| london volume 5 part 2 - 1973 february-march | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
[daily diary] 1 February, Thursday Woke, John cross because I'd slept upstairs, but he came up again later and could be comforted by Luke's bath. "Good morning" [said Luke] mimicking my tone. He sat naked with J and I took pictures. Got high on Prisoner of Sex talking about Lawrence, some Roberta Flack. We played hookey to the Tate to look at the Blake drawings, John gave me an exhilerated piggyback running from the Tate steps to the car. Ate lunch at the Ark in Notting Hill and there sat Michael Horowitz and Frances, friendly noises, my eyes sparkled. Went home to bed, got Luke, danced. Strange picture at the Tate of a foreboding animal kingdom under the rocks; carapaced bull and procession of stags. 2 Friday After class, Whitney's Mantra, the Anti-Discrimination Bill rally in Caxton Hall, J in business clothes, I joined the demonstration, torchlight, to the Houses of Parliament and then to 10 Downing Street, scary moments talking to Victoria; fighting with J; eventually got to the car and went north as far as ---, hotel with a high room, "rape in which I collaborated" and early morning fight that came out friendly, breakfast in bed. Driving on the motorway talking about the ladies who've wanted to marry him. [journal] Picture of him [John] in a long-tailed white shirt dressing for work, narrow shouldered, point-chinned small man, small boy - standing at his door smiling back at me over his shoulder. When I leapt onto his back off the Tate steps yesterday he took off running, galloping toward lines of oncoming traffic, unsurprised pedestrian, lamp post, dumping me finally on a car and I felt on my face the clear gleeful laugh of a five year old. Happy day. - At this moment in front of me there's a red patch of bookshelf lit from the north window, what a red, what a pattern in the knots of wood. - John: he's right, our work is exactly what he says, hard work, independent but catalyzed by the other, on discerning high powers, of elation, of ecstasy, grief, truthfulness, ceremony, games. You mind that I'm not in love with you, but slowly something else, inside our unholy alliance, a possibility of circling around back to a holy separation that explodes, forces; you know it all, something serious. You're very special to me. [daily diary] 3 Saturday Horrible Windermere, stood on the end of the ferry going across it like walking on water, cold, the rocks on either side a' lane beautiful preparation for the quarry where we stood and moved a long time, thinking about a meditation film, the Royal Oak little hotel in Borrowdale, Mrs Christie's, J massaging away my stomach ache, flat rather miserable day. Stepping stones shaped [sketch] crossing a stream. 4 Sunday J's story of Diana and his first dance at 15, tying his cock down. Morning, the meadow where we found my menhir with gatepost holes carved in it, cold, high green/red/grey places like beautiful worn carpets, but a misery with cold and secrets between us, the churchyard with stones of slate with brief inscriptions cut, the folded cunt in a tree trunk, a place where shadows of tree trunks melted into water, stones. Driving back looking in our 'book' we invented a school with an old fiddler, a morning in my garden, and then he miraculously found a key in my wall that took us to our work with magical powers. [journal] In the cemetery at Borrowdale, looking at slate tombstones, old women, old men, young women, infants, I named my children: Jonah Roy, Merrit Poppy, wet grass among the round fells, red bracken, green grass, grey slate, and darker grey walls thrown straight up the fellside and around. The Romans called a bastard a son of the earth; the Rumanians still call it a 'child of flowers.' Bastard: bot. nearly resembling another species. Customs of giving birth on the earth, kneeling - or newborn child when washed and dressed is placed upon the earth: dead and dying also laid on the earth, which is the threshold of life. - Bones of the ur-mother are stones: concentrated essence of life. In neolithic times bodies were laid in the earth in the shape of the embryo in the womb. - Feminine initiations: in societies where chastity, modesty and virginity are valued, there are certain sacred occasions, marriage, for one, where behavior is reversed: Ukraine, women lifting their skirts to the waist to jump over the fire "burning the hair of the bride." "Necessity of suspending the law that bears like a dead weight upon the customary, and of re-entering into a state of absolute spontaneity." Erotic and lewd songs and dances! Mystery lacking in sexuality, best fantasies are about forbidden things. Man in the train at night, girl. [daily diary] 5 Monday Reading Eliade most of the day, cleaning, dreaming of a Moroccan seaside town like Essouira for April and May, met J just outside on the street when coming back with a kebab in my hand, delighted to see him; but then when he came back defensive, glasses gleaming out of the dark, when I was far away in Eliade, frightened at his anger. 