| london volume 5 part 4 - 1973 april-may | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
13 April [letter] I've taken the red kitchen chair out into the garden and am looking about at good things - some flourishing from last year, things that were bits grubbed out of somebody else's garden are at home, at ease, and spreading themselves. New things: a lavender and a rosemary with round stones under them to give them the reflected heat they like. All around my gatepost - menhir from the Lake District - there's a picture of spring [sketch], the rose is throwing its long arm over the heads of my shrubs and in the back, the happily unpruned philadelphus is sheltering ever more birds in its ever weedier, twiggier arms. The forsythia is in yellow flower among the flower-shaped clumps of its new leaves. There's that rare really deep blue sky and all our backyards are full of light and birdsong. Me, I feel I've worked magic, because this garden was mud and rubble just one year and a winter ago; it makes me think of how I worked out my sadness about Roy in digging and sifting - gardens are about the most intelligent convention we've got - it's nice to feel that in this thing, the care-ful creation of a place for plants to be themselves, I can be Grandma Konrad's and Grandpa Epp's daughter, even though most of their other conventions have come to the end of their line in me. And you in your clearing at the edge of vast forests on the far side of the earth-bubble, I've thought of your first week in April, the air full of water it swallows up without ever getting enough until the mud gets a dry crust - oooh. Rudy's birthday that came like official Spring-day. Haven't heard from you for a long time - I have written haven't I? Yes I have! I know I have! Sent you Luke and me from the front page of the [Sunday] Observer - did you take exception? No, not you. I'm eager to know whether Shushwap is possible - I dream of a month (or more?) of Canadian forest, Luke running where no cars are, learning to swim, discovering that he's got another Grandma totally unlike the one he already has. When he has his bath every morning - in a plastic tub in front of the fire - I wrap a towel around him and hold him in a bundled bundle and rock, and sing rockabye baby-in-na treetop as you used to do, and think of you. When he's in bed and meant to sleep, on the other hand, he says "Sing Ba Black Sheep" and when I do, in somewhat Johnny Mathis style, he arranges his eyelids coyly in what he imagines is their sleeping shape. When I finish, he opens them and says "Clevah boy!" He's in love with babies, plays baby with Pissy cat, rocking and cuddling her; strokes the babies at Nursery reminding himself, "Gently;" likes to play baby himself. If I didn't have many things to do, I'd make him one of our own. His vocabulary is large now, but rather specialized: he knows the names of all the subgroups of noisy engine: Landrover, road roller, crane, caboose, caravan, ambulance, taxi, John's car (ie VW), van, tractor, caterpillar, dumptruck, bus, minibus, fire engine, lorry (or truck), airplane, garbage truck. The rest is more random. He's talking very well; I sometimes forget and speak to him as I used to when I didn't expect a reply, but now he always has something to say, talks long complicated fantasies to himself, hilarious private stories about sending his toy cars to the toilet (setting them upright on their bottoms) etc. Sometimes I take them down verbatim; they're bizarre, like strange dreams that jump from one thing to another. He had a plastic ladder fallen off a fire engine; in a minute it was a "crane in the sky" (holding it perpendicular to the floor), a train chugging across the carpet, and a boat. These baby achievements must seem familiar to you. Sunday: yesterday and today L and I went to Dalston Junction where Roy lives, to work on a people's park - a plot of council land that we and lots of people from round about have cleared: kids digging, carrying off bricks in an old pram, clearing and burning junk, everybody all unsupervised. My friend Christie and all her kids were there, and the commune people, and their children, and the kids from the council flats who'll appropriate the place when it's made. A ten year old boy came and worked with me this morning finding plants already growing there, protecting them and digging beds for new ones. He dug up and replanted a lot of strawberries in danger of being trampled, proud of everything he learned - never had a garden before. Everybody surprised that kids could work so hard and intelligently without orders, but that's presumably why they could. And that other thing uncommon in England, a nearly unselfconscious mixing of classes. My dreams are telling me I must be a writer not a PhD - what do you think of that? 13 April Friday [daily diary] Jane packing for Portugal while I read all of the Doomsday Book under my yellow rug. Swimming, turning in the water, jumping in. Stupid conversation with John. 14 Saturday Early morning (10:45) already sitting with hot chocolate under an angular leafing tree looking at a camel, feeling pleasure of being a traveler; to look for Knights Templar in Middle Temple church: an alabaster woman's face very fine with 'skin' bruised and polished, fine mouth, painted eyes, all the rest of her body frozen into a frame for the effigy of some bishop or judge. Broken candle sticks in a box. Savory pie on the boat swaying just enough to feel drunk. NFT - discussion and films. Sitting in the aisle next to Mari [Gaffni] pale in black leaning to ask what I thought - more films - home to sleep on lumpy sloping sofa under riding cumulus clouds. [journal] Thinking about what I must do, what I long to