| in america 5 part 3 - 2004 june-july | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Hotel Patricia, Vancouver June 12 2004 Saturday morning. Here's a room. Louie last night. Cheryl and Rowen on Thursday. Over there my orange singlet on a hanger next to a blue shirt. I have internet in my room. Louie liked the idea of putting the journal on the web. She didn't blanch about the bad things I say about her. We drank Yellowtail shiraz and ate roast chicken and olives. Her hair is growing out of its dye. She looks good. I noticed a dread of going back to talking on the phone from SD although I liked many moments being with her. One was when I played her the Italian Duets and she described the way the soprano surges forward. What I dread is her pressure to feel what I don't feel and be interested in what I'm not interested in. That must be what Tom felt. Her house is partly lapsed but I didn't take it personally. There is a horrible quilt in the orange room. She refinished the cedar table, sanded it and oiled it, brought up its cedar glow of orange. Rowen knocked on my door nineteen years old. The size he is as a man, slight, curved at the top of his spine. I took him clothes shopping. We came back to the room and he tried them in various combinations. Then he tried on my clothes, which are all young man clothes. He liked the green cord jacket and the red linen shirt and my cargos. Cheryl knocked after dark and we sat on the bed giggling. She loves me after all the years. Well she loves Diana, Betsy, Daphne and many other people too. She liked the journal/web idea. We both said we felt we had passed our primes when our last love relation ended. Louie suggested I could have a despair link-line that crosses the other lines. Now it will be evaluations all day. 13 I finished four evals yesterday and have three more for today. 14 It has been raining and dark since I got here. It's odd that's all I have to say. Cheryl this aft at three. Have been watching TV movies. The bodyguard, Costner and Whitney Houston. The texture of that one was better than the rest - the silent man and the stellar woman. They spoke their lines very lightly, both of them, intelligently. Who directed that? My shirts on their hangers, blue, red, green. The colors are suspended in the background of the photos I took of Rowen at the window. Look there's sun straight from the east - I told Cheryl that it's Tom for me, or no one - We argued about art - she's such a courtier - knows what the fashion is - when I told her about David Rimmer's footage of the Indian woman's foot, the sari hem, the grain lifting and falling, she said such footage could never be shown without something else that 'contexts' it - it would be seen as appropriation, a privileged man essentializing a brown woman etc. What would contextualizing be, for instance? Another video with a white business man's shoe. I say, What, if you want to show something you like to see you have to show something you don't want to see? We squabbled about Roni Horn - she said the water is a text. She said, You are underestimating social conditioning. I said we perceive by means of our structure and the actual world makes our structure, the whole of evolution. She said, more or less, Whatever. She said, What do you think is David's muse? I said, I think it's love. Love, she said. She's choosing the bitter love story. It's a corrupt ideology, it's a corrupt time, it is as if we have to put our work away until this witchhunt of the real world goes away. 15 It is as if, whenever there's something we need, we (I mean artists) are required to forgo it, and not only that, but to forgo feeling we need it. Why is art ruled by corrupt ideology? Why is it ruled by doctrine? As if we are in the Middle Ages hiding from the world. - With Rowen: [Rowen talks about interacting with weird people on the bus] "Interacting with a Frankenstein of real people." "If you could do anything at all what would you do?" "Something to do with almost a sort of controlled movement - if I look at a building and see a scenario, something happening in the building, I've been playing a game, settings for a game. Directing settings."
16th With Luke and Rowen at Hon's yesterday. I said of Rowen, Isn't he pretty. Luke said, Enjoy it while you can. He said the books I gave him last time were so good he read them immediately with Kim and her mother. [Coming through slaughter, Sound of the mountain, Riddley Walker] I said then I would get him more. I was awake before 5 and it was light - the water silver, the mountains clearly drawn against the pale sky. Starting to be here. Ran into Tony Gordon-Wilson on Hastings. Captain Cat. He's 65 and very trim. Very. His gymnast's body. He said his mother took a picture of him doing a back flip above the city. It was a pleasure to see him. John Turvey is dying of mitochondrial myopathy. He's 59. We ran into Becky on the street yesterday, sturdy Becky who lost Isaac last year. She was tying up her bike. Her face was lightly furred. The first day back I ran into the dock worker who was