| in america 16 part 4 - 2008-09 december-january | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
4 December 2008 Halfway through 1972. Didn't I write more than that about Portugal? When I move out on my own, as soon as, there's more about Luke. A lot of pleasure, I love those notes, and the notes on Burghley Road. Am ignoring packet letters but sent off a polemic replying to Ralph fretting about academic standards. He wants a 'solid' program. Is Francis playing on Ralph's sexual/gender anxiety and getting him to front for Francis's fight against embodiment studies? Francis is staying back, and Ralph is wanting to blame the way (we women) allow and encourage students to work with/from personal experience for lowering academic standards. He doesn't know what we actually do, he wants students working the way they do with him, he can't do what we do and has no clue how it works. Then Janet's letter confessing how she doesn't know this and that at length and then saying what we're good at. I wondered whether she was confessing all the not-knowing as a way of courting the men, or out of a habit of being long married to a man, or 30 years of academic politics. But anyway, after she had patted Ralph down at length I thought I could take up some of his points - had felt sorry for him and held off - and emphasize what I thought her letter eventually came to, which was that we're unusually - some of us are - detailed and precise in our response letters, and that is academic standards. I am much more rigorous and pointed with my students than any regular prof was with me - I'm much deeper - I'm looking at the whole person to see what's needed for better work - I'm working from my formedness which isn't just disciplinary - Janet seemed oddly to believe that her formation was just disciplinary, was it because she didn't take on her discipline? What was formed was focus. In Forming so wide a study, the way I studied design always in instances. What else: feminism, gardening, early childhood education, poetry, co-counseling and other psych, film and film theory, sex and gender, construction. Go through Forming and list all of them, London, English culture, photography, pottery, women's writing, 'consciousness studies' and human potential psych, art history, French, German, music history, Eng lit, Italian, European geog, child psych. What did I study in the Dames rocket time - film, cooking, photog, gardening, feminism, sex/gender/lesbian studies, sci fi, community org, garden design, consc studies human potential. Rowen's working at Futureshop, his cousin Lucas has given him a red VW Golf and is teaching him to drive, he likes his management, they train well, he says, his voice had forced low notes, I was operating the way I do in conversations with him. [clipping on Alison Bechtel's books] 5 Erica with her 4 kids, 14-hr work days, threat of Joe coming back to town and slaughtering them. - Here I think of Belle, her fine kids, the way she's come through. She is wandering off to publish a series on Christian mysticism and I'm thinking some lateral engagement would be good. Have been wanting to say something about Boston Legal, which is about to stop. What I've liked about it. The unstandard characters, a woman lawyer about 3' tall, a male lawyer with Tourette's or something like it. Denny Crane getting Alzheimer's. Candice Bergen sexually yearned for at 60. My favorite is impudent Alan, the lightness of his intelligence, his intelligence at all. His friendship with Denny, the way the two of them are like young sisters confiding naturally on their balcony with manly cigar and scotch. The show has been explicitly Dem these wicked years, has talked about all sorts of issues, lets right win nearly always, and is erotic top to bottom without check. And Grey's anatomy - I began by wanting to write something about Little Grey, the character who most holds my eyes this season - last season it was Izzy and Madison - Little Grey is a brown-eyed redhead whose face simply shines. What is that - nobody else has it. I like the color of Grey's anatomy, blue scrubs with closeup faces, it's shot more in close-up than most. It's well cast, well lit, it's intimate, it's erotic from top to bottom, too, though in a more idealized way than Boston, no unstandard people doing it. The kissing and grappling are implausibly ferocious, why do they do that in the movies. I like the completely natural equality of men and women of course. There's been an autistic woman cardiac surgeon whose expressions are interesting. Bailey isn't pretty and she's got a squat lippy dogged sweetness that works. I'm not crazy about the shots of bloody body cavities. Shonda Rhimes 2005 creator. She's Luke's age and black, Chicago. Writer Krista Vernoff. Lexie is Chyler Leigh. 