do is find disciplines to make me pay attention, holy life. For that I need to control my poverty so that necessities look after themselves - Saint Mafalda diligent and spreading diligence in her careful life - mornings, Luke. I need a discipline to know where I am - a knowing discipline, and that's writing. Looking disciplines: camera, poems, drawings, films. At the NFT discussion, two women. One girl in the washroom, outlandish lovely costume, high clogs, striped blue and white silky stockings, a shirt, a white vest, a petticoat and a peasant apron, a fake leopardskin coat and - she put it on with a secret sideways smile to me, having taken it from her pocket - a black velvet scrap of a hat with a little black veil she pulled over her forehead. And Barbara Halpern Martineau: shining fat face with round glasses, hair back, sitting up straight and giving smiling delightful account of Marguerite Duras' film, excited about how music was the revolution, fanciful, high. - I get involved with the world, want to know what will happen in it. Will I be there at its end? Smells: Mari's scrap of bush - black current? A smell from childhood's summer days. In Regents Park, a wisp of the smell of water poplars' new leaves: the grove next to the bridge, snow melting in pools around their feet, the water brown and warm, decaying leaves. Water poplars and black (Russian) poplars that had swiveling leaves, green/silver. Mari: fuzzy curls more red at the ends than roots, narrow pale green eyes, thin beautifully cut face (like the alabaster face on the tomb!) on a long neck, long narrow body with high disguised breasts, a gold sign on a fine chain, crushed black satin skirt, no makeup, high boots and a tatty fur coat, small square (bitten) fingernails. She sits beside me at the NFT, seems large; later I sit next to her in the corridor - she's on her haunches and leans over to ask what I thought of the films - pale face with steady eyes, sometimes a radiant laugh with small white teeth (a miniscule chip off the left-hand incisor); we have a beer - she says she's a painter and a waitress - she talks carefully, I'm excited to work so hard to be truthful - sometimes she mangles a word - often she takes out her notebook and writes something - she says she has never been able to read and now she's working to catch up 23 years' vacuum - she takes notes and reads them over - orphanages, Southhampton, Isle of Wight (nuns), London, a retarded sister - writes down her dreams - talks eagerly about pushing herself to learn - we sit at a table later bent together talking about our notebooks, pregnancy - she doesn't flatter me, nor I her, but she works at talking (does she listen to me) and I'm anxious anxious for her to like me because I like her. Oh pleased when during a film she digs my elbow with hers. - Breadandbutterfly. Infantile thoughts. - I want - to share my life with somebody. Too. - R answers some complaint of mine: "I don't really feel I have much of a relationship with you." - Pissy Cat purring alone in a drawer of the filing cabinet. - Dream of turning an old greenhouse - caravan - shed into a house, with children (J and P as little?) bringing in carpets, mattresses; thought of putting in a glass roof. 15 April Sunday [daily diary] Wake to look out at the morning sun, square, Mari comes down in her 'handpainted' kimono, makes scrambled eggs and toast, Nigel is put out; the round big pot in the shop around their corner; walk home along Westbourne Grove, Euston Road, up to Regent's Park boats, daffodils, the rock garden (Tulipa Clus), finding my way to the zoo and home - house, sun, washed and soaked plants, got in tulips; an edge of hurt and anger that Roy, having made it up with Jud, is turned off again: bored, furtive, resentful. 16 Monday Rosalynde's Kaffir sheet [a blue and white striped blanket]; my rug on her wood floor; talking about The Rainbow, dreams, surprised by what I could elucidate to her about the strain of being Luke's mother and a postgrad student and not being able to integrate the two; chiming with Elizabeth Moore's lovely paintings; Swiss Cottage library - getting high on stories about Sylvia Plath, all of Children of the Dream, some confused rubbish by Faithfull about women allowing the female passivity in themselves and not touching the clitoris, something false about a deaf (brain-damaged?) child, and then home, in my pocket the providential A Life of One's Own pulling things together; straight from it to Rosalynde's at 10:45 and the exotic pleasure of letting myself stay with her until 2:30, swishing home in the spring-smelling dark past only 3 hippies. 17 Tuesday Walking home. Ham sandwich; hotdog from cinema. And working at relaxing to sleep, and then waking easy and good at eight, just right, then drifting until 9:30, then hanging about while Roy (Jud being away) came and affectionned, with Luke's clothes - Sarah for lunch, ham, paté, salad, buns, avocado, wine - worked on Life of One's Own and tried to assoc to my lamprey image of John - S and I a bit strange - Pissy Cat very round bellied - hover over garden - most of day lost - Luke and I falling on the steps running to see a train, sitting together waiting - lovee. [journal] Joanna Field A Life of One's Own My ordinary way of looking at things seemed to be from my head, as if it were a tower in which I kept myself shut up. Now I seemed to be discovering that I could if I liked go down outside, go down and make myself part of what was happening. The question of what it is that prevents me, tries to prevent me, from feeling the reality of things. Need to have a baby: even when she was pregnant she failed to realize it: When I did finally understand, my angel of annunciation