6 Tuesday Working on a gospel song in two sharps. Window cleaner came like a mythical hero bringing light and summer into my house, gave me energy to fix the bicycle, reline my leather jacket. Roy brought Luke, sleepy - I carried him asleep from the car, what a loving holding - and then I had to work to make him friendly so that we could part better. Sat in bed reading Hopkins thinking about the lively happy suction of his mind toward things, oak trees, clouds. Letter from Ian quoting Nin about relationships like cathedrals. Luke's first [whole] sentence to me "I saw a gir-awffe," at the zoo, Bun's birthday. 7 Wednesday Luke's distress when his diarrhea foamed and gurgled out into his bath, he's brave but fragile, says he's tired, has a swollen tummy that his new window t-shirt hugs. Grandma brought strawberries and cream, yogourt, cheese biscuits, processed Canadian cheddar! Smarties, frozen orange juice, half a malt loaf, three brown eggs. Sat and darned his tights. Film Co-op - Neke's film about a street and a girl's legs walking, posing - Germany 1968. Stopped on the street at Vista [TV store], djellaba, bicycle, to watch pairs skating until all four television screens suddenly flickered off. Anathemic to me: structuralism, minimalism. [journal] What drained me today, made me jitter with dread: Luke, ill, saying goodbye to his grandmother, insisted he wanted to go home, "Go home," "Roy home" and was ready to follow her out: she hesitated, making a long goodbye, making the most of it, and I almost had to push the door shut on her to be able to face my own panic that she wanted to skin - that Luke will prefer Roy, that Luke loves Roy differently from me because Roy is gayer, warmer, surrounded by good exciting times, love and tenderness that I make so much less of; or do I imagine that. Oh but it sunk me to think so, made all my movements uneasy. [daily diary] 8 Thursday Home with Luke, Sarah came through the rain and we walked with her back to the fork at the side of Parliament Hill, still raining, she said how the trees in Yugoslavia were like life pushing up; I looked at wet tree trunks and thought a little about a cabin in the woods but Luke wanted to play. A lot of trains. Slowly I got near to him and was present with him; then he said "I'm tired" and went to bed; Roy brought toys for him; I set out the low table, candles, made Veau de la Chevaliere, leeks and courgettes cooked with onion, tomato, garlic and lemon juice, honey carrots with sultanas, crème brulee that was like high class scrambled eggs; wore net stockings; J was beautiful in purple shirt and waistcoat; smoked a little and got down to skin, beautiful leaves and sky framed in window, blissful buzzings in my body, went to sleep like melting, J thumped out a bed for himself. 9 Friday Morningtime there he is, still, and I'm cross but cheerful, so that's what I am, money comes, John takes Luke to school on the bicycle, and I go to Green Park, sun, wearing wide jeans belted and peasant shirt, leather jacket, earrings, cap, people take notice, go to bank and Design Centre to find some pinchpots like mushrooms, walk up to South Moulton Street to look for boots and find at Crocodile some beautiful knit dresses, dumb Van Der Beek at the Slade, David and I shy, R comes to see Luke and the latter's happy, we to celebrate Catherine's birthday, leave her to babysit while we go see La Salamandre, all the jokes I remember are even nicer; on the way home, in my loneliness a little fortified I talk about how he's more faithful now, again it's me who wins the little contact. [journal] Asking R about how he's so faithful now, he said "She's very conscientious," "She's very limited but within her limits she's consistent, she knows what she wants, she sets her limits." "I feel she really likes me." "I like her very much." Of our old battles, "But you have to keep from just doing everything someone wants." When I said that I always felt he must know that all my efforts to control him were just because I felt he didn't really want me, as I wanted him. He said "If you feel someone's just using you, you should get out." "I feel more real." "Is it because you trust Jud?" "I do trust her." Jud's a little like Olivia, practical, witty, loving, dependent on people, off-pretty, although not hysterical. Once again the girly girl wins the difficult lonely man; and as for me and my loving practical funny off-pretty man, there he is and I can't love him and that's the best thing about him but - - La salamandre, happy moments between three people who are themselves. Farouche, as I am when I'm daring, like this morning fierce separate crisp and able to celebrate tenderness when it happens and resisting all counterfeit. Two ugly men and a pretty girl. Paul's wife reading the bit of Heine about people who're conceived in loving embraces having no idea of our present misery, as we have no notion of the sort of thoughts they'll be able to think. I have to love Roy as I do, in tenderness, silence that breaks itself when it does, as it does; this softness doesn't