in america volume 21 part 3 - 2010 september-october

work & days: a lifetime journal project

1st Sept King St Station Seattle. When was the last time I did this - what's different - I have enough money to stay in a hotel instead of taking the grim 5:30 bus. Fine old room, white duvet, big window throwing leaf shadows, light on when I opened the door, hot deep bath, good pillows, moss green velvet carpets in the corridor, light-spirited Asian boy on the desk last night, handsome big black man whistling for a taxi this morning. Wordless soft atmosphere. [Executive Hotel Pacfic] I'm nostalgic for being 14 or 16 or 18 and interesting to everyone, interested in everyone. A bit dejected expecting a journey where no one talks to me. There was one day in the last two months when I liked to see myself in the mirror. It was the day after I took David and Dorothy to dinner - had on the black shirt. My face looked longer and lighter. Was it because I'd laughed with David and been a bit adored? That one - I want to be that one, not this squared-off grim old head. - For Row: don't let batteries leak - acid will eat through concrete - don't use propane, it pools at low level - used marine hardware in Port Townsend. 2nd California. Ridge of velvet hills with patches of oak. Dry grass by the roadbed, sun. Spanish in the lounge car. Wayside bushes with smaller harder leaves that glitter. The night laid flat on the lounge car floor softened after a while. Woke in Sacramento where the sky was pink and there were palm trees. Tall dry weeds standing intricate in ranks. Fennel with flat yellow bloom at its tips thick along the tracks. Perky old thing at the breakfast table, smudged blue eye shadow, big red-rimmed glasses, tanned parchment skin, said, I'm not happy till I see the bare hills with live oaks. Oh oaks. Eucalyptus grove. - Is this ache for the liveliness I used to feel like the dumb blank ache of waiting for her to come for me? Santa Barbara Bay with a fog bank some way off, blue in sun an hour above the horizon. Thin weeds perpendicular to shadows three times their length. The amorphous task of finding how to live now. The eighty year old woman who was in advertising in the 50s said, And you're an artist. I said What made you think so. She said, Well, everything. She was lazy in conversation, I had no way to know what she meant. It's the time of evening when whites begin to glow. Three egrets in a tree, I think egrets. A man in a white teeshirt standing by a marsh. Sink anchor into an art. - A superb girl - I saw her striding through Union Station and she arrived later in the seat across the aisle - tanned all over, short yellow string-strap dress in thin cotton, flat-heeled ankle boots. She was laughing with the high school boy in the window seat, calling up songs on his computer, singing along, nattering about college water polo coaches and practice. Had long athlete's hands with interesting crooks in their poses, shining knees, a smooth envelope of muscle. Talk full of quick play, a delighted quiet laugh, stood up in the aisle to demonstrate the stanky-leg dance. Told him half Irish, half Sioux. A well-raised competent girl, a charming physical girl not trying hard at all. - This between LA and Irvine. San Diego Friday 3rd I wrote her down because I wanted to go on seeing her. Was there anyone else on the train I wanted to see. A throwback hippie family, small tight-bodied quite young man with Jesus hair. He was wearing a white shirt open to the 3rd button and Salvation Army dress pants. She was a broad-faced blond in hippie layers, draggling skirts, bandana, scarf tied around her hips. There were two tousle-haired kids, very small, with unwashed faces, barefoot. The littlest girl lay tugging on her mother's empty breast in the lounge car. In the dining car he made a fuss about his eggs being cold. "Do you have a complaints form?" They'd brought in their own coffee press full of some green liquid and own large jar of honey. Last sight of them staggering down the ramp in Union Station, the two kids in a carrier, one on his back, one on his chest. A lot of miscellaneous bundles dangling from a peeled stick between them, he carrying the front end, she the back. Making a statement I supposed. He was bent double with the weight. An eighty-seven year old man in a seat next to me in the station who had a good lower lip and a quick answer. Bulky older black woman redcap who swished her cart around corners with strong-minded verve. - My house - my house - big sigh. It seems I don't like to be away from it. When I came in last night after 1, it looked bare and cold. Need some new plants. - There jumped up and moved the phone plug, orange-oiled the floor. It's ten Saturday morning, Labor Day weekend. Needed to make my house loveable, and now have been at my desk seeing the sky fade over the ocean, window open, only one lamp so the room can see what's outside it. Rabbitsfoot fern in a black pot for the desk, pink cyclamen, a scented one, under the mandala. Couple more plants for the winter. I love how clean it is, I love that the phone cord isn't messing up the inside edge of the floor. That bathroom corner is very finished now. 6 Shopping and cleaning, doting on my house. Scented orchid with full stalks of