| time remaining 1 part 2 - 2014 november-december | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
9 November 2014 Why am I depressed this morning. Note from Tom written at 7:13 from Starbucks that was two lines of just business. Meeting with Paul K last night in which, whenever I'd say anything, he'd change the subject back to himself. We used to have such lively talk. Now it's as if he's encapsulated. He looks encapsulated, he arrived in a long brown overcoat and a flat cap with a scarf tight around his neck though it wasn't wet and hardly cold. His close thick beard encloses him too, like a fitted shell. He's extending himself, I suppose in a sense of kindness? Calls me, arranges these meetings, but doesn't want to see me. I sit next to him wondering what's happened to him, or is it to me, that I can't light him up into interest now. And Tom, is he shutting me down because he has decided to, or is he just shut down. David is fond in his way but I don't take his fondness seriously, why, because he floats in fondness with a couple of dozen women all over the city. Louie isn't gone, she can still listen and laugh, but she's busy and not hungry. I'm outside her life of money and skill and ambitious popularity. I'm starving to be seen and felt and in that starvation also not seeing and feeling. That's the point isn't it. Paul has a Japanese woman who lives with her very old parents in deep country. They talk on the phone. "She's so sincere. And she's a good storyteller." It's where he still has an edge into romance, a romance of context, as I had with Tom. The relation won't bear dailiness, doesn't bear dailiness when she visits him. He likes his routines better than he likes his friends, now, he said. When he was saying goodbye he pulled a chocolate bar out of his bag for me. I was walking back up Abbott in the dark looking around for someone to give it to. There was a very tall drunk waiting on the curb. I handed it to him. He was too dazed to understand what was happening. "It's a chocolate bar" he said slowly. He fell into step with me. "What are you doing later." I said "No. No." His pickup line was so odd in the circumstance, as if he didn't know he was a drunk giant next to a small seventy-year-old stranger who had given him a chocolate bar at random because she didn't want it.
- BP 200/110! 200/120!
In the drugstore 190/95. After biking, conversation, supper, newspaper 175/108.
Lowest in 2012 was 117/79. Highest in 2013 154/100. - So that's two emergencies. - I want all my loves back. All the loves I had to throttle.
I was slow-breathing and Tom came up. I thought, I could stop yearning for more from him and just love him. He can't harm me. It's what I actually want. It's the metta meditation I suppose. But I don't want the formula. I want to do it personally. - soma that opens our minds to the vastness of your sky Soma is poppy, cannabis, ephedra. [BBC The story of India] - Cold. Remembrance Day, streets closed around the war memorial in all directions. Three cruisers parked across Hastings at Abbott. Walking to Army Navy at noon colder than I have been in is it twelve years. Save-On Meats is a long narrow diner now. I went in for breakfast. Three young servers and a young manager. My waitress was a light-footed young woman, black, carrying her head beautifully on a long neck. Red lipstick. Her hair was interesting, close-shaved on the sides and grown out in a strip of pelt from the forehead to the nape. It suited her, gave her a regal profile. I was sitting at the counter. When she was handing my check across to me I said "I love your hair." It startled me how she lit up at that - such a beautiful person, isn't she used to it? Her pleasure was like a long-held flash of light. I was a bit dazed by it. Two mornings ago there was a bug crawling south across the room. I thought to track it rather than catch it right away. It seemed uncertain, was moving in one direction and then another, but then headed for the south wall. It climbed onto the baseboard, moved along it behind the power bar. I had to bend over to keep my eye on it. Suddenly it jumped across to the back of the power bar and landed exactly next to one of the holes meant for a nail or screw, a distance of six or eight of its body lengths. - Photo I took in the dark this morning. Man standing in front of the pharmacy holding a Styrofoam cup that's a white spot at his chest. Behind him is his supermarket cart full of all he owns. On the other side of the frame a tree holding up its arms into the golden light of a streetlamp pointed down. - I listened through all of Sons and lovers on audiobook. He likely
was unfair to Miriam and to Clara too, really, and there's all that Lawrence
hysteria in any of his adult relations, but at the same time such a presence
of countryside. He walks ten miles home. Fields, times of day, what is seen
from a window. It's another era, as if my mother's childhood and young adulthood
too. 1913. 15 Voted, city elections. Bright cold Saturday afternoon. 3 months since I last saw Tom. Richards Lives of short duration. The coming of winter 1974, Blood ties 1976, Lives 1981. B.1950 Newcastle NB.
