in america volume 21 part 2 - 2010 july-august

work & days: a lifetime journal project

29 July 2010 [Opposite page, notes from Andrew Harvey Hidden journey: At the center of everything I did was a great lie, a lie of fear, my fear of her, and my fear of my love for her. In my youth I had the strength and grief to choose the path of joy. I felt the whale feeling my terror and sending toward me these great warm healing waves of energy ... sending me through the sunlit water wave after wave of what I can only call love, a silent, strong, immense, impersonal love. Ask for everything. love and knowledge The whole world is white light. light entering head and body the kind of sincerity demanded intricate and exquisite interrelatedness of all events and kinds of consciousness the great vibrant humming curtain of silence Look at your hatred ... find the humiliation that nourishes it, the fear that continually feeds it, the self-hatred it masks. as if a quiet wave of light has broken out from her and foamed up over everything The darshan of the Mother is also birth. Each time you kneel to me with real love, the child in you grows a little. Each time you gaze into my gaze without fear, the child in you grows in joy. I am inside her vast body. that sea, and a wave of it, and all the other waves too pouring light into us ... different lights for different needs Your enemy the one who always kills your hope. The one who believes in nothing. You have no mercy ... you see your and others' failings but you do not forgive. She is completely crystalline, every outline clear, sharp, crisp ... soft, fiery tenderness has broken all over my being, a fire-water of love A love for [my students], ... I realized I had been repressing this love for years. The only way to keep her energy is by continual inward prayer ... makes the being flexible enough to take the power poured into it and to make the subtle adjustments necessary to keep it active. Everything at first is experimental. laws of concentration, aspiration, clarity the duty of the present moment ... the present moment is always overflowing with immeasurable riches ... your faith will measure it out to you; as you believe so will you receive. I am in her body, I said to myself. a clear, crystalline sea of soft fire looking at the sea from within it ... seeing myself breaking and glittering in a thousand waves before me. All morning this breaking and glittering had gone on in me. I watched the sea rearing and falling and listened to that great deep sound of creation and destruction the waves and the wind and the whole moonlit creation singing om ... a thousand thousand intermingled oms, loud, soft, high, low The child is a dolphin in the sea of light. All those you love awaken a little with you. each thing was made of the same substance, was moving and breathing and shining and emerging in and from the same vast, quiet, Body. All this is me. You looking at it are looking at it within me. These eyes you are seeing my face with are my eyes. You ae looking at yourself within me with your real eyes. I don't like the word divine. What I feel when he describes light given off is factuality. Calling it divine seems his desire for specialness, a kind of stupid greed to be superhuman. Move with dignity into your own splendor. It is better, when someone says "I love you" knowing all the doubt still within them. Then it means something, then love can grow. You are my sweet child, she said. In Telegu we have a song: "Love can melt the stone, can turn the mountain to water." This mind sees and does not think, knows and does not have opinions. Prajna Paramita supreme wisdom of emptiness Everything you think and do you must dedicate to the world in love. Is this relevant to the physics   A mysticism that's not miraculous   Reincarnation    no Configural similarity   'Oneness'   One can feel it as a mother   Harvey has gone lightless   This book is true   Misstep in relation to homosexuality   Did she stay true     no Can anyone stay there     no But the moments are true   My love for Tom was true    YES Could I be in love with the universe like that     'Light metaphysics'   Are these lectures going to be okay   Envisioning it as a mother, enlists our youngness    YES It isn't human but it's a way to unify our own structure   It wasn't actually she who was doing it     no It was the mother structure in him    no She's a kind of structure that can radiate?   By being previous to the whole   - Is it the first thing I've liked since I got here, Mountain View Cemetery tonight, driving the narrow lanes with a smell of hay, last light on the tops of a rank of narrow beeches (?) and waves of crows beating across from the west. Long, far northern wall of blue mountains, the city in its dish below and across. A few large monuments each with its mythic names. The open acres, here and there a dense old heavy juniper or yew, dry grass shaved close. A limber odd old couple walking fast, he with a white beard and knee-length shorts, she with a long flowered peasant skirt. Working on the lectures today by means of Andrew Harvey, which wasn't - I wasn't - what it was in 1995 when I was in love, and then some of the esoterica of electron physics. Worried about Rowen, who finalized the boat today but instead of focusing on it is running away into storm-chasing in Saskatchewan and a Society for Creative Anachronism camp. I'll wait till Louie's gone to talk about her. 30 Missing Tom, missing myself in times of hope with Tom - don't think there's anything new to say or do about that, and yet I'm hanging out with the mention of it. Is this 3 week sore throat turning into a cold finally. If so there's just enough time to get over the worst of it before Vermont. Anything I want to say about Louie. Mainly just her tight pretty small body moving in the room, her thick swinging ponytail. We're not tense. She sits with straight back at phone and computer conducting business. I work a bit, the rest of the time am idle. Now I won't see her for a month. The most successful private yoga studio in Canada someone told her. The detail she has to track, unending. - The truth is grief. I've sat watching My name is Joe in bits on Youtube, crying at the end. Am I so blank because I'm in subliminal grief    no Am I supposed to try again with Tom    no Does the story end just like that     no Is this addictive craving    no Is it memory    no I'm at loose ends     no   Will you lead me     come through Instruction?   