little pink flowers leaning. Dithering. There's a run of 24 weeks before I have to go anywhere. It will be winter. The sun already is further into the room at 5. How about if I paste images on the south wall. Make something in DR. Read poets, only best. - Just now - just this moment: I wanted to say hi, because I've been reading your journal. Deep and authentic, dark and repetitive, generous and beautiful. I'm at a milestone, January 1974, when I was born. The Wales poem motivated me to send a link to my friends on Facebook, and so it's also a good time to say hi. "I want to flash through your flashing leaves" is how I felt the other day watching a windy Kingston sunset. I came across your site when I was looking at [the college's] site (I have an interest in empowered learning). Thanks for sharing this life. Ben - The other home story - on Friday morning when I looked over the back stairs rail there were some homeless person's bundles piled, and bits of things left on the table, a rug between the trees in pots. When I came through after dark a small man doing something on the opposite stairs. I asked if he was living there - it was too dark to see his face - he said no - I said I was worried about my bike, needed to be able to park it where it won't be stolen. Next morning, Saturday, with the business buildings empty, I came through on the way to the jeep and saw him better, a small man, very small and thin with meth sores on his face. I said good morning, he mumbled, didn't look at me. In the afternoon he was raging, a woman came by and cursed at him. He was on the carpet under my window all day, talking to himself, weaving his hands and head. I saw him lying in his sleeping bag. Sunday morning I heard him smashing glass, banging a metal sheet on the ground. Called 911. "This isn't an emergency. I'm not sure it's even a crime." She dispatched an officer. I heard him asking for name, social insurance number. "You can't live here. You should go back to your brother in Florida." When the officer was gone he picked up some of his stuff but then he smashed glass again. Parking after the farmers' market I saw two policemen talking to a street man on the edge of the park, went across to see whether they'd come deal with him. They called the original officer instead, who showed up downstairs to talk to me. He knows the man, he says. Meth addiction but there's more, some kind of mental health problem and he's HIV positive. "He's going down fast." The officer was good looking, a silver brushcut, and he was speaking with something like love. Frank Caropreso. I said the man was angry. He said, Do you know what he's angry about? People keep stealing his CD player. He said it's the third one he's bought. I said he needs to hide it better." The police can't move him on until they have a letter of authority from the owner, he said. I emailed Nora. She wrote that she was phoning the cops. This morning his bed was gone and so was he but a lot of his bits were still piled or spread. Someone had swept up the glass. There was shit against the wall. I cleaned up the back corridor, assembled all his bits under the stairs. A pillow without a case, a large velvet cushion, a waffle iron, a packet of sugar, his faded carpet, plastic boxes of little things, a hat, a basin. On the table he'd left a centerpiece of two black aeonium rosettes [from the Barrio Star garden] set up like flowers, a power steering container, a cup, a candle in glass. If he didn't come back for his bits within a couple of days I was going to dump them but this aft I see someone has already done that. The reason I am telling this long story is, I want and don't want to say, remorse. Not that I think I shouldn't have acted to get him gone, but that his efforts to furnish a home, which were like mine three stories above him, had to fail. The sight of his pale mean little face covered with sores. He's sinking into death cast out and bewildered. [Opposite page notes on Laura Marks] So fashionable and wrong   7 Last dream I'm in a neighbourhood where I've been passing back and forth looking at the markets and this time I'm saying to myself that I'm beginning to see more. Then the road bends and around the corner is a bank with bushes of white flowers - an unusual kind, thick low bushes but covered with white hanging trumpets like datura. A child sitting under one at the top of the slope. A more tree-like one under which the grass is thick with fallen white. Thinking now that when people are more tuned into how dreaming happens they will be interested in a new thing about them, how the dream creates itself from instant to instant, the qualities of brain shown by that, artistic qualities of dreamers. - Alastair Macaulay's brutal wonderful account of a ballerina's decline - Times June 29 C5 - I clipped it and am rereading it now. To find such a combination of sweep and sweetness was startling. She had fearlessness, wit, delicacy, expansiveness and an irrepressible love of dancing. My memory is that by 1992, her dancing had become scaled down, polite and musically safe. Since then her career has been a long, slow fade. My life was changed by the 56-year-old Margot Fonteyn, but there were people who could not bear to see her dancing anymore, just because