8 September
The sight of sound: notes.
What is it about seeing sound. Being sound. Feeling myself as cognitive
body. Noticing that the way we talk about things is primitive. The object
metaphor. Intimation of cosmos.
- What's the beauty of neural photos - they are air earth fire water
plant animal in one tissue - they are space and shape, veils, indicated
unreal positions, flower fields, creatures reaching their arms - threads
of sound, sounds spun and stretched - gold wires, bits of gold wire growing
- flecks such as there are in silty water.
-
- By these means I am, this is where I am immersed and the same - a weave,
a net - a sand, a silt, a mist - a drift, a sift, a seep. -
-
For Some photos A5-1.html 2011 working on N1
9
Inter-sensory. Experiencing being. "the eyes of my eyes, the ears
of my ears"
-
Driving past bush that's everywhere along the edge
of town, spring branches orange and wine red together - dreaming I'm naming
the colors. Seeing the room I've moved into is small and shabby. Feeble
heat from a vent near the floor. There's an electric heater too, which means
it's going to be cold in winter. The large painting I did in the other room
could maybe go on this blue metal wall but I don't know where it is.
- Can I get more mental stamina yes
- Physical exercise no
- Was that little room a description of my state
no
- Should I try to force it NO
10
Do I need high blood pressure to work?
12
Need to say I'm finally dressing well for here and for my age. Black
teeshirt, long black cashmere cardigan, black pants, pale blue chucks. Earrings
when I re-pierce.
Another thing is that I look at my old hands with pleasure. They're thinner,
their tendons are more defined. They look like my dad's.
-
I woke at two in the morning with my chest tight and vibrating. Worried.
Patch was sleeping at my feet. When I turned on my side she came and curled
into the hollow at my belly. She didn't tread or purr, just lay asleep exactly
where I needed her. She knew it wasn't morning yet. She never wakes me even
when I'm sleeping later than usual. She notices that I'm awake, though,
even if I haven't moved yet. Then if she thinks it's morning she comes to
stare into my face, say hello once, ignore my hand and leap a big disrespectful
arc over me onto the floor.
We have lovers' fluctuations. There was a while she was as if devoted,
often in a day wanting to sleep in my arms. Lately she's more backed off,
daytimes sleeps privately under the bed.
When I set off the smoke detector's scream yesterday she streaked out
the door so fast I thought I might never see her again, but when I opened
the door later I saw her at the foot of the garden looking back. The way
we look at each other is so human. We assess, request, refuse. When she's
determined to be let out there's a hard stare: DO it. There are times her
look seems to say don't look at me now.
It gives me pleasure to see her so at home in the place I've given her,
the way she strolls in and out through the verandah door I prop open, the
way she sits on the porch platform gazing over her domain. She likes the
far edge of the garden, the grass under the plum tree. When I look for her
at night that's where she is. She says meeee quietly from the shadows
so I don't step on her.
17
- aspect of a verb can be in different tenses -
5 distinct stems of the same verb
- o simple aspect doesn't specify whether ongoing
or completed
- o perfect aspect specifies that action is completed
- o progressive aspect action ongoing
- o perfect progressive ongoing action completed
- concise ironic open-ended mode of expression
- aorist tense expresses action without indicating
completion or continuation
- durative - happening now
- aorist - the idea of - thinking of running away
- moods: indicative, infinitive, subjunctive, imperative,
optative, participle
The ingenious language - I liked the idea of learning how the
grammar of ancient Greek is different from ours but her style is so horribly
wrong for that purpose - wrong in what way - by imposing her trivial self
in what she thinks is an attractive 'accessible' way she keeps tossing me
away from her point so I have to press through defending myself from her
silliness at every moment.
Proto-Indo-European fifth to second millennia BC
bronze age
Indo-European people who reached the Greek peninsula
and islands about 2000 BC
Every noun had three genders - m, f, neuter - three
numbers - singular, plural, dual - and a case system
Every verb had two voices - active, passive/middle
- three persons and three numbers, as well as finite forms - indicative,
subjunctive, imperative, optative - and non-finite - infinitive, participle
The three verb tenses - present, aorist, perfect
- indicated aspect not tense
Koine Hellenistic Greek ie after Alexander had
spread empire, lost locality and simplified: irregular nouns and verbs normalized,
dual number vanished, optative mood merged with subjunctive, loss of vowel
discriminations
18
Last stretch of forming The sight of sound, what it's like.
These days a crew across the street stripping the church before recladding
it, at this moment someone on a bucket crane wrenching the last of the brown
shingles off the very peak. Motor growl. Rain last night, just now platinum
sun burning through into the side of my eye.
