6 Dec 2010
The semester's done -
7
Was euphoric last night at being able to drop this semester's mess of
students. Karyn in her last packet plagiarized some Patanjali scholar I'm
on the hunt for.
Someone in Dublin, someone in Rio, coming to W&D through Facebook,
presumably Ben's link.
Katie the only pleasure, and she in her eval doesn't say what I gave
her, as if she doesn't know it.
- Still the pleasure of Kenner's Pound. Further on, what I liked in him
in 1980 I know more about, brain as a fountain, universe as a wave structure,
erotic love as the difference, steady pagan disregard of Christian teaching,
which I thank him for.
- Is it that what I give them is so relevant to them they
think they themselves found it?
- Whereas I've tracked bits of that relevance for 45 years,
or 50
-
Chorus Niagara in a food court in Welland ON, flash mob, beautiful Youtube
video. Food chain banality highjacked by joyful daring. Singers and random
hearers lit up. The man at 3.24 so lovely I stop the video to touch his
face on screen, his look like what I felt in music in London, pained wonder.
There has also been an extreme snowboarder on a Nepalese mountain, a
piece of red silk dancing in a circle of fans, a man showing what he can
do in a wheel.
-
Came out of the Museum of Natural History when it closed at five and
from the top of the steps saw the new moon in a yellow sky. Inside, a slender
green mamba five feet long, a pair of moonstone earrings, and a translucent
white roof accordion-pleated over thin struts and a five floor drop. From
the top floor a wide view north over the largest tree toward little blue
triangles of mountain over east.
[opposite pages]
Light metaphysics
Scotus Erigena is omnia quae sunt, lumina sunt.
neo-Greek theology
Letter to the Ephesians, omne quod manifestatur,
lumen est.
"Bishop Grosseteste's deduction of the whole
universe from light." "When it has reached the extreme of its
rarefaction it is that of which things are made."
radiant gists, for a while in the 13th century,
held in many intellects
the radiant world where one thought cuts through
another with a clean edge, a world of moving energies
mezzo oscuro rade
"Risplende in se perpetuale effecto,"
magnetisms that take form, that are seen, or that border the visible, the
matter of Dante's Paradiso, the glass under water, the form that seems a
form seen in a mirror, these realities perceptible to the sense, interacting
Love, said Cavalcanti, takes rise in Memory's locus
- "In quella parte dove sta memoria" - and radiates like Light,
"himself his own effect unendingly."
- risplende
- in se perpetuale effecto
the tensile light
light-philosophers
sincerity the attaining of precision of speech
with oneself
irresponsible peddlers of the ineffable 454
Illumine the root of the process ... the bones
of things, the materials, are implicit and prepared in us, abundant and
inseparable from us ... (Pound 1945)
was Taoist in his deepest impulses ... he could
respond to places ... with a geomancer's perception of hill and shade.
The mind is a fountain, sculptured water.
interested, that is, beyond philology, in how
the bard breathed by rhythmic gesture as the structure of sound is built
up, prolonged, modulated ... so far as possible breathing as it breathed,
intoning as it intoned,
The process has traversed in half a page the
history of English versification from Chaucer to 1945, decasyllabic becoming
pentameter, pentameter encountering Imagist resistance, and metamorphosing
into the idiosyncratically stressed line that carries Pound's hallmark.
Anaphora (repeating beginnings), internal rhyme,
witty diction.
a world where the sphere of adventure is the
imagination, and where mastery achieved by labor may open the mind to possession
by minds past
Frobenius paideuma basically whole cultural
style.
Only a whole mobilized tradition.
Mark Twain structured five dialects in Huckleberry Finn.
He had less working time left than he knew.
Released 1958, 1960 "My head just doesn't
WORK," d. 1970.
8
Mary calling in the middle of the day to rave about her red amaryllis.
It has four flowers.
My begonia's flowers have gone white because it isn't in a window. I've
put it outside on the air conditioner block for two days during daylight
and it has its deep pink back.
After two weeks without agave in tea, or main carbs, morning down to
under 144, which I haven't been since the res last Jan I think. Feeling
it as sore bum when I sit working. Went away when I was heavier. Black jeans
still tight at the waist.
Morning scrambling to organize OAS evidence. Internal revenue, the OAS
office, tax folder for 2002. Shd I ask Paul for a letter.
