| in america 17 part 2 - 2009 march - may | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
26 March 2009 Zooming through Raw Forming - posted vol 6 today and didn't stop, kept on through vol 7 - by ten had finished it all but the index pages. Liked deciding on the photo of D and O for RF6. The Clergy Street stairs for 7. In 4th year I was happy with Greg and then suddenly I was sleeping with Peter Martillo, Peter Harcourt, Arnold, and then more craziness, Ron, Robert de Chazal, were there more, the madness with Peter - I was lost. Starting again without a plan. 27 Ruining a garden. I got up this morning and went to Tom's. It had been twelve days. I had made a list of things I needed back - my scanner, the cooler, not a lot. A bit scared, not much of a plan. He was sleeping though it was after seven, had gone back to sleep in the house he had cleaned because Mike is coming. What did he say. He feels scrutinized all the time, he'd been euphoric feeling he'd escaped that. I said I'd been euphoric too, though what I've been is more like hopeful. "I can't not feel what I do but it boxes me in too, the hundreds of small disappointments." He said something like, That's that then - not exactly that, and we both moved to get up. He knew where all my things were, had them ready it seemed. It's a warm Friday morning. I hadn't seen my plants for twelve days. There was a red California poppy open under the fig tree, that has not only leaves but a small fig. There were yellow freesia next to pink scented geranium and vine geranium flowers. I stood looking at my garden on the steps with my heart hurting, that I would lose it. - So now I have moved the smaller ones upstairs. He said couldn't I wait until Mike has been. That's the kind of thing I've despised about him, that he's more anxious to look good with his friend than he is to tell the clear truth and know it. I have loved that house and garden, when did I find it, October 2006. - There I extract all the mentions of Tom and the place over two years and five months. What do I see, happy times, very happy, when he was working usually. Since I got back from Alberta I have been turned off most of the time, shut tight. It has been about money - he has been freaked and I always forget that when he's stupid he's freaked. When he doesn't have money he's ashamed and when he's ashamed he's angry. We had security and were opening up and he screwed it up because I was away and he lost focus.
Sunday 29th Yesterday morning I was starting to write Louie an email saying I'd broken up with Tom and the computer froze. The night before, I'd defragged the desktop and run Disk Doctor, and Disk Doctor had frozen before it was done. Now it was sticking when I'd barely started it. Yesterday I turned it off and restarted it again and again. It sticks at different places when it's booting up. This morning when it was cold I'd plugged in the external drive and tried again. It got almost to ready but it stuck at the calendar notification, which was covering the drive icon so I couldn't tell if it was there. Tried again. Wow, it made it. I could open the drive, I could copy the RF files I haven't posted. Went to copy the student folder. It froze halfway. Since then it's opening blank. Without it I feel as if the room's south window is gone. Thinking whether to spend $2000 on a MacBook Air, something I could travel with. I'd need wireless and Word. Or get the drive replaced on this one, $400. Or buy another G3 for $200 and spend $200 having programs installed. Get an Air when I've saved for it and the price comes down. Anything to tell. A moment yesterday morning looking at Tom, it was after we'd said most of what there was, seeing a lovely person.
- Decision about phone Decision about computer - G4 12" 30 1. Rowen saying he wants to pay off the fund, can he count various expenses including his car. I say yes, which means beyond owing him what I now do, something more than $12,000, I will owe him a couple of thousand more. Does that mean I should start paying back. There's still $2600 in the bank. More important to go on getting ready for the next work. I decided today to tell him where the money comes from. Michael had already told him Jam. But I wanted him to know why, that our craziness had cost him something. He said he's a happy person. He is setting up to be a freelance wedding/portrait photographer and there's a biology student who likes him. "I got a smart one." 2. I looked nice today in the red hoodie with the leaf necklace, pretty, brown and pink. 3. Ron and I sat for an hour and three quarters this aft seeing what we could do with the G3. We hooked up my external drive and his, and he poked here and there and found my desktop in the end, everything. I pulled it over to the external so it was all safe and then we tried to rebuild the OS. Nope. So the G3 is done but I can move everything to some new machine that will travel well. We had a friendly cooperative time. He was getting lost among his many cords so I got in beside him and helped and he didn't mind. 3. Sheila Spremulli sent a letter that made me cry a tear, because she quoted Emily Dickinson to tell me she loves me for understanding about the prenate.
