28 January 2009
Sent Mary 6 yellow roses for her birthday and spoke to her the very minimum
of time.
She said she couldn't smell whether they were scented. She doesn't have
smell enough.
I was at Tom's yesterday doing my laundry while Tom was at his first
day of jury duty. He came in white and drawn. He can't afford a haircut
and so has his hair flattened thin to his head, which makes him look an
old man. He got his social security check for $900, which will pay his rent
and a few bills, and leave more or less nothing for food. He's not looking
for work. He says he's writing and reading and doesn't want to stop. It's
what I've wanted to hear from the beginning. I've worked for it. It means
I'm more alone, I am going on alone, and still I would want it, because
it's right.
I had given him The celestial jukebox, which he liked, so I called
up Wonder book of the air from the basement stacks for him. I read
it first when I was desperate in love with him, and it was my true-hearted
companion in that state. I tried to give it to him then and he wouldn't
try. Now he inhaled it, he said. He marveled the way I do. We talked about
it on the couch before I went home. He'd finished it and I brought it home
to return it. When I woke at 4:30 I lit a candle, put a hot water bottle
at my feet, and sat in the lamplight in my bed reading it again. I opened
it into the stories of Adrienne and Austin, Harrison and Olivia, Field and
Madeira. What I'm reading it for now is what to do in the trapped state
of marriage.
- Why don't I name what's closest in me, why don't I feel it.
- What is the bitterness. What disappoints me.
- Can I say without hedging.
- She describes people shutting down on each other and then starving
for love, touch, admiration, realness.
- I'm disappointed he isn't hard for me.
- I'm disappointed I never see his naked heart any more.
- I'm disappointed he's scared of lust.
- I'm disappointed he isn't a good writer.
- I'm disappointed he lies.
- I'm disappointed he doesn't have money.
- I'm disappointed he hasn't taken care of his livelihood.
- I'm disappointed he's running himself down so he won't look his best.
- I'm disappointed he's not curious about me.
- I'm disappointed he bluffs.
- I'm disappointed he's uneducated.
- I'm disappointed he's ingratiating with people.
- I'm disappointed his interests are so narrow.
- I'm disappointed he shutters his beautiful rooms.
- I'm disappointed he's sloppy in the way he lives.
- I'm disappointed he bores me with laboured thoughts.
How it was writing this list - I felt a lot of hedges - wrote and erased
lines about what I'm disappointed about in me - heard lines I didn't write
about what I appreciate in him, and how the ways I'm disappointed are linked
to good things also.
The disappointment list lines up with what I need to imagine for Mac
- that he's rich, accomplished, hard for me, steadily truthful and straight-up,
skilled and alert in anything he does, wonderfully housed in ways he has
thought out himself, a power in the world, interested everywhere, widely
wise and informed, quick and light in thought and talk.
There's a lot of disappointment and the causes are all true.
- Are they true reasons not to love and trust him
- Are they the reasons
- Would I love someone like Mac no
- If he loved me YES
- Is it my fault that I don't love Tom no
- Should my love be unconditional no
- Should I leave and try to find someone like Mac
NO
- Am I ashamed of myself because I'm with Tom no
- That's a mercy
- Am I proud of myself
- Should I be
- So I'm stuck in lovelessness NO
- I shouldn't love Tom but I can love in other ways
YES
- Do you think I already do no
- Do other people love dogs or Jesus because they're in
this bind no
- Do I misunderstand that
- They're in a different bind than this
- It's more unconscious YES
- Do you mean the way when I was young I loved everyone
- As phenomena of life
- Tom sort of does that
- After one falls in love one wants it to be that way
-
- Because it's intense
- And that's wrong YES
- Could I love in that young way again YES
- Does Judie love in that way no
- She pretends to
- Do you know how to get there YES
- By being responsible for people no
- Meditation no
- Faking it no
- By somehow clearing anger
- Practice on Tom
- Shearer can do that YES
- Do you know how to do that YES
- All those disappointments are angers YES
- Because I feel they're deprivations YES
- Are they deprivations no
- There is only one lack and it's lack of moment presence
- That's why anger is a sin
- Inhibition is never a cure for sin
- The cure for sin is presence
- Can presence be willed no
- Worked for
- Do things to make it possible
- Is the list of disappointments a list of that
YES
- I want Tom to do what will make me present
- I'm already many of those things
- But not enough
- Be more sexual no
- More naked heart no
- Better writer
- More truthful no
- Get more money no
- Better care of livelihood no
- Better physical care
- More curious NO
- Less bluffing no
- More educated no
- Less ingratiating no
- Less narrow no
-
- Better writing, better physical care and other things
- Anything you want to say improvement, of crisis,
by slow growth, of intelligence
- Can my intelligence still grow
- And you'll help
- Want to add? subtle processing of child's heartbreak
- I'd need to find a therapist for that no
- One card look at defeats
- Scan for defeats YES
- And process them
30
The last chapter of Wonder book of the air. I seem to have ignored
it other times. Field's daughter. She's lucid. She has good parents but
she gets hooked by desire and it's masochistic in her. Why am I dumbfounded
trying to say what this chapter says. It's scorching. "What is it the
world in women does require? The lineaments of a steadfast, cheerful liar."
