time remaining 11 part 2 - 2022 march-june  work & days: a lifetime journal project March 6 77, not a number I like. Campbell, Indra, Mike Zryd, Leslie, Ben Robins, Jim Mann, Tana, Adam, Cheryl, Val, Sue, Cynthia sort of, Mafalda, Jenn, Franci. Emilee. Paul phoned. Long talk with Luke yesterday. I posted the camera red shoes north country after-storm-light slide as birthday photo. It's a body taking a photo not just a head, body inside a strong triangle that says concentration. The landscape around the body is fired by an amber light of liking. The road's white line says directed journey, the roadside weeds say nature naturing all around. - After approx 6 months of agony the metaphor paper breaks out into such grace. - In those years when I made notes I sometimes felt an aura of larger possibility, as if there could be causes and significances within a larger view than I could form, so then I should be accurate even with details I didn't understand. Now as I'm editing I usually cut what isn't understood, but should I. Am I able to cut Don now because I gave his letter back     yes Is keeping someone's secret a kind of enslavement     no 7 154 pages so far: 1 - the plan (2).doc 2 - the canyon (7).doc 3 - the perception paper (18).doc 4 - driving slow (3.5).doc 5 - golden west hotel (6).doc 6 - wings of desire (16).doc 7 - brain and imagining (8).doc 8 - driving fast (4).doc 9 - crashing and balancing (11).doc 10 - what to do about lies (11).doc 11 - theory of addiction (11).doc 12 - he visits (7).doc 13 - audition paper (8).doc 14 - metaphor paper 1 (14).doc 15 - he visits again (4).doc 16 - metaphor paper 2 (11).doc - Jeremy showed up - fence bed edge ready to be seeded early, cold frame cleaned up, lilacs deadheaded, strawberries raked, short beds cleaned and their long edge cut back, bad end of the raspberries dealt with. Meantime I finished clearing the porch pad edges. Have learned that after I work outside I have to take an aspirin and sit in hot water. 8 Posted a photo of my left foot in a Doc Marten boot for women's day. What it was like after thirty years of women's shoes to stand two inches taller in those firm secure handsome well made boots, how strong it felt from the ground up. Another open dawn. I'm happy working through metaphor paper 2. It's good. - Into the five months back in San Diego, Brain and metaphor done, linguistics seminar and reading about traumatic dissociation. I'm in a good room in the Maryland. There are good times but then he's secretly freaked about the move, and something else I don't know, Lorie has been in touch with him again. I don't write anything in this month except bookwork and daily adventure. We pack together and I don't know he's arranging sabotage. Reading Goldstein, Bowlby and Winnicott on dissociation and attachment. Part 4 Gilles Fauconnier's linguistics seminar at UCSD, I give Tom an ultimatum and he agrees to come north with me, 10 What to do with how much there is in the Kantian stories stretch from April through December. What to do with how self-absorbed that woman is, meaning how at odds my interest in the writing has to be with anyone else's lack of interest. - Have just deposited a check - the check - via the iPad. Because it was so nerve-wracking I had to call the bank to have a lovely person hold my hand. 11 Love woman cat. When I'm working she comes onto my lap asking to be held. Lies against me pressing the top of her head to my chin, vibrates quietly into my chest, fades into sleep. - I don't know what to do with the repetition. 15 Watching a doc last night about Dalit high school students at Shanti Bava writing the government exam that wd determine the whole of their future lives my eyes were wet as they always are when I watch young persons going through a test as consequential as grade twelve was for me. Afterward I woke at 1 and had to keep struggling to sleep. Patch was having a hard night too, kept bashing the cellar door. How to break up the long 22 section - 16 Every day aware of Zelensky battling for Ukraine and Putin murdering his young men to murder Ukrainians and decimate towns. - Having to decide what 22 shd be about. Have been seeing there's another kind of work on getting to action and prosperity. There's been abandonment and insecure attachment and I can work on that with Tom but I've been wanting to leave out the deformity theme that's about getting to how I could teach. - 7:14 after the time change. There's the sky open and lighting gradually but without intensity, why. 17 Morning nap's sweet light dream of being back in Vancouver looking across a lot of space to the old Province building's dining room windows, lit up and showing someone moving among tables, thinking why don't I contact one of my old friends, Leah or David. 18 Short chapters with theme titles. There's a lot to do to get it pointed and I have so little work time in a day. Is there anything I can do to get more work energy     yes do the Work/power struggle/action/creation Something psychological     no Hire a reader     no Go into power struggle for real     yes Enlist the power struggle motive     YES Enlist my humiliations     YES Anything else     no   Better sleep Exercise Yoga Med Brain supps Visualization Was feeling this morning how much I'd like the triumph over T and R and Daphne if I got a well-reviewed book. - A woman in my own branch at Vancity easily instantly ready to send the money to Luke with just an email directive so that's done at last. Am left with something like $30,000 of my own. 19 Little chapter where I'm applying for the post-doc. I wanted it to fund staying in California. It's a good application, probably better than most. Paul said he'd said I was the only person on the planet who could do it. Why was it rejected. Did Phil sabotage it, were there representationalists on the jury, was there gender prejudice, I can't know. The rejection stopped forward motion. I flunked out of the first rank and was doomed to Goddard. In another way, though, the rejection was just because I wasn't going to be ready to finish the doc. I thought I could - I was in Borrego thinking I could drive straight through - but I'd been at the table in Louise's guest house realizing there were holes in my plan and at the same time stunned with pain about breaking up with Tom. It would be another three and a half years. Why did it take so long. What happened after that. First Point Loma chapter about thwarted desire then get into vision more. 20 The two holes section isn't clear - there was the desire hold and then a crash about not understanding cortical geography and function in enough detail. What to call the Gas Haus - Clayton's Pies. Should take backward bearings from 30 - the introduction.doc because though it doesn't finish it sets up the whole. There's a double crash in the months before it and then a solid step. Does it read as is? 21 32 - complex covariance. Shows evidence of coming through. Hardly any stressing about Tom. Joyful teaching. Social learning. Getting fed up with Phil. A tangle in the middle I haven't seen through yet. - When Paul phoned on my birthday I mentioned the hard thing I did at M's gathering - said it had been hard. Then he said he'd been glad I'd done it and Judie had said the same. If I hadn't brought it up he wouldn't have said anything. Rowen - Rowen, though, did better. And I suppose Michael when he thanked me for open heart at the event. I hadn't realized that was what he meant. 