in america volume 22 part 4 - 2011 march-april

work & days: a lifetime journal project

12 March 2011 My journal site now comes up in Google search. Someone in Richmond whipped through a couple of pages from Still at home, London, Golden West, AG, as well as Being about and the graphics site. 30 seconds each. Saturday morning, bit after 8. Overcast today, is it the parade later? If so, leave early. - Amtrak over the sea - - There was mustard blooming with hogweed and sometimes a phlox. Ruined by the little family across the aisle, small boy and a girl maybe 7. The parents rode them every moment. "Sal get up." "Sal don't do that." "Don't put that in your mouth." "Look at the boat over there." "Here's a bridge." "Sit down Sal." "You're missing all the scenery." "Do you want me to tell Mr Rodgers about you." "You can't go down there by yourself." "Look there are the waves." "Sal give that to me." I was remembering the way our parents let us alone to be what we were. This after reading in the LA Times this morning about the whole culture of middle class women who'd been managers and now try to optimize their children full-time. I'm in the Biltmore Club Lounge where anyone in the expensive rooms above the 9th floor can graze on food and drink and concierge services. I'm here drinking good Earl Grey as the room clears, people going to dinner. It's 6:30 and has grown dark as I've written about the monster parents who were blubbery big things as well as evilly paired in their control mania. I have a 10th floor club membership though I'm in 772 because Albert on the front desk, bright-faced man with an African accent, gave it to me to apologize for a little mix-up the other guests were too boorish to exploit. [Biltmore corridor] [lobby] [old entrance] I am at a window overlooking Pershing Square, it's a big square surrounded by highrises. My room has an east window onto Olive Street and badly grouted marble in the bathroom. Such a good bed, white, no dirty bedspread. Big window across from the tub. I fell crossing Pershing pulling the small green bag. In the lobby I fell again in front of 50 people waiting in line. Am I used to it now? I'm strangely not much minding, though it is hard on my wrists. It's probably my new UGGs, I'll try to remember for the rest of the weekend. The first time, when I'd just come up off the Red Line and was crossing to the big brown pile of bricks, I was thanking myself for how well I was walking when it happened. Smash. People sitting under blue umbrellas called Are you alright? I looked at a friendly Middle Eastern man with wife in a headscarf and said "I'm embarrassed" although I wasn't, apart from the moment of getting up and having to deal with people looking concerned. Nevermind, people, it's just something I do. J'y suis habituée. I'm buoyant today, just being in this hotel and about to have some kind of evening with someone who knew me when I was 20. Rome youth hostel, 1966. And then Kingston the year of Expo, and then 1976? when I was a new lesbian and we saw frigate birds at Pop's Camp. - The lobby smells like lilies. There are naked women with two tails and wings instead of arms. A coffered ceiling. People dressed for parties. In the elevator a man in a tux with a red rose on his lapel. A dark bar at the far end of the lobby, very dark. Plaster cherubs at the ceiling. Unimpressive people checking in but an air of glamour in spite of them. The sort of hubbub there is in high-ceilinged public spaces. Wall painting behind the desk as if a conservatory, with banana trees, palms, orchids, parrots, and Diana on a fountain lifting the bow to - the sky. There a still-tall bearded man in a dark blue cashmere jacket. His brother googled him and found him with me drawing on the steps of the Piazza di Spagna. That was maybe a year ago. I asked, Did you hate me? No I loved you. But reading my journal felt voyeuristic, because it's a journal. A slowness they are saying is Parkinson's. 3 marriages, the last just ending. A 25 year old daughter, Sara. A bungalow in Santa Monica that is in jeopardy. Big international clients all of which were sold and have vanished. Good years betweentimes. Teaching at a good design institute. - The phone rang after 'saying' above. He said he'd gone home and thought of more he wanted to say. There was an echo on the line so I heard my own voice overlaid with his. It was my flirtatious voice, girly. When I was lying awake in this fine bed last night I was thinking how much of what I'd said to him in the evening was from repertoire. When I was 20 none was. Early afternoon mild in this lovely room, which isn't lovely in its dull yellow walls or gilt-framed fake painting of Venice or paired cream-painted cupboards but is lovely in its broad high windows and the just distant enough sounds of traffic. I worked for this room, refused two that were above fans. - And its wide white bed and the openness of space above the square, with a few pigeons coasting between ledges. At night the shutters threw crossing lines of soft light on the ceiling. The traffic came up blurred velvety grey, a somehow blissful wash. It's 1:30. I need to be at Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas at 7. An hour to get there? - Lee Krasner 1961 Primeval resurgence, b.1908. Pollock Number 1 1949, b.1912. MOCA - here's the one I like best and what do I like about it. Cream, black, a