And then she says, "Is love any less real because it is imaginary?"
Yes it is less real when it is imaginary. "Sometimes it seemed to me
that people do not care about each other, per se." Her book has them
caring and not caring. It has the wild centre of it, the man who beats his
wife and kids, a source of magic value for them all. His language.
The way my dad was that. What did I say to Tom, it says it's all there for
you if you can balance in it.
But in the last chapter she isn't doing that. She's two generations on
from Harrison Durrance and she's living a more abstracted life, no small
Georgia town, no war, no Uncle Artie. A job and a house. I'm some distance
on from when I first read this book. I read it the first time for the gold
state of mad love for Tom, often in tears. I'm reading it this time dry-eyed
looking for what she knows about how to live dryness. I've kept faith with
the gold hope, and Tom has, yes he has; I've done the moral work, and this
dryness is the reward. And there I stop, a bitter sore heart. Which is better
than none.
And then open the two interviews, Cantrills' and Mike's, and pare away
the overlaps, mostly from the Cantrill's. Have I made that one bearable.
Mike took out the exclamation marks. What was I doing so badly in that one
- I was confluent with Corinne, I was courting them because I wanted to
be invited to Australia. I was schmaltzy.
- The window is open, it's just after five, a Santa Ana, pale orange
sky in the west, open ocean pale blue between an edge of St Paul's Community
Care and a leafy tree on 4th. Plane sinking through that gap. A lot of light
in the air above the harbour, Point Loma ridge a featureless dark purple
with that evaporated orange in front of it. Row of palms, on 3rd I think,
the tall thin kind, a lot of them, spaced out, different heights. Cars going
home on 4th a plush rolling sound, visible. Siren's baying like dogs in
a pack. Ten minutes have passed as I wrote this. The sky hasn't changed
much. Pale yellow, very pale and fading up to ivory, above the fading orange.
Gooseneck California lamp lit at the end of the couch, the black one I bought
for my first room in the Golden West. I am noticing its light on the page
now. Helicopter tiny as a bug flying southeast toward the city, tiny light
blinking. The ocean is in bands, shades of pale blue and one pale gold.
I sent the thumbnail image for fringe online today, a frame of
the Trapline caustic. That part of the project is finished, they'll
send me $500 by PayPal. Little things left for the monograph. Check through
the interviews again. Maybe a few more images. See what Mike does with the
design. Then $500 for that.
- Later design the hard copy and print it.
- What else. Clean up the site. Set up subject words finally.
- Post Forming - Queen's. Write intros.
- Post Forming - London. "
- Dames rocket. "
Use the $1000 to set up the book, transfer tapes, maybe retransfer Trapline
later.
It's a slow twilight.
The yellow is stronger - no, it's not yellow, it's ivory, intense. Lamps
in the long rectangles of the apartments, small jet dropping fast. Lights
marking Point Loma shore. Is the sky more intense or is it the contrast.
It's yellow when I look up, and then it's not yellow.
The way Mike describes my work isn't recognizable to me. He's kind but
sort of mystically abstract, which I am not at all. He's not a country boy.
When he was interviewing me I was trying to speak through him to women who
might hear something they needed to recognize. Now it sounds whiny, I keep
saying I was excluded and had to struggle. That's not what I want to say
now. Now I want to advocate what I've worked out, what I know.
Forty minutes since I started. A dark smudge showing in the darkening
orange, which fades directly into pale turquoise, all of that below the
black arcs of the nearest palm fronds. I can't see the water of the harbour
anymore, are those lights on anchored boats?