I collected material into clumps for interrupted months and have been
refining on the level of those clumps. It has felt like carving. It has
been so slow, I've been able to do so little before I give up in a day,
that I've wondered whether I can still work at all. But then I wrote the
Patch story straight off and it has some grace it seems. There has been
an old earned faith too that there's time and even if I can only shape a
paragraph a day it will be done when I need it to be. So now I've edged
into the last stretch where I'm wanting to open it into the widest I've
seen. I've noticed today that it's going to be just separate blocks that
nonetheless are at least partly stepped. It's thrilling work - I say that
very carefully - I mean it's thrilling to be doing it at last and I say
it carefully because am I actually doing it if I'm doing it in so halted
a way.
-
- Proto-Indo-European 8 noun cases ie case endings
- o nominative subject of a clause
- o dative indirect object of a clause
- o genitive possession - translate with of the
- o locative where one is
- o ablative place one comes from
- o instrumental means by which something is done
- o accusative direct object
- o vocative used to call or call attention to
- oh !
-
- Ancient Greek reduced to
- o nominative subject of a clause
- o genitive possession - translate with of the
- o dative indirect object of a clause
- o accusative direct object
- o vocative used to call or call attention to
- oh !
-
- Modern Greek has all but the dative.
- In Latin, word order. In case languages word
order is free.
- In modern languages cases supplanted by prepositions.
22
Our two fonts on the page. Garamond looks worldly. Courier looks plain-spoken.
My old college boyfriend, Greg, complained when he saw Work & days
pages in Courier, why wd I choose a monotype, hard to read he said. I said
because it's a journal that was handwritten in pencil and a typewriter font
is closest to a hand-made look. Am realizing now that it's more than that.
For a person who bought her first typewriter at sixteen with money from
her first publication - a person who learned to type by correspondence because
she was the only person in her high school who wanted that - it's aspirational
too. It's a private voice edging toward being a public voice that stays
private.
let me tell you how it is, a push or intentional
spinning of structure to an agenda, vs. considering and naming with no agenda.
you are exquisite at it, because of the sensitivity of your perception,
the clarity of your gaze, and the precision of your language. it is wildly
pleasurable to be with you and in your articulations to be articulated by
you.
23
Greg's letter to O sometime in the autumn of 1969.
Sometimes I am aware of us lying on the rug
in front of the fire, and I can feel your bare breast in my hand, and I
can see you above me, then bending down so I can kiss you, and I can feel
your smoothness and softness and wetness and excitement. There is no way,
really, that I can tell you how exciting you are and were. . I want to be
able to undress you bit by bit, sliding things off, and to stroke all of
you and kiss all of you and have you need very much to feel and hold me,
and to have this last and last until we are shaken
at the end, the way your legs were the other night. That's what I want,
or a little bit of what I want, and that's what we could have, can have.
And then, different from all this but related somehow how nice it is to
be able to sit with you and when we're talking to put my hand on your breasts
or between your legs.
What I feel reading it is erotically inferior. I've never been that excited
or exciting. I've been a careful body. I've loved touch but stayed out of
O's kinds of trouble.
The other thing I feel is O's crow of triumph in giving it to me. We'd
been friends and sexual competition ruined us. Breeding rivalry? I cut to
the chase, stole a superior child. Comeuppance later.
Judie on the same pattern. She was sexier but my child was smarter and
better looking. "Akasha has such a lot of little things wrong with
him." I didn't know what I was doing when I said that but it was a
short knife to the point. Wow.
Have I ever had a female friendship that didn't fall to compulsive sexual
competition for men. Even the lesbians! Including T and R if I consider
Jam as male-ish.
An irreducible level in this, steel teeth. How could one live better
with it than I have.
- Is it irreducible YES
- Is it breeding rivalry yes
-
- To live better with it one would have to lucidly and
single-mindedly go for the best breeding possibility one has
YES
- One would have to succeed and know one has succeeded
yes
- Does that have to mean marriage no
- Did my grandparents understand me in that
yes
- Did my parents no
- Then could one be secure with female friends
yes
-
Food has been boring and annoying but just now I have two things I love
to eat every day, my own Yukon golds baked and mashed up with butter, grated
cheese and chopped onions, and juicy Cuore di Bue in chunks stirred up with
basil, feta, black olives and a bit of Greek dressing.
Sun today, the linden yellowing, the two crabs thinning out. St Michaels
is going a gray-greenish cream.
26
Have been posting stories from the mighty first trip to San Diego. October
1995. When I could still move around in the world.
6:49 Sunday morning, white sky, linden old gold top to bottom.
I think The sight of sound is done. The sight of sound: notes.
27
Paul's birthday. Will I phone him. Not today. I'm mad at him for conspiring
with Judie against me. Still! I'm better company than she is but he's holding
his old grudge. Not because I did anything - I liked him and encouraged
him - but because I was more vivid in the family.
Look at that, clear sky above, under it a wall of dark cloud moving steadily
north. 6:27.
