March 1 2024
- Master gardener getting too old to do her own work looking for reliable,
competent help for the 2024 garden season, hours depending on conditions,
starting soon for prep and cleanup. Emphasizing reliable and competent
- someone I wouldn't have to supervise or teach, someone who'd show up
when they say they will. Wage negotiable and can include flowers, fruit
and organic veg. Good gig for a gardener without own land? Location is
downtown. Private message please.
-
Taxes, housing supp, applied for dental. Chucked masses of paper.
-
When I was scratching some space around the snowdrops I saw the hellebore
was blooming but squashed because it had been under the rose's blanket.
Jorie's handsome big book except for that last poem is a heap of soundless
rhythmless loveless colourless abstract rumination.
-
The physics notes are best.
An honest mortal person in joy and pain, a lover, a love
In some actual place and time
In company of others in all times
Lines repeat in different contexts
Touches of structural self-reflection
Still very much to discover
2
What's up with Patch. This morning she doesn't want to eat and doesn't
want to go out.
-
Style like those Nasa images.
Can it be funny sometimes.
3
I'm waking from sleep with my mouth completely dry. It happens to 40%
of old people, causes rapid tooth decay.
-
How is it different from In English
4
There's a young man I might be going to be with.
He's famous, the magazine in my hand has a big photo of him on the first
page inside the cover. I show it to him. He says it was because his brother
died. I ask will we go to my place. We're getting ready to go. There's a
pile of books and papers I need to carry and they are falling out of order.
We're having to climb a rocky slope. I'm struggling.
-
This morning Their orpheus. I don't know what to make of it. How
is it the air. First myth, story, dream. It happens in simulation, which
is transparent somewhere/nowhere. Finely structured transient eddies within
a more stable structure immersed, transpersed in vast transparent sea. Ocean
best image of cosmos. Become ocean.
Second a search that goes from broad lit air to unlit air, air with torchlit
spots of colour, where something needs to happen so there can be return
to broad day. Someone is captured, someone else searches to release what
was taken. They are one person though they seem not to be.
-
In the monograph so much air work already shown. Please print it. When
I was looking at it I felt, so, so much work and soon it is all going to
die. The woman I made able to do it. Not only that but the contexts that
could use it will soon die too.
-
I've figured out how to connect the laptop to the speakers, which I somehow
hadn't done since the new Powerbook and Mac Mini. Why haven't I known to
have music again, desperate winter doing nothing but watch junk TV in bed.
5
I had a wonderful and productive autumn reflecting
on McGilchrist's books very interesting, prodding me to reflect on my fabricated
analytical self and especially prodding me to (try to) be present, aware.
Don's note says, so I have The master and his emissary and have
found it unbearable, in that it is just so exactly an instance of what he
critiques. And this: 'master' and 'his'? Are there ANY women
in the massive bibliography?
6
Birthday post the jeep owner photo, "I've loved my wheels".
79. Cee, Adam, Jim Mann, Mafalda, Val, Jennifer, Lola, Indra, Rachel,
Laiwan, Franci, Sam, Greg, Kate, Sue, some other people just liking the
photo. Alex. Paul last night. Emilee just now. Emilee! A real letter.
-
DM. Fantasy is air but what other relevance. He's the tutelary spirit
of the work. An Arial, aerial.
7
- In my country snow melt happened in the first week of April so early
March was still deep winter. When her baby was due my 21-year-old mom was
booked into Johanna's, Johanna being the pioneer midwife who helped all
the county's babies into their daylight lives. She had a little house in
the small town of Sexsmith, fifteen miles away.
-
- My dad had a truck but on drifting roads horse and sleigh were safer.
The two of them set off I think a couple of days before she went into labour.
She would have been sitting on straw wrapped in blankets and he would have
been standing to hold the horses' reins, stamping and beating his arms
across his chest and clapping his hands with wool mittens inside cowhide
mittens to warm them. It was so cold they had to stop at a farmhouse halfway
to warm up.
-
- Women those days didn't talk about the experience of childbirth (because
it happened in what my grandma called Die Scham Stelle, meaning the place
of shame) but I think my mom liked the week or ten days she was at Johanna's.
Winter days in my country were brilliantly sunny with air so clean and
dry that the sky would be an unusually dark blue. There were other young
women in the house having babies at the same time and their company must
have been a pleasure for my mom, who at home lived with an impatient self-absorbed
man. Later she'd remember that this or that boy in the county was my twin.
-
- Sexsmith AB March 1945
That from yesterday. Em's letter prompted it. Checking through posts
I was realizing that this past year there's been more current writing from
what has always been memory. It's not good writing, just chunked together,
but gets it down. Button box, being stuck up into the attic, Rasheed, this.
Asked myself whether I had a photo of brilliant snow to go with it, realized
blown edge.jpg would have the sharp edge to suggest birth. Blown into open
space.