9
Pleased with myself because I was thinking ahead to taxes on pension
and discovered tax-free savings accounts in time to register for one before
the end of the tax year so I will have extra space rolled over into next
year, which will mean I won't have to pay taxes on it when it comes.
And booked a service for the jeep. And am still trying to track down
the plagiarized essay. And am dealing with waist blubber. And washed the
floor. And have a paycheck in with hardly any draws on it, finally.
-
So went back to the science museum and bought moonstone earrings -
Stable incubation period of three or so billion years for life to develop.
10
I will sometimes find a feather on my doormat and feel they've said thank
you.
[opposite page website fix lists for entire site]
12
Lucia Popp singing Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen.
- Ruhe in Freiden aller Seelen
- Die vollbracht ein Bangen quälen
- Die vollendet süzen Traum
- Lebensatt der Welt hinüberschieden
- Aller Seelen ruhe in Frieden
-
- Liebervoller Mädchen Seelen
- Deren Tränen nicht zu zählen
- Die ein falschen Freund verließ
- Alle die von Hinnen schieden
- Aller Seelen ruhe in Frieden
-
- Und die nie der Sonne lachten
- Unterm Mond auf Dornen wachten
- Gott in reinen Himmelslight
- Einst zu sehn von Angesicht
- Alle die von Hinnen schieden
- Aller Seelen ruhe in Frieden
I'm thinking of my mom's funeral as I listen to this song again and again,
and discover Schubert wrote it when his mother died. He was 19.
several chillingly dark songs
Buried next to Beethoven "whom he had admired
all his life."
-
I've entered the black turtleneck age. Black turtleneck, UGGs and baggy
silk pants if poss. And simple earrings with good stones.
-
5:04 Sunday night. A Santa Ana, western sky through the window stained
its winter apricot, tall white candle lit next to it, and spotlight on gorgeous
Padmasambhava. - Who I discover in Wiki is a Nyingma guy.
5:16 it's dark on land and the apricot has deepened at the horizon, fades
up through yellow to pale and then darker turquoise to dull navy. I have
the door open, a cup with cream waiting on the cooling hotplate as the tea
steeps. Very soon I'll go do an eval in this lovely winter room - now a
lovely winter room. Have brought the begonia in from its work day in the
sun and it is looking exuberant in its dark gloss and new pink.
Last week Louie thought to look into Fading and said things about
the bits she read that I liked to hear. "Balanced between spontaneity
and reflection / I don't feel control in the recordings / it's crispy clean."
Struck me that if her mom died she might like me to go to the funeral
with her.
13
Took care of the jeep today. 107,146, minor service, meaning oil, fluids,
rotate tires, tire pressure, inspect a lot of things -
As I was on the way to mail Dave Scott's 4Gb flash drive with my slides
on it, found an envelope with another $1000 from him to edit his novel.
14
Alzheimers and fasting - theory that amyloid isn't
cleaned up, builds up in default network - lower glucose in - less is produced
in sleep - it's not the focused network - hippocampus and some other.
15
Radio silence on email, even most spam is gone [later: news item says
Russian spam sources shut down].
16
Three and a half hours pruning at Scott's this aft, it'll rain tomorrow.
My favorite spot today was the tropical room, now an open space with thick
high edges. The flagstone path's broad and solid. Two of the ferns spread.
Ivy grown though patchy, two of the daturas very tall. Both the interesting
hard-leafed shrubs, whatever they are, completely right for their spots.
The whole square damp, dark and unusual like a garden in another sort of
country, Vietnam maybe.
In the side yard the dark pink salvia's almost gone. In the front the
cistus ladanifer had grown thick and overhead, blooming white on just the
tips. It was bulging out of the corner and I cut off a 4" trunk. Thinned
the Graham Thomas. The bay laurel is at the eaves and has more shape finally.
Garcia has mutilated the apricot.
There was only a little to do in the gravel garden. California poppies
self seeded, a winter salvia blooming wine red, pineapple sage very spread,
the ceanothus hiding what it was meant to hide, the little lysiloma wrapped
around the fountain.
Pulled the silverlace vine out of the pepper tree, see whether it can
recover. Cleaned up the dead sticks of the passiflora the monarchs had devoured.
Then tonight The lover on Netflix, exquisitely visual, Jane March
at 18, Tony Leung's bronze bum.