Note from Don first thing this morning still yearning to have had a mom
who simply loved him. Men like that. Peter I suppose. (Women: Cheryl.) (Men
who had it and it wasn't enough, Tom, Roy.) What do I conclude in relation
to Don. That I can't get what I'd want from him, which is company in adventure,
because he's stuck wanting something else. So who is there -
-
I was emailing the amatter piece, attached photos, pressed send and saw
I had new mail. It was from them, first I'd heard since June.
- A psychic web that coordinates with Berlin?
yes
- Did they send because I was sending no
- Did I send because they were sending no
- Coordination is the word yes
-
- Shd I phone Paul no
- Luke yes
28
Where I went this morning, Australia for travel and then there I am at
45 so tender and uncertain being an artist.
-
Clean house, clean bed. Canned efficiently, I do now, large pot of Cuore
di Bue with onion and basil, have a system that ends fast with everything
put away and the kitchen clean. Is it good, will I want to open a jar of
it in winter, I don't know. I look at all the many jars in the cupboard
with that doubt.
29
- mended by her quality's affection
To remember to give Louie credit for that despite whatever else.
-
Shame and pretence, a sickly child who believed in Santa and the Virgin
Mary, a bullying father, a mother angry he wouldn't be a priest for her.
I've thought of him as my semblable but I never went wormy-obedient in fear
of being alone. Why did he. And then the wrong kind of therapist who doesn't
know anything.
- I had better instincts yes
- Was it genetic no
- My context was less coercive yes
- Tom had better instincts too yes
-
- Do you want me to go on talking to him about this stuff
no
- Is him reading my stuff worth anything
no
- Anybody no
- Shd I stop posting no
I keep realizing how good our home context actually was, how much privacy
and liberty we had. There were good things about church, table grace was,
choir, seasonal festivals, having a group of people for whom we went on
existing all through childhood. Our ideology didn't seriously infiltrate
the way Catholicism seems to, we three could all drop it without much struggle.
No one supervised our heads. We weren't mawkish about each other. There
was a lot of open space.
He's still ashamed of himself for having folded isn't he. "Shame
and inadequacy and pretence." He feels it has to be fixed in the past.
It can only be fixed now, in his body.
30
Tom for a while had a little metal crucifix hanging over the bed we were
sleeping in together. I said NO we are not having that image of emaciated
murdered maleness hanging over our bed. He didn't see that in it. He saw
his love for his parents. His loyalty to his people, which I could see was
loyalty to his young self. He liked his young self and I did too. The crucifix
stayed, but around the corner in another room.
There was something quietly graceful about the
guy that I liked very much, a quiet lack of ego; I had no need to be, or
say, or pretend, or prove anything. What a special man.
People like that. Deeply relaxed. It came from more than his mother though.
If he was a vet he may have been through the AA program.
a shrink once who said that I was my mother's
penis
We had very different kinds of therapist. Mine was a Gestaltist who worked
with the body to release tension.
having to shine in ways that would bring her
status.
Catholicism in relation to women absolutely vile. Wipe them out so they'll
be so starved emotionally and intellectually that they are the most devoted
servants of what oppresses them.
what it meant, that Mary was a woman-ideal of
wholesome purity, a wholeness to which I aspired and sometimes found in
private prayer
The wholeness of that man on the plane.
if I was going to be able to hold up my head
I would have to understand what others believed and subscribe to it
I've thought parents lying about Santa is far from harmless, is in fact
earliest training in betrayal and self-abandonment. It sets kids up to disbelieve
themselves so then later they'll fall in with insane ideologies. I hate
that you had to deal with such a coercive context. But have you forgiven
yourself for it? It feels as if you haven't.
-
Grey light at 7. The trees I look at all day unleafing, a big linden
that goes from green to bare every year in a couple of days, a Russian olive
that's slower to thin. These early mornings the best times of the day. Large
cup of tea, lamplight next to the work chair, daylight coming on at the
window, cat outside doing garden patrol.
In Edmonton the aspen poplars in the river's cleft will be uniform bright
gold or else already bare.
The air toward Hamilton Hill has just gone white. It's going to rain.
2
Slight first frost yesterday morning, photos [the farm], [tomato ladders]. Hard frost next week.
There's St Michaels beige and neat and wrong. Dull anger at the rich
man's power to wreck what had been my good corner.
Scratching for something to do, going through what I collected from 1990,
I still shy off Louie analytically but warm to sex with Rob as if Louie
was an exercise and Rob was real life.
- Was Louie an exercise yes
- Did I do her a discredit no
- Because she got what she came for YES
- I sophisticated her yes
- Structural reverse of Jam and me yes
- But Jam was willing to be cold and I wasn't
yes
-
The way people talk in This is us. Falsity always, false enthusiasm
taken as normal, stupid facetious American idiom taken as lively sociability,
is that how it has to be to keep things going among people who stay attached?
Civilized behavior means pretending to be glad
to see people you aren't glad to see, praising parties you wished you hadn't
gone to, thanking friends for presents you wish you hadn't received. Training
kids to feign a passion is the art of parenting.