6 Norton Disk Dr and defrag desktop this morning, going to try speed disk. Occurred to me to wonder what it would be like if I walked around remembering my IQ is 140, which is 99.62 percentile. I mean not arrogance but practical attitude: what would that fact, if it's true, imply for how to behave in this circumstance, how to carry myself. Thinking of it feels firm, like Jodie Foster, cool eyes. How would it be different than what I do now. Is it a tension? Where now I'm softer and warmer. Professors, top civil servants, research scientists. 7 I fixed what I wanted to fix, something in new files that was making an error message come up every time it autosaved or I tried to save. Disk doctor found in an unfixable error in my template file - it said I should dump most of my recent work including three Forming vols. What to do. I made a new template and cut and pasted onto it - yes, it's fixed. Then googled floppy hinges on G3 Powerbooks. Now I know what's wrong with it. Sunday morning. It's just eight, a dark morning. I've already transcribed 16 pages. 1972 is up to 90 pages. Roy settling with Jud. I try John Rowley. Write a lot about Luke. What have I been thinking as I transcribe. The writing's rarely anything but serviceable. Affection and pain. Felt self-division always in relation to men. Eloquent self defense with my mother, who doesn't want me to be what I am. I so dislike her in retrospect for undermining the brave young creature who was being so generous and fond with her. That happens from first year at Queen's onward, she doesn't think about what I am having to deal with or what I am needing to make of myself - she's stupid and fixed about me, greedy: she wants me to be what works for her. That's hideous in a mother. Two things about students. There's Jessie I've left till now because her poems oppress me. This time for the first time there was a paragraph admitting she's shut down. She doesn't want to feel her childhood. I can talk about that but she's wasted the semester. Then Macy. She sent stories and essays and notes, new and old. What's in my tangle with her. I said most of it last time. Something spiteful in relation to her use of the femme image, blond, high heels, long legs, etc, what I've always resented other women for, that power to compel men. In relation to her the spite is mad, but there it is. Another thing my repulsion from crip sex, messing with the woman in the wheelchair to turn on a watching girl-man. Fisting, choking, whipping. She's often lucid. Beautifully so, gracefully. I like her portrait of Eli, ie I'm interested in Eli, but I don't like her behavior with him, I don't like submission as a way to compel. Another thing I don't like in her work is the way it's locked into sex/gender compulsion. Is there ever anything about the day, or the world, or even her children? She's a good warrior, and she has an arena and she thinks there, but in her writing I want more range - like a landscape, openness around. And there's a way she's ignored me all semester, not wanted to engage because I'm not in her vortex of sexual and gender concern. Is she actually interested in disability? I haven't seen that she is, except in Eli. How interested is she in deformity, apart from the sexual/social effect of her own? I don't have all of this yet. I mostly see someone grasping for sexual power. Is it power or acceptability? As if power is the only way there'll be acceptability.
8 Hello Monday morning. The sky has opened, sweet winter light stopped in the dew on the windows. It's welling into the far corner, why is it doing that, reflecting from a cloud? This morning I'm thinking I'll repaint this room, set it up as a studio - sometime before the first of Jan buy the monitor - do something to extend the media surface into the corner - will soon finish transcribing, 1972 today, 73-74 before the end of my break - mark the switch - clear out the closet as much as possible - ship the journals if I can figure out where they should go. 9 Eleni Sikelianos The California poem. Logan sent me its name and I ordered it. Looking at it to see how it's being done. Yesterday at Amvets also bought a complete Shakespeare for $5 and Lattimore's Odyssey for $4. They're both pristine. My soul is in the sky / tongue lose thy light Alas a crimson river of warm blood / like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind
Evals - get them done and get on into my two months of beauty. - So there I wrote Macy, Melanie, Jessie, and finished Macy's letter, and set up Sue. I think that's my work day. Now what. It's four o'clock. Sun low down and slow to arrive on the page where I lie on the couch. "Mostly clear skies tonight. Winds becoming light by this evening." Nathan Pacheco, Brazilian. 10 Starting at the beginning of the book, such a good blue, midnight, with Henry VI. Now it is supper-time in Orleans A small jump of pleasure at the idea of, for instance, a PhD in language. English but more than English. Ray said it was the best thing he had read. What to make of that. O make of it, my beautiful book. His plays begin with Joan of Arc among the squabbling men, I didn't know that. Made beautiful by her vision. She sees through their deception and defeats the king. Come, come, 'tis only I that must disgrace thee [she says] But in the end she's shown to be a witch and no virgin before she's executed - denies her father the shepherd. The scene where Talbot's young son dies in his first battle and is brought into his dying father's arms. - Wondered as I was reading S this morning whether Martin Ware would (connect) - I'm saying that so it's nonspecific - because I was in his territory. Midmorning a note from him saying he'll reply at length after Christmas, wants to think about it in relation to something he's reading. Tom arrives. I take him home, have the jeep for a couple of days. Go to the library, Valentine's for lunch, sometimes noticing a light hope. What exactly is it. The letter I wrote, the three paragraphs about Ken, they're graceful, it's hope of being read, which lets me write. I don't miss sex now, but I'm deprived in literary friendship - and in this I want the illusion more than I usually do, I don't care if he or anyone is actually smart, what matters is I can feel they are. It's not about them. Love is, but this is not. It's about the kind of being I am, who needs to feel wanted when she writes. The writing is true even if its receiver is not. Is that insane? No, it's art. Hypothermia is a gradual and remarkably gentle way to go. First there is the slow, insidious chilling, then the desperate, uncontrollable trembling ... gradual slide into unconsciousness ... peaceful, almost blissful. Mike sent the bits he has transcribed over the last couple of days, and I pieced together the few I have that he didn't. He said how about a small monograph. I said would it have room for things I wrote too. There'd have to be permissions. Is this going to happen? 12 Mike when he says monograph means web. I'm saying I'll make a hard copy of it. This would set me up to do it in the next two months. Would have to make it a broad book like California: a poem.
UCSD midafternoon on a Friday, in the Roma years later. An almond croissant, so good, with a latte. The bookstore. I came for my monitor and haven't got it. Frothy. Bought two Penguins to study the design. And a moleskin for Tom. I'm euphoric to be on campus. Smart faces, oh. That one across the room. A young East Indian with long bird eyes and a wide white mouth - a wide short face, very bright - goodness, so beautiful. Animated talking to a girl, he's an Ariel, so fine featured and alive I'd want a race of him. Behind me a young man in a striped ski cap and worn brown docs explaining physics problems to someone he's studying with. - There a female blackbird, I think it is, flits through the room past Ariel and he laughs. What film writing can I include. What's it called. What images. Text from Notes in origin? This notion so starts me up into Ant Bear again, I'd faded out. Could I use C's photo or Shon's somewhere. - Somebody in the Russian Federation back and forth in Being about, ch 8 - bib for intro - topcv - Perception without rep. Came in through ch 8 as did someone in the UK three days ago, Open University - Kingston-upon-Hull. Ch 8 is Representing and the IPL. [notes on laptop audio studio]
13 It's the day I rearranged my room. I'm closer to the west window, which doesn't have bars. I face it from my bed, now. Continuous work surfaces in the corner - that's where the monitor will be. I want to keep the space more conscious. Keep the work surfaces clear, not have old projects stacked - have no projects stacked, just tools and open space. I want to frame and hang Cheryl's two photos and Jean-Jacque's. Paste grain images above the work-L. Want to clean up the tangle of cords. There should be a cleaning habit - maybe every Saturday? Oftener than now. Quickly get rid of the pile of folders. Have a system for remembering things to do that doesn't involve having them on the desk.
