in america volume 19 part 5 - 2010 january-february

work & days: a lifetime journal project

27 January 2010 Can I see well enough to do this. It's 6:14 on a Wednesday evening. The power went out. I thought it was my fuse and then saw the neighbourhood dark, in one of the facing windows a flashlight moving. My candle was already lit and I remembered there were camping lantern stubs in the closet. It's happened when I've been intensely imagining living in a truckhouse. There was the granite counter man's Chev boxtruck yesterday, and then various sites online, and then the Polymecca site that so engrossed me I looked up and it was 1:30. I had already drawn an interior for the Chev box and then Liebowitz' plan showed me it could be less crude. A tiny yacht heater, a clerestory. Real wood windows. A hand pump from the water tank. From there I've been imagining which of these objects I'd want to keep. How much storage there'd have to be. The yard-high yellow orchid certainly. It goes on the narrow shelf on the starboard side, with the other plants. 29 Housetruck man hasn't replied to my note, I'm thinking I shd get an email address in a man's name for dealing with tech men, not only housetruck guys but Frameworks too. Dreamed a white amaryllis flower beginning to push up in a small dish. Later that Louie had found a place for us to live, took me to see it. A quite large central room. She said Trudy and Rhoda were going to live there too. I opened the door to their room and saw it had north facing windows. As I turned I saw stored antique beer barrels in an upper corner. My room quite small with a south window, off the middle of the common space. Then Louie's room surprisingly beautiful, large corner room with a turret, south and west windows. Later we're all sitting together, I see Rhoda's with a young boyfriend. I'm with Louie, she and he are on a long sofa further west, to my right. There's a young, maybe 10 or 1l, boy in front of us, shaggy hair, bare chest, board shorts, nice energy. I see his dad over on the right, tattooed young man, bare chest, board shorts, sweet happy look. I call to the boy, Is your dad Trudy's boyfriend? She's over at the end of the room. When I woke I was annoyed Louie had given herself so much better a room but then I thought if Louie is love woman and I'm ego or work woman and T and R are the artist versions of the same set, then it's a happy dream because we're all together and the artists have physical young men and a spirit son. Is that what you mean   YES So then Louie's beautiful room is perfect and T and R living together looking north is perfect too. Does it have to do with the truckhouse   no InDesign   Is this a permanent change   Do I need to think more about it   no 30 The seek system, dopamine, getting turned on when there's attachment loss. The days' drive of this housetruck fantasy. Couple of things I'm seeing. One is that it's a diagram of me, now minimized to a capsule. The other is how I have this fantasy/plan drive when I lose Tom. The first time Tom smoked and I left him it was that beautiful Point Loma house with pink floor [2014 version]. Others in earlier years, but the first ones when I was a kid. [Opposite page housetruck floorplan sketch] [housetruck view from bed 2014] [housetruck view of desk 2014] Electrics kettle, computer, monitor, 3 lamps, stereo, iron, phone charger, camera charger, scanner, drives, dish, saw $30,000 = $500/mo for 60 mo = 5 years] So it's that   It means unconscious distress   no It means coping   YES When I woke at night there was that hollow-hearted loneliness. I don't find anything else to say about it. When I was with Tom I was afraid of being abandoned the whole time   no But mostly   Did I stop myself loving him because of it   no Stopped myself feeling it   But is this an actual good plan   Does it commit me to loneliness   no Was my criticism of him about fear   Am I wrong about this separation   no This time it's as if I've wiped Tom out of memory, I don't remember loving him or being happy with him. Last time I missed him, I mourned. This time it's as if there's a door sealed behind me, I have nothing but future, and that future has nothing of his sort, nothing of what I wanted with him, nothing personal. It's as if intimacy is inconceivable. Will you talk to me   (Kc), responsibility, withdrawal, shared pleasure Is this an instruction   Be responsible in art to make shared pleasure rather than withdrawal, is that what you mean   Can I pick up from Trapline and be as honoured   [Opposite pages: notes on electrics, water, windows, air, built-ins and sheathing, diesel] He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets One by one they were all becoming shades. pass one by one into the shades fade and wither dismally with age His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious but could not apprehend their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out ... The time had come for him to set out on his own journey westward. 