I shut down love   And miss it so much   And see no end   And will just be hungry heart on and on   It's like a scream   Please lead me    the child was with Tom to learn strength And now I have nothing but strength    no I was stronger when I was balancing in love and fear     no I'm so vacant without that kind of love (crying)   anger, love woman, defeat and death Is it ever going to get deeper and realer again   I'm so less than I was    no 8 years of steady fading    no That love was defeated   And everything else has been trivial    no Louie doesn't hear me   I don't expect her to   I FAILED with Tom    YES It was my one chance and I failed (sobbing)    YES I didn't fight enough   And now I'm sentenced to be without love for the rest of my life   And it's so barren    yes I hate it (sobbing)     yes, exclusion, balance, crisis, happiness Instruction    no, description Will you point this    action I don't understand     Tom is processing betrayal and coming through Lifetime betrayal   You're saying we aren't together but we did well   And for that doing well I'm to be punished with loneliness unending   That was the price of Tom's redemption     no So it's just going to be like this on and on    no You mean worse     no   Please help me    yes, balance, excluded child, and strength, (Kc) Please explain    act, to teach, what's withdrawn, to graduate I feel like giving up on this conversation   Should I stop   I want to be in a different phase of my life and I'm in this one, frail, dry, nostalgic, competent, hopeless of many things. 31st Nose streaming. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, didn't do any work yesterday. 1st August Emilee has sent a beautiful cover design. 3rd Somewhere above farmland hazed over, bored with flying to Chicago. 18th time not counting London. There was a movie I watched, didn't listen to, because Jennifer Annison was in it. What is it about her. She's a good frame, she moves with perfect neatness in a tight black dress and heels. Speaks her lines with a lot of little hair flicks and head tosses. Compare her to Lauren Bacall young - it's another era of acting, more cognitively exact. Her little movements are thought movements, whereas Bacall though I watch her every second the way I do Annison, has lines float out of her mouth without being produced by a body. It was a movie based on cell phones, built around the device and I'm guessing GPS. [Bounty hunter] Rowen at Louie's last night, couple of hours before we had to get up at 6 to take a taxi. I sent him to bring up a box: his pin cushion from grade one, his quilt from Mike's mom, and the little Gund bear I bought when he was newborn. He stood leaning his head against mine, had an arm around me. I didn't know whether he was feeling it or being nice to me. Then I unfolded the Kurdish rug and showed him the embroidered people and animals. Made him a bed on top of Louie's. He showed me heraldry blazoning on his iPad. This morning murmuring together in the Yellow Cab back seat behind a Sihk driver listening to a religious service at low volume as we drove through 6:30 quiet. That was the best of the visit. He was a brown bony profile on my right, big pack in the trunk, red rug rolled and duct taped. We were murmuring about college - looked at course offerings last night. [The college] 4th The Cottage. If being in an eternal fac meeting were the condition for being alive wd I take the deal. There are leaves at the windows but I'm so dopey and droopy today just sitting is an endurance. They're talking about marketing. The room is dark. The [sound of the] fan darkens the room more. - Have I livened enough to tell two stories about the trip. It's 10:30, quiet. One is from Chicago, the tight rows of waiting area seats at C4. I'd already had an hour and a half there and more to go. It was a time between flights and the seats were empty enough so I could lie down in a two-seat space with my head on my shoulder bag and knees bent up, one arm behind me and the other hand on my belly. I closed my eyes and went into slow breathing to the point where I could feel the head pressure, and then faded out, or maybe not all the way out. The seats around me began to fill. A German group arrived and settled opposite me and in the seats beyond my head. I didn't open my eyes. Something about the loud, dark German voices, people I knew believed I couldn't understand them. I was there and not there, quite blissful. Then in 3D in the smaller plane, in the last half hour coming toward Burlington. It was falling dusk over layered clouds, some of which were lit pink only at their bases as if rooted in embers. The upper layers were faded grey-blues in many textures. A few large heaps, a near one very sharply defined and still bulging, that one throwing a long cone of blue shadow away from us. Other flatter layers some of which had areas of smudge like moving water shot in long exposure. There were places I could see down in and under to other layers at other depths, as if shelves of them. sometimes a small fine flat webby bit that was closer and so seemed to be moving quickly in the direction opposite to ours, like a spacecraft of an alien race whose substance is only partly visible to us. Those were ten sublime minutes in a trip where I hadn't seen much and was no longer hoping for anything. Email from Kat Harrison tonight, saying she's not coming this time. I thought, someone like that, whose bearing I respect - bearing and adventure. 