17
[opposite page, notes on sound equipment and audio recording]
Luke isn't answering his phone.
I'm looking at audio recorders thinking of the tax year.
Imagining recording silence - sound recordists call it air - for
that maybe $1200 plus headphones and maybe a mic.
- What do you think
- I need it this year
-
Email from a reader who begins, Greetings wanderer.
- Do you have a sense of what my workshop should be
- What is a mind no
- Light and seeing no
- ? balance, completion, judgment and action
- What I need to do no
- What it's about
- Dragon girl no
- Will you slant this the Work
- About you? no
- The two hands YES
- "Part of me is in the dark" YES
- What is a person
- Le Guin Left hand of darkness
- What is intuition
- Conscious and unconscious
- What is a mind is the intro
- Hilgard
-
- Stories:
- Hilgard
- Joanna Field
- Clairvoyant
- Something from
- Images: the half people
- Fairy tradition - larger, smaller
- Two sides of the brain
- What is ego?
- What is self?
- Creative unconscious
- The shadow, the larger self, the child
- The unconscious in a democracy
- Ego and inflation
- Porous attention
There is a stream but consciousness is not it, c is like a chip riding
on it.
-
Levy-Strauss in Myth and meaning - Indians able to see the planet
Venus in broad daylight with the naked eye, in Daniel Pinchbeck Breaking
open the head
- Coincidences. Feeling other people's feelings.
- Silence, time slowing, vision in 360 degrees.
-
- Out-of-body becomes near after-death if longer
- Right temporal lobe
- Anyone who'd had near-death, need less sleep, go into REM later. Depressed
people enter sooner, people who've had near-death later than normals. More
sync in L temporal.
- Meditation decrease in R parietal, orientation assoc.
- When parietal's quiet, R temporal religiosity comes on more.
I became the best possible version of myself.
18
[code for podcast links]
Don't ask don't tell repealed today.
Laughing with Luke this morning. At his window, horizontal snow. He has
no place, no job, no girlfriend, and is wondering about balloon piloting.
"I always like talking to you." "Me too, I always like it
so much."
He had lunch with Roy and dinner with his brothers. Walked in the snow.
Jill sent a text.
I said that after 40 one needs to be strategic about mating. Think what
one needs and where to find it and once found how to attract it. He looks
at kids in supermarkets. I said go to the British Library and pick a reading
room. Then one can stand next to her in the lunchroom line.
Netflix movies on my Mac monitor.
Journal reader in Van sent a photo of himself. Polite reply. Sent an
Orion piece today. One line reply. Just now something about his reply
to that, that scared me. First time I've realized I can be stalked. The
word 'hooked' in his first email - isn't it the second time someone has
said that.
19
Think more about what it was about him. Yesterday I shied off doing that
because he might read it. This morning I'm not as weak-headed. I was repelled
by the photo - that he had sent a photo, the kind of photo it was, and the
face itself. It was posed against a big colored painting suggesting vivid
emotion and showed a lady's man with blue eyes and a wavy forelock, a drinker's
blur maybe, something weakly evasively seductive. What he wrote both times
implied a grand and vague common interest in humanity, which I dislike because
he isn't saying what he wants, he wants something, and because he was posing
as thinking of us as equals, which we are not. Ben Robins did it better.
Straight ahead and talking about the writing.
Someone in Barcelona, a good part of town near parks and the sea, has
been coming in through the index with no referring link six days in a row,
and then not going into theory, writing, graphics or the journal.
Have been a lot of days avoiding the last three evals and fixing the
Fading section, little format stuff. Four vols left, I'll finish
it today and then do the evals and then get to Emilee's book and mine.
19
Wachtel interviewed on Writers & Co.
A journal thread about reading.
20
Have spent $1300 just now for an audio setup, Marantz field recorder,
Rode cardioid stereo mic, Shure headphones, rechargeable batteries and charger,
mic stand.
Why - I'm picturing myself in Glorietta Canyon recording silence - later
on maybe in Alberta - and setting it up in this room making podcast recordings
maybe.
Trimming photos for Up north 1-1 this morning, had them large
on the monitor. They are so soft and loving.
Raining today, palm fronds flailing as they do, thick silver daylight.
Airplanes taking off to the east, overhead. I've booked room 21 at the Hacienda
del Sol for the 23rd to the 25th. It won't be enough.