my neighbour all the years. - VYR international departures hall - this space has a nice sound quality, acoustic tile on the high ceiling, carpet on the floor - the light has a similar quality because there are white shades on some of the 3-storey windows. Simple white tree pillars. Two birds dipping against the whiteness. The young woman next to me has pearlized purple toenails, is jiggling her feet studying a psychiatry handbook. A handsome Arab well-dressed in an open-necked burgundy shirt may or may not be planning to bomb my flight. He is reading a book by Alex Kaya - would a terrorist be reading a novel before he died? He would be looking around noticing who he was about to kill. And this one is looking around - he just looked at me. His foot is not jiggling. He must be thinking I'm wondering whether he's going to kill me - The taxi driver was a Punjabi who liked talking politics. When I said I was a professor he gave me a longer look in the rearview mirror. He was a serious voter. I approved. He had a question - if the earth is divided into 360 degrees, and it takes 24 hours to rotate relative to the sun in one hour, then the earth will rotate 15 degrees relative to the sun in one hour, and it will take 4 minutes to rotate 1 degree. But (I think it was this) somewhere else he read that it takes 59.5 minutes to rotate through 15 degrees. He has been pondering this question for some time. Hardly anyone is talking on cell phones, is it because it is Canada? Oh the elderly. They are so nothing. Even traveling, they are full of nothing but home. That's a lovely shape, the man shape, shoulders in a shirt, sleeves rolled, slacks with pleats at the belt. A window seat and this time I brought my topographic map of the whole US. I am going to go through this whole res not eating any flour stuff, and when I get back there is going to be less blubber. And then when I get to SD I am going to join a gym whatever it costs. Plainfield, 17th In Chicago waiting for United 488 to Burlington I was watching people pouring by pretending I was there with Tom and we were seeing whether there was anyone we would ever be willing to sleep with. The men as usual were unthinkable - and then there was a sunburned kid in a Santa Cruz teeshirt. When we boarded I was in 24F, the back corner, with a complaining old thing on the aisle. And then came this kid and plopped down between us. Hi, I said. The complaining old thing tried to grab him and he was sympathetic and friendly, but I won. We talked all the way to Burlington. He kept nudging my shoulder with his. He had wonderful acorn-brown eyes and a firm cushy lower lip and high color from working as a snowboard instructor. He was thirty, was a breakfast club kid from a suburb north of Chicago. Catholic school. He got in trouble. When he was in his last year he went to a Grateful Dead concert and he left his old world behind. In college he studied recreation, and then he bartended in Santa Cruz for five years, surfed, smoked weed. He had a lovely warmth. He listened to explanations of my films. I asked him if he was a Gemini and he said no he was a Pisces. We touched palms on that. He had large palms and short fingers. He plays guitar and listens to the old bands, Zappa, the Dead. He wore a baseball cap and ordered two Heinekens from the gay attendant who flirted with him. As we got close to Burlington he was telling me about his love worries and I was giving him advice. By the baggage carrousel we gave each other a hug, he wearing a big worn-out old red packsack. He doesn't pay attention to politics. His parents make money. The Everywhere Taxi driver had a way of speaking I didn't like, loud harsh and tense. I didn't want him to talk to me but he did. We rolled through the Vermont night. He told me he had seen his mother murdered by a boyfriend when he was eight. His dad later was in jail for child molestation. His stepmother died in a motel fire. And so on. Now he and his wife are doing well with the taxi business. They work hard. He carried my bag into my room. The beautiful things I saw. The mudflats as we left Vancouver, their rivulets and sorted colors immaculately formed. Midjourney a perfect sight of crop-striped fields dark-green and tan, some stripes wide and some narrow, some long and some short, set at various angles to each other, the geometry fitted into wild land with small coulees carved in all their detail. I was looking down onto it between patches of cloud that were brilliant white and flowing in glorious variety, with their shadows grey-blue forms motionless on the ground. We came down into Chicago between and through cumulous towers, immense, all leaning slightly to the east, mysteriously neat in outline, nothing fuzzed, everything rounded and intact. Seeing them, passing among them, is like seeing true angels, not anthropomorphic - gigantic, only partially visible to humans, marvelously unsolid, extremely charged with light. I'm in my bed in room 3 in Dewey. I've moved the bed next to the window. Leafy air poured in all night. I slept very well. There are cheeps among the cedar branches. It has clouded over. 19 Heartsore and defeated. There's two-faced politicking. Margo believed it and chided me and now I want to stay away from her and anyone - I want never to come back. What else can I do to make money? 20