pinkish reddish brown. It's organically principled somehow. Structures behind structures. It's complex. It has a foreground and corners. The corners have different feeling - in fact the left and right sides do. The shapes on the left are more whole, uninterfered. On the right some scribbles over, a head with a seaweed crown. It has the sort of skill Gordon Smith has - of marks and multiplicity. I like the Pollock too but it seems easier to do. Black, pale blue, cream, a bit of mustard. Strings and splats, it works. But hers is full of places to go. I've rushed past most of what's here, there's nothing to see, even the sacred Rothkos. - It's full of places to go and they're all in different styles. No elements are elementary. There's a bottom to top shift in scale that is like landscape, but it's not obvious. The bottom third has roots down, longer black streaks. The play of formed against loose is right, slightly figurative to gesture. 14 Union Station courtyard, Monday morning. Light sun at 10:30. Very tall slender palms, two rows. Four young pepper trees, two rows of hard-leaf I think pittosporums. Box hedges enclosing bird of paradise and red roses. Rounded concrete curbs. It's a mission courtyart with birds in the hibiscus hedges - yellow hibiscus. Above it to the southwest is a building I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been sitting here, some pale concrete civic building, not sure what era, 60s? Subtle and perfect in its detail. I'd like to memorize it. Has Deco memory but it's brought forward into this grid in two shades of cream with some grey detail, stepped recessing around the windows. Sophisticated. It has rectitude. Correct relations of scale. - Metropolitan Water Board 1998, $150 million, Gensler arch. There is a cafeteria. Large courtyard opens out of the station courtyard, entrance on N Alameda. Coming into LA Saturday I couldn't see much but this morning the warehouses and works yards and trailer parks were interesting, I had artist's eyes again. Jerry with his most recent ex last night at the show. Irina and her friend Conrad across the table in the pub, talking to Adam. A woman called Kate who was in Brazil filming insects on a Nikon D7000. Ross's wife Claudia (?) who loved the film. A young black man giving a drum concert on overturned plastic buckets outside the Hollywood/Highland station as I came up out of the Red Line. - It was a good bed - the best bed so far - high enough to see out - a white platform with fine sheets. I liked the bathroom's big window and the many white washcloths, and the broad solid sink with a right width of shelf above it. Lee Krasner 1908-1984 (75) abstract expressionist New York School MOMA retrospective. Affected Pollock. Met him 1942, married 1945. "Interest in forces of organic growth." "Her real development after Pollock's death in 1956." 15 The screening. David's film seemed oldfashioned, early [Migration 1969], junky even, though I liked the bird repeating through the film beating steadily along. But gulls don't migrate. Richard's Plein air [1991] mostly wonderful, woven streaks with sometimes a brief catch of a visible thing, a couple of times the visible things there too long, a quiet repeating beat as of a wheel turning? Then Notes in origin on a large screen, shots not as long as they can be, scratches in the middle. I felt I was holding my breath, it was so silent, the audience didn't stir. Frames so strong and chalky-bright, loving. Was I boring     no Was I awkward     no Was it wrong to bring up structure     NO Did anyone get it     no Did Irina like me   Was I foolish after the gin and tonic     no Did I do what needed to be done   Will Adam invite me back   Was it trivial   Should I have stayed for Cal Arts     no Was I ugly     no Did Jerry think I was awkward     What I saw in the program was the way Brakhage in David's early piece had been brought forward in Richard's film and even more in Daichi's. Mine is not in that lineage. Should I propose a film evening with a talk? I didn't answer well, I feel - don't think accurately enough when I have to answer fast. - [Reading Thompson Mind in life for a student] What's wrong with phenomenology - "How thinking, perceiving, acting and feeling are experienced in one's own case" - but journals and novels, poems a philosophy of the lived body "Consciousness constitutes objects" - consciousness doesn't act, through the body does. It's still Cartesian. "Experience has a structure" - body has structures. phenomenological reduction = attitude of interest in how experience happens - but don't imagine looking at 'experiences' as objects bracketing = both natural and scientific attitudes "trainable skill," "awareness of awareness" But is it possible? It's something else - thinking of it that way is structural metaphor. I mistrust the jargon of setting up isolating and fantastical networks that don't test against others. Correct interest in being, correct emphasis on ordinary being. Husserl wanting a new foundation for science is Cartesian. But yes to the idea of first person methods, Buddhism, contemplation, Varela neurophenomenology. Empirical and psychological. "Transcendental phenomenology" - Kant - "laws under which experience necessarily operates in order to constitute a meaningful world" - 'Experience' doesn't operate. 