| london volume 4 part 5 - 1972 october-november | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
[undated journal - October] I'm beginning to want to write something. - More pictures from Christie: a village on the bay of Monte Carlo, a white little flight of outside stairs to a white little room, white furniture, white bed, white walls, white everything: beyond the white blind, a tree with yellow lemons, and purple grapes. Every morning the concierge would come, rap, and leave outside the door a bowl of figs from the tree in the back yard, covered with fig leaves, cool. To be able to feel someone else's potency gladly rather than enviously. - Sunday, waiting to get into the planetarium, the small black cat swinging like a teenager, big pumpkin shaped khaki coat, blue-beaded belt, jeans, blue sweater, beard, afro, short, smiling eyes with their lashes curled double back, looks familiar, says if I'm killing an hour he'll walk with me - Regent's Park among the dahlias, says he's 30, long ago from Jam-ai-ca, says his name is Omar (don't believe it); could be anyone, any age, very cool, bluffs a lot, likeable, remote, but free and easy to the squirrel feeding man. Not very hungry - In contrast to Roy somebody [Clemens], over thirty, living in one tiny room at the top of a house in Tufnell Park, sky full of clouds like a blue and white Magritte - a little book called The Creation of Life open to a picture of a butterfly in a glowing transparent embryo sac - further on, a chicken in its shell, feathers, bones, a cloudy blue eye, forming out of - antidissolving out of - precipitating out in - the egg, yolk-yellow glue substance, all sealed inside the shell, amazing transformation of substance sealed in the same volume when it is ready, finished. His bitty drawings, the photographs he's learning from. Slight, so thin and flowery, a canine tooth missing but a beautiful face, smiling eye, grizzled beard, aquiline nose - his look of poverty made me wonder whether he drinks; but he's another kind of alien, a 'nervous breakdown' welfare child: thirteen years a caterer, and before that the army. Eight and a half years with a woman he "wasn't compatible with" - "and that was very hard for both of us." He was leaning against the wall beside the telephone at the chemist's corner when I came past on the bicycle to go to the Indian shop - when I came out he was loitering on the curb - I hesitated - he came and said "May I meet you." Lovely frank gentle man making his way through his new freedom to do what he likes: he's not where it's at, he's completely marginal, he's lonely: his x-rays hung in his room, white-edged delicate clavicle, ribs, collarbone, and constellation clouds of, he says, muscles - vertebrae, a square tower. A good shine in his eyes - Omar had that too. Sean Stiles black around the eyes like the people in films who are dying. - Dream - photographs of Paul, slender man with light falling on his shoulder and head, and of his lady, who has taffy hair like Judy's. Remember them less than the words I used to describe them, reminding myself not to forget when I woke. - One miraculous loving fuck, a good evening at Ryan's Daughter, half a dozen tins of paint and some whitewash, and a brush and a screwdriver, and the loan of the television, and he's off again. Better than nothing, but I'm left feeling defensively ashamed that I settle for so little, the force and integration of the feelings I have in relation to him, all wasted, and myself wearing thinner and finding deceit always a little easier. - Memories: sometimes the feeling of being a child in the presence of my young mother and father among the wondrous details of that time's places. Hesitations: feeling how most confident solid people wear their lives into rutted, maybe good, shapes, by becoming something; I've become nothing, all womanlike. - And another Monday: in between these griefs, he convinces and I soften, we meet in laughing, almost forgiving, friendship, it builds, he's tender, one night we lie together and I find myself rocking against him, real loving fucking, and then he takes himself away - I reflect on why everything, kick his shin twice, shout at him in my mind, and when he arrives - with Kevin - to get the heater, have no chance to tell him what a sly stupid worm he really is. - And then I refind this in Marge Piercy, Juan's Twilight Dance.
- Got a flash of what's contemptible about journals (Richard's, Cherry's): they construct - sometimes - the weird limited ego we imagine we are, belittle as we try to flatter - R's compulsive scraps have always seemed an ungenerous refusal to let anyone else see his littleness, but maybe one of his secrets is that he doesn't construct an ego at all; or cunningly doesn't let on that he does. - Haven't written about our happy days lately, aware of not wanting to admit them, knowing I'd regret them. - Christie to NFT for experimental films, she looked beautiful and I felt reinforced by her prettiness, as if it added to mine. Good Christie. We walked across Hungerford Bridge, up Charing Cross Road to Leicester Square, the Continental Café, eating cheesecake and drinking coffee; talked about baby Danny and baby Luke, her wild man and my sour pain about Roy, watched the river, talking about images and economy, turning to see ripples behind a boat, the color of a grey satin dress. Talking about Deathstyles, she said "The people in cars, turning their heads toward you with the intimacy of heads on pillows." Rising happiness - paradoxical rising of joy, thank you Roy. - More little pangs: about Jud, he says "That's another thing ... she energizes one, she's a hard woman, she's very much her own woman. It's a good thing to be." And I say, "And it's also good sometimes to get a little lost, as I did with you," and he says "I know, I do it all the time." "Energizes ... it's something erotic." Came from my saying how I like to be in love, "It's a good mood to be in." "She's always telling me what I am." But he doesn't listen, that man, thinks he knows everything