| london volume 5 part 3 - 1973 march-april | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
[undated journal] Taking Luke to school, look back, carrying the bicycle over the [railway] bridge, and see him in his dufflecoat, a halo around his hair and his breath white vapour, shining back at me, and being full of love for him. - This evening, coming home from a class, John brings him home. He rushes [pen runs out] - This morning, taking Luke's nappy off, I find inside it the nappy he had on - nappy lined plastic - last evening! - Poor Claires on television, made by Brigid Seagrave; Pissy-cat courted by two fat old toms weeping in the garden. Pleasure of going to see John at his place, there he is flat-headed in his paisley dressing gown, won't let me in cause he's making my birthday present, we sit in the hall on the floor, he shows a leg and is gay, waves to Luke from the window until we're almost out of sight and then flashes paisley underpants. A lonely ache inside me but not for him. Because he's there. Luke at John's long mirror touching his hand and staring into his own eyes, mouthing carefully - not whispering - "I love you." At John's he asks for ice, brings it home in his pocket. [daily diary] 9 March Friday Le Jolie Mai, a worker priest talking with such dignity about giving up the church for the union, two giggling lovers, a suit salesman talking about the movies' use - guns - and money. Surly Mark Nash. Robert Breer dreary underground film class. To Barbara's for 'party,' me and Sheila, pleasant. Lennie pressing food and Barbara silent and careful of him. Blah. 10 Saturday [Women's Day march] Gathering at Maggie's to make signs and dress. Luke put to sleep in her bed. Maggie red cheeked brilliant eyed pregnant bride - "This is virgin on the ridiculous." Sarah pasty grey with potty and plastic pail draggling after her long train. Leslie. Hazel wrapped in white rags. Gail brought a magnificent 50s wedding dress, which I wore with my I won't sign, holding up the train to push Luke. Smiling faces all around in the march, and all along Oxford Street. Sun. Cameras. John leaping in orange t-shirt. Trafalgar Square. Escaped home to put Luke to bed, went to bed ourselves, a little of The Rainbow - shouting at J because of his journal. "It just happened." 11 Sunday Luke waking us out of grey sleep. J, coffee and toast and egg "to give you a rest" while he dressed Luke and I relived young loving murderous marriage with Anna and Will in The Rainbow. Music, came and lay naked on the living room floor, composing a birthday portrait in the mirror [sketch], skeptical woman's face, generous, holding a long palmed hand up. Paul just called to say he has a daughter Tova, by forceps, Friday. Womb was exhausted. I'm scornful [of Mimi for not managing to give birth]. Luke at his grandma's, afternoon's escape from dreary Ceremony, man's room in Notting Hill, home to bed in afternoon, and then when it was dark, to get Luke, to clean my house. The lilac branches may bloom. [journal] Monday 12th March Missing Roy because he's having a honeymoon at the Scrubbs with Jud. He likes crisp women, doesn't like to be seen through, that old grip of fascination when I picked up his muscular grinning photographs as a Maris Brothers boy. - Dream - in the country with Luke clinging around my neck, we ride very fast on the stubble edge of the field, past a dry tree with grapes hanging from it, turn back to see, Luke is Judy and we've found a big hotel, we go in a back door and find, in a cardboard box, four, one after the other, silken bedspreads, black with little flowers - we dump papers out of a plastic bag to carry them in, but it isn't big enough, we go next door to look for a larger bag, and there's a big wooden box with - shock of recognition, pleasure, sadness - some of Roy's things, including a package of Paddi-pads. Related to earlier dreams of a big flat, 7 Heath Lodge, plans to clear and clean it and let two rooms, Roy having moved out. - The grief I call Roy. What is it. - Memories of the closets of that house, empty spaces. Cancer - immunology research: the body constantly produces abnormal cells - "not eliminate cancer but establish an equilibrim between cancer and its host." When they injected the [marrow] cells into David's peritoneal cavity, relying on the cells' natural homing instincts to guide them to the bone marrow. Every cell and microorganism is believed to carry at least one such flag on its surface: it fits, like a key in a lock, into a site on the lymphocytes recognizes the others as foreign. Anywhere from 10's to 100's of abnormal, genetically different and potentially cancerous cells per day when the defense system is weakened it fails to do away with he errant cells, either because it cannot recognize them or because it is incapable of attacking them. That gives the outlaw cells (which are apparently not under the same genetic restraints as normal cells) the same opportunity to run wild. Picture of the body's floating mosaic, like log jams in floating log-pens, with colonies that can take over its space. Cancer is chaos, the form unable to defend itself. - A swarm of vague thoughts buzz up: my immunity is low, I'm needing Roy. Thinking of the empty spaces in my life, wishing for something to engage with my intelligence, hollaring at Luke, throwing Pissy-cat across the room (her fat lover sitting on the sill staring at her through the window). John snapped at me on the telephone; I hung up and burst. Last night he said I and Dee were the only women he knew who thought so much about getting old, and I prickled with tears. - In his bed this morning, when the sun came streaking across the floor almost to the stove, Luke sat in his bed looking at his book, naming things, sing and parodying the singing sessions at his school, "Cle-vah boy! Well done!" - Last night at school he went the rounds, kissing everyone - Michael, and the slippery baby - goodbye. Then said "Is my Ellie."