23 I'd bought a wrong kind of Fancy Feast. When I'd set it in front of her Patch would look at me from the kitchen floor and cry. I like that she feels she can complain. 24 Noticing there are essential discoveries that aren't properly marked when they happen. 25 Working out a theory while working out how to work. Elated by David Austin order all on own roots, Wollerton Old Hall at last, Winchester Cathedral and two yellows, Molineux and Charlotte because Graham Thomas and many others are out of stock. 26 Having to trim it down and knowing that what's trimmed is useful - can be useful - and unsaid anywhere else. Raining on my wildflower seeds. 28 It's distasteful today and was yesterday. 29 House of integration. Dubious about including the left hand man story and don't know how much of the imagined house as diagram of self. - Solved it with the string, cut a lot. 30 Disliking that anxious uncertain wimpy woman. Anyone would. 31 I'm in the 110 days section. When I'm getting new parts, the way what I say in the journal is so compressed I can't sort it now - a dense grok like a pile of insights - "The way I understand is so compact. Writing it out is the slog." There are Tom notes, process notes about dealing with stops, subject notes. The subject notes need to be much simpler, I have to get clear statements in some other format. There's repetition I can carve back - I mean later saying it more clearly. When I go through again I should read the parts I was writing. Maybe quote single lines. Being clearer in the thread that's about social haltedness. There's a lot I need to figure out to make it readable. Suspense, humor, charm. Then I think of Dorothy Richardson and how I keep on loving to read her though she does none of that. What does she have instead. She keeps naming what I've never seen named. She registers unconscious experience. - Thinking of buying a printer. Have posted a search for a tech helper. April 1 Need to discover what were my best theoretic innovations. What are men. What is philosophy. What are humans. What needs to be done. What holds women back from doing it. Why there are so many ideas is that the whole framework needs to be changed. There is development in the theory. I need the stages to be clear. There is development in capability that maybe doesn't show clearly until the next book when I'm teaching. - Cynthia has a Facebook debate going about Will Smith slapping someone at the Academies. I don't exactly approve but I'm not outraged, partly because I've known and felt for a man who lived in that male ADHD ethos of suddenly losing it and hitting out at another man. It's unthinkable for most women to live that way but many especially working class men have faces scarred from boyhood. It's hormonal and cultural, and so long as they are not hitting women or children I've come to see it as just another bizarre incomprehensible guy thing. We should also remember how hypocritical it is of Hollywood to be outraged. Hollywood makes its living off men hitting other men. My time with Tom like an anthropology. Or I sometimes as if say to him that the journal of my years with him is my On the road. A love and hate story and an anthropology. 3 41 - 'perception of space' - what to do with how dense my figuring-out is in this time - do I need to keep it to one realization per chapter - who is it for always always the question - there's repetition though, so I can carve it back. 4 Need to sometimes work back to front because I get to a better statement at the end. - 1824 Sheridan Ave AB Cook residence 1911 artistic bungalow architecture Emmor Brooke Weaver. March 9 2003 SOHO's San Diego Arts & Crafts Home Tour. Mary F Ward 1925-1999 bought it in 1986 current owner Vince Petranzio. 5 In the deep middle sections - using the journal to try to think - blazing but how much of it can I use - I've laid it out and scraped down to the hard questions - Tom fades out - good statements thrown offside. - The Pound era - 1971 - what it is and what I've taken from it when I've flown through seizing what I could recognize and ignoring the rest. Being about is built on what I recognized: what I recognized was there as if unsaid, in solution. Kenner begins with a description of Henry James devising a sentence phrase by phrase, pause by pause, phrases as blind nodes. What I was thinking of alongside that was that Jam in our time was hugely burdened by needing to accomplish written style, something I didn't think of at all, so that I didn't understand her and wasn't interested in understanding her. And would have blamed her for minding that. I want to say yes the modernists learned from him to be present in their sentences but I'm still not interested in James: his motive just seems masturbatory. Then I have to say, but I take pleasure in writing and how is that pleasure different. There's another motive too, wanting to fix something, get something right. James doesn't have that but Pound does. 6 About process in love and work. Look at this - rare perfectly open sky - 5:49. I look up and there it is pale blue all over tinted yellow above the hill. Patch is in the garden. I've already worked for two hours. It's so preliminary still. So far approx 430 pages. 7 59 - it was at 2 on the 22nd, 2002 58 - he breaks up with me 57 - leaving 56 - accomplished 55 - a good visit How to pick out the kernel. It's the conflict of love woman and work woman. It's Ed's cramp and the men's everywhere. It's blankness of a shocked abandoned child. The conjunction that makes a larger self. How to see all of them as universal. Theory to understand them, piecing together revisionary frame. Trying for theory that can hold them all. Practice to restructure them. These last chapters are happy, the coming-through is in evidence. Of both. Looking forward to the next volume! 8 Rain last night. 5:49, heavy dark cloud sliding north against pale open sky. Rain I've been waiting for because of the fence bed seeds through weeks of wrong forecasts. 54 - calling it finished 9 Overnight snow. Winter sky this morning, how, cloud lit faintly from below, something else too, something about the quality of the yellow showing in an open break over the ridgeline. 53 - I'm a professor 52 - getting a job Working backwards was a good idea because everything gets clearer and lighter. - Poor man's nitrogen, Ed at the lunch table. Snow most of the day, now slow and hurrying side-slipping under the light, big flakes not falling, not drifting, each flake a different weight, a different speed, all bright, like something live flocking in black ocean. 