1961, 406 [left side NYT clipping, Marjorie Grene, a Leading Philosopher of Biology, is Dead at 98] 1st April Losses. First SFU's perfect webmail page, that pleased me many times a day by its simple clean prettiness and function, and now the G3, its humane mien, case shaped to the hand, sweet little pulse, screen somehow warm. The new mail page is industrial, analytic, unsimple, and gmail is as bad and has no folders. The G4 I bought from Raul Palomino the assistant pastor from Chula Vista is a hard little thing, looks bullet proof, like some kind of lidded industrial clipboard. Both are an imposition of disembodied maleness on my days. I'm wondering whether there's been a takeover of more humane early digital design by robot-guys. I dreamed I was sitting on a bench behind Tom at some function. A man I'd liked somewhere came in, sat next to me, slid over to push against my shoulder. Nathalie had come in after him. She said she was coming to tell me she'd seen him in the elevator, ie that he was around. He'd pushed me sideways far enough so there was a wall between me and Tom and I could whisper that I had a boyfriend. I was going to say, But I'll kiss you. Then he and I and some others were in my little house. He was standing with his back to the north wall, behind the couch. He said I have a good view. He was offering cheese and crackers. I'd already begun to make toast. It's remarkable the way, when I talk to Tom on the phone, I faint with boredom. I mean something automatic happens to my brain, as if it semi-opaques. I should pay attention to be able to describe this better. - The G4 - first, that it was a satisfaction to erase Raul Palomino's operating system so every trace was gone. Then work through all the detail of installing another OS10, then 9.2, then Word, Pagemill, Fetch - and now what do I have. 3rd The new little computer has land line modem for 10.4, has my folders on the desktop in the old way, has Word set up with my ribbon palette, can do SFU on Firefox, is over there silver and blue. I finished RF7 and posted it - Fetch worked, Pagemill worked. Jaes' little flash drive slotted in and opened. $800 and a week. Sat 4th RF8 is up and the intros written. Now it's Saturday afternoon. Sun on the black desk, where I have a bowl of turkey stew next to me. The index photo for RF8 is one of the photos from the first roll. Am thinking the index photo for London will be the Trapline caustic. Love having these big images for each of the volume level index pages. In years when a lot changes it works. 5 I saw Tom young - embarrassed with a baby and a cheery little wife - he was kissing the baby, who didn't want to be on his shoulders but liked his mother's, and he stroked Rebecca's back the way he sometimes strokes mine. What I was looking at was something about his chest and shoulders. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved black sweater and his chest was young. He was lighter all up and down, graceful, but absent, something. A subdued body. Sexy in his way but not by energy, by grace. 38 on the pier in Santa Cruz, a secretly cheating husband. 6 Where was I that year, when he was about to turn 39 - I was 40, a couple of months from Rowen being born. Formating London, working on L1-3 feeling how hard we fought, Olivia too, with various men, to stay alive while connecting - we were valiant, I thought this time. I'd wanted to say we were crazed but the struggle was what happens when people haven't given up either freedom or connection. What surprises me now is my willingness and good faith. Roy was lying and cheating and violent and I stayed with the ride and took notes. Why. For the sake of the realness that could happen too, Roy's body, his flux.
