on. I see her in the mirror. People are looking at me.

Last night after I left Tom I stopped at Rite Aide and bought him hydrocortisone and antiseptic creams, coffee and a squeegy. Drove back and left them at his door. Feeling what it is like to do things for him. I don't say I love Tom and am over the moon to be making a home for him that he is paying for. I say this must be some kind of thing my body needs.

-

Do you want to say more about Laura anger, unconscious, practical, overview
Would anger help her
Give her a practical overview of uncon anger
Does she ever feel anger no
Are her illnesses psychosomatic YES
But now the surgeries have so cut her up
Should I be learning from her about me YES
Coping alone is not good in a child
Because it freezes fear - dissociates fear?
She somatizes YES
Did her mother try to abort her
Was she enclosed when she was a child
Will she remember that
Can she handle feeling it
More? no

13

We talk about the house, say the same thing many times. We talk about our history, say the same thing many times. When I'm at his house I like to be in the kitchen doing something, making it look the way I like it to look. I wipe the counter many times. The best time yesterday was when we were lying down under the window with Ray Lynch on very quietly. Tom was spooning me and I was nearly sleeping. He said he felt me drop into a deeper level of relaxation.

I go along in vague wonder that a relation with such poor talk is somehow what works. I who have had such good talk - have I fallen back to this because I'm fading out?

Another way to think it is that this home is a base for something more that can happen now. I was starved for it - that's why I have been comforting myself for years with a fantasy about a man's house.

-

Going tomorrow to Chula Vista to look at a table for his closet electronics. Hours on Google looking at bistro tables.

-

Another thing I am wondering vaguely is whether I am exploiting him. Until he began giving me money did I ever wonder that, I don't think so. I wonder whether I'm forcing him into a house that intimidates him, is me not him, is too much of a class stretch for him to be comfortable in it.

Or should I say I am showing him what's possible.

I'm determined to make it beautiful, in dread that any of his own decisions will spoil it, plotting to forestall any of them I think are wrong, and uneasy in this cupidity that doesn't care about him.

14

Degarmoara is a white orchid with a lot of leaves.

15

Wednesday morning in a damp black.

I'm antsy looking at things to do.

These minor packet 4's and start evals to have them out of the way for when Rowen comes.
Buy Ro's ticket
Three lectures for res
Finish at Scott's
Finish at Nora's
One day at Dawne?
Combined mag for both semesters
Supercomputer center

Will have 5 weeks after Ro goes.

Here I sit up: Loki's introduction to someone at the supercomputer center - I need to get ready to make use of that. Research. Dig into where I was when I dropped it.

Should I do the lectures on - yes.

One at least on vis with tapes.

What do I have - Fox Keller erotic science, vis tapes, sci vis and experimental film

Mind and land: a post-post-modern culture of contact - new humanism - religion is what is - embodied epistemology - understanding of dissociation - grounded science - Christopher Alexander? - instances of post-post-modern - would libe buy a copy of The great dance - would it buy a copy of Julie Tolmie on CD? - Gordon Smith, is there a photo?

16

This week I'm picking him up after work where his ride drops him on 1st Ave. We go to his house. I make supper. After we eat I go home.

Last night we stopped at Whole Foods for meatloaf, baking potatoes and artichokes and then at Ace for a power bar, computer cable and waste basket. We have been shopping together very peacefully. When we got home the cat met us at the top of the steps.

Tom lay on the couch and I assembled the electronics on the new table in the closet. There they are in a row: TV, speakers, CD player, DVD player, alarm clock, phone charging. We had the TV on mute and a CD playing and Tom lay in wonder gazing at his silver machines, his control center. Then I shut the closet doors and there he was in an Irving Gill room with his fine lamp glowing on a Mission table and his amaryllis cracking open on the hearth ledge. Candles on the mantle, an end of the blue couch visible in the kitchen. The smell of meatloaf.

He said it's the first apartment move where he hasn't been drinking and grouchy.

Sober he has turned out to be a happy man. It's the job too, he's heroic and physical all day long. Splendidly paid.

Leveled out, not losing it, temperate with money, good to his woman. In possession of an apartment so marvelous he can hardly believe what he sees and just gazes on and on.

I come up with ideas and he is doubtful and then I realize them and he is overjoyed.