came upon me when I was one day walking along a sheep-trodden winding path. I suddenly found myself standing quite still, gazing down at a pattern of little hoof marks in the sun-baked mud - and a flood of contentment welled up from underneath my feet. - I need authority. Pissy Cat lying on her side, sleeping, back to the fire, feet straight out and loose together, head flat - her pregnant belly rising round. I fill with sentiment, feeling; Pissy Cat climbing into the top of the filing cabinet, awkward in it. The girl Isabel in the hostel in Athens, Henry sleeping apart from her, going to bed in her slip. Nylon slip tight around her baby - I watch electrified, trying not to show it. 19 April Thursday [daily diary] Luke at home, R brings Mossy in the morning and we go to Waterlow Park, a squirrel near Luke. 20 Friday Ditto - to Old Highgate Cemetery, Mossy's treasures - a feather, a long stick. I have two pockets full of primulas and a bit of wallflower. Catching red tulips for the house. 21 Saturday Luke and I at home, we go for a walk (Mossy answers the telephone and says Roy has gone out) to the Heath - yellow green soft lamp new leaves coming out on the lombardy poplars, strong frame for so little weight - reading the rest of Rabbit Redux and liking it, more controlled less smart, the gentle innocent learning whatever comes to him; I need more, more, notebooks; afternoon took Luke out after a rain, blue and white moving on the film of water that makes the streets run black underneath - stood looking over from the Council catwalk; R at Scrubbs. J appears late, for a moment looks beautiful. [journal] Luke's words to April 21 Keep warm please. Don't need it (tugging at my book). I talk it (hogging the telephone). Shoulders (soldiers). Mike's blue car (new car - green Mini). When I tuck him back in (2 a.m., J having just gone home) he says "Not going" - I understand him so well! and say "No, I'm just going downstairs to sleep." Likes Fe Fi Fo Fum and Ba Black Sheep. I sing him Sleep Baby Sleep. 22 Sunday [daily diary] Irritated, raining day, we read papers, J brings huge vulgar Easter egg in cardboard showcase 68p crackled gold paper; Ros has an egg for Luke with Smarties in it, I'm hurt Roy has done his usual trick, Luke keeps asking - "At Scrumps" - go to bed with hot water bottle and fall asleep with Long Day's Journey into Night - L and I watch television until 9:15, eating wieners and salad cheerfully together - the best moment. Also the wet garden, a tall single red tulip enclosed, faceted, radiant like a silky stone holding water drops in its microscoping grooves. 23 Monday Woke late, the rain on garden outside the window, Luke didn't wake till 9:30 - solitary hard-working day, made bedroom beautiful, cleaned, put branches into the white honey tin antlering the piano and a sketch of Madeleine's inside out so it's a pale greasy girl in barely visible yellows and greens. Put pot onto filing cabinet, have red tulips in another honey pot on the windowsill. In the kitchen brilliant partly rotted mirror hung by the door's light - cleared out the whole basement, shouted back at Mrs Holloway. Thrilled with Mutiny on the Bounty; through wet to bath, Ros sunk-eyed in red bathrobe. 24 Tuesday Museum of Natural History, came in with Luke to hall full of thrilling elephants - met David in the whale room (there was a beautiful gentle-faced man with four children - a doctor?), vertebrae like beautiful sculptures - prehistoric fishes also beautiful. David sore back and boring, Luke agitated, good stout in pub, through Hyde Park home past fountains of Lancaster Gate - when we were home Dee and Anna came, Roy took us and Mossy to the Vale on the Heath - Luke deliberately stepped in - Marine Ices, magnificent constructions, Anna and Mossy slithering out on their bellies like crocodiles. Roy talking about Manson book, like old times. Dee and I bottle of whiskey until earth tried to throw me off. 25 Wednesday Luke and Anna woke early, were running, jumping - going 'shopping' with Anna's dress over her arm for a basket by 6:30 a.m. - I hung over couldn't get up to quieten them, they stood solemnly watching as I threw up into the coal shuttle - Dee brought toast and milk which got me up - sat in John's sunny living room giddy, making up dialogue for a play about two women getting together to celebrate with delicious spite a man's absence - I said what I meant, Dee was seeing everything as ludicrous - the cat having all our crockery on the floor - when I got Luke, took him into the cemetery and pinched rockery plants, while he stood at the fence motionless looking at cranes and tractors digging for council houses. Varda's Les creatures. 26 Thursday Up early Luke all polished to see John and Lillian [Toews - my mother's sister], L fat blonde good-humored vulgar and squeaky with some of Mother's absent-minded mannerisms, John thinner-faced, become a kindly careful professor who likes children and gardening, I was very attracted to him, Luke was charming sweet and pretty. Struggling to get him, pushchair and shopping bag through the morning rush hour. Sitting in Russell Square facing the sun descending into a vague groping place where she understood nothing I said and I could partly reach her by telling her childhood memories of her vanity, otherwise flowed with her gossip about family members, couldn't get into myself with her - she's so friendly and diarrheic. With Roy and Luke to Heath, sat alone under a tree on Parliament Hill for a long time, peace and ease in sun, two runners flashing around the distant track side by side and in perfect step, the road past the brick flats, the trains, the silence, the blue haze. Cut Roy's hair off, made me exhausted. 