9 Formatting L5, scanned slides for L1 and 2 yesterday, my tissues are crumbly yesterday and today, a pull in the groin, very sore at night, stiff at the base of my back when I get up, sore even up into the left shoulder at moments. 11 Saturday morning it rained, unusual. Am blasting through London, there are 8 vols, the last 3 vols have a lot of fitting to guess at, undated journal, letters, a couple of notebooks going at the same time. The fall of 1973 gets interesting, Tony, Khanka, the film, yoga, I heat up. Luke toward 3 is brilliant company. I'm continuously marveling at how much I made happen then and how little now, what being young is like. Brought home from the libe yesterday a new art book, Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712), cityscape paintings in or near Amsterdam, finely detailed and with unusual tones of light - what do I mean - light recognizable not only as specific to time of day but also to season, for instance the painting I have in front of me, an evening light but not warm, as if I can feel evening chill after a rain. Here a blue light, evening of early spring. I'm thinking his light isn't in accord with his trees, which he paints always in full leaf. This one's like early morning light, thinnish. Here's one in the last light of the day, with the sun near the horizon - but is the shadow perspective off? Here's a pale side light, long shadows - he likes that side lighting often, the way it throws a long shadow across the foreground. It turns out he's a Mennonite and his friends are wealthy merchants also Mennonite. The particular quality of brick cities, what is it, something about the scale of detail. I was looking at this book before I went out to Tom's at suppertime, and it had the effect of making whatever I saw, 4th Avenue with a yellow taxi, the street perspective driving north on 5th, pictorial, like a photograph. It was a strong effect that persisted. 13 Monday morning. Have to go out to H&R Block's and try to get in to have my taxes done. Yesterday Tom and I were in Del Mar, late afternoon, on a rickety bench looking over the tracks to the ocean, which was a wide silver blue band with a sky edge slightly curved at its ends. Seagulls came over. There were a lot of them and they were coasting north above the tracks, white with black tips on their wings, but a lot of juveniles too, finely spotted brown and white. They were in a soft yellow light and their motion was unusually relaxed. They passed, and we gazed around, purple sea lavender everywhere, and then they were back milling above us, sliding across each other's paths in circles in both directions. They were fine-cut against the blue, sharp wing shapes, and they were gliding, and they were stirring a common space of light, and they were above us, so I had my head leaned backwards onto Tom's shoulder, and they were doing something we didn't understand, something that seemed uncharacteristic. - Tax refund 1120 and paid 220 so it's 900 back. A large fat man who gave me a bottle of syrah he makes himself, Roy Taramasco Jr. Today I'm systematically learning Acrobat Professional. 14
16 Couldn't stop transcribing leftover bits of 73 and 74, some days more of that and I can format the last 3 vols of London and then must comb through carefully to check undated insertions and write intros, summarize the time. 17 For some reason almost no one is going to my pages these months, even the mbo site, zero zero day after day. Realizing dimly as I work on the journal site that knowing too much about me defeats fame, or I should say, interest. I became famous in experimental film while completely obscure, remarkably famous I keep discovering, in a tiny cohort.
I feel like I'm pacing behind a wall, have done that most of my life.