Cyclamen in their glass pot, a lot of white butterflies, jet intakes
on long stalks. The room, this practical cabin, my minimal house. Expensive
perfect silver machines reflected on black glass. Why am I happy. Afternoon
tea, for one. A little late afternoon push that makes me feel this self.
Artists' welcome for another, that some little thing is happening again.
This is still civil twilight, stars can't be seen, but when I stick my
head out the window there's the several days old moon and Venus brilliant
together in royal blue.
Is it Obama winning that makes this difference, as if I can be more here?
As if I'm waking up in the neighbourhood, is that possible? Can Bush have
blighted the years I've lived here?
Bethany McLean - clear poised pretty young woman interviewed on economic
policy - she's sweet, a snugglebunny, has the slightest lisp, a girl voice,
dimples, and a wide lucid overview as if she were the finance minister,
but more flexible and incisive and balanced. NOW interview. I'm writing
this down for its glorious normalcy. Love Woman assessing the bankers, casually
entitled.
1st February
Sunday morning. Handel Italian cantatas. Shrimp and vegetables bubbling
across the room. When I woke I worked as long as I could on Eurydice. It's
only ten. A bright day. My jeep, oh my jeep has something wrong with it.
Transmission I think. It will be $1200. Which I have, but would rather have
used on something else. Isn't it amazing that I have it - will have, after
[the college], where I don't spend money on food for two weeks. Have to
pay off Tom's $460 on the Mastercard. It means I shouldn't buy [the college]
clothes probably, but will I mind being shabby.
What else. I'm not quite well. There's a dark bar in my stomach. The
white hiss goes away during the day, always there when I wake. I've stopped
swallowing capsules and it isn't making it worse. The stinging hands have
been gone for a while, maybe since I was ill? I look haggard. At the harmonica
class I ran out of energy halfway thorough.
-
Other disappointments:
- That I'm uglier
- That people aren't interested in me as they were
- That I'm not bright in company
- That my mother isn't interesting and interested
- That Olivia got fat
- That Joyce died - Janeen - Frank - Jean
- That philosophers didn't get Being about
- The white hiss
- That my health will get worse and is already worse
- That Mr Mann was disappointed in me
- That my relatives don't admire me
- That I'm not with Luke more
- That Luke doesn't find his work
- That I'm at fault with him
- That I'm not a distinguished writer
- That I'm so boxed in
- That I have no exciting conversations
- That I'm shorter and wider!
- That Rowen is floppy
- That Louie is dogged
- That Sue doesn't like my journal and films
- That Sue isn't keen on me anymore
- That the [the college] fac are duds, that they let Margo go, that I've
lost hope there
-
- Improve, by the Work, to process, withdrawal
- Each of these points is a point of withdrawal
- I don't know how not to withdraw there YES
- When I was young did I know no you just had energy
[Opposite page:
- dopamine - explorer
- serotonin - builder
- testosterone - director
-
- estrogen - negociator
-
- What kind of mate would you pick for me disillusion,
come through, power, anger
- Someone who is an opportunity to come through disillusion,
power-play and anger
- You're laughing YES
-
- [Harmonica class at UCSD]
- Playing the business - high notes
- Base - dominant - subdominant
- Warble - two notes, a move
-
- Little Whitt and Big Bo - Moody Swamp Blues
- Stomp your whole leg
- Blues riff
- Gritty sound somehow with tongue on the out
- Bend - closing your throat as you're moving in
- Train]
Emilee and Deidre's progress review docs - both flattened out writing
with Goldberg. They're vowed to embodiment studies theoretically but they're
less confident and zingy. I love my students to be bold.
-
The jeep in the shop - distributor cap, transmission flush, --- belt,
something about transmission timing. $700. That's not so bad.
3
Tijuana, MacDonald's across the plaza from the dentist. I'm early. Mercury
retrograde. The t on my keyboard started missing this morning. I pried it
up the way I used to on my old G3 but its tiny plastic spring came up too.
I had to spend an hour trying to put it back together - I couldn't see its
tiny sockets or the tiny differences between right and wrong side. Had to
keep trying this and that with infernal patience. It turned out to be a
tomato seed that had slipped under its key cover. And last night the white
filling from my top front tooth fell out. And I think there may still be
something wrong with the jeep.
Why am I so stressed by any kind of business doing - dealing with the
jeep, coming to the dentist, I feel my blood pressure hard.