10 Sunday morning. In blank daylight agglutinated on everything thick snow in blobs like splattered foam. She's a sensible capable cat. She cried to have the door open, then stood on the threshold twitching her tail, then backed away. 51 - living so dull a life 50 - stuck in a zone where the work is never done Almost through this scan. Then go back to the original and look for what's missed or for needed colour, fix the html if ness. Then Indesign, then maybe ask for readers and send out chapters? Word count for sure. Think about a preface first. Hey, I got my doc. Jam's bluffing caught up with her. 11 49 - soft and hard attention 48 - difficulties about listening An odd book about doing hard things and working out how to do them. 12 46 - maybe carve it back to nothing but Congeneris? Feeling what a tightrope it is to be making something that can be seen the way this one can, how on the edge of really stupid if it isn't better than I now can make it? The egotism in it is just intractable. Self-concern. And yet there are observations people need. Things about being with a man that many women need to hear named; things about intellectual process that could help women do it their way. Are you still able to guide me through?     yes 13 Imagine not waking till daylight, 6:30! 46 - congeneris Slashing through the sentience whole/parts tangle finding it the phil of imagining chapter. - Oh Luke. Email notes from after midnight to after 2am his time, crying out the way he does when he's drinking, the way Roy used to. Is there anything I can do     no Will the therapist help     YES   what you wrote on the closet wall in 820 e pender, I am lownlie   three year old in her hospital bed   mary reading in the outhouse to get away from her stressed cranky mother   ed out in the field fuming about his enemies knowing his kids fear him   roy's drunken blur   not an indictment of anyone 14 47 - difficulties in how to talk - So that's once through. Good sense editing that one this morning. Sky all clear at 7, birds in branches, doves on the wire, sun just now a white blaze creeping out from a blue spruce branch. Patch staring at me from the floor. 1 - planning. Have filled in a lot, seeing how much it sets up. 15 2 - canyon 16 3 - fantasy 17 Looking at the fantasy chapter in terms of coherence and wow a lot of ideas not at all knit. Whole different level of difficulty. 4 - writing and crashing 5 - the golden west 18 6 - wings of desire 7 - brain and imagining 19 8 - crashing and balancing 20 9 - coming to a point 10 - theory of addiction 11 - he shows up Have been thinking the next move is asking for readers. Who might volunteer: Zimm, Rachel, Emilee. Val? Sue? Janet? Should I round Don up? Jim? Ask for when it's too obscure, for when it's boring, for when it repeats too much, for when you think it's best at what it's trying to do. Can you tell what it's trying to do? There are about 58 chapters - send out 2 at a time? 3? Two would be 30 weeks, three would be 20, which is 5 months! Ask what format would be best. Pdf, Indesign, Word. How many words in Wolf Hall. 604 pages, 151,000 words. Bring up the bodies 152,200. What I have in 10 chapters is about 71,000 so in 58 there'd be about 420,000, meaning I'd have to cut 369,000 words, which is 369/420, about 9/10th of every chapter! Do you agree I have to cut it down that much     yes Do you want to lead me     no Should I expect to be able to publish it     yes Do you mean really     yes So I should go all the way through once more optimizing and then cut     yes 21 Now I'm all scrambled - I was bopping along and now I have to doubt every sentence. Is this going to take more brain than I have left. And the Mac Pro it seems can't handle FB anymore, won't post, won't name interactions. I can afford a new computer but don't want to interrupt myself to do the research. Can't use the iPad to post because it won't work with Word without being subscribed and I can only type with one finger. And this G4 isn't online. - Then hours researching computers. 22 13 - sound 14 - lot of bodywork 15 - he visits again 16 - metaphor paper Was stopped yesterday but this morning working through the metaphor chapter cutting some but not much I feel no it's valuable, I have to hold onto whatever length has what's good for people to read. 23 17 - will he or won't he 24 - Have just been sobbing about Mouse. 18 - the border is much much too long and I'm Cowslips grape hyacinths and Johnny-jump-ups next to me. Their scent. 25 Patch is hurt. A goth young woman knocked to say there was a cat in my tree. A young beagle was running away across the corner when I came out. Patch seemed to be hung up in a crotch 15' up. She was twisting and scrabbling trying to reach a narrow branch she could use to pull herself free but she couldn't take hold. The young woman and I were standing below calling her and she was crying. Then she did twist herself free and creep down but when I set her on the grass she was limping on her left hind leg. Now she's sleeping on the sofa in the back room. She lets me touch her belly so I don't think she has internal injuries but she may have a fever. - I'm hurt too. It was warm and bright yesterday. Jeremy couldn't come but I worked a bit in the garden. When I was getting out of the tub afterward my hand slipped on its edge and I banged my ribs hard, so then I went to bed sore in legs and hips and wrist from working but also having to be careful how I lay. Woke at two with my top soaked and face prickling with salt. - I've aged so fast since I got here. Now going once along the grass edges with the weed whacker was making my hip hurt. There is so much to do and I have to hesitate every time before I push down on a spade because I know it will hurt my knee. I can weed sitting on the ground but getting up afterward is a sad comic effort that can take minutes. - There's more, the Mac Pro quit this morning and my phone hasn't been charging. I carried Patch's crate to the jeep and drove to the vet but I'm seeing ahead to a time maybe not far away when I can't do the ordinary things I'm now doing with effort. - Anterior cruciate ligament torn, surgery and a couple of months of rehab. My ribs hurt when I sneeze or blow my nose. Luke to say he's struggling. Willing to console though, as Greg always. What kindness becomes in sorrowful times. Tonight Patch is eating and peeing - back bedroom recovery room - wanted to be outside - lay on me for a while. Oh perfect small body marred forever even if she recovers some. 27 Yesterday morning she was hiding under the tub so I thought she must be in pain. I pried her jaws open and gave her meds. By afternoon she was moving around in her usual way. Just now she was lying on her back like a baby, held in my left arm with her head on my left breast. 