Wordsworth, whenever he has a moment of insight or happiness, talks about it in the language of light. His great poems are about moments of enlightenment. Imagination is - a faculty of maturity, as opposed to Fancy which is a faculty of youth sez Coleridge. Joseph Conrad, Literature "is to make you see. That is all and it is everything." [daily diary] 14 Wednesday Enjoying the little fame - because of the Observer - with Doreen's interest, and soliciting my opinion of her pots etc - had a good day at pottery, throwing small feet for goblets, and in the afternoon pinching a few porcelain shapes, will have four pots in the exhibition. Pissy Cat has gone off with her three suitors. At lunch sat with Sarah and Polly talking about Rosicrucianism, order, Polly's belief that to live well is to harm no one, she says she is guilty about nothing. Morosely went to morose Charme discret de la bourgeousie in stupid expensive Bloomsbury Cinema; Roy put me out of joint by snubbing me courteously on the telephone. (He was coming down with violent food poisoning.) [daily diary] 15 Thursday Blue and susceptible, feeling wasted, sitting in my house quieting, straining; comforting myself with Ode: Intimations of Immortality. Went out at last to see Six Cinetracts and Written on the wind. Moment in the bath staring at rust stain like phallus and balls under the warm water, thinking what if that were my last sight - looking through my notebook to see who I'd be, have been, to whoever found me. Andy in the bedroom, piano, guitar, harmonica, far away singing the blues. John looking after Luke while I was gone, Luke tearful and brave when I got home. Choking on a crumb, throwing up and going to bed with his pleasant relief. Said to John "Where's my Ellie." Farting in his sleep like bubbles in the bath. 16 Friday Not wanting the routine of taking Luke to school, kept him home, walks, took him to Barry's class where he was difficult. Threw a fit on the way home. Me too, I'm exhausted, watch television. But begin to read Campbell on Zen and the surface of a pond. 17 Saturday In which J decides that it's my journal that gives me my resistance to him; in which, in a fury of fatigue and nerves, I take Luke to the commune on the buses; we sit in the garden and I weep; we sit inside and Jud hovers; we go to the market and see the fishes; I'm uncentred and foolish because I can't say what's on my mind; we come back to the house and he's claimed by his captain; I leave, come back, and say, shout "Can I speak to you for a moment, if you're allowed" and we sit in the sun until I feel better and so does Roy but Jud looks sulky. New River Walk, to Upper Street. Margaret let me dig up a long rooted hollyhock. Theory about new moon and depression. John says I don't talk to him about films, about my future, about my projects and about Roy. [journal] Luke when he finds me naked is so pleased and nice, touches me with his light small hands, says "Mummy's tummy, Mummy's chest, Ellie's nibbles, where's your nibbles?" This morning pulled down my panties to look at my hairy 'bum,' looked under my arm and asked in humorous surprise what was that - hair. I'm in love with him today. Roy, because in some ways he's my future. If I died he'd have all Luke and I suppose would have my journals, my rubbish. Only Mother would want them. How could Luke have anything of mine, Paul, Judy, Mother; far away, and I live in Roy's world. Polly saying how her family and some friends are her network and surround her, because she's lucky, she's one of the knots, the exchanges in the net. "When my mother died, although she'd lived 5000 miles away, I had nobody left to talk to." "We were going to enjoy her decline, send her to Europe with the children." And I remembered my own fantasy, "that my father will die soon, and then my mother will come live here and we'll have fun." But me, no connections, such a poverty of flimsy connections. Is how it is, simply. All conditional friends, except Luke. 17 March In the back garden at Roy's sun trapped and lying still among the buds and stems; Jud sullen, trivial, confused; ugly too, which made me feel better after arriving and beginning to cry in the kitchen. Found myself protecting her and lending myself to her. Roy is suspicious and pushes me away if I hug him too long, but I was seeing him almost new. Jud likes to think we have the worst relationship possible, but it's been so bad only because it was so good. Bad. Because we'd, or I'd, never been married before. My sadness these days, like Mafalda's was, is a return to the sadness I had before Roy, looking for somebody to care for, to share myself with. And John in his sadness. [daily diary] 18 Sunday Timely waking and a little Egypt before buying a pound of green grapes, and a pear; crossing the bridge looking at Dr MacIntosh's blue and white VW van, he appeared, taking a record out of its sleeve, and as usual we stared at each other but this time I had my wits with me, and just at the last, right, moment before swooping past on the bicycle, smiled and he did! Lunch with J after, by shouting at each other we made the sky break, and then went skating on Queensway with lots of kids - with ankle support, I could! I could! Went home and shouted some more, took home birthday tapes; Pissy Cat had got out through the hole in the window. [journal] Zen: mind is like a pond's surface blown by wind. The images reflected on such a surface are broken, fragmentary, and continually flickering. But if the wind should cease and the surface become still - nirvana: beyond or without (nir-) the wind (vana) - we should behold, not broken images, but the perfectly formed reflections of the whole sky, the trees along the shore, the quiet depths of the pond itself, its lovely sandy bottom, and