break me, doesn't threaten my time or my life; our separation makes something possible, speech, generosity, that wasn't; I'm content for little, like our goodbye embrace last week, that was enough, a shy kiss and a little feel of his shoulder blade. How special that body is to me and what do I care, only sometimes, how neutral my body is to him. It's good not to be able to love anyone else. Now. [daily diary] 10 Saturday Luke and I spend the morning at J's house. Bath and television and records and food. David comes for supper, we're dopey and I insist he stay to sleep under the dream rug. He smokes and talks a lot about his youth and adventures, when I tell him about being 14, Gary stealing oranges and giving me a baby tarantula in an aspirin bottle, he says it's a poem. Reads me Pound. Long walk in dark to Heath hillside and trains. 11 Sunday Morning - sunny Sunday, breakfast ritual with David, Luke sits on his lap. I wear a provocative green dress and long socks, he praises my hair, we're pleased to be chaste and good, walk through sun in djellaba to cemetery and back. Vigilant kind presence, "You're a gentle man." Luke throat infection very ill. [journal] Luke's words at 25 and a half months. Yours coat, my jacket, moneybus (minibus), Roy, Jud, Margaret, Mossy, Bun, I not spill it milk, Jud's bed, Jud's sleeping, road roller, John's work, go home, and GO HOME! (pounding Sarah), pissy cat sleeping, sing a song Lord Jesus, one for the master one for the dame, Marg'ry Daw, lobbipop, milkman, hot fire, dog not coming now, I (not) shitty, pooppoop's coming, pee's coming, Mommy's nice tummy, I do it, appuh juice!, I tired, I not like it, I like it. In the bath together, "Nipple, two nipple," pointing to his belly button, "my nipple." Trousers, jersey, TI-GGERRRGH, I saw a girawff. A dog on the tely dogshow he called monkey. Choclit, sweeties, open door! (asking to have the lid taken off his Smarties tube), put it in the bin, here's letter for you (delivering a poem to me from David in the kitchen), Granma's crying, tehluvishn, FIREENGINEMAN. - When I came to the nursery school this afternoon, Luke in the corridor in his coat, in tears, he'd seen me from the window and thought I was leaving again. - Now the sky's clear, London's light vanishes up into it, the stars shine red, there's moonlight at the back window, I'm writing by firelight, fire warm on my bum. - Sword rune from Pound "Se il cor ti manca non ti fidar in me." - Having dinner with David he read a poem from Pound, Dance Figure
[daily diary] 12 Monday Luke's home with above, but better. I think - J comes, lets himself in, I go on in trouble, about how I'm not in love with him and will never be, guilty and maddened by guilt. Roy babysitting while I go to pottery, Luke still awake until 10:30. 13 Tuesday Ditto, Greg here. Going grey with irritation. Shit spreads over all. Roy comes to visit with fruit and good wishes. 14 Wednesday Pottery, throwing pots with lids. Peter Simpson's poppy pot at the Design Centre. 15 Thursday Telephone rings, it's Flack's beautiful "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Bad day full of farts. 16 Friday Similar. Beckett's Not I and Krapp's Last Tape. Ridiculous splurge of money on dinner, little chickens, at Kings Road restaurant. 17 Saturday Roy, Jud and Luke through the sun in the Mini to the beach at Brighton where they sat, ate fish and chips, and Luke threw stones into water endlessly from a breakwater. Clear brilliant blue morning - slept and slept in J's bed, got up and did yoga, bare-assed headstands in sunlight on the grey carpet. I'm pentup frustrated longing to give myself to dedication, work - go quickly home, and then to see The Other Side of Underneath, sit through it twice, eat compulsively, come home and clean so that my house has will and order shining in it. Watch woman's prog, mediocre, on TV and go to bed with cat. [journal] Lumpy, morose, waiting to be called, waiting to find myself. - Enflamed with mysterious beauty and power. Think, how. Gather all the secrets I know. - At Krapp's Last Tape, the moment when I knew I would die, when in my body I felt the lunge of fear at the moment when I will cease. The taste of a thin half slice of lemon stolen from ice in the foyer. [daily diary] 18 Sunday Wake to light and sun, feeling right, when I'm ready. Play yoga, eat breakfast, sit down in my clean house to read Campbell, buzzing with thoughts, films; write Mafalda, speak to Christie and to Dee, eat, speak to Roy, dial a poem that suddenly addresses me "Are you still there?" All the sunny afternoon my back yard's branches are full of light. Lug home half a salt-glazed drain to plant things in, Christie's image of her day in Lincoln with professor, her beads broke suddenly and rained to the ground. "At first I could only think it was ice." Resources and communications in me, I reach, I'm alive and open, trying, believing, expanding to contain . 