I think of any of that with disgust.
3
Why does it look so much like fall. Lot of birds in the wind, birds dropping
through bare branches. But then no it's how low the sun is as it's rising
in platinum glare across the street.
6
6 in the dark, Patch curled at my knee with her fur opening and closing
at the belly. These days when I'm reading in bed she'll sometimes sleep
with her head on my shoulder. I love that. She went out first thing this
morning as she does but she hasn't wanted to stay out. It's getting cold.
7
In my last dream before I woke I'd come back to
820A when it was soon going to be demolished. Someone who had lived there
with me earlier and was still there had a thick blind over the hall's west
window so it was completely dark. I asked had she always disliked the brightness
I'd wanted there. I was noticing smeared edges of red paint where people
had been careless with their brush. Then I was standing at the kitchen window
holding its frame sobbing, sobbing.
6:48, open sky evenly pale, evenly lit. A bird cut-out drops from the
Russian olive's cut-out lace. Frost last night, I'd laid towels over the
tomatoes and peppers in the verandah. Quiet rumbling as if from the rad
under the window. Not really a rumble - it has a pulse and is more like
the sound of boiling but it's also the soft scouring of water moving in
pipes. Kind life-blood of the house.
I had 820A from 1975 to 2002, 30 to 57 when I lived with my love-self
and was most in life. Was the dream answering something I've been asking
vaguely, which is should I be more distressed than I seem to be, by the
emptiness of these days.
-
Some photos. June-July 1977. The writing voice then is mostly
broken and false but what was correct in it. Are the photos a way to know.
What I'd want to make of it now very different from what I made of it
before.
I'd scrambled my brain. I was wrong with Jam and she was wrong in her
own way. My effort with the druggy artists had spoiled my sense of what
writing was. I made a bad mistake with Luke.
- I saw it right away that the photo was gone
- had no right, they were hers, I had no idea what they mean to her,
it was unforgiveable
-
- Do you understand why she freaked about the photo
yes
- She felt it as herself yes
What drugs gave: the sense of mutable self, quality of consciousness
as a worry -
Luke goes back to London with Roy on the agreement that it will be for
six months. Roy later gets back together with Sara and decides he won't
send him back.
What did I want to remain, what did I want to remove, what did I want
to build.
There were three things entangled, a dim sense that I was incomplete
and wrong personally, an urgent sense that I was inferior as an artist,
and a sense that a lot was wrong with people in general.
I wanted to be more aware of what people were when I was with them.
I wanted to know earth in ways I hadn't been taught - seasons, sky, plants
I was noticing evidence of unconscious knowing, was trying to work with
it often mistakenly
interest in anything I could learn about how to work with the mythic
unconscious
noticing attractions to images and phrases and feeling they must be clues
I knew there could be more feeling openness than I allowed
I'd have rages of frustration when I hated everyone
looking for company and a style of being in the best of artists and scientists
looking for method I was thinking of as discipline
All day thinking about how to make a relation between closely watched
inner and outer and not having to live in only one / and whether the inner
works better unwatched etc.
Want to register these meetings with men and stop mistrusting myself
in them if it's possible.
8
Oh! (I look up.) Tenderest yellow at the ridgeline melting up into palest
blue. 6:42.
Go to the causal zones and fight the child-errors of local culture.
The yellow comes before the all-white.
When I get to a fineness, by bold refusals, I feel a panic of having
to 'work' when it's impossible - because I don't know what's worth doing.
Also their methods have taken over in me so I don't know what mine used
to be, and I know I didn't fight for them well enough to know if they're
well lost, the navigating ideas.
Is there something wrong with deliberate creation? I used to belong in
life and made in passing, now I feel responsible for the world's soul.
9
Last dream dozing after a broken night, I'm taking
Luke to daycare - it's Luke but the name I have in my head is Rowen. We
are having to take an urban train or subway to somewhere toward the east.
I have a handful of silver change but I don't know how much it will cost
or whether I have enough. I don't know where to pay for a ticket. I'm at
a counter trying to ask but the woman is shouting over a lot of background
noise and I can't make sense of her. We go on into a large open subway foyer
. I've forgotten the name of the daycare and its stop. Luke has told me
already but I don't remember. I'm getting frantic. I turn to ask him again.
He isn't there. I look around shouting for him. Rowen! Rowen! Rowen! Some
blond children sitting in the grass at a distance. I can't see him anywhere
in the large open space.
I think what it is about this dream is fear of Alzheimers. I have gaping
losses of ordinary words. I'm timid about going into the world. I'm giving
up on people as if I can't handle much. I make small mistakes with people
- yesterday I asked the maple leaf woman her name although I'd already been
messaging her. I sometimes don't recognize people I've already met. I'm
careless in how I dress. Do I post journal pieces taken from the past to
keep up an image of myself as more competent than I am now? I reassure myself
with evidence that I can still write - people liked the latest Patch story
that I wrote straight off a couple of weeks ago. So ask again:
- Do I have Alzheimers no
- Some other cognitive disease no
It has always said no.