- And now that commotion has taken all my work focus for the day.
Look, daybreak showing an open sky pale pale yellow over the hill.
-
Should do layout in the afternoons. Beginning with 1- I realized its
name is Work woman, love woman and the little one - something like
that - because it introduces the whole. But can see edit problems, cringing.
8
How far back have I been working on The air. Meaning translucency
still and moving. Trapline? Early in Vancouver crystals and air over
water.
-
This morning it seems I can't. What to do instead.
9
Cleaned the fridge. Which does give me pleasure to see.
-
I don't know how to move in the pile of versions.
-
An essay I wrote in desperation for horrible Tietz. I saw Kant was repeating
the same shape of thought at different scales.
-
- House as diagram of cortical state. The painter's house symmetrical.
Room on the right for cooking, sleeping, reading, talking by the fire.
Room on the left an office, storage space for work. Room in the centre the studio. It connects both ways, is the largest room and has a curved
window facing north as if an open back of the head. It's the larger self,
it integrates and has a farther reach.
Wasn't that the last house and I called it ame local without realizing
it was locally-arrived me. Life-long implicit recognition of psychological
meaning.
10
Sunday 6am after the time change. Patch curled on the back porch in the
dark not wanting to come in.
The three-part house post is telling Don what's missing in his ponderous
cut-off hero. Normal male lateralized cortex with its disabilities but also
quest to build the larger self of connection.
- The key words are dissociation and integration.
- Feeling self has been knocked into unconsciousness and has remained
too young.
- Adapted self has lived without her but misses her, searches the world
and then braves the uncon to find her.
- What rescues them both is courageous honest conversation within the
body.
- The actual body, not fantasy, is the space in which the larger self
can form.
-
- So is The air the larger self's work? YES
- About Childhood of the philosopher I'm going to lose my nerve
again and again.
11
there is the subtler music, the clear light
I say my soul became translucent
Very early Pound in an overwrought poem already in love with air, I mean
translucency.
the reality of the nous,
of mind, of the sea crystalline and enduring, of the bright as it were
molten glass that envelops us, full of light
no cloud, but the crystal body
the tangent formed in the hand's cup
as live wind in the beech grove
as strong air amid cypress
Kenner likes that but I don't think he understands the intuition it evokes
- prebirth and cortical and cosmological all at the same time - numinous
- all those god-grounds of being at the same time.
In Ovid Greek religion so playful and loving:
- The Sun
- announces: I am he who measures out
- the year; I am the one who sees all things;
- and, too, because of me, the earth can see
- all things: I am the world's eye. Do be sure
- the sight of you has pleased me.
-
- A catalogue of useful metaphor.
-
- everything you are keeps vanishing [Book IV Mandelbaum]
What was Mary's metamorphosis.
12
Her clumsy angry harsh dark voice. Her stupid greed. What is a spoiled
mother. It's ruin isn't it. It says not. It's Ed who ruined her? Yes. Was
it necessary to give myself her conditions and survive them? Yes. Because
those conditions were imprinted. Yes.
13
- I've spent since 1989 in conceptual revision, first in foundations
and then in the twelve years with students by meeting anything they brought
up in detail. It's useful work. It's what I understand philosophy to be,
conceptual trouble-shooting: you'll be able to think better if you say
it this way. I've wanted to sort, straighten out, clean up. I've worked
harder than most people do - I see that when I see G satisfied to think
the thoughts he thought when he was 25 and anxiously complacent in the
limits he has settled for. He doesn't want to know there's a way out. I
did, I do. But say the rest. I've done the work but I haven't given it.
I haven't made it count.
-
- -
-
- During the night a wind that rattled the open windows and the screen
door and sounded as if it might be rain. I went out to close the jeep's
window and saw the sky black overhead with stars large and single blazing
white. This morning dark grey coming over the ridge wall to the west, a
storm from Alaska says my weather reporter Tom.
-
- Borrego Springs October 2013
Look - smoke lying flat and open sky above scattered fleece barely moving
but from the north. Forecast is warming days and even nights. They are saying
robins.
-
Sentics notes I'd forgotten. The moment Tom asked if I knew it
and I blazed into certainty that he was my fated true love because who else
had ever recognized it. Another moment when he knew the incandescent flash
at the horizon. How could he not have wanted to live in that faith too.
A lazy liking to hide, was it only that? Yes.
-
Some reorganizing this morning. Is it worthwhile letting myself be swamped
as I am. Yes. Would it be better to format. No. Can I do both. Yes.
14
- light metaphysics she said
- what you had when I saw what you had
At first she saw me through Pound, which was correct for the best of
me.
15
Want to make something whole and comprehensive. Just always stalled.
Do I maybe not realize how much of it I have made.