'Focusing on appearances' - object metaphor "Active engagement on the part of consciousness" - yes active engagement - no, on the part of the body - base level object-action structure No "intensional activity of consciousness" - intentional activity of the nervous system Am I right about this   He is englamoured     YES 'intentionality' = aboutness, transitiveness self-world, embeddedness x "mental acts perceiving, remembering" etc States not acts, acts is whole body. Bodily structural states. Intentional experiences are conceptualized not as states having content but as acts having directedness. No, it's neither, because experience isn't the subject, it isn't a representation, it isn't an act. Bodies are directed by means of structural states/processes. 'Experience' is one part of a body's directed state. Re-presentation in phenom jargon means simulation not presentation. Enactive/dynamical systems - "structural coupling of system and environment" - yes. The system has to structure itself to perceive things external to the system as external by its own self-organization. "External events for the system." subject has to be seen as a living bodily subject of experience, and as belonging to a life world "Aesthesis sense perception" before active object-making. "Openness to being affected through the medium of our living body" - body is not a medium through which 'we' are affected. Category of pre-given as if the old category of body vs mind. "passive," "primodial openness" "sedimented patterns" as metaphor for structure - Merleau-Ponty "the habitual body" as opposed to "the body at this moment" "the life-world" "always already pre-given" "practical and theoretical horizon" In contrast to the world as conceived by science "objective nature," "attitude adopted by a community of theorizing subjects" Something about objects always having background and vice versa - naturalize phenomenology dynamic co-emergence autonomous system and 'selfhood' - autopoetic cells, autonomy embodied dynamicism "Cognition is the exercise of skillful know-how in situated and embodied action," "made of coupling with the environment" enactive approach: 1. autonomous agents 2. nervous system self-org 3. cog = know-how, sensory-motor coupling 4. mode of coupling = 'world', not represented internally 5. investigate 'experience' complexity = dynamic instability - metastability "continuous co-evolution of acting, perceiving, imagining, feeling and thinking" Selfhood "at the level of behavior and intentional action" Co-emergence of outside and inside Cellular, somatic, sensorimotor, neurocognitive "distributed networks with organizational closure" Computational systems as heteronymous - representationalist - "feature-binding problem an artifact of a certain way of looking at the brain" Freeman: construction by nonlinear dynamics of a macroscopic, spatially coherent oscillation pattern that covers an entire area of sensory cortex The emergent pattern is not a representation .... It is a state transition ... construction of a pattern that is shaped by synaptic modification from prior learning ... brain stem nuclei that bathe the forebrain in neuromodulatory chemicals. 16 Gordimer story collection from the library. I'm more interested in the ones about sex. The flatness of time without it. I can work on the ML design today, exercise on Thompson, but then there's too much time left over, there's no central fire. Ambition isn't that, for me. Nadine Gordimer 2010 Life times: stories 1952-2007 Farrar, Straus and Giroux Is there anything that could be that for me now     YES What    generous unwithdrawn erotic completion (9p) Is that what you want to say     YES What I was in the DR time     no In the GW time     YES Do I need another person for that     no Can I be turned on if no one desires me     yes But I do need objects   What would be my object     coming through, turn for the better, withdrawal, improvement Get unwithdrawn and you'll find out?     Can I do anything about falling     no I'll break something     no It's a neural fault   Would exercise help     no Walk more     no It's not muscular   Walk with a cane     no Concentrate when I walk   Is it going to get worse     NO It happens when I'm distracted   Worse if I walk more     no Vary with what I eat     no Can I retrain the circuit     no   Be as good looking as I can be     YES Try to be 140   Exercise more     no Wd a stimulant help   17 I dreamed I was singing with my father. We sang one verse and I liked hearing the voices stepping together at their intervals so much we did it again twice. The sensation of hearing my own voice being made instant by instant, sometimes sharper and higher than I expected, his coming darker and evener steady underneath it. When I woke at night I would try to remember the song but I now don't. - The voice I could monitor and the voice that was just there keeping it effortless company, is that the way to say it. Thinking of teaching Clarisse to listen before she talks or writes. But when I woke I was in the state I think of as soul, and longing for that state. I wanted to use the world 'spiritual' for what I was concerned with - I was remembering what it is like to quake in the solar, quake with realness. I have been teaching without it and spoke at Film Forum without it, complacently, and am ashamed on account of that absence. I couldn't go on with Tom because I had left that realness with him. It's what's meant by generous unwithdrawn erotic completion. When I am in soul - should I say with soul? - dreams can mean something. Was the dream telling me how to do it     no Evoking it     YES I thought of Margo leaving the program, taking soul out of it. As always I wondered why I lost soul with Tom. Is there a single reason?   