- It's just old age YES
Which is bad enough.
- Losses from uncontrolled high blood pressure
probably yes
- Do you agree with my reading of the dream
yes
These fears have been so much the texture of every day, why haven't I
written them before. I should note every worry. Worry and shame.
-
In the writing of 1978, even in passages I think of as best, such inexactitude
and hype.
When I was 17 I left my family aside lightly and humorously. Why when
I was 32 did I have to struggle to revise myself out of them?
- Was it really necessary YES
Because earlier it was just me and later I had taken into myself so many
other people I'd chosen as models because I wanted to be a cultural worker.
- Was that why yes
- I was building work woman yes
- Did she have to be built rather than found
yes
- But something recognized yes
- I had to build a bridge between uncon and con
yes
- Pilgrimage is about that
yes
Jam didn't recognize it because she hadn't yet experienced the effort,
she thought she'd stepped from Zeus's brow. For me it was like a colonial
struggling to revise colonial formation.
10
What I want from Some photos - I want people to see them, to see
the marvelous place and to be in the state I was in making them. I want
them to marvel.
How to do that. Sound. What sound do I have.
- Waterpipe angels? no
Wind.
- Inaudible murmurs yes
11
In the Olson house my writing is already less false.
12
Clues, interests came up in those years that I and others later made
something of. 'Becoming oneself' so much forming happening over time. For
instance this, "What do you know about li, principles of order, markings
in material." For instance the way I am now so much more conscious
of the being of the cat I live with, than I was with any of my earlier cats.
Was asking yesterday, of the way I'm all day open-hearted with Patch,
is this the lovingness native to me, that other people live out with their
lovers and families all the time? I notice her fondly, I call her Darly
or Little One, I give her what she asks, I reach to touch her, I can be
amused but I'm not ambivalent the way I always am with humans. The difference
is startling. There's now so much dislike in my relation to almost anyone.
It must be hard on me, that hardness. On my kids. On anyone I meet.
I saw yesterday that Kat Harrison had been attacked in her house by a
neighbourhood man, choked and beaten. That sweet spirit.
Things about people that repel me. I can't imagine them not repelling
me. They are repulsive: it feels objective. Yet there could be a view of
them that doesn't take repulsions personally - what would that be like -
how would it have to be done. I think I was like that when I was in my teens,
I saw people as phenomena I was excitedly finding in the world. I didn't
see them in much detail, I didn't see much about them. That was my mom's
way? I think. Now how would it have to be. What I learned when I was teaching,
that dislike would go when I'd got to diagnosis? To do that on the spot
I'd have to be mentally much faster and more active than I am, than I can
be now, maybe.
- Do you think that's the only way no
- Do you think this is important yes
- Should I try to find my love for everyone
no
- So is there a right way to do it yes, integrating
despair and triumph in overview
- Do you mean despair of getting what I need from people
yes
- And angry triumph no
- Do you mean actual winning yes
- Do you mean needing and not needing no
- One card truth, accuracy
- Be accurate about despair, is that what you mean
yes
- Just understand what I want and am not getting
YES
In every case. Makes sense. [sigh]
- Do those pleasant-looking older women do that
no
13
Ability to work so so fragile. I open the A notebook file and
light up into its best pleasure. Carry it to the laptop. Take my bp and
make a note. When I then open the file again it's gone blank.
-
Yesterday when I was in the A&W lineup a man with a huge belly slopping
over the top of his pants walked across the parking lot in front of me.
I was looking at him with hatred but then remembered to ask what it was
that I wanted from him that he wasn't giving me. The first answer was that
I demand visual pleasure everywhere.
- Is it empathy YES
- I hated him for hurting me yes
- So is it intractable no
- Is it pathological NO
- Is it possible to be perceptive and not hate
yes
- Do you mean the way an artist would, who drew him
yes
- There does need to be defense yes
- But not in a way that self-harms YES
- Hatred is self-harm yes
-
- Am I wrong to dislike Louie as much as I now do
no
- Was I always wrong about her yes
- She's highly manipulative yes
- Tom was in some ways a better person yes
14
These nights turning over is heavy labour: my shoulders are stiff and
my arms are in the way. My heart starts banging and scares me. I say to
it calm down, calm down.
-
A good dream this morning. I was at the computer
writing something. Noticed work going on around me. My dad was renovating
the house. There were a lot of people working all over, some laying a new
floor. I found myself carrying an armful of small wood. Was it needed or
was it trash? Needed someone said. Then I began picking up rubbish to take
to the big tip I could see over there.
18
1979 still suspended in so much uncertainty. Cringing to see how helpless
I was in the Notes in origin writing.
The actually beautiful story of Luke in his visit.
Not interested in the good times with Jam, annoyed by the misery.