27 Friday When Luke got into Jane's Dispirin I had to lay him on the edge of the bed and push my finger as far back into his throat as I could and determinedly tickle until he threw up, gave him vit C lemonade and did it again, then held him and tried to explain about the bad sweeties. Roy came and got him and I went to class, Scott Bartlett's Moon 69, some lovely things, Keith and I seemed to strike sparks, but got to Union roof to have tea with David who was feeling sorry for himself. The Lady from Constantinople. Dee telephoned wanting to see me. 28 Saturday Reluctantly to Cambridge, miles of traffic jams, a trucker's café where Luke and Mossy were twins eating chips and sausages and eggs, sat on lawn at Dee's, Luke running away to the shop with Matchbox toys. To the river to look for monsters and crocodiles, found reflections of trees and a watered red eye staring from the depths - a misty red sun. Home on A1, beautiful forests on verges, Luke and Mossy asleep fallen to right and left like tulip petals, exquisite light through poplar avenues and then it broke into rain, thyme sage and a dry saxifrage from the Hatfield nursery, home. Nigel got dozens of canvases and hardboards I realized I could have sold, then bored me for hours locked in antagonistic debate about socialism in which I said that because I liked myself I couldn't totally reject the system I come from. 29 Sunday Regent's Park in the afternoon, with Roy, hot, walking through alpines gardens restless but came down gently on the edge of the lake and watched rowboats (oars clanking), sailboats, a coot, and big ridiculous geese waddling on shore. Sat on some grass looking about and despising people, but not two little Japanese girls in white kneesocks and clogs, lovely blue and white print dresses in classical Sunday style, shining black hair. Horrible tea on Golder's Hill and walked home over Heath, asked a man about kites. R got rid of rubbish in the Superlamp: Luke with Pooh and Frances and Mossy. Jane back, a gust of tea and chat, bed early with Women in Love. Jane's story about her loony friend and the organ and the priest chortling. 30 Monday Morning: tea, orange, in sleeping bag with Women in Love - rain and wind - sappy bright letter from Mother - Euston looking at magazines trying to think how to be beautiful - couldn't get onto Moviola so had to try to look at Moon 69 on pic sync, no good - the last bit of Queen of Spades, irritating lurk, fancying Keith and feeling silly becos it's so abstract, sat through a little of Fantomas - bath sweating in [student's] Union hot water reading about Gerald and Birkin wrestling. Lonely. Evening Pissy Cat's round sides can't squeeze under the cellar door - R's big bourgie Mini outside the door. Rain and fat crude face. Beautiful spade in tube, plays with Genghis Khan lampskin jacket and little pigtails, fat face, Venezuela. [journal] Golden Notebook: her state of continuous anxiety about Saul! - "Obsessions of jealousy being partly homosexuality" - my dream of Jud, trying to carress her. - Being stopped down. Not realizing how stopped down. - Just had an illumination about David. To scare myself? 1 May Tuesday [daily diary]' Eventually get into car and go through beautiful country until we arrive at Scrumps, 'the country'. Luke sleeping under his quilt. (Luke asks in a service centre, tamarack and oil surrounded by fields of dandelions, if this is the country.) Enough time to sit in the afternoon sun, walk through Snow's farm to the high hillside field where we sat in short bright green grass with a round slope above us, the valley below, sheep moving slowly, with their lambs, all around, and a low sun grazing along at us almost horizontal; and then a robin sat for a long time singing on the telephone wire; fire; fumbling estranged friendly tumble. Beech wood with wild garlic. Dandelions everywhere. Primroses, cowslips, violets. 2 Wednesday Wake too early, Luke goes down with R to drive on tractor, later sun comes, we drive to Painswick and buy a cherry (apricot) tart, Luke loses his tractor in the church; offends old ladies by 1. saying he wants to shit just outside church door and 2. doing so; we sit in the hot sun among chamomile daisies and flat stones and sculpted solid yews; a teetering tall old man addresses Luke, "You're a sausage" and Luke takes his hand and walks him around the corner; in the afternoon I learn to drive, we go into a sheep field and walk down a hillside path looking at more tiny flowers in the still roofless woods; make a fire and supper, and Roy cooks, and I read Luke a farm book in front of the fire and we don't answer the telephone. In the garden game R said a jungle in a volcanic crater; couldn't decide whether the house was Japanese, a baobab apartment or a Tibetan cave. Key was to vast treasure he disdained. Dream of Father as Luke's father. 3 Thursday Rain, I dig and R cooks, we have a little driving lesson. Trunks of trees are beautiful but going through the uneasy movements of 'friendly' coexistence I'm always a little distressed and can't get at the extraordinary things here - feel unnatural and degenerate, sooth myself with daydreams and the earthy smell as I dig in the wet, I'm always caving in; when Luke wakes we leave the valley, there's a beautiful shy misty white and pale green landscape at the top: the round grove, the fence, a barn; through Bisley and up the now-beautiful M4. Luke jumping teasing fantasizing in the back hugging bottle sucking. Home to dirty flat. Fond goodbyes. 