31 When I ached at night and thought I wouldn't sleep I put on the last CD of the Joyce collection from the library. I drifted off somewhere in the middle of it but woke again for the last few paragraphs of The dead. This morning I'm wanting to give them to Tom, listen to them with him, because he will never have had them if I don't. Silver morning through the dewy windows. The long orchid stalks are swaying in slight rising heat from the candle stub, or just the currents in the room.   Shall I go see him   no Will you tell me why not   be happy by coming through into withdrawn womanness It would go on withdrawn with him   That womanness is what I feel with Emilee   Is withdrawn womanness longing   no Then what   shattering, friendship, coming through, processing List?   It hasn't been happening   When you say friendship do you mean liking   no No one wants to know me now   Do I deserve that   no So how do you mean   friendship delayed, success, and graduation, in writing Writing I've already done   no There's something you want me to write   For women   I've done that to no effect   You want me to live in barren isolation for the rest of my life   no Please lead me   exclusion, partial loss, triumph, withdrawal You're saying deal with it   Is there more going on than I know   More to find and be   yes I feel there isn't   I want to be a flowing well of being   Drugs?   no Is there one word for it   subtlety Attention in the moment   Is there a reason it stops with Tom   it becomes processing his losses He absorbs it all   YES So can I be that again   And all it takes is staying away from him   It hasn't happened yet   no David forwarded a note from Leah Wiebe saying she is leaving 824 E Pender. I thought of leaving it to come and live here with Tom, and how it turned out that he had been on meth for years and not told me, let me move on false faith, so that then I was here alone with an angry liar. And did I ever feel that betrayal for what it was? And then years of false consciousness? Is that the story I should be telling? And all because I wanted manness with me, scraps of it, whatever I could get, and that because of my loveless dad - still and still. I moved here Sept 2002, broke up with T June 2003, 9 months later, didn't see him till Aug 2004, 14 months, and then we had till Nov 2009, 5 years, three of them with his house. We had 7 years before I moved, 7 after. What do I actually feel about Emilee. Her weakness is that she is pious. It goes with her hair in a bun. She can be prissy in person, small mouth too careful in its poses. She likes pious formulas. And then in writing, in her writing for me, in her notice of what I write for her, intelligence I need, oh free brave intelligence, an adventurer I love as my equal, whose stories I need, who is love, who lives love in ways I can't now. - There a pure white blimp floating across the pane, its scumble of dark hum following. I defended her loving intelligence, I fought her and others for it, I gave her anything I could because I want the world to have that, to be that. I want to be what I can be with her. It is how bright she is but also how ethical she is, the way her intelligence is ethical. I'm grieved to lose her. There one of my doves pale brown and grey and cream with black spots on its back, a mourning dove whose wings whistle when it flies, lit on the parapet. Alright, out to the day. - Where I bought silver earrings from a woman who smiled as if she liked me, and I felt like a lovely person in my periwinkle sweater and black UGGs. And now here's an email from Alex. "You helped me find my way to happiness and what I want." And a letter this morning from Juliana, not as definite as that but thanking. What's different about Emilee is partly her conscious kindness in the midst of accepting what she can from me, and partly the degree of her talent, which gives me company I long for. Jan saying When you find your audience they will be hungry. [Opposite: sketch of housetruck exterior, refined interior plan] [2014 exterior] I was out at Bassam's last night with Larry. Is that worth doing again? He is smaller and older than I remember, a tiny man, couple of inches shorter than I am, narrow sensitive very Jewish face, white hair springing back off a bald forehead. Last night he was wearing boy clothes, jeans and a striped teeshirt which showed him very slight. He has a juvenile quality, admires his dad, doesn't have serious work, doesn't have serious things to do, goes around making friendly conversation here and there, loves his cat best. All evening he came back to telling me the plots of movies I hadn't seen though he could have noticed me glaze over every time. Insulated, though he's friendly. When I got home I was imprinted and had less presence in yoga. We had told medical stories like old people. At the end of the evening we did agree about