-
- Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 5:27 PM
- Subject: you alright?
-
- Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 9:47 AM
- Yes I'm ok
- .. Feeling bruised.
-
- Nelida finally made it to Madrid to stay with her son and I visited
for the second time this summer. Last week.
-
- It didn't go well so I left early and cut ties. Such a terrible waste
-
- We have such different means of communication and resolutions and it
really couldn't work. Despite much of the grieving over the last year I
feel quite horrible and don't know where to put my feelings of care.. But
I'm OK. I'll dust myself off and keep going.
-
- How are you?
-
- Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 9:49 AM
- Your message arrived just as I walked in from the airport and I was
very glad for it.
-
- XL
- Is that really it with her yes
- Does it mean he'll be ready for someone workable
yes
He answered my call in the rain on his bike near the Heath. We said tomorrow
evening his time. I'm carefully elated.
Had asked Rowen to call me. Said I was worried about him, the dream and
the disordered way he has looked in photos. He said other people have kept
asking too if he's alright. He said working 16 hour days and Freya at home
needing him. He was carefully not saying all of it. Asked how he feels about
how he looks. He said the beard is because he is hiding his chubby chin.
I said shave and deal with the chin and would they consider daycare and
weaning. He said Peter Pan having to grow up. I asked what would Peter Pan
miss. He said fun.
- He needs to care about how he looks YES
- Should he train for a trade yes
- Could he be persuaded to exercise yes
- He needs to learn anger YES
- Does Freya still love him yes
- Gentle lucidity YES
- But lack of follow-through has made him doubt himself
YES
- People like him for the wrong reason yes
- Compliance yes
- But he needs aggression for follow-through
yes
-
Kate had been euphoric about a man and today wrote that he shouts and
slams doors and disappears for days and she doesn't know whether it's safe
to stay with him. I had questions. Are you physically safe? Does he repent?
Does he recognize the truth when he hears it? Is he on a good road with
himself? Does he deke out into addiction? Is he more real after he's blown?
Can you stand up to him? When she said he slangs her to other people I said
disloyalty isn't negotiable. I was feeling Tom's manly virtues. "A
bad man can be a good enough opponent if he has a strong spirit." -
I was also feeling though that my advice can be useless to people who haven't
what it takes to come up with those understandings themselves.
I said wait to leave until you know your strength. She asked how I knew
when to leave. I said it was always in the lap of the gods, the book told
me.
- Do you think she should dump him yes
- Was my advice correct yes
- Can she take it yes
-
Grape juice in a wine glass, so perfume-y. I caught them at the right
moment.
19
7:28 blank white Tuesday morning, wall of mist has been rising from the
east. The hill is gone - hill like the billboard hill standing across the
east at home.
Meantime the garden coming into marvel. Centre space opened when I pulled
the sunflowers at last, cherry tree in its far corner all gold tinting to
orange. Gooseberry strong yellow arms, strawberries a red row, nectarine yellow and
green, apricot going dull maroon-bronze. Cardoon still asserting from
its edge, aster incongruous purple that waits till now. Heaped dead vine.
I like October though summer health is gone, sore throat and morning slime
and water fat that come when the rads turn on.
20
It was 4 in the morning in London. He'd come from Ezra's birthday party
still drunk. His voice slid around corners the way Roy's used to and I kept
a familiar watchful distance on whether he was connecting or not. Mostly
he was I think though I was aware too that he might not remember what we'd
said. When I called he was falling apart, crying. He said he didn't want
me to see him that way but I'm the only one who can. I said I don't have
a bad opinion of pain. I described the difficulties of what he's been trying
to do to give him a firm ground in description. I could lead him to firmer
ground by asking about something else too, his brothers, Jill. He said it
had begun to rain and he liked the sound. Later I could tell things as well,
Mouse and Dr McLeod. Said I have always had imaginary boyfriends. We were
very free. He said heartbreak over the waste of his beautiful hope - he
said fantasy, I said no, hope - the life they were going to have - first
thing they were going to get a cat. I asked whether he's pleased to come
back to his place. He said he has neglected it. Why? "I don't want
to say." "Have you been drinking too much?" "Yes."
So there's that. I don't know whether he wrecked it with N because he
didn't stay clear or whether the strain of imagining he was doing something
he wasn't doing wore him down. Grieving for a year he said.
Okay what do I think. He fastened his best hope on her but he didn't
know her, they didn't know each other. They didn't have a language in common.
They didn't have money. There were travel restrictions, their countries
were in lockdown. To make it work he'd have had to be steadier than he could
be in the fairyland dazzle of early love - than he could be. He'd
have had to have confident competent resolve, known how to work with her
limits and his own, done it to honour his wish whatever it took.
How old is he, 51, the age I was when I was going through agonies with
Tom. I held to it, I saw it through, I was awash but I was steel, I tracked,
I processed, I studied, I got a work visa and moved to San Diego. I found
him a place and furnished it! We had a life together. Can Luke do that?