already." Ha - it's right that I put quotation marks after my phony, half-phony, complaints. When Sarah was here this morning, 'remembered' a few important things: that what Roy does, with his adventures, is also what I want him to do. What I find to despise in him and in David and in Ron (rediscovered in the journal, was my stream of Don Juans, and how I balanced on logs with Rasheed, in the beginning, just as I do now, and did with Ron, and Peter). (Rasheed saying "A woman is different after she's slept with a man. Be careful.") (Or was it me said that?) (No - he: "You must be careful. A woman is different after she has slept with a man. Don't get hurt." And I said, "I'm different, I'm an exception.") (- Is that the unliberated person in them uses the liberated wizard for its own reactionary ends.) - "Looook," "book," "uk" for egg; longs to go out, extend himself. The park attendant who bawled at us when Luke discovered the sprinkler, see-saw to make water leap from either end: joy. And for clothes spinning in the front-loading washing machine. Especially for fire engines noisy next to the curb - he turns to look at me and share his delight; even a big red noisy truck. Rum and raisin ice cream from the newspaper shop. - More delights: jumping from the low table onto my lap, sliding down my thighs. Cut his hair last night as he slept, today he looks different and prettier. Excitement as I made the tower out of his blocks - he climbed onto the table with it and we invented the game of taking it down block by block until it was once more the one, layered, lump, which he'd flourish up at me. - Matron at nursery school scolding me: says Luke arrived filthy this morning! Bought him a Corgi matchbox fire engine: a DEE DAW DEEDAW DEEDAW. - Christine at Konstamm: "I was sitting with him this afternoon while he was going to sleep - otherwise they get up and play about - and I was stroking his hair, like this. I thought he was asleep and stopped, but a little hand came out of the blanket and took my hand and put it back on his head as if to say 'Don't stop, I like that.'" We walked the narrow planks at the adventure playground, some of them very high. In a rubbish bin on Fortress Road, I found two old black telephones with intercom buttons and long rust-colored cotton-wrapped wires - brought them home for Luke. - "See you" when leaving Christine. Asleep on his red terry sheet, hands up like a baby. - Anna called him "my boy" in her elfish little voice: "My baby will sit here," "My boy is 'wake," "My boy banged me," in tears. At Trinity College they climbed the steps of the circular fountain and ran screaming round and round it, and through the vast grass space around it: the bells sounded, Luke looked startled as if applauding - "ging gong." Anna has the coat hanger, Luke grabs it and shouts "My!" Last night when we slept in Anna's room Luke was on the mattress on the floor, narrow as my bed, so we were lying side by side; I could hang my arm over and hold his warm hand. At night his cold kicking uncovered him and I could reach over to pull the washed-out sleeping bag over him. In the morning he jumped on me to see out the window. "Looook! Looook!" at the strange landscape - and the wonderful Player catalogue, with, on the cover, "Taddy got dee-daw," a teddy with a toy towtruck. Yesterday, safe behind a bale chest-high between him and three antique tractors (a kerosene tractor from Ohio, with the tank mounted in front, an International Junior, and a big orange thing, all rattling with their strange combustion), he stood with his mouth a little open, unblinking - and sat fiercely driving a big Case for as long as I let him. Sweet little Luke, dungarees, red Keds, jean jacket, a little miniature person with shining eyes - Anna tall and shapely, skin and hair pale brown, smiling lovingly at her "bouoye" - shouting hello to passers - and Luke does: "hel-lllll-owuuuuuuuuuuuu. When I sang to him in the car he hummed a varied monotone with me - with a few words he recognized "crying hummmmmmm" from "a baby when he's sleeping has no crying," a bar after me, but getting so lost in his hum that he was getting stronger than me, John and I had to laugh, and John said "I can't tell whether he's with you or against you." - Gone to John's tonight [Rowley], good three-corner evening, me playing bright liberated lady, they beginning in business language and with their two drinks each becoming giddy as my one late beer, on top of the bubbling joy of this day's recovery from both my hurt and the grey worry before it. As if Roy and Jud, by their conflagration, give warmth even to me. Walking brazenly into his bedroom, looking around with a little tickle of anticipation. Nice to play with them both as they play with each other and gradually learn to play with me. John taking off his sweater, rumpling his hair, he's plump and has - what? no danger in his eyes; I feel I'll be able to be honest with him, and also misgive a little whether I'll be gentle with him although I am. But I won't be anyone's woman, no no no. I'm taking my breath. His look of - can't say. 23 October [letter] Well yes, the office corner is still there but so is the piano, and I can already play Lo in the Grave He Lay as well if not better than Elizabeth Voth. Luke plays dee-daw, two adjacent notes, the sound of British fire engines, and sings it. Beautiful Luke is growing longer legs and now has his father's shapely slim bum. Busy chatty creature, tells himself long stories in bed, rehearses his thoughts, words. He's got the idea now that he can make me do things, takes my hand, pulls me toward the ice-lolly shop saying "Come, come!" most persuasively; or pushes me off my chair saying "Go off!" In the morning he wakes me and I look up to see him smiling, pink-cheeked, at the end of his bed: "Ge' out!" When I let him out and tell him, hugging my pillow, because it's early, early, "SLEEPING, I'm sleeping" he giggles mercilessly and struggles to get into my sleeping bag with me, but oh no not to sleep. To wriggle, neck a