4th I'm somewhere in a historical park sort of place and see something on the ground that I pick up. It's as if a mushy brain pulled out of a stone and I see there's a folded mass of hair on top of it, dark and then lighter at the tip of a long braid. I look at the stone and see it's an open half of a skull, not a modern skull, a skull that's transitional to human. It's a dream where I'm on a bus intending to go over there toward the northeast, more north than east, and the bus is tending east through tight streets. Waiting to see whether it will tend in the right direction later. Impression of red stone. [Written during fac meeting] What's Mac wearing this morning, dark red teeshirt, jeans, open plaid shirt, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, he's out with his herd, watching from the hills. There's a real stallion who is never ridden, he's interested in horse cognition and providing circumstances for it. He takes notes, photos, he tries things. He talks to people in horse cultures and watches them. Global horse culture. He buys horses from elsewhere and breeds them into the herd. He has DNA analysis for every individual. He's pushing to have the largest possible view of what he's doing. Horses and plants. Verging toward a global model of optimal embodiment. He's interested in globalizing in general. Specific perception, broad generalization, sideways invention, eager affectionate mind. Social efficiency, clear neutral rapid social cognition. Doesn't smile much, when he does it's sudden and startlingly white. Not ingratiating. Authoritative and light. How does he amuse himself, has a lot to think about. He's entirely optimized. He can do that because he has provided for himself, has money. He has money and a country base, he knows what he's for. There are things he needs, mainly conversation and touch, someone seeing his whole arc, something about writing. Why am I so turned off marketing discussion - because none of the marketing is or will ever be toward the kinds of students I'd like to have. All of it is toward students who will waste me. What's his work. He's consulting on low-tech invention, using solar, phone, wireless but also fuel, toilets, education, basic slight tribal innovation, birth control. He's interested in understanding wide effects of slight innovation. Female empowerment because of his grandmother. Restructuring of male responsibility. Cognitive regrounding. Expansion on the basis of concrete grounding. He brings home beautiful pots, rugs, knows the global history of pots, clay. Technical uses of earth that haven't been discovered. Earth and sun. Getting a correct continuity from the prehistoric to the post industrial. Quiet focus, confident thinking in any topic, always a context of action but the largest possible view. He likes to talk to local old women, squats easily, lively curious black eyes. I'm such an outlier, it's never going to be my institution, I've done what I can do well when I can, but overall my decisions wd change the structure so it wdn't work for the people who are here. When Margo was here did I feel less alien. Because I was intoxicated with being able to do personal work as part of academic work. Am I bored with that. I'm bored with the students I'm getting. I'm bored with the fac, withdrawn with the fac. Margo made me favored child and that helped. These long conversations seem not to ever end in anything, as if they are indirect exercising of denied anxieties - something like that. 5th I don't like this hive mind, the way it has needed to pick on Lucinda and Mark, the malicious buzzing and two-faced dealing. What else. Lise repeating her dogged story always in the same words, never modified by anything she's told. It's family mishagas, has to be. 6th Bridie uncomfortable Amber pregnant, a blank dark side Diedre beautiful, L side not answering Bibi 'tired' not able Kristyn 'unified life' harsh vs collapsed, dissoc and integr Karyn 'sacred,' 'divine,' enlightened masters Kate Good things today - intervening to have Amber after all, seeing Siobhan, working on matter and energy all morning, a calm brief talk with Lise about D's next semester, sleeping enough. Sheila Spremulli's grad presentation in which she gesture-danced the formation of the embryo's heart from blood cells through flow into structure, small bright and pleased, with her mammoth husband videoing. Rani saying I'm about writing good sentences; not having any fac meetings; walking in the green Chucks seemingly without cost because of the night hip exercises probably. 9 Shd I participate more   no Shd I make more effort to be included   no Shd I go to dinner with them   no I'm exhausted by them   Bridie - she wants him to be a scholar but he's not   S on the right track     Amber nature and writing, adolescent ecopsychology Will Karyn be better than I think   Will Kristyn come back and say that helped   Katie's quite superb   Will Bibi make it   Will Barbara [new president] make a difference   no She'll be all talk     Can we get her developing a PhD program   Shd I become a coordinator   Too much admin   no PhDs in those 3 areas   Wd this delay art too much   no 13 Particle model of the self. Contraction when sitting next to a stranger on the bus. Talking to Sobell at the breakfast table. Sheena and --- salsa dancing last night, forward, backward, shaking their shoulders. Neely's narrow white-skinned waist in the belly dance, Amber's exquisite person in the right cut of fitted dress walking toward the door. Katie on stage last night on a chair with her accordion on her lap saying, I can't cross my legs when I have an accordion on my lap so unless you're