19 Monday Studying good bits of Mekas' Diaries on the Acmade, gathering of Slade students felt nice, Storm over Asia with delighted filming of steppes and faces, still reading Campbell IV and high on Tristan and Hilarious and Isolde. Can't do headstands, melancholy about J and threatening to give up sex forever, gone off it. [journal] Despair about fucking. J telling me how it is for him, raptures of mouth, nipples, shoulders, cunt, anus, face. My own sexuality so barren and thin. Or is it only him. "The little distance between your back and your belly." I grit my teeth, the little excitement gone, continue blindly, come, but the climax is lost in the confusion of his beginning to rush, he flops on me, kicks, jerks, the caught fish. I'm bitter because I don't love him. Have no pleasure in the shape of his waist, none in the form of his shoulder. Try to accept his body as just his strange unrepresentative box, as my body is mine, my long box, but I've no affection for his body, and I can't look at his face when he's coming, can't bear the meaty swollen ecstasy that feeds on me. Or feeds me. It isn't right. - He guesses that I wouldn't steal a baby from him. - Looking in his long mirror this morning I saw a strange naked body, pleasing to the waist, and there split downward into a long, abundant rounded sleek leg and a dangling mean stick leg. Seemed a body in which one side had been whittled away. [daily diary] 20 Tuesday Boudu Sauvé des Eaux, disgruntled not to be able to invite David to dinner on account of his Linda Mexican lady, ate morose Chinese meal by myself and went to Sarah's, silly kicking-and-splashing arguments about film, sorry because of Leslie and when I got home Sarah telephoned to say she was sorry - also Defense book from John, "for/the/defense/of/the/Queendom." 21 Wednesday Pottery, got back two goblets meant to be streaky blue and black, actually a quite good speckly rutile with an emerald pool in the middle [sketch]. Got Luke, hadn't seen for 5 days, speaks more, pale face with fringe cut high. David came for supper, made pork chops and I made a good salad and Luke remembered the candles from last time. Linda [babysitter] came and we went to see The Man with the Movie Camera: delight. Delighted, went and soaked our heads in the river lights, stood in the middle of Westminster Bridge with that ambivalent element light/air/water swirling and boiling around us, tipsy with vision. 24 Saturday Took Luke to Cambridge on the train. Found Dee in the market. Took Anna for a walk, beautiful East Anglia sky, sat by a little river with her, Luke asleep. Cooked supper happily while Dee read to Anna. All four watched The Greatest Show on Earth while eating good cheese sauce and delicious apple sauce with cream. Then sat by fire and talked, she played garden game. 25 Sunday Came home from Cambridge hurriedly, Dee in bad humor, feeling in the way. 26 Monday Glazing pots with Carol. 27 Tuesday New, soft, olive green laced round toed beautiful boots. Noel's day on The General Line. 123 Children's Community Centre with Luke. Good WL meeting. 28 Wednesday Noel [Birch], jabbering on a freaky high level. [journal] Luke's words 28 February Poor Mummy's shoe! Got a hole! As I try to brush his hair, Fuck you! FUCK YOU! Yesterday, patting his thighs as I carried him on my shoulders, "Likkle bo-dy." To the sleepy man on the train, "Hello man!" Crane, my likkle back, my fat bum. [daily diary] 1 March Thursday Boring one hour interview with James [Leahy] fat, perspiring. With John to a meeting, some group leader getting boring, Chris Leonard, smiling and unsmiling. 2 Friday The Year of the 10 Million; Djengo Reinhardt; Relativity; A Jester's Tales. Keith. 3 Saturday Noel's seminar, Keith [Jackson], Mark [Nash], Ed and Noel dominating it, me unable to follow it; took camera to Rank Audio Visual; reading about underground cinema on Underground for hours. Came home to find my CROCUSES out. Felt like J and went around, sat in peasant skirt shirt and long skirt, beautiful boots and barefoot but electricity didn't begin until Dee came home and there I was in John's bed reading Camus - J stormed out saying it was impossible but came in in the dark, very cold, and I warmed him - and me; oh, very good. [journal] Wilson on Maslow on will: I think of Mafalda's diligence in everything, will that energizes itself. Being a wilful person. When I was young I believed I could make myself beautiful, lived in dedication to myself. Now I know more about my closing-down closing-out reflexes, conservative decisions. I experiment with the idea of richness. Because of Luke, I say, I need things, a jumble of sights and sounds. Better simply my attention. - Giordiano Bruno (1548-1600) burned in the Campo dei Fiori for teaching what Copernicus demonstrated five years before his birth: that the earth moves around the sun. - Fantasy and will: I want another child, I'm preparing another gestation, I'll learn to make it possible. I need a house, money, car, help, need to learn to make my film. - Gentle striving in relation to a secret hope. Gottfried. - The Gothics were able to raise unimaginable amounts of money to build cathedrals, inspired by a mythology - if we were, what could we