the fish. We should then see that all the broken fragments were actually these true and steady forms, now clearly and steadily beheld. And we should have at our command thereafter both the possibility of stilling the pond, to enjoy the fundamental form, and that of letting the winds blow and waters ripple, for the enjoyment of the play (lila) of the transformations. One is no longer afraid when this comes and that goes, not even when the form that seems to be oneself disappears. - I need to know both edges of what we know, the universe and the atom, with the cell in between, need to know them for my metaphysic (physic = study of "properties of matter and energy;" phusis = of nature). - The female donkey in the village near Marrakech, male donkeys pursuing her, she kicks at their heads, but their slippery black phallus reaches out more than a yard to catch her, and he grips her neck, or her saddle, with his teeth. Pissy-cat runs away squealing from the three fat tomcats who wait for her outside, but when she's brought inside away from them she squeals to go back out. The male duck who is always more beautiful. The male human who is stronger and larger, and born that way. Our equality depends on so much more precarious a social contract than any other - racial, religious? [daily diary] 19 Monday R sliding, docking, next to the window in the green van. In Swiss Cottage library, images for meditation, the suffused inside of a flower - Roundhouse's loutish longhaired clientele, angry at the way J was lending himself to me, he was thick and tense too. Charming Czech film Intimate Lighting, Mirek grinning at the end; David having lost his job; Earth slow and hysterical. Took David through a beautiful soft summer evening to the pub boat on the river, had some nips of whiskey on the way, ate sausages with fruit sauce; Pied Bull at the Angel, smoky back room full of longhairs, Corridor. Dome of Death, long tack up between slow white thigh walls to a little flight of stairs (the old wing of the University Hospital) to a black door. At John's a frozen distance that couldn't touch - and cool distracted walk home, and waking fresher than usual after four hours. Hollis Frampton in the Vancouver gallery. David rang to say he'd written a sassy poem about my having pretty ears as well as a nice neck. [undated letter] Sunday Pissy Cat is nibbling this pen; on the cassette player are some songs John recorded for my birthday; it's Sunday evening by the fire and in my room are two seven foot lilac trees - blossoming. I found them in somebody's rubbish, cut off at the knee, brought them home on Luke's pushchair and have set them in some jars of water - they were barely in bud, but in the two weeks since then they have not only come out in leaf but also grown - with only water to eat - the five, six, inch flower stalks that have come out in white very scented flowers. In the garden crocuses and primroses, buds on the bushes. And this afternoon - o happy day! - I went skating, we went skating, and John found me some ankle supports, and I COULD! Sort of, as well as any other beginner, and sometimes actually swooping for half a rink's length. What other news: four pots in the school's exhibition this year. Birthday - I celebrated by making a chocolate cake with so many candles it gave a lot of light - and having a women's lib meeting around it. Ah! The demonstration! Last Saturday, on a rare, sunny, warm afternoon we had a march from Hyde Park through Oxford Circus to Trafalgar Square, lots of shouting and high and happy women and a few men; banners and babies. Luke was there, pushed by a bride in a frothy baroque 1950s bridal creation carrying a sign saying "I won't" - my whole group spent Saturday morning in the traditional way dressing the bride - except that we were all brides. Leslie in her actual own wedding dress with a pink ribbon saying "gift-wrapped." My friend Sarah with a long train knotted with plastic potties, rubber gloves, washcloths and a sign saying "Don't let anyone give you away." The cutting is from the front page of the Sunday Observer - GB's best Sunday newspaper - the only picture they had of the march - you can see how he's grown up and pretty. Luke is at Roy's commune this weekend; it's spring there, warm in their big garden. I was there most of yesterday. Roy's alright, a bit bored, wanting big adventures. We don't fight much now - whenever I tell you how things are between us they've always changed by the time I 'see' you again. Me, I discover I still love him - that original 'marriage' went very deep and I miss him and long for him and can't keep my hands off him when I do see him and am hurt when I don't hear from him and talk to him in my head and think about all our past times much too much and dream about him all the time; but I can't get around knowing that not having him is much better for me than having him given the way he is and my need to have my own way. He still loves me in a little way, too, I think, but we both know we can't live together and he needs to have somebody he's sure of - even if nobody can ever be sure of him. He destroys me, he breaks me down (and, at least, he makes me thin), and I don't think we could have got around that; and I'm coming to see that I do the same to him, in my admiration and jealousy not realizing how fragile he is, as well. Dearest man, I'd like to always know him, but he demands human sacrifices from those he's next to. Maybe sometime I'll be his oldest friend. All that was meant as a prelude to answering your question about John: symptomatic. I love Roy, John loves me. He's good for me, good with me, patient, bright, appreciative; makes me feel beautiful, witty, soulful and unique, tough and sure of myself. Pushes me in the right directions, and always tactfully. I like him; you'd like him, he'd like you. He's easy to be with, loving, knows