5:11am. What kind of day is it. Light in the notch between biofuel-guy's roof and his neighbour's, smudges and an awkward clump of cloud on palest blue. Needle at zero. Monitor and Mac Pro at the shop. Phone at 3%, says charging but not. Nothing hurts at the moment. Stymied in 18 - the border, doubtful. What should I make it about. What is it about. It has seemed repetitive and miscellaneous and maybe trivial. Hard to know how to unify a section because so many threads are being followed. - Should I go month by month. 28 Wandered into the Michael page and found so graceful a mind. I have a distaste for Michael now that keeps me from remembering him at all but there was a lightness Rowen still is. 29 Bought a new phone and am using its battery and cord to charge the old one. The G4 carcass I risked buying on e-bay came today and can in fact use the battery of the carcass I had; it has 9.2 and wi-fi but its browser quits when I try to sign into gmail. Darrell's boy Merrick whose name I'm writing so I'll remember it used a tiny screw driver to place its memory cover. Bought Patch a pen at Pet-Value so she can be in the garden after surgery. Stresses of a business day, ankle hurts from having to stand waiting in Walmart. 30 Saturday 5:37, grey air, milky sky over the hill, Patch asleep on the floor - why isn't she climbing on me. This morning in the dark I tripped over her by the bathroom door, crashed ribs against the sink, ricocheted to the floor, bounced head on the tiles. Ribs still hurt from last Sunday. These days, I think more than ever, a feeling that everything I'm doing, even just walking around the house, is hard to do. I'm saying, I'm only 77, but do I have to start thinking of moving into care. Should I try for Beaverlodge, for Abbotsford, for Strathcona . How long have I been here, May 2016 - I was 71. Reading the interim between the MA and the doc scratching for what to do next. May 1 Wavering, is the love woman / Tom story too psychological and foolish, should it be about art and philosophy. Do I need spelled-out background and if so, at the beginning or somewhere tucked in. Should I just do episode-stories not a book. Is the whole project a delusion. When I woke at midnight to turn over I found I could only lie on my back because my ribs hurt if I lay on them, so had to be awake on and on listening to Something like. Worried that summer now will always be spoiled by fire threat - should I move ahead of having to move, and if so where. Worried that Patch is lame forever and worried about how to keep her safe after surgery. Worried about my brain, couldn't find Favor's name (Faith? Faith?), often have a slow blank trying to remember some recent detail. Worried about being less and less able to look after house and garden. I'd thought my pulse was more regular but last night it had a a lot of pauses and a new two-step quirk. Worried about Earth being unstoppably trashed. The Ukraine war. - Three hours with Jeremy weeding. Lark Ascending looked dead but there are strong shoots from below. Both pears blooming like mad and full of small are they bees, flies? Tulips white yellow and red, first yellow Iceland poppies, johnny-jump-ups in clumps, white and mauve moss phlox, first mauve iris, cowslips and primulas, grape hyacinths, red paeony stalks, bits of white blossom on apricot and all three plums. - Can smell the clove currants next to me. 2 Woke in early daylight lying on my back, meaning I'd slept six hours without waking to struggle with my shoulders. 6:10 sun glaring white between two dark bars north of the linden now. What do you think     teach, love woman, to write, triumphantly Explanatory appendix     yes And journal     yes Minimize the Tom story     no Make it about what was won by the 8 years, is that what you mean     yes And how that winning was done     YES Separate Tom and Ellie story     NO   Am I going to be able to take care of Patch     yes Will she be completely mended     yes Will we be threatened by fire this summer     no 4 Lee and Kathy helped move the sofa to the sewing room for Patch - nothing to eat this morning - she'll hate being confined - Ribs still hurt. The dream I often have, of trying to get home to my house in Strathcona from somewhere to the south, along an eastern edge of the city where I can't get through because of a bridge or overpass. This morning I was staring down rocky outcrops that seemed impossible both forward and backward, then having to pass through some kind of shop or office where the only way out was crawling over a man's desk. In this dream I see apartment buildings in detail and sometimes have to pass through them seeing the people who live there. As always I know the art college or university library is closer to downtown not far to the west. If an appendix does the teaching work what does that mean for the journal part - 5 Your girl did great! Very stable under anesthesis, woke quickly and comfortably, and the surgery went well. Now two months of confinement and intensive rehab and then two months gradually recovering. "Most cats will do most of their own therapy." Shouldn't I be doing this kind of research for myself too. Her shaved skin is dark grey, shaved leg like a pitiful grey drumstick. Claude Desy obit in the Merritt Herald today. 6 Do you think she's okay     no Is she in pain     no She will be okay     yes Does she need the fentanyl     no Icing more often     no Is she sleeping too much     no Will I be able to take good enough care of her     yes Can she jump down if she doesn't land on that leg     yes Are the instructions important     no Will she get full function back     yes   Is my body remembering     no Am I helping Jeremy     yes Mal lunée especially on my right side, cut on one finger, rose stab on another, bruise on my breast that makes the two rib pains worse. Waking at 2. Not hungry. Can't work. Patch's sedative is keeping her from fighting the crate. Uncertain about whether she's in pain and whether I'm doing what I should, and maybe she drains me when I hold her the way a sick baby does. Jeremy came for 3 hours though and sang as he weeded. The garden isn't all caught up but it looks nice and the rose holes are ready. He's living with his mom! She's his daughter's Nana. He took home some of my strawberry plants for her and they're blooming. I rejoice with him. 7 Patch asleep on the hassock with her head against my leg, lamp warming her naked flank, means I can sit with her in my morning chair, tea alongside. New vulgarity of the rich dumb guy's plastic fence. Grey overcast, brighter rim where it shows out from under the valley's lid. The mutilated linden showing faint green in its upper branches. So many bad things have happened to this view I thought wouldn't change. Hardship is making me wish for someone, anyone, to talk to. Clove currant in the pink jar next to me. Steady throb of the boiler. Lamplight. Tulips in a jar with a spot of shine on its flank. The desk's room with its rug and bookshelves. House in its good order. Trees in the garden coming into bloom. Rain quietly beginning. Jeep safe in its own room. Aspirin's effect. Lower Nicola Security white truck patrolling. I have enough money! Can buy a new computer, can pass some to Kathy and Jeremy and Luke and Row, could pay $1500 for Patch. 