| in america 15 part 6 - 2008 august-september | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Plainfield, 8 August Belle is here wanting nothing more to do with altered states. She just wants to be present, she says. She looks happy. Jennifer in our first meeting crying because she lost writing when she
was married for 5 years. Sue tall, narrow and silver, a German bump on the
end of her nose, wanting to learn something about how silent meditation
works. Deidre introducing me with beautiful dignity - not wearing a hat,
not wearing big earrings, showing skin, looking rosy and physical. David
in the returning group mutual and centred. Lexi okay, neither of us holding
a grudge. Gary a light straight body my height, to put my arms around interestedly.
Deidre talking about the books she would have liked to have written - Poetics
of space and Women and nature. Sitting with Emilee. The moment where I said "If Margo was here listening she would be thinking I'm wanting you to be something you're not and there IS something I want you to be because it's something you can be." It was bursting out. I had wet eyes. "I want you to be standing in the circle of us warriors." There was more I don't remember well enough, a true-heart burst her kindly calm allows. I talked about the tone of her tantra essay. "I was heart-broken you couldn't continue to be that." She was too she said. Something complete. Bobby in the cafeteria saying of Margo "It's like it is with all of us, there are seven things each of us does well and the other three things we don't do so well." Tonight Jame and I the last speed dates of the night, he morose, bumbling along. I said I hated most poetry and his hand went up over his mouth. I said Pound was all that historical stuff, but the Pisan Cantos are exquisite. "Exquisite" he was saying at the same time. Then I said "Do you know Hugh Kenner's The Pound era?" I was risking letting him see my taste in poetry, which could have put us both off. The risk took. He liked Kenner. Then he said "I think we can work together" and started gathering his things. [But he put down Ralph and Goldberg.] 9 Tired, draggy, dreaming, dreaming, a male poet with a naked penis. - Student-faculty reading. The advising group. I lay on the floor and phoned Tom. There are three California poppies and he took a picture. He has been nice to Bud's family. John Edwards that repulsive sneak has been having an affair. A cement crew has been working on the steps at 3663 Georgia. He went to Amvets and got a trove of good books for $25. There's a back road he found paralleling and on the south edge of Mission Valley. When I get back we'll go to Santa Ysabel. His house has been wonderful, the upstairs guy is away although his car's there. He's reading and writing. He loves me and misses me. I love him too. I don't have time to miss him but I think of him and sometimes I talk about him. That's what he likes to hear, he says, and laughs. Meantime repulsive Michel A has gone to Ruth and said he wants to shift to Jim. The advising group bothered him. I asked them to lie on the floor and he doesn't like to sit on the floor, even. Tried it out but was it him freezing the space, or was it Macy, who came late. I was struggling.
13 There was Margo looking fatter on the couch across the room. I wanted to ignore her. I'd jumped up and given her my seat so I could move to a chair closer to the door. Later on Katt was saying "Ellie do you want to trade with me so you can come and talk to Margo" and I was shaking my head no. I'd been talking to Lise who was standing behind the couch. Lise said "Don't you want to talk to Margo." I said "I'm mad at her." Lise looked across the room at Margo and announced "Ellie is mad at Margo." I said with irritation "It's not your job to say so." "Are you mad at me now?" "For this moment I am." And then there was Margo across the room looking at me with intent and I was caught on my side trying not to look at her, which felt foolish but when I gave up and did look at her she was smiling complacently like Ms Guru. "Should we talk about it?" she said. "No. We did that already." And then I gathered up the Sunday Times I'd stacked under my chair and sneaked out. Doubted writing down this story, it didn't seem worth telling, but there are a couple of things about it. I don't forgive mothers who drop me. On the other hand isn't it (too) childish to sulk in this way. But is it sulking exactly. It's minding but recognizing - she did well by me but she didn't finish well. On her side, I think when she was realizing she was done she let herself get less professionally benevolent. She let herself dislike me for various things she'd had stored up. And then she used the Francis-Emilee debacle to opt for Indian religion and thump me. That disgusts me. Francis complaining about me in fac evenings in the dorm and saying Emilee's gracious apology proves he was right disgusts me. Lise agreeing with me in private but not in public disgusts me too. But Janet. I've liked Janet. Janet's a creased little biddy of broad adventure with a voice that sounds real.