do? - Heloise: "There were in you two qualities by which you could draw the soul of any woman, the gift of poetry and the gift of singing, gifts which other philosophers had lacked." - The space between my heroic fantasies for myself and the limited, conditioned choices I give myself every day, feel it's exaggerated by being female but don't need that excuse. - Film: the troublesome female choice, impossible to refuse the power of having babies, but what being sunk into our facticity - good . - Have it on the ground, place it on the ground. - We come to the problem of communication, the opening, that is to say, of one's own truth and depth to the depth and truth of another in such a way as to establish an authentic community of existence. Joseph Campbell - Standing in the bowl of the winged serpent, we are inside that sacred chalice drinking with our eyes the intoxicant, there symbolized as wine, of the mystery of the substance of our being. - Legend of Caedmmon 657-680, cowherd of Abbess St Hilda of Whitby, who would, because uneducated, disconsolately leave the hall when the harp was passed and songs were made. He would go to the stable to sleep, but one evening: "While he slept, someone stood by him in a dream, greeted, called him by name, and said to him 'Caedmon, sing me something.' He replied, 'I know not how to sing '. The personage insisted: "No matter, you must sing to me . Sing the beginning of created things.' And at that, Caedmon sang in praise of God the Creator verses he had never heard." - Christie - irritating lady, full of her own visions and not much interest in me, but stuffed with images, privacy, ambition, affection for her children. I don't understand the connection with Peter, she needs and has got a wife I guess, but doesn't her conscience choke her, as mine does? I need to grapple with her, but am shy of her authority. She's a worthy opponent with whom I need to prepare myself, she's got magic and powers; always I have to find a way from choking myself with pride in the face of such pride. But her gifts don't have my alien defensiveness, my ferocity to live with. She can be wife, mother, Margaret's friend, lecturer, the sunny social lady. Today I don't mind that I love people who love me back only fitfully. It's important to love the best people. - Once again, clear to me, I'm not to be a teacher or critic, I'm to be a poet, maker. All my weariness and anger in my 'work' has to do with it not being my good road. - Bless London for donar kebabs. - Dee on the telephone saying she'd taken her mother and Anna to Ely: the old mother was so pathetic and neither one had anything for her - "Last week I nearly killed Anna I hit her so hard I bruised her. I didn't want to . Sometimes I want to kill her." The murderous rage of frustration that creepy psychiatrist called the fear of being a woman, no wonder children grow up with a terror of their mothers and a horror of women. - Gnostic love feast, prevented contraception, but if it did accidentally happen, "they tear out the embryo as soon as it can be reached, take the misborn unborn fruit of the body and pound it in a mortar with a pestle, after which they mix with it pepper, honey, and certain other balsams and herbs, so that it should not nauseate them; and then that entire congregation of pigs and dogs gathers round and each dips up with his finger a morsel of the immolated child. We have harvested our brother's error." Epiphanius Poem on abortion. - Gottfried on courtly love, "It is just this readiness to embrace love's pain along with its rapture that makes the noble heart exceptional." Nor is the pain that is so endured merely adventitious, overlaid from without upon a pleasure in love that is alone essential. The pain is implicit, rather, in the very delight by which it is complemented - to such a degree that the pleasure and pain are indissolubly interlaced, as commensurate components of one experience of existence. In the progress of his legend the steadily mounting tension of the polarities of joy and sorrow, love against honor, death-life, light and darkness . the self-surpassing power of life, which is experienced in love when it wakes in the noble heart, brings pain to the entire system of fixed concepts, judgments, virtues, and ideals of the mortal being assaulted. - Aventiure (Middle High German etc) "event, occurrence," or more usually "a marvel, an accident, a bold beginning of uncertain outcome," and especially "a fortunate occurrence, a destiny." - "Never had she experienced such heaviness and heart's need." And Tristan was conceived. - the marriage and dream bed, which is in every home, every heart, and which Joyce, like Gottfried, represents as the altar and cross of the consummate initiation. - Anima est Sol et Luna: "The soul cannot exist without its other side, which is always found in a 'You.'" Jung Alchemistry of pottery, of person, of film: He may approach the work as one in need of salvation, but he knows that his salvation depends on the success of the work, on whether he can free the divine soul. To this end he