4 Friday R's here before breakfast, lonely at commune, dresses Luke and we're all happy, Jane in my orange dungarees and her patch jacket. Luke in his bath on the floor, I stamping about in my Wellingtons inspecting the garden's growth - passiflora has buds at last, one of the strawberry plants is large, saxifrages have spread, little saxifrage about to bloom, fern under the philadelphus has three long thin arms uncurling, all the bluebells in the shade in weedy flower, several self-seeded nasturtiums up, mint spreading; Fluxus films, Ono's bottoms, an x-ray of mercury-solid fluid being swallowed; wearing green polka-dotted dress, striped socks, sneakers, Jane's long sweater, hair wild, feel nubile and a little grotesque. 5 Saturday Nice at night to hold R's hot dry hand while he slept - he's loving - it's raining - go to Heath but it's cold, have breakfast at Tony's - I'm allowed to go to the British Museum to look at pots - Abyssinian ruins at Persepolis - Luke and R spend most of day with John and Angela and the triplets - a feverish daydream about The Tale of the Tiger at Colorado - R arrives early very sad - Luke says "Are you crying?" - a small true letter - needing spirit and I'm feeling that's something I do share with Chisholm and happiness about that. 6 Sunday My turn to get up and make tea and omelette and toast, but when the Times arrived sank wanly into it, ended by crying and complaining to R that he was going to disappear again - got rid of them long enough to clean my house and cook rice - ate in Japanese family around the low table - went to Kwai-dan at the Roundhouse - sneakers and long skirt and black hat among the pretty people - C Saunders Kentucky fried chicken and The Birds with the set flashing and flickering with the birds' attacks - R fell asleep and I watched Mercer - An Afternoon at the Festival. 7 Monday Waking: Roy is already talking to Luke, who comes out - R gets into my sleeping bag - a seepage of electricity and then when we stroke each other Luke comes and runs his car over my breasts - at Institute threw a series of maybe nine tea bowls, felt good - brought home some pots and made pancake batter in the one with the lips - Hattori's smile when she saw me this evening - the cemetery, Luke pressed to the slats looking at cranes, tractors - I stuffed my Habitat bag full of white bluebells, bluish tulips, wild carrot, wallflowers - Luke complained all the way home that he didn't want to go to Ellie's house. Big bit of saxifrage drooping off a grave. 8 Tuesday Turned the nine teabowls, got six, light and nice. And then with fingers tipped strong and easy threw six flat plates in succession, fingers working with independent perception, quick plates with rims, not like Hattori wants, but the kind that seemed inevitable by my method [sketches]. Oxfam the doggie for Luke (put in green button eyes) and quilted pink coat for me to make something beautiful. Luke put it on, looked like a lama; R came with chest whose drawer doesn't slide but left soon and Luke sobbed, big grief, I want my daddy. Jane brought home Angela Carter Heroes and Villains, read straight through in fascinated ambivalence - "stuck his finger into the wet hole." [journal] Angela Carter: "Feeling between her legs to ascertain the entrance, he thrust his fingers into the wet hole so roughly that ...." Four pages earlier she says: "So she ran away into the wood, not much caring if the wild beasts ate her; but Jewel found her, raped her and brought her back with him." And then describes it from the beginning. The look of her, hair in chopped hanks as if someone's cut it with a large shear, round wire rimmed glasses are eyes forward in the bridge of her nose which tips up shrewishly, soft mouth feeling itself heavy and aggressive, army shirt, hands clasped loose and square on a table in front of her, thumbs up like masts. (To describe a face from inside? Does it work?) Fairyland - where I'm more at home than in the Lessingland I admire, and everyone else, so respectfully. Luke says "Is it goining?" 9 Wednesday [daily diary] The bird that Pissy Cat carried shrieking into the bedroom and then into the kitchen where I caught it, Jane dabbed it with disinfectant (a few drops) in water and we put it in the mixing bowl with pink toilet paper and a plate over it to keep it warm and dark. To Buddhists but got into Bashara, sat and watched, David, Selim, Gemila, Rachmani, their chant of hoo with hands on table. Discussion of Arabi with candle lit. Stopped to tell John, who made me icky and uneasy. Andy in ponytail with eyes blazing makes me crisp and tender like KFC. Also bored and irritated. Bamboo and paran and rice delicious. Doreen's brown face; Polly drawing finger diagrams of Moorish houses. Plates from 1 lb 4 oz and 1 lb 8 oz - 3 good ones I couldn't repeat. Lilac on windowsill. 10 May Thursday Delicious apricot squares from Comm Suppl. Swimming lesson, breast-stroked across, question of rhythm. Smooth upside down turned plates, only three of the small ones are good. Meeting of Sufi at Portobello Road, Wadad and David; the breath of people in silence on either side, 'meditating' and seeming to tilt more and more backwards, lovely girl speaking slowly out of her smiling face - moment of wanting to cry, saying to myself "I hate God;" walking north up the Road, the bank of cloud like a range of mountains after dark; disliked implications I was a spiritual beggar. Home to see Superlamp outside, Luke crying and coughing, then Roy angry, righteous, despair, scolding Jane for leaving him two hours. Fantasies of pots for Bashara. With Mossy and Luke to splendour of ponds and young trees. Luke 'fishing' off his 'boat' at the end. 11 Friday New dining room, made it on sunny Friday morning, an iris blooming. Zik - the moment the circle pulled my hand over and I could feel the boy's light warm heartbeat under his clean professional shirt. Short broad big faced Adam singing a grace to tune of Amazing Grace. Feeling separate and dense, doubtful - even wanting to giggle. Wadad's authority and beauty in leading it / his giggle. 