Moonstruck. And that's that, my tiny social venture of the year. 2nd February Woke anxious from a dream that I was looking for a place to sleep - through corridors, narrow and unknown, every door opening into small crowded rooms with people in them. And then edges of muddy winter fields my feet were sinking into. Then lying in the dark stressed in thoughts about the life of art, its homelessness, its anxiety, the cost of being what I had to be when I was trying for it, the core value of what is sometimes found, which I feel is the only thing I am worth, or anyone. And then the number of projects I have afloat around the brutal simplicity of the way I live, the way I can lose my sense of the whole when I'm grabbed by a creating enthusiasm like last week's for the housetruck. I need that energy and there's so much dogged finishing-up. I think to go back through the nearly quarter of a year I've been gone from Tom and then I give up, there's too much daily junk. The journal is the whole of daily conversation and that is too much and too miscellaneous. 4 Sorting files, letting the Garanca interviews in German run - she's so intelligent, she taught herself to sing, she taught herself to speak four new languages with complete naturalness, she's beautiful up and down, when she sings men she moves like men, she travels the world, her husband the conductor praises her musical comprehension, she thinks her way through her situations, she has a lot to say. When she's at her best, "so locker, leicht, frei und gefühlvoll," love woman altogether released and educed, new in the world. Lying in bed this morning I wanted to write into this record that the nights are quite grim. Then a light happy day. In the mornings now I like to feel my tighter waist after a month of yoga twists. I sit down to InDesign and improve pages, figure out new tools. Midmorning I took the jeep to look at the plumbers' mess under the African sumac, then had delicious rice and beans and salad at Whole Foods, read the NYT. Then parked at Babycakes and used their wireless to fix workshop pages, then came home and went through files in the second-to-bottom drawer, which is full end to end of clippings, watched CBC 10 minute news. In between, here and there, a thank you note from Tasha, a technical note from Emilee, a question from Deena, a note from Martin Rumsby, someone in Ottawa, I'm thinking maybe Greg [no], looking at Raw forming 6. Making a new floor plan on smaller square graph paper I found in the files. 4 days till Vermont. Yest finished DR index pages. 5 The number I'm pulling out of the air is $30,000. I've half designed it already. It would be perfectly outfitted to my taste, well finished, high end, sycamore cabinets with strong tiny latches, stainless steel window frames, a $2000 stove, stainless steel custom railings, open space above waist level, dense dedicated storage below, venetian blinds allowing slats of light onto a green velvet sofa - or teal - black and white triangular tiles at the water end, an 8' wide 3' deep black work table with a glass surface, moonlight through clerestory windows, moderne fixtures, solar on the roof, at least four deep cycle batteries, a diesel cab that finds it a light haul uphill. 6 There I phoned Rowen and he told me about playing League of legends and I told him about InDesign and the housetruck. "It is possible to ..." "... form a bold plan ..." "... and execute it." The startling sensation with Row of wanting to confide, because he is so friendly and fond. I was thinking of Rob this morning, and felt how Rowen is the son of my time with him, a light sweet fond gentle quirky soul. He's happy to be at school, two blocks of English and a block of math. They are reading short stories and writing paragraphs. He said of Avatar something about deus ex machina, misprounced it, was pleased to have learned it. This semester interval got happier and stronger as it went. I love to feel my firm smooth waist. I love my look in UGGs and jeans and good shirts and colored sweaters and earrings. I've had music in my head most days, Ridente la calma the last two. I've learned InDesign, I've got Dames rocket ready for the last effort. There has been weather. Doves have stayed where they are pecking under the air conditioner pipe when I open the door, small birds have splashed in seed on my roof yard. - It's 6:30, planes are taking off toward the east, I have the Vivaldi playlist on. There's one a minute. Richard has been inventing a pleasure garden next door, passiflora has crawled all through the pepper tree and is ornamenting it with red. The vine on my BC Ferries stair is blooming thick, recovered after it looked to be dying back. The mesquite downstairs is blooming after the rain. My yellow orchid is a lovely thing. I've given myself orchids and candles for the dark of the year. When I get back there will be the spring smell. Street pears are white in Balboa Park. Most