Wanting to do some planting. A mesquite on the landing. What else. Scented geraniums. Cistus. Need some big pots later ... some really big pots, let's grow a mesquite from seed maybe? A cassia below, passiflora vitifolia among the honeysuckle. A guava? Sweet peas would work there.

I asked who he would like to show the place to. He said after a while that the people he would like to show it to are gone. His mom, Vic, his uncle Joe.

17

Haven't said I have a new comforter, white and fluffy, large and warm. Found it when I was bedding-shopping at Amvets. I think it's new and if so it's a great luxury - don't think I've ever had a new duvet. I'm looking at my bed pleased with it - periwinkle bottom sheet, white cotton topsheet, this substantial white coverlet, red plaid blanket, a couple of white pillows.

When I got home last night I had to go back and lock the roof gate, and then crossing back to the door I heard the phone ring. It was plugged in because I'd called Tom before I went out. I'd have unplugged it in a moment to check email, so Susan had found the one-minute window.

What else - the note from CFDC saying notes in origin and trapline are on in NYC in early December.

It's Friday. That means money in the bank - I should buy Rowen's ticket.

Now it's 6 and the sky is just lightening behind the palms to the east.

AG is transcribed. Now I can start designing it.

Formatted the short first vol up to where I leave Jam.

19

Sunday morning at 3663.

Hummingbird on the snag. That dark-headed cream-breasted bird I can't find in the book. Some little thing on the wire I could see opening its beak emitting what I could hear. It's maybe eight on the bench, hot. Tom is inside reading the Union he got from the box across the street.

We were lying on our backs with our heads together and Tom spoke a paragraph of a Reader piece about this place.

Tonight Rowen's ticket. Three weeks Tuesday for 5 days, 12-18.

-

Tom's house.

His foot hurting so much, how can he sustain the job. How can he sustain the apartment.

It has cost him $2000 to move - approx. His costs will be three or four hundred a month less. Seven months to make up the deficit. He'll need $2000 a month to sustain it, that's $100 a day for a regular work week.

1. He's doing it because I demanded it.
2. His foot went because he didn't wear his elastic socks to work.
3. He loves it, it makes him want to write.

I was looking at him with so much pleasure, I was so much liking him in his calm funny realness. His big strong nose. His beauty.

Yesterday he struggled here on sore feet because I'd left his house Friday night disapproving of him. He declared and I declared and he got himself up to date and we made friends - went shopping and I cooked a roast.

He never complains when my cooking doesn't work.

The cat slept all afternoon on the blue sofa and then on the cooler concrete under the honeysuckle. Tom read the NY Times for hours.

20

Michael Duke. Last saw him maybe last May. Tragic last sight of him ill and manic. I was closing my door on him, he was looking at me in anguish of reproach. I've wondered whether he died. He showed up at Starbucks today, missing two front teeth but clean, in new jeans and running shoes. He looked healthy and was sane, not too fast or too slow. He'd been to Utah working on a raptor survey, crew chief, regular meals, a community.

21st

I often wake scanning my decisions - I mean scanning, talking to myself about, the course I'm on. It's not a strong state, I lose it easily. It is anxious and broad. For instance this morning before I got up and turned on the light and made tea, I was naming to myself the way I haven't felt interested in buying a computer and making films, the way I've been avid instead about Tom's house and now am more involved in helping him sustain it - picking him up after work, cooking for him, paying bills. Do I really want to get involved in talking to vis people at SDSC. The past four years I've been strongly involved in [the college] - it was what I was doing more than I knew - and isn't that over now. The journal is going to take another couple of years, maybe 3? Which brings me to 65, and no one is liking it, anyone I've sent to it (Jan, Lise, students) fades out of it without comment. (Damion was okay.) So is it going to be a well like Being about, but I'll still do it. I could find notes for enthusiasms and use them to set myself up to do something but none of them are drivers at the moment. The colloquy this summer was a smash of something, I build things to a point and drop them. (What have I dropped - my student fans - Juliana, Carolyn, Favor, Carol, Jeanne. Why did I drop them. They aren't epistemologists. What else have I dropped. The semester magazine. The website.) Something else that has quietly dropped - it's mutual - is Susan. We may still talk on the phone but she has gone the route of Kripalu and standard expository writing. It feels as if I've said to her whatever I had to say and that has unlatched me, two years later.