little, and then a minute later stand on top of me to reach something else. So I give up and get him breakfast and warm some water to wash off his 'we'" (wet) or sometimes his kinky (stinky) and give him lots of hugs and kisses and we begin the day thus lovingly. Could you send Paul's address in Sweden? I look forward to having them here. Let me say that I think of you often and fondly and respectfully, and that I feel myself participating in, sometimes extending, your struggles, and that I keep you in mind as one of the best examples I know of another kind of person to be. I get involved in my adventures and don't write, but you're there, you're always there. Roy. Well, there'll be no kind of marriage there. With half my heart I grieve bitterly that the person I wanted most with, gave most to, hoped most for, never did quite, ever, feel the same about me; I can't bear that, and most of the time struggle not to admit it. But with the other half of me I'm simply relieved not to have to spend the rest of my life with someone so chaotic, fickle and selfish. I love his beauty and his tenderness and all his crackling originality and feel completely unworthy of him. And I hate his inconsistency and egotism and weakness and feel totally superior to him. I don't want to be the wife of a genius, I want to be a genius. And so does he. So we have to be our own kinds of genius, separately. Who knows, maybe when we're wise calm old people, although I think turbulent young geniuses turn out to be turbulent old cranks. But we are what we are. Roy's getting a lot of safety from his commune, and is beginning to pick up some of his responsibilities; he's sober, far more honest than I've ever known him to be, and is learning carpentry quickly and successfully. Me, I'm beginning my new term, the Slade is reorganized and dynamized and there'll be none of the old easy-going ways; I'm doing pottery again, teaching some children pottery in my own private class here at home [Indra and Ayesha de Lanerolle], learning woodwork at night school, preparing house and garden for winter, playing piano, looking around for a nice man, learning with Luke. Thinking about writing stories, preparing to produce a little film about the Women's Liberation conference here in November, finding time to spend with my dear Christie. [undated journal] Pride is wrong because it's being for the other, very costly to oneself. - Today's satori, light-foot shin-limb, running down the moving steps to the Northern Line at Kentish Town, St James Park, the geese with their legs set wide apart and toothache bandages around their jaws, ducks' solid bodies swimming up in front of me as I sat on the edge of the lake leaning against the guardrail; feathers like petals running down their backs to the tail; walking on the grass, among the ducks and rosebushes, inside the enclosure, bopping, and then the tree (beech?): burning bush, orange and pink, yellow inside the tree, red at the outsides, leaves hung down off branches in rows like shields. Not far downstream, coming from behind, a tree with branches down to the water, fig-leaf shaped green, yellow-bordered curtain of leaves transparent, hung with light, and two pigeons still on the branches above it. Across the road at Hyde Park, stood on my head.
- Scraping on the sidewalk, a big sheet of unfolded little magazine, pages 49 to 64, and on it this message from Roy, part of a short story by someone called Fernandes: "My wife's voice in my head: please explain to me. But I can't explain. António's anarchy and love, António's simplicity .... Can't explain." I remember Sarah saying "It's not taking your feelings seriously, again." David Davies' eyes gone yellow under his thatch of grey and white hair where the low sun caught them, young old man. Thinking of tricks to test their touch. Thinking how to be simply honest and yet - get into other people's beds and skins, histories, feelings. - Built, he says, his own organic house, put the walls up, windows in, without plans, logs and cedar siding, a steep-pitched roof, fireplace and skylight. - Still, still, these meetings with men. I chatter. How to bring truth into them, I'm so far from simple, and always assume it must be me who offers my truth or provokes them. Henry standing across the road speaking with a baby in a pram, big jagged face full of light, and smiling, hair leaning north, a hunched big tweed coat like a clochard's, and a dogeared briefcase. "All these people, they come to you speaking a strange language," he said. Exactly. We sat at the edge of the Fields, and when I lay on my back: leaf-light-shingled plane-tree roof, green and yellow glass. Carmichael. Someone called Tony [Andy], dilated green eyes and a long narrow face, soft bushing moustache, rough bushy hair, one of these ectomorph politicos, beautiful but - unaffectionate and unerotic, unmoved by lazy bodys' gradual inclination toward - too bad, he has beautiful hands. Where's a loving man. [In Andy's hand, written later: "Right 'ere."] - Called Roy back to ask him - eventually - to come see me, wanted to appease my hurt feelings some, but we sat empty of anything real/good for each other, and I was glad when he went home. That wasn't who I wanted. Sarah: in our business meetings we laugh a lot. John, a comedy of misses - I'm watching to discover who he is, and we feel for positions in relation to each other, back and forth along the couch, but the whiskey puts me to sleep, and a man called Tim comes in complaining of his mouth ulcers, and then another noisy pug slurping Instant Strawberry, and his mother calls, and his neighbour hangs around waiting for a telephone call from Buenos Aires - and the Goon Show throws us into our completely different origins, and I go home fed up, but talk to Dee, who's crisp and nice on the telephone, and end feeling love to spare, after looking at Luke asleep and pulling his cover over the bare strip of tummy. - Moments of feeling so broken. - My life folded up behind me like a fan, feeling like sad lost love; if I could have