| time remaining 3 part 1 - 2015 september-october | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
2 September 2015 Vancouver I've somehow lost the last journal. Took it to the storage place for its list, sat on the table crossing things off before I put the monitor box back, looked at the floor before I left. It was clear. Don't remember putting it anywhere on the trolley or on the loading dock. Went back to the storage place today; it wasn't there. Checked the jeep. It's not there. Did not carry it up the stairs. It's transcribed up to August 22nd. Not much of a loss except maybe for numbers I'll miss later. Most of my current phone #s on my phone. Dreading the work of leaving - cleaning up after myself responsibly at Louie's. Have to leave tomorrow at the latest or I'll run into Labor Day traffic. Big fuzzy brown sweater. How is it that I can reread Richardson many times and feel I'm reading passages for the first time. Earlier times I was reading myself maybe, catching what I could recognize, and now sometimes I'm reading her as someone unlike me, writing so specifically about her own experience that I can patchily imagine her. Patches I'd glided over other times. Middle of Revolving lights. She's breaking up with Michael. "Things like this don't happen unless people are real in some way." - I wrote about the visits with Leah, Janet, Daphne - the soft, wide air 3rd Here I go, dark Thursday morning. So aware of the energy cost of things. Don't trust automatic function, always checking do I have my keys, walking carefully flat-footed afraid to slip. I can see there'll be a time when I can't do this sort of move. Comparing DR and Portrait or Ulysses. The beach walk chapter [Joyce] gave me the seaside vivid and distinct and certainly there the showing-off young man was showing off even when he was alone, every moment pulling in his recondite Catholic reading. How is DR different. Wasn't I dreaming this - something. Gone. She's personal in her moments as if addressing a companion, keeping company with an immense angel, a loved companion. He's more egoistic - no, but now I'm talking about Miriam and Stephen not Richardson and Joyce. It's 7:30, I'll go. A hard journey. - Ashcroft 6pm. Must be his kitchen the other side of the door. Pots clashing. Here's a desk and a lamp, here's a bed put together on the floor. Driving wasn't as hard. Cielo y Tierra on my new player. It brought Tom. I talked to him some. Around Boston Bar I saw sagebrush and colored rock and got happy. There's a nice cliff on the other side of the river but power lines spoil it. - What's that motor sound going off and on. His fridge probably. Off and on and off and on. A gouge down the mountain face wide as a road. A plateau with a blond brushcut. Colors of the country: tan, blond dry grass, pale grey-green artemesia, grey-brown rock. Long light almost horizontal I see from the sage's shadows on the cliff. It's a strange I want to say white light. Yes - monkey's wedding, full rainbow to the south. It's sprinkling on the jeeps standing either side of the cop car below. Full blast of that white light on - Went out and walked past the wires to take photos. Small cacti tight to the ground. - Alright it's done, the driving, the lugging upstairs, the sorting and stowing. Tomorrow Copper Valley [internet]. I have a desk, I have a bed. A cliff, a humpy field, a neighbour with a big curly dog. Oh a bed. When I started out this morning I seemed to be remembering so many dreams, bits of, all gone now. Thinking of Julia [Jansen] in the canyon as always, the frightful girl sacrificed by her parents. They must have known she couldn't sweat. They left her alone struggling on the mountain in the heat. We kids in the motel, was it in Boston Bar? "Julia died." And then that family lost their house to a fire - another form of heat stroke - and collected insurance - and then another fire - and Phil the oldest child became a fireman. And the wife became the only wife of our congregation to leave her husband. They'd had a baby almost every year - Phil - then Julia - then Edith my age - then Herb - then Lorraine Judy's age. Apart from that motor it's quiet, not even a hiss. A row of industrial lights a mile away spoiling the dark. 5 The cliff is superb - velvety, mouse-colored in this light - showing its edges differently every moment of every day - but the view of it so horribly messed up by this insane balcony - this architect's insanity. I need to complain. I don't like the rickety steps and I don't like being on the second floor so I can't just walk out. I don't like the wires across the view. I did fix the motor so it's quiet. Nick isn't in his kitchen often and so far doesn't run his radio. Both libraries have nothing, nothing, nothing. The radio doesn't pick up CBC or NPR. The monitor goes black if I'm online a while. Cache Creek has a laundromat and motels and gas stations, cafes, but not much else.