9 Row said a pre-set for adapting new software to old. 10 She said Patch is doing well. Bandage off. When we got home she scrubbed its feel or smell off her leg. At this moment sleeping under the bed. What I actually wonder about the Sun photo is whether it's maybe a photo of the book. Do you think?     yes I worried that she wasn't beautiful, wouldn't have lovers. She was the new self being formed in therapy, already in 1990 on the way to Being about and teaching. So then the story is the years of kicking and screaming wanting old pleasures rather than the new competences and nonetheless trusting the new self to coach the old self through. Is that the way to say it     yes Where does that leave the love story? Was Tom just exercise?     yes Needs to be written as that     yes Does that mean leave out his backstory     no Did he have a parallel story     yes So write it as the parallel story     YES I've gone back to 1 - planning. 11 Being about and teaching and sometimes calm happiness with Tom I'm remembering to say after looking at bits from 2005, so the span of Theory's practice doesn't include what it was accomplishing. Last night - seven thirty maybe, it was dark - I heard my name shouted from below and there was Tom in dirty work clothes. Oh good. I throw down my keys. He's tired, his face is deep-creased from lack of sleep. He was supervising 80 people on a hectic jobsite over the weekend, has been driving his crew morning and night, four hours a stretch sometimes, and yet he was burning with energy. Sat next to me on the couch with his feet propped on the chair and talked for an hour and a half full speed telling his adventures. I was delighting in him, petting his damp hair.   -   We liked each other today. Mr Tom in his work clothes and boots, sunburnt, tall, fit, scraped up, green-eyed, no fat on him, and that voice. He saw me drive up beaming with pleasure to see him and it gave him a flush of happiness from head to foot he said. He watched me talking to Louise and was proud of me and I was proud of him too cos he's 59 and physical. He's proud of himself for his supervising dash and wisdom and pleased to have been in the world, wind, sun, heat, cold, morning, night.   San Diego March 2005 Patch at my knee scrubbing her barenaked leg and now her foreleg, which she's using damp to wipe her eye. I saw her lift her sore leg to scratch her jaw, must be a good sign. It's a spring day with one fly scuttling up the window, bright-edged masses of cloud moving north. The crabapples are in leaf, Russian olive not yet. Cherry blossom in a vase. My rib doesn't hurt. Kathy coming at 10. She wanted to give account of her days. She felt they should be valued. 13 Roses came: Molineux, Winchester Cathedral, Wollerton Old Hall, Charlotte Richter's 6 plants: angelica, attar of roses geranium, rose-scented bergamot, salvia apiana, bay laurel, Turkish orange eggplant. Darrel has put my Mac Pro disk into a case he says so it can be its own backup. 14 Haven't been able to settle to work since Patch's operation - should I call it that because that was what it was called when I was five, seven, nine, eleven, fourteen? And was taken to be cut, for reasons I wasn't given, by a man I didn't know, and then would wake alone dizzy with anaesthetic, in sharp pain, my leg held to the bed heavy as a stone in its plaster cast. I wonder at my steadiness in I'm not saying ordeal because I didn't experience it as that: it was happening and I was there in it passing from moment to moment without protest. I didn't expect to be consoled, I expected to go on to the next moment. Now I wonder at that valor only because I know more about how other children live. Still, I've been blanking these days in iPad TV and uncon memory is probably why. 15 Coming to Joyce compacted, she said. "It's been very stressed." "Show me with a pillow. Flutter it, press it. Press against something. Breathe, Ellie. Make a sound. How does that feel?" Energy through trunk and head. "Bring it up from your feet and through your head and down though your feet again."   "Put your father in the chair. Speak to him." "I can't see you but I want to take you on, I want it to be over." "Now see him. No, not the old man, he's the safe one. See the other one. What do you see?" "He's at the head of the table. He's angry." "Who's he angry at?" "Either my brother or me. He wants to crush our spirits. I am the only one who is standing up to him."   "You have been standing up against him everywhere, let it go." "If I let it go there is no one to look after me, she won't, he won't. I want there to be someone." I'm shaky and rushing. She says "There is someone, Ellie now can look after you, ask her to." I look at the chair opposite and say "Will you look after me?" Stagger toward it holding its arm to take the two steps. Sit in that chair and say I will.   She gives me the cushion. "Hold the little girl. 'My darling one ... " (she's prompting). I'm holding the cushion with my wet face on its shoulder, open my eyes and see a photo on the wall, a Tibetan young mother. The baby on her back has so direct and secure and clear a look. The mother can walk where she likes. The baby and she are together and free.   "Is it three o'clock?" "Almost." I get up, arms and legs rushing amazingly. She's rubbing my shoulders. I stagger out laughing.   Vancouver October 1993 What I typed one-fingered onto the iPad and posted this morning. I'd made small fixes and like it now: it's deft, it tells a large story in a few paras, shows an important method. "I stagger out laughing" is a good last line. My FB readership is down to about four a day though, counting Em who says like to everything. But Cheryl liked it and I was thinking she's the one who'd most need to know what it shows. A bad night. When I'd turned off the light and was expecting to fade I started to feel danger as if a flywheel might spin out, something in my chest that I should control by thinking some right thought. Was it the old kind of vibration? My pulse was too fast. Slow down, slow down, I'd say. That went on. Was scanning the day for what might have set me off but there was only garden work. happy work and not hard work because Jeremy was shoveling and carrying. Later in the evening I was sitting on the ground looking at the blossoms on the Whitney and the cherry, fallen into a trance of peace. But then taking off work clothes in the laundry room I noticed an over-all tremour that comes into me now when I've worked at all. Someone came at eight this morning to fit the two ends of my roof with fire control sprinklers. $600. We tested it: mist