afternoons I've simply got on the bike and blasted through my circuit, not minded that it's routine. Was thinking of Jean, her way of being an old woman in her house. The mirror hung behind a kitchen cupboard door where she wouldn't have to see it unless she needed it. Her wet-combed cowlick, her worn good teaspoons, her thick-painted sage-green living room floor, her measuring interest that made strangers like her, her several colors of hyssop along the path, her studies of grasses and reeds, her swims in the lake, yoga into her eighties, her crushes on young men, her house dresses all made from the same pattern, her gracious hosting. - That far away time in my house in Vancouver, when she was alive and I had wonderful hair. I say that in exile, looking out at palms in grey sky, the sycamore with a few dead leaves, street swishing, the SLOW sign blinking on 4th, quiet of Saturday early, Richard's what is it called, vane, mushroom shaped and rusted, turning rapidly on his roof. - Being bodies: letters on how we think about mind and self It would be Wittgenstein for the medium-intelligent A philosopher hands-on with samples of how ordinary people think, how it perpetuates confusion It would tackle people ordinary people read, like a self-defined job in philosophy, a lab Who I had to work with, chapters Womb denial How we think language, mysticism, therapy, theory, femaleness and maleness It would meditate on the nature of theoretical intuition and on the frailty of theoretical construction - microlensing - gravity of stars near the line of sight magnifies light of background objects gravitational lensing caustic - for instance the gravity of a galaxy bends light to concentrate more of it at a point Einstein cross 7 After a year of seeing your limitations and weak spots, of feeling a bit ignored by the world, a bit weary, you bounce back - now, this week, the month ahead, and the whole year ahead, 2010 will give you a shot of luck, ambition and self confidence. That's important because 2011 will begin a one-time, overwhelming 15-year period of self-realization. It will feel like a new spirit, an indefinable awareness (or dreaminess) is filling you. You need to be cheerful, confident when this occurs. So 2010 brings you confidence, luck - enjoy, accomplish! Start your new life! Astral reflections Feb 14-20 I like the way doves are black at their points, beak, feet and tail. Two hawks spiraling on thermals against clouds I can see from my desk, northwest. 8 In the Laundromat the tall shy man I used to see in the Maryland. "How's Tom?" "I don't know." "You guys break up?" "Yes." Then the afternoon packing and going through tax receipts, tired today, melancholy of leaving, then my mother phoning when I had receipts spread over the floor, wants to tell me something even after I've said I'm going. The phone rang, I hoped for something wonderful and it was an old being with an insecure grasp of common facts. Did she mean daisies when she said lilies of the valley? I'm sore-hearted leaving without Tom coming for me - when the phone rang I thought maybe he feels me about to go. Vermont 11 Chicago airport - taxiing slowly through snow falling in the aqueous golden light under vapor lamps, a lot of long dark bodies standing or gliding ponderously as whales. In the two hours to Burlington Norbert the Austrian from Montreal bringing out gemstones to show me, a slightly porky man, I assumed gay, coming from a gem fair in Tucson, wearing jade and sapphire on chains under his shirt, carrying little things in a case in his backpack, quartz, amethyst, ruby. I was enchanted as he by the star dioride, a smooth little oval, tea-colored, very fine-grained, with a cross of white light hovering and sliding in or on or above it, a magical thing, and the concave-cut topaz, colorless, cut so it showed through to a nest of needle-narrow refractive rays. Second day of the res, tired. 12 Six on a Friday morning, the rest of the students arrive today. How it's been. Lise bright eyed and good natured getting my tales out of me by curious sympathy. I wasn't going to tell her about Tom but did, because she asked. I'm not off-balance bragging this time, though I'm forceful and forthright. KC is back, scowling and mugging. Everyone as always, Katt shoving at her hair, Ralph a gentle geezer sunk deep in the softest chair, Francis wading about belly-first and posing his big-daddy statements in a ponderous voice. Jim greyer and more beautiful, the best presence in any meeting, watchful, light, kindly, more authoritative than he was, summarizing. Goldberg in humpty-dumpty belly and strange shoes lurking and scheming. Ruth roundly impassive keeping the meeting focused. - There's the sound of a car not starting in the cold. The driver I had from the airport was an appalling human and I have gotten her fired it seems. A woman with fat hanging off her frame in a stack of bolsters, who wandered in the lane as if she were falling asleep and jerked her foot on the accelerator continuously so I was seasick, was willing to talk on and on witlessly giving off whatever stories tell themselves in her misbegotten head all day long. Wanda. 