Jerry saying, I think it may be too late for you to break up with Tom. 16
What needs to be solved:
17 Saturday night there was a lot of street noise. I lay awake feeling my blood pressure scarily high. Biked to Granville Market and then tried my bp again. Still high, and stayed high all day and into the night. No bites, though, and I was feeling I'd out-managed the bugs. Then yesterday as I was lying on the bed reading, a vicious attack, something like thirteen bites inside my shirt, up my neck, across my back. I stripped everything, did the laundry, put blankets into the dryer, even the red cushion, which needed a dryer of its own - $8 for all - got out the Pinesol and wiped down all the baseboards, mopped the floor with it. But in the process of cleaning something got up my pantleg and left another vicious trail from ankle to above the knee. I didn't find either of these. Knew my bed was clean though and slept confidently and woke with lower bp, but as I was making my bed there was an adult bug on the quilt at the head end. I don't know how it could have got there. I'm mystified by them. - I've just now made this entry not realizing I was writing it onscreen rather than in a journal book. - [Stanley Park sea wall] Stone wall constructed around the shore perimeter to hold back erosion. Master stone mason - argued that waves created by ships passing through First Narrows were eroding - 1920 workfare project for 2300 unemployed men. Stone sets from dismantled electric railway system in the '50s. 18 What is it about this book. It has a charm of randomness, it floats. Nothing is nailed down - things happen, Lois lifts her left leg and kicks at the air. The world surrounding people does the same sorts of unmotivated thing. "Under the bridge the pleasant moving shadows of water." There are scents, more than in most books. Who is smelling them? Four generations it took me some while to sort. Neighbours I might not ever have got straight, times floating through all muddled together, a watery dissolve altogether. [David Adams Richards Lives of short duration] Who are all these people. They know each other, as they would, but I have no way to. Some of his adjectives seem random too, "a few darkly ferreted things." Usually-unnamed social facts, people looking at each other with sexual interest, constant status concern, brand names. Physical observations I don't believe are character's observations exactly, though maybe they are meant to be? [Notes trying to figure out why Richards believes in god.] Tue, Nov 18 6:36am Email to Greg:
Thursday, November 20
- Thursday, November 20
- Note from Don sent at 2am this morning. I'd sent him Here2014's birthday page last year and he said he'd read all of it many times. I loved to hear that.
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Housetruck jpgs: [noon whole] [5:20am june 21 N side] [office end] [daytime sofa] [view from the couch] [bed made up] [view from bed] [doorway to machines] [bathroom from above] [west end] [bathroom light] David McAra's house on the London roof. I'm inventing it at the same time as seeming to remember a real place and time I should describe faithfully. I saw it only at night. Only the kitchen area near the door was lit. There was an upright piano along the south wall at the far end of the room but the rest of the long space was in the dark, so now when I'm filling in those farther spaces I have been uncertain. I want it for the moment when I haul myself up the many stairs and come out onto the roof. It's late and raining. I've left my things at the Y. It was a long flight. I'm jet-lagged and don't look good. I'd intended to come and surprise him in the morning, but once on the ground in his neighbourhood I just want to see him. The door onto his roof is a heavy warehouse door. The curtains next to his bed are partly open. I stand in the rain looking into his cave of light. He's there in a white shirt with sleeves rolled up, suspenders and