Firmer this morning - I know what to say to Margo - but I'm wiped out from not sleeping. 22 Tuesday morning - advising meeting - this aft is Wild research - faculty meeting at noon - prepare for Cognitive significance of birth whenever I can - my workshops have a reputation - unfortunately this one isn't going to be good - 24 Michael was moved. We were standing outside the Community building after the workshop and he was thanking me for something I hadn't known was important to him. Through the semester I'd quietly watched him fail. I had made copies of what will we know, and at the start of the cultural structure section [of the cog signif of birth workshop] I said we'd each read five lines. Michael began. I listened to the way the rhythm of the piece is so secure that everyone could find it. The faculty last night - not Margo - yowling pop song tunes with altered lyrics. I went for a walk under the black sky - so black. The sky is cleaner here. Above the Upper Garden bats crossed faintly brown. The yowling went on. It was cold. I walked some more. What do I feel about this faculty. I like to look at Margo. I like to look at Karen in her neat pert body squirming around. When Lise is here I have someone to talk to. Francis drinking away, Jim the cute little boy, Katt incessantly tossing her hair, Ralph with bright eyes, buttoned tight. This time Barr-Cohen's device for holding control is bringing her little daughter, who sits up with us 'til we go to bed demanding notice. I think mostly they're good at the work - maybe not Francis. I'm as I was in elementary school. The best student and isolated. The teacher likes me. The other kids might like me if I liked them more than I do. Later I'll be somewhere there are people I like more. I'm silent in faculty meetings. They're used to me now. Ellie is abrupt. They don't dislike me. They think I'm okay but they have nothing to say to me. I don't play along. After the workshops last night the movie about Ram Dass. There was a moment when I touched the spot where I am a wave of sharpest love for Tom. Your time, your wish, its failure. 25 Yesterday the advising group met outside, ten chairs in a circle. Sean talked about his global warming project. (Sean is a phys ed teacher, stocky, shaved head, goatee, strong brown eyes.) I asked him to tell us about his vision of the tsunami. He went from there to saying he'd had seizures when he was a child, and after he's been grown has had concussions nine times. I said, Do you know anything about your birth? He'd presented back to front he said, so his skull was heavily bruised by pressing against a bone. He came out with his forehead so swollen it came down over his eyes. Everyone was interested in the way all of this fit. At the end we went around the circle and each said what we most felt is wrong - this in reference to Lise's address, which was conventionally exhortative but which quoted Christa Wolf on wrongness. The leaves were fluttering, there were birds (there I looked sideways out my window onto the wet underbrush and saw a form which when it moved turned out to be a bird). What we were feeling as we named the wrongs was that they were not where we were at that moment. Juliana dancing with her big butt and strong legs. She got down the way none of the North Americans could. Michael came to ask me whether I'd look at his manuscript when it's done. I said it wouldn't make sense not to. He said, Yes, because you were the one who (I don't remember exactly) got me there. ("He has such a reverence for you," said Carolyn.) I like it that the poets trust me. - On this page a beautiful shadow of window screen, and laid across it the breathing shadow of leaves. I thought, it's an image of what I could have instead of words. And since my words are now so plain, should I try that? I guess it's called meditation. 26 Vancouver, Hotel Patricia 331 Aching, strung out. The flight home after a res is always an ordeal although the flights to a res are good - the res's wreck me. A silence. When Corin came I had nothing to say to her. In advising group sometimes I didn't want to move my mouth. It's as if anything alive in me was saying, there's nothing here for me. As if in my invisible platform I have lost hope, I've lost both hopes, all hopes. I don't want to be a [college] drudge anymore. I have so much less flare. I had no bursts of invention. People loved the wild research paper. Michael and Favor liked the cog signif of birth but I didn't finish it right - the weak souls went away brutalized. The embodied writing thing was alright though I had that same lack of energy for it. In five years I'll have a Canada pension, a tiny amount. I don't want to do this routine flying. The journal, yes, but for money, what - I should get myself in better physical shape first, that part I know. I'd like to be a student some more. What is this - it's faintly suicidal - scares me to say so - what defeat does that mean? As if I'm saying without Tom nothing is worth anything. I say that and my eyes sting. Saturday midday. I'm in Blenz. At the Mac store this morning, spent 470 on a power plug and new battery. 