13 Pee and shit steeping in the toilet, they won't fix the plumbing until next week and maybe not at all. I'm supposing I'm going to have to scoop it out and carry it somewhere. Meantime a hard night, fell asleep at 9:30 and woke at 11:30 and then was awake until after 3, and then not even quite, skin stinging, haunted by the sight of my naked torso in the Kilpatrick bathroom mirror - cell death, it isn't smooth, it's marbled, it's old - Deidre yesterday a spectre of exhaustion and stress, a so-distressed body, shaky, and she had home-dyed her hair orange so that it looked dead. Her husband gone to jail for 4 years as of yesterday. She had been supporting him, and her son, and her daughter's boyfriend, with her night job looking after wrecked bodies in a group home. There had been a car accident too, she'd gotten slammed in an intersection. And at the same time she's writing for Lise about three abusive men, reliving it rather than standing in her beautiful strength and conceptual clarity, that can give her hope of a PhD and an end of nightmare now that she isn't drinking. Jaes arriving at the opening circle imposing and elegant in her shaman hat, a Stetson wrapped in beads and ribbons. She dresses so beautifully always and I love her for it - long thighs in narrow black, polished boots, narrow jacket in thin black leather, and yesterday an ivory glow. She takes care of herself, she focuses. Zach's sweet look in his tutor-job tweed jacket. I fall into place next to him. Here's my boy, I say. Instant dislike of one of my new students who's a tall pretty thing with long curly hair who wants to be more spiritual. 13 I read from Frank after his life and didn't prepare it well. I stumbled and got into false rhythms. I hadn't tested the length and got timed out before there'd been enough to show a shape. I fogged up with emotion I hadn't felt before I read. It was a mess   no I didn't think it through   no I didn't feel it through   NO Will you comment   heartbreak, (4c), judgment, processing People felt it was badly written   It's not badly written but it was badly presented   It wasn't a mess in the sense that it was practical processing of heartbreak   It's too bad I didn't present it better   I'm sorry (tears)   yes I wasn't strong today   Will I sleep tonight   Is there more you want to say   no 14 It's 4:30. I didn't sleep enough. I'm going to present Emilee later. Something for the mbo colloq. Somehow get ready for 3 lectures in 4 days, that I'm not current on. Learn 7 people, only 2 of whom I like, and none of whom have topics I like. [This first assessment as often was wrong in several instances.] 1. Andy is a stiff thick body full of accomplishment, who will need me only to curb and narrow him, and will see me not at all. 2. Mo is full of mediocre enthusiasm for something natural she wants to conceive as supernatural. 3. Nan is a blank overwhelmed tiny thing. 4. Tip is a diffuse new ager who will need to be laboriously directed. 5. Rani is a good soul who is a little squashed, maybe I can find out how. 6. Todd is a beauty. He's a sexy bad boy turned paramedic angel and I'd gladly cosy up with him, but he wants to talk about god. God-images, he says. Which god is he. He has Krishna's eyes and he holds my gaze, he's there. He turns me on and we will see what comes of that. 7. Sweet Zach with his teenage boy mouth and his intimate habit, his companionable smart style, but he will send me wayward bits, all which-way. What will I say about Emilee. Pretty much what the eval says, that her MA task was to bring forward the wildness, and as she has organized it now the good student supports and clarifies the boldness and wildness. Her dreams are full of wolves and doors, her precision in writing carries her gliding under the sea. It is part of her kindness, life-long study of how to be brilliant without scaring anyone. I dreamed I saw three birds drop flat down onto the pavement. They lay still but I didn't think they were dead. It was just something they do. I was looking at them from above, a window like the middle bedroom's window on Pender. They stirred, would pick themselves up. Someone moving into the building, that look of belongings on the street. Some men leaning back against a parapet not realizing it was on fire behind them. Jaes yesterday standing in black with her head covered by a dark scarf calling the powers of the directions, but facing east as she called the west. Her long fine hands white in the dim haybarn. Her ceremony didn't move me, but I could see its function for her, it lets her show something she is, an earned priesthood. The long-stemmed red roses she gave us were plastic, as roses - barely scented and overbred, attenuated of