succeeded once in sharing it, when I longed to tell Roy all of it, the enormous hunger that - maybe - grows and grows, I can't deny it, and what kind of honesty can I bring to my fearful new possibilities, longing to share my life, but with my double, my other; I stumble over that same grief, same desperate struggle for a real mating; thought today that maybe it's a biological affliction on me of my child-bearing age, but I don't believe it, it's like a scream of grief, jaw locked open, head back, it's that rage of loneliness. I can't win that one with Roy; I'd better mourn it truly this time, if I dare. Make it my own, without resignation or comfort. Christina Rosetti: it's such a common story; Emily Dickinson. If I could wear that simple common grief I'd be like a special order of nun, true and accessible to everyone. Luke's young days: we went into an empty house on Brecknock Road, climbed through four floors, and found, besides my teapot, a toy truck, a bulldozer, an army jeep, and a bag full of wooden building blocks. Brought them home, washed them in soapy water in his bath, and he sat on the floor upstairs with them while I dug out one of the forsythia bushes; and then put himself to sleep on one of the mats. Tonight had them all in his bed; I've put them on the green box for his tomorrow morning. This morning he sang to himself for a long time before I came up to him. His delight with apple juice in John's cup. "C'ock." "Train!" for the long straight road he made with tiles. He's suddenly slim and long-legged, his head is round and neat since I cut his hair, his eyes are browner and his face more pointed; I'm freer and gladder, and sometimes want to devour him with love. John, yesterday, kept leaning, pushing, forward and kissing him. The house near Stoke Goldrinton, meadow with sweet medicinal-smelling high grass where we rolled playing tiger. Sheep's field, chicken in the black pot, delicious lemony gravy sopped in bread, melon and deadly Hirondelle rosé - Luke kept holding out the lamby cup saying "mo!" until he was staggering and rolling, and we were sorry. The trough, water dried out, with a raven lying in the thick black mud, like a mysterious relief panel, two wings still covered with half-decayed mud black feathers, skull and beak, with a hole for the eye and another for the nostril, rib cage curved out like the beak, with fragile ribs and a fragile beaked breastbone, leg bones jointed out at the knee, feet and claws pointed stiffly down. A pasture where we sat behind an empty house, hillside cut with cowpaths. Late afternoon. Small yellow trees along the M1. John stopped and reversed to let me see the hazy apparition of a red and white hot air balloon, upside down pear shaped, the rosy colour of a low sun through smoke, drifting and bumping behind the trees not far off the ground, with an occasional silver flash of the gas flame; the basket swaying under it. John's cool skin and warm hands; shy one-eyed look at three inches, and he's a bright kind eye and a full mouth. It's good to feel so comfortable. "You know what I do think about you, I think you're somebody with whom it's possible to be truthful." "I knew the same thing about you right away." "How could you know?" "It was your warmth." "That's a good answer. If I'd really thought, that's what I'd have said." - "What are you thinking about?" "If I tell you you'll be hurt I was thinking about Roy." "I'm not hurt." Turns onto his back and looks glum. "I'm still thousands of miles away from you and he's very close." - "Come on," he says, thumps me, warm and patient. - "He gives me such a kick!" stumping his knee; read me Borges. I'm cautious and pleased; fortified. Protein? Monday At home, remembering, I panic: what an unholy alliance - what can I possibly give him that's true - I revolt - then I remember that I'm making a ghost of him, as I do of Roy, and try to let it be. I'm scared. "What good can come of ---?" "How can I say?" "Trying to work it out in my head again." "Let him be." I make a dismembered head of him, batter him with suspicions, warnings. - [RD] Laing. Transparent green print shirt with flowing sleeves, brown velvet trousers, a green velvet jacket he took off, and shoes he took off and put beside a chair. - Another exercise in letting be: finding I wanted to come home and not go to have coffee with John and Phee - something to do with that evening of vivid people and her so beautifully made. Feel so tentatively the currents of other people's moods and decisions. Was woken at 6 a.m. by the dream that staged for me, lucidly, the confrontation I need and try to get: I'm with Jud and Roy at a supper table. Looking at the schedule I see that the doctor comes before supper on Fridays. I make a joke to Roy about does he go to the doctor every week - he says yes, with his voice strained he says "I'm forty years old, my nerves are shot," and a tear rolls down his cheek - I move to put my arm around him - he's sitting next to Jud facing me. When I hold him I feel his shoulders straining to push me away, but then I stop and turn and come back to say that I must talk it out. I tell him that his body pushes me back with all his strength, why? Why does he find me so revolting? Jud sits beside him in calm support. I shout to Roy "So why are you so fucking faithful now?" He says that Jud understands him. I say I understand him too; that our positions toward him are made out of our standing with him: she can be serene, and can understand him; and I must be hysterical and furious because I'm so hurt. I ask what she's got: she stands up tall: much taller and prettier than she is, moves her shoulders back to lift her breasts as she talks, says, with dignity and presence, "I'm --- about things like Vietnam and ---" (implying anguish at political tragedy), "but" (she turns to say it to me, great emphasis) "my friends - all - love me." I'm put into place, made an inferior child. I can't answer that. My friends don't all love me. I wake with my insides hurting, am afraid, remember Laing last night saying