all the way to the coldframe. The house is registered at the firehall. (Doug and Gail are selling!) Last night Joshua Minsoo Kim "writing a book about sound/music/silence in avant-garde films," "your works have been of interest to me for some time," "do let me know if this is possible." I sent him The sight of sound. Realizing I haven't been taking account of what Mary's money could do. Digitize the other films. Make a picture book? Bring the rest of my money home from CA. Don't die yet. - Have just sent Chris a note. 16 Apple blossom next to me, Cox prunings thick with flowers. When I was lying down after the sprinkler men yesterday to recover from the bad night the room was full of their scent. (Yellow and white iris that didn't bloom last year will open this week.) Brown-nosing.doc, one of my defiant posts. It outs Louie. She won't read it but Val and Sue will dislike me for it. As will anyone? And yet. - There's a blank moment between beginning to fall and landing. I'm stepping up onto the porch platform about to drop the pruner - suddenly going down - then almost nowhere for a long moment - then my head has hit hard against the base of the peach tree. Or: early morning, I haven't yet turned on the light, am stepping through the bathroom door - what! - Patch at my feet - then a complicated blankness, two instants, three, because there are ricochets - now I'm on my back on the tile floor and my head has bounced hard. I understand backward: stumbling over the cat, crashing into the edge of the sink with my ribs, bouncing sideways, hitting the tub? flipping onto my back, hitting my head. There must have been movements to stop the fall, not efforts I make consciously because I'm in suspension completely helpless. Then there I am, how badly hurt?, knowing it is always going to happen no matter how careful I try to be and one day it will be much worse than this time. The top of my head still echoing where I banged it on the peach tree. 17 Since Patch's surgery disgraceful days of scraping up bad TV on the iPad. Now I don't know how to get into work again. I'm repelled by the struggling self-involvement. Is there anything worth passing on. States of good balance. Do you agree     no The self-involvement is repulsive     no Was it bad to post that about Louie     YES Is Being about the most important thing     yes   What is wrong with my heart     exercise Is it weak     no It's the arrhythmia, it's inefficient     yes Are the meds bad for it     no Is it the tea     no Dehydration     no Not eating enough     no Are my arteries blocked     no 18 Was struggling in a long complicated English exam, a lot of parts and what am I meant to do with them. Is it reading comprehension? I can't make sense of these texts. I should start at the back. How much time do I have. Other people seem to be answering on their computers but I'll have to write on the page. Use this rubber band to take the wheel off the car in this picture. I do that easily and when the wheel is wound off the car is gone. People are talking, it's spoiling my concentration. I was wondering whether for the bread recipe it would tell me to skip the proofing because it would take too long. Then I woke in daylight - in daylight! I'd slept 7 hours. Lay there thinking it's odd how the dreamer doesn't realize she is making the exam at the same time as trying to answer the questions. It's the structure of daily being, there's a given other. 18 Dear Chris says wd I like him to pull together a general action plan and a quote. Patch's stitches out. Dr Liana says Patch is as good as she'd expect in a month and a half. When she has carried Patch's crate to the jeep and we're standing talking more I say Do you know the story of Mouse? She says We all know the story of Mouse. "We have the same cat. We're kindred spirits." 19 I at my best can only be a strife for a renaissance in America of all the lost or temporarily mislaid beauty, truth, valor, glory of Greece, Italy, England   - Pound wrote at 23.   and the air, air, Shaking, air alight with the goddess,   to have gathered from the air a live [tradition]   A live what? He scrounged historical record for work fitted to his capacities. For friends. For consolation.   Love of light above all, as for instance today as if singing reverent thanks that the sky is bright.   Reading last year surprised liking it. It moves along in quiet assurance.   Then reading another chapter and liking the sparse balanced flow of time noted.   I could do those things but could I reach the far end. Do you think. There I see the sunrise touching the top edge, just the top edge of the cliff, a bright line spreading longer and wider. Just there. Bringing alive. I could have a bookshelf. I could have flowers in the house. I could have roses and lilacs. I could look around for fine souls. Of any age.   That isn't what I began to say but I like to know it.   I'd be glad to call the granular void fabric of cosmos the One.   love of light above all.doc At 4 this morning wandering into a doc called poetry compiled and being lofted in Shakespeare, Duncan, Pound. All the poetry I hate and then these scraps that lift me into paradise. The line of descent in experimental film that is from Pound via Brakhage. On Knowledge Network last night hideous Al Purdy "Canada's best poet". 21 Dear M, here's a note written to the sound of Verdi's Last Judgment, in the last daylight of a feast of a day. Woke with a friend in my bed, jumped up and played Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow on the piano, and then had good coffee and two letters from long-lost friends and then had another old friend come to use my hot water and then had breakfast with friend #1 and went to a bookshop (in new sneakers) and then went to sit by Camden Lock and expand in the absolute joy of sharing my eyes with somebody who knows how to look - light - light - light - and now I've come home alone to prime myself on Verdi before working a bit. Oh dear M how can you worry about me: it's true I pay in uncertainty and loneliness but what moments -   -   Luke now is a tall brown boy in little shorts and striped t-shirts and sandals, unrelenting and tender and plump and shining-eyed, truthful and nobody's fool.   52 Burghley Road London NW5 June 1974 In those many years her young elation. Look it's raining hard - 7:14am - dark silver daylight, jumping bits on the shining street, two crows yelling on the wire, continuous grey murmur of drumming on the roof. What would M have felt when she got such a letter. Can I guess at all. Jealous? Jealousy disguised as disapproval and concern. What a waste of me and of her too. The photo on Paul's page of her next to him looking so pretty. He had freedoms she didn't but she didn't have to feel competitive about them. - Paul on the phone. I like talking to him but he signs off in his courteous way and I feel once more I've been too much myself. Note: next time sign off first. I said he and Judie still hold me off because of the old days and it makes me sad but they ought to give that up now because they've both soared. He said ironically that he'd take note. I'm trembling after talking to him, diastolic up, so does he exit because I set off anxiety by what I talk about? It says no. Because he isn't dominating me     no Something I'm doing     yes I have more talk energy     YES   Are my heart problems emotional     yes Body is scared of being alone     yes Should I be on meds     no Is there something I can do     Ellie generous practical overview Do something to help people     yes Writing group     no Some kind of volunteering     yes For instance?     