So here's a question: when I do things intentionally, without being impelled, the effort turns out to be wasted, it seems to me. Sometimes I'm caught and driven and that turns out well - the garden and the doc - student letters and developing mbo these years.

So what do I have now: a gap.

Yes I can put these things together: the writing from up north, the visual notes from the years filmmaking, digital tech.

The journal transcription now is more to give myself the resources of those years.

For the journal project I can see that the DR and AG years will be more multimedia - linked to slides and tape and CDs. A rich life.

So what about Being about and mbo. I put them into parentheses and drop them?

I need independent money so I can drop [the college]. I need to form the life that will support Orpheus - have to call it something else.

I need to be doing things to shift into that more tenuous sensitive state. To build support for.

Do you want to talk to me about any of this money, action, delay, practical
It has to wait for money
Is there money coming
Do you want to talk about source for the money no
More exclusion, betrayal, defeat, illusion
Illusion about the work no
That's what's going to come of it no
What about them come through
Is more important than the work YES
Do you want to say more no
I should wrap up mbo

Workshop notes, letters.

22

Secretly planted a pink passiflora under our bit of the walk yesterday. Didn't prep it well, needed my pick.

Yesterday was a good day. I was writing when I woke. AG intro notes. Wanted to do Scott's last bit but his place was locked tight. Mission Hills Nursery and Walter Anderson's, at liberty looking at passifloras.

It's Thursday but Thanksgiving morning so there's no traffic though it's 6:20. There's patchy cloud I can see pink bits through.

I didn't go to Tom's last night till almost 6. He was stretched out in the grey pyjamas I found at Amvets. What's in the fridge. Bacon and eggs. I'll make bacon and eggs for supper, wheat toast. We put Wings of desire into the VCR. Lie together holding hands. It gets too long. He turns it off, asks me what I thought of it. Earlier he asked whether I'd slept with a lot of women and listened quietly to the whole story. What I mean is that he's become the Tom I was there for, he's come true. When I cooked for him last night he said "You're so nice to me, I'm seeing what you've been holding back."

I'm not forgetting to say to myself that it always changes, it will change, this won't last.

What did I like in Wings of desire, melting through the city hearing people think, the grey murmur of voices reading in the library, the angels' smiles at each other. Thinking what Luke, Dave Carter and Tom of twelve years ago liked about the movie was the watcher in themselves who looks at people, feeling them.

We lie on the couch looking through a doorway to the checkered floor and the blue couch where a tabby cat is blissfully asleep.

I play the Maria Joao Pires Mozart sonatas these days. Don't listen to them. Sometime will stop for the precision of spacing in those rapid bubbling runs. The bright and dark. It's always a play of bright against dark, the two hands.

-

Brought chicken soup and made a pumpkin pie. We ate two pieces each and put the other two into the fridge and not much later got them out and ate them up.

25th Saturday

At Tom's place on the bench. Last of the sun. Tom's inside asleep. Woke under the window. There were pink clouds. Tom had a boner - there's a jay - and said ardently that he loves my big hairy fat-lipped pussy that I have along with my Palladian mind. I never get used to his overstatements.

It's quiet. What's that tree with dry leaves, our deciduous one. There's a long apartment court below the garden, it reaches all the way up from Florida Street, a block and a half. Is this bitty-leafed thing a eugenia grown out? Fractal tree Tom says.

Our neighbours the tweaker queen and the illustrated boy, though she kicked Harry out and now there's a big old guy in a motorcycle gang teeshirt with is that a pit bull. Northeast toward El Cajon Boulevard a king palm with a crown of orange fruit. Closer to, an ordinary fan palm with its glittering grassy fringes. Out of sight down below a tall persimmon with a lot of fruit. Row of pigeons on that wire they like. Massive eucalyptus beyond them, very spreading.

-
tenuous poetics
pagan heart
natural motion
sci vis
hi-def digital
digitize slides
films on DVD
garden video
video negs
tapes reading journal

29

Reading AG to format it. A lush burst, especially the last part of the year, feeling out an Orpheus film - remember those notes are there.

It's cold. My hands are cold though the heater has been on for hours. Cold and bright.