The Bonaparte River far below. I could hear it echoing off the cliff. It flooded Cache Creek this summer [it didn't]. Elephant Hill Prov Park all around. - Somehow have got sound through the speakers again. Bathtub is good. Cache Creek terrane remnant of exotic ocean floor Caught up in collision between the ancient continent and its fringing island arc, scooped up and shoved overtop of crust. Lytton Spences Bridge Cache Creek Kamloops on 1. Spences Bridge Merritt on 8. Cache Creek Clinton 100 Mile on 97. Kamloops Clearwater on 5. Bonaparte River Valley Road into Ashcroft contorted dark shale and sandstone of the early and middle Jurrassic Ashcroft Formation. 6 Flies. I killed many but there are always more though I've kept the door shut. Awfulness of empty days. I've sometimes just lain down and gone to sleep to get away from having nothing to do. Things I have to figure out:
7 What Oliver had that Ashcroft doesn't - better library, coffee house, vegetables, 2 huge second-hand barns, cheap rent in the winter. What Ashcroft has - real wildness, a train, closer to Van a bit, less traffic, a real river, closer to PCR. Up here is so bereft I'm forced to take command of it, understand myself, work with myself. Woke remembering why I'm here, which I hadn't. What I want:
- Little yellow bird in the apricot
- Brown bird with a flat head
This table with its apricot tree is quite a good place. I particularly like those darker patches rimmed with sagebrush, eroded grit accumulated. - Little yellow thing size and shape of a leaf. Light on a slope always.
At night from the bathroom looking into the other room good light on golden floors. 8 Sent Kalantzis the url for here2014. He replies: Yes! What Borrego has that Ashcroft doesn't - coherent views, dark sky, good cheap housing, Palm Springs nearby, flat roads, gardens, superb library, swift road to town, Tom, the US, NPR, PBS, orange groves, warm winter, Roberts Automotive, LA, sun. Savona - 2000 hours of sunshine, less than 12" rain - population 600. Skeetchestu reserve W of Savona and N of the Thompson up the Deadman Valley. - The flags are limp; it is a still morning, misty and dappled, and where the light touches flesh or linen or fresh leaves, there is a sheen like the sheen on an eggshell: the whole world luminous, its angles softened, its scent watery and green. Mantel 2009 10 Falling asleep sitting up - almost falling asleep - I notice dreaming is beginning as thoughts that are concerned with a fictional circumstance thinking is convinced of in the usual way. It's startling to come to - oh, I don't have to deal with that, it's not real. Hilary Mantel's Cromwell - imaginary boyfriend - women writing their heart's desire - the sexiness of power someone said - she makes him smart and kind and witty - they all speak like contemporaries - he loves his wife and isn't licentious - a hard worker - who likes children - and loves his patron loyally. I don't like that this house is skew to the directions. I know north when I can see the dipper but the house doesn't tell me where I am. Slit of light on the north wall in the morning briefly but what does it mean. - Gosh look at the little moths around the lights. Going to start weeding this aft, Nick said "You should wear gloves, it's black widow country." Garage ceiling covered with them. 11
When I opened the PRC work files I had no contact with them, it was as if they were sealed behind plastic. Is it the house? It's been windy enough to thump the house. While I've been drawing a proper remodel of it. [from the G4: Quiet of six in the morning. I slept through the night, didn't hang awake at two. Will try to have mornings before the computer. Oh tea. Faint hiss where is it, right ear? Can hear traffic faintly but it's quiet. There are houses both sides along the road but to what I want to call the east, which is actually closer to north, there are no lights, no houses, just that interesting dark wall. I can walk around the house naked. Maybe the policeman - the baby policeman - he does seem a baby with his plump helpless face - maybe he walks Molly at night - Molly the curly black thing young thing maybe he walks her at night and - but no, he wouldn't take her onto that slope, it's uneven ground in the dark. So the most important thing about this place is that wall with its pretty shades of darkness, slight fur of dry grass tan grass and nobbles of grey green that throw long shadows. I like best the darker patches that I know are splintered rock rock splinters collected into hollows, always fringed with the grey green nobbles. It's botanically the simplest