27th Globe and Mail Saturday paper - a piece about June Callwood, a lovely obit of a liberal Anglican archbishop. Callwood is 80, has cancer, is refusing chemo, drives a Mazda Miata and will take it down the I-75 to Florida one more time, to be in the warm sea. I've bought Rowen a month at the May Wah hotel where he has an old bureau and a peacock-blue bedspread, #308 on a long corridor. The hotel keeper is Lily, who is a practical mother. AND I found Louie a sofa - it's Art Deco, beautiful design, and she'll have the young man reupholster it in rust red. I walked past the shop in Chinatown this morning and saw the shabby pink thing through the doors. It had been there for a couple of days. 28 Transcribing the first of the journals I didn't have in SD, Nov 1995 - Jan 1996, the most in love I was. [GW4] 29 It's five in the morning. The mountains are so sharp against the yellow north. I'm looking down into the alley between Hastings and Cordova. At the end of this block I can see the corner of the white hotel Michael lived in with Rowen before he got the house on Jackson. Those monuments of two-legged power poles line up at short intervals carrying three wires on their upper tier and six strung vertically much lower. They're totems, simple timber, regional, decorated with transformer cans and small and large ceramic insulators. Silent bicycles. A notch brightening - there it is suddenly, our god rising. 5:30. I'm sitting up in bed, uncomfortable, writing on my knees. It's a single bed against the window wall. There's a TV on quite a big desk, bureau with shallow rattling drawers. On the wall there's a good Chinese watercolor of two martins suspended near a branch of a white datura. Water stains along the bottom of the matte. Oh gosh - while I was looking at the painting the sun as it lifted above the edge of the mountains raised a white mist over the narrows so that it's standing in a brilliant haze. A pigeon flying against it had its tail feathers transilluminated. Three cranes in the container port are raising their giant headless necks looking north. A can prospector pushing a shopping cart has stopped at the dumpster and is opening garbage bags. Found a beer can. He's digging assiduously. Found another. He's wearing a watch. Juice boxes. It's Tuesday. Today I'll transcribe and have breakfast with Louie, maybe work on the semester magazine. Yesterday I transcribed 14 pages and then watched TV and slept. The election results last night had the Liberals returned with a stronger opposition. 1st July I was waiting for a bus on Hastings yesterday on the way to meet Janet at Harbour Center. The bus stop was in front of a wire fence with a garden behind it. A street woman came toward me along the fence, stopped and held an arm of a rose bush in front of her nose. She was playing at peeking at me over it. And then she came and stood in front of me and said, You're about my mother's age, and if you were my mother I'd tell you you're beautiful. She was brown-haired, very thin, worn-out looking, pale. I said, How old are you? She said, I'm forty-three. I don't know my mother. I'm lost. Ninety percent of the people around here are lost. My bus was arriving. I can see that, I said. She was starting to step away. I blew her a kiss. She blew me one back. My feeling was that the kiss had really begun in her intention rather than mine. It was very synchronized. Janet's husband is drinking again. She was across from me at a table in the Japanese restaurant distracted with worry. I was noticing her beautiful eye, dark blue and crystalline like sapphire although she's my age. I wanted to talk about Tom but it wasn't the time. I didn't say that when I stopped at 824 E Pender on Monday I saw that it's already looking neglected, the paint is peeling and there are more weeds. The bottom step is broken. When I was crossing Keefer, there was Gordie Koo in his old Cadillac. I needed to tell him the Fairmont's story and that I often think of him and thank him for taking care of it. He's seventy, he says. His sister's 78 and in a retirement home. I'm definitely thinner. When I got in at nine I lay down and fell asleep and didn't wake 'til 5. 