needs meditation, fasting and prayer matter that must be redeemed what comes out of the transformation is an ineffable being named the 'stone' . The substance that harbors the divine secret is everywhere, including the human body. - egg and sperm cell no longer exist begetting parents in a sense, no longer exist for their generation has been surpassed, the new is now the living centre, in relation to which they are to function as a protective husk, to be in due time cast away. - The great lovers love each other for the sake of their beauty. - Theseus, Arthur, Tristan born out of wedlock. Film: Roy from behind, walking away / from far. The sun jumping. - J: can only annex you as friend: truthfully, that passion is not for you. "Walked past the house of her I cannot help, but love and care for." - Everything I was ashamed of, afraid of, with Roy, I should have been proud of - being afraid to be broken - but I wasn't - the passion of curiosity - who is this man who - what's this being I had to love - now that I know, remember, that it doesn't happen often. - A dream in which Jean Morrison appeared, known to be dying. We visited, Luke and I, I think in a large house with stairs. She was gay, warm, and I thought I hadn't known she was so alive. Today I wonder if perhaps she did die early this morning. Catastrophe in that gracious household. - as reproduction depends on the sexes, in their unrelenting conflict and only occasional - periodic - reconciliation. Nietszche - I work from the idea of dreams to anchor this 'work' outside the professional circle of film-talk, even film-making, ie try to live poetically. - Campbell on Parsifal: "loyalty in true love, joined with heroism in action, as the human way to perfection, passing in freedom between the two impersonal compulsions of nature of sheer spirit." Knightly adventures that include finding maidens and proving worthy of their love. Quest stories of women? - secular spirituality a life responsible to itself, to its own supreme experiences and expectations of value, realizing through trials in truth, loyalty, and love, and by example redounding, then, to the inspiration of others to like achievement. Jung - task of life's second half quest for uncreated consc of one's race. First half - reach maturity as an adult functioning responsibly in the context of a society. For me must seem to be the same. Anima - "she is a portion of oneself, one's destiny one's secret intention for oneself." As Gawain, having found his lady, had to undergo many trials to prove his willingness to let go of himself. Campbell 4.502 on Green. Jung etc. The cure is effected by the weapon. Orgelense: She had been to such a degree dissociated from the spontaneities of innocent life that anyone who would release her love would first have to undo the spell by which she was enthralled. Gawain: had spent his life not posing in a role unearned but in quest, sincerely, for the object of his desire, and when he found her - after years, not days - he was transfixed, established in his own true center, and knew exactly where he stood. bards and fabulators trained in the mythopoetic craftsmanship which included, besides a knowledge by memory of all the basic Celtic myths, practice and facility in the arts of improvisation. appropriation and mastery of time, therefore novelties, possibilities, raw facts, dangers, pains and wonders of a new age. The child is the self reborn in the perfect being we want to be, that we are striving to become, and that we hoped to become, so to say, when we entered our present body. It is the symbol of the entelechy, or secret model, of our destination. Zimmer on Lancelot Thus Sir Galahad, the immaculate, is the redemption of the ambiguous, brilliant Father and so that father is revealed to have combined in himself the energies of the two spheres, the worldly sphere of desires, and the higher one of the purely spiritual adventure. This is the final secret of his charm. Every so-called 'fall,' or departure from the 'law' is then itself a creative act in which God participates. - When Roy comes he's so loving with Luke and so preemptory and bored with me that I leech away, face feels stiff and false, I show nothing interesting of myself and just go sit next to him in defiant unhappy affection waiting for a little sign of feeling for me. - John's getting fed up: I won't play romance with him and don't sleep with him; have told him I'm still a little in love with Roy and that maybe I've gone off him. He tells me, after a sleepless night, that he's decided I'm full of contradictions and not what I claim. David - irritable and dogged. And then there's stiff Andy. Foreign languages. - I miss Roy = I miss being centred in love of somebody. - Was there a time when, yes, yes, there was, when I said, could say, I love you so much. - This will to be oneself is heroism ... it is essential for the hero to want his tragic destiny . All the sorrow springs from the hero's refusal to give up an ideal part, an imagined role that he has chosen. - I can learn from those who agree with me, the