do something to improve the Work (pw) Of brilliant courageous young person     no 22 Shaun's ReIssue piece. The final shot "floods me with emotion for reasons difficult to pin down". "It is, on the surface, a structural film. ... Yet Trapline falls afoul of the mode's anti-illusionist credo by inviting the viewer to fall in love with the image ...." "... little surprise to learn that her influences fell outside the hegemony of male directors. She recalls the galvanizing effect of Chantal Akerman's Hotel Monteray .... Likewise, it was lessons learned from the narrative-film experimentations of Marguerite Duras, particularly Natalie Granger ...."... Last light "is an open-air study of almost imperceptible change, a slow-motion film in real time. small events carrying with them unobvious beauty and emotion: faint chiming of bells nestled somewhere in the soundtrack. demonstrates the profundity of Ellie Epp's art, now as then." When I see how certain people, a few, have been struck deep by my work what is it I feel, a warm glow in my chest. That kind of soul flood is what I wanted to make and give. It happens and I sometimes surprisedly hear about it but so seldom I forget I've managed to sometimes be that and so in some way as a lifetime go on being that. - Row's birthday, Cirque du Soleil this aft, Freya's idea. Louie took him twenty years ago. He hadn't seen magnificence before. "It was about $500, so far between my mom, sister and grandma we've got $250 covered. There's so many sacrifices with being a parent it's nice to have a day where he's cherished." A vid of Gideon dancing to a song he knows, yuh yuh yuh he sings before that line comes up, "he dances to it with his dad often". There are slender red tulips that come up among the strawberry tulips after the earlier are done. I have some in a vase by the peaked cullet. They scent the room. - Scent: I bought a little tin of balsam poplar salve today, avocado oil and beeswax. Happened to be the day I posted this: We walked a mile and a half from the school bus. The bridge over the creek was halfway home, the hyphen of the walk. This halfway spot was where we located the fairies or gods. On the far side of the bridge, the home side, we'd set down our lunch pails and drop our jackets to slide under barbed wire and follow cow paths into the slough.   The border of this zone was a row of black poplars along the fenceline where they liked the wetness of the ditch. At snow melt in April, when the ditches reflected sheets of sky and we were walking home on gumbo newly dry, the poplar buds gave out an air that came around us smelling intelligent and goldy-green.   At the center of the slough was a small space of open water, knee deep. It was near the road but invisible in a ring of pasture willow standing thick in damp ground with cow paths deep-bitten between them and nettles in the underbrush. When I had my first camera at fifteen what I wanted to take a photo of was my sister wading there. The intuition was of a strong slim goddess whose sanctuary it would have been.   On the north edge of this internal pond were swamp spruce, the tallest of our three kinds of local trees, standing with sheltered dry ground under the sloped roofs of their lower branches. In September, when we were back after the summer, willows would be dropping yellow new moons on the hard mud of the paths. The spruce room with its porch opening to the water would be warmed by the lower angle of sun and its ceiling lit by fiery reflections off the water: a reading room. I'd be gone in a storybook with my back against the creaking trunk. East o' the sun and west o' the moon.   Across the pond a branch crackles. A Hereford steer with his ears up, shaking a dirty hide, come for water. Startled.   Inside this room, at the roots of the trees, were squirrel or mouse burrows, elf doors where we left gifts. A mushroom in a coat of jam wax given for a table. A bit of writing. Little stones. Small flowers, maybe one floret of fireweed. A bit of wood with a knothole.   When I was in my country again, much later, that place by the creek, because it had no cattle pastured in it now, had become impenetrable and rank with nettles and mosquitoes.   Valhalla Centre November 1978 23 When I was getting dressed I saw the white lilacs are open. Went out in the 5am grey and cut some for a vase. While I was outside I saw the first white and yellow iris are out too. Yesterday I invented weeding from a chair. Still a bit haunted by talking to Paul. I'm generous with him, I praise him and ask him about himself. He does neither of those and there are often moments when I feel a little backwash of unspoken offense, oh I've been too much myself. Is it deliberate, that male strategy, make them come to you? It says yes. I'd be ashamed of stinginess but it works doesn't it. 24 Something unusual in the light, a glow as if of warm mist. There seems to have been a bit of rain in the night. - No isn't it smoke creeping sideways in that garden behind the linden. Tuesday morning. May weekend is over but it likely isn't warm enough to plant out what's overgrown in the verandah. One crow on the church's apex staring north and shouting in spasms. Breath showing at a walker's face. Clove scent, low sun warming currant boughs in the pink vase. 25 Doug and Gail's house listed for 525k! Billy McKeeman on FB remembering that when I babysat for them he used my bike to learn to ride. I would have had to walk it up the long hill but I don't remember that. What I remember is suddenly getting my period and digging in Kay McKeeman's cupboards and finding a box of tampax and having to study the instructions because I didn't exactly know where my vagina was. Maybe it was that night I flew down Hill Sixty in the dark steering by nothing but the faintest sheen of hardened clay on the track. 26 Small bouquet, lily of the valley, white violets, johnny-jump-ups, and two tiny rose-coloured tulips, last of the best of them. [Krinkled white and salvia] [Seashell] I began planting out today, the ratty squash and nasturtiums that were in the coldframe too long. 27 Scent of the white iris. Purple lilacs from an alley. Lilacs all over town, white, mauve, darker purple, mauve most scented I think. Was in the alley because of taking rhubarb to Cass. 31 Today I've posted more about 'information'.doc from the Jody correspondence: "In response to my "disembodied knowledge" quip you asked what I meant by information and that is a question which really haunts me. What is information? Really, the question of what information is ties me in knots."   