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14 That's so dull an advising group I sent them off after half an hour - could I have done better? - I miss Susan - can they feel I'm bored with them? It says yes. Could I not be bored with them? No. [Student details deleted.] Sue is a Dr Seuss creature, a smart east coast thing, Susan's generation, zingy but she doesn't say you. Belle - Belle's her own self. The way she stands is like a man. She's on her ground. [Details deleted.] Michael was at the Fields and networks workshop looking included. It was his topic and he was looking pleased. Melanie is in Colorado having a baby. Macy was always late or absent, which was a loss to us because she was the smartest realest with the most to say. A lot of mothers. Are we just getting duller students? Is there a reason for that? Or am I just getting duller students? Did Lexi put out a warning? I dodged worthy Kri, who exhausts me. I'm tired aren't I. -
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There's little I want to say. Nothing I'm not willing to forget. I'm tired. Sleeping badly, eating badly. There's the pine tree quiet in its silver air. Lise's company. She'd appear at my table full of vivacity. She's curious. We'd talk about students interestedly, agreeing. I'd find myself telling what I'd instructed myself not to tell. We had a drive up the hill with the sun going down, layers of blue hills on the horizon. A field of goldenrod. The film she brought, Norwegian man with messy hair sailing in the Lookfar. A strenuous task and a capable body improvising. Leaning back in a wetsuit handling a windsail. Building a model of the planets miles across. Billowing cloth of gold for the sun. His confident naturalness, playing. He was a little boy who ran to touch Yuri Gagarin in the schoolyard. 18 Starbucks on 5th. 19 days here, 15 days Van, 7 days GP. - Best moment on the flight - we'd been trailing dusk, falling behind very gradually. I was looking south. Came to an edge of the cloud, cumulous in shallow piles at a little distance. The sky above was pale biscuit shading down to an edge of pale flamingo above a narrow grey-blue band that was just above eye level. There suspended in the band was the clear clean moon, not quite full. Beneath it in the cumulous piles now falling rapidly backward little sizzles of moon-colored lightning flashing between adjacent clumps, sometimes here, sometimes there, the whole pile balancing its forces. Not long out of Dulles rising through a depth of shredded fabric of light. Midland country where I could see the winding rivers had been in flood, by a scoured-looking width on either side. Pink canyonlands with upper ridges in strong pink light. Rimrock. Not much else. Over New England I don't bother to look. The woodland is like a wooly beard, and there are too many people. The weariness of [the college]. Hey - I ate toast, cake, ice cream, and didn't get fat. Not even a pound. Tom was at the foot of the escalator at the airport. Drove me to Shelter Island to see the moon. Carried my bag upstairs at 2720. Took me to his house and cooked steak while I lay in the tub. It was Saturday night. On Sunday drove with me to the market. He'd waxed the jeep and armour-alled it inside, bought new floor mats. We moved the plants back to their spots by the repaired steps. Admired them together. I lay down while he was reading and slept for an hour. Had been sick and then was better. He listened with interest to the story about refusing to talk to Margo. Went on thinking about it. His stories about being in thick with the Sonka family, Bud lying enormously fat in the ICU. At night I pulled up the blinds and we went to sleep early in quiet moonlight. He'd saved me What they carried, about young men on the ground in Vietnam. Sunday morning wanted to get into my pants, or wanted to seem to. Wanted me to put my mouth on his dick and I did but it's sticky and rubbery and I'm not fond of it though I could be happier if I was. ~ More to say? How it feels to think of those two weeks at [the college]. Flat weariness. The way the advising group went wrong, the way I didn't love the students or they me. I survey them disappointed. There's no one I can be interested in. The dragon talk worked. I was walking to Dewey to go to dinner with the fac and heard someone behind me on the lawn say the dragon workshop had been the best event. I had prepared it well enough, meaning I'd spent a lot of two days early in the res pulling its parts together, and then after Networks on Wednesday had to find hours early in the morning for last fixing and then memorizing talking points. In Cynthia Curley's photos the other faces are always smiling. I am not. In those photos how can I be so broad and old? It isn't fat, it's my bones settling. When I feel myself lying around in tight jeans I feel elastic, limber, 40. Then I look at the old thing so elderly broad at the hip and I'm incredulous. I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life elderly, there's nothing I can do. Though my voice in Emilee's fac/student reading CD from last res was just what it always was, flirtatious. I was a beauty at 50. It's fuckin' menopause, destroyer of form. 19 Restless. Between things. Hungry for something, beauty, excitement, something that isn't on a computer. 20
Four more residencies to 65, 6 to 66.