feebleness of my own ideology. - India: classical order of a lifetime: first half, in the village, first as 1. student (obedient, learning skills and duties), 2. as householder, partner, parent; second half in the forest 3. serious meditation 4. achievement of release from the will to live and wandering, rootless begger until body drops off. Dante's four stages: 1. adolescence, to 25, obedience, sweetness, sensitivity to shame, physical grace; 2. [woman]hood 24-45, apex at 35: temperance, courage, love, courtesy and loyalty, its aim is achievement; 3. age 45-70, prudence, self-lawfulness, justice, generosity, affability, teaching; 4. decreptitude, soul returns to god and blesses the voyage [she] has made, "come to part with all sweetness and all peace. At 35 the adventure of the dark wood, descent. All symptoms of disease are but disguised manifestations of love; and disease, but love transformed. Magic Mountain My superstition exactly: I feel the lump in my gut, the lines under my eyes, are the anguished clenching, slow deat by poison, of my longing for peace and bliss with 'Roy's' beautiful body. Is Jean dying of duty, as I thought, or of love? - Jung - possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought. The dream is that little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was the psyche long before there was many ego consciousness. Eros is a kosmogonos, a creator and father-mother of all higher consiousness. Dream three nights ago: I'm tumbling down dunes, cliffs, of white snow, sand, and come to a broad river so fiercely rushing that it seems to foam at the edges - it's very wide, I think about crossing it but don't. Congealed foam like Chinese drawings. Memory of standing by the Wapiti at a point where one of the sons of someone Mother knew had drowned while crossing it on horseback, not foam but pebbles on its banks. Dream two nights ago - a man walking upriver, following him at three paces, a tired and unwilling woman; later in the dream the woman comes up to me, takes my hands in the highly formal position of old fashioned waltzes and leads, pushes me so gently and accurately that I dance several very slow, precise rounds with her in great delight. Thursday morning - dream - walk past a house built out to the street where the garden used to be, a narrow corridor around the outside and in the middle a glass-covered dining room where people are eating, serving food. One of the parts of the corridor is like an airplane, but we decide to make it a cinema - movie becomes a flight low over evening-lit grass, a field covered with red lilypads, other wonderful sights, I say to myself, what a nice dream this is (this movie!). Then we come down in an airport etc. - Earlier dream of lying in bed waking, fantasizing Andy and being surprised to discover that I was wanting him, feeling imaginary head, hollow between arm and chest, beginning to dance and all intent - when I discovered the shape was solid, but John; pulled out in mock indignation and made a fuss about how did I get downstairs when I had a bed upstairs. - Looking at Madeleine's sketchbooks, spending time with Chris Leonard, feeling how stiff with fright I am. Petrified! Turned by myself into a babbling-machine, stop! Think! You owe nobody anything! Oh how long it takes to learn not to collude, not be be what anyone expects, not to be nice, to let go-o-o and rip loose - is there any training for that. A pleasure with John when we're nice. At his house yesterday, in his bed, feeling the warming in my sex, going on and beginning to move, cling, fit, ah, stretch, reach, follow, glide back, follow, fall back, breathe, wait, bellies pushed together mouth avid greedy, he does it to me. I wait, glide in when I can't help it, push in. Then the grateful cool kiss, and sleep. That's blind fucking that hardly knows who - except for the pressures, the tuning, that's who, that's all. No question of loving, it's fucking, it's simple exchange of innovation, reply. Attentive, totally attentive. That's love, yes, obviously. Attentive innovation and reply. - Chris - shaggy bossman with authority - oh but heavy, and makes me so heavy with him, interested in power and in seduction. Makes me learn how scared I can be, not to seize my power in relation to him, and simply because he is beautiful. And knows it well, and that's all. A dream of Jud lying in a bed, naked, invites me to touch her, feel her stomach. I do feel the little distance between her stomach and her back, reach to touch her breasts and she goes away. 4 Sunday Jumped up in the morning to talk to Dee and have coffee, glad to see her; J getting up was almost superfluous, went home to work in the garden, digging good loose crumbly damp soil! Got, from Caversham Road, a bundle of iris to put along the wall under the rosebush, and some bits of - what? A spreading perennial, maybe a violet. Warm, sun, went to 3 Caversham Road to find Chris again, carried the big suitcase on his head, I had the pushchair with a box, a big coolie basket upside down, and then two stalks - 7' long and bushy - of lilac we fished out of the tip - stiff talk, that embarrassment between us, don't know about him. Andy playing jazz piano while I made omelette; meeting at 123 to which Dee and John did NOT come. Jane [Downey] arrives. [Jane rented the room downstairs.] 