Last night Susan on the phone joyful in all her directions. Her brother says she's beautiful. Her thesis is done. Someone in her class says her teaching is full of love. She's running again and feels herself lighter moving from her core. She loves her jeep. She saw that nothing ever being good enough was her father and she needn't be that. She's sure there will be someone soon. She's thinking a PhD in performance maybe at Berkeley, maybe at UCLA, maybe at NYU. She notices she's smart.

The moment I loved was when she described how in her senior year her roommate had a boyfriend who liked to throw a football. He taught her to catch it over her shoulder, running. She'd be running, looking back, and the football would appear in front of her and her hands would close around it. She never got enough of it.

- Yesterday at Rite Aide when I took my blood pressure I discovered it's down to 135/86. Home happiness. Stopped there on my way to Tom's where I put meatloaf and baking potatoes into the oven. When I arrived he had cleaned everything, even the bathroom, even the kitchen floor. He had beautifully arranged the dishes and glasses in the cupboard. His amaryllis has sent up a second stalk that now is taller than his first.

Anthology Film Archives Friday Dec 7 at 8 - showing Trapline. Northumberland Gallery showed something last week with a lecture by Philip Hoffman.

Applied yesterday for fac devel funds to go to a TSK course in Berkeley in March for a week.

In volume 4 of AG I'm still in fantasy about Robert Mac, flirting with Michael and fighting him off. Sometimes having a moment of noticing Ro, playing with Laiwan, working with Joyce, starting to imagine the herb garden by various names, reading a lot of calendrical, pagan and underground stuff, and from all of this there foams up an ecstatic lyricism that is imagining the grain film.

What happened then - the lyric burst took other channels - is that correct? Did I have to lay a floor in these other ways? The herb garden and in 1989 the MA and then the whole of western epistemology and coming to good terms with a man and getting to the child alone in her bed and then hand-rearing my [college] few and then the journal project and now -? In the meantime it kept saying no and now it's saying yes

Should I move on it over Christmas
Buy a computer
Will there be a correct one
Is the TSK correct
Is it important
Is it a loop YES
Will this film work make me famous
And will that send people to the other work
So mbo is irrelevant no
But I should make it self-standing
And get ready to leave [the college]
Copy it onto another server
Am I going to have enough time YES
Thank people
Will I still be at [the college] this time next year no
Arts grant no
Some other offer
Are you sure
Buy the computer soon
New no
Craigslist
Will I still be here in this little house
Will I be able to handle the technical stuff
Electronic composer
With enough money
Do you want to say anything about this no

5th December

Tom yesterday got back from his VA appointment excited and loud. I'd been working on packets. He'd say chloresterol, I'd say "It's cholesterol." He exploded. He went on like that. I took him home. Last night I was annoyed at having him so much in mind. I say to myself, this has got settled, I should get out. I think of the mornings in the Maryland, desert sunrise at the high window, Tom in lamplight a man with stronger arms than now, tying his tie, ironing his pants. I a younger woman than now looking at him with erotic liking, in bed next to the city waking in its streets. And then as the sun rose into the room working alone. Pigeons on the billboard, Clayton's Pies wide and empty full of light below. The height of that window, its generous width, the depth of the sill. In other words there was a realness to the time that this time even with its beautiful small house does not have. I'm sidelined. Tom presumably is sidelined too. (It says no.)

Now I say, are Tom and I going to go on 'til the end, and I don't want the answer to be yes. Why. Because we hit the top of our curve long ago, nothing more is going to happen. I want to slip back into the river, I don't want to settle.

6

Hayashi Fumiko Floating clouds 1949/2006 Columbia. Snow country was 1947.

In the clear, well-kept post office at this early-morning hour, the light was as quiet as the bottom of the sea.