that the insides are where feelings are. I say to myself that my pain isn't killing me; feelings are what my insides are for. After that I have another realization, that what my insides hurt about is this, formed in me as a speech to Roy. "Before, two weeks ago, I was feeling that underneath everything we were getting closer. You had adventures, but always came back to me, and underneath we moved closer together. I was waiting to feel safe enough with you, again, to let my feelings go, I was always waiting to be able to feel safe enough. Now I feel that you've actually transferred to Jud, you've broken the connection. I need to know, from you, with her to make sure you're truthful - whether you have. What it means. Is she your woman now in the sense that I was. - At the meeting I realized that I missed being there with him, simply appearing with him, his proud consort. - Then dreamed about trying to tell him about the dream; his and Jud's room orderly and elegant with a big soft white double bed. - On the telephone this afternoon, I couldn't remember the dream to tell it - only the conclusions I'd made about it. - Luke's first major temper tantrum on Fortess Road, on being refused a bag of chips in the Co-op. Threw himself out of the pushchair and screamed. I picked him up awkwardly, trying to balance my string bag of food, he struggled, after a while leaned his head against my shoulder as he does when he's sad or tired; then remembered and screamed again struggling back to the store. I had to hold him for a long time; an ice cream truck drove by quickly; Luke screamed again, and I had to carry him on my hip, dragging the pushchair behind me, across the street and into the ice cream shop. - John at home one morning last week. I drop in and he's in his suit ready to go out, waistcoat and white shirt. When I embrace him, the wonderful silky flow of his back; now I understand waistcoats. He looked so untypically neat and slim puts his Greek vase lion's face next to mine and says "Oh yum! Yum!" When we were in bed Wednesday evening - I refused to go on and just held onto him hard, looked up after a while to see how he was taking it. He was smiling to himself; I asked how he was and he said he was having some nice fantasies "Well one was that if we had a daughter, with your flat chest and my concave chest well, I thought we should have a son." "Another one was about kissing you between your legs." And? "Well, about being old and scarred and having come through it all together." That - and also "I spent the afternoon thinking about all the reasons for being able to disregard you." Looking the other direction, that struggle he makes and wins pretty easily, he said "I was thinking about the quality of our minds, I always wanted somebody I could talk to." Good, you fight it John Rowley, because you aren't going to win yet. And me, thinking about him in Dee's car, with my knee next to her stick shift, remembering one of his strong dives to the bottom of me, my womb lit up like a flare. Even thinking about his waistcoat. With Dee in the Fens, thin sunlight but quite warm: a blue water tower with rust patches like copper shining through. A line of poplars in front of a long sky-blue factory wall, shredded bits of leaves twittering against it. A road along a canal, sheet of blue with one swan looking as if it would be frozen in - the canal corkscrewing straight ahead inside its high flowery banks, birds. A meadow with old willows like olive trees, beside the stream, where we ate fish and chips and fed the swans, and Dee said "Do you see John sometimes." "Umm." Silence. "I sleep with him sometimes" and something garbled about whether she minds. "It was pretty inevitable I guess, we both seemed to be very lonely for skin at the same time." My fear choking me. She simply private. We talked about John for a while: "He's very humble." "He laughs well." As we got up to leave she said "I keep thinking about John." Hours later she said "It's much harder work when somebody tells you the truth, than when they tell you lies or half-truths." - Liverpool Street Station's beautiful details of soft old color, byzantine arches, brick, iron, dirty glass roof. The countryside flashes of yellow, red; poplar trees in thinly leafed pale rows, sorrel gone deep russet-coloured. - "No, what it's like for me is shooting down a red hot tube ... all my skin where I touch you here, here," (touching his chest, upper arms) " ... is concentrated, incredibly intense." "I will come, with you, John, but not until I've established that I don't have to." - This evening, Colin! arriving - looking thinner faced and older. Luke all over him, me scared and silly, it was good to see him and we nobly said goodnight at his car door, good hug and half a kiss. Christie on the telephone: her self absorption mirrors mine, I get lonely. Something competitive and something sweet. - This Sunday, at six, maybe, the chimneys of the terrace across the garden were pink with the last sun; I took Luke by bicycle to the Heath, we climbed to the top of Parliament Hill and sat (me on the back, he straddling it and singing dee-daw) on a bench looking at the sweep of coloured trees toward Highgate, oh soft brilliant colors like natural dye samples, a high cloud ceiling; Luke heard shouts in the playground far below in the dark, and ran dangerously, rolled and tumbled once, down the steep slope; I went back for my bicycle and came down after him into the darkness; facing us, the brilliant lights bedded in the dark towers and pink night sky of the City and the West End, banked up facing us like a mountain range. We came down into the unlighted space between, Luke running, looking back to see me following, bumping down, on the bicycle. Ah Luke, I don't want to forget this evening, October in your second year. You run down fearlessly to find the children shouting; you call to me, insist, "Cung! Cung!" until I do come with you, but letting you lead me down, your two legs almost out of control almost unable to keep up with your chest and