5 Monday In a fury with John; he came round and I told him he was disgusting, dealing double - trying to be friends with everyone. He was ready to hit me when Jane came in with a timely cup of tea; then suddenly it was all gone and we fell to talking about crocus and hugging each other over the delights of Saturday night. And I got a lift to the laundromat. A little strong pot with silky graphite glaze [sketch], my hollow footed big goblet beautiful with grey blue streaked dolomite; the squashed pot has liquid deep cracked puddles of clear glaze inside and outside a baked lot of browns and blacks. $10 and letter from Mother - she's given Father a feminism course for his birthday. [Later note: Has gone to be exhibited at Swiss Cottage, also big vase and fat low bowl, black earthenware too.] March 6 Tuesday [28th birthday] Morning grey, raining, down to Mari's day on minimalism, sitting on high stool watching beautiful first sequence from Straub's The Bridegroom The Comedian and the Pimp - a long street in Munich in the rain, prostitutes under umbrellas, sheets of water, fluid streets, lovely movement in - overtaking a Porsche. She shoots her pimp and there's a zoom past her through the window. Afternoon Nicht Versöhnt. Rushed out to find Euston Road a corridor of white light. Made cake and WL came, Dee also. Morning went with Roy to see Chris about car. Sarah making brilliant slogans for Saturday march. [journal] March 6 Birthday, raining hard, go with Roy (the Saab's door held on with string) to see Chris - we sit and talk in the car about his being tired of Jud - "She's so petty. It takes a while to get to know people" - I hold him by his white sheepskin collar with drops of rain on it, we're talking almost well. Go to catch Chris, who comes in wet, glad to see us but wondering what we want. When I leave our heads touch in shy affection. The moment coming out of Flaxman Terrace at four o'clock to find the sun on liquid streets, patches of color shining up, walking through gleams of white, blue, orange, smiling at the richness of all wet colours in the clean air, coming around the corner and being knocked into satori by the dazzle up wet Euston Road, low sun blazing off the pavement, white light with black forms of pedestrians almost swallowed by it, an ecstatic alleyway of white light between the office blocks, human figures eaten into, dissolving, by that clear white light from the pavement - that, and a fresh wind whipping my hair, and the street around me flowing with light and color. My birthday present. Made a chocolate cake for my women's lib meeting, good to feel I had someones to celebrate with. Hesitated but put on 28 red white and blue candles, good, wine and passionfruit juice. Dee came and was easy. Sarah was full of brilliant slogans [for our Women's Day walk] - Ban's Off, Access - takes the Waiting out of Wanting, Having to Hold. Mary shone dimly. Ate the cake and now am going sadly to bed because John hasn't even said happy birthday. Luke asleep during the meeting. We were assembled around the pither. [daily diary] 7 Wednesday At the Institute throwing stems and little bowls for goblets [sketches], such sun my bicycle leapt down the road, and my hair shook out behind as I rared and leaned, back straight, swinging one arm - stopped at J's, coffee with him and Dee, a book with beautiful pictures of Robert Louis Stevenson, and a Boots Diary from 1918, a middle aged woman picking "such a lot of violets" and buying stuff to make drawers for Louise. High and bright. Doreen and Polly evoking South African country childhood near Peterbourg. Sat in the garden at noon. Pissy Cat crying from the roof to get at the fat old cat next door, sun on my white crocuses, grass growing, warmth among the bluebell stalks. Tuned in evening. David's blue eyes. 8 Thursday Bright sun, got up late enough for J to catch us, set out toward Hatfield and turned into the first PRIVATE estate we came to, Earl of Strafford, race horses; stepped bravely into front garden to see bluebells and daffodils coming up, the lane and the gardener, 76 years old like her Ladyship, gothic conservatory with jasmine all up the back wall, orange trees, a palm, magnolia and camellia in full bloom; a pool running with colors, wanted to film it like the quarry film; sat in a field, pushed faces into moss to smell; Hatfield, river, greys, yellows, very austere; stopped at a nursery and bought a passiflora, a clematis Jackmanii, saxifrage, yellow and white primulae, some rosette alpines, sweet peas. Jane had gingerbread men and made us tea. Got back off-centre 'American' pot, inside has earthenware turquoise run onto shoulder, pushing oxides ahead, full of streaks and variations, emerald patches. [sketch] Black oxide slightly oiled with vaseline.
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