loose pants. Barefoot. He's wearing reading glasses, looking down at something in a pool of lamplight. He feels me looking, starts up, comes, not to the door but to the bedside window where I am. Opens it. Stands looking at me with his face alight. We both just gaze. Then he puts out his arm and pulls me inside. Takes my wet coat and puts it over a chair by his fire. Rubs my hair with a towel. There is soup on the stove. He sets out a bowl for me. I am sitting on a bench facing his table - I don't know why it is a bench rather than a chair. He sits across from me and asks about my journey. He says don't go back to the hotel, stay with me. He sends me out to his sauna, lends me pyjamas. I get into his bed. Fall asleep as he moves about the room. (Puts on some of his own music.) Sometime during the night we half-wake together and he's into me without decision, home. It's David McAra, rather than the California Mac, now, why, because he's a computer musician and not rich and for the kindness of soup and a bed, and for the age I was? Early forties. He lives on the roof of a business building. Is it in Bloomsbury? Drives a green Landrover. Is handy, has devised a winch strong enough to haul a piano up to the 7th floor. Slight Edinborough accent, is it? Near the British Museum. He can see the river. Alex published the housetruck on his site today. I sent it just yesterday. New parts of DM's house are original mullioned windows and a sound-proofed sound studio at the back. [bed at noon] [desks] [evening sky interior light] The McAra: name comes from Gaelic word for son of the young manly one. Ancient family seat in Perthshire some say well before the Norman Conquest. Central Scotland. High mountains of the southern Highlands, agricultural straths in the east. McAras a sept or subclass of McGregors. What tartan was the red blanket? There are Irish McAras. 23 Publication - sudden lot of clicks into my sites - why - remembered it's that my housetruck design was published - comments - lots of them. "Delightful design!" - "I love everything about the design except the shower" - "It's a lovely design" - "Would love to find someone who could build this on the Big Island" - "I love Ellie Epp's design. This is what I am looking for" - "This is such an elegant design! I wouldn't change a thing, and that is saying a lot! :-}" - "Superior design, love the use of light, storage and especially the bed!" - "Nicely done!" - "I love it! It's different from other tiny houses, love the roof!" - "Love all the windows and lay out, as well as the looks, that makes this one absolutely delightful" - "I really love this design with all the windows. I could easily live in this. Great job!" - "This is perfect. All to my liking. Love light! It has it all and still spacious with built ins. The roof is so cool. Gives more open area and more light! Yea. It's perfect. Wonderful design." - "Superb creation. When can we buy your plans? Wonder if flexible solar panels placed on the roof would work for off-grid solar power for the house? Thanks for the brilliant design!" - "Sweet design. I'm not a woman but I really like your plan" - "Love the 10' width and all the windows also the curved roof" - "Outstanding. Would like a separate shower but overall beautiful and liveable!" - "This is one of the best tiny house designs I've seen I could easily live in this space." SIPs for construction, flexible solar panels. Roof curve? Copper or rubber membrane "torched into place" - induction burners from Walmart. - By now it's Google page 4.
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[from The gold cell)
-After I sent him the Sharon Olds poem. I could copy it here for the fine semicolon. Beyond that what is it D is that no one else I know is. When I feel it, is it myself I feel, or him. It's as if a yawning gap in the chest, a dark vacuum affrighted in realization of tragic facts. A kind of resolute fear? Not resolute but still, holding still in it.