of landscapes, just those two colors tan and grey green. There were trees on lower slopes, a few, that show as black sticks thrown down, pines were they probably. Would anything live on that slope those slight ridges, slender ridges. Would anything have reason to go there. Maybe in spring there'll be flowers protected from grazers like the little shelves on the Saturna cliffs that I could only see from the ocean. Could there be goats, would there be goats. The dark patches are scree I suppose. There are gouges down that look as if some machine had scraped them. That long one like a road, it's an awkward shape, if water had made it it wouldn't need to be as broad. It's in solid rock I'd like to see it during a storm flooding down, and is it the main waterfall - I suppose it's a waterfall, or was, a dry fall, but there's not a lot of height it drains so it seems mysterious. Further along there's a broad bridged patch that looks scraped. Retreating glacier, sinking glacier? Apart from the lower piles, which are obviously deposits, the cliff isn't making sense to me. It's a little river not a large one, not the Thompson, which turns east in Ashcroft. What's that color, it's not straw, too brown, but I don't like the word tan, there must be a better. What looks like that. It must be bunchgrass, it's very tufty. It's in the direction of syrup, pale syrup, and there are kinds of wood that color. I don't like it on its own but it's good with silvery green and that dark brown. There now the sun a strip on the wall beside me with leaves moving the apricot tree is quite nice though its apricots were pathetic hard knobs. It's a bird tree. And what direction is that. September equinox, means it ought to be coming from due east. Let me look. So due east is a sharp angle into the house. In summer there'd be sun on this table briefly I guess, otherwise it's a sunless house, stupid house, oh all these poor scorched lilac shrubs, other trees. The garden was loved in detail by the people who made it and then abandoned to people who don't understand it. Nick goes around setting the sprinkler on what he considers patches of lawn and that is about what he understands. Bit of a vegetable garden. Anyway, bunchgrass isn't its name. I like how when there's a horizontal crosslight like now the bunches show with dabs at the tips of all the stalks, it's a kind of painting that would need dabs over the strokes. It's a charming dottiness. Now they are moving, a bit agitated. Spike trisetum I think it must be, widespread but rarely abundant on dry open slopes. How am I - sore sometimes - when I don't expect to be - never expect to be - sometimes I'll get up and oh sore and stiff. That didn't begin till the last three years, I wasn't stiff when Tom was creaking across the floor - oh Tom - sigh oh Tom The ground is quite soft or not soft but spongy, underfoot as if an unconsolidated earth, a lot of those ugly low cacti if they bloom it would be nice - is there a natural history society around here, probably not, what a redneck outpost, it's not natural beauty it's rugged and broken up, it's not like the Anza Borrego a beloved destination near a world center of smart people, oh well - have I seen any smart people - there's a leggy blond girl, high school girl, babysitting I think, the other day, old car, liked the look of her - laughing that I eye the men and say hello, what hope - am not settled yet - have to know where I'm going to live before I eye the men with real intent - someone to fool around with, or drive around why not, drive around in the grassland - sigh - geologist divorced smart rambler - with a good four by four - Geologist Don't go there yet Oh Tom He doesn't acknowledge what I send him, why is that, no ordinary courtesy, it's okay, what he's good for Greg's polite kind blandness Is worth something The birds haven't found the feeder, they aren't civilized birds, don't know the use of it, it seems, or is it too overshadowed by the house. Really I feel quite nice sitting here at this table with the little computer on my lap looking at the apricot tree moving stirring a bit and there a bird. Le Guin talking about Woolf's sentences, their elasticity, what she said - it was in Vogue - was right - It's Saturday, the Ashcroft fair this weekend, I'll go look at the region's pies and squash. Know where it is. Haven't figured out a bed yet. Will I have to build one. Lumber - but I'm so bad with screws and it should be bolts. Thinking of that good bed I used to have. Val will know. What I wanted to say about porn, a site called romantic porn, something like that, many