Beginning to work on Up north. Bit scared of it.
21
Toward eight in the morning. It's pouring. Drops all over the north window.
Tuesday.
Something about the loud dark scumbling rumble overhead, over air full
of water. It makes me feel submerged as if I'm at the bottom of the ocean
and a ship is passing over me.
These rain days also are like the intercalated days, blacked out of the
calendar, in parentheses, enclosed.
-
Diedre's eval, ie her transcript summary and my grad intro. I need to
settle about her more, we had a thrilling first semester and then she got
handed to other advisors, who I want to think wasted her time and in some
ways spoiled her work.
- Is that correct no
- They gave her good things
- Caryn was just right for the next stage
- Reconnecting in art and writing
- Then her next semester with me was less good
- Because she was battling in her life
- Did she succeed in that battle
- Was Lise helpful to her no
- Was I right to slam that work
- Does she honestly agree
- Lise screwed up because she was competing with me
- Were the feminist texts important to her
- She was weak in relation to Lise no
- It was a mistake to take that job no
- Will she get into a PhD
- Feminist epistemology
- She mistrusts me now YES
- Because of what Lise said no
- Correctly no
- Because I feuded with Lise no
- Because I hated witches/blood
- Was she writing that for Lise
- Is it her true sensibility no
- Feminist hysteria
- I mistrust her too because of that piece
- It shocked me YES
- If that's truly her I've been wrong about her
no
- Was the work I liked flattering me no
- I'm more doubtful about whether she'll follow through
with the PhD
- Did Phil doubt me like that no
- Did she borrow her fine judgment from me
no
- But she lost it
- Has she lost it permanently
- Was she getting it from her man no
- Did she have it because of booze no
- Shd I assume she isn't going to make it
YES
- She had a fine adventure but will want to stay where
she is YES
- Did Lise ruin her YES
- Is that possible YES
- Because D didn't fight her
- If she wd let Lise ruin her wd she let me ruin her
- Did I no
- Lise ruined Susan and Diedre but not Emilee
- So the question is whether a student is suggestible
- Is Millie B still alive
- Is she still mad at me no
- Is she back on meds NO
- Did our work help her
- Did she go back to her family no
- Is she nuts no
- Shd I help Justin NO
-
- Meanwhile I want something from D
- I loved her ability to get the framework
- And want her to go on getting it
- She's smart but she doesn't have my strength
YES
- I want my work to be worth something
- And it's not
-
- But she'll do a PhD
- A conventional one
- She has a framework but she didn't make it herself
YES
-
- How shd I think of the [college] work unconscious,
responsibility, reversal, tyranny
- Working against my father's tyranny YES
- Correctly?
- Working for cognitive justice
- But it's not the most effective way no
- As a forum
- Wd it be better to be doing art no
- That motive is different
- That motive is early love YES
- "One friend and one enemy"
22
Another $1000 from Dave.
Laundry. The pleasure of a clean bed, watered plants, polished table.
Meantime the sky opened to the west after six days. Cloud towers, palm trees
bashed clean, groceries in the jeep for tomorrow, library books. Phone's
charged, camera charging, excited.
The money has paid off Vancity with $300 over, or I could say has bought
my beautiful audio machines and what I'll be able to do with them.
I'm happy too about being thinner, and how I look in a black turtleneck
and the moonstone earrings, better hair off the forehead and smooth silver,
ache not very often. Year of stretching behind me - pink face - better time
altogether - thank you - Rowen in school and Luke liking to talk to me -
money working out, a plan - the worst of leaving Tom done - a bike carrier
- a trip tomorrow I can afford - the Up north section finally - this
coherent sound little house - a month and a half of liberty after New Years.
There I turn on the Blackberry and fix its time and date, and then ping
a message waiting. It's Tom returning my call. I phone him, Did you just
call me? No it was yesterday. Short conversation in which I notice I have
that fur-stroked-the-wrong-way turned-on sexual buzz going just from hearing
his voice - the one that makes me laugh.
23 Borrego Springs
Thursday a bit after four. Tense getting started, scared of the freeway,
will I miss the 67 turnoff, it's marked at the last minute. Traffic as far
as Santa Ysabel and then sweet open moments. The sky lowered until near
the junction on S-3. A bit before the San Felipe pass, the light I wanted,
invisible high frequencies reverberating off the mountains, a solid hit
of them. Then the way there's just a bit of hairpin climb before the air
opens wide, wide, and the road lopes down at ease all the miles to the valley
floor with its tiny buildings and green blots of orange groves.