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24 Michelle Butler Hallet about Lives of short duration "This one works in currents and layers, very like a big river." Arches for the roof - several sheets of marine grade ply laminated and cut to shape. Then marine ply fitted as skin and covered with waterproof membrane, then roofing of her choosing. November 27 [south side evening sun] [washhouse arches] [bath water daylight] 28 A boy from downstairs gave me many bunches of flowers. He had them on the other side of the bed. I remember snapdragons. Anything else? Something yellow. Then dim sum with Louie at the Pink Pearl - picked up my cactus and peaked cullet - made a photo I liked in blue dawn - rest of the day working on the London roof - moonlight photos of it - Isaac Levitan - made Louie laugh about putting bedbugs in a little jail. - John Luther Adams: dark waves, become ocean -
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- To Paul:
November 29 November 30 December 1 Chiffonier, chesterfield - those old words. 2 [looking north] [evening sky hoist and plants] [looking toward hoist from the stairs] To Paul:
To Greg:
3 Secretary hand, Chancery hand, Court hand, Text hand. [Ackroyd The Lambs of London] To G:
To Paul:
- Some details aren't accurate - actual lino patterns not found - not the exact shades of blue and green - etc - trying to reconstruct what was background in childhood - seeing different things in it now - my dad's family politics in the way it was constructed - what was conventional and what was original - Showing it seems more intimately revealing than any language could be. The awkwardness and backwardness we were, where we come from. To G:
11 I don't write here, these days. I invent buildings, or draw buildings I've known - I'm working on the lake house. I post small creations on whatthereis.tumblr.com. They aren't important but they please me. I send things I make to someone - Louie, Greg, Paul Epp, Paul K, David, Jerry, Tom. I post on FB. My girl students sometimes write me there or elsewhere - Kate, Sam, Jody, Emilee. Luke sometimes shows up on FB message. Rowen phoned last time Freya was away. We ate singing chicken together. He shifts into a remote abstract tone to talk about a game he wants to develop, that's like the hard remote tone Luke uses for business ideas. I don't write these days because I'm ashamed of them. The bedbugs are less, much less, and the street noise is less, but I have hard nights. The burning skin / black arm pain is back. I feel it on the surface of my eyes now, and on my arms and face. There's a hiss in my left ear louder than often. I eat randomly and expensively, for a while was wolfing carbs so five pounds of water blubber piled onto my waist. Am spending $600 out of savings every month. Will have been here 3 months at the end of the year and they want me to sign another 3 month lease. Have no plan to be anywhere else or spend less. Have not moved on Cheryl's book or mine or any other. Feel nothing will come of them. Nothing will come of anything. What is it that won't come. When I imagine discovering I have a fatal disease I feel no fight. Let it come, I seem to be done. I keep going on small pleasures and small contacts and stupid distractions like the books I read these last two days. The library has row on row of stupid books. I put on my jeans and walk out onto the streets once a day, twice at most. The computer is my drug. It has been raining and will go on raining for another 4 months. I look at the highway near Demmit, at the waves at Delmar, at a dry hillside at Mesa Grande. I check gmail, FB, the weather page, the stats page. I clean house once a day. Waiting for someone to come for me. Joyce did. Tom sometimes did. - There I think of Nyingma again and feel what it would be like to have a plan. I'd have a reason to get things done out of the way. Six months at Nyingma? Save $6000. End of March? Next fall?
R visa validity 60 mo no fee, multiple applications. R-1 temporary religious worker. Be a member for two years before. Organization files a petition for you. B visitor visa for voluntary service. Petition for nonimmigrant worker form 1-129. Unpaid volunteer - visa waiver 3 mo max. J-1? Sponsor. 14 The moons of Jupiter - I used to think she only wrote about adultery and that seemed so middle-class an entertainment. I'm more impressed now, but should I be. She intimidates me sometimes with the specificity of her observations of people in a moment but it's the kind of intimidation that doubts: is that really what her character was feeling, that exact mix? Does she see things I can't? Probably, but at the same time I suspect her of impressive method. There's something too about her social insideness. She has been pretty and successful and the people she writes about often are those things too, women who dress well and wear makeup. I've had wilder shores. At the same time she began where I did, rurally. She can write about small town people, poor people, but - what is it I'm wanting to name - the way she's stayed a conventional woman; she knows what conventional women know, though she knows it with more depth and particularity. She has gone into the minutia of what women know but she doesn't know world, she stays among people. Dreamed of Don last night; he was visiting with