15 Tom's house Monday morning. It's raining, not heavily. I'm at his long window. The eugenia is opening and closing. Not steadily, sensitively, its tall stems independent from low down, which makes its tree motion unusual and beautiful, the parts of the tree fan across each other, not stiffly, swaying layers through the crown's depth - and small leaves, dense dark-green plumes. And there the single palm, a very long-legged fan palm with a thick short beard. Its grassy fringe is moving but the whole crown doesn't much. There's my shade garden under the honeysuckle fence, very thriving, fern, *, datura, * geranium and then the princess acacia with its lacy droop. Dry on this side of the steps, wet on the shade side. 16 Tuesday before Luke's birthday - UCSD - I've bought the monitor - it's in a box more than a yard wide, deep and heavy - how to get it to the jeep. The sour old computer section clerk had a plan he insisted on. An electrician said that with a jeep I could get over the curb. I walked out into the alleyway and flagged down a UCSD electric buggy, elderly man with a thick grey moustache. Said he'd give me a lift. Tracked carefully around and about between the patio tables and got me to the bookstore entrance. There the sour man with the dolley. Then back around to the parking garage. An electrician, worked here since the 70s. Lifted the thing into the back of the jeep. I opened my mouth to say thank you so much. He said "You're welcome." I liked riding in the buggy with him, and I liked the way he inched down over the curb. - I liked that there was an adventure in the getting of it. Then a lot of running around for the library card. Delicious coffee. Yesterday I stayed at Tom's to see the rain. It blew sideways in curtains we could see against the valley trees. This morning I flew up 5 in sun but toward heavy cloud. The rain began as I got to the parking palace. At the extension complex I stepped out into the scent of eucalyptus beaten by the rain. The campus is emptyish, sunny again, new buildings stacked up everywhere. In my student ID photo I look more than old, it's a preview of 90. Haggard, thin wispy hair, a corded neck. The satisfaction of having sent Luke a book. I was talking to him in his kitchen, where he had put beef and potatoes into the oven. He was talking about depression and I mentioned The dream and the underworld. Realized I could go to Amazon UK and have it sent to him. Luke is 38. [page of statcounter records for index page, mbo, work and days, being about, page origin and place] [work list for room] [work list for semester break] 18 I wrote a para after that, which I've erased. I can't write in the evenings, it was like writing blind, randomly putting something down. My evening brain can't do much. It can transcribe. Then in the morning I can hear thoughts again. How was Luke. He's eating for comfort he says so I suppose he's fat. I'm afraid his spirit isn't fighting enough. He's doing this and that, working on Josh's house, housing co-op website. Feels London isn't letting him in, his ngo contacts say he can't just drop in. I said find me a house-sit for May or June for a month. Cheryl when she visited him last summer brought a bottle of *. He hid it in his cupboard and brought it out for dinner last night. I had sent him four of the contact sheet baby pictures, his strong small spirit, level. He gets angry with Roy when he sees him hammering a nail crooked - You're supposed to be able to show me how to do that. His dream - the black man pulls the father out of the water but he's unconscious. The sun is left behind because the father is unconscious, I said - he's unconscious. "I wondered whether you'd like to have the record of how you were with Roy when you were a baby." I was thinking he needs to know how in love with Roy he was - what Roy gave him, that he shouldn't shut down on. He said he was afraid of pain. I don't like that he wants to believe shutting down is undoable. [work list for before the exp film conference April 2010] It's 6:30. Kiri singing Mozart has just stopped. I look up from my new position in the room - a few feet west - and see clear sky pale grey between unlit scraps of cloud in the east. There's dew on the windows. Last night in bed I was cringing about how bad the Grande Prairie talk was. I tried to pull it together in the last hours but talking to the psych class that afternoon threw me off. (It says it wasn't as bad as I thought.) 19 I worked all day. It's ten at night, I started at 6:30 - working on Mike's web book - proofing his collection of critical writing and now thinking about my pieces - combing Leaving the land, Brain and imagining, Brain and metaphor, maybe some journal pieces? 20 Saturday midday - Susan phoned to tell me how she nabbed a famous writer in a dim sum restaurant on her birthday - why am I crestfallen after - she expanded and I didn't - she's excited all around - it was her course description that depressed me - she saying only 20% of optical cortex is from the retina and therefore perception is mostly memory - my heart hurts. Her general point was about meditation, that her yoga women could be noticing that the way they see varies with how they are thinking of themselves. They were seeing a shark where really there was a dolphin.
In the time I'm transcribing I'm full of love, so full of enjoyment of beings. They knocked it out of me, Cheryl and Trudy.