In the Times today a review of a book by a young man who has traveled in South America. He had begun with a quotation from Theroux and the reviewer found him unworthy of it. "Mr Theroux is an acid stylist, not at all the sort of writer Mr Boudin wants to place up against his own bland sentences." Dwight Garner. Encouraged me some. Wednesday late afternoon a strong north wind. Tom and I went to the sea strip past Imperial Beach and walked south. The ocean was noisy rubble on our right. Just inland Immigration helicopters circled over the marsh, two, three or four at a time. A pelican fleet was riding the updraft over the cobble berm with wingspan at a thirty-degree angle to their direction. They fly with their necks pulled back to make them a smoother but quite heavy-looking shape that seemed to be sitting on a moving belt of air. Do I have anything to say about the last London years. In 1971 I wrote the film thesis I'm transcribing now. I scrutinize the writing and don't admire it though it is humane and relaxed. It's overdecorated, I was twenty six and had a new baby and a violent drunk boyfriend and hadn't done enough work, but the external examiner gave it a first although it was full of typos. It has a confident authoritative tone. It has a good structure. It accounts for what I'd liked in film. Should anyone read it now? Likely not. But I'll link it. It's the intellectual work of the time. Then later, in 1973 and 74, there are dense notes enfolded, a lot of reading. I liked most today finding a description of 52 Burghley Road, details I'd forgotten. Bored by the poetic flight I tried to rise to. I was good at concrete description and bad whenever I tried to widen, or whatever that is - what is it - deepen? I wasn't well connected, is what it means. - I hadn't realized that. 18 It's 6:31, ivory light intense on the window bars. The sun is rising far enough north to just clear the window frame. It's Saturday, this tower is my own all the way to the ground. I was dreaming that I was on the way somewhere, the hospital I think, and I was stopping to wash a collection of metal utensils there'd been in a chest. I was washing mud off for instance a big enameled pan that had a lot of enamel missing, handfuls of tinny cutlery, on and on, wondering as I was washing it where anyone would ever use this junk. As I was finishing I realized startled that it had been collected as scrap iron. I woke, was lying there in the dark and understood it was a comment on the transcription. In the morning I want love, love in work since that's how I live. I have transcribed to be in past love, but what should I do when I run out of that. What I did when I was going to work on construction and would sit with tea in Jam's back room writing dictionary bits before I had to put on my boots and leave. [left side, notes on Acrobat Professional] 19 Tom woke me, said the sky was starting to heat up. A band of orange along the east. 20 He got into my bed and fit himself against my back, both with our knees bent. He'd poke his head up and report on the stages of sunrise. Next the sky was gold with a stroke of pink cloud. Then, here it comes, the fire rim. He was watching the sky above us turn from white to blue. He said Here's the dawn breeze, and there it was lightly flowing through the screen as if directly from the sun. The night before had been sphinx moths in the honeysuckle, dozens of them whirring and zooming. In the dark scent drifting between our two windows. I was lying on my back waiting for him to turn off the lights and close the closet doors. He sat on the edge of my bed and stared down at me. He said he was seeing the goddess. I was seeing a bony strange little face I didn't know. I wasn't in a goddess state, I knew that, and so it was a moment of mystified blank waiting for him to go away. It's Tuesday morning. I'm in the deck chair in the sun. Last night was so hot there are gullies under my eyes this morning. I'm looking at the smooth bright green of the cactus next to me. Truck motors on 5th, a lot of traffic. 22nd
24 Cottonwood Campground, Joshua Tree. Tin cup of tea, dirty concrete table. A cool morning. Tom's on his pile of bedding back in the creosote bushes reading the Joshua Tree handbook. It's quiet. A big Landcruiser pulling a Wrangler. In the next slot a little white Toyota snuggled up to the back of a black Dodge Ram. He arrived first, military haircut, then she, still in her work clothes. They are sleeping in the pickup bed. Yesterday we were on the Los Palms trail before the sun had cleared the nearest mountains. The palms at Cottonwood were venerable towers, a thick grove, full ancient thatch all the way up, buzzing loudly, a seep of damp at their feet. I had my new trekking pole and was happy I could zoom up and down hills in the old way. Walked past the