-
I'm in Carlee's Bar waiting for a t-bone steak. Football on TV. Couples
in red leatherette booths. It's early, the drinking crowd isn't here yet.
Fans, shaded lamps, neon, Budweiser, Newcastle Brown Ale, a dull orange
light.
I took the bike out onto back streets as it was falling dark. Near the
high school there were two large owls calling, one trying to climb onto
the other's back. The streets were empty and unlit.
24
Here's a whole day at the window.
A good book, 2010 Anna Lawrence Pietroni Ruby's spoon Spiegel
and Grau. And Renee Flemming on how her voice is made.
Things still to tell: a card from my mother, a so-bad photo of her looking
awkwardly compliant, and worst the trembling handwriting on the envelope,
her shape of words the same but the line in tiny quivers. Oh poor thing
so undone. She called again the day before I left to say the amaryllis had
still another bud. It was what she lacks now, strong clear order trumpeting
out.
I now understand how long her weak-headedness has been coming. When she
wanted cards it was already that. When was it, twenty-five years ago when
she was sixty? She was already awkward when I was 30 and she 50. I broke
with her about the cards, not realizing her head was going. If I had known
would I have forgiven it? "My mother has died." But was she ever
what I thought she was? Did something break her? Ed broke her. The Mennonites
did. I did too? It says no. Could I have saved her? No.
The second thing I want to tell is that I make more mistakes now, for
instance when I'm formatting I more often have to do something over. The
faults of attention I notice in driving. I am training myself to double-check
more. I have to monitor myself when I walk. There's the way I don't find
thoughts to interest me when I'm lying awake. And even here there is more
erasing and trying again.
So am I going weak-headed like her? Am I already what she was at 65?
-
Cool air with the smell of beetroot newly dug out of the ground.
25
I'm ashamed of hiding out yesterday. I ate and read and almost nothing
else and then lay dejected at night, and am so this morning too.
- Is this spiritual death no
- Is it loneliness no
- Is it because I haven't taken my fences
no
- Is it because of Mary no
- Is it because of eating no
- Did I regain all those pounds
- If so they weren't really lost
- It's wanting to feel
- And having nothing to feel about
- I'm living wrong no
- Did I zonk yesterday because I'm repressing
NO
Last night I saw the swimming pool lit and warm, a hole in the ground
like a transilluminated sapphire. I wanted a ritual immersion, I wanted
to float looking up at a black sky, but when I went back in my bathing suit
the cover was on.
- Will you lead me process, anguish, balance
in crisis
- Instruction? graduate, to
intimacy, with your child self
- She wants a mother interested in her
- The child is what I'm missing?
- I'm starved for a mother
- I come alive when I have one
- Does that mean I should find a therapist
no
- Will you point (Qs) improvement
- Work intelligence
- Alright YES
[Opposite page:
AIFF - FCP, Mac OSX, .wav standard Windows
AIFF encoder fr CD in itunes
sampling rates DV audio 48 kHz, CD 44.1 kHz
yes FCP supports 24-bit 96 kHz (most vid is 16-bit
48 kHz)
only uncompressed formats should be used, AIFF,
.wav
x MP3, MPEG-2 or -4
try to match sample rate in all
BWF broadcast wave format is for timecode
to use CDs copy the track onto hard drive first,
then import to FCP and convert sample rate
noise is inherent to electrical system, noise floor
signal-to-noise ratio
headroom - signal can occasionally go louder w/o
distorting
dynamic range - loudest and quietest
compression - decrease loud sounds to be able to
raise the quiet to compete with ambient sound]
Glorietta Canyon
Yes it's silent. One crow, one little warbly thing, something very faintly
tinny. The crow keeps saying the same thing from different places. Three
times the same word. Sometimes the near zoom of a fly. A very faint texture
that is maybe many other flies at a lot of distances. Now something else,
little needles of a whistling bird. Now the crow far away barking continuously.
The velvety buff on the mountainside is from dry brittlebush stalks.
It lies fitted between the big shards of rusted brittle stone. That little
bird ticks as it zooms low. Hummingbird.
The desert is damp today. There's not as much scent as in the valley.