22nd She moved back and forth among the other band members, banging into the contained light, breaking across the structures of songs ... There was nothing too prepared or controlled about the performance. She was enlarged. Divisadero 2007 Knopf. There was nothing else I wanted to copy out of that book. In this passage only the last two lines. Restless, between. Transcribing this volume for something to do and to collect myself maybe. My projects so broken up, and will be again. Some queasy aftertaste of [the college] too, from re-reading, glancing ahead at, KC's horrid letter about the journal. Am thinking she had to have talked to Margo about it and that will be what M's wrongness before the res was really about. Has to be that. The gradual going-wrong of it at [the college] from the semester of Susan and Millie forward. By contrast, Goldberg's power gleam, she's all the way committed. I don't want to fight those people - or I should say what fighting I've done didn't succeed, it's murky. 25 Woke at 3:30 at Tom's and was lying in the dark remembering a dream about filmmaking. A woman carrying a tall pile of wide film cans and flat boxes, materials for her film. I was going along with her to the studio to see how she worked. Dave Rimmer and Sarah at a table with me. I'm across from him, she's beside me. He's bare-chested. I tell him he looks like Brando. There's trouble between them. I am making my way across a room through thick cobwebs. I'm as if swimming, pushing my way through, a couple of feet below the ceiling. I was lying there remembering the dream and thinking of things to write about here - thinking of how I must be remote from my real self because those things to write hadn't occurred to me. As if when I wake sometimes I'm briefly myself and then go blank or shallow. I wanted to write about how it was giving the Dragon girls workshop. I was talking to them about what I'd most want to talk about, what it's like to live in furthest work. I had the notes and sometimes spoke from them but sometimes winged it. I talked about writing Perception without representation. "I was writing it my way. I knew they wouldn't like it but I was saying what I knew. I didn't care who loved me, I didn't care who I loved." I said I'd thought of that state as a dragon. Then I talked about love woman and work woman. "I fell in love, and I fell hard, to the point of confusion." Having to switch state between love woman and work woman. I had a paragraph that said "In this MA program I see women scared to know what they know, scared to open the can of worms, scared to challenge authority, scared to know authority isn't looking after their interests, scared to say This is what I see, this is what I know, scared to have negative thoughts, guilty about negative thoughts, scared to write critical papers because they're scared of negative thoughts. Scared of anger. Scared to know the worst, scared of chaos and failure. Scared no one will love them if they show how large they are." I said "How far into the room do you want your breath to go?" Alright, what about it - it was straight out - not cautious. But a bit in trance? I don't remember seeing the audience. What else about the res - that Caryn snagged Deidre and Emilee for herself and instructed them not to be in contact with me during the semester. I'm so indignant still about Francis and Margo - can I resolve it?