it had once meant so much to them. I cannot see that since 1992 she has been a good role model for the young. Often her mane of hair has been a mere schtick. Her solo dancing in the Stravinsky ballets was wretched, flicking lightly at steps that require a rigor she lost long ago. - What I feel in it is his bravery in forecasting his own decline as a writer, I thank him for the precision he cares to have in his chosen work of seeing and naming even that. - The dejection Kistler would have to feel, reading that "the light still falls beautifully on the planes of her face" and "her sweetness of manner made its old impression" but "she never danced with the same attack again." Only the best one has done matters and all the doing since then has been deluded waste. It's the harsh fact of a life in art. - Scott's garden. Orange monarchs flapping on the raised terrace, silverlace vine blooming thick, spread up into the peppertree and the eugenia hedge. He had left the gate open so passers can see a path curved through fullness. Many things twice their size, the ceanothus, the toyon. Pineapple sage up against the wall. Some of the wildflowers substantial, I mean tall, established. The African sumac recovered, radiant, the palo verde not, though it's blooming. Baja oak snapdragon spread. 8 I keep avoiding Ant Bear. There's a stop in my head about it. I had time in Vancouver and do now, and when I think of it I turn away. Is it something not right about the project or is it the bad stop on action that ruins my time. Will you tell me about the bad stop     balance losses and illusions about action Balance in   Looses, defeats of action?     no This is deep   Does it go into infancy     no A lot of women have it   Do men   Should it be called an inhibition     no Is it fear of failure     no Lack of permission     no A faulty signal   The sense of stop can usually be trusted     YES But in this case it's false   Is it body protecting against stress     no A trained fault   My dad did it     no School     no Did somebody   My mom     YES So it's early childhood   I had impulses to action and she clipped them   A particular kind of action     YES So the stop is her   Can you say what kind of action     (temp)(2s)(5w)(hiero) Is that a list     no A stop on aggression   Against authorities   Action is aggression against authorities   Ant Bear is aggression against the status quo   Is there more I need to know     losses and partial losses of love and truth Loss of aggression is that   Is there something I can do in the instant     YES Decide on action and understand the stop     no, integrate the unconscious mother when you make When I feel the stop, evoke her   Make her support action   Did I evade this structure when I was a teenager     no But I was getting a lot of support from the community   Is this about competition for the father     YES She had to try to ruin me   Is there more about this     YES process to come through withdrawal into balance Is it in general about competition     no In general about stopping energy   Is there ONE THING I need to do when I feel the stop     YES improve action readiness in relation to (the devil) Will you give me another way to say devil     (temperance) Angel   Bad angel   Be ready to meet the stop as a large power   Visualize it as a force   Do you want to give me a picture of it     YES (moon) A gate     YES A narrow place   The stop is a pinch-point     YES Anything else     no Prepare by visualizing   On the other side many kinds of creation and a full life     YES Visualize what's on the other side   This was good     YES   Triage students   Don't waste time on those who can't be helped   Write briefer     no Bridie, Karyn, Kristyn   9 Yay it's you wrote Emilee, just what I feel when it's her. Tuesday morning, greyed over as these mornings are. Hours yesterday considering Em's design. At night working with Amber's packet, jumping boldly over what she sent to what she is at her stretch, which she didn't get to at all in her pregnancy journal. Should she keep writing journal   But make it closer to her edge   What do I want this morning. Something personal first. 10 Rowen on the phone today, "There's nothing I'd rather do now than study." English and anthropology on M and W, phil and logic on Tu and Thu. 11 I've worked since 5:30 this morning - it's going on 8 at night - biked, done yoga, napped - it's Saturday, haven't spoken to anyone except the breakfast café - now I'm hungry-hearted needing something sweet - love, or else a movie - and so go format F16 1-5 until my thumb aches. 