Was wanting to send the intro to Mary Tiles - I could do that - and to other people mentioned, some. What do I want from this? Not to give talks and be invited to departments, just to get Being about published and used. I do want that. Found some good bits about Notes in o. Horticultural society of NY showing it [must have been] at Implant Redux Jan 13th. Cognitivetheory.com mentions BA intro and ch 6. 21 Looking at GW20 and 21 for passages - I wrote an intro this morning, that talks about the journal section - it's called Being Being about. Versions:
Degree of filling in, in both directions - toward the philosophy, toward the body's tale. What did I see this morning, that maybe I could publish Being about somehow together with the journal during its making, that it could make something different from both, make both more credible - that it could be a richer form. Then looking in 2000 I saw I'd written this: "the real last chapter is journal." Write a parallel book. The childhood of the philosopher. It's a journal. It has future in it. It's a novel. It's a woman coming through. What will philosophy be like when women do it with all their might. Is this it? Is a lot of it written already? This book is its reference volume. June 14 2000 Had the mind-blown sensation that what I'm living isn't possible in the world I assume, that it has to indicate something esoteric: the sort of story there is in Legend of Biel for instance, a solipsism - this couldn't be so in a world with real other people in it. I can't be that. 22 It's Monday. Raining. It will be raining all week. Hope there'll be no one downstairs most of the week though I can hear Nora now. I want an interval. Bought a small Christmas cactus at the farmer's market yesterday. It's on the filing cabinet in the celadon Bauer bowl, two pink buds. It will spread, the bowl will overflow. Look, steady rain past the drifting palm blades. A bird is the small knob atop the tight-folded single spike standing straight up at its centre. The spray-sound lines of tires on 4th. What else - a slight pebbly sound like water boiling in a small pot at some distance, what is that, wind on some edge? The joy of time - it's open for 7 full weeks. Going nowhere, working, working. 24 Email from Louie: the god we are in is exact.
Email from Luke: chimbo family dinner at dads was a complete Fucking disaster. again. left in under 10, a new record. never again shall I cross that heartless threshold. Wednesday morning. Working on the mag. 25
It's Christmas Day and I'm grim and glum. I can't stand Tom these days. 26 Then Tom arrives. He walked across the park. We talk more. I'm still miserable after, sleep for an hour. Wake and go to work with the Being Being about journal. When I come to the end of my discernment, fold the computer and go to Tom's to make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. He's glad to see me. Gives me a hug that feels absorbent, so I stay with it, have my head against his shoulder sinking in. He has been thinking. Walked the Embarcadero after he left me. Agreed he's been hard-boiled. Said he could be willing to try another kind of touch. We talked. Ate in the kitchen. Concrete outside the French doors gleaming wet in the dark. What did we say. Can I remember. I found the same conclusions in May 2000 - December 2001 with more aliveness. I said there's the structure that always loses confidence, stops me. I need to be very alert to fight it, I need to be a warrior all the time, I can't afford to drop. That's why I'm going to stop TV. He said I take myself very seriously. I said I take life seriously, want to do something magnificent. I'd said I never forgave him for what he did with meth, I haven't wanted to sleep with him since. Lying was a betrayal. He said, that's not good for you. I agreed. We said we'd have to confess our little fears and resentments. He said we should commit ourselves to do things out there together. He said TV makes him current, included. I said but it's passive. He agreed. I said I want someone to help me be a warrior. I'll respect him when he does that. When I started the conversation the night before I said our contact has been dead. He said a lot about how he is imagining how to get sex, the bind of it. We both said we feel trapped. He can say things to me he's never said to a woman and I don't mind. I said he keeps forgetting that I'd always rather hear any bad thing than go dead. I said I've been corrupt, feeling it's hopeless with him but knowing how jangled I'd be if I left and being jangled would spoil my work, so I'll hang on for the sake of working. I knew not to stay long. We were side by side on the blue couch. He said a couple of days ago he discovered Lou Leatherwood had been dead since 2005. He'd been looking for him online to phone him and there'd been an obit. It was a shock. Then I told him about emailing Martin, which I'd been holding because I didn't want to tell him I was cruising for better company.