He hasn't taken up the aloneness it needs; he's still wanting his other
to be more than she is. Meantime though he says he doesn't care about himself
he's taking care of Jill and his brothers and making gardens he delights
in.
- Is he an alcoholic YES
- Would AA work for him no
- Can he stop yes
21
What is it about this photo. It's so present. Clear vivid pink, orange, an
orangey-pink red, apple green, none solid, all full of tint. The thin white
frost edges are a partly separate line drawing overlaid. They make the leaves
more dimensional. None of the leaves are far out of focus but there's a
dark background they show against. The foreground leaves are strong shapes
that come forward definitely but at the same time don't seem separate objects.
It's strong all over with strong foreground - maybe that's it - the play
of foreground and background is strong but not simple. It's beautifully
assertive, assertive in a whole way. Indra liked it right away because of
what she knows in painting.
-
Now reading isn't what it was for so long because I'm not still looking
for how to be. Now I read to be enlivened or else when I have nothing to
do.
Look at you, your sweet folded little shape sleeping in lamplight at
my knee, folded because you came from outside and your feet were cold. Fur
at your haunch opening and closing.
In 1979 having to deal with Jam's complicated crankiness and insane intent.
The way she didn't really like me. What she was good for, sometimes open
body, sometimes talent that could stretch and teach, sometimes my sorts
of abstract interests. I wasn't clear about my circumstance, I keep seeing
that I wasn't dealing properly with who she was.
Thinking of Luke as I say these things: the struggle of early love's
fantasy structures against sane accounting for who is actually there.
22
Such a bad haircut. Then I say because of masks it doesn't so much matter
and by spring it will have grown out.
My readers are bored with posts about me. I'm opening .doc files and
closing them again. They want more drama.
At a stop with Some photos because I don't see any language that
will work with the slides.
afraid of the heavy bodies of middle-aged parents
Everything with her seems such a mess.
-
Maid on Netflix, young woman with a baby, violent drunk man, she
leaves when he's asleep, no money, nowhere to live. Welfare office, bad
daycare, the bad man trying to sweet talk her, sabotages arrangements she
manages to make. Cleaning jobs. Custody battle. She's clear and kind, people
help. 10 episodes. To the end I was never sure he wasn't going to kill her.
How unbearable I sometimes found it told me I'm not done with the terrors
of Roy. I never talked about them in therapy, isn't it odd. I think of myself
as having brought myself through without harm but was it true? It says yes.
She writes a book. She doesn't aim for literature, she just writes
what happened. I couldn't have done that. I needed to be too special to
write something so banal. I wasn't far enough along to be loyal enough to
myself as I was. I got a film though, I didn't get a best seller and a Netflix
show with 60 million viewers but I did get a film.
24
Cold rads. It's Sunday. McMahon was here but didn't fix it. I'll leave
the oven on and keep reboiling the bed's rock.
A dream of running and hiding on and on from was
it guns. When I woke I wondered whether my heart felt scared because of
the dream or whether I'd had the dream because my heart felt like that.
These days I've noticed as if a base note of fear. Is it worry about Luke
or worry about having to do something about the boiler or worry about health
or mammal fear because of long isolation or is it just whole body's alarm
feeling heart unsteady.
Tom had parked my truck facing the wrong way and
it had got towed. I had my Blackberry but not his number. Leslie was there
on the street asking where I was living. I said at her place. Was trying
to get a child and a little duck across a street to the hotel. The little
duck was running the wrong way. Would the hotel let me stay with a small
child and that little duck. Welfare hotel, I come into the small brightly
lit front office with a lot of shabby men sitting around.
25
the precious ones I overthrew for an education
in the world
Leonard Cohen
26
I'm still reading without glasses.
Kathy comes kindly cheerfully every two weeks to clean.
The boiler was fixed by delightful Brian of Copper Valley.
I don't have to think about money.
Broccoli after frost was delicious.
Grape juice.
The jeep has a service appointment next week.
Colours in the garden all day.
My new coat.
Patch who sleeps at my feet at night.
So many things to like to remember.
People willing to read posts.
Being able to edit now.
Large cups of tea.
Journal record and that it's posted.
Photos, Being about, mbo, teaching, the book, Tom and therapy,
their integration.
Leslie.
Computers, online help for memory.
There's still beauty in the world.
This good bed in the centre of the house.
This house.
This quiet street and the hills it sees.
Dr McLeod.
People's liking for the garden.
Not having died young.
Luke's voice again.
27
Posting Susan stories. Their light essential tone. How is essential the
right word. A quality of liking there'd never been. Tom at his rare best,
an American sophistication, a light precise flare. Imagining Louie reading
them, seeing Susan hold me with something she doesn't have.