an infant. I have a little yearn since he wrote. Naturally he isn't replying. Four or five days on the lake house, which mostly is done. I've rotated toward a window and peered through it. There's the upstairs space lined with unpainted wood, the chimney stack as I'd see it when I was on the porch roof fitting glass. I've leaned a broom behind the screen door on the kitchen porch. It's a complex little form, with a lot of well-fitted parts. My proportions aren't just right and yet there is the barrel heater with Grandpa Epp's bench behind it, where I sat reading a book of Chinese stories when it was 40 below and Jam was away in Hythe shopping and didn't come home for days. Drawing the bench I remembered I had a green pillow - it was an African fabric with a pattern in the weave and tie-dyed spots? Beautiful dark green. [kitchen bed] [kitchen door open] [winter work table]
15 The carols I'm hearing on CBC are sung with so cynical a sound. The Potsdam Gravity Potato - geoid - areas on the earth's surface where gravity is stronger - gravity maps - high or low sub-surface densities. 17 An awful 24 hours, burning skin that didn't stop. Lay in bed all day hurting, coughing up yellow slime. Wouldn't want to get up. Shaking when I did. Woke at 1am soaked - even the sheet was so wet I had to move it out of the way for the rest of the night. Then second set of pyjamas soaked too. Was cold for a while, so cold. My hands wouldn't warm up. 18 "Someone has said that a writer should have as much trauma in childhood as he can bear without breaking." PD James on Eleanor. Escutchean - in medicine, distribution of pubic hair. Shield in heraldry. Taznahkt is Berber, High Atlas. Iraqui Kurdish embroidered carpet chain stitch. Was it 12 hours of sketchup today? Working on 824. When I'm working I sometimes sneeze but don't feel sick and hardly blow my nose. 824 is the house of color. Sketchup doesn't show either the shabbiness or the radiance for instance of the middle room's blue. Such elaborate mouldings. Skirting boards, door and window frames, wainscoting. Ridiculous balustrade and stair posts yet to come. I get away from slog by making or finding furniture - the metal filing cabinet, the little crib, the blue chest, the ferry bench, the kitchen table with holes cut for ma jong tile drawers. The old PC. The old typewriter. Three mirrors - turquoise oval, green rectangle, fancy bathroom mirror - still to make. The dial phone in the bathroom. Peter Epp's bench. Layers of layout - I need to sort furniture position into 1. Dames rocket and Luke, 2 Luke later, 3 Rowen baby, 4 thesis era. Color detail I forgot and recovered. Objects - the ratty rug in the bathroom. Where exactly were the doors into the closets? Have I got the window sizes right? [kitchen stove] [looking from the kitchen toward the hall] I've learned a lot since I last tried 824. I'm not trying to modify a whole existing house. I understand groups and layers. I know how to move, place and rotate easily. I can find, import and apply textures. I know to look for components like skirting boards ready-made. I'm handling the maddening V-ray intrusions. I have quite a large bank of furniture, small objects and textures and remember where to find them. I'm probably better at estimating dimensions. I have amazing focus in that mix of invention and slog. I come back knowing how to do things next day. I've found other and better color palettes though colors are still lurid. I know how to rotate textures. I'm fast at seeing how to modify existing stuff. I know to build different storeys of a house, and porches, and roofs, separately and combine them later - that's probably the most useful one. I've figured out how to do autospaced intervening multiples and measured intervals. Know to hide things when they're in the way. And apple-E for erasing lines. Squashed with apple-S and expanded with apple-P to get better proportions. Worked out many dimensions before I began, which was better. Am remembering numbers better? Some, I think. When there's an intervening action I know to write a value down. Still have to learn how to make volumes interact. Should have used it for the lake house roof. There maybe isn't a lot done in a day? And yet the rooms are more real-feeling tonight, much more. Other projects: skyshack, 3663 Georgia, Ban Righ, Sexsmith, Burghley Rd, St Albans Rd. Meantime my muscles are more friable from not eating much, maybe, or sick lungs. Sore here and there, wrist, hip, shoulder. 22 When I couldn't sleep last night I was having Christmas with my imaginary family. Thinking what present to get each, elaborating them as I thought. Mig Nuñez is a horseman? High quality agricultural manager who likes opera. I give him Four last songs, Te Kanewa. Lee Nuñez is Navejo rather than Mexican; turns out she's Mac's cousin. 10 years younger than Mig, who's 50. When her youngest leaves for college she wants to do archeology. I give her earrings. Martín Nuñez, Mig's old dad, the gardener, I give Clebsch on salvias. We'll do a collection. Jim? - son - the astrophysics student - what did I give him - a book. Becc - Rebecca the 16 year old - I find a collection of Double Take magazines. Mac isn't easy. 3 pairs of those thick soft white socks. What else. Want something he'll take when he travels, a really beautiful shirt.