Barrel cactus in its fur of pink spines looking frisky. A few flowers on
the chuparosa, an occasional ocotillo blooming. There's a hawk in hunting
circles, its shadow waggling over rocks below. Another higher up. Creosote
the darkest thing except for shadows in rock crevices.
It's a place simple in its facts and very complicated in its forms.
Three crows, only the leader speaking.
Sunday 26
I fell asleep early and woke at 4. Later when I saw the sky red I rushed
out and took the bike across the mall parking lot to see the east which
was a broad and high mess of marachino pink and orange. Decided to ride
looking at the mountain instead, because it was faintly subtly luminously
rose-lit so its folds and slabs and scales and dabs were all alive all over.
Rode northwest and then north for miles along its flank, tire rattle on
the rough surface of the asphalt. Fresh chill. Sunday early, Boxing Day,
no cars.
Then after breakfast discovering I couldn't book for another night and
packing suddenly and on the road getting more and more desolate. What was
that.
Last night I went out not much before dark and headed back across to
the row of churches. St Barnabas Episcopalian is the beautiful one, adobe walls and silver smoke
trees. I was circling around through its empty parking lot and saw a little
opening among palms. There on a little floor enclosed by a berm and a plastered
wall, with adobe benches, was a labyrinth laid out in white pebbles. It was the
loveliest human-made thing I'd seen in Borrego.
I had been as if longing to be able to go to church, longing for church
not to be what it is, not false, not foolish, but instead what it could
be when I was a child and we sang together, not the belief but the belonging.
So I sat on the bench and talked to Joyce aloud, I said things I've felt
but wasn't at that moment feeling, but the moment when I did crack into
something real was when I begged to know, If I am alone this way because
I did something wrong, what was it? Tell me what I can do to make it right.
And then I was alright, but coming through the tight winding passes after
Santa Ysabel this late morning I was in anguish feeling a pull of death
on the road, not a strong pull, but one I was having to talk to.
At the labyrinth I said to life, You trashed Frank, you trashed Janeen,
you trashed Ed, you trashed Joyce, you trashed Mary, you are trashing me.
Today in the Jeep labouring to bring myself home again I was saying For
15 years I gave my girl heart to a man who didn't want me and now I'm ugly
and there won't be anyone else who does, and it will just be more bleak
years.
- Do you call this being depressed no
- Do you have a word for it the Work
- It's necessary to feel because it's true
- Is it injuring my heart no
- Is there more I should be doing NO
- Am I supposed to be repenting of being with Tom
no
- I had to do it because of my dad
- So it's his sin I'm paying for
- Is Rowen okay no
- Is Luke okay no
- If I feel this pain is it helpful to them
no
- Is there anything you want to say to me
no
27
Someone eager to please - how it helped her to be that thing I no longer
am.
Success conflict - "You've gone too far. You weren't supposed to
step away from the pack. You've strayed from your own roots. You are by
your nature an underdog."
I can do tremendous focus and dedication, I still can, but to what?
- Do you know the answer to that
- You're going to tell me something about psychological
work YES
- But I need a work form
- Are you willing to answer me in those terms improving, action, anguish, integration
- But I need a concrete task YES
- Grade 12, Trapline, the PhD, the garden - like
that YES
- Are you able to answer that
- But you don't want to no
- Please will you tell me YES (4 orange cards)
conflict, come through, graduate, readiness
- You're saying I'm not ready yet
- I'm not ready to know it
- Wands/clubs are enterprise
- Finish things
- Hone myself
- Assemble money YES
- Assemble machines
- Learn software YES
- Physical training
- Have faith
- Work on success conflict YES
Favor writes "I was there as her doula. Her labor was long ....
She was so focused, Ellie, and calm. Very strong. I loved that she kept
saying 'I love you baby.' It was the first birth I'd attended (of three)
that was natural - she got through with just Rescue Remedy! I'm sure she'll
tell you stories. She told me your email wisdom helped her so much."
Carolyn's boy yesterday Dec 26 2010.
Ausstrahlung
28
Luke in the Facebook talk box.
Mbo page: Stockholm, St Petersburg, Bangkok, Naples, Russian Federation,
Braga Portugal, Gent, Basel, South Africa, Rome, Nanjing, another Belgium,
Arezzo, Oxford, Ho Chi Minh City, Bogotá, Bristol, Léon Spain,
Göttingen, Catania Sicily, Eindhoven, Feltre Italy - those in November-December.