how to listen, laughs easily, jumps with joy. If he'd taken you around Europe even Father would have had fun. Why don't I love him? It would be so sensible. He reckons that if he hangs on, I will, sometime. But he's not Roy: that tiger's grace, that beautiful insolent body, vigilant self possession, ferocious originality - beautiful, beautiful, dangerous elusive Roy. Especially the beautiful. Why's it so powerful? If he were 5'4" and rather plump how uninteresting he'd be, but oh prince Roy, as he is ... Do you think I exaggerate? What ironies and sadness in the search for loving; but freedom and loneliness is good in its way - I wonder how Olivia survives living with somebody she loves. And Mafalda, who's having a second baby this summer. Brave strong free Mafalda. Some pictures of Luke: When staying with John (I was at a class) he said "Where's my Ellie?" Patting his thigh as I carry him on my shoulders, he says "My likkle body." "Poor Mummy's shoe, got a hole." "My likkle bum." Taking him to school, I have to carry the bicycle over a railway bridge. I look back and see him with morning light in a halo around his head and his breath shining white vapour. I happen to see him standing at a full length mirror looking into his own eyes, touching his own hand and saying in a whisper I can only make out by lip-reading, "I love you." When we go to see John the first thing he asks for is ice from the refrigerator. Then he likes to carry it home in his pocket. In his bed one morning when the sun was shining, before I got up, I heard him pantomiming the singing lessons at his school, "Away mangah crib for a bed Jesus happy birthday to you " and then parodying the teachers saying to him "Clevah boy!" "Well done!" Clap clap. One evening when I came to get him he went the rounds and kissed all the other children goodbye, even nearly standing on his head to reach a baby on the floor who hid her face away - then took my hand and said "Is my Ellie." When he finds me naked he's so pleased and nice, touches me with light small hands, says "Mummy's tummy, Mummy's chest, Mummy's nibbles? Where's your nibbles?" Looked under my arm and asked in humorous surprise what was that - hair. Has a big book full of pictures, sits looking at it naming things. Talks as long as he's got an audience, Roy or his G'anma, on the phone. If I shout at him his lip trembles and he says "Say sorry! Say sorry!" and I do. His hurts are magically kissed away in half a second. At the thought of an ice cream or a train ride he jumps and jumps. Drags Pissy Cat (named by him, half grown black kitten, half Siamese and so very elegant and beautiful) about with no respect for top or bottom. Likes the tuhluhvishun, watches it in case there might be a fire engine. Woke up one morning saying "Crocodile! Crocodile!" Lets me know about things - "I am pee!" "I am shitty!" - with great delight. Sometimes, if it's handy, likes to pee in his beautiful yellow plastic potty, but doesn't mind using anything else that's handy, like my casserole. Sings to himself "Ice cream lollipop ice cream lollipop." Remembers Paul and sometimes asks where he is. Sometimes I'm so in love with him I worry about needing him too much. Sorry this is not a good letter but you seem to feel it's better than nothing. [journal] John in the orange and green dressing gown with his face turned to the light, wonderful silver movement doubled in his glasses, shining flat blind eyes turned blindly to the light, he doesn't look at me while he speaks, his hair's in curls and with his head at that angle turned sharply, he's handsome, mouth is strong rather than greedy, he looks contained, collected; I'm not allowed to speak, sit with my arms on my knees, looking at the floor, in the posture that befits me. He begins to wander, seems to be talking to sooth himself, finally gathers up a flash again and orders me to go, which I've been waiting to do. Walk home with a curdle of disgust for the remembered feeling of half waking like a vast grub a dopey queen bee stroked by a little sucker-mouthed drone, serviced in indolent corruption in contempt. I plucked myself off him and pulled to my edge but at last I said. We had invented a way of making love in which I didn't have to touch him, hands open palms up empty the titillated swollen thorax at first blissful, then irritated and bored as my contempt and revulsion woke - black silent disgust just trying to blank out. His fantasies. "I thought you might come to love me." "There's never been a moment of unqualified yes, never." He gets up, crashes against his red lamp (why did he move the bed?) tearing out a cardboard box, throwing it on a heap with my clothes, throwing them to the door - when I take my socks and shoes into the bathroom, he crashes in after me and for a moment glares at me in fury - I stare back - he apologizes and I rage silently against his reasonable stupid apology. When he turns, his back and bum are covered with pimples again. A few wild sobs and then he's collected himself to tell me that his work lately has been me and that he's lost a lot of dignity and people he's told must be laughing behind his back. He knew he'd force me to go away. This morning, a letter from Jouti saying the carpets are on the way. - Pooh's told Roy that the him in existence since Jud's come back is the one he likes least: he has "the mannerisms of a ghost." [daily diary] 20 Tuesday Letter from Jouti; lunchtime hot sun, lay on the edge of the Euston pool watching black lines under water dart like knotted snakes, shiver like graphs; home to magnificent crocuses in the front, scented yellow polyanthus; got Luke fat and tall, trudged to get lollipop and laundry with him on my shoulders - while lifting him knocked his head into the bottom of the traffic light, made it shudder, he cried "I want to see Roy" then began to sing Ellie Ellie Ellie Ellie Ellie and I did a counterpoint Hello Luke tune that was very good. A little quiet sad missing John sorry it's so. 21 Wednesday Sun when we woke, Luke and I, sat next to the heater in the queer double warmth, "I want to sit on my lap" he says. With Doreen, Hattori, and A; in Hyde Park a chestnut in bud. The New Craftsman exhibit, Lucie Rie pots in pitted glaze diagonally combed, and some wide high footed matte bowls; wall hangings spotlit (one a funny tent with a love poem inside; a velvet box with a mirror deep inside behind balls and bumps with a hanging round mirror; a chair made of air mattress covered with tweed and blown up and tied back; a black red and wood colored cupboard with hooks to close it at the top; wonderful clocks sealed in glass, big brass works). Japanese pots next door; when we went home through Hyde Park the chestnut had opened! 