into that sort of thing, eyes here. And then playing what she composed when she had no one to talk to about Anna Karenina, Russian ache. The way her small pointed face flushes pink on her long neck. Her light girl body dancing last night in a fitted blue dress. Bibi strutting big, proud, loud and African. Bridie [detail deleted] held false and immobile in a thick fluid of grandiosity. Karyn voted most gullible in her senior year in high school, going on about divinely enlightened masters and what the universe wants for her, pale big eyes and a glossed little mouth, ditz blond all her life. A millionaire said, You don't have to work. Ayurvedic astrology says I'm the 4 of spades, which makes me her karma card, which means she has to give me something and it will never be enough. [She says.] The room full for the physics workshop, Gianfranco's movie behind me. Talking to Claudia about houses. Diedre in the clear, purple hair, goth jewelry, short skirts, a live sexy ready bold bright turned-on girl. Vancouver 14th Noticed in VT that when I thought of going home I was seeing my little room in SD with longing, forgot I was coming here. While I was gone I had Cantique de Jean Racine in my head. [Faure on Youtube] Came in last night half past midnight lifting the suitcase one step at a time. - Now it's evening on the porch. Green grapes in thin bunches, pink-ivory sky in the south. That familiar traffic surf constant. Saturday night mid August, here but when, heresay of past years, it's still just me. Drinking tea from the silver cup, cards in their little box next to me. Thinking of Amber and Katie, Amber's exquisite precision, Katie's diffident girly brilliance, the way she speaks one word at a time, idiosyncratic, lilting. Her swift thin hard hug goodbye, bare flat little ribs in my arms. I feel large and old with these women, slow, solid like a thick tree trunk, very plain. Friday at the last fac meeting Goldberg looking at me reproachfully across the room. I'd keep finding her wet eyes on me, what is that. Later on Ruth in my office showed me her list of students over the years who have switched out of TLA when they work with me. She'd got two notices that morning and Amber was one. What's the truth. I don't tell the students to leave TLA, but I show them an alternative, if they are good writers I want to work with their writing, I show them what it is like to have my company in it, and then they may realize they don't want to prepare to be social workers. I did intervene authoritatively when Ruth assigned Amber to Goldberg. Ruth had said don't tell students but I told Amber and saw a sharp sudden twist in the corner of her mouth. Was that because she can see through Goldberg's poems? I thought. If so it was legitimate to lie to Ruth, which I did. "Advising came up and I had to tell her she didn't have me. She wants to talk to you. I thought I should let you know." What I believe about TLA is that it is for mediocre students. It's valid community work at that level but as a study it is lowest common denominator. Other politics. The mediation with Jim didn't go Lise's way. I knew that if I mentioned Susan's slash poems and the fact that Lise had said she didn't get them, he would know what has been going on. She said "You think I'm not smart enough to work with the best students." I can't agree when she says that but I say it's about certain kinds of writing. She's good with students who need feminist discovery. The evening Margo came to the fac dorm. She was fatter and she sat being facetious in an empty way that had been unlike her. Ruth was with us so we couldn't say we miss her. Francis on the other hand had got comfortable with me and it seems with mbo. Why don't I become a concentration he said, since I am one in effect. He, Ralph and I could set up PhDs in our concentrations. Jim came to sit with me for the cabaret and we watched movies together. We'd be a bit candid. Was Lise jealous of the books   YES The tension with Ruth had dissolved too, I wd sit nattering with her. Any good reason for that? She has gotten used to me and has good reports from students. - Likely that. I felt she was on my side in C's complaint about me. Have I been wicked    YES Do you approve   I outlasted Francis's prejudice   I held my own with Lise's mishagas   I've been right about Zach   I will see Jaes through   I've established authority with Ruth   Is the disgust wicked     no Will you say wicked in what sense     foolhardy Risking getting fired     no Risking dislike     no Risking students     YES Have I harmed any     no Diedre   By rivalry with Lise   Have I restored trust   Shd I have consulted with Lise more    no Jaes asking me to work with her when she writes vol 2. Asked for a price. I looked at her flier and saw she's asking $250 for a shaman session, so that's what I said. She wants it to be less. What shd be my considerations. She can get editing at Scriveners by the word, $103 plus taxes for 20 pages at 250 words, 24-hr turn-around. That's shockingly little. For her process paper a professor offered her his friend rate, $60/hr and only took an hour and a half. What is it for advising - I take a day per packet. With some students the work is more or less therapy which by now must be at least $120/hr, probably $150. - It's soul support work and development work. 16 Towering days. So hot in the afternoon that I swelter sleeping on the couch. Last evening took the bike east on Cordova, ended on Wall St. Jam's house with all its windows open, blue paint weathered. Glimpses of freighters on the river, superb high summer evening. Yesterday I began fixing hyphens in [In America] . Began at the first volume, want to see what there is to bring forward from these years. Have 11 vol formatted, 7 more transcribed, vol 19 partly transcribed. - Bibi's story. Her father an oldish American anthropologist met her