2nd July Rhonda is distressed that she didn't thank me in her graduation speech. She was mad at me because I wasn't at her grad presentation because I was doing interviews at the time. What should I know about this. I wrote her a snarky note back and this morning she is there again [on email] crying. First, since she's graduated she's cut off from a whole structure of available support. She's there in her house without a job and barely mobile with a husband she's careful not to burden. Second, I let her get away with not acknowledging me because I think she's valiant enough, and if there are things she can't afford to touch I won't try to force her. She didn't want to acknowledge the crisis with photography that I pushed her through. The worst thing about MS is that she was a brilliant photographer. Her written project didn't engage that - she needed to use it to present herself as viable, so there's a central thing she hasn't touched. I understand the dodges there are for presenting oneself as viable. I don't think she does. It's harsh knowledge. The other thing is the awkwardness we both feel in being associated with each other in public. We don't want to be a cripple club. This is another thing I don't think she knows. She takes care of it unconsciously. Thirdly, there is the way we seem to take anyone as a mirror. We take comfort looking at uncrippled bodies (here I object, I say she's a cripple but I'm just lame) and don't like looking at the other kind. It's not 'self-hate', it's that any body is dismayed at seeing injured bodies, and we cannot not feel that dismay in seeing our own. Is that the whole of it? Yes. But is it why she didn't acknowledge me in her grad speech? No. That was because I cut her off at the res. I felt, that's enough of that, I'm done with Rhonda. The goodbye rituals don't matter, what matters is the work. I had a professional relation with Rhonda, not an equal relation. For her, though, I was a right mother and dropped her at the exit. So there I go write an email that apologizes for brutality and suggests she write something more about photography. I don't say "cripple club." - It's Friday after yesterday's holiday. I have to take checks to the bank, try to get to see the doctor, mail Rhonda's revised eval, talk to Mary and maybe book a car for Monday? Pay Visa. It's raining on leaves and roofs and asphalt. I finished transcribing the love journal, Jan 1996, and am transcribing the first months Tom was in Bellingham. Email from Cyndi saying the images in my space file are fantastic - that's the first email I've had about the photos. About Tom - these days I just want him back - I want to have him as he is - an addict, unstable, a rager, and all the rest. Want him without intent to improve him. I just want to be with him, I want his company.
New life - What would I do if I suddenly had money - look after my looks and energy - stop [the college] - have a little house with oak savannah at the door - write - be a web presence - make my beautiful projects - travel - First thing I have to do is get another source of income - 3rd Saturday morning. Waking morose. I haven't wanted to phone Rob or David but I did. Rob is working and buying books. David's mom broke her hip and he can't get out. It was a slog talking to both of them. The other morning Luke Rowen and I had breakfast in the Kwang Chow. Luke told the story of his trip to Thailand and Rowen sat between us listening. That wasn't a slog. I have money - with second reader fees and such, 1700 US deposited yesterday. 5th Last night I went with David to Wall Street. We walked slowly past gardens and then down the steps to the bridge that crosses the tracks to the harbour. We were walking across the bridge, looking at the water and the mountains, when David said, There's Rhoda. The people at the end of the bridge glanced back. Rhoda and Carole Itter. I was disgusted, what are they doing there, and David so friendly to them. It was my thought to go to Wall Street. It was his to go to the bridge. I was disgusted mainly because Rhoda as always will be looking wonderful for her age, and though I was wearing my best, I am not.
At that spot Vancouver looks so beautiful I don't know why I would want to leave. The sun was sinking over the North Shore, there were freighters in the river, fish boats, grain terminals, four lines of track, an oldtime waterfront, the water silver, the city a compact clump of towers, the mountains rising directly from the far shore. The Capilano notch receding back to distant ranges. 6th Amtrak near Portland. We're skirting the Columbia. The sun has come out. Raspberry rows, apple trees, rail cars, a lumberyard. Vancouver Washington. - Area north of Albany OR, hay fields, contoured hills with farm houses. It was raining until just before Seattle. The customs officer was East Indian and had very warm eyes. I'm not sure but I'm guessing he was smart enough to discover anything he wants to know by guessing strategically while using his sympathetic manner to get us to trust him. He was remarkable - it felt like velvet ju-jitsu. In the ditch, mint blooming, wild oats, rye grass, teasel. Many of these broad fields have cut windrows, hay drying. Beautiful roads, smooth new asphalt with fresh yellow stripes. "Golden West Service" on boxcars. Amazingly beautiful tags on some of them. Everywhere Queen Anne's lace in the grass. In wetter spots wild pea white and pink. California poppies in roadbed gravel. Louie Luke Rowen and Mary yesterday. I woke at two in a panic. It was something about Mary's flirtatious grimaces. She was grimacing coquettishly, I think trying to