22 Thursday Sun; therefore, happily to the Parkhill Nursery, bought a white jasmine and some oriental poppies, orange; came home and planted the passionflower in a hole I carved out of the concrete, next to the south wall, mended flower pots; planted the jasmine in the hottest best bit of SE wall; lily of the valley is on its way up. When I got Luke from school there was someone with a walk like Roy's, pushing Mossy! Luke tearful thought Roy was going without him; Heath, adventure playground, Catherine came with two knitted caps; Tarmo de Jongh leaning out the window with a beautiful spreading cherry (?) in blossom in the garden; I on the roof in red dungarees and purple shirt. 23 Friday Sun - Enid leaned against playground fence and told me that they think Luke hits other children more when he's been back and forth between Roy and me; also that he sleeps more than anyone. The girl downstairs saying "Sometimes he looks so lost ." Struck with need and energy to strip these two upstairs rooms, threw out the plank desk and made Luke a bed in the chest of drawers; money to get David a copy of Seferis, cheesecake for me; Joanna singing while doing all the washing up in the kitchen; trying to root ivy in water. Have got so many possessions - ugly things. [journal] Two-Lane Blacktop - lying on the floor in front of the front row, living on roads in cafes for not nearly long enough - film burns after frame slows down to stop - long Roy's sparse face screwed back in a smile and we're playing America, I'm lonesomer for him than I'm unproud enough to admit - he doesn't flirt with me. His walk, round shoulder ends swinging like a man on telephoto, red sweater hangs from those shoulders - I guiltily evoke Paris on the motorcycle, sunny days like today was; the bus across the country, far away long ago as a film; how far away he sends it by refusing to flirt with me. My lonesome watchful affection that wonders how it could win him, just for a half hour or a night. With the window open I can hear trains from here. Driving in that green van, such a big racket, big black space like a bus behind, two seats separated by three feet and a stick shift, he's Superlamp. - Memories of - the Auction Mart. - Went to bed early, frustrated, furious, after trying with no success to tease Roy into playing with me. Energy without a centre, flashing into bad temper with Luke. - Dreamed of receiving a clear and certain answer: I must take up writing. Long dream of clearing, sorting, possessions: plants, things, leaving some with Anne. Going to BC and finding the grandparents in consultation with their children about money, they concluded there was little. I determined that I would go with my typewriter to the berry fields. Felt I'd actually staked my life, very easy and glad. Also an earlier dream of taking off my clothes to float in patches of water the sun hit. Caged, flash-bound and fat, pinching myself where I sit or bend, energy turned to selfdisgust, what to do. Doris Lessing: does she know, see, so much because she writes, or can she write only because she's already full of life, joy, generosity - All her imagined existences. misery ... weapon felt perhaps as a clear-lit space situated just behind the forehead. Alternative existences, conscious existences. Young Martha is fierce. There were two ways of reading: one of them deepens and intensifies what one already knows; from the other, one takes new facts, new views to weave into one's life. She was saturated with the first, and needed the second. She grew up in a frontier farm as well, she is like George Eliot in her widening circles of understanding. I wonder if, as a child, she knew what she seems to have known - does she remember or reconstruct? intense joyful melancholy ... she imagined she must pay the price for intellectual honesty by bidding farewell to this other emotion, this fabulous visitor. She's written all this since she was my age: hope. But that other sort of person she's always been, entering into things, truthful. Mother and father: home and outside. Accepted, despised, direct and hidden. Does she recreate herself as she might have been? She continues to believe in her own charmed life. Sense of the fluctuations of emotional life. That realm of generous and freely exchanged emotion for which she had been born. People altogether generous and warm exchanged generous emotions. When's she going to write about her childhood? Is she leaving it as the water table? Her four-gated city. As if half a dozen entirely different people inhabited her body, and they violently disliked each other, bound together by only one thing, a strong impulse of longing, anonymous, impersonal, formless, like water. She loves clothes, and was dressed so plainly -? Both irritated and matter of fact about her participation in the rituals and taboos. She uses her contempt to learn something. The form of moral exhaustion which is caused by seeing a great many facts without knowing the cause for them, by seeing oneself as an