On the weekend, pre-convention footage, Robert Kennedy at the podium, convention of 1964, standing looking out at an ovation that lasted 12 minutes, so beautiful, sad eyes, great tenderness and realness, remarkable sweetness. I didn't know he was that. Tonight Michelle Obama in a pale green sheath. Tall, competent. She has Jackie's elegance and does not have to speak in a baby voice - she's a feminist goddess. They're physically ideal humans. 26
Names - saskatoon, caragana Names of what isn't there at that moment, hawk, magpie Relation of whole and part Moving internal frame Something about preserving its realness Looks like it will be about photos Closeup and whole image over and whisking past Photographic structure Comments VO "Do you see the face" Meaning of getting into 26 Aug The hardback book is full, I'll patch this in. I'm adrift between times. 10 days before Van and then packets. What do I need to do, what can I do in this isolated little time. Need to assemble tech notes from the finished journal. - Bill watching Hillary speak at the Democratic convention. Moved, shining, crying, proud, laughing at her jokes. She was wearing pumpkin orange against a deep blue light panel. The camera would cut to Michelle listening. Even their best call on god. They describe dead people looking down on them. They shout praises of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 27 What to do about the PRC talk - How far can I get into that time - what's the best way to talk about it - what do I want to say to anyone there - myself then - the 18 year old - the Epp girl from La Glace - do I have any true wanting left for any of that - 28 Didn't last long at Tom's last evening - it was one of the times when I think being hitched to him is a bizarre mistake - he hadn't shaved for three days and was dark under the eyes, stressed. Piled thick on the mantle and at the foot of the fireplace horrible remnants of his family, large china dogs, a green-glazed copy of an armless classical statue given to Vic by his mother on his 21st birthday, much more, grimy sentimental junk. Venetians down, dirty dishes. Hours of frenetic Democratic Convention gossip to come. He's had a set of hits in the last couple of weeks, Bud's infirmity, beautiful Gail emailing him through Facebook and sending a photo of a fat old face, Bud's family's ugly complications, another of his old girlfriends going down. When I see it I wonder whether that dirty junky cave is his preference and he labors unnaturally to keep his place acceptable to me. He says he likes it when it's clean but he could be buttering me, which would be sad for him to have to do. Squirrely, unfree, interrupted, hungry. The slides digitized aren't wonderful - they have a brown-grey cast and aren't luminous. I'm working with them knowing very little about what to do with them. What the tools are, what makes a good photo technically. I've never had to learn. Flapping loose abut the GP talk. "Imagine child searching for friendship. That's what it always is with me." Thursday. Barack is about to speak. The populist sell in the convention - his body and Michelle's sell one thing and the rhetoric is designed to sell another - there he is, the messiah of intelligent princeliness, thanking as they chant - he's a physical prince and he is declaring, they are insisting, that he will take care of all who aren't princes. A true prince in love with a true princess. Can he do what he says he will? What they insist tediously is that everyone can attain a goal that is a mediocre goal, home ownership, car ownership, a secure income. He has more than that and doesn't mention it: perception, sophistication, global scope, beauty, sanity, earned confidence, young energy. Educated young people were his base and they are not being mentioned in this convention - the convention is wholly designed to court the working class. They are all saying We're dumb too, we believe in America, we believe in God, we believe in the military, we watch TV and don't read. Tom noticed this - Kennedy's speech was literate, and none of these speeches have any breadth of reference. - Oh poor creatures cheering and crying. He's promising health care, education, energy independence, equal pay, international regard, the defeat of Al Queda in Afghanistan. It's populist and it's nationalist - it's so nationalist - no one can say I want to be an American president vowed to the well-being of the world as a whole.
30th Doig 1987 Dancing at the rascal fair Atheneum Bought it at Amvets last night, kept at it until now - 4:30 Saturday aft. Small print. He's somebody who can talk to his country. What did I do instead of what he did. I didn't learn the characters, I didn't want to know them; I didn't want to know their stories. And yet in London, when I was 25, I felt a pressure about what I did know. There was no one to tell. What did I do instead of what he did. There are branches here. I can talk about the way I had to prove myself, the way I was able to prove myself wasn't local, but I will talk instead about what I found was my particular intelligence, that wasn't literary, wasn't about people or language. A film about light and water. The way my writing was bad and mostly still is, I guess. The evidence is. Writing because it has in it something wrong with my relation to people, that always will be wrong. I can say that, I can give up on it, can I? That sadness continuing, they don't see my value. They saw it in my films. What is my value, that they don't see? They saw it in the garden.