-
Took the jeep to the car wash!
16
This night the going home to the house on Pender was from the south and
with a dog, obstacles as usual. Earlier among much else I was in an indoor
swimming pool at night thinking with a lot of pleasure that what I wanted
instead of the usual kinds of social life was just to be in the dark running
my hands anyway I wanted over people all of whom were naked. I carried the
thought through more scenes.
-
Joost's image today is what I want The air to be. He's techy,
got there using analog computers to compose. I'm heartened and jealous.
-
It seemed warm enough in the aft to sit on the ground so I went out to
weed what I've been calling the apricot's patch, that one because it has
bulbs showing, tulips and grape hyacinths besides snowdrops and chives.
Sitting on the ground doesn't work anymore because my legs are so helpless
they're in the way but I can manage with a chair, so that section is cleaned
up as far as and including the stepping stones. Patch kept me company sniffing
carefully or lying on her legs on the sunny coldframe edge.
Next the nectarine's bed and the two front rose beds because they have
bulbs too. By the time I finished I was pausing for whole moments between
chair-moves, just come to a stop. This is the narrow end of the season though,
I'll be stronger after a while.
Lot more hazel catkins this year.
17
When I woke to turn over I felt a solid lump against my back, what I
liked in Die Wand when she wakes to find the cat she doesn't own
has crept in through a cupboard as she slept.
Sunday morning 4:30am Martijn deep in snow has acid-washed his stone
floor.
-
Sore and feeble but cleaned the nectarine bed to show its tulip nubs.
Afterward sat on the porch in the late warm sun with Patch in my lap, both
blissed out it seemed.
18
When I posted Joost's exquisite image yesterday none of the girls showed
up but good for him there was Don with a red heart.
-
- In my tent at the end of the day I lay for a long time seeing pale
summaries of the day's driving. I was moving forward at road speed with
tall weeds whisking past on the right, the centre line swerving on the
left, rectangular signboards growing rapidly, small cars with tiny headlights
approaching far ahead. I'd sometimes drift left into the oncoming lane
or even rise a bit above the road. When I'd focus too much the movie would
break but then I could begin it again. At the same time I could feel my
body jolting slightly the way it does when there's roughness in the road.
-
- Alberta Highway 40 near Grande Cache July 2015
Summary of the summaries.
-
With these shred sheets it's such a groping. I'm still so new in it.
What do I need. Persistence because it's so hard I want to deke out. A narrative
frame? A way to think of the whole. It has to form in the matrix, not begin
as a dumb idea.
all those god-grounds of being at the same time
-
Cayenne on the tulips, fresh deer pellets.
Cleaned both of the short rose beds - uncovered the roses - and along
the path across.
19
Then an hour of forbidden watering to give the new things a start. The
warm streak is going to end but not till the day after tomorrow. Sore but
want to keep going.
-
Who could I be making it for. Who is there. Joost?
Working in the garden yesterday I was saying to someone, Judie?, I'm
really half a man. The way it's men who like my films. "Brave like
a man" the fortune teller said. When I've measured women against myself,
for instance my mom, I've found them weak and uninteresting and haven't
wanted to think that's just what women are.
20
Last night before bedtime I suddenly thought to write out the story of
forgetting Luke on the bus. This morning a note from him about getting up
in the dark and creeping downstairs to make tea. He wrote it at 5:35 his
time, which would have been 9:35 mine, about right.
The equinox happened last night at 8.
-
Julia dug up the cooking sage. I met Manuel Olguin at City Hall about
teaching English to his Spanish-speaking workers once a week for two hours.
21
I unfriended Janet. I've often deleted her comments because they undercut
the post by being too obvious but what she did yesterday was worse. The
story had made some people laugh and it makes me laugh too because forgetting
your child on a bus is outrageous. Other people had liked it as a story.
Don said he loved it I thought for the right reason, the confident child
and a mother with confidence in that child. Then late in the evening Janet
came along and spit on the story by pitying the child. I won't quote her.
People around me are not allowed to pity a valiant child because I was one
and pity attacks valour. Pity attacks valour! Wants to degrade it.
Let me look at that. Was she intending to undercut. Certainly, the way
she intended to undercut my Theory's practice project too. So why
is she malicious now when she wasn't earlier. What is it that happens to
friends later on. They move into malice. She was a good friend and I have
to act on seeing that she isn't, now. YES. Like Louie.
Now the other thing. Was it right to take the volunteer job. I'm guessing I might have fun with his young
worker-students. Hormonal gusts? Help in the garden? Laughter? I'll try
to invent ways to be good at it. It will mean having people in my head and
that has a cost.
23
Arlene Golish yesterday came for the gooseberry sucker. Someone at the
door I could like the look of. Landscaper.
So sore these days and nights. Is it because I worked though days ago?