isolated person, without origin or destination. Is Martha concocted to be typical, just more self-critical? She couldn't have been so . If I write it must be about what I know and so for myself. She seems more cunning than that. I refuse to know. She's said everything about the fury of the thought of being like those parents. She understands exactly what part ideas have in people's heads - her project seems to be to lift herself out of the cycle by understanding. It was the time of these women which supported the whole edifice; their willingness to sink their youth in acquiring multifarious small talents, which softened the road to that great goal, comfortable middle age. The instinct to comply, to please, seemed to her more and more unpleasant and false. The suspense - how'll she get out of it? What everyone conspired to prevent one seeing, was the middle-aged woman who had done nothing but produce two or three commonplace and tedious citizens in a world that was already too full of them. Since there was no woman she had ever met she could model herself on . From Communism, the logic of history. An unposted love-letter - bare true painful middle age, herself as an actress, "I have so many husbands, I don't need a husband." "If I can live alone, and out of fastidiousness, then you must have a wife as good as you are. My husbands, the men who set light to my soul ...." the reason I said 'love' to myself was because I could not manipulate him, for the first time a man remained himself ... I could only wait for his actions to spring mine. I had been possessed by a man, the Man had created in me himself, had left himself in me, and so I could never again use a man, possess one, manipulate him, make him do what I wanted. I simply let myself suffer for him, knowing he was worth it because I suffered - it had come to this, my soul had become its own gauge, its own measure of what was good. I knew what he was, because of how my work was afterwards. I made a cool, bare space no man could enter, could break across, unless his power, his magic, was very strong, the true complement to mine. Everything I am most proud of seemed nothing at all - what I have worked to achieve, what I have achieved, even the very core of what I am, the inner sensitive balance that exists like a sort of self-invented super instrument, or a fantastically receptive and cherished animal - this creation of myself, which every day becomes more involved, sensitive, and delicate ... my life, which so contents me because of its balance, its order, its steadily growing fastidiousness, . I am a great space that enlarges, that grows, that spreads with the steady lightning of the human soul . For this is what I was born for, this is what I am, to fight embodied sleep, putting around it a confining girdle of light, of intelligence, so that it cannot spread its slow stain of ugliness over the trees, over the stars, over you. - When I read this I thought in fear and excitement that perhaps this is the story I expected her to write about Roy. What she writes about is interesting because she writes about it. Every middle-aged person swallowed the disappointment of looking at all the intelligence and bravery of their children being absorbed in - repetition,... . All he could see in these charming faces was self-importance ... what they believed was not as important to them as that they had reached that opinion. Their features were permanently twisted by vanity and self-importance. Jack kept passing his hand across his own face, feeling the ugliness of the love of power on it. And his limbs, his body, kept falling into postures of self-esteem and self-approval. She lives with her adolescence still alive in her! If they knew how he was seeing them, how loathsome they were in their predictability, their banality . His sleep had become another country, lying just behind his daytime one. - Doris Lessing. Work. Enough faith in her own intelligence to stake her life on it, as I refuse to do, waiting to be sure. I remember that she's interesting because she's successful and she's successful because of - Africa? Having been England in Africa? But she makes me think again about my assumption that writing is no way, anymore, post Joyce etc. The care and intelligence in breeding and feeding that makes brave beautiful horses with energy and stamina - the field at the Frensham stables where backlit and along the far edge, three mares ran with their colts beside them, the colts thin and all legs, heads up, sometimes sprung loose on their own, bolting halfway across the field and back, bucking and kicking until they were almost standing on their heads. The family of five beautiful blond children at the skating rink in Paris. Story about Monica, Guy the trainer, and those five children, blond as primroses, nearly identical (are their parents so alike?) In all our voyagings we had never envisaged that we might simply be lifted up and taken away like a litter of puppies or kittens. We had wanted instructions, or aid, we needed to be told how to get off this endless cycling and into the Southern current. With all the sky aflame with sunrise like the inside of a ripening peach, I swarmed down a rope and swung myself on to the raft just as it was about to bob right out of my reach . Oh porpoise, on this delicate soap bubble our Earth, spinning all blue and green and iridescent, where Northwards air and water swirl in time's direction left to right, great spirals of breath and light and water .... So hold on now, porpoise, and keep you mind on your work, which is me, my landfall, but never let yourself dream of that silver sand and the deep forests there for if you do, your strength will ebb and you'll slide away southwards like a dead or a dying fish. The sea where I have been around and around for so many centuries my mind is ringed with Time like the deposits on shells or the fall of years on tree trunks - Powers: the garden, the house, the key. - Monday morning In tears because Roy's come to the house in a state, accusing me of not looking after Luke properly, my fury rising with his hysteria, finally shouted to him to get out, kicked his backside as he did, he turned and clubbed me, I flailed and couldn't reach him, shouting. Luke watching with his white face. Roy was indignant and hurt and clubbed me some more, finally left; I have a lump and a laceration and started to cry. Luke said "Whattsa matta?" He is ill, white and puffy and quiet. - That circle in the midst of the city A man walking along a street gives no evidence of what he is thinking, yet his thoughts are playing all about him in subtle currents of substance. 