mother at a party in Johannesburg. She was beautiful and dancing on a table. Bibi was born and lived was it seven years in Botswana, Gabarone. There were older children from an earlier marriage. Her dad was working in rural development. (Her folder has AKA Jenness on it and there's a Jenness involved in African agriculture in Botswana and Lesotho.) They ran wild in the streets. When African boys see her dance they say Where did you learn to dance that way? She says, Same place you did, in the streets. When her mom and dad separated she and her younger brothers and sisters (was it more than one?) lived in the US with her mother. She was born in 1976, is now 34. Had a baby boy when she was 19, lost custody of him. Started college in 1996, BA in Islamic studies 2002. I asked her what adult entertainer meant on her application. She said forthrightly that she'd been a hooker for 6 years but she didn't get into drugs. She's married now. Has four and one year old boys. She has African energy and is charming in it, but lonely, I think. She'll declare herself briskly but doesn't expect to be felt as anything but a curiosity - was my sense. She works, she wants to prove herself. There's a half moon some west of south, clear bright cheese yellow. I'm on the porch amid electric light and see it under grape leaves that are hanging lit from above, a valence. Rustle in the vine, little raccoon face looking down. 17 Libera me Domine is what is singing in my head these days. Have gone through fixing to the end of F3. There's a lot of protest but so far it's not nothing. The book passages are good. Luke's stunningly clear letter in F3. A lot of days. 18 Have pushed through F6, at the end of every page wanting to know what happens next. 19 And into F8. 20 Photos from Mary's album. My clothes, seeing them again - my pink Tibetan shirt and the blue silk Chinese jacket. Wearing it sitting next to Jam, who's in her plaid shirt and sheepskin. My army shirt, short hair so dark and shiny, next to Peter Dyck at Mary's kitchen table. The turquoise and gold blouse from John Rowley - big hair - big smile - Mali glass beads - posing with Oma. The long red and white dress, Luke lying back in my lap. Oh! My green silk kimono shirt with such an eager pleased look and hair buscherisch. White Indian cotton shirt, grey tweed jacket, blue velvet corduroy long skirt, the silk scarf from Paris, Luke in jeans reading next to me on Oma's couch. Thick short hair. And places, handsome Luke at 20 in his child room next to the red and white door, my back room with green tongue and groove, turquoise chest, and the Devon pitcher still unbroken. Wicker chair. I'm wearing the blue shirt with a black sweater. Rowen in Mike's yellow room on Jackson, old iron stove, green cupboard, the TV he'd watch The golden girls on when he was five. Nellie next to me on Mary's couch. Here's Jam next to one of her Vietnamese boat refugees looking lean. Mary and Ed's living room with the Russian troika and wolves tapestry. Some London pictures. Did John Rowley take this one on the way to Morocco, it says 1974 on airplane above the sea. Here's one I wanted, me and Roy, he in his plastic raincoat, I in my cowboy hat and Montreal leather jacket. Luke at 2 or 3 on the floor of 52 Burghley with Pissy Cat, the black toy chest behind him. 3 photos of him with Ed and Mary at the table that I've taken because they show the flat - the orange cupboard with an avocado plant and something in the Devon pitcher, the west window, the mantelpiece, my bed with Rosalynd's African blanket on it. Luke at four in the grass, red and white pickup, old Mercury, granary and machine shop on the yard, gas tanks on stands. At the wheel of a tractor with Ed. The yard under a rainbow. Mary in 1968 looking beautiful in her wedding dress, she's only 42. Whole family on the long trip. The kids in their winter coats. I'm 12, taller than my mom, no winter coat, my red cotton windbreaker and a scarf around my head, I look eighteen. There's the old trailer. Photobooth photo in the pink gingham dress lifting my chin for a glam shot. Here's the one where I have Rowen's boneless long hand. That Persian print blouse with an expert interlined collar, did I make it or did Judie? At 5 in the organdy flower girl dress. Is this 1943? The fall after they married? Picket fence, cars on the yard. 22 A cold Sunday, grape leaves shaking in a west wind, grey sky. With David and Dorothy in the Royal Tandoori last night, telling stories. Dorothy's merry little face next to me in the booth, how can she be so pretty. Her spine is so crooked forward that her face is near her plate but there it is pink and winsome as an eight year old. The two of them play and I drop into playing with them as if their air is native to me, a light grace I like so much. Afterward she in her deep red chair and David in Russell's and I where I was the point of their triangle telling [college] stories. Mary on Friday a grey little bullet, tight grey pantsuit, hair cut too short, new thin-skinned blue under her eyes. I sat going through her albums looking for photos I want to scan and she beside me was naming people I wdn't linger to look at. She did what she does, complained that Ed had sent all of us so far away. It has been her constant old song she repeats with no variation; her hands fly up when she says away. I said she could be proud of how far we'd gone, that she has no idea how far I've gone. I was pressing, I said I've gone farther in philosophy than most of the men in the field. Then she clamped her arms across her chest. She didn't believe me but more than that I could see that she didn't want to believe me. I was disbelieving it myself as I saw her but I hung onto remembering what I'd known at other times. She didn't want to believe me for competitive reasons - she said she'd gone as far in her circumstances as we have in