Mac showers me - a super-long lens, a long distance phone contract, a soft long thick dark green cardigan, $400 pyjamas, silky cotton with stripes. He gives Mig and Lee a trip to Cuba. Jim a big air travel credit so he can go to conferences. Becc a computer and a length of sari silk from India. My grad dress! she says. Martín a hat. Christmas morning they come for light late breakfast, bacon and eggs and fresh bread toast, orange juice and coffee laid out on the library table, fire in the fireplace. He has just come back from India the day before. Brought a tree. He and Mig are at the kitchen's big table with their plates talking about the horses. I'm at the counter making raspberry-cranberry dessert, listening in. The kids and Lee are trimming the tree. I've done a garden circuit with Martín earlier and he's still in the glasshouse doing things. While the geese cook we'll gather in the library and Mac will show pictures of where he was and what he was doing there. We'll watch some movie we all like. Becc will keep sneaking looks into the Double Takes. Late afternoon people scatter for a bit, take walks, nap, read, then dinner. Then presents in the library. At dinner Martín raises his glass to say it was good in this year that la senora joined them. Mig says something to Mac in Spanish. Mac smiles. La senora entiende espaniol, my brother. Everyone tells the events of their year. Plans for the next. Becc wants to get into a best college. Our strategy is to get her a major publication credit. She's writing a piece about her dad and horses. There's a sprinkle of white on the mesa. Long slow dessert in the library. Everyone goes home by 9. Mac says he needs half an hour on the computer. I say shall we sleep outside? He says yes, turn on the subfloor heat and add a big quilt from my closet. I put on my new pyjamas and go lie in the outside bed with my nose sticking out, looking at stars. After a bit more than half an hour he comes naked from the washhouse and slides into bed. We talk about the day. He's happy, he has a hard-on but he's holding out. He knows I know it's there. 27 Lavender and peach bands with island mountains below them in a blue row. A wide short open tree with small lights spaced somehow evenly all through. Low wide stone fireplace with a deep bed of large chunks glowing red. April of 1989 - "a squad of vivid men" - "big dark brother with juicy arms, warm straight energy ... curious" - "and a gawk" - "the brothers have made themselves together, it's a powerful sight" - "in the family bathroom mirror looking an exotic catch" - "the mum who rules, is tall and impatient." [AG10-3] 1989 is going on 25 years. The big dark juicy teenage brother - 19? - was least recognizable, a swollen bear of a man, large, with a puffed-up face and large belly; the one I called a gawk, who has hands like Rob, is a tall narrow trans - well, equally unrecognizable - with long hair dyed beige, fingernails painted maroon, thin long shanks and a high belly carried further forward than his fake boobs. He babbled, as if that's how he thinks girls behave, I wondered, or as if the specialness of his new status licensed him to feel every thought interesting enough to share. "I feel naked without earrings." He was wearing a thickly sequined stretch top, a filmy skirt and high suede boots. I could not see him in the image he had invented, not at all, was aware of having to take his claim on faith, but later when Geoff had turned off all but the tree's lights and we were talking in the dark Cary was there again in his natural family voice. Rob - he came up the escalator into the sea bus foyer wearing a long black greatcoat - wasn't a teenage boy anymore, his face has thickened some, but he's not bulkier around the middle and he still has that family lightness of play. His voice is as it was, quirky. Pat was not tall and impatient but small and ill. Often she was sitting silent in her rocking chair, breathing with difficulty, still drinking though. In the bathroom mirror I was not an exotic catch but an old woman who looked unwell. A couple of paragraphs about a visit in July - 23rd - [AG10-4].
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