Kawabata spoke at her funeral. 1904-1951.

change and chance as the work of the spirit

[notes on I Ching for Justin]

If I left him now would I still miss him no
Do I have to wait for him to find some other woman no
I'm feeling his emptiness
The emptiness of his life
Is there going to be a bridge somewhere else
Will you talk to me defeat, action, come through, mother
Is this about action being defeated in me
That's what this is really about
It happened through my mother
Whether I stay or go with Tom is not important
Recovering action is what's important
It's as well to stay and have a base
More? process defeat of practical triumph
Fame and fortune
Is it better not to have those no
Could I have enough money to have a house of my own
Do I have to make it by slogging no
Is it about money no
Influence
Don't allow Tom to abuse me at all YES
Yelling at me is a physical blow
Go to the country more
Do you know how I can make it
By honest means no
More love woman, turn for the better, indecision, action
Improve love woman's indecision about action
Much more single-minded
Love woman should enlarge her sphere
It was an amazing time YES
It's done
I was wide open
Can I be wide open in action
Is that what Nora is

7

And then it says instead of leaving Tom and throwing myself into dejection I should find the river in work. No it said action - improve love woman's indecision about action.

Yesterday I didn't touch student work. AG8 had seven sections and yesterday I read through and placed five of them - 100 pages. In the afternoon I sat with my files and did a rough sort of a year's clippings.

1988 I bought my first docs [Doc Martin boots]].

Bad thing happened. Because my fucidin in zinc cortate 1% cream ran out and the new prescription doesn't work, the patch of broken skin next to my anus didn't heal when it broke out and the infection or whatever it is has spread from one little crevice to the whole area. And a spot in the crack behind my right ear the same, so it's been a weeping sore that has spread. My scalp has been violently itchy. And now there's an inflammation spreading forward into my labia.

Allergy? Tom's skin infection that made his balls itch?

8

Marble topped tables yesterday - up 805 to Mira Mesa, a desert suburb with huge hollow houses in cheap materials, plastic window frames. A few dried-out rose bushes in weedy gravel. The whole front of the house a 3-car garage. At the far end of the street a baking yellow afterglow. Going home three lanes of taillights creeping in a wide curve onto 805 south from Mira Mesa Boulevard.

Susan applying to UCLA, euphoric.

Tom standing in the living room with me to stare at the black table set with a pink lily on it up against the blue sofa.

Salt water has fixed the lower itch.

AG9 is placed and 10 set up. What did I want to say about it. I've sorted the parts: AG is 20 volumes. 1988 is almost twenty years ago - crazy for tail and about to go back to school. I like nothing better these days than working on it and yet I haven't much to say about it. I'm fixing typos and placing onto pages, pulling excerpts for the intro page, listing reading notes in the index, noting links to make later and insulting lines to consider. Nothing I've looked at in this lot is really well written. A bunch of reading notes. Sometimes I sound a bit off about Rob. I'm excerpting to summarize the time not to show good writing. Michael sometimes shows well. When I like him my liking has his lightness, some.

- As I've written this paragraph the sky has darkened, marine cloud has moved inland.

1986-1989 I shifted steadily: took leadership of the garden, went to London and met Lis, put out notes in origin, met Brakhage, had the Canada House show, National Gallery opening, got the Canada Council B, went to Berkeley, went back to school, made the herb garden. 41-44. Had already found the key books of the time, Gardner, Chaos, Fox Keller.

What I do want to know: I was reading the NYT arts pages on new visual art and feeling how tech-y and inorganic it sounds, like the architecture in Dwell, what's the material I'm thinking of, a plastic laminate. 'Composite.' Had been looking at the Hymns to Aphrodite, Greek adoration of the colored world, so beautiful, so real, so erotic and full. (On this journal I have pasted Louie's photo of sheep grazing deep grass under olive trees.) I'm loyal to early love. I always consider bodies.

What do I want to know: would anyone I respect have pleasure in this project, be heartened by it? That's a real question. I'll do it even if the answer's no.

-

What is it with Tom. I've been all lovey, buying him pots and glasses and cooking supper and now I've gone right off him. He was sharp last night about how I don't like his friends. Today he came in having bought bags and bags of junk - stupid books from the library sale, a brown cushion, a mirror, a blanket. He's spending mindlessly again. Is he using? He looks like his mother - he's in that state, whatever it is. He's also cleaning his house. He came in happy with all his parcels and I didn't like him.

10

I dreamed I looked back along the walkway and saw that everything in front of Tom's place had been stolen - the bench, the table, the plants. I was staring at bare concrete. Later I saw he had a large round glass pot he was going to sink into the ground. He was going to plant in it. There were two more. He was doing the work with two friends, rough-looking men. A woman with three children in a stroller. I think she's the thief. I'm threatening her to try to get her to tell us where our things are. I've cut her leg but she's held out. I'm not giving up. I rock the stroller above the long flight of a down elevator as if I'm going to send it flying, she immediately says where she has taken the stuff. It's a guru's place. When I wake she has taken the kids and they're fleeing up some stairs and I'm chasing them.