two mile mark and back, and was fine. On the way back, insisted on leading. I was looking at the ground in front of me and suddenly there was something right there next to the path - a tortoise like an old rock, opening its tragic dragon mouth and munching up a tiny lupin. We squatted on the path and stared. When we had shut up for a while it rose on its 4" forelegs and tottered toward us. It was heading for another lupin. We were next to it and could see into its green-stained mouth and hear its assiduous little crunching. That was so intimate, and its fierce little face so austere, we were awe-struck as if trespassing on a mystery. Two nights of stars. The first was clearer. Tom was in another room in the creosote with his little radio. A fine meteor flashed through. I said into the dark on my right, Did you see that? He didn't hear me but just afterward he said, Did you see that? [photos of Maya and Anya in the clothes I sent them] 28 Two mornings after I came back from the desert (first night back in my house) I dreamed, after various other things, that I was walking on crumbly red fissured hillsides trying to get back to my car and/or the place where I was trying to sleep. I was walking with a stick. There was suddenly a green snake. I grasped it by the head, saw its flat triangular bright green head between thumb and forefinger of my left hand. I held it so it couldn't bite but still, after I let it go, I could see bite marks on the skin below my thumb. I went on. Met two more snakes, brown ones I knew were more dangerous. I kept them away with my stick. Came over a ridge and in the hollow behind it were three Mexican men on their haunches. I wondered whether to be afraid of them but they had good intelligent faces. I said I'd been bitten by a snake, but it was a green one so it wasn't poisonous. The man I had spoken to looked at another man, who got up and came over, slashed at the bite twice with his hand. I understood him to be a shaman who was fixing the bite. I liked the feel of the three men. This part of the dream stayed with me. In an earlier part I was in an old hospital looking into a room furnished the way it would have been years ago, the 50s or earlier. I liked the room. There was a man in the bed covered by a blanket so I couldn't see his face. It's a good dream in the sense of good travel. 29 Netflix for Tom tomorrow. Discovered there'd been nothing on Statcounter for the mbo site, W&D and Fading because the code was corrupted and the page said so - May 3 Odd thing - people coming into W&D by googling work and days journal - in March - from Connecticut, Temple City CA, Mass, Princeton, San Luis Obispo - then I wasn't tracking in April. Unlinked mention somewhere, just the title. If it had been email there would have been links. 4 Monday morning, thick white sky. A few things to catch up on. These last months I often wake with a hot spot of tension in the solar, which can dissolve, or partly dissolve, if I focus, which means it's anxiety, I think. I haven't had that for years. As if an underlayer of anxiety I can't account for. There's no obvious reason. Overnight at Tom's, disgusted, resentful he said. He was buoyant, talking about his writing. I don't like to look at him, his missing front tooth that now will not be fixed until August. The way I have to subsidize him if we're going to do anything together. He wants to write, he says, and is he actually writing? A grand plan of speaking for his time, which would redeem his years. I'm resenting that he's willing to tap my little salary, as if he's worth more than I am. The evidence may be that my last 7 years, which have brought him to this raft of peaceful respectability, have been sacrificed to him - that he's held me by calculated little hooks that work on my weakness in wanting to be with a manly man. If that is so, anguish - that is the anguish isn't it - I feel exploited - he's prone to exploiting, because he was handsome and could. When he's prosperous and generous, I can be generous, which I love to be. Holding back is hard on me. I feel unvalued when he's broke. Heartsore. It has been like that since I've been back from Alberta. What else - I resent Rose - I don't believe she can do what she's trying to do - I resent giving my strong mind to her drugged slow self-pitying sentences. She should do something else. Yesterday looking at a couple of Aphrodite's garden volume index pages. Pleasure. A baby and a garden, a recovered body, swift giftedness, not firm or tight.
-
Was imagining the little desert house, standing in it, and felt its tightness. Remembered the workroom Being about was set out in, instant relief of the large space with light at a far window. Thought I could start to imagine films in it. Post images on its walls, assemble equipment and help. 5 Tax refund $1122.