12 Two nights ago was it I dreamed I was at Peter Epp's log house, the original one, looking at the way three or four kinds of wood? or only different pieces of timber? were nailed together to make the upper end of a pillar. Then I saw they, the owners, were burning the field and wd burn the house. This morning I dreamed I was living in our old east place house, alone, grown up. It was beside a highway. I didn't like living there. Roy Kiyooka's cabin was nearby further back on the land. He wasn't using it, I asked if I could. Someone with him, a quite young man, asked if I stayed up late. I said I would if I lived there, meaning I would be happy and working. Daphne, looking young, was not wanting it to happen, she had papers stored there. I said I only needed two rooms. She also was remembering they'd had plans for it. There was a path through tall dead grass, then some sheds. Someone showing me where things were, a pottery area. Large new kiln. I was understanding I could use it. Some of Roy's work, a life-size kneeling woman painted in areas of dark oxide. A woman lying on her side, was it with moss and water dripping. I had been coming along the slope looking at bushes thinking I would shape them. Sunday morning. Wanting it to be true, wanting to move from the plain bare awkward uprooted childhood house into a skilled established funded country-rooted art. - And then Rowen phones. He's screwing up. His oars were stolen because he didn't get around to buying a locking system while he had his head in his stupid Society for Creative Anachronism expeditions. He was on the phone asking for textbook money, hadn't checked whether his parcels had come. I was shocked, jumped on him, he's gone off offended. And I'm left with shock at heart, having to calm myself down. I shouldn't say anything when he screws up, I shd be more backed off, I shd scratch up all the money and give it to him and watch him waste it. That and his phone has no money on it, he was calling on a crashing incomprehensible skype connection. That and his Woodenhead stepmom is encouraging him in failing. Shd I back off     no Fight with him   I didn't raise him so I need to raise him now   Are you sure   It's not nice for him that I think he's incompetent     no Does he have to be incompetent     no His family didn't teach him   Do you mean because it's true   Anything else you want to say     no Should I apologize     no Does he believe I'm right   Is Lise trying to sabotage him     no Does she like that he's going to college   The money is bad for him     no I shd have kept it for myself     no It's more welfare     no Will you give me a sentence     the Work, Rowen child, Ellie child, learning responsibility 14 A steep slope of cropped grass, I can't go straight up, take it at an angle, come over the rise, a drop into miles more of bare open land. There had been in all the bare open land one old woman and maybe an old man playing golf. Peter Constantine et al 2007 The Greek poets Norton Poem is a Greek word. Pastoral idiom Theocritus in Alexandria, reshaping shepherds' songs of his boyhood in Sicily Callimachus of Alexandria d.240 BCE, Cavafy 1890s Courtier poets of English Renaissance Seferis, Elytis, Sikelianos, Ritsos The Greek language remained through the years of Roman power the language of learning ... Aramaic-flavored Greek prose of the New Testament Byzantium, where in 330 CE Constantine established Constantinople as the capital of the eastern Roman empire and where Greek remained the language of literature and learning for another thousand years Ottoman occupation to Greek independence 1821 Cavafy had the whole history of the Greek language and culture in his head and of the empires that washed across the Mediterranean, and made of it a poetry at once tragic, ironic, sensual, and humane. Edmund Keeley Cavafy's Alexandria Seferis A poet's journal Classical era of about a thousand years, second half of 8th c to Strabo, 2nd c CE, vibrant mythical tradition - When there's nothing else I want to do have been formatting the later volumes of [In America] because I want an overview of the 8 years here. Format it, then read it and write the volume intros with excerpts. 32 pages to transcribe of vol 19 2010 Feb-June Have formatted all but vol 13 and 14 2-6 Vol 20 is this one, 2010 June-[December], halfway through Then vols 12-19 index pages/excerpts - 8 vols 16 [2-page to-do spread] Ant Bear got its first junk mail today. Have pieced together some author notes and mailed them to Jeanne for comment, with proposal for mbo letters collection. Set up the to-do list. 18 Yesterday and today finishing formatting F12, F12-1 screwed up in Pagemill so I had to use GoLive on the MacBook. Hours tonight fixing and refixing one page because it would reformat to its own taste as soon as I moved it. Reading through F12 marveling at how crazy I am in attachement even when it's going well, I don't have latitude. I'm in cautious trust for a day and then something happens and I fly into panic, it's remarkable to watch. Old chrome chair with buttoned rose seat and back. [chrome rust-removing tips from Google] 20 What do I like about the chair - what did I like about it when I saw it on the street - it's a lady chair - it's genteel deco - chrome says one thing and rose brocade says another - the firmness of its padding after what must be many years - its chrome a bit rusty, the brocade - is it that? - faded, a bit rubbed-off looking. It's right with the machines but makes the wooden drawers look cheap. - Breakfast at the Firehouse in PB with Tom - liked showing him my chair - first instant relieved, he's not attractive to me - don't hanker to touch him - I'm cured - but then afterward I do go spend the whole day reading Game change and as soon as I'm out of his sight am at the yogourt place stacking up a tub full of sugar and fat - John Heilemann and Mark Halprin 2010 Harper Collins "Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Progress Data has been applied for" 21 Louie's loan paid back out of my line of credit into her account in one second online. 