roseness into symbol, the leaves already crushed. The real thing is the way she stalks through airports, for instance, in her Stetson wrapped with beads, carrying public testimony of her willed survival. She creates herself majestic with detailed effort, she wants to be fine and is. [Description deleted.] Mary last night reading something braver and realer than anything I'd seen from her, her core story, clear, the way she holds on in anguish with her father, what I saw in the way she needs to hang onto Tompkins. Goldberg's published fake poems read in her oily poetry-reading voice. A lot of pretty nouns she doesn't actually feel, strung together miscellaneously the way she does for her parlour trick improv on words supplied by her audience. It's 6 now, silent, a creak upstairs. 16 Tuesday night. What I've done so far. Sat on the floor with my elf child Nan, pressed my hand against her cringing upper back. Talked about her strange destiny, looking into her dilated pale eyes, seeing her elf ears and quirky hiding strength. Sat with Todd who was less beautiful today but told me the story of meeting his wife. They were working together as paramedics, he had been training her. They were invited to dinner together, talked, drove home, thought not much about it. He went to sleep and woke realizing he was going to marry her. He told her and she said "I know." They have been together 8 years. Other things, being saved from depression by Pentacostalism, and after some years being saved from the church in a moment of what did he call it, ----. Tip's oddness, is it a kind of wonkedness. He fastens onto half-baked ideas, I'm going to be hauling him back from foolish explanations constantly. Zach awash as always, beautiful though twitching on the right side of his face, beautiful sweet mouth, boy mouth, boy eyes. We played with his iPhone. He showed me a dictionary and the complete Shakespeare he finds by flicking at the screen. A photo of his kid. Mo like a granola centerfold, eyes, mouth, hair, boobs, legs. I hated her yesterday when I saw her twice in long confab with Todd in a corner. Her study plan dopey but then she so absorbant and willing, childy. I got over hating her when she wasn't stuck on her new age thoughts, or maybe not. Rani a plain sturdy thing right through, it seems. Save Andy for another time. We haven't clicked. 18 The room was cooking today in a way it hasn't with this group. I'd done the exercise that takes them to their home works space and then into some adjacent place where something happens. The three women and Andy had lain down on the floor for it and were still sprawled in that cosier way, and that had helped but not enough. What lit the air was when Todd had been talking about his vision and said the old woman stirring the fire was his femininity. I said "What is masculinity?" and that took us into animation about gender difference. I wdn't let them name character contrasts as gender and suddenly saw I shd ask them what their own particular conflict is - that that is the only way to name it right. Todd - sensitivity and shut-downness Andy - child and adult Rani - her way and family opinion Nan - risk and comfort Zach - magnanimity and greed Mo- reason and the unknown Tip - something about Tip blanks me - what Zach said about not being able to read him. He has big black as if pleading eyes and a thin somewhat skewed face. He could look fanatical if he didn't look helpless. I don't remember what he says. - What he said, now I remember, was that he recognized all our conflicts. Todd's vision: a hobbit-sized door out of his living room into a dark tunnel that when it grew lighter he could see was a large high room completely lined with books. There were some old men, scholars who'd meet and talk quietly about their work. He had his own workspace in this room. A grey-haired woman was stirring and tending a large fire lighting the room. He saw the paper before I mentioned it. It read, You know who you are. When he emerged back into his own house he said, No I don't. He didn't want to leave that room. The house of scholarship Is the fire his relation with the mother Not his femininiity   But his relation with it   YES   In the two sides vision one side, the R, had said Light the fire, and the other side, L, had said tend it. The fire is early love   19 Todd, strong in contemplation for defeat of illusions about the uncon Zach, balance in heartbreak and anguish of responsibility 20 Saturday morning 6:30 in the alum suite, creakings upstairs, blue light at the window, arrived at the end of the arc. I wasn't expecting a Friday morning group but hadn't said there wouldn't be one, so came to my office with journal, cards and cup of tea expecting to sit by myself but ready in case. At the office door a saw a couple of them already there, somehow dropped the box of cards, said Oh shit aloud. Left the cards where they'd fallen to put down the tea. Todd went out to