A lot from Wikipedia and Green Fuse but also no referring.
Tom's North Park notes - vivid and loving - we were on the couch with
the laptop, he reading over my shoulder. It was just a list but there were
colors and birds and my name and the word 'home,' and I felt what I'd given
him, what I don't now have myself, and the liveness of feeling he still
has and I don't, and some gratitude and missing me, as if it was a letter
of the kind I always hoped for - the kind I understood. There was some of
what I don't like too, flashy name-dropping encrusted phrase-making, but
more simple-hearted being between. It was our New Year's visit. There was
sun on the walkway. We untangled the mandarin, which had thrived in the
rain, and the stemmy cassia. We were familiar and told our news. He liked
that I was wearing the green silk pants tucked into the UGGs with the black
turtleneck.
29
Started to write a dream, erased it, no don't write what happens just
write the moments. I'm with two young men, London
artists like Tony. One of them is holding me on a bed, lovely being held,
he finds my hand behind him and holds it. I touch the other man to say I
feel him too.
In a subway, dark, dirty, greasy old wood, with
a man who was also at the conference. He knows the way and it's complicated,
so I stick with him but then lose him when he goes to look at something,
people filming maybe the homeless. Then I'm trying to find the way up and
out. Dark dirty staircase. It stops at a barricade. Beyond it is an iron
double bedstead with the mattress collapsed.
First vol of Up north. I've been through once, got the images
placed mostly, shy off the density, at the same time feeling there is work
in it, to be found in it, deciding what's worth using, what I couldn't do
then, when I was holding dilation to too much because I didn't know what
to notice, flou, so much undecided, and the flux making me an artist at
the same time as it was disabling me as an artist. Matrix of bewilderment,
is that what it takes. Now in a firmer time, shying away from the bewilderment,
can I tell what was worth something, or just lay a track between the facts
and a willed story.
30
To work with N1 I'm having to make a full excerpt, and liking to. It's
slow but has let me find places that were out of order and better spots
for photo links and a couple of cross-time links. It makes me consider the
stoned pondering, and the notes, that I've skipped impatiently. They tell
me the technology I was using to get the open moments I did find, which
are why I still want to be with that person in that place, that autumn.
If I clean it up a little the writing isn't bad. I mean I'll be able to
read the edited excerpt with pleasure - should have it as a mirror page
probably.
Yesterday found a web book by an Englishman who writes about the kinds
of dilation I was sometimes finding. He's elaborating a two-world hypothesis
about them, though more honorably than many, saying what's conjecture or
ambiguous. He's one of those having to posit subtle other worlds because
he has such a debased view of this one. None of what I was experiencing
up north was other-worldly though it was often mysterious. It was this world
loved, and imagining powers courted by emotional-intellectual risk and effort.
What Logan said about making breathing a gorgeous enterprise, enriching
the world not escaping from it. [John Heron]
I assumed then and still that art needs effort like religious effort,
in that both are about being fit to meet something well. That claim larger
than it seems, because 'meeting well' means quite esoteric sorts of attention
and presence.
31
Two inches a year, the same as a human fingernail - fault creep.
1st January 2011
Finished going through N1, adding a few links, moving photos sometimes,
using the excerpt edit to evaluate everything. It's long intensive work
- this morning from 7:30 to 12:30 just on a bit more than half of N1-5.
Toward the end of that month the solid writing - ie prose not fragment notes
- got better. That crystalline January like a room I still want to inhabit.
What I liked and kept this time - Helmer and Bernice, sometimes the bachelors,
oh the days and nights, a few of the reading notes. Love and concrete adventure
and indications of the mental work I did to get presence, a few. I'm thinking
about how easily it cleans up now, but how I didn't have cleaning-up judgment
then. Was setting up methods that wdn't have old forms of it, but also didn't
have it, couldn't see what was wrong with it. I don't keep most of the
attachment pain about Jam, though I notice how strong it was and that it's
the same as I felt in Borrego.