A stream of persons. Persons so different from persons a quarter mile
away on the other side. Little indios. Tiny old things. Bent little dark
men in cowboy hats. Women in shawls.
Halfway back on the trolley a big black man got on, backpack with a hard
hat hung from it. Black do-rag, big white teeth. He sat down one seat back
across the aisle with a big bright here I am flounce. I smiled at him. He
wasn't sure what I was up to and started talking to a baby. I was watching
him in the window reflection. Stops went by. I remembered what I have on
my journal. Caught his eye and held up Obama and Malia. He grinned and I
did. When he was getting off he said "Can I see that again."
I handed it to him. He studied it.
4
Transcribing this book, last couple of days, a way of reviewing. Raw
forming and London?
- Collegio La Esperanza Tijuana
- James Hubbell
- The Americas Foundation
- H St trolley stop in Chula Vista 8:30
- Lunch, hat, gloves, water, friends, $10 donation
- Ilisa 619 665 8547
- Christine Silvana 619 585 9009
- Need drivers
- Feb 21, March 21, April 18, May 16
The jeep sounds wrong - a flutter - I get freaked not knowing what it
is.
At Tom's telling stories about the trolley - I liked that - but then
he launched into telling about his trial on and on - there's something wrong
- I don't want to touch him - when he touches me it's man-handling, some
hard massage that isn't wanting to feel me. It's been like this since I
got back I think - he says it's money worries.
-
More little things of the same kind.
Beautiful simple SFU webmail is destroyed in favor of some busy ugly
multifunction system - the red and blue airmail design, the drop menu to
get to files, my many-time-a-day pleasure since 1993 (?), someone's lovely
creation gone forever. Phone calls trying to figure out what to do about
it.
Batteries gone on the blood pressure cuff.
G3 running out of memory in Explorer.
Had to phone Bob at Robert's Automotive about the flutter. He said bring
it in, I dressed up to go out - red hoodie and the black leaf necklace,
cleavage. When I got there Bob left what he was working on, got in it, drove
it around the block, came got me to go around the block again. Said did
I mean the chut-chut-chut. Said it was likely something around the U-joint.
Put it on the hoist. I was standing around in the sun watching from a respectful
distance. An old man with a moustache came and put his arm around me. That
was on account of what I was wearing. I may almost have liked it. He was
there as a tool salesman, said Roberts was one of the five or six places
he'd recommend. "Ten years ago I couldn't give away a pair of gloves."
There was Bob under my jeep tightening something with what looked like a
surgeon's gloves on. Then Bob lowered the jeep, backed it out, turned it
around. "You're all set." He wasn't charging.
6
No email. They've switched me to a system my browser can't read.
Was trying out replying to Martin's letter from a month ago, called up
1969-70 to see if it was Devon we camped in, began reading - have been a
couple of hours in it this morning - the hysterical waste with Peter and
Ian - consuming - then sometimes a little mention of Greg, warm sanity,
a relief even now.
7
Working on Eurydice's voice, reading packet letters for instance
to Emilee, Layla, Carol, Favor, always feeling dimly that I should publish
them. The notion that has been whispering itself is that I should ask Nancy
in Palm Springs whether she would like to edit them - someone needs to try
them out as a reader. Why am I thinking of her. She was so pleased by the
workshops and she wanted to go on having to do with me. She's a personal
coach so she'll understand the teaching.
Working on Love Woman - I'm confused, and am I going to be able to sort
it in time - I'm not confused in my case but when I add all the student
versions of conflict I see there's more to get clear. I'm trying to overlay
things that aren't the same - the Orpheus story isn't the universal pattern
- am I able to think this morning - not yet.
The students' own paragraphs are interesting, the Orpheus story is charming
- I have those charm elements but I don't think they line up with the clarifying
structure - maybe I'll need to just pick a couple of students.
- What is Love Woman for me - why do I need that name - because being
seized by love and then fighting it - and longing for the state when I'm
not in it.
- Dreams of two women singing together
- Seeing the two women at the conference
- Feeling for the Orpheus story
- Women who stand in for her in dream
- With Tom the visible arrival after sex - estrogen, oxytocin
-
- For Louie being seized by wanting what one doesn't want.
- What is it in work.