2 April Luke playing at the table, with his cars: "Have a nice time. Have a nice time. Burrrrrrrrr. Choc chuk chok. Get down n dandy up." [Standing up?] "Stay there. Brrr prrr. Bye bye. Come on train. Where are you train. There is there is there is there is. Gary. Gary. Gary. Gary. Gary Walker? Don't know." (Coughs.) "Whee. Let's go in the truck. Wheeee. Brrr. Come on truck. Goin' away. Way this way. Tractor roller tractor roller gone now quick quick. Quicky." (Seems to be describing what he's doing with the truck.) "Cup. Uh. Uh." (Hugs Pissy-cat, carries her at a run across the room.) "Up daisy." (Grunting.)(Tries to force her to eat.) "Don't want." (Puts her on the couch.) "Go on bed go on my bed." (Kisses her face.) "Oohhh - ." (Cat struggles away.) "I pully." (Pulls cat's tail.) "Come on come on see my bed. I blink blanket." (Coughs. Pants, follows cat around stove, pants. Drags her back to the couch.) "Stay there minute. Pussy cat come in my bed come in my bed." (Pants and struggles.) "Oh lov-ey." (Coughs and staggers across the room with her, puts her in his house.) "There." (Coughs.) "Ooh - ." (Cries, sputters, cries.) (I say 'Do you want some more bread?') "No fank 'ou." (Cries.) - Luther on dreams, Philip Goodwin's translation: In the night-time, and in the midst of man's sleep may this sin arise and run out in his dreams. That's a man's well-beloved, which lieth all night betwixt his breasts, that's a man's Delilah-lust which leaneth upon his lap in sleep. - Need to summarize, say one true thing before going to bed, like saying my prayers; need that perfect listener who is no one to listen to; confide: yes, at the NFT I'm charged with unease and falsity, walk, sit, straining to remind myself that I am subject, subject, no object and then dismay at the strain of false attention I feel on my face. A smiling young brown-eyed man, face a little East European, looks easily at me. Otherwise only those in tight circles of friends are free of strain. On the tube, strained faces held tight to some anxiety, I try to soften my own face, make it human, open; wonder at the pitch of hostility I feel for the people in the long black pneumatic tube with me; but on the elevator with me it happens that, like last night, there is a tall black man with glasses holding against his knees a half-white daughter, talking quietly, constantly, and merrily to her in German. When I see them I smile: we recognize each other. I turn around again, and smile again. Then the big elevator comes to the top, the iron gates fold open the time machine, and I step out into Tufnell Park Junction, whatever new and surprising weather and season and time of day. I reach up to the sore bit of my jaw and feel, where I've often felt before, the cavity in my jawbone, and there's a funny soft lump there. I've thought so much about cancer recently. - April 7 Andy tells me of a dream in which I and he run up a mountain, he can't keep up with me because he's wearing a large fur coat, when he reaches the top he sees me sitting there, laughing, wearing "the radiant smile you must have heard so much about." Talking with John, he's laughing, says I have powers but no longer over him, contradicts, squabbles, we have a good silly fight in which we get eloquent and accurate. Says he wants a ritualized kind of sex with someone, while I'm saying I'd almost like one-night stands. He says "Can I try to tell you something" and tells me I fascinate him sexually. There's a long kind of silence in which I feel lonely - he says something to let me know he's exactly that as well, a good meeting. Lots of good meetings, lots of energy. I say that in getting out of the web of weirdness with him I've also got out of it with Roy; "You're like two halves of a trap ... two opposite, what's the word, complementary ways of losing my self, my time." "Time, yes" he says. I say that reading his book I come on him wondering who I'm with, who I'm replacing him with, and that that insults me. "It isn't a choice between you and somebody, I'm choosing, in a way, choosing my loneliness, freedom from that web of weirdness I had with you ... I'm lonely and so I'm open to possibilities. [daily diary] Saturday April 7 Making a people's park in Dalston Junction, commune people, Christie in tie-dye t-shirt, Pete, Danny, Georgie, three black boys in deep blue, Jane saving strawberries with ten year old boys, Roy toothache, leathery faced standing around holding Luke to see the yellow dump machine; blue clear intense sky - emerging, a beautiful bush we saved, a coat hut, a prefab playhouse, men obsessed with 'safety' ie violence to trees and brambles; Luke standing still and amazed, now sleeps on his knees like a baby. Talked for a long time, converting to friends with John, on the telephone. Luke's pleasure (and mine) in the big sunny back of the taxi we took there. 8 Sunday Back to commune, Jud pointedly hanging on, blabbing loudly about "when we took Luke to see my mother;" isolation, sad, sad, even Christie odd; dug flower beds with young boy, helped Christie rake under rose bush; fled, 191 bus to Waterloo Bridge, sat a long time eating expensive rubbish in QE cafeteria, loneliness, then saw Women's Films from America, rising happiness took me to sit next to the photographer (Clare?) and then Michelene [Wandour], feeling included. 