23 CBC National images of a storm in Newfoundland, thick brown streams rampaging, "an old man swept out to sea" Martin writes. I have been drivenly working through the [In America] volumes since 2007. Couldn't stop for the garden work this week. Ivory sunrise on the St Paul's façade this morning. Since I've been back the mornings have been closed, and now this one is opening as a winter morning, winter opal. Two crows lighting on the seed bundles of the palm, what are they finding to eat - now another. The air over the harbour is showing milky. Grey-blue shadow on the white face of the law building at the bus stop on 4th, where sunlight is showing the freshest pink tint. Such compounding of time, I'm in 2010 working with 2008 which itself is working with 1963-1968. 24 Luke writing me this morning about liking the wave book and winning a battle with the airline freight office and replying to the letter about metaphysics and epistemology - Luke. Back patio, more campers, this time 3? with a little TV and sleeping bags. I'm waiting for the officers. The London pages today. Earlier there was DR comment I need, but after that what am I watching for - what happened with Tom and whether it was a clear cut. It wasn't. What I'm noticing in general is that I expect time not to have lulls, but there always are lulls even in the journal where I'm picking moments. "Make sure that you're in good enough shape to deliver it." 25 Sister act - wandered into it this morning - bodies redeemed. 26 On the roof, sun about to rise due east over the cathedral, moon high and white in the west. Hot cup of tea, one crow barking from the highest point of the cathedral roof. Fan palms on Maple tall enough to have caught sun. Twitter increasing. 27 Santa Ana so hot oven gusts have come in the west window. Have finished formatting 1 to 19. Backed it up. Improved volume index jpgs. Now is there something I want to do with them. 8 yrs, 2000 pages, approx. 57-65. 1. Assume mourning/review about Tom is done 2. Assume mourning/complaint about aging is done 3. Notice massive amount of applied philosophy done 4. Notice Work & days almost finished 5. Good relations with kids and Louie 6. Working base for Ant Bear 7. Hardware and software, jeep - provisions achieved, house nice 8. Gardens, deserts and travel 9. Days seen 10. Prep for Orpheus/film/DVD 11. Prep for publishing 12. Housetruck planning begun 13. Health, meditation, research begun Assume this volume is the last in this section. [It isn't.] What do I want in the next time. Lyrical work, lyrical achievement, wise felt presence. Influence. Intention. Does the record slight my work   In favor of Tom   So I should go through it looking for the work     YES Including student letters     YES Work list section     [Student details deleted] She shd figure out her exact anomaly   She wants to be one or the other     no She wants to imagine herself one or the other   anomaly = an homolos not-even, not-same Any more you want to say     no Possession - having the englamoured image rather than the function     Contrasexuality and inferior function   W enterprise intuiting C feeling S thinking P practical coping, sensing When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight). Aion (1951) part II. CW9, p 338, 30. B isn't going to understand his/her dreams if s/he imagines self as female - the dreams show a male psychology. 1. A male shadow figure, 2. a glamourized anima figure. And so does his/her cut-off physical presence, lack of relation, lack of mother-confidence. [Student details omitted] 29 Wasn't asleep until after midnight but woke in the dark. Thought it was night but it was 6. Lonely. Come to a time in the day when there should be people and there are none. Then I scrounge for TV online. Last night found a couple of whole episodes of Mad men. That works, it stops the barking. So does work on the journal sometimes. Am in packets, students this term strewn about, Kristyn having to start with Gilligan and Estes, worried about money. Katie late. Bibi quitting because she has left her husband and kids and has nowhere to live. Amber too tired to work, knows she won't pass but has an idea for a book. Karyn moved twice. Bridie off her rocker in a fantasy self. The craving sensation - cd be more aware of it, cd find something else to do with it. What it's like, heart, forehead, indistinct - things I do, check email, taste in my mouth, used to be read all day, sleep. Is there something I'm not feeling     no Is it about a real need     no A sign of a block     no Creative     no Memory     no Is there anything that would satisfy it     NO Is there something I shd do with it     no Accept it     no Hormonal state     no Weather state     no Is it a hunger to love   So just love anything     no Volunteer work     no Will you lead me     YES graduate, come through, improve (9p) Will you point (9p)     acuity Dig into life more     NO Expand it     no Contract it     no Get it to talk   I don't think it will talk   30 I tackled Bridie, sent her a letter on contrasexuality and she has cried all day, she says. Men freak her, they are fear and pain to her, and