12 Saturday R's story of a dispute with a straight man by the pond - Luke began to cry but stepped forward and began to hit the man saying "Don't shout!" and then to kiss Roy better saying "Don't hurt Roy." Just being with Roy depressed me so acutely I went home and sank - Jane fed me and chatted me up, and then Chris came and hung about and I got involved in colors and want beautiful self made things to wear. Tasting Don Juan. Egg bacon fried bread and sausage. Life is mostly colors today - pink silk robe from Oxfam dominates it. [journal] Blazing across the Heath with Mari, so beautiful she makes me glad and timid; we work gradually from unease at the bottom of the hill, past the top, past the grove, to the man swimming alone, to the spot I call the pond, where sailing gently direct to us came a little boat made of a sycamore leaf pinned up on a tomato carton by a stick. Taking our rags of kite and the boat, climbing the spiked fence, gathering powers in the darkness through marshy ground, willow, a rising mist of wild carrot (Mother Die says Jane), finding a path that led us perilously, on a narrow mud shelf, to the gate into the Women's Pool, where we sat paddling our feet sending ripples out to the indifferent ducks and to the encircling jungle. Laughing. It's like a sanctuary, she said. When we set toward home, grass on our wet cold feet, jeans rolled up, her skirt hitched, running through the dusk, the sky was pink toward the south and green toward the north where we'd come from. In the pub, bits of grass on our wet feet, we drank hawf a Worthington each and our feet tingled warm. (Coming onto the concrete was like a pebble underfoot.) I was jumping with joy because I was so sure I'd come home to find that morose man [Andy] sitting with Jane; but even after I'd walked Mari to the frontier of the Underground, and sat on his stairwell letting the garden, the flowering may, the rose bushes, the wet grass, the fences and the light horizon of the reservoir focus themselves on me, he was not at home. - Tuesday morning, Luke is still asleep although it's quarter to nine, sun coming in the window on the back of my neck, diffusing up, like heat, from the white floor. The cat when she stops in it is a ripple of iridescence. The black chest of drawers, in the greasy depressions around the handles, gleams reticently like pewter. I'm lit up myself with a sparse image of your narrow self on the chair, legs spread on either side its back, sly pointed feet, arms laid on the chair back; sometimes your eyes blaze, sweep, like a lighthouse: frightened nervous secretive hard little man that you are, notebook keeper, hypochondriac, misanthrope! - Thursday. Every evening in this week is another pain. Well, it's long, from each evening to the next. Embarrassment of sitting in front of repulsive Bob asking, slyly, for news. Bad breath? I get angry. I get lonely. I'm scared of how lonely I get. Bless Mafalda, I remember how it was with you. Now I'm leaving him alone, I've left my message. On the tube, skipping to the end of a poem, I see
For a moment I couldn't remember. - How can you stay away, yesterday, today; how can you not be at home when I bring myself courageously to see you. Are you scared, I think you are; or in the space I was making, in that opening, somebody else, suddenly, jumped in. You said prosaically "I think something is happening around here." You said I'd bewitched you, but how is it I can't bewitch you here when my joy has turned to sick fatigue from waiting and disbelieving? - What your eyes are like, is the flashing blue light on the top of a snowplow. May 13 Visitations form old friends: yesterday I was in bed with Colin, at first we were naked in an attic bedroom, but were interrupted by the (naked) man-woman he lives with. Then in another larger bed he's rubbing his penis pleasantly between my legs and goes limp when I try to put it inside; he's kept his jacket, shirt and tie on. I wake feeling tenderness for him which stays all day. This morning a dirty sleeping bag with Paul in it, he gets up looking a lost wan queer, hair bleached white, confused, pathetic, saying Jasmine and his Indian girl have left him, he's lost his circle of people. I put my arms around him, he begins to cry and while crying rubs his penis up and down against my belly. Then, going out to greet Roy I see Janeen standing alone, rush to join her (just now remember another dream about her in a hillside at home, again a crowd of homey people) and am swept into a hall for her anniversary / second wedding. She says "I'm embarrassed" with her odd laugh and I see her enormously pregnant in pink check cotton. She sits down and Marlys comes to button a green apron around, above, her waist. We go into the building, there's a tableau in which she meets an old friend, they look at each other humorously and beautifully come close and smile into each other's faces without saying anything. I look around for the groom, a dirty man in rags and medals, hip, comes up and makes a joke about how thin she used to be and adds "as Ellie knows" making me feel at home. The participants, Janeen, the medaled costumed man who turns older and older, and a scruffy minister go into a glass sided room at the top of the hall. Janeen leans against a counter with her back to us, reading a magazine. The 'minister' is at a table ceremonially rolling out dough, but he flattens it too much and it begins to run off the table edge like water, escaping him. I have to giggle. Next thing I know a couple of women have stepped in to save his face, efficiently