A dream. I'm in a large room lying on a high narrow bed looking at the far corner of the walls. Paper has come off in sheets and under them is what looks like black-streaked marble. I'm looking carefully because it might be an artist's drawing. Hundreds of thousands of long pencil lines. Very beautiful if so. Tony is in the next room. He's singing. I join him from my own dark room. Listen to our two voices. I begin strong, singing the tune with him and then go softer and try harmonies. He comes in. He's naked, as I am too, climbs under the cover with me. But he lies on his back, doesn't turn to me. I can feel he doesn't want to make love. I'm in anguish. He's in the other room. I put on my clothes to show him that I've understood. While I'm dressing I look at my left breast. The nipple is a big ugly teat. As I'm looking at it, there are ugly bulges in it like cauliflower swellings. I touch it or maybe think of sex and it shrinks to its usual nice little point standing stiff. I see Tony has his pants on. I'm so grieved and tense about wanting to be fucked that I start to run down a slope away. There's a horse standing with its back to me, a quite small horse but I'm aware of not wanting to get behind its hooves. I'm trying to pass on its right but it shifts its back end toward me. I see its back over the shoulders is opened up, it's hollowed by disease. It is eating garbage from a dumpster. I wake from this dream understanding it's about feeling my body now is too ugly to be wanted. I'm in an anguish about it that I don't feel. From there to many realizations of things in my daily life that are interesting that I don't feel and so don't write. My daily dull unconsciousness, for instance the way I blankly booked my London ticket yesterday. Feeling it's important to find how to be more present. I don't now remember any of the things that state found interesting.
8 What I've noticed sometimes, transcribing Queen's or London, is a feeling of realness about the place, this isn't easy to say, as if it is still there, as if I still live there. I felt it reading the moment I came into Alison's apartment on a Sunday aft and found Tom Hathaway lying on the couch. Today when I remembered taking a bus to the East End, the bare stretches of roadway near the river, to the Sufi meeting room. It is a feeling of what it's like to live somewhere, belong somewhere. I never look at this room with love the way I looked at Burghley Road or East Pender. Writing Zach about why I like Fernando Flores. Saying he's about how to have energy. How when I'm with someone who doesn't do what he says he's going to, I withhold energy. Same when someone is sloppy or sleazy in speech. I'm thinking of how, gradually, with Tom, I have held back more and more energy. I tried not to but I did. With Roy, I went elsewhere rather than die back this way. It has been 7 empty years. Wasted years. Giving my time to Tom has been wrong, a wrong effort. I had a wrong notion of need, I have been wrong. Joyce did what she could but she didn't fix me. The book couldn't get me right.
I want to make something sublime.
9th
-
10th Reading about the Khanka - I've formatted up to L6-4, only have a couple of pages plus L7 left of London - I've been thinking of Elias - thinking he's somewhere in Massachussetts building houses - I find him because there's someone who has dedicated a book to him, and that person has a web page and gives an email link. Boulder Institute for Nature and the Human Spirit - there he is, thin white hair, beautiful. He's a murshid, he has kept moving, he and his wife sold their house and dropped into the world. Traveling. He's admirable, he didn't settle. 11 I finished formatting 1973 today, and tonight on American experience there's a story of the siege of Wounded Knee, Indian hippies, men with guns, AIM, TV cameras, 1973. 13 Working in L7, the last London volume. Stressed trying to get a booking for Astor House, which is $26 and on Charlotte Street. Had a lot to tell Tom yesterday. Wonderful day solid with work. Began immediately in the morning, 6:30 or 7, and when I looked up after finishing it was 5:50. Was scanning from the negatives file, which included unmounted slides - some of Luke in Portugal and Wales, some from a euphoric day on the Embankment, some from the pool. Then I tried negs from Cornwall, and there was an exquisite one of the corner of the farmyard. I'd never seen it. It was like Bill Brandt. Working with these images held me tight, I didn't want to stop to eat. - 3 emails, 3 phone calls, I have a room at Ian Baker House for two weeks.. [left side notes on InDesign] 14 Laughing with Louie on the phone last night. We're going to meet in Paris on the 30th - Gare du Nord 10:17 am. Working with the Mafalda scans last night in Powerpoint and this morning in InDesign - rapidly figuring out the software. Janet's on Ideas May 22, new book Public science, private interest. 16 London is up though I don't have the intros written - can do that in London maybe. 17 I've been happy since I booked London and since I'm learning InDesign. Yesterday and this morning looking at art books with Tom - type design, layout - imagining more of what Mind and land could be as a book, if it could be a theme book.