she is a man and so to be able to live at all she has to say she isn't one. Why have people gone along with her claim to be a woman rather than rescue her from PTSD? The embodiment hypothesis wd have to be that you're the gender your body is, and the evidence seems to be that she is some of both. It's her lie that makes her repulsive to me and as soon as she got real in her two reply letters I started to feel for her. - Health report - these weeks since I'm back, 4 weeks, no supps except ginger just a few times, bike nearly every day, stretching most days. Feel straighter, more core maybe. Not trying to walk long distances but can wear the green Chucks walking. Sometimes hip and leg pain but not when I walk. Often dark arms wake me, arms hugging the pillow, why do they keep doing that, it cuts circulation. Many days without tinnitus, it'll come on at night, as now. Have eaten pizza, without pain and without gaining weight but this week after ice cream legs hurt, twitchy hurt, at night. No neuralgia, try to remember to relax jaw. Weight 145 or goes up to 147 and then down again, waist 30 and a half. Good bike energy. Usually do slow breathing now for longer than 15 min, slow breath, feel for heartbeat, relax and let it move me, then feel into forehead, try to stretch the tight feel, maybe open it sideways, never releases completely, ask for ears, hips, throat, memory, bowel, belly fat, stomach, teeth, and esp bp/arteries to be well. Thank. Often naps in the aft, don't have long mental energy, don't want to do gardens. Belly pad more, L thigh muscle tight in jeans. Dry hair and skin. Sometimes moments that feel like almost fainting - very brief. Hollow-hearted lonely yesterday, not today. - Started working on Going for broke, just buttons. 1st October On Wednesday Tom sent me by Tunefan a link to a Guy Clark song called To live is to fly, country ache, lyrics I didn't know how to take. Next day an email, subject line, "Should have paused at 'send' / I don't want you to worry if it will happen again." Yesterday I reply, subject line "Wasn't worried but wondered whether / you were having a bad day too." Tonight, from him, same subject line, "too." When he does something graceful like that I wonder why I don't just love this man and have faith in him and stay with him and have a life instead of this suspension nowhere. Won't say I love you babe / Won't say I need you babe / But I'm gonna get you babe / I won't do you wrong   Everything is not enough / Nothing is too much to bear   You're soft as glass / And I'm a gentle man / We got the sky to talk about / And the world to lie upon What he's given me in our years - Springsteen, Lovatt singing It's a simple song, a night the mockingbird sang through all the hours, a night of the hawk moths in the honeysuckle, moments of total broken-hearted transcendent love. I say, shouldn't I? It says no. Because it's done?     yes Alright but is something else coming     writing, (9p), (lovers), slow growth   Bridie's scared complicated self. Lazy Kristyn scratching together half a dozen thoughts and considering it enough. Katie correctly fired up by Gilligan. Karyn complacently setting together 20 pages of New Age hearsay and Vedic religion. Bibi in a shelter with her baby. Diedre working but out of touch. Amber sending two poems and some questions. - It's the flimsiest semester ever, rags and tatters.   Jim and Ralph reading my letters to Todd and Jaki. Membership in the zoo yesterday. Transcribing this vol. - Wet hour in the gravel garden. Cut down a lot, brought home long scented stems, a grey hard-stemmed salvia, and a charming white rose that was showing over the wall - it's White Cockade looking alright finally. Writing Katie today, her religiosity, spiritual journey toward union with the infinite unity, and at the same time jumping into Gilligan. 5 Biked around my circuit this morning, locked up at the zoo entrance and walked through into the hidden place, which is complicated, miscellaneous, a lot of kinds of shabby plants, fake rock walls, here a tight dark pen with some depressed bird, here a wire room with some bare poles laid at random and a little mammal asleep on a platform. I kept trying to see landmarks outside the walls, it seemed too large an expanse to fit where it is. I was heading for the elephants, a long way. There they are standing unmoving up against concrete towers simulating trees. They aren't doing anything, have nothing to do all day. Further on a large man pulling nice-looking heads of romaine apart and throwing them into the enclosure where after a while one large female 46 years old he says picks them up leaf by leaf off the ground. First day wearing my UGGs. It's another desperate day. I went to the zoo in desperation. Of all the animals I saw only the pigs seemed to be doing anything. Some of the tropical creatures in those tight small wire pens had bar heaters on. The one honest place I found, more honest, was a narrow staircase up through a densely planted tight stream-slot. There was no one, and nowhere, else that could be seen. What was honest about it was the stone construction of its retaining walls. It was left from a much earlier design. The fern walk. Slave animals, "our animal ambassadors" the brochure calls them. Our