Realized yesterday that I should read DR now in light of how embodied
her descriptions are - her unusually strong senses and the way she's always
noticing her own heartbeat and the tingling in her hands. It must have been
part of what I always liked in her. Her pedagogical, documentary impulse
so different from VW's flights of high art.
29
Gideon eating a pear. Little person utterly transparent in pleasure.
30
It was wet yesterday and Patch didn't like to be outside so she slept
in the red chair most of the afternoon. She has been ready to sleep when
I do, goes to her spot at my feet when she sees the night quilt spread,
but last night when I was going to bed she was desperate to get out, running
and crying. I hoped she'd give up when it was quiet and dark but I heard
her little voice insisting at the back door: I'd have to get up and put
her in the cellar so I could sleep. She saw me coming, crept under the chair
where I can't reach her. I rattled the doorknob to draw her out but then
she slipped past my feet and down the cellar stairs. I was charmed, you
clever thing, you wanted what you wanted but you understood that you couldn't
have it.
Awake too early, harder frost last night and fog moving under the street
lamp. Patch at the open door looked out and backed away.
November 1
I posted Tom on OB pier with a sequence about imagining DM, earned
my fantasy by faithfulness in reality.doc. Is there something I should
know about what it means to post naked longing. Which isn't only naked longing.
This kind of publishing knows some things about each of its possible readers
so it isn't completely random sowing of the wind. It knows something about
the limits of its readers. There's a photo so it won't go completely unnoticed.
Don will see that I want something he isn't at all. The lesbians will see
het longing they need to shun. Kate will identify with wanting a musician.
My relatives! will stop reading after the first line. Louie and Paul and
Luke will avoid seeing it. Janet will like the look of Tom but the piece
will be too honest for her. Jennifer will like the piece maybe more than
anyone does. Emilee? Will say she likes it and will see it well but won't
tell me what she feels in it. Rachel will recognize what I say about hard
masculinity. Susan Zimm as always will notice the writing. Tom if he were
anywhere near it? Would see its justice I think. But would not be anywhere
near it. Indra? Won't say she likes it but will recognize the sad gap between
want and have. Jim Mann will stop halfway into the first para because it
says sex but there's nothing in it that looks like sex to him. Jim S will
- how to say this sensation - he'll gape at the nakedness - he'll honor
it but he'll feel it's beyond him. Cheryl won't read it because she'll be
affronted by what I posted yesterday. Campbell has a long liking for me
but she'll feel in it that I'm someone who'd have to like her less.
- So really it's not a best way to publish is it.
Is and isn't a best way to write. Isn't because it doesn't ask to charm:
there's a hard insistence, this is what I am whether you like it or not.
Is because the unconventional or unwanted things I say might be needed by
someone somewhere who can have heard them nowhere else.
2
A pdf manuscript of this year's journal with its FB posts? As memoir.
Time remaining.
Tomahawk Inyallie, Tyrell's unvaccinated dad who came into town sick
with Covid and infected first Jennifer's kids and then her, was airlifted
to an ICU in Vancouver and has died. She said three people from his community
in McLeod Lake. So now both her kids' Native dads are gone while they're
still teenagers. Was thinking last night that Jenn is like Leslie, that
the two of them are the only people I comprehensively respect.
I posted janeen.doc this morning with her photo. With tea at the
big monitor first thing in the morning deciding how to edit it, knowing
how to edit it, pleased it's there.
3
What a wrecked night. My bp last night was too low so I went to bed without
ramipril or CBD. Woke at 1am feeling my heart had gone wrong. Pulse weak
and more irregular than it's ever been. Was lying there cold and scared
not daring to go back to sleep. Got up, drank water, changed my shirt, tried
to read, heated the rock, etc. Worried about my 8am appointment, don't know
how to set an alarm on the iPad. Bp was up, took ram 2.5 and CBD and another
aspirin. Eventually slept till 5. Heart still feels wrong. So now it's 6:30
and I need to be at Frank's Automotive at 8. Pulped. Bp too low again.
4
Things I've got done in the last couple of days. Scolded Telus down $30
a month guaranteed for 24 months, which is, what, $720 earned. Had the jeep
serviced by grumpy Frank and walked 3 blocks to and from his shop.
6:30 black and wet on the street.
On a night and morning like yesterday's I feel bad old age closing in
and don't want to be here for it. This morning I've woken well after an
actual seven hours.
I've posted actually not alone anymore.doc. It's very bare. Will
they see it with their self-pity or will they feel its sturdiness.
Sam liked earned my fantasy by faithfulness in reality.doc! "This
is so hot." I keep noticing Sam is one of the best.
Headlights, energy plant neighbour going to work in the dark.
Mornings when it's possible to work.
5
Shifting phrases in their orpheus feeling my forty years' Orpheus
work could be set on one page.
7
Open sky at 7, all white.
Sun rising so far south I don't have to lower the shades.
[low sun of November]
part 5
time remaining volume 10: 2021 march-december
work & days: a lifetime journal project
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