In the afternoons when I have the window wide unusual migrating birds have sung from the wires. 18 $1236, £808 for Ramsey House - didn't take off alum discount? 19 Fashion Valley - I spent $500 toward London - the best is a Jack Spade bag - so beautiful - so well designed - it's lined with orange - it's the right size for journal and laptop - inside is a zipped orange pouch - slots for pencils - two card pockets, which will be for pencil sharpener and eraser - a phone pocket, is it? - outside but under the flap what must be a passport pocket - on the side two zipper pockets, one the size for a paperback. These can be unzipped without lifting the flat - on the back there's a deep newspaper pocket - and the straps are wide and very strong - set a little slanted to hang well from the shoulder. And what else I bought - Ralph Lauren pj bottoms, black with white line check - a long sleek coat sweater - a sleek black teeshirt. And a phone - I found out what I need and I found it for less online - a Blackberry Pearl 8100 unlocked, meaning I can swap out the sim card to use it in England and Canada. 23rd
Socks, bra, jeans, phone activated. Workshop on imaginary friends? Kids, gods, fantasy and self-managing. 24th Wrote Dave that I'd finished transcribing and looked up when it began: May of 2003, six years ago. Fading 2-3. Sunday 6 pm, the west window open. Bird cheeps, mild light. I phoned myself. 619 335 6164 phoned 619 291 6412. Picked up the land line phone and said hello in both directions at once. Hadn't realized until I wrote it just now that 64-12 is the span of the journal project as of now. It's a pretty phone. [monograph design notes]
- There I took a picture of it [the phone] with my number on the face and emailed it to Susan whose beautiful poem bit me when I came to it in the journal I had opened to find a phone number. [Left side InDesign notes] 27 I dreamed I was at the kitchen window on Pender, looked down into the alley and saw unusually physical men - tall straight fast moving good looking men - coming and going, doing something with an engine in Koo's open annex door, posing for photos with a hand saw. I thought they must be carpenters. There were women too. A moment when I stepped to the window, which was open to the floor, with a decisive motion like theirs and they glanced up. They all lived in the west neighbour house I thought. Then later I was thinking how much the neighbourhood had changed, and that I could be writing in my journal about that change. Last night on Independent lens a film called Men of hula, beautiful to see those strong brown bodies moving in manly ways that suited them and that suited the place where they lived, it seemed. They squatted on the rim of Pele and threw her offerings before their competition. Monday morning I couldn't face packet letters and drove to Tom's. He said, Want to drive out to the fire station. He meant Japatul Road but we passed that and kept going till the Campo road, Memorial Day on I-8, open road, the dramatic bulk of El Capitan in pollution murk. And then when the houses stop, chaparral in gorges, the bridge. The open plain south of 8, black oaks, grass already dried blond. Highway 94, a glimpse of the new rusted wall, mountains each in its pristine skin of color, matilija poppies white dots all up the slopes. We just drove. We were home by 12. It was just right. On the way out of town I asked Tom how he met Lou and he told the story of Burt teaching him to paint in the Vista Unified School District. Since I'm going to London and have new socks and a Blackberry I like Tom again. He is having a no money adventure, I'm mostly not subsidizing, he is being sweet and tolerant and I'm back to loving the sound of his voice. Netflix is sending movies. Last night was Shakespeare in prison, which he watched as a street man, assessing the con levels of the actors. The Graham Thomas I planted in a green pot is blooming yellow in front of his kitchen doors. Breakthrough with Cameron, who wrote that he's so abstract because he's trying to find descriptions of his own experience in other people, and why doesn't he just describe it directly. Then stayed up late devising a structure for his memoir. Zach wrote about being smarter when he was eighteen and then leveling himself to where he could hardly remember two numbers in a row. It's Wednesday morning of a short week. White sky every morning, burns
off by ten or eleven.
|