Ask it a different way. Imagine there is no such thing as information. Ask what work the term is used to do in any particular instance.   -   The 'information' koan. Thinking about 'information' is an excellent exercise for you because it takes you straight to some of the paradoxes, unclarities and complexities of theoretical language-use in general. It begins to take you toward a feel for what theoretical language use IS. Your analysis of 'information' fanned out some of the disciplinary uses of the term. The fanning-out and sorting process can also be done at a finer grain. What I usually do with these bulk-use lazy-metaphor words is try to paraphrase in each instance, that is, try to say what exactly is happening physically. You began to do that in your analysis.   You also began to see the relation of the information metaphor complex with the representation metaphor complex.   The metaphor of object transference is misleading, you say: "If the informational content of a message is dependent on structures beyond the bounds of the message itself, how can we talk about information as something which can be transferred from place to place or mind to mind?"   Yes, and have a look at the breakthrough paper analyzing transference metaphors for communication: Reddy M 1979 The conduit metaphor, in Metaphor and thought, A Ortony ed.   In relation to bodies, information can often be glossed in the physics manner as formation.   "Interpersonal communication is not like a signal broadcast from a sender to a receiver.Communicating is better seen as a process of cognitive synchrony where a group of humans restructure themselves (neurally and otherwise) to be about the same thing."   Having got this, you have got quite a lot.   -   I'm going to leave it at that for this reply, except to say I think you are doin' great. You maybe don't know that you are conceptually already ahead of quite a lot of the field.   'Til soon.   Student reply letter October 2002 I was looking for something to counterbalance my girly feminist posts but when I was one-finger typing it on the iPad I was feeling how far I'd come in the thesis work, how honed I was; I mean this precision in seeing-through and re-forming. I was annealed. We didn't realize it but it was the end of me and Louie because I became someone else, I moved out of sight. It's posted and no one will be able to read it but Jody could. It's a benchmark. All day I have to be ashamed of dim uncertainties - did I take a diuretic, where did I put the cat, what's that word - I almost didn't recognize what's-her-name when she showed up in the garden - and no one can or wants to know who I am anymore, but look where I was. June 2 I wrote about pottery classes today but where are the slide strips of my pots - Is it going to flood again? It has been raining and the cold spring has held back snowpack melt until sudden warming this week. 4 I've been having more bad nights. If there's a tight feeling when I lie down I guess that it's coming. Then I lie awake scared of my heart on and on because it feels as if it's struggling. Was it because I worked a bit planting yesterday? Because my b.p. was high at night and I took a ram 5? Because there's a scare about the rivers again? Because Patch is still awkward and limping? Because I haven't been working? Because I stared down those two men in a truck idling outside my windows? I'm looking at my house, at everything assembled over 7 years to make a possible old age, wondering whether I have to give it all up, because of fire and flood, because I can't do the work to maintain it or maintain the garden, because I don't want to leave all this stuff if I die? How would I manage moving? What would I do with Patch? Should I let Rob sell it now because if Merritt is hit again property values might go down? Four houses for sale on this one side of this block. Sun this morning, Patch with her head on my shin and her rump in a strip of light. Large white and small purple iris in a glass vase on the floor so they won't be blitzed. I miss having a proper monitor and keyboard but should I buy something large if I'm going to have to move? Or if I'm going to die? 6 If I have to leave here where to live - Beaverlodge? Vancouver? Near Rowen?   What would I want - Small Light and view Near good medical Near good library Quiet Can have a cat Rent subsidized to 30% Safe from fire, flood and crime I woke at 2:30 with chest pressure trying to ward something that might have been panic. Isolation for years, wildfire fear, evacuation stress, being less and less able to walk or work, being ugly, injuries often, bad sleep and heart worry, Mouse dying, Patch being maimed. A lot. But: I have money, after computers about 30,000 Some people still like my work Journals Still able to do desk work more or less Rowen and Frey are kind G is kind Jeep 7 The word I wanted for Patch was maimed. To render imperfect, make defective. - o Ionic magnesium drops o Apply magnesium oil to skin o Soak in Epsom salts Tremour, arrhythmias, hypertension, tinnitus, weakness, palpitations, sleep disturbances, Depleted by bp meds and diuretics The magnesium miracle Carolyn Dean 9 Realizing I'm working on a preface that sets up a present form of the parallel of work and life. A summary, here's the theory, here's a demonstration of the practice. 10 A Vancouver Sun reporter took this photo for a story about the community garden. December 1990. When I saw it I thought, who is this? There was a family resemblance but I didn't recognize myself; this person seemed older and less female and maybe somehow steadier. Now I like how she's looking at me. [sun.jpg] Posted that yesterday and people piled in who ignore writing and cat and garden, Jane Downey, Martin Rumsby, 3 hardly-known La Glace boys, one of Adam's sisters, a Toronto artist I don't know. Other sometimes people: Indra, Nancy Jeanne, Jaes, Jody, Jim Sparrell just now. In relation to that photo the red hearts feel like actual love, Val, Sue, Jenn, Laiwan, Campbell, Freya, Cheryl, Sam. Jim Mann said care, which made me see the sadness in her soft steadiness. It seems he has a sweet-hearted protectiveness about me that's about missing his dad, profound in both of us. - Phoned Luke to say does he want to pick up my royalty check from LUX. Depressed he said but better I think talking as we do on and on. Struggled all day to buy a Macbook Pro, Cal Coast card refused though two calls and an hour on hold, VanCity card refused but limit raised to 3000. Seems a long day but it's only 2pm.   part 3 time remaining volume 11: 2022 january-december work & days: a lifetime journal project