Is it weather change? Permanent old age pain?
-
a film called the air
a film called the day
a film called [something about Orpheus]
- Realizing a poem can be called a film.
The Kant paper where I found him using the same cognitive structure again
and again at different scales and in different contexts. Thinking of it
because working with the air materials I see myself doing that. I said it
in the Orpheus application: intuitions of structures homologous through
all the scales.
Am I doing this: it's a matrix: grain, air, body feeling, cortex, cosmos,
amnion, crystal, etc.
24
- Tietz and structural homology. When I went into the philosophy MA that
I needed to get to the doc there were a couple of required courses. One
was a Kant course with a man whose reputation in the department was of
being blind to female intelligence. I was coming off a Wittgenstein course
whose prof said don't use any secondary sources, just see for yourselves.
That suited me; it was the way I'd been working as an artist. Tietz was
a long-nosed German pedant without enough flex in his head to deal with
anything I wrote in that way so I was in trouble. I told him that to try
to do it his way I'd have to write about something I didn't care about
(don't think he understood that I was insulting him). In the paper I wrote
then I discovered something that seemed to me to be radical.
-
- What I felt I'd discovered was a cognitive structure - a shape of thought
- that Kant was using again and again at different scales and in different
contexts. That kind of noticing was diagnostic: I wasn't interested in
his epistemology, I was interested in his brain, and what I discovered
was that if I was seeing for myself I could see a brain with a structuring
habit that could be seen as the actual content of his philosophy.
I'm glad to have written it but my twenty possible readers will be glazing
over saying it's another of Ellie's posts they can't read.
25
Joost replied to it.
Misery these nights. I lie there on and on in mild pain knowing I haven't
slept enough. It's like the dream I had of lying at night with a radio on
which I could only find dull male mutters. Later in the dream it was morning
and when I stood up Don put his arms around me. There he was standing in
front of me - I see him head to foot - then he steps forward and I'm held,
the feeling of that. I'm thinking, he's holding me for really a long time.
-
'a film called' - what it looks like, what happens, what it means
stages of the story
it's happening in the brain as it is read
27
- So do I know something now about a film called going under.
- First say how to see it.
- Then tell the story.
- Then explain what happened.
-
It makes me visualize it better.
I'm looking for structure I know I haven't found yet.
There's vision, there's conversation, there's language. What isn't in
the original story is the teacher.
-
"house cats are more apt to talk about religion
and politics"
"drugs never work on feelings that are not
your own"
29
- Can I keep doing that. I was so buzzed after teaching that I couldn't
fall asleep. I had prepared. We had a good time. We laughed. Then even
after a couple of hours I was still so imprinted that on top of the usual
struggle to be comfortable I was hearing phrases quite loud - processing.
- I could be generous and liked for it but was having to feel how much older
I am after this winter. Dry mouth has made my teeth suddenly much worse.
I struggle to walk. The two steps outside their back door were steep and
had no rail. I just stood and stared down at them until Eduardo gave me
his hand.
- - That: Edgar walked me out and then Alejandro too. I loved
that they did that. I do feel in need of help. Yo soy una mujer vieja.
I say that a bit incredulously. Have been thinking I'd have to find a way
to exit if my head fails but now I'm wondering whether at some point physical
struggle will be more than I want to put up with. When I wake I have to
rub CBD cream on my knee so my first step won't hurt. When I work in the
garden for an hour I pay for days. Tylenol isn't working anymore so for
the last hours of my short nights I am hurting all over. There's constant
distress of being ugly. My teeth, my walk. I don't have social poise anymore,
I'm not fast enough to judge what to say, I have to just throw myself around
and then afterward wonder whether I was foolish. I'm going to post this
nice young photo because I like anyone to know it wasn't always like this.
Emilee was perfect.
at my desk now a second read with admiration
for your practical articulation of the impracticalities of aging
Indra, Don, Kate, Emilee and Jim said like, three of them at least because
they know for themselves. Che and Lisa said red heart, which was good too.
Five people damned by the 'caring' emoji.
30
- This afternoon I rode June out to the bridge where we tied her up in
the clover patch. We kids went off on a wild chase around. Then when we
were tired we stripped down and had a sleep with our noses in the clover.
It was dreamy - blue sky with a filigree of gold poplar leaves against
it, a drowsy warm sun, bees buzzing around, and June's contented "munch,
plop, chawww, crunch, plop". I was going to write something about
it but this was all I could manage -
-
- La Glace AB September 1959 (14)
Then the poem.
-
Look sky open all over light table sheet evenly gradual, more amber at
the lower horizon behind the plane tree. High pressure, smoke squashed as
it emerges. 101.6 kPa and rising. kPa - kilopascals
part 3
time remaining volume 13: 2024 january-*
work & days: a lifetime journal project
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