9 Monday Took Luke to Kentish Town baths. Dr says his poxes are hives. With R to see Wanda. [journal] Dying protoplasm loses its transparency and becomes granular and opaque; its continuous structure breaks down into particles which may eventually shrink into a lump as water is withdrawn from them. EJH Corner Anabolism must therefore exceed katabolism if the cell is to grow. Anabolism in the plant means daylight because photosynthesis requires sunlight. In the plant-cell therefore there is an inevitable rhythm determined by the sequence of day and night, and the cell survives during the night by the excess of photosynthesis in the day. the microscopic sweetness of every plant-cell the energy of life is not earthly ... the sea, which receives most of this sunlight A leaf, petal, or fruit is shaped by its cell-walls; trees are the expressionm of cell-walls made by the internal protoplasm in carrying into effect its development, its evolution, and its world exploration. Nuclei of single cell organisms, such as marine planktonicc cells which have such simple lives, appear very similar to those of a human body; primitive nuclei clearly had the capacity for evolution, much as the brain of primitive man .... Most of plant growth may happen at night. Development from a simple, motile and naked reproductive state to a larger, non-motile, adult or vegetative state enclosed in a cell-wall Gametes do not unite indiscriminately .... Though similar in appearance and behavior, they must differ internally with some chemical distinction into maleness and femaleness. Why? They don't unite indiscriminately - that's the beginninng of sexes - or? - I don't unite indiscriminately - perhaps they have all sorts of dimensions along which to mate: and "male/female" was what became of the most evolutionary strong of those dimensions? The assumption mining what he says is that male/female is archetypal and only discrimination for uniting - how about simple cell division, for John, to produce an exact replica of ourselves - what if we had the temptation - binary or multiple fission. means whereby the sinking plant-cell multiplies itself into motile forms, rejuvenates, and increases its chance of returning to the well-lit or photic upper zones of the sea. The clouds of pollen emitted by pines and oaks in spring for reproduction are at once understandable as aerial one-celled plankton. The many-celled plant body becomes, like the animals, mortal, and its race survives by restoration to the plankton to start all over again. [These are EJ Corner.] 11 April Begin to blow up with excitement because of not getting my next three years sold for a huge amount! [ie Canada Council doctoral fellowship refused] Yippee. I dream, am forced to dream, of writing and making films. It was good to be prosperous for a while; now maybe it will be good to be poor again - cuts loose a lot of sticky falsities. (But where will I get money to travel?) Writing: need the analytic steadiness of Lessing, joy of Updike, and for myself the exploration of imagination. Real work: onward and outward. Yippee! - Crow quests for liberation: retire to a lonely place, fast four days and chop off a finger joint. "The sun, the bear and snakes are the chief protectors of visions." A Cree medicine man: "Whenever an Indian sleeps, especially when he has a dream, he appeals to the power of a moth or butterfly." He wanted to be somebody; he sought a vision. - Menomini: youths and maidens at 15 retired and fasted 8-10 days and prayed for a supernatural vision. "Keeping his mind on things above the earth, in the heavens." "No male or female is eligible to dream who is long past puberty or who has had sex." - But no car. No traveling. This dead grey country. Worries about money. - John put my name on a strange diagram of a heavy blob-sac with the caption "The bottom is deformed by the substratum." - in a book about animals. - Updike "I never wrote the novel - the moment in my life it was meant to crystallize dissolved too quickly." 11 Wednesday Didn't get CC [Canada Council grant for PhD], stayed home to think about my life, had lunch with R in the Greek restaurant at Brewery Road, the Women's Centre and Free School in the transport depot. 12 Thursday Letter from Mafalda. Confused Judge Roy Bean - ugly Huston anarchy. [journal] On the tube: standing in front of me, her hand holding the chrome railing not far from my face, an Indian girl, narrow black coat with small rhinestone buttons, an orange-pink silk sari showing under it, red spot in the middle of her forehead; she's lovely, I want to stare at her large eyes, full mouth with something like a tuck taken up in the middle of it, smooth hooked nose, long neck - I stare at her narrow wrist with three plastic bangles on it, two white and a pink in the middle. She's there, other hand in her pocket so I can't see whether she's married to the ugly fat man beside her, until Euston? I wonder about her fingers, because I can only see the narrow brown back of the hand that grips the rail - she lets go, she leaves, I see her fingers uncurl and am suddenly shocked and fascinated by the narrow fingernails, short and of different lengths, scrubbed and rather soft looking, like babies' half-formed fingernails. I'm shocked; it could be my own hand; it becomes real to me, I'm shocked by the intimacy of those four fingertips that could be mine; I think of, I feel her, cleaning them, looking at them; the girl becomes flesh, not spectacle. I haven't said it. It was a shift in me, over in the second it took her to step out of the train and disappear.
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