ours, which is untrue, people in her circumstances have gone much further than she has - and also for philosophical reasons. She said in an angry burst, But why did you have to get rid of God? I said I hadn't got rid of god but think of it differently. And then said let's go for a drive and took her to a place she knew on the river, where she and Ed used to pick blackberries. She was happy to be walking, had had trouble in her hips and knees, and liked sitting by the wide river where it sent spangles through the willows. What I should notice firmly is the pressure she still exerts to make me smaller than I am and to make me believe I am smaller than I am. She doesn't wish me well. She cannot wish me well. Is her disbelief what keeps me from showing that I know? It says yes. Was what I said true? YES. Is it the fundamental reason? Yes. Is there anything I can do   balance mourning and improvement Has her will been holding me back     no Something in me that doesn't believe it if she doesn't   Wd that change if she died     YES My freedoms have shown her her timidity   Oma did wish me well     YES Is that something structural    (twirls) Can it change   Should I imagine convincing her   Is that all     YES Do you want to say anything else     overview to come through illusions about intimacy (lovers) You mean the way I've used Tom to fight her battles with Ed   That she didn't fight herself   Was that a waste of time     no But I'm caught up   And at liberty   More you want to say     no - Caffé Calabria Sunday early aft. Am I restored enough to risk the mirror - white shirt, chalcedony earrings, grey hair off the forehead, mouth held in, looking majorly mature. Alright, mature but not flabby. Kind of tough. This is my tough side. Moved tables so I'm head on. Not much better. Hair's nice, tail down to the first button. If I lengthen my neck I can look distinguished but that's not love woman. Small eyes. This morning transcribed the letter I wrote from Paris when my folks had found out about Rash. It's such a reasoned document. A lot of good will but so firm. It didn't reach them. Mary was shocked all over again when I went camping with Greg - how odd. I addressed a page and a half to Ed. He didn't reply, did she even dare pass it on to him. Alright, Calabria thoughts. Coffee so good. Anything I want to imagine? No pressure at all. Beginning to think about a light workshop - light, vision and imagining. What is light in wave structure physics. How does a body see. But what am I holding off in the meantime. The Ant Bear books. I'm holding off in dread of the many uncertain decisions. The Mind & Land book. Two weeks before packets. It took a week to get unwrinkled from the res. - There are some nice-looking people in this neighbourhood, in Strathcona there seem now to be crowds of slobs, fat women with tattoos and ugly babies. Her hair when she's older is pure white. She wears it the way she did when she was young, straight down. She's an inch under 6', has long strong hands. What does she do. Her name could be Mac too. Is she an architect? Does she have kids? I don't think so. Is she a philosopher? A painter? Those jobs all seem too locked in, filmmaker? Documentaries. Bold and exquisite. Who is she friends with? The older man forever, but she has brief lovers. She travels. Teaches but never for more than a semester. Does he die, yes but not till she's 60 and he's 80. After that there's a younger man who's been around. What do they read. Always science, always novels. Find things for each other. What does he do, independent scholar with a lot of money. Writes. Does he have lovers. No. He's patient and amused and completely confident in her. He keeps a house with a garden. She has flats here and there. 24 A lot of photo scanning yesterday. Posted workshops. Boxes of papers to a recycling warehouse to be shredded. Many episodes of Mad men until 1 this morning. I'm worried about Rowen. He is starting college with 5 courses in 10 days and hasn't done anything to make his boat liveable, instead is spending his weekends in fantasy with the Society for Creative Anachronism. He doesn't realize it's going to be hard, he doesn't realize he's evading. Is Rowen going to screw up   Is he going to flunk out   Will he give up living on the boat   It will be too hard and lonely   Will he lose his moorage   Will he get his student loan   Will he waste it   Is it my fault     no Is the money bad for him    no He's lost interest in photography   He's lost interest in the motor bike   He's just an inferior human     no Is he scamming about the boat    no Will you comment    search, for early love, crisis, fantasy Is what he needs   Learned evasion   He needs therapy   He can't face the stress of dealing with things   I'm like that   25 Watching Mad men, all of season 2 and then back into the season 1 episodes I didn't see at Jan's. It is brilliant. It's a brilliant concept to look at the years of the turn. Marilyn's death, Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy's election. The outrageous entitlement of the men. Constant buttoning and unbuttoning of jackets. Everyone smoking and drinking all day long, while they're pregnant too. The New York glamour I studied in magazines when I was on that beaten-earth farmyard 300 miles from a city. Women's unexercised bodies encased in bras and girdles designed by men to make them look like rockets or trophies. Their compliance and yearning. The men's total dependency. Dialogue always sharp though occasionally anachronistic. Beautiful mise-en-scene, never a shot too long. The continuous interest of background detail - what's in their houses, what are they wearing, what is a doctor's office like in the 60s, a railway car. They don't spare expense with extras, it's a huge undertaking. The ad campaigns, watching them come up with something. Don Draper's impassive Cary Grant masculinity, not my type but he's well written as a man who fascinates by being remote. The writing is good on the subtleties of gender politics. 