What do I want to know:

Is he using
Can I tell
Am I just shut down for my own reasons
Did we have that sweet period because he was sick
Should I change how I am about his addiction.

I'll start there delay, mother, action, generosity
You're delayed because of mother, action and generosity
Because of my relation to my mother
Because it spoiled action and generosity
What I'm seeing about trained helplessness
I'm puzzled instead of clear YES
I should just say You're using again no
His addiction means abandonment to me
Is that what you mean
I should just be brisker, you're in a stupid state, I'm going no
I'm too afraid of abandonment no
I don't know when I'm abandoned
Will you lead me betrayal, responsibility, indecision, writing
I'm not clear this morning no
Something about writing YES
I'm stuck

Got stuck with the book. Let me try again here. He went into a shopping euphoria. The worst was the pile of old books. What do I hate about them. He shows himself mindless, out of control. Why am I with this man who brings junk into my life, why am I with stupidity and disorder.

It says I can change something about my relation to his - what to call it - disorder?

Do you mean don't take it personally no
I feel the possibilities as shut down or suffer
But those aren't the only possibilities
Is that where my mother comes in
Move up into generosity
Say you're out of control but say it with love
If my mother had said to Ed, you're suffering unbearable stress
And said it to herself as well YES
Tom is shutting down on something
Ask what it is
Is it something about work no
Is it about his feet no
About me no
Something specific no
Tom is shutting down on something YES
Sex
Because he wanted what's her name no
He wants a man
Somebody in particular no
Should he just go ahead and do it
He's afraid of me sexually no
He feels I'm going to want something YES
He absolutely does not want to fuck me
And I don't want to fuck him either
He has no interest in me sexually
Never has had
He feels pressured in this house
I need to hold onto this knowledge
So I'm strongly deprived with him
He's emotionally het
And sexually homo
When he looks like his mother it's that YES
If I held onto that knowledge would it change anything no
He thinks that if he acknowledges it I'll leave
He was sexually attracted to Oscar
Would I leave no
This is a floor of sanity for me
And I know he'll deny it
Which means we're stuck
Will you advise me mourning, processing, coming through, betrayal
I'm taking account of this without feeling it
All of that nesting was folly no
Because I needed it
But mistaken in its object no
I want him even if he doesn't want me
And I'm emotionally homo and sexually het
Is there more you want to say withdrawn, action, and judgment, are coming through
I need to hang onto this
I've twice with men felt true desire
Ache and desire and know I don't have
More you want to say Ellie, (HP), unconscious, loss
Will you slant (HP) withdrawal
Keep your hand on, stay in touch with
Will and Grace YES
Puts its finger on something
Anything else you want to say no

Susan talking last night about what I've done for her: three things about physical care: told her to use a hot water bottle at her feet, insisted she get an oil-filled heater, recommended writing with tea rather than coffee. Three psychological clues: told her not to waste herself on self-blame, told her she's impatient with writers because she has trained herself to specialize, and what was the last one - told her not to correct the tips of the branches, work at the root and they will take care of themselves. She is mentoring young volunteers and passes that one on.

-

It's a lonesome day, dejected, lost.

Should I go make friends with Tom. No. Nothing has resolved.

In the month we were friendly did I swallow too much I don't like - his endless do you love me dampness, the emptiness of company except when he was funny - the times when he dutifully asks me something and I hear myself unsupported saying something dull. This isn't really true - there'd be very natural straight-across moments and when I have something to tell he gets interested. So what's my complaint. It says it's that there's something false in the platform that never gets acknowledged and that I have to feel alone and that is a grief and deprivation and that he suppresses so that suppression also interferes. Am I feeling it more since reading in AG what real sex was like with Rob? That was where I freaked last night - we were in Rudford's in the booth together and he said what was I doing and I said transcribing etc and there was a lot I liked about sex. He changed the subject. "This soup is really good." Right there is where I fell into the far-away.

There's no solution to this except truth and he is never going to risk it because he's too dependent.