1st September I woke at night and was lying on my back starting to drift. Saw something wonderful and complete that vanished the instant I noticed I was seeing it. It was a spot of western sky at the horizon, brilliant silver between clouds - the sort of phosphorescent silver there sometimes is just over the horizon line above water. I saw the edges of cloud around it in sharp detail. What else - I noticed the import of the way Tom and I sleep now, with our heads together and the rest of our bodies at ninety degrees. Yesterday I was nothing but concealed impatience with his talk. -
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2 All day 11:30 - 8:30 cleaning and remounting slides. 13 are wrecked, and they're some of the best. 2 frost trees, 2 fairytale house, Tofteland house, willow light, 3 virga, cloud airplane, smoke foxtail, frost reeds, tawny grass. on his chest was a bead net of blue faïence representing the stars Fight last night. Tom had found Dirty Harry on TV. I was trying to thread a needle. He was insisting I come and look at the next scene. I was holding out for threading, which was hard to do in lamplight. He started pushing. He was saying "I want you to see this next scene. It's the best scene ever filmed." I was turning to steel for the pleasure of it. He was saying "I hate you, you stubborn bitch" and I was biting back an evil gleam. Then he was at his wit's end and said why didn't I go home. I gathered up my mending and went downstairs to my jeep. As I started my engine under the pepper tree I was thinking now Tom is going to go straight to sleep. This morning - what was I doing - about to call about CA taxes - when the phone rang and Tom was downstairs. He'd walked across the park before 7. I love his repentance - could see I do in the mirror, I looked so pink and pleased. Took him to Denny's for breakfast and then Horton's Plaza because I needed a new jar of night cream. Found hightops black embroidered in silver and grey herringbone. Took him back to Georgia Street, he wanted to write. Then came back and was entranced all day looking at small specks in 35mm frames. 3 Dreamed I was walking on the sidewalk next to 824 E Pender singing in a thin high voice but interestedly, spinning out a subtle tune with little slips into a minor and sometimes quarter tones. T and R walked past. I hadn't seen them coming because I was looking at the ground concentrating. Just glanced around when they passed and saw Trudy's grey pencil skirt, was thinking her hips were very trim. Earlier I was with Daphne looking at a piece I'd written. She said the mother was mother nature. I said I was glad she'd gotten that. She said there were a lot of stories. I was liking the piece which I guess was like a section of journal. - What did I mean yesterday morning riding down through Little Italy with Tom when I said my journal writing was like a postmodern condo tower we were looking at. I'd been saying the way they build now is Christopher Alexander's idea about having a lot of different scales that are well related to each other rather than a straight-up slab with windows or any of those other crude ideas from the 60s. - I didn't mean much, just the way small sections are stuck together, like the balconies on the condos. That there isn't a sense of a simple-minded whole everything is subsumed into; that form accretes. In the last dream, which continued from the singing, I was upstairs in 824, which I thought I had paid rent for. There was a sort of hippy community having a birthday party. They said they didn't know when Rowen would be back - he was little in this dream - he'd be brought later. I was upstairs sobbing. Lay on the bed under the northeast workroom window and saw a giant woman in a bed opposite, where Rhoda's porch would be. She was under covers and maybe 20' long. Caught me staring and began getting out of her covers. She was coming after me. Her enormous doughy foot on the window sill. I thought of her as Grendel. Discover in Wikipedia that there's a controversy in Anglo-Saxon studies about whether Grendel's mother is described as a fighter or a monster. From there somehow have jumped to wanting to challenge Francis at the next faculty meeting on the phone. Angry, frightened. But I can do it. Something I've been feeling about older journals - for instance the one this is being patched into, 2005, is that there was a kind of light humor, the balanced light humor of saying whatever oddness happens. I don't think I have it now. But then when I've gone back looking for it I don't find it there either. I'm wondering whether it's something that forms up incidentally - is that the word - in sustained reading. Wednesday morning. This day and two more. What can I do. I'm in bed with the door open. It's clear and cool. I don't know what to do about the talk. - Palin's speech - how sickening the roar of the convention floor is when it's the other side - they're yelling USA! USA! Cindy McCain turning to grin grimly at the Down [syndrome] baby when she talks about 'special needs' - they're giving her husband a standing ovation - and now her parents - there's the captive teenage boy - "the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom - lipstick" - she's confident and comfortable and about as smart as Bush - she's a dream girl, vowing to be everyone's pretty fertile mother - she's listing her reforms now, and they're good - actually she's presenting herself the way I said Hillary ought to, femme in image and tough in talk. Cheap shots: she's saying Obama wants to raise taxes without saying it's only on people with high incomes; she's saying