gather them up. We squatted together in the doorway turning my dirty cards together. - I'm writing this part because of a dim sense that in relation to Todd significance extends further than usually. So he asked if I were intending to read the cards for them and I said I could if they liked. We were sitting together on the carpet close enough to see the images on the little cards. Rani was first on my left so I began with her. Illusion, energy, lovers, directness. I had no sense at all of what that means because I've been so uninterested in her. Shd I be more interested   no Can I do anything for her   no Am I uninterested because she's set in her way   YES I said I'd think about it and passed on to Zach. Even now I don't want to think about it. Energy of fantasy will give her more speed and intimacy     Yes, she lacks fantasy. The leaden face I feel she has. Zach balance in heartbreak and cynical responsibility.   Balance those two?   no balance in them I exclaimed when I saw Qp come up. Mo observe to recover the truth of femininity. She was wanting to take it to her recently dead grandmother but I thought it's about her Barbie quality, the pretty girl slot - Is it?   The way she's using it   She needs to be careful of that   She was publicly seducing Todd   Shd I tackle her abt it   NO Because I'm jealous   no Find it in her work   Then Todd last. I was exclaiming to myself as each card was turned up. This was the most obviously correct reading. Strong meditation to defeat illusion about the unconscious. It occurred to me suddenly then to ask for a sentence for myself and as it came I marveled at its impressiveness in the context. Judgment, temperance, lovers, inspiration, all major arcana and so unambiguous I named them as they came. Afterward I took them through the pack and showed them the philosophy of the cards as I understand them: the balance figure above heads; the rainbow arc of hemisphere integration; the hands in Temperance pouring from one to the other; the Work; coming through; exclusion; delay/slow growth; shattering of the structure; the sun of liberation; early love. It was for Todd, who was interested and nodding, and who I'm feeling as wanting to read daily situations on the other side as significant constellations. Kat Harrison. I'd seen her in the cafeteria, tall thin-faced blond woman with pale smooth long hair. A few days in she came over and said we'd had a conversation last res about plants and would I like to talk again. I didn't remember her and was polite. Another morning at breakfast she came to the coffee counter and said she was sitting over there and would I like to join her. What came of that mostly was that she said she was giving a presentation next afternoon. I came in for its last half after Wild research and found her at the podium quietly authoritative and moment by moment fresh in her language, a fresh real mind. Her photos were beautiful, she spoke personally and professionally in the mix I know, and I was pleased pretty much every minute. We sat together at supper and talked about where she comes from - small town on Catalina Island - and damaging our kids. Afterwards I googled her and found her speaking on Youtube about the correct way to use salvia divinorum. Found who her famous ex was, her kids' names, Finn and Klea, her stature at conferences about hallucinogens. She came to Speaking bodies III and I was nervous at first, surprised to be. Next morning at breakfast sitting across from each other again talking about acid, which she says she takes once a year and her son makes. I said, I want you for us and she flushed enough so I noticed. I couldn't see any end to what I wanted to ask her about. 20 Spirit of the Red Horse silver and malachite earrings, the best green a stone could be, Navajo Group. [shop on the concourse in Chicago Airport] Professor Dr Isil Buluk of Bashkent University. 'Light cloud.' San Diego 21 I like being here today, Sunday quiet, stronger light, a bundle of jasmine, an hour with Louie, the Times, salmon and salad, catch-up episodes of Private and Grey's, the malachite earrings with the green sweater for the farmers market, and this morning before light, tea and Rocks and minerals, notes on stones, this aft a note from Dave saying "I love those photos of you, you were very vivacious in the early 1970s, maybe more so than in the early 1960s" - just that he noticed I looked good in my 30s, and who else has been interested in that fact. C25 at O'Hare late yesterday, in the end seat of a long row, reading Esquire. The woman who'd sat next to me was reading a paperback with Nadine Gordimer on the cover and a title in a language I didn't know. I said, You're reading a good book. She said to me after a while, Do you remember my name? I said long pause Usil, remembering it's i pronounced u. A pretty woman, quirked corners of her mouth, small bones, feminine, a sheer frilled skirt, black eyes, dyed red-blond