My decision     no His?   Will I ever understand that     Is pain the only way to get to soul     no Is unsatisfied longing     no Sex     no Intent     no But all of those can do it     no It's never that   It's only ever naked honesty     YES It's only ever naked honesty     yes Making the outer as the inner     YES And it has to be everywhere   Everywhere always?     no Everywhere mostly     YES The acid state   Self loyalty   - Sarah Bakewell with Eleanor [Wachtel] March 13, 2011 Montaigne 1533-1592, sent away to live in a peasant home till 3. Périgord dialect and Latin. French renaissance, humanist friends. At 38 ten years of reclusion, Chateau de Montaigne, "freedom, tranquility and leisure." Best friend Etienne de la Boétie, "Parce que c'était lui, parce que c'était moi." Died when he was 30. Shakespeare may have read him, 1603 translation. 18 I was unpacking a box of meat, cutting raw slices off the bone, putting them into a pot to cook. First I was slicing muscle off the face of a little blond girl and then lifting a thigh bone out of the box. I was having some misgivings about whether we should eat human flesh. - What about the mind & land book - am I being too desultory about it, as if it doesn't matter. What's it for - have I even thought about that. Do I know how to think about it. As it is now, maybe 200 pages 12x10. It's cross-purposes Mike's idea of a monograph with critical comment Those can be online, don't have them in M&L     Then are the films in M&L at all only Notes in O Mainly it's to have a hard copy of the photos Would the reproduction quality be worth it   On Blurb   Online film monograph different project   So then M&L is really m&l. Notes in O is featured more Leaving, wwwk, being An essay saying what the relation is between photo/seeing and the epistemology Should it be Blurb? If so their InDesign template. Is that workable? Replace the Notes in O DVD? What is the benefit in art/philos of being a farm girl Different audiences but Still the categories   [opposite page notes on Createspace, Blurb, Lightning Source color books] 20 A grey wind today 21 Monday morning a bit after 6, solid black at the window, only one room lit in the St Paul's black. It rained hard last night, a January rain smashing against the west window. - Just there I hear light rain again on the roof. - And then heavier, crackling of large drops on the glass. This rain will be carrying radioactive particles from Japan, which will be taken up by vegetables. When eaten the radioactivity will slice through cell walls. I woke feeling ashamed of the mediocrity of my position - not the mediocrity of my being, but that is implicated too by the fact that I haven't made my way to a better job, better friends. For instance I have no friend who would look at that sentence objectively with me, and not try to pad me in relation to my facts, which are that our program now is leveled to the leadership it has chosen to suit the mediocrity of the majority, and that I have given my last 15 years to a flatterer. Am having that thought probably because first packets are in and last night I was having to explain semicolons, dashes, blockquote and citation format. When I remember myself as a student - the way I picked up all the fine points on my own - I feel that the sort of detailed teaching I do is useless, because anyone worth teaching does not need teaching. It's as if what we do is lend our own capacity to weak minds so our collaboration pulls them through to pass some standard they can't reach on their own. In effect their tuition pays for flattery. The best university education can do is what we don't do, set curricula that require meeting the best minds on some topic, sequence those meetings, evaluate strictly (admit only the competent), set reliable bars. So what I'm doing isn't university education. At its best it is feminist mentorship, which is alright as a way to make a living, except for the mass of useless labor, which this semester mostly will be. Blue-grey daylight, drops on the cleaner windows. I'll hoist the blinds next to me. [Opposite page: notes on hardware and software requirements] 22 I've been feeling the physical stress of having to deal with minds worse than mine. The first night, lying in bed I felt the inner tightness I haven't felt since before Christmas. Last night I woke at 1:30 and couldn't go back to sleep till 3:30 when I took an aspirin. Wondering whether the acid ache is a sort of poisoning by other minds. - Which are organizations of bodies. Remembering how brightly well-knit I looked when I was writing from Pat Churchland. - That said, I'm working on what's wrong with the souls in my charge. Ondine - in thrall to her cut-off father and confused in pain. Why she needs to say Korzybski is better than Gendlin who is a generous warm father. She takes as if an intellectual stance but really her mind is a child's. Solipsistic. Clarisse runs ahead of herself, doesn't give herself time to find herself, throws herself around, but she can hear true description and she's interested. James needs to