sacrificial animals, whose captivity exists to make stupid people perhaps somewhat less dangerous to the whole animal kingdom. The fifty year old female elephant he called Cookie, "Cookie, come! Or not," rocking like an autistic child, swaying without moving her feet. The small animals in those grim little wire pens have really no function, no one looks at them, why are they there, so the zoo can put them on a species list? Do you like that place     yes You like it as a project   It's a horrible place   Should I do a project   Cd I get a Reader cover     no The zoo is sacred   Publish it somewhere else     no No point doing it if I can't get paid for it   But you want me to write   I like it as a story about bodies     YES Human attitudes to   I walked - it was a long way to the elephants. My hips hurt but that's not unbearable. 6 Yesterday found the National Geographic photo of the day. It was superb. Finding something visual online - When I bend to open the cupboard a perfume of passionfruit. It's raining again. 8 doves standing around on the walls though the food bowl was full of water. Why do I need to list things I do in a day - because I don't talk to anyone - because there's a tension until I do. - Sent [the college] receipts, protested VT's wrong tax revision, sent Mike's reference letter, sent Visa a check, sent disability insurance card, wrote Zach a tart note, wrote Diedre's packet 2, sent an intro to Adrian's listserve. 7 Thursday morning, a staring blank. So desperate for company last night that I called Mary. Ashamed of being desperate. - Assembling DR material, went into 3 suitcases and a box - threw out loose papers that have been transcribed, want to throw out more dirty paper. Two big packets of letters to Tom, still in their envelopes - unfolded a few - they're slender, slight, graceful. And my heart reading them is a solid block of darkness - what is the darkness called - sorrow - but why - because I loved as if I had someone to love - I loved alone. The masses of paper in the journal feel like that to me - pathetic, desolate, and I keep making more. - Rowen had his first mid-term, wrote paragraphs with no trouble, said the way he's being asked to write in English now is the first it's made sense to him. Midterm in Plato for philosophy. Got the packages to the boat finally, didn't unpack but liked to see there was a duvet. Is taking a girl out to the boat tonight, maybe she'll help. - Then sent Jam a note with a jpg of the Oracle. Her boyness will like it. Is that sorrow in the letters     no You knew I was loving alone   Do you find that sad     no It's the fate I have     no What I did in relation to Tom   Am I wrong to feel sad in it now     YES It's alright to love alone   I did that with Jam too   With less awareness   Am I like Bridie needing to accept my fate     no But is this loneliness more true than I was with Tom     no But am I better off     YES Is the loneliness good for a creative state     no Less deluded     no Its only virtue is that it is what is so     no Does it have a virtue     yes unconscious, search, for action against illusions Because it touches the original     YES To significant effect     YES 8 Such a miserly flabby little eval from Ralph. Scanned for DR and went through putting in time breaks. Fine bright Saturday. 10 Days fastened into DR1 and 2, scans, scan links, hyphens, a couple of bits I missed transcribing. 11 Monday morning fogged in. Dozen and a half mourning doves rise squeaking when I open the door. 6 of them in a line on the shingled peak of the grey house. A crow patrolling above the parking lot. When the doves land the pointed spread of black and white under their tails - there a black crow with a red palm berry in its beak lands on the roof's edge and they're gone. - Here's the faint sun diffused in the mist. Do I have anything to say about DR1 and 2. The green silk photo. Vitality. The sequence through Going for broke, eager girl, frozen queen, wrecked sketch. - Through DR1 to DR3-3 before them the worry about being female, afterward again with Jam. So much worry about what I am. - This is a different worry. It's more direct, it's worry about whether this crushing isolation will ever end. - Funny that I didn't feel it this way until now, it's almost a year later. It's faintly suicidal, sore heart and a dim suggestion. - There I lay down and tried to feel back into it, and saw a scene from Brothers and sisters that I saw earlier today, Rebecca with her mother, who is brain damaged and doesn't recognize her. That's where I sighed and tears came, my mother no longer knows me. - I did have a father of immense charisma ... the monsters always have a lot of that ambiguity. Clever people always wondering where power really lies déformations professionals incomparably rich material about the ambiguity of love The yeast goes on rising and turning ... it's great. We write because we're restless ... taking myself into the labyrinth without a map. Le Carré at 79 on Wachtel - Asked Louie why loneliness didn't come until now - she said it took that long for relief to wear off. Yes. That's what happened to him too. And the fact, now I'm realizing, that autumn was when we'd return to each other all these years. Tell me about being alone from now on?   slow growth, of balance, in love woman's, exclusion Will you tell me what balance is like     decision to be happy in conflict with power struggle Will people find me pathetic     YES Shd I kill myself     no I will seem so much lamer     no I will always be depressed     no More pathetic than I did when I had Tom     no I don't know what you mean by power struggle   Something I haven't come across yet     YES Enslavement   Enslavement in relation   Ongoing enslavement   Enslavement of some particular kind     betrayal, of early love, happy, alone The enslavement I'm prone to because of betrayal     no I don't understand   Can you point this     responsibility It's about becoming responsible   I'm so responsible already!   