2007-, has had 3 seasons. Matthew Weiner, was a Sopranos writer. Shoots Draper from behind, scenes shot low to show ceilings, Hitchcock for visual style. "As of the third season, seven of the nine writers for the show are women." "Women from their early 20s to their 50s." Season 1 March 1960, 2, Feb-Oct 1962. 3, spring-December 1963. 4, 1964. Jack Daniels a sponsor. Frank O'Hara poem. Joanie is Christina Hendricks. 26 Driving with David and Dorothy on a day when the air was clean enough to see Baker white and godly always larger as we neared Abbotsford. Hay fields, hay in windrows, scent of hay. We jeered at monster mansions, praised old farmhouses, Dorothy always noticing. On the way home lost north of the highway wandering west, south, north, through farmland none of us had seen, the north rim of mountains solid blue and craggy alongside us as we streaked up two-lane blacktop in the little truck, David's warm shoulder and his decisive manly driving. The ice cream parlour in Abbotsford, Dairyland Ice Cream, where bent-over Dorothy on a red leather stool between us ate maple-walnut from a paper cup, remembering stopping in Abbotsford for ice cream when she was a girl 90 years ago. David drawing out the ice cream vendor with stories and questions, admiring the copper kettle and marble slab. Mary on a bad day truculent and hideous, complaining in all her rote old ways, explosive hideous gestures, grotesque false tones, bizarre grimaces. She's furious at the life she's had, she's furious to find herself old. She's outraged to see herself in the old persons around her, some of whom she doesn't realize are quite a lot sharper than she is. She's going down gracelessly because she didn't fight for herself when she still had energy. I was hating her for how gracelessly she's doing what she now has to do, it sickens me to see it. I was feeling, Die already. Meantime she doesn't like her wonderful south window that looks up a neighbourhood street toward many trees and Baker on a clear day. I kept trying to get a blessing out of her, some out of control and ugly too. She said I had respected Ed for his strength. I exclaimed that I did not respect Ed or find him strong, that I found him weak, that when I was seventeen I wrote in my journal that I was stronger than he was. I wanted her to say Yes you were and are wonderfully strong. You shouldn't have had to be so strong but I'm proud you looked after yourself. She did not say that, or anything like it. She wanted to lament and regret about herself. Something about the way I brag these days. I didn't do that when I was younger, it's a falling-off. When I need to hear something from someone else and they don't say it I say it myself, to hear it said. Should I stop doing it   She's lamenting and regretting for the same reason    YES But I shdn't indulge her   Is she going to live to be 90    no Has she got one year left    2 or 3 She's angry at her life   Rightly so   She couldn't be stronger than she was   Her horribleness is a measure of how horrible that is   She didn't have a life suited to who she is   It's not our fault   But we benefited from it   It's too late for me to get anything from her     YES All that's left is disinterested generosity    YES If I don't do that I'll be as bad as she is    no - I put the bike on the 20 bus to go get a T2126 from the tax office. Got off where it turns south and rode up the alley between Hastings and W.Georgia. Where I crossed Burrard a man was playing the violin part of a piece he had on a cassette player. I passed him into the alley beyond him. Man with a moustache, forty-something, a cap. It was music I knew, though I didn't remember the name. When I'd got halfway down the alley I turned and went back because the music had made me cry. It was the same sort of crying as when I heard music in London churches, sudden and sharp. I leaned the bike against a wall and sat on it to listen to him more but he was finishing the piece. As I came to put money into his basket he was squatting putting his violin into a case with another violin. He snatched the basket back away from me, You're too late, I won't take anything from you, this city has no soul. I could see his feelings were hurt and kept steady, stayed with him, said You made me cry, put two two-dollar coins onto the ground in front of his case. This city has no soul, he said again. He was confused because there'd been a sudden turn. I said, I do, put my hand on my chest, looked at him. Now he looked back. After I'd pushed off into the alley he called thank you after me. Coming into the tax office the name of the piece came back to me, it was the Albinoni adagio. I was still feeling the grief, was it his, I wondered. 27 This beautiful dark olive-green computer bag from Banana Republic, just wide enough for the MacBook Pro. 28 David gently on my case about my mom. He looks after Dorothy and is in that mode and feels sorry for Mary alone in her old peoples' palace. He liked her. Should I feel sorry for her     no Should I come back and look after her    no Do I owe her to look after her     no Is she into dementia     no Is she going into dementia   Will you say why I don't owe her     YES integrate, anger fighting against improvement I've done that?   