be winning with Rowen and Luke. I've never noticed before how heavy and false her flirtation is. I was instantly freaked by her place, the way it's dark because there are windows only on one side and even they are shaded by a deep balcony, and the way it's full of useless and ugly little things and so many photos. I crept across the room and sheltered at Louie's knee. Luke went into the kitchen and helped Mary get the iced tea. Rowen sat next to her, holding her hand, gazing at her. We arrived at 1:30 and left at 3:15 to take Rowen to work for 5. That was my visit for the year. Luke and I and Louie under a willow at Trout Lake talking about love, and then at the Indonesian restaurant eating fried pomfret, which we learned was a South Asian saltwater fish, very delicious. (Then a steamed custard made with coconut milk and cane sugar.) Louie took charge socially. I needed to keep quiet and feel: the silence I am, these days. - Not exactly feel, something more like palpating unconsciously. There are oak groves, but the more northern oaks with that sort of leaves [deeply indented]. How is Luke. He makes speeches that go on for quite a while with pressure behind them. Politics; space and time. A woman was left behind on the Eugene platform. We watched her realize the train was moving away. Luke is growing up, Louie said. Yes. Hand-eye strategic communications, is his plan. Louie asked whether we could look back and find someone who might be right for us if we met them now. Luke said a Spanish woman he met in Venezuela, a political journalist who looked boldly into his eyes. The first thing he saw of her was her hand. What was she doing, I ask. Touching her little boy's shoulder. He thought, I have to meet that person. We're next to a smooth glossy river, dark green in this suppertime light, nice with magenta wild pea. Llamas under plum trees. My alarm and wake-up call were set for 5. I woke at two but processed the panic, talked myself into falling asleep again. Woke at 4:55. We're climbing into the Williamette Pass. Daisies. Mary had taken down the drawing I did of Rudy with a tear drop and substituted a (good) drawing of Dennis Windrim, that does not look at all like Rudy. On the flight to Vermont I started imagining a man called Tom who is not much like Tom. I think that in the hotel room in Vancouver, back in my town with a room of my own, I grounded some. I feel more interested and firm. I slept a lot. As we were just sitting down at the restaurant, I saw, through the plate glass, across the street, Rob walking home from the skytrain station. He turned 49, did he? He looked - what - grieved, older, some sort of more disordered. There are bumps growing under the skin of the left side of his face. 7:15 dinner reservations. 7th Ladies and gentlemen, now arriving at Davis. Latinos waking in camps under trees by the tracks. They'll ride their bikes to work. Last night when I went downstairs to brush my teeth, the window was open. We were in high country south of Klamath. The sky was black. There was the Dipper, Casseopia laid across the Milky Way. Red lights flashed at a crossing with no traffic. Blue running lights one each car. These are the first golden hills. It's storming up. Tall fennel bobbing. Tule fields, we're coming to the estuary. Channels brimming. That's the nicest woman on the train and she doesn't like me. I liked what she was wearing, green-blue linen long skirt and sleeveless top. Brown eyes, a pleasant face. She's a civil engineer. She's good with anyone she talks to, friendly. She's fifty-two. Her name is Suzanna. She was going to get married in May to someone she'd been with six years. She had her dress. He called it off. - Max Black - is an engineer-inventor who has made enough money to do what he wants. He has a small ranch in the back country, has just bought it. He's my age, hard worker, physical, has all his hair, white brushcut. Wears workboots, shirts with sleeves rolled, black eyes, strong arms. He figures out how anything works, Saggitarian, reads a lot. Building a house, wants a garden, olive trees, citrus. Wants to learn what I know, funny, knows what he wants and is patient and strategic, tests, is bold when he has thought it through. Confident and autonomous, ethical. Has invented something like solar ovens for developing countries, environmental tech, loves my sense of design. Has a couple of horses. Doesn't talk a lot, asks questions, curious, sexually intelligent and generous. Has no kids, wasn't ready when he was young. Navajo and Scottish forebears. For business wears dockers. Never wears shorts. No beard or moustache. 