feel he's a deep thinker but he hasn't in 30-some years noticed the proper use of a dash. He did notice he gets lost in whoever he's reading and doesn't hold his own point of view. That's important - that is his key, he has to ground patiently, get his personal base clear. Jody is what she is, I only need to enjoy her and enrich her options. Kay is late because she's a perfectionist. Gil, Tabe, is very simple, has only a few inaccurate thoughts; it is too late to do anything for him. Zach has backed off what he does best but should I say so? It'll be work to sort him. Nan has tried for an intellectual frame, I'll see whether she has got it. 23 I'm sick. Sore throat night before last, sore all over last night, throat, head muscles. Couldn't sleep though I took aspirin. It will run its course through a week. Worried about the decision about the computer. Worried about the mass of packets. Should I have said no to the computer? 24 So trashed. Coming into the second day, flattened, blank. Any small effort seems too much, I just want to lie here, but lying here is not good either, my ears are hissing hard. Do not want to eat. Have worked a bit but run out of mental energy fast. Enduring time, it will pass but I have to suffer all its passing. 25 I have weazled out of buying the computer. It wasn't as new as the ad had made me think, I wd have spent the money for not enough advantage through it had 4GB and a 500 drive. Yesterday my jeep twice got stuck in park. The first time it unstuck after I revved the engine. The second it stayed stuck. I was on the 7-11 parking lot and had to go across to Jimmy Carter's [restaurant] to phone Robert's and then Coastal Towing. [Mac buying notes] I was in the Laundromat one day last week, was sitting in the small U of chairs waiting for my clothes to dry. Someone had parked his eagle-faced old black mother at the head of the U. I was reading, not noticing, until she suddenly coughed, a loud sharp bark. I leapt out of my chair and stood away from her by my drier. I know what can come of a stranger's cough. But it was too late, that dim old creature had infected me with this misery. Last night was easier. I dozed through the whole night, damp all over, weak and dull-headed but not aching. 27 Sunday. My lungs aren't well yet, I'm breathing through fur though not really sick. Tom made hospital visits the last three mornings. 28 Monday morning, now I have to work on packets again. Still breathing through fur. Cut my hair yesterday in a reckless moment. It's a dry mess, not what I imagine for shoulder length, and now I can't get it out of my way in a queue. Was sick of its dry ends. Conference call at noon I notice, ugh, and we have nothing to talk about. - Robert's Automotive driver came and got me, and we drove out into enameled brilliance. The verges have iceplant in jewel colors. The canyon slopes are blazing yellow. It was windy which seemed to have the effect of polishing the day. I was arisen from sick bed and restored to the open, so the blazing of flowers everywhere was my blaze of recovery. Have noticed my skin, for instance on my flanks and upper arms, feels silkier after nights of heavy sweating. Penpals and their areas: David L history, David B health and nature, Martin hi lit, Greg books and computers, Jerry not known yet, design? Tom eventually? pop music. Best note today from Mike Hoolboom. Couple of blog mentions. Woman who was at the Montreal show wrote that the best moment was when I said stillness allows seeing motion. Man in SF wrote that Migration and Notes in origin were his favorites. Zach was at the Boston show. When I'd got the jeep I drove to Bread & Cie and gave myself the best lunch, their tomato soup and half a ham and cheese sandwich. Ate the soup very slowly, chewed the bread on and on for its beautiful subtle tastes. It was a holiday. 29 Luke is in love with a woman called Lynne. "She really wants me." 35, ad exec, "a handful, beautiful, strong, smart, funny, sexy experienced, ready." - My first thought is that they're in for it, they'll take on more than they can now imagine. Maybe they'll manage and if not, Luke will still have kids. Two daughters, it says. 30 What to do with Kay. Packet a week late, she says because she wanted it to be perfect. I don't think that's exactly it. I see her difficulty. Hmong/American. Animist/Christian. Cultural woman / free woman. Poet / Hmong cultural savior. She hasn't made decisions, she isn't willing to save herself. Do you see why I hate her     no I do, though   Because she doesn't have the gumption to cut and run     YES Ditch the Hmong     YES It is costing her too much   I ditched the Mennonites but they didn't need me. Would it have been different if they did? Is there anything you want to tell me about this     no She needs a therapist   31st It's not over yet, coughing up yellow slime, sinuses swollen. Not hungry, don't even want tea, it seems too thick. Don't want to read, don't want to lie here but wobbly if I get up. Lonely in a dry dull way. Depressed. Breathless after walking half a block. 