27 Saturday morning at the new table - sawed 2" off the black one so it would be the right height. Haven't said I heard from Astro last week - he was coming out of chemo, living in his mom's basement. 28 Just went through ch 3 the perception chapter - what do I think - parts of it, quite a lot of it, hard to read. I was smarter when I wrote it, finely organized in academic mind. That's in exposition. I come out of the tight circuits into something more genial when I'm making the general philosophic points I'm proud of, the ones I think are my best work. Extracted Being Being about last week. I saw I'd said Mind and land is the umbrella for everything else - the films, the slides, the journal, the academic writing. My question was how to get Being about seen, used. No my question was how can I edit this for Mike's monograph - answer is no, except maybe the vision section - the general bit about audition. And then I was thinking I should do subject words for individual chapters - update those files - make a CD of them. Pdfs for chapters, each with a copy of the toc. Should I make hard copies now. - It's very cold. Desert sunset deep orange shading through to pale turquoise. Thread of new moon, sweetest finest most perfect white little arc. I'm achy. Hard night with aching arms. White hiss, more a sharp white whine, most of the day yesterday and heavy all night, both ears. Transcribing London Boots diary, fitting it into the journal. Pleasure, I did a lot.
29 Finished the Boots diary - like it better than the journal - wish it hadn't stopped - it gives London - it gives the time, what we ate, who we saw - I didn't remember that Roy and I sometimes were together even after Jud - the fluidity we had, we'd be miserable and joyful, fuck without considering, play a lot - ran around all over town and here and there in England, always money for movies and food - we didn't take jealousy seriously though we were jealous - glorious energy in all, energy to feel all day - 30 I cleaned today, dirty corners, under the garbage box, behind the toilet, under the wash basin in the shower. I washed the sheets and changed the end of the bed I sleep at, to be facing the west window. Washed clothes, two loads. Planted one of the empty pots on the fence. Tom is stressed for money and needs to talk about it all the time. He's working tomorrow and New Year's Day. I want to go somewhere and he can't. I said I'd go on my own.
31st Besides that I'm aching all over, especially glutes and arms. I was at Tom's washing clothes. Went to sit on the steps facing my plants. Such a sore heart. I feel that if I go away on my own for New Year's it means we will separate in the new year. I'm so disgusted by his having frittered his whole $6000 cushion last summer though he was making $1800 a month in unemployment insurance, that I'm wanting to give up on him, but at the same time the thought scares me, hurts. In the meantime I don't want to hug him, don't want to kiss. I don't know what it means that he was so foolish - does it mean he was drugging. The string says no but he was being careful and sane about money and then he wasn't. I've lent him $760 and I'm not going to lend more. He's been using the jeep constantly. I'm the one who insures and maintains it. I've been keeping it full of gas because I know he hasn't got money. I bring him food because I know he isn't eating well. He gave me money when he had it, quite a lot, bought gas often, and I don't forget that but I'm resenting the drain, why, because I don't want my man to be incompetent and foolish. I don't want to be with a fool, I don't want that to be my story. Is that the nub of it? Yes. He's done worse, the meth and lying about it for years was worse, living with bedbugs was worse, much worse. He stays out of trouble with very great effort, and that effort collapsed for some reason. I don't like not knowing why. I need to begin the year right, I need to know how to do that. When the book said don't go traveling I agreed: I won't, though I want to. But what should I do instead. I could start with the monitor. Don't stay at Tom's overnight, go for a drive New Year's Day. [opposite page:
2009 priorities