I don't need to do it more     YES Triage     YES Because she's a sinking ship    YES Is it cynical to say David's doing it because of the money   He's doing it because he feels for her     no Because he has nothing better to do   That's true     YES AND it helps him control the money   It's correct to abandon the old     YES But could she be managed so she didn't go into dementia    no   David actually does love me   He loves a lot of people    no   Anything you want to say about Rowen today   balance slow growth with decision to fight Coach him   To be grounded in practical skill   He's growing slowly but he needs to push   Anything else   Do you want to talk to him     no - Best moment was sitting on his roof together with the late summer bay around us, listening to Somewhere over the rainbow on his iPad (Israel Kamakawiwo'ole), Rowen singing along quietly. There were two visits. A buoyant elderly Englishman steering a small water-bus came alongside so he could show Rowen a photo of the Oracle taken on a beach 15 years ago. And then another man who lives in a condo across the bay and is fitting out a large yacht several boats over rowed up and came in. (I grilled him for good tips, an electrician who works for $20 an hour, a neighbour who watches the bay.) I spent 2x 138 = $276 for the day trip - $120 return for bus = $160 for the flights. What made you fall in love with it? It was so weird. He was on a footpath in Banfield Park and saw a small For sale sign in its window a long way across the water. Stood around for ten minutes trying to get a photo that wd enlarge the phone # enough to read. Went home and googled it. The Craigslist ad came up. Young pilot on the way back said to the passengers climbing the stairs, You're welcome to sit in the copilot seat. I said, You're kidding and unbuckled my seatbelt. Pushed through to the front, put headphones on. The whole spread of islands and mountains. We happened to fly past the Saturna bay where my cabin used to be. Could see the neat green corduroy of grape rows where orchard and pasture were. Farmhouse still there under the blond escarpment. [Saturna 1984] [Opposite page: shopping list and to-do list for Rowen's boat] 29 I don't know Rowen. When he's amused or affectionate I don't understand his feeling. I go along next to his slight, sweet spirit. We say things. I often control what we say and do because he doesn't put anything forward. I came into his boat wanting to take charge of it because he hasn't. Was puzzled that he hadn't leapt into fixing it, that he's held off playing around with medieval Dutch heraldry. Come on Rowen, dig in, this is yours. He's oddly gormless about it, I was boiling with thoughts about what he'll need and how to get it, and he was daydreaming about this and that. Having me next to him in heater and hardware stores was turning up his engagement some, as if he needed help to focus. Do you understand that   He can focus till 4 in the morning on medieval heraldry but has no grip on his boat   Is it because it's real   His fantasy has a stronger grip   Is it pathological   Ruined real action     YES Spoiled in childhood   By not being given tasks   Can he fix it   Is it brain damage   no Also spoiled by being thwarted   Did I do it   no Michael   Does Michael have the same thing   And I do   YES We're stressed by real action   That should be my next study   People who get into fantasy action   Which the doctorate also was   When Row and I were walking on the esplanade above the seaplane dock a man came toward us who was my age maybe and stunningly right. Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, confident, alive in his eyes, completely physical. We looked into each other's faces as we passed. I was thinking, all women look at this man the way I am looking at him, and so we should - something like that. Hello there, stud daddy. Sunday, cold overcast. I'm picking Louie up from the South Terminal this aft. Clean house first. 30 Shopping for Rowen - whole household (see list) - Value Village, the MCC thrift store, Salvation Army in Kerrisdale, back to Value Village, little supermarket for the cleaning supplies. Have come home satisfied. 31 Tuesday late afternoon - dark and wet - I hauled 2 heavy suitcases and my heavy overnight and my new computer bag and a sleeping bag in a large plastic sack and a pillow in a Mac bag - six things - down the stairs and into the taxi and into the station and along the line into customs and through to a cheerful baggage check man so that now I'm in car 5 seat 9 and can stop. This morning Pilgrim's Market as soon as it was open, bought a 3-piece luggage set - cold water pouring on my head - found the spot behind Alexander Street where there's shelter under the viaduct - got Rowen's stuff out of the trunk and packed most of it in the largest green suitcase, pillow on top, perfect fit. Duvet in the box the video dubs had been stored in, with little things in the corners. Video dubs into tied plastic bags in pairs. Greyhound Express, very stupid counterman but shipped both packages for surprisingly little. Then mail to Luke - wave structure book and What to look for in autumn, some photos - Roy and me at the start. Paid $240 onto TD Green card since I was parked next to the bank. Then dropped film tins where it said Cineworks on Alexander. Then videos to JoAnn's house. Then all that was left was getting rid of video garbage - I'll look by the garden - there are two bins on the corner, garden videos to garden garbage. Then Union Market for salmon sandwiches for the journey. Then back to Louie's. She is around until 2, has lit the fire, it's fall. Laundry - wash my sheets and wet jacket and pants, remake bed. Tricky packing - stuff that can be checked through, stuff I'll need on the train, stuff I don't want to trust in checked baggage. Wash my wet hair, dry it. By now it's getting close to 4. It's pouring. Drag the bags down in 3 trips. Google a Yellow Cab number. Long wait for a dispatcher. Will the taxi be late? Surly driver scolds me for having a lot of stuff, scolds me for using a Visa card, blames me for losing a fare. Dragging bags through the station foyer in several trips. Figure out how to haul it along. Etc. So now I can stop but my legs are damp.   part 3 in america volume 21: 2010 june - december work & days: a lifetime journal project