cutting and pinching up jelly tarts out of the dough while he sits out of the way looking very old. The groom also looks older still and I decide it can't be him. - Castenada The teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui way of knowledge The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit. Luminous egg. Man is fibers of light, circulating from head to the navel. I was absorbed in a series of extraordinary thoughts; extraordinary because they were more than thoughts; these were complete units of feeling that were emotional certainties, indisputable evidences about the nature of my relationship with my mother. We must know first that our acts are useless and yet we must proceed as if we didn't know it. That's a sorcerer's controlled folly. "My acts are sincere," he said, "but they are only the acts of an actor." "I have tempered my will throughout my life until it's neat and wholesome and now it doesn't matter to me that nothing matters. My will controls the folly of my life." "Once a man learns to see he finds himself alone in the world with nothing but folly." "Everything is equal and therefore unimportant." "my laughter is real but it is controlled folly because it is useless, it changes nothing and yet I still do it." One must choose the path with heart in order to be at one's best, perhaps so one can always laugh. A man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace Our lot as men is to learn and one goes to knowledge as one goes to war ... with fear, with respect, aware that one is going to war, and with absolute confidence in oneself. see his personal life disintegrating, expanding uncontrollably beyond its limits, like a fog of crystals, because that is the way life and death mix and expand ... there was no sadness, no feeling. His death was equal to everything else. When a sorcerer attempts to see, he attempts to gain power. tentacle-like fibres of Don Genaro, you can read a person; strong people have long bright thick tentacles - you can tell from them whether people can see. My superstition about having no authority, people not listening to me, presence that waxes and wanes. R when he first knew me: "She's all there" but then clouds me so I'm hardly there at all. only smoke can give you the speed you need to catch a glimpse of that fleeting world ... fleeting movement. Being plugged. He said that nobody had ever humiliated me and that was the reason I was not really mean. Have I given up my victories? Only a warrior can survive. A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for. A warrior has only his will and his patience and with them he builds everything he wants. Will is something very special. It happens mysteriously. There is no real way of telling how one uses it, except that the results of using the will are astounding. Perhaps the first thing that one should do is to know that one can develop the will. A warrior knows that and proceeds to wait for it. Your mistake is not to know that you are waiting for your will. The frightening nature of knowledge leaves one no alternative but to become a warrior. Without the awareness of death he would be only an ordinary man involved in ordinary acts lack the necessary potency, the necessary concentration that transforms one's ordinary time on earth into magical power. His decisions are final, simply because his death does not permit him time to cling to anything. One day he succeeds in performing something ordinarily quite impossible to accomplish ... as he keeps on performing impossible acts, or as impossible things keep happening to him, he becomes aware that a sort of power is emerging ... he can actually touch anything he wants with a feeling that comes out of his body from a spot right below or right above his navel. That feeling is the will, and when he is capable of grabbing with it, one can rightfully say that the warrior is a sorcerer, and that he has acquired will. We are men and our lot is to learn to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds. Don Juan's face: "It was not light as I am accustomed to perceive light, or even a glow; rather, it was a movement, an incredibly fast flickering of something." I'm thinking about my water film, and greenness, and come into a passage about looking at water in the ditch: "Water is your hinge." A warrior does not abandon himself to anything. A warrior is not a willing partner; a warrior is not available, and if he involves himself with something, you can be sure that he is aware of what he is doing. Around us are forces: the point is to use them, not to change them. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior's last battle on earth .... In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his will is impeccible, a warrior laughs and laughs. shields ... things that give you great peace and pleasure, to take your thoughts from your fright and close your gap and make you solid - stop talking to oneself: listen to the sounds of the world harmoniously and with great patience. We choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over - Luke's words mid-May "Touch the birdy's foot" - he does, "ouch!" Shelf, grass, sun, monster! (iguana), the sea lion, tiger, snow, froggy, bird, fishie, butterfly, turtle, deer, rabbit, piggy. "I show you!" "I look at the motor" (under the pushchair). "That's the end." 14 Monday [daily diary] Heath - stopped to ask Andy whether he'd babysit. Came home with Quartet in A Minor. Couldn't sleep! Dreams. 17 Thursday Pussy Cat's kittens born in the early afternoon while Luke slept, in the filing cabinet, second drawer down. 18 Friday Keith and I giddy about Barry; the two electrical pipes wriggling to flicker films. Paul Sharitts film about words. 