he's not concerned about terrorists. Scary. Those familiar Christian women with dull faces shouting. "Ladies and gentlemen the American presidency is not meant to be a journey of personal discovery." They stand up and roar. She's harping on McCain's war record now. Her gestures are very contained. She lifts her right hand and jerks it, or lifts both hands very slightly together above the podium. Now she's standing with her family holding the doomed baby in front of an image of the waving flag. Now the baby is back in her husband's arms. Sustained ovation. - There was one black face I saw in the crowd. Thursday morning at Starbucks. The jacaranda is in full leaf and throwing shade that won't be here in winter. I'm in a kind of ache of emotional hunger - it's about the talk, and that other thing whatever it is, the waiting for something to come to me. Two students I'm thinking about. Belle sending her thesis, which is about mystical experience. She's boring when she's doctrinal. She's interesting when she's writing her own experience. What's the best it could be. She needs to peg the alternatives for explanation more. If she shows the art she needs to talk about how it relates to her experience. And Macy. I googled 'cripping femme' and discovered 'cripping' is politicizing what they call disability. Will I look further into an embodiment studies framing of 1. social disadvantage and 2. impairment, which are different? I'm not going to be signing into crip identity why - I would like being able to talk about social disadvantage, the subtleties. Being more conscious in that discomfort would help. At the same time I don't want to override, or try to override, my horror at impairment. I don't think any impairment, as such, is something to be proud of. I want all bodies to be beautiful and intelligent. I can be proud of myself without being proud of my poor stick of a leg. I am proud of myself, as well as anxious about myself, as anyone is. The moment Macy said she thought she could pass. That startled me. I guess it means trim blond image superceding not having fingers? She married and had kids. And then she decided no, I need a community where I'm not what I have to be in this one? I feel I'm passing and never do actually pass but I want to identify with what I'm good at and what I love not what other people hold against me. At the same time I know there's more about the effect of that holding-against that I should understand. At the same time I was happy in downtown east end politics and in the Golden West because in those communities I'm seen as and feel myself to be one of the royals. It would suit me always to feel that. The embodiment studies frame would ask what bodies feel when they see damaged bodies. Distress. I don't argue with that. - And also involuntary interest: what is that, how is that, exactly. The main thing, I think, about my circumstance is that I'm often confused about exactly what's going on socially. A blur in my head. - Leaving the land is superb. I was smarter than I am now. I was primed by academic writing. I was on edge with an art audience. I was pulling that story together for the first time. It's loose and coherent. It's personal and theoretical and all of it is in my own voice. Hardly anyone has seen it, Debbie Rose, Kirk, Peter H.
Felt seeing - presence, contact, love, immersion Intuition is a name for the wholeness of what is seeing, some of it nonconsciousness Photos as records of moments of immersion or interest Listing resources - here's a little packet of wonderful resources I've found, that anyone should use - wanting to give them The image I want to start with is striking the spruce branch one summer afternoon and seeing swarms of golden pollen rising into the air and saying I'm living in heaven. 1978-1981 when I was in my mid-30s. Understanding that the world is real and interesting and behaves in ways we can watch and understand. January in the Olson house - frightened - dreams of cancer - yoga - superstitious fear - a little clairvoyant, synchronistic - fighting unwanted minds - haunted by past humiliations and stresses. Friends too. Anxiety. The other world is when entered this one in its bliss. Dreaming Luke's death. 5 Yesterday and today looking at daily journal 1979 July - 1981 September. It's a welter. Tortured, conflicted, neglected, impoverished, haunted, isolated, confused, deprived, fragmented, frightened, superstitious, and coming out of those two years with the slides, the film, and play of the weather. I don't know whether to count the writing in notes in origin. I would say to myself in my thirties - nine years 1976-1985 - all of that intense unrest of conscious effort - was it unnecessary? - could I have done the same or maybe better letting the uncon work the way it had for Trapline?
6th Denny's, Sea-Tac. Strangely traveling. I should have been arriving at YVR and instead am booked in a motel with a 24-hr shuttle. Oppressed somehow by leaving, and then finding out I'd misunderstood the booking, more dismayed than I'd have thought. Morose. Is that about leaving Tom and I don't know it? Said we should go into the ocean this morning and we did. It was green and mean. Where the bottom was bumpy a breaking wave would smack me down. My hands were aching with cold, only my hands. What kind of creeping death is that. A layer of smog over as much of California as I could see. Brown air,
brown earth deeply intricately carved. The habit of roads cut white along
ridgelines. The way humans have fit themselves into odd ends of ground,
corners up against slopes.
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