6'2, trim. He says I can live on his land in exchange for planting and house design. His real intention is to build trust so we'll share the ranch. He figures out how to help me publish. He enjoys figuring out how to make me happy, then I enjoy figuring out how to make him happy. He studies situations, is acute. He's a wonderful kisser. He makes overseas trips, spent years in Africa, India. His politics are informed. He's been massively responsible and now he's wanting to catch up with art and writing. His body field is strong and innocent. He still consults on international projects. He has interesting guests I like to meet. He adores me. He's building a concrete and steel house, very light. He consults me on a guesthouse studio that he actually intends for me. In the early time I'm there a lot without him, caretaking. He waits a long time to make his move, he likes the feeling of it heating up. We love to talk to each other. He's so generous and candid I don't obsess. He reads Being about and other people I recommend. He likes architecture but hasn't had time to collect a file. He has researched physical well-being. He drives a pickup. He can fix cars. He likes me better than any woman he's met. He wants to kayak in the Sea of Cortez. He wants a couple of cats. He has many stories to tell. He likes to be read to, and to read aloud. He's overjoyed to talk about books. I do research to catch up with him on economic development. I give him ideas. He has a recent PhD in development economics as well as an MA in engineering. He has fearless integrity. He loves to write me letters. He has local friends in the places he's worked. I never need to hide my opinion. He likes to cook. There's a Mexican family working for him and he sponsors their kids to college. He doesn't wear rings or watch TV. He knows geology and archeology. He wants to learn the psychic arts. He has beautiful hands and feet. His eyes are very bright, he smells wonderful. He likes road trips. He feels protective about my weaknesses but doesn't say so. He's very scrupulously nonseductive. He's caustic and funny about inanity. Very clean and careful of early love in himself. Designs his house around the library. Is heroic. Has never been in the army. Wasn't a hippy, has never done drugs, doesn't drink, has powerful dreams. Collects pots and rugs. Likes photos. Doesn't expect to give me money, but figures out what I need to do to earn it. Adores good language. Classical music. I'll be playing it loud and he'll come and listen seriously. He's delighted I make him a vegetable garden. Studied hydrology to find his excellent well. He has looked steadily at the worst. Grew up on a ranch. Walks beautifully. Is energy self-sufficient, banks of solar and wind. Dresses well, has no clue about style. Doesn't smooch in public but feels secret currents, wants to fuck every night and knows how to get what he wants. Loves good outbuildings. Is a smart generous team leader. Wants me to read him my journal and I do it with care. Is a happy person with tragic depth. Is delighted to have a salvia and agave collection. Goes speechless with beauty. Has a sheltered valley bottom for a fenced garden. The house is high up with oaks and pines. Can talk about weather, clouds. Energy like Mike the cop. Wants to do a photo book about old concrete bridges. Wants to do Ditches of Alberta with me. Understates his regard always. Wants to hand-dig the garden and orchard. Speaks an Indian and an African language as well as Navajo. He wants to write. I take him to Alberta. He and Peter T like each other. He wants bees. He's a good photographer. He's a hawk. Good eyesight. He doesn't lose his temper though he knows how to release it at need. San Diego, 8th She liked me better later. She said she wanted to go put in her contact lenses and when she came back freshly made up she asked if I'd like to join her for a beer. We sat together looking at the beautiful hills between Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo. I liked to look at her. She was a conventional woman with only the shallowest curiosity. When I started to tell her about Being about she turned away to the man across the aisle and began to talk about his goodlooking sons, who were in fact quite ugly. But her whole look was so clean, simple and nice. She's lonely. She's gamely doing things to keep herself from suffering, a Canned Heat concert, an Audubon camp, traveling to see her sister judge horses. As we rode through the hills she pulled up her skirt to sun her legs. 9th It was a beautiful trip although too long. If I moved to Santa Barbara it would be the right length. Is that daydreaming alright? I sat dreaming-up a perfect lover while I watched the flow of land. When the coach was darkened after ten I was on my back across the seats in my sleeping bag touching my clit imagining it was with him, feeling the jolts and bounces of the car. I came blissfully, and it was after that I stood happy at the window looking at the stars. And then I took my sleeping bag and pillow through many cars to the lounge car. The train was full after the 4th of July holiday. Each seat had someone folded into it unconscious. A child and mother fitted across the seat, the child away from the edge on the inside. In the morning when I woke in the lounge car I popped my head up and there were people sitting around me looking at the red sun on the horizon. Good morning! said a woman with thick grey hair, amused.
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