hair. Married, professor, head of department, small summer house on the coast, son and daughter-in-law classical musicians planning their PhD recitals. I was outclassed, I knew, though not necessarily of less value, pushing to hear the story. - There an email from Lise still gnawing on Jaes having written me in distress last semester. I have stamped my foot. What is that really about. Jaes in her graduation speech thanked me for support during the semester. Lise's feminism workshop had was it 6 people and the last two Speaking bodies had 20-25, that? After the cabaret she needed to complain and I was humoring and explaining patiently. She said, You're my only ally on the faculty, I love Kat but I can't talk to her like this, it's completely selfish. So is she shadow projecting   no It's true that she shd be talking to Jaes   And if she isnt' it's more sign of not having established trust   Is this a downstream consequence of Susan   no With Susan I really was guilty of interfering   no Sentence?   honest, action, in war and crisis It was fair to try to keep influence   I didn't interfere enough   Because I knew I was jealous   Wd it have been better for Susan to do slash writing   The reason people didn't go to her feminism workshop is that they don't think she's nuanced   With Jaes is she spoiling the writing   She's spoiling its naturalness   23 I was telling Greg I liked him better than Desser. Then I was at the Cox's house thinking I was going out somewhere with him, talking to Marilyn (dimly Marilyn). Said maybe we could babysit and watch TV, he came in thickly bearded, fatter, quite deaf. I was trying to remind him who Marilyn was and he couldn't remember David, who'd been his friend. He was holding a bottle he said was whiskey, said he drank every day. [Opposite: diagram of housetruck roof systems] Space, stones and sky Consciousness, space, stones and sky Stone and sky: matter and consciousness Archetypes of light   the mineral kingdom archetype of stone bedrock rock-forming minerals streams and ice-sheets the way a mineral occurs in the field granular igneus rocks are normally dense mineralogy and its relationships with chemistry, physics and geology introduction to crystal geometry treatment of space groups is strictly abstract symmetry groups, symmetry operations, necessary for understanding crystallography 3-dimensional periodic arrays relationships among chemistry, structure and properties crystal structures, crystal chemistry, chemical bonding introduction to solids unusual properties of clay minerals crystal physics, diffraction structural crystallography and crystal chemistry krystallos ice, krystainein to freeze, krios frost crystal ball, lens properties, focus l hearth Minerals are the natural crystalline materials that form the Earth and make up most of its rocks. 1800s by correlating this structural knowledge with physical, chemical, electrical, thermal and mechanical properties forces that hold the crystalline matter together Almost all solids except glass and organic materials are crystalline. Even organic materials form crystals when isolated in a pure state. Usually rocks are cohesive aggregates of two or more minerals. Color in stone, color in sky Light in stone: archetypes of matter and consciousness Time, space and knowledge Light and color in the open air 3000 or more recognized minerals suffix ite fr Gk lithos classification compound minerals by radical (non-metal) present, for instance sulphates SO4 more than 100 chemical elements only 20 uncombined, stable compounds metal, nonmetal, and semimetal Mineral formation and rock formation are, in fact, one process. igneus rocks eg granite, quartz, are mostly silicates - combine with silica country rock - existing when magma intrudes abyssal formed at depth, batholith deep stone phaneritic - showing grain, aphanitic metamorphic - high pressure and temp w/o melting recrystallization limestone tomarble, sandstone to quartzite, shale to slate atoms and ions migrate foliation, slate, strong pressure in one direction and crystals with long growth habit solid-state reaction, atoms exchanged, forms new minerals contact metamorphism, destroys fossils sedimentary - boulders, cobbles, pebbles, granules, sand, silt, clay - sandstones, shales conglomerates mechanically or chemically deposited (solutions) clastic klastos broken, rock made of fragments matrix - smaller particles between larger grains, eg greywacke, sandstone with quartz, clay, feldspar, and metamorphic fragments Charles Sorrell 1973 Rocks and minerals Golden Press [End pages notes on InDesign process (paragraph styles used, image sizes, table of contents, type color, book commands), video cameras, retirement plan, tax expenses, food and health, osteoporosis, inflammation, essential tremour, bank totals, work list, calender, blood pressure]   volume 20 in america volume 19: 2009-2010 october-february work & days: a lifetime journal project