chin. Painful, precarious love getting bigger in me. Sometimes I tease you with tiger kisses and tell you "I love you so much." Mixture of negligence and scary ardent love. Baby firstborn, what will become of us, what will I make of us. Today I've been like an adolescent catching myself in reflections, thin dark face, hair down long past my shoulder blades - pleased with myself, my look of wildness and secrecy, hair lank, green sweater, the look of presence I need - with it the doubt that anyone I know will love that girl; doubting John. - Went after John yesterday - unquiet unhappy night. But today - I threw two beautiful bowls, felt my hands interlock just right, wall coming up between them sleek and wet, rim thickening and flaring, everything tense as it grew - then painted one crooked as a primitive. - "I'm afraid that if I don't maintain a certain level of seduction ...." Fucking: the most rudimentary form of mating. "I shrivel if I think of you doing it for me. I'm doing it for you." "I shrivel if I feel I have to come for you." Falsification in the middle of it; I'm forced to go on or to stop; stopping means losing. Going on is lonely and irritating. A perilous exercise we descend into, unthinking ritual, we don't feel that we have a choice, we simply must, for the other's sake, I want to break that. Need a pure heart, and someone else with a pure heart. Not marriage as sacrament that justifies the pleasure. Just the self-sacrificing ritual, part of whose program is feeling or seeming to feel pleasure. Uneasiness if I don't want to; feel I can't refuse. - And since our bodies are all composed of elements which break down into atoms which break down into energy, it truly appears that we are constantly generated out of a void, that our physical form emanates from an unknown dimension which sustains it. Becher sort of self-dreading cowardice shrinks from developing and asserting a just 'I' because of the stress of self-feeling - of vanity, uncertainty, and mortification - which is foreseen and shunned. Cooley p 226 of 1956 ed of Human Nature and the Social Order In order to grow he needs to renounce precisely that form of comfort and salvation that have become inseparable from his deepest values as these are grounded in his muscles and nerves of his organism ... going through hell of a lonely and racking rebirth where one throws off the lendings of culture, the costumes ..., the masks ... standardized heroisms, to stand alone and nude facing the howling elements ... as one's self question of personality growth and change, if it is deep-going and authentic, is usually whether one will end in madness or suicide, or whether one will, somehow, be able to marshall the strength to take the first steps into a new world. Becher - tempting old bait. Nature has no respect for misperceptions of reality. the perfectly free man, the man who introduced newness into the world in his own being and through his own perceptions; cut through earthly illusions and categories by the inner depth, harmony and openness of his individuality. - So the bildungsroman is still fascinating. - Notes: Danny at Christie's, centred laughing person, feels so good to me, small nail-bitten hands confident on the piano, and the line from his story, "... small, but her eyesight was very good," and stairs without banisters. Georgia blazing out of her black eyes, hard, poised body in her little pleated skirt. The shock of Roy arriving at the door, fat faced, indolent (with a protea for me, like a stiff pink artichoke); shock that's still/again filled my head with compulsive retribution-mutters: "How could you just trade me in for somebody else, like an old ..." etc. Disliked him, cold guilty presence he is, fascinated always with his own boring naughtiness. Sad that the peaceful weeks he's been away could vanish so soon. "Soft, violent." - Not quite able to write about John: when I walked off desolated and left him in front of the Civil Service Building, hands pushed stubbornly into my pockets, he was - proud, he said, that I hadn't turned when he called, and that I'd done what I wanted; when I got home there was his authoritative note under the letter box: "I'll pick you up at 6:30." I blessed him and gave up feeling I'd given up loving forever. The way his face sometimes shines with joy. Ah, he's ready! Wow, he's ready! for me. And I can take my time. We can take our time, what sanity. "You look at me sometimes with the wonder of a child." His patience. Oh - his amazing, always amazing, sanity! Firmness, willingness to know. "You look at me as if to say 'Who are you? What am I doing here? Help!', always like the first time." Lick his face with my eyes, tastes good. Goes on with what he was doing; I sit and look. We watch television jigsawed together, shoulder and armpit, thigh and thigh. He does a funny dance at the door; face shining. Comes back from the weekend with a bull's head of chrysanthemums, full of things to say. "I felt I was coming home, to you." "I don't mean I'm falling in love, or want to live with you or anything. Only I'd like to see you more often, and we could and it would be very hard, but good." "Everything I've been doing, I want to share with you." I begin to weep thinking of Roy and wanting to share everything - Betweentimes I forget who he is. Then I see. With such self possession I can be self possessed. O lovely man! "I fight down my hopes." I do as well but that's good. Oh yum! - We went to the Heath and aired ourselves to the cold distance of stars, cold clarity of moonlight, didn't like each other much. - At the end of this morose Friday, went to the Holloway Odeon and came out next to Roy, short haired like when I first new him, with Jud. Outside the cinema, they walked to a red Mini, he gave her that fast hug I know so well, went into one side and she to the other, both stopped and looked at me, and I at them, very hard, as I walked by on the way home, hung my head and went on, very fast, limping home to where I'd left Luke asleep, feeble revenge fantasies in my head, but