1st April A night with one long dream, more a story that I was elaborating as I dozed. I was alone in a post-apocalyptic downtown living in a high-rise finding ways to stock goods and secure areas. The top level of my skyscraper was clear glass so I could plant a garden. I was moving alertly in the sort of spaces there are in a skyscraper under construction. It was essential to stay hidden. There might be hidden rooms, hidden staircases. If bad men found me I'd have to kill them and dump them down an elevator shaft. I was a resourceful heroine. The rule for some reason was I could never go outside - maybe radiation - but I could scout through other buildings connected with mine by downtown malls. In the morning when there was light at the window a young woman called Emma appeared suddenly. I put my finger to my lips. She could know I was there, and visit me, but she mustn't let her man know or I'd have to kill him. It's a beautiful morning, a perfect morning. Richard's sycamore is in full leaf standing with the 4th Avenue palms in yellow light from the east. The sky is deep and pale, it's 7:30, quiet. It's Friday. I have just one more letter, which I will whip off this morning, and then I'll have 9 or 10 days. Should I go to Borrego maybe? With my sound equipment? - Need real life not reading - the thought of newspapers sickens me. Laundry this morning, all my germy bedding and pyjamas. Window wide open, door open, hot bright day blowing through the room. I sneaked into Sean's back yard to look at the robinia, which is resplendent. We were worried over winter but it's thick with new leaves and purple flowers. The pink bougainvillea is a shining pile. The almond is bright green. It's a garden, graceful, open, pretty, pleasure for worthy Sean, who can step onto his back porch and look down into love. And then I went to Scott's. On the front porch a pile of new leaves on the passiflora and lots of pomegranate flowers. The pepper tree in the pot halfway alright again. Opened the gate - the palo verde has leaves but not flowers yet. White sage flower stalks 8' high behind the fountain. Ceanothus blooming. The iceplant-thing a vulgar smother of purple daisy-flowers. The bush oak has new leaves, has come back. A few California poppies. Then the back, everything good. iceberg roses fresh new things covered with buds, all 5 of them. One of the new passifloras blooming pink. Quiet order. Even coming in past Richard's fence, looking at wood and vines I was longing for a life outside, things to do outside. 2nd Dreamed I was thinking of the house on East Pender, thinking I'd tell its tenant to let me know if they ever wanted to leave. Woke and remembered it's gone forever. But should I move back to Canada   I would have to pay rent somewhere     no It wd rain through the winter, the rain wd make me ill     no   I could revive the herb garden. The liveliest life would not be waiting for me - ie lover, local politics, garden, SFU study and TAing, young Rowen, Luke, Louie - Will you talk to me about moving back   Should I move to Borrego     no To Santa Ysabel     no search for friendship, graduate, from anger Nice old lady     no   What do I want A little house with a garden Time in London with Luke Enough money to travel Good health, good looks My jeep To quit [the college] Interesting friends Beautiful creation, magnificent creation   Philosophy?     no Start closing out my drawers   The last section of w&d - the worst time - the kind of defeat it was - Hacienda del Sol 4 April I'm here frail. Driving was completely placid, I'm so dialed back I hardly felt the effort of packing or the freeway - just drove fast and fearlessly and then after Santa Ysabel slow and unexcitedly. I hardly want to eat. Left coughing behind in my moldy house. The jeep's heat dried my lungs it seemed. I'm booked 4 nights - M, T, W, Th. 5 Doves continuous. I'm next to a little olive. Ants in the sand, yellow in the palo verde like large pollen clots. A slight acerbic scent. A maid's red car appears with radio playing, drives to a shaded spot in the back. Quiet cactus holding light in its furry spines. Is the man in the pink teeshirt meditating? Creosote. It's rabbitland but they're waiting till later. Am I ready to eat? Steak. Two white-haired lesbians coming from a duplex. They have the look of ministers. Steak sandwich. The creosote smell is a medecine. Squeaky little birds. I'm sniffling but not coughing slime. - Kendell's - "I just want some steak and some toast." "Side of steak, how do you want it?" "Well done." "What kind of toast?" "Do you have rye?" 6 This morning I started with the headphones, then the mic, then went for a 9v battery for the mic, then went for steak and toast, then came back and sat blissed out with the Maranz in my hands. 7 Ugh it's not worth ordering tea in restaurants. Cold and weak. Should I pitch a tent and stall till Sunday to miss the rain in SD. Don't want to go home, want to stay in wide space and scented air and the sort of silence there is. - Campground, Torres Desert Nursery. Happy. [Opposite page audio note and sketchy transcription of first recordings] 8 How is it I just go on having nothing to say. Still weak, not coughing but my lungs aren't well, I'm breathless when I walk just a little. Sore throat and thick nose. It has turned cold. I'm going to camp tonight, Saturday and Sunday. Forecast is for wind, maybe a bit of rain. Should I even bother to put up the tent, it will rattle. I'm going to camp because I didn't bring enough money and the forecast is for snow in the mountain passes, rain in SD, till Sunday. I like the far end of the campground, where the spots are far apart and up against the mountain's flank rising