- A woman's values and interests and knowledge
- Personal perception and warmth
- Not segregating into home and work
- The personal
- Presence, response
-
- Anima in men
- Soul also in women
- Root in the mother and early love
- Women desiring everything and not knowing it
9
Good overnight with Tom. Thursday he held onto me for minutes, quietly,
and lay with his head on my shoulder, and that, along with the fact that
he'd had a haircut, turned me right around. He watched Drachensberg elands
and Brothers and sisters with me and got into my bed and cuddled
before we went to sleep. This morning he was holding up his arm looking
at the crepy skin inside the elbow, that place where it's worst.
Vermont 11
A man at the aisle end of my row - a pale blond impression - not exactly
- something about his eyes, pale blue, round white eyeballs, wispy white
hair, pinkness - does he understand English? Is he Russian, I wonder.
We had an empty seat between us. Later shouting together over loud engine
noise. He wants to talk about the concert he played with his brother - cello
- Haydn trios - he's fluttered about his brother - I'm encouraging and patient,
I'm so starved for new acquaintance I will cultivate this one. He plays
with a string quartet and lives in Paris, travels constantly. Grew up in
Odessa, studied in Moscow, won a competition in Paris - is he only going
to want me to listen - I say I'm a filmmaker and he lights up extraordinarily.
I look at his mouth. He's maybe 50, an oldish 50. His mouth is young. He's
not large but he has big hands, strong, unusually fine-skinned pale yellow.
He's wearing a wedding ring on his right hand. After a while I'm telling
him about living up north on my own, going out to take pictures. He warms
up. As the hours go by sweetens. We write our email addresses in each other's
notebooks. Igor Kiritchenko, Quator Elysée. Toward the end of the
flight looking out the window seeing Orion high and simple in the black.
After Philadelphia swimming up through loose cotton floss and there's
the round moon far and small, a vast plain of cloud like prairie moonlight,
wide, blue and cold.
[Notes for mbo explanation]
12
Jaes, Deidre, Emilee, Sue, Angela.
Thursday night, the students have been showing up, my computer cord got
here this aft.
Showdown with Francis this morning. His hackles were up, ie he demonstrated
that, hadn't thought what to say, accused me of a couple of things that
were easy to refute - that mbo hasn't been vetted in the college, that it
isn't articulated, that it's ideological. I said it hasn't been vetted because
it hasn't bid to be a concentration, that it's very articulated, completely
spelled out on the website, and that it isn't more ideological, I'm just
more explicit about what its assumptions are.
Later Caryn said I should let other people be more included in defining
it, so everybody could own it more. I was aghast but trod water. Said if
they wanted to help define it they would have to learn it first. Was there
something more intelligent she meant by it? I don't think so - I think she
wants me to be more cozy about it - if I'm going to be a founder I should
do it more in her manner? She doesn't understand how a philosophical vision
is different from an activist vision probably, in the garden I could let
people into ownership by finding what they could do without spoiling the
whole.
15
Sunday morning in this big bed.
Furnace roar, a fine line of white hiss in my right ear, faint dark blue
at the window.
Repulsive students, two of them repulsive in a similar way, bloodless
and pretentious. The skeletal woman, pale blond hair, pop eyes, swollen
lips with buck teeth, who was walking self consciously in 3 inch block heels.
She's not only skeletal but narrow as a pencil. Yesterday in a crocheted
sweater like a doily and size zero jeans. Her project is about the joy of
food. She wants to do a practicum with church ladies talking about recipes.
The other is a self conscious thin man with a blond goatee who came to Kri's
talk in his purple Zen robes and sat cross legged on his chair. At the fac-student
reading he read a piece he described as mysteriously dictated, which prophesied
doom to the planet because humans move oil and other substances from one
place to another. The planet will spin out of control. His time was up and
he plaintively begged for grace. "I've been crushed all day."
Lise was loathing him. What it is about both of them is that they are tenaciously
mad, they're locked.
The best reader last night was large awkward Mike in the Bears cap. I
met him at the introductory circle when he was sitting behind my chair.
I invited him to move his chair into the circle and he said that since he'd
been a security guard for three years he has to place himself where he can
see the whole room. He read a passage from his BA novel describing a young
boy in the forest with his stepfather hunting with a dog. He had the scene
vivid and true. The stepfather's voice. He read it perfectly. He is humble
and quivers with realness. He's private and young.