20 Sunday Furies of impatience, Luke at last - on this beautiful day - goes with Roy and I take a little thyme to see Tarmo de Jongh, who isn't there, so I find myself wheeling around and going straight home to get my bicycle singing "So now there's nothing for it but to go and see the man" - striding through Waterlow Park looking in the band shelter for - coming home and lying on the bed listening to the Quartet - sharp rap, R asks to keep Luke - I go back to bed in seizure of nerves - sharp rap and joy and terror - have to retreat, have to sit and hang on - and then get giddy and remember to wait, Don Juan helping me - huddle - Heath, kites, men running puffing, elbows and knees jiggling; contained and open and peaceful and glad looking at leaves and branches, looking for a spot. Home to - work. [journal] Am happy. Buttery cheese. The corner of the room hung with carpet. Luke asleep. The tickle of infatuation that began unsentimentally flares up just sometimes. Haven't thought much of it. It's just there, hardly attached to him, something girlish about it all - sitting on the floor - the queer moment that unhinged my night into dreams like thin patches on sleeplessness - I am looking clumsily at the bookcase - I feel very shy suddenly - he lunges for me, "Come here you" - but when he hugs me he's stiff and only his head is anywhere near me and when I feel his thin back it's as if he's hung there not knowing how he got there, without interest - like me too hesitant to choose - and we separate into half-ironic banalities. But the hug has been fermenting away and my erotic pitch toward him makes me eat and eat all day - what sh'll I do. - Another thin night patched with dreams, in one of them Andy comes from the bookshop where he works, we put our arms around each other, he's much taller than I am, I have to strain up to reach him, he's broad-shouldered but very bony - later in the dream he's wearing a dancer's multicoloured leotard - it's Brother Carl of course - last night's little ecstatic time with the holy idiot stiffened silent dancer, coming into my dream nameless and taking on the name I've given my hungry restlessness. - I've been reading - Lessing, Castenada, Naipaul, Angela Carter, Updike - gulping for something to be - poverty again, makes it more acute, the ghost of Father's fears of humiliation, worthlessness, emptyness, hopelessness, intense loneliness for a body. When I was telling David about A - A! - I said "You wouldn't say he was good looking - he has beautiful hands and beautiful hair and beautiful eyes, but that's all." "That's enough," sez David. - Gathering my resolution together. - HA! - Occurs to me to wonder whether I can remember how it is with simple loving. Do I dare imagine it all ahead of time. You've really unsettled me, I complain - oh why do I complain? - Feet, white plimsoles; I have my black ones on. - Having bought the new Marks and Spencers underpants I wonder, does he find old under pants touching? I do. - One needs the mood of a warrior for every single act. Otherwise one becomes distorted and ugly. - In what 'happened' yesterday, I did take control of myself, control and abandon, so that when my heart knocked me speechless I hid behind the partition in the room and looked the other way except for questions and replies held up with much effort like logs to hang on to. And did, and got high, got euphoric, was patient and acute, and was so strong in my terrifying vulnerability that when I reached to pull his hair away from his neck, to pull myself close, he said "What are you doing?" in fright, that became something else, but for a moment really was fright. - My 'cautious' attitude is like a will to disaster. 25 Friday [daily diary] Hitched to Tenby. 26 Saturday Day on cliffs. 27 Sunday Hitched back. 28 Monday Morning, sad, then, thinking about music a feast of energy, John came and I danced to Gale Garnett and sang - mournful West Indian festival. Sarah, Margaret, John, Dee. People I like, and Peter is coming in August and maybe I'll go teach English in China. 29 Tuesday Raining, came home from Ros's bath barefoot on sidewalk, my body's warming! Sad and weak on account of Moustache and that weary seminar this morning (Robin Wood dignified and 'human', James shouting every word he says, where I felt both magically present and invisible and irritated, maddened), Dwoskin Trixie skinny face being mind-fucked or else fucked from a distance while the soundtrack repeats her name like a heartbeat; danced my way out of loneliness and desolation with Aretha, went from there to the Quartet, lost it to Roy, got it back from Sarah; am going to learn to play music. I've got lots of soul. 30 Wednesday Glazing lots of things - Margaret came and looked lovely, brought an orange rose full of scent like an oxygen mask to melt away my almost-migraine. Went to see Moustache strange older thinner apparition in imaginary braces and spectacles - nervous creature grating like washboard. Stopped to see Dee, bright and hard. 31 May Thursday Morning, waking up erotic with Luke courting me insistently, eventually ready to spring up, feed Jane, gloat a little, get Luke to school through the wet light and stop to read Cosmo through in fascinated disgust, buy new notebook and zoom down to Institute to sit scratching out, painting, butterfly plates. French Jewess singing, children singing, me singing, Tina a friendly presence and Sarah with her pink-skinned daugher squabbling - I'm high and expansive, the tatty lion eyes me and I daydream at lunch. John ill and moping, feels me up hungrily and generously, lends me sweater, warm blooded creature. "So are you" he says.
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