beautiful and interesting toward oxblood cut rock facets near the top. Friday morning. Mike with a yellow stepladder cutting up the brushy old palo verde that split in a gust yesterday and fell into the party patio. Meantime new small palo verdes in bloom planted across the street on that edge of bare desert. I'm in a cane chair at my door wearing sunglasses for the glare off the page. The sun's a perfect spring temperature at 9:30. Tall palo verde across the street from me waving its yellow tips against blue and white. There's a little acacia over near the ice dispenser. They are a fresh light green unusual here, striking. The man with a pretty spread up on the Glorietta Canyon road has them planted with his metal horse fences and water tanks. An ocotillo in full orange bloom against the milky blue of a mountain behind it. When I was driving from Glorietta Canyon I was creeping down the slightly inclined white dust road in 4 wheel drive, lowest gear. Noticed on the first N-S leg that the driver's side pan was wonderful, arrays of creosote, agave, rabbitbush, that other small yellow bush, flowing against anchored mountain. - Thinking that for desert movie if I'm going to do that. Rainbow slick on the cirrus green purple pink turquoise, more through the sunglasses. - [Site] 103 in the campground - almost 7 - yawning - sitting in the jeep for warmth, looking southeast over the valley - there's dark cloud over the back of the mountain, heavy raincloud that seems to be lightening as it comes over the crest - is it time to creep into my bed - where there are two hot water bottles. There's so little to read, I have a southwest/California nature writer who is sickening me with her ingratiating exaggerations. Annie Proulx' grim tales. Between times I read through the Edged out 1-10 index pages and liked the real life of smart people in them. Four nights of TV in which I kept clicking through and would only stop for a few characters, the woman in Bones and the man in The mentalist, in Bones having to put up with smashed corpses. Vile stupid America what is alternative to you. [more audio tanscription] 9 Whole night without blowing my nose. Not a hard night. Warm bed, warm soft flannel bed with an excellent hot water bottle, the steel water bottle from Tom's first aid backpack. I don't like that the tent has a plastic rattle but most of the night was quiet. This morning it's ice cold. Saturday. I fell asleep imagining a desert garden with walls, palms, dates, bananas, rows of citrus including citron and yuzu, tangelos, a long row of melons, cucumbers, squash, beans, peas, carrots, lettuce, chard, onions, garlic and shallots, beets. And chickens, a long high-ceilinged covered run, end wall with nest boxes that can be opened from outside, some moveable pens so they can clean up garden beds when they're done. A Mexican grandfather looking after it. A bread oven. A couple of composters. Guavas, almonds, peaches, apricots. Banks of roses. Water tanks with a windmill. It's for the pink-floored house with the studio. The front of it opens toward the desert. What direction for the food garden - north so there's a shade zone. Placeable posts to support shade cloth. A side strip one passes through to the door - that's the salvia collection. Shading into swimming pool and cactus. It's a long lap pool, raised. The wild front is gardened to its property line, rock swales, acacia, mesquite, palo verde, a track away into the park - it borders the park. Bedrooms upstairs. Sleeping roof. - Oh sleeping roof. I live there all year. Big freezer. Service edge onto the garden. Willow - long windbreak either side, acres - rows of one kind, tempering the air for each other. The look of oranges on a tree - imagine a row of those - I've just picked up a couple of armfuls off the ground, the best real oranges, scabby, partly dried out, intense perfumed perfect medicine growing quietly in the sound of a single dove. - Imagine the birds I'd have. Imagine the chickens under the orange trees. Olives. Such tranquil heat. Tables among the trees. Days and years all with distinct character. - Today there's a skin of haze over the hills. A faint rustle in the citrus leaves. - Black trunk acacia, pinyon, smokebush, ocotillo, juniper, eucalyptus, oak, a kind of gold button acacia. What color stucco - pale red brown - outside walls 8' with grilled windows - long covered driveway with solar panels all along it. [opposite page plan sketch] 10 After dark when I'd got into my warm bed the wind blew hard. The tent danced like a fighter. A gust came that was so fierce it buckled the tent, in one corner the pole bent into an S. I jumped out of my covers and held it up so that when the gust let up the tent was standing again. Not long after it bent again, and then again. A lot to do. Had to empty the whole back of the jeep, bring my bedding in three trips from quite far back in the scrub. Make my bed with the foot end sticking out under the hatch. Then I had to go back and take the tent down in cold wind in the dark. Bundle up the fly and stuff it into the front seat. Go back and pull out the poles. I felt a splintered end on one of the side pole segments, it had snapped. Yank up the tent corners and bundle it into the front seat too. I'll go back for the pegs in the morning. Get into my bed hoping there's still enough heat in the water bottles to warm up my cold