very feeble, all through me, the only revenge I could actually find was the pathetic sight of me to haunt - or elate, yes - them for a few minutes on their way home. "I wish you were dead, you poisoned my life." - But I must give up my loyalty to my status, my face, and be loyal to my feelings, my interior - "There is nothing more convincing or loveable than spontaneity." [undated letter] This is later, I have Paul's address now. Roy's been to Africa and come back, having gone to tell his sugar daddy that he doesn't want any more money. Mafalda wrote from Yellow Springs Ohio where she is with her Rob and Kaliel. She said of Kaliel, "She almost sits and speaks a lot and laughs all the time. We've been like one until a few days ago. Suddenly we're two separate people which is a great shock for me but am taking it well now. It's no joke having a child but a great pleasure and makes me grow in my own private quarters. Me and Rob we do our best to share our lives. Not easy." I hope Paul is coming for Christmas. Last Sunday a nice man appeared at my door with a bunch of chrysanthemums three times as big as my head. He has a sense of humor too. More and more plants come into my house, some are coming in for the winter. I've planted tulips, hyacinths, crocuses, bluebells, early spring iris. The first of them will begin to flower in January. I feel as if I'm planting the winter's end. Happy days, especially when there are Indian summer blue skies brilliant as, no far more brilliant than, actual summer's. I feel how cyclical life is, how I forget things and then discover them again as if I'd never know them. October makes me think of Frank, who felt the autumn was his best mood. Makes me think of the October I was carrying Luke, especially one day. You've seen the photographs of me in a big damson-colored sweater the shape of a ripe plum, when Roy and I went to Hatfield house to look at the yellow leaves and I nearly burst with the anticipation of that child and all I could share with it. A jubilant October in Sexsmith. [undated journal] Kitchen floor - and afterward, distress and uneasiness, then a gale of ideas, and now flattering loneliness, absence again. Went to Dee and John's party, Dee 'asleep' thinking about her flat, how she knows every inch of it, having cleaned, painted, decorated it - how it was when she brought Anna home, how it was when Anna began to come; Dee remembering when things happened, her voice is like a wire that goes tight and turns its edge - "I only know ugly people." John and his clutch of friends with their beautiful ladies, seemed unknown, nobody whose head I'd held and whose body I'd lain alongside, he was nobody, I couldn't look at him as I left, desolation. "When Dee breaks down ...." - The shuttling frontier between defense and love, with Dee and with John, alliances and secret divisions. Rain waiting until dark to fall, now a wind blown up with it. John bleak on the telephone: "I can't say anything. I'll just say goodbye." Click, and I felt a hot knot of love in my stomach. Feel my courage come back. Talking about Ant and Roy, "I feel as if I have a mark on my forehead that says 'damaged,' and it scares everybody away as if to say I'd have to be reconstructed before I could be any use to anyone." - Halloween as we spent it: Dee came to the door and had tea with me, talking about fighting with John, "He'll never speak to me again, he said he never wanted to see either of us again." Brringggg! I laugh and refuse to answer it; she says "Oh you must" and it's John wanting to speak to her. I go out, close the door after me but hear her apologetically telling him what we were talking about. Then she comes in and it's my turn; I go out, leaving the door open behind me, sit down on the kitchen step and say hello. Dee comes and closes the door. I'm gay and high and invite John to come join us in my garden of delights. When he comes we decide to drink whiskey and play strip poker - he goes to get his whiskey and cards - we all get onto the bed - I go put on my new black thing that I made last week - feel light and fearless with nothing to lose and full of play - put on my black hat with a plume of chrysanthemums and give Dee one too, get John another shaped into a bowler and put a flower into his curls; he teaches us to play poker and I quickly lose my socks and my pants. John's soon down to his underpants. Dee still has everything on, I'm drinking neat whiskey and they're drinking it with Schweppes. I go put on my earrings to be able to take them off and keep on my black thing. Eventually, on a high bid - 90 - I take Dee for all her clothes, and she shrinks because of her flattening breasts, but she's lovely, bones, and so long - by this time we're all naked and under the covers, we pretend to watch television but really lie and cuddle. Dee asks John how he feels and he says false. I don't want to ask how, but Dee does. He turns to me and says "I want to kiss you like I did Dee just now" (while I was upstairs looking at Luke?). I don't say anything, I feel good; he asks Dee how she feels and she says "Dead." We've turned off the lights and lie ready to sleep. Dee says "I want to go" and I'm up and out of bed immediately, get into my sleeping bag upstairs, hoping she'll stay, not minding, feeling alive and glad. Heard the door bang, didn't know which one it was. Lay still listening but heard nothing until suddenly I felt a touch, John crouched beside the bed with just his shirt on and his eyes shining. He said "I said I thought we should all sleep in our own separate beds. I was going to follow her, but I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and felt that I love you." I said "Come here with me for a moment and then go home, okay? I love you too, among other people, including Dee." His face shining at me. I felt simple and good and wicked and very loving and half indifferent. "And given a choice too I'd rather have a friend than a lover." "That's because you haven't had me yet." "As either?" "No." "I think you're very close to Dee