Emilee, who's marvelous in her moments and also somehow wrong. Her manner
when she speaks to the group is prissy, she pinches the ends of her words
and goes churchy in her motions. I need to see it better, I'm not saying
it well enough. I asked for the essay she wrote on home and she gave me
the whole packet with its letter to Caryn. I'm annoyed she praises Caryn
as much as she praises me. I want it to be that I inspired her unusually,
not that she's the sort of person who gets cozy with everyone. I did
inspire her unusually and Caryn's letters have a fake-kind ponderous tone.
If she is inspired by that she lacks judgment. But then I also think she's
empathic and protean and that's her brilliance and it's fun for her, gives
her lively time. It's the way I have to think of Susan though not as sharp
and sorry.
The advising group in my office as the room darkened, people lying on
the floor not wanting to sit up, afternoon sun when we began, three men
and four women, all generous people.
Jaes, Deidre, Mandy, Rose, Morris, Zack, Cameron.
Now it's grey daylight on frosted branches and there's the waning half
white at the tip of a branch. Seven o'clock. I have the morning for Eurydice.
A big silent room, creaking.
Annie [Smith] at her grad presentation yesterday poised, pregnant, rooted
in her actual topic that she'd come to with my help, telling the story of
her question and confidently showing us that she has learned to write passages
wonderful straight through, and with it also a livelihood and a way of reaching
far into the world with something it needs.
Kri danced her presentation on an aikido mat. She diagramed her talk
continuously with gestures, and many of them were gestures of her whole
body, a ripple bottom to top. When she sat on her heels she was a perfect
small right shape, weightless in place, more weightless than a child but
balanced like a child.
There now the first pale sun on the standing feathers of the pine. A
bit of the way down the cold trunks.
16
Monday - mbo [embodiment studies colloquium] in the cottage yesterday
afternoon, gold behind the trees - twelve of us close around in chairs.
It fell dark as we talked.
Herzog's movie with Antarctic adventurers and their scientific images,
and the place above, below, around them, beings. A jellyfish somehow lit
from below pulsing magnificently against an abyss, like god. Bulgarian keening
of religious force. A clam like a flat rock jet propelled and flapping.
Something between a spider and an octopus high-stepping with 5 wire legs,
I think five.
19
An oppression dream. I'm in a basement people are
sleeping in. The landlord is arguing that more people have slept there than
have paid. He saw 17 pees. (Not sure of the number.) I'm in bed with Judie.
The landlord is in a lit space a bit lower down. A very small naked woman
sees she will fuck him. He sets her on a high lit counter and gets out his
penis. She says it hurts. He's going to keep on anyway. She has a big dildo
she's putting a condom on, she says she wants to come. Judie on the outside
of the bed is freaking. I'm trying to keep her quiet, she'll draw his attention.
She's moving around too much. He's a very bad man and if he wants her he'll
damage her. I move her to the inside next to the wall. She quietens.
It's next morning. We're paying the landlord. I
have my baby with me and I sneak out the door, leaving Judie and Paul to
pay. I'm waiting for them in a park. Paul comes back and says Judie has
to go back. The landlord is demanding it.
What I'm feeling about this is that I had been forgetting that Love Woman
is hounded and hunted, and that she is somehow unwillingly complicit.
- Am I right about that
- She's complicit with very icky men
- Her vulnerability is also a complicity
- It's a gnostic tale
- Is there more you want to say no
- Were you reminding me
- Am I going to have time to do this right
- Morris was boring me
- He has everything pinned down
- Does he have to lisp no
- Does he know he lisps no
- It's babyish
- Should I tackle him about that and his hair
- It's the opposite of his self possession
- Is it a kind of hiding
- Does he exercise no
- He dresses well
- Is he gay no
- Does he have a girlfriend
- Should he do gym
- Am I disapproving out of prejudice
- But am I right
- He's doing talk therapy but it isn't getting to
- Will his feelings be hurt no
- He has a lot of head energy but his body's passive
I'm repelled by his babyishness.
What else am I repelled by. Mandy. She's like a cushion. She just goes
on about her boyfriend. She's verbose, she was wasting everyone's time indulging
cozy dreaminess in advising group. She has no tension. She's babyish
too. Lazy.
I had her in a chair being sword girl. She felt how it is to be more
tonic. Feet planted, back straight, chin higher. Something out. Arrow,
she said. What does she want? "I want to see out." She
said it weakly, with a question's rise. "Can you say it more strongly?"
She spaced out into seeing far horizons. A lot of sky. I'm waiting to hear
her say it with more energy. She's does but she's still lying low.