Does he know it? He may not even know it. He may never have had real sex.

If I try to talk about it he is going to blame and deny. I'm stymied. And/or he'll try forcing it.

Supposing what I have said here is true.

I can say at 60 sex doesn't matter but I have to stay aware of this level of truth that I keep responsibility for alone. If I lose touch with it I will be confused. And the other thing is true - it scares me when he goes out of control buying junk.

-

Mathew Sanford Waking 2006 Rodale Press

Paraplegic from age 13, teaches yoga.

Wanted a mind-body institute - "institute of consciousness."

Isn't a strong thinker but radiantly beautiful.

Non-profit org Mind-Body Solutions out of Minnesota.

'Mind' = conscious awareness = 'I'.

'Body' he says it's 'conscious' but means sentient.

"My body interacts with the world and records it regardless of whether my mind is having any experience." 183

"Body memories."

"The mind connects with the body," "an energetic connection," ie we feel ourselves to be bodies, we feel our lower bodies more.

Perception from outside, body as image.

He could feel his legs - instead of a stretch out through the heel he feels energy moving out through the heel.

He makes a mistake just here. He thinks it means "the mind is not strictly confined to a neurophysiological connection with the body" but what it means is that he is completing the pose energetically in the cortex, a pattern completes itself in motor cortex somewhat as if.

So what he calls "energetic sensation" is cortical sensation.

So is all energetic sensation only cortical. It says no. "I can 'feel' the pose, feel how the physical instructions are intended to amplify, guide and direct the flow of energy in ... I observe not just whether the physical actions are occurring, but also whether the intended energetic release is happening."

Poses are always moving in at least two directions, usually opposite.

Energetic sensation "a hum, a buzz," increases, changes color with cold, amplifies with meditation, signals needing to pee, is more when aligned in yoga, shows dark areas.

"The yogi begins to see poses as expressions of this energy, not creators of it."

Twists and backbends - body memory and spine somehow.

12

Rowen tonight. I was scrubbing out the bathroom.

13

There he is sleeping on the roof.

The phone rang early. He'd been bumped to a flight through Portland. I rolled down Laurel in the dark. Crept along the curb at Terminal 1, where is he. A security guard was waving me on. Past the baggage area, and isn't it where Luke stood too, there he was with his pack. Jumped in.

He sat with me on the couch and showed photos in the camera's viewer. A light little camera with an excellent hand grip. His landscapes look like mine, some of them. Some of them are good in subtle ways. I was imagining showing him things. He said that in all the little towns they were in in Australia he was going to the library and reading about cameras.

What I dreamed. That I met Robert. He had a strong dark evil face. We didn't like each other. More I don't remember.

If I lean forward and wipe the window I can see his bed in the sun, his straight black eyebrows.

Minnaert. He can be interested in light, now. The raven book, what was his name.

He's interested in the machine, but the machine can take him to the world.

15

Need to talk to myself about Susan. Today was her deadline at UCLA. She phoned today talking about Lise. What happened. She had me on the spot admitting I'd wanted to influence Lise with her. I did influence Lise with her. I warned Lise against her. Then she was imagining she could have had the kind of time with Lise she'd had with Jim.

So what I'm thinking is, now that I've written her UCLA letter, but Lise hasn't yet, is she going to go back to Lise and say I admitted I interfered, so that she and Lise can have a reconciliation and Lise will write her a strong letter.

I don't like it that she has Jim in her pocket the way she does. Why. Because Jim is a whitebread white boy. Does she have me in her pocket? I wrote her a good letter. I want her to get on.

She wants everyone in her pocket. She doesn't discriminate. That's weak of her.

How am I.

Wondering whether I've cut my losses enough.

You're a climber and a user, and the fact that you do what you do without knowing you're doing it doesn't make you more honorable as you seem to think it does.

I wonder whether, if I'd been willing or able to butter the way you do, I'd now have a published book.

That's the end of this friendly stretch.

Now the conversation is going to simply stop.

Sue's application:

Moving body learning, moving body teaching, effects of moving together, writing from motion and evoking motion, cinematic motion, "I believe the moving body is the knowing self, the thinking self" - slash writing "the same sense of self from which I teach and move."

part 2

in america volume 12: 2006 january-june
work & days: a lifetime journal project