1st January 2009 The monitor! We did it right today - I had my own party last night, met Tom behind the Hotel Del when he finished work - drove through IB to the long beach beside the marsh. Walked a mile out and a mile back in fresh wind beside green waves, drove back through Chula Vista and National City looking at the light, considering what to call its color. Lavender he said and I was pleased to agree. Went to Valentine's for lunch. Brought him up to look at the monitor. He'd gone to bed at 8:30 and woken in the dark, happy the way he is when he wakes alone and makes coffee and sits with his newspaper and sees the sun come up. I don't want to kiss him and am not doing so. I don't even want hugs. He makes canned jokes and I ignore him. I talk about what I want to talk about though I know he isn't interested. I don't comment when he talks about anything that bores me. I say outright that we will have to notch up or else, because I'm bored. Meantime a note from Martin Rumsby about landscape films. Slides on the monitor. Last night I brought home a pair of beeswax tapers, a half bottle of fumé blanc, some black bean soup, a $5 little basket of raspberries, a sliced loaf of walnut and raisin bread and some Humboldt fog. I set out the food on one of my blue plates - my California home blue plates - lit the candles, arranged some flowers picked downstairs, white pink and red vine geraniums. Had a shower and put on the long black dress. Kiri Four last songs. When I'd been crossing the parking lot with my bags, I saw the homeless man going through restaurant trash looking for food. Thought about whether to give him the rest of the bread so I wouldn't eat it. Thought I should give him half of everything to make it a real party. Hot soup in a jar. He looked in my eyes beaming when I brought it to where he was sitting cross-legged under the steps. Then phoned Louie who was working while her lazy Gastarbeiter was on the phone for hours with his girlfriend. This and that on the computer. Looked up and it was 11:59. Fireworks thumping from the harbour. I was on the roof wrapped in a blanket holding my glass of wine in its perfect wineglass. Dense orange mist with palm tree shapes cut into it. A yardlight cutting a straight line down across a wall. Then yesterday stringing the hard drive, monitor, Mac Book Pro, all their cords, and pressing the power button. Brinngg. Monitor came on, hard drive's there when I turn it on, scan folder, click on the hawk photo and there it is brilliant and wonderful. Full size is only 25% - I can increase - increase - increase to 100 or 200 and see what I wanted, mythic grain. Then Tom all in black with his fine-striped scarf and silver brushcut looking very glam, and the long strip of simple beach. High tide, packed sand, stone berm on the inland side, green waves lifting in the west, high plateau of TJ indistinct straight ahead, a few strolling groups at long intervals, perfect New Year's afternoon. Peacoat pockets, walking, walking, tireless miles. Martin Rumsby New Years Eve talking about landscape film. Kathrynn Lyle today because she had been reading my journal. I was saying what she thinks, she said, from Oakland. There are passages I recognize as you from how I understood you. Those moments made me feel such joy. The joy of rediscovering something about you and myself. I am also moved by how much you put into words exactly how I think/feel about life. Her opera - I hate opera in English - I like individual marks of instruments - graphic - This is not my home. 4 You have a genius for finding the moving essence in life's ordinary complexities, Kathrynn writes. Celtic-Cherokee she says. She wrote it in the context of wondering how to finish her opera. It turns out that I have InDesign too - layout. 5 It's 2:52, I've woken thinking about what Tom's up to. Friday when we were in the bookstore coffee shop eating chocolate croissants his front tooth broke off in his mouth. His social security check, which is $1000, has paid his rent for January, but he's not working and he's broke. I'm at the end of what I'll lend him though I'm buying him food and keeping the tank full when he needs the jeep for work. He had all those months on unemployment when he could have been setting up a sustainable job and instead he ran out the cushion he had in the bank. I'm wondering whether he's aiming to bust out of Georgia Street - by failing at it - he moves that way, doesn't make painful decisions, fails into them - is his nonconscious plan to get rid of me by flunking back into an SRO or St Vincents or the tent. He says he wants sex but I don't think it's that. Although he'd like some female fawning again - is there another way to say that - he'd like what I'd like surely, which is to be lit up and interested with someone, moving on. When I came by yesterday his blinds down all day, the kitchen so dirty - the way he lives on his own, in a dirty cave. If that's what he's up to he'll have to give notice at the beginning of February, ride out his paid last month, and be out at the beginning of March. I would have to do something with all those plants. Take back some of the housewares. Then my question would be, at what point did he give up? It would have been sometime last summer. Maybe there was a woman when I was away. Maybe there was weed. - There I check back to see whether there's been love with Tom since I've been back from Alberta - beginning of October - there hasn't - mainly a drive through Queen's and the beginning of London. Michael Wood The story of India parts 1 and 2 tonight. [opposite page: InDesign notes]
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