- A cranky father?
- More trouble in her family than she's saying YES
- Keeping looking for the tension
- Philippino families are more patriarchal than she knows
Who else is problematic. Rose. There's something there but she's scrambled
and dependent. I don't know what to do with her. She's a worn bulk. Question
is what's the best use of her. Fragile I think. Are her diagnoses her medals?
Is she going to make it through the semester? No. She doesn't interest me.
- Should I be interested in her?
- For my sake no
- Is there anything I can do for her no
-
- Am I on the right track with Zack
- Can he do it
- He's very bright
- And has a sweet mouth
- Will he do what he wants to do
- Does he need balance no
- Centrality
- He says he can't do things but it's doesn't want to
- Can he finish this semester
- It's exactly what he should do
- He didn't want to know about me
- Is that a limitation no it's correct
- He doesn't want a relation, he's paying for permission
- Any more you want to say about Zack no
- Does he know I'm attracted to him
- Not sexually
- As a son
- Is that alright no
- Cut back on that
-
- Something wrong with Cameron?
- Does he go out of body no
- He's decorating himself
- It's pathological
- Look for something else
- His giggle is self deprecating
-
Lovely Siobhan who said she liked my voice - long long ago this morning
in Sowbel's research hour. The way she sat with long neck and creamy brown
skin. I was sure she was Jewish, a young queen.
- Was that as horrible as I thought it was
- Lise's dream workshop.
- Is Goslinga as horrible as I think she is YES
- Is she sick
- There was so little knowledge and respect
- Does Lise have any clue what she's doing no
- Did you like that big woman
- Was Siobhan's dream about wanting a baby
- Love woman's locked up
-
- Can you tell me why I can't stand Gillian
- Is it jealousy no
- She's grandiose YES
- She's padded
- Something about the way she wears her hair
- Something else no
What happens when people I've liked, had intimacy with, like someone
I don't like. It's as bad as jealousy though it isn't jealousy exactly.
It wipes out the realness of one of the few connections there is; if they
like that one, they could not actually have liked me. Susan with
Jim. They must have been faking or I must have been mistaken. The continuous
hollowing-out of connection.
Gratitude is something. Students when they cry at graduation. Kri this
time. It means I understood them whether or not they understood me. It means
they know I understood them. There are people I've understood who don't
know it - Joyce said that, "You know when you're seen, not everybody
does."
I'm writing in the field of explaining. It's not good.
People grateful for Wild research, stopping me in the cafeteria
door. "I felt confirmed." Delight. They liked the way I did it
too. It was funny. They liked being me in it.
Morris's fuss-budget babyness, that professor-formation spoken in a juicy
lisp from a baby-fat face with hair down over his little uninteresting eyes.
I'm repelled by my three Asians - Mandy in her marshmallowness, Cam in
his somehow broken-apart loud ungrounded abstractions about the many and
the one and transcendence.
What do I like. Collected fine Jaes in her good clothes and level consideration,
Deidre in her modest pretty clarity, Zack, pretty Zack, young Zack with
his sexy mouth, anguished Zack, smart swift experienced Zack who doesn't
want to know me but wants me to know him. I dreamed his name was in a New
Yorker cartoon.
I dreamed a Chinese house, something like historically
preserved, impeccably kept, three stories, fringed lamps in the second floor
windows. Symmetrical. I dreamed walking in a high pile of salvaged beams,
huge beams laid in a mess, probably unstable. One fell a long way onto the
street below, where people were passing.
A hollow glass sphere a child would get into and
be spun. A junk yard where my little boy had picked up toys, not knowing
they'd have to be paid for.
Last night the tall woman - was she a man? - she had a double chin and
a big square belly and a blunt big face like a cartoon giant, and she stood
telling her dream in a grave cadenced resonant voice with measured gestures.
She was like some tribal function, Celtic, northern, I thought Scottish.
Archaic. Hypnotic. (Yes she is a man.)
19
The Love Woman lecture this morning.
Jessica the quirky mover, the light spirit, in dialogue with the drummer.
- Is there anything you want to talk about balance in missing, regret, competition and anguish
- Instruction? no description
- I'm doing that
- Well enough?
- Are you saying that lovingly
- Regret for the lack of the best
- Do you mean missing my mother no, regret in true
cause
- That my best has no use
- I can only serve my inferiors YES
The Queen of Sheba in the cafeteria this morning standing at the counter
telling me I'm so beautiful. I was groping for what to be, it was so unexpected.