leg. The jeep is faced into the wind, warm and solid, but I'm too close to my neighbours, two couples drinking and laughing. The same laugh, four people synchronized ha-ha-ha-ha after every exchange, loud stupid men's voices dominating. On my other side this morning a middle-aged bully with a gut and a beard tuft managing his bosomy younger wife. "Did you throw away that ladle? I loved it" she says. "It's yours. I don't want to see it again" he says. There is a little rat-dog on a leash. I'm bitter this morning though it's a good morning. A jack rabbit came nibbling flowers. Its ears were translucent red. It moved like a kangaroo, timorously, jacked up in the rear. I was watching from my bed in the jeep. Ellen Meloy was born 1946, married a river ranger, younger I think, when she was 39, and died without warning, in bed next to her husband, when she was 57. They had lived in a house they built in Bluff, Utah. She was tall, a good swimmer, lively. Her husband's job was rafting rivers. She went with him every year. I miss someone to talk to. I miss talk and feel incapable of it. I hear kids' voices at the washhouse and remember Judy and me on camping trips. Our voices will have run confidently like that, ownselves lively every minute. There are two mountains nearby, piles with different characters. The one slightly to the north has thick dark red-brown bones that seem to run vertically. Rockslide and runoff have gouged grayish scars between them. There are a couple of fins on its crest, paler, speckled with dark green bushes. - I've brought out the recorder because of a bird on the palm across the road. It is singing long complicated series - percussive bits, whistles, rattles. Now I'm listening to the recording - look up at the tree expecting to see it there - here comes the phantom car, it's next to me and invisible! Sound texture - a fly - phantom presence more than visual - this little machine makes me happy. The other is larger, a bit further away, prettier. Its upper third is dignified, queenly, pink blocks in a fine arrangement. - I wandered into the scrub with the Maranz in its bowl. There was almost silence but it squealed to say the card was full. So then I just lay there with the hot sand under my back, silence all around, and that was perfect. One last steak at Kendall's. I'll begin to go home but don't want to. Am thinking Black Canyon Road tonight. 11 And then drove Black Canyon Road but didn't stay. It was soft green all over, the creek was full, Indian paintbrush here and there. Road banks damp red clay. I wasn't called. The only places to park are next to the road, where any beer-drinking yahoo can blast through. What I'm thinking as I cuddle under blankets in my own bed under the overcast sky on the coast is that I'd like to travel soon, east to the southwest. I'd like to weed the stuff in the back of the jeep, make much less of it, essentialize, and then go to the Four Corners, New Mexico, a long trip. Do yoga to be more limber. Slow breathing to be quicker into tuning, whatever cardio I need for more energy, video and sound, proper metal suitcases for equipment, dust sealed. Tuesday 12th At the close of the breeding season certain birds, such as male ducks, become covered with dull or colorless feathers. Zoologists call this phase eclipse plumage. 170 Ellen Meloy 2002 The anthropology of turquoise Vintage What I've been asking myself as I read Meloy is whether nature writing has to hype to be saleable. She exaggerates in Dillard's manner and tells cute stories about herself that make her seem loveably feminine as well as strong and capable. She also has many exact moments and she has read up on many things worth understanding; I've read the whole book and am sorry to finish it. But I've kept a watchful distance, I haven't given over to admiration the way I can with Lopez, who is cleaner. She chooses quotations I don't like, that have the quality I don't like in her, of fanciful décor. "A lot of life is like that. A lot of life is just a matter of learning to like blue." "I thought I would never survive my own imagination." What is it about cornflakes with half a packet of peanuts in whole milk, it's about the only thing I want to eat. In the last months I've done what I never used to do, waste food, bring things home and put them in the fridge and weeks later throw them out. I've also been more reckless about putting recycleable stuff into the garbage. At the same time have kept my room cleaner. Have washed the floor oftener and may dust every day. [notes on the Mac Pro tower] Tuesday late afternoon, sun almost straight through the west window. I've dodged packets so far, though I did a lot of prelim as they came in yesterday. Want to work with the sound files but the sound card isn't showing up on my desktop. 13 There I thought to try the first sound card, and it showed, and I listened to 27 flies in itunes. Pared them down some, learned to mark. Then thought to look for granular synthesis and found a lot of sites. I can get software. I can make grainy sound for my grainy images. I know to have interrupted sound, as on The civil war. Now I need to get a waveform editor and learn to see what I hear and hear more by seeing. I have some useable stretches of mockingbird - it was a mockingbird on the palm.   part 5 in america volume 22: 2010-2011 december-may work & days: a lifetime journal project