aren't you, and she's very close to you." "Yes." "I feel very close to Dee too. I feel as if we belong to the same tribe." During my horny happy night I dreamed that I came to Ken Driediger in a street, put my hand into his arm and walked with him free and elated and familiar, until we came to a square with fiddlers, and we broke into a square dance. Dee came to take Luke to school this morning; John came to get his waistcoat. We had coffee. John said to me "You can keep the whiskey if you think you'll need it" and I full of glee said "Oh you do flatter yourself!" He was abashed and shouted at Dee when she said something amiss, but then Luke began to gallop up and down the room shouting with the importance of having three parents so excited loving him. I said to John "You gave me such a nice dream last night." "And you gave me such a nice one, I can hardly tell you." When he arrived, pink, flat-headed, clean and neat, at the same time as Dee with the milk, and caught me and Luke looking through the crack in the door, and then everybody converging toward the place where last night we celebrated our lives - oooh, ---. And now the official version of all that exists. - WL meeting at Sarah's: Maggie, Leslie, Mary, Sarah and I in laughing affection feeling each other alive. John: realizing how I turn away from looking at him, as if I am not ready to see him, and I'm not. As I couldn't be with Luke for a long time. But now - the joy of seeing that little person today when I came to school for him! His little hug and his conversation as he fitted himself against my knee. Joy in the rain heightened colors of almost bare trees, fog on the Heath, smell of burnt coffee coming from the lit windows. Joy, calm. Coming home from school with Luke, the white whale of a long Chevy turned suddenly across my path, and in the rain my brakes didn't hold. We slid into it sideways and just as we dipped I said "Fucking car!" and thought "This is it. Luke." Without fear. A second that didn't exist, then Luke and I on the sidewalk, I reaching for Luke, who was unstrapped, and crying, holding him, comforting him, a beautiful young boy, long black hair and blue eyes, dressed in black, kneeling with us holding his arms out to us, looking scared. Three old ladies and six schoolgirls! He said "Come and have a cup of tea with us though" and I thought, good, an adventure. (The green room I often look into, wood fire, wood from a hole under the floor, tube table, huge mirror, jar of cookies, another young man and a boy.) They make tea and we talk about how it was. Luke is shy at first, drags my hand and says "Come on!" but when we begin to repair the bicycle he becomes a little man and gets his hand in. The rotten tire explodes with a bang - we begin to laugh and his fright goes as he understands and nervously laughs too. - Luke and words: today he learned SMASH! - nearly 23 mo. Says four-five and seven - repeats but doesn't remember a lot. Light off, come on, I like it, flower, fire, trankik (blanket), car, airplane, bi'cle, go way, what's that, Michael, Chisa (Christopher), is mummy (explaining to strange people), toot, b'bukkun (belly button), sock, elephant (telephone), crying, bird, cat, duck, dokkie, daddy (teddy), horsie, coat, shoes, man (he learned today and remembered with great satisfaction because of my little model in clay of a man sitting with his beast), boy (insult, short for bad boy), tractor, deedaw, bike, onage (orange, learned yesterday), book, picture, get out, get up, BANG, my, plunk (jump), want some, apple, milk, bokkle, water, open door, close door, key, okay, spoon, clock, fish (from a picture), go out, go off, baby, fall, it's gone, all gone, eyes (can show finger, hand, nose, hair, mouth), 'sen! ssh! (listen), pencil, train, fif (ship), uk (egg) and eggie, lorry, truck, bite, b'l'n (balloon), back, hello, goodbye, no, here you are, mouth, building. - Before 24 mo: Moon, sic (music), loook, pen, juice, sing a song, nose, finger, toe, sore, window, tree, bubble, (in his new Ladybird today he called a cabbage 'tree', a boat 'fish, a window 'bye-bye', a scissors 'ouch, and a rabbit 'donkey'), babbit (rabbit), eleffant for elephant, fi'gingin (fire engine), hammer bang (listening), jump, fork, box, pocket, button, cough. - G'amma, break, jump down, bath. - At the WL meeting Sarah telling about a girl who came to see her saying her head is too small. Her family always said, "Oh no you're perfect," but she said "No no you don't know who I am, I'm not myself yet, you don't know who I'll be;" men wanted her, pursued her, but she said "Oh no no you don't know that I'm me. I'm deformed. I'm not right, I'm not what you see. My head is too small, it's a me-misery, my head is too small, I'm just barely here at all, I'll never be
Another dream, in the form of a half narrated story in which I am an actor, of Paul as a joke playing dead - he's just built a beautiful and skillful addition to a house - when I come in with our father, I know the man (who doesn't look like Father) will try to kill him when he discovers it isn't true, and so I try to choke him, he submits carelessly, but will not die no matter how hard I press his neck and wrists. Then when I give up he gets up and goes toward Paul - the rest is narrated: "The boy suddenly realized his danger and moved toward the door, but he was not quick enough, and just as he passed the door the man chipped at his heel, and he died." Dreams recalled evoke other dreams that happened months ago, also some kinds of events, maybe landscapes do, like traveling in Ireland, but only very fleetingly. The mysteriousness of dreams: letters with familiar characters from our personal life, in scenes that we don't believe, something like that. I'm trying to say what a film is in the same way that I'm trying to say what a dream is: a poetical feeling it out by making images, finding what it's like ... phenomenology but not analysis. Thinking as metaphorical, intuitive, when we're in new experiences.
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