She so beautiful up and down.
When dreary Maeve was telling the mythic history of Ireland, midsection
a bulging brown sack, I closed my eyes and thought of Siobhan naked, how
I could touch her to make her sigh.
20
The schedule has ground along through its always repeated stations and
I will be dumped off the conveyor into Friday's mess of people with suitcases
milling and hugging.
Lise took me for a drive so she could talk to me about the fac in the
dorm saying that if I'm going to talk to Lucinda about marketing embodiment
studies they want to feel they 'own' it more. What can that mean.
I've been noticing my spine is starting to curve. Have to take that on.
The sensation of mid-back touching the wall and neck curving too far forward,
bad.
It's 6:23, blue dawn, there with yellow flashes and a motor. The pine
in light snow drawing itself in pale sky-colored edges.
Cabaret. Angela reading Beowolf in Old English, sitting cross-legged
on the edge of the stage. Billy's tedious story, but he's thawed some, he's
cuddling everywhere and there's more shape in his face.
Emilee's modest delicate song - the way she isn't all the way rooted
down. The hunch in her walk, and her lump of bun, what is that, in a smart
girl with a good family? It's oppression, but how? Writing, loneliness,
defeat, of subtlety. [It says.]
Deidre's dream and her reading of it - the younger woman who's pulling
a chain, hauled away, sad.
Architecture - beauty - a whole with the way you speak and are embodied.
21st
Burlington airport restaurant, window table. Away across there, snowy
mountains, what they call mountains, pearly mauvey blue, just the color
of low clouds above them, dim grey blue darker in the clouds' shadows -
I'm not able to say this. The pearly quality must be water in the air rising
from the snowy slopes, which hardly show snow because they're thickly treed.
It's the branches that are adding mauve. The mountains are a grand band
of yonder, a somewhere that isn't here.
What was it this res. Jaes. She's tall, straight silver hair shoulder
length, pale eyes behind glasses with small lenses. She dresses well. Rings,
bracelets, necklaces, small pin in her nose. A gentle gravity. She laughs,
she likes to laugh, but she's formal. She says I changed her life. She is
more at ease and she isn't wearing her protection hat. She has a small mouth
and often a little pleat between her brows.
-
Dulles, 17F. It's just back of the wing. Low sun slanting through, United
919. I'm wearing the bronze satin shirt, jeans, docs, little black cashmere
zip cardigan and my metaled aspen poplar leaf necklace - years from now
I'll like to know that, though no one else will. The bronze satin is a sophisticated
thing, I don't ruin it with washing. The leaf is or isn't a poplar leaf
but I'll take it as that.
[Opposite page: notes on the first pdf of Mike's monograph]
23
Monday very early. 4:00.
What else do I need to tell before I move to the new book. I feel attacked
at [the college] in two ways now. There was what happened with Lucinda.
I took my chance when she came to talk about marketing, said marketing should
think about how to reach the people who are dissatisfied where they are,
and intake councilors should understand it. There was a silent gasp in the
room. Lucinda said yes there could be a meeting and I said what about Friday
afternoon. It turned out that Lise invited me for the drive because she'd
been delegated by the fac to tell me that if mbo is marketed they should
have more of a say in it. "And I agree with them." And then Lucinda
didn't get back to me and I dropped it. I made the offer because the program
needs enrollment but I'm not willing to do anything anywhere to get permission
for it. The thought disgusts me.
The second thing is Sowbel suspicious of the beauty/glamour/enchantment
of the way I do lectures. What will I make of that.
On the other hand, the students. Kri's graduate presentation, Kri dancing
her talk all up and down, straight small body, and then the way she sat
in lovely balance on her heels.
Annie in the cottage at hers, rooted, achieved, pregnant, reading beautiful
passages she could not have written a year ago.
Jaes freer, Deidre sober and moving into her own studio room.
What I have, that makes my lectures enchanting, is freedom in personhood,
integral platform. It's what they have when they graduate, and what I work
to give them. I succeed.
Kri cried when she said from the podium that I helped her to the voice
she wanted. Jaes cries when she says I've taken oppression from her. Deidre
when she hugged goodbye said "Love you" in my ear.
Who else there's been. Anna, Layla, Carolyn, Juliana, Favor.
volume 17
- in america volume 16: 2008-2009 september-february
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
|