- Do you like the excerpt edit
- Do you want to say anything about it judgment,
child, love woman, writing (Kw)
- I didn't have judgment because it was child and love
woman writing
- I had wrecked work woman
- Love woman was good for photos
- Was work woman being rebuilt later
- Why I love the time is that it's love woman
- Given something to love
- Anything else? no
-
Walter Webber at Nordhagen's New Years party next to me on the floor,
or probably I was on the floor and he on a chair. He was in his 70s then
probably. I was wearing a black pullover and when I'd warmed up, took it
off. Walter noticed how quickly I did it. I've often thought of what it
meant that he noticed that - it was intelligence noticing intelligence,
and so I've thought of who he must have been, living as a cowboy without
education through the pioneer years.
I have never since then thought about the work I thought I was doing
there - coming up with a film - I never did understand how to do that -
I worked in the ways I knew and muddled along but what I eventually made
left out a huge amount of what I worked on - [the film] Notes in origin
was a little something thrown off out of a huge matrix that hasn't been
finally brought through. - Something was, an understanding of the draw of
prenatal recognition was. Did it take all that to write what will we
know? Maybe. I could never have written it earlier. Did the reading
and thinking, the notes, make the photos possible - something, I'll think
about it more.
60 Cloud View Road North Point, Rosie Nag
[diagram of the winter hexagon, Capella, Aldebaron, Sirius, Procyon,
Castor and Pollus, Orion internal]
3rd
N1 is done, tonight collecting 1000 pixel versions for N2.
Getting the OAS letter ready -
4
Do light and vision instead.
Light-vision-imagining. From light to mind.
- World and consciousness, something like that?
YES
- The color of light, show slides? YES
- How mind comes from land YES
Earthquake lights "size of a basketball hovering
over the epicenter of an impending quake," "most likely the result
of static electricity created when quartz-bearing rock is stressed and scraped."
'Luminosities.'
-
Evals. Bibi names "Ms Epp is very direct" as my strength. Bridie
says "I was very uncomfortable with some of the things she said and
a lot of the reading" and "how I feel clouds my judgment."
Katie says "She's excellent at identifying the pressure points in things."
5
Dave got the photos finally - my loveliest gift - and can't see them
- says the winter ones "are the best," "have the best use
of light," as if they weren't all showing wonderful light, and as if
he thinks he's competent to tell me what in my work is good.
- That's pathetic YES
- I shouldn't have sent them no
- He was sending what he has and I what I have and his
not being able to use it is irrelevant
- But my feelings are hurt
- I want my country to love my love for it
- Do you want to comment rebalance, don't
withdraw, recover success
- People resist those photos YES
- I've been almost alone in loving them
- And yet I love them so much YES
- Am I mistaken
- Mistaken to love them
- Everybody else has been right no
- Is there something wrong with them
- That other people can see no
- Can you tell me what's wrong with them
come through, power, processing, practical
- I'm scared of this YES
- Do I have any photos that are better no
- Is any art better no
- Can you point this withdrawal
- Was I right in what I was trying to do when I made them
- It came through as 'pure' and 'elegant'
- Which these are
- Are you saying I shouldn't work with them
no
- The rejected child YES
-
- Is John Heron right about the lightness
YES
- Cd I walk lightly that way at will
- Fasting changed my alignment
- Was feeling close to death part of it no
-
- Are they good as photos YES
-
- What would I have to do to walk like that
process, conflict between power and the child
- What is the heaviness maternal, recovery,
shared, processing
6
Am labouring with the edit version of N2-1, two days so far and it's
not done. It's the month I was working on oilrigs, staying internal in the
midst of the most external of adventures. I edit out a lot of the self-observation
and yet its idiosyncracy when it's edited gives the writing whatever charm
it has. The Seth notes now obviously vacuous but David Cooper still
holds. I like remembering it for the concrete, Jules and Myrtle and the
man I liked at Hudson's Hope, the camps, the boys. I'd want to play with
them more now but wd I be as enchantable by what I saw on the road? Steeped
in marvel and sometimes pain. I mostly want to cut anything about Jam. Having
to go overboard to find the good things I did find, I'm noticing that about
deep art, it makes mistakes, it doesn't necessarily have good judgment.
Cull after. But confusion frightened me, frightens me, unless it's brief.
I was enduring confusion with a lot of valor. Writing in a way that wd get
minimally, that was likely correct.
[Opposite page notes for dealing with a skin cream company, Queen's transcript
service]
[Nursery scouting lists]
part 2
- in america volume
22: 2010-2011 december-may
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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