More deprived to be more responsible     no I'm supposed to be MORE responsible?!     no Get used to living without love woman   Because I've outgrown her     no Because she's died   Because I didn't look after her     no Because I got old   Some people have her when they're old   But I don't   Getting used to not being pretty     YES Getting used to not having romance     YES I hate that   You're saying decide to be happy in it   13 Decide to be happy it says - What are the sources I still have - is that the question? travel making gardens visual creation luke some reading, best reading friend best talk new friends   Is that it     no ?     balance Balance is happiness in anything   You mean something like meditative presence   Can I still do that   - I'm combing DR1-3 looking for themes. It's tiring work. Mostly don't find what I need now but here's Harding: deeper experience of her own nature ... feminine principle relatedness ... to be really creative she has to experience deeply her own feminine animus ... soul mate ... Prince Charming ... 'the constellation of the animus' ghostly lover ... unwritten novels ... universal criticism of people ... redemption of energy held in the unconscious by the image of the father woman's revealing herself a matter of feeling rapport ... a pose of immodesty thus involves repression of deep feelings and sexuality [Esther Harding in either The way of all women or Women's mysteries] - Your relationship to her is going to be built on two things. She has to trust you. And only when she trusts you will she respect you. And only when she trusts you and respects you will she really love you. And only when she loves you will she truly honor you. Be trustworthy in the smallest things, the tiniest details. Because if you ever plant in the mind of your partner that you may not be trustworthy, then suspicion dominates the relationship. - Someone online, a minister - Wilhelm Kempff playing Beethoven sonatas - I've collected as many as I can find onto my piano playlist - shabby-haired poker-faced old man with his mouth a downturned line, his hands far away at the ends of his arms singing rapturously. What I'm trying to do today 1. move SFU mail to gmail 2. move my website to ipage Nothing but trouble. [technical details for 2 pages] - Then I have time with nothing I can do and transcribe some Tom letters and it's exhausting - what do I know - I don't feel the love, I feel the waste - I was working so hard and it was useless - there's no connection in them - sometimes I'm more anxious and sometimes more balanced but either way there's no connection, only trying. [sobbing] That's true isn't it   Something I needed so much   I see how desperately I needed it   Do I still need it     no I still need something but I don't need it in that form   It happened because I opened the father thing with Joyce   It took 20 years to work through   Was it worth it   Did I have to do it   I had to love a man who wouldn't love me   But I did that with Roy!     no I didn't see it through   Shd I just burn those letters     no Transcribe them   Can you tell me why it was worth it     you got rid of the anger I'm not angry at men   I'm not angry at my dad   But now I'm so cast out     YES Will I have to stay depressed for a long time     NO A whole year     no Through the winter   Early summer     no Midsummer   Shd I move     no Please lead me     decide to come through by practical action Money action   Career action   Ant Bear   The monograph   Will I have enough drive     YES Will you say what will be different by late summer     strength, imagining, enterprise, the uncon The uncon will be involved with enterprise     YES The uncon needs to mourn?     no, reconfigure Okay   Can I come up with a grant     YES - It says I need to be depressed until late next summer but then the uncon will be ready to do something else. In the meantime take practical action. I'm short of money for the first time in a while, can't spend to go to Borrego for instance, am watching food money. Want to eat for pleasure and have to curb strictly or I'll be sore and dislike myself for being thick. - Jim's eval sez "We're lucky to have her," which made me cry. And "wildly popular" workshops, and students who aren't my advisees passionate about what they get from me. And in one of his workshops when he brought up a puzzle about self he suddenly got that it's a way body experiences itself.   part 4 in america volume 21: 2010 june - december work & days: a lifetime journal project