little rectangles with a couple doing something, it's arranged with swift synopsis to entice I guess and I noticed the only thing I want to see is the close-up of the lovely stiff thing going into the pretty slightly rounded little mound - I keep saying as I see it, it's magic, it's magic. It turns me on instantly even to say it. And then when I turn off the light and go into it for myself the story I am always telling myself is a story where the dad is telling the girl she's beautiful, she's exquisite, and he's holding her on his lap and stroking her hair, and taking care of her, bringing her safely into sweet intensity, bringing her there with no greed of his own, giving her pleasure and making her a confident woman. So I understand what that's for - it's going straight to the root of sexual confidence and security - it's just sweetness and deep deep pleasure, he takes pleasure in her openness, it's for her, it's wise and kind and intelligent, it's an adult man for that reason, erotic fathering. If he had been able to say even that I looked nice in my fescue-colored dress I'd made, he was so miserly and I suppose he'd had dreams he was afraid of, that he thought made him a bad man - But anyway just the fit, the close fit of penis in pussy so lovely to see, so magic, so fine, such a power.] 13 The remodel of this place is pretty much perfect - pretty - I have a vocabulary now, can just lift surfaces and structures from other houses - and windows and doors and beige terrazzo - rugs - Tom's little table - but then there are new moves too when something doesn't work - kitchen counter and tiles - or I look for and find a better element - stovetop and cooking pot - or I put more time into something - colors on rows of books - or bring in something special - the Cold Front painting this time - and then I make jpgs and keep remaking them - it's midnight and I haven't been able to stop. There's more finish on what I make now. [armchair corner] [bathroom from above] [bathroom with corner windows] [inside bathroom] [office corner] [from the bed] [from the desk] [toward the kitchen] [terrace over the Thompson] 14 Hard days. Woke sore before daylight and then again later. Continued sore all day, am sore now. It's skin burning and muscle or joint pain too, head muscle, burning palms, inside skin of arms, soles, back at the waist. It was cold this morning, rained big splats this afternoon. Sat in hot water and did yoga last night. Haven't eaten bread, was it from two days in front of the monitor? Is it going to be this bad all winter? It's early in the year for it - in Borrego not till January. Skin of my eyeballs hurts. Skin of my face, skin across my shoulders. Is it having the door closed, chemicals in the air? Should I fast? Ashcroft Fall Fair yesterday in the arena. There was a man I liked the look of and a woman I immediately hated as a rival, foolish old habit. Many competitive categories with so few entries in each that everyone got a ribbon. Outside the arena the green river flowed fast and shallow sounding up onto the town's long bench. There were ragged dirty old bachelors of a familiar country kind, wearing cowboy hats and baseball caps, fat young mothers, withered old women with their poodle hair, ugly children with face paint. The man I liked the look of was my age, bit less maybe, in jeans and plaid shirt moving easily - not rickety - announcing the musicians and tweaking the audio controls. Breezy manliness. The woman I hated was one of those country princesses with a thin face, long hair, long legs, and a big rump. When the man I liked the look of eyed me back - I was wearing my black silk kung fu jacket and blue glass earrings - I felt something up the back of my neck, a sexual prickle - can it be said better. Then he was there on stage flirting with cowboy princess and oh alright his having it means he has it for her. He would, because look at her. So I sang along and then went home. I miss living in the weather the way it was in the tent. 15
I don't know what to do with the length of these days.
- August through November four shows - Karlsruhe, Les Voûtes in Paris and Museo de l'Arte Moderne in Buenos Aires in October - Chris's show in TO in November. Found a review in the Badische Neueste Nachrichten that liked Trapline. Slept a lot today, decided I was sick and have read most of The stone angel about being various things I'm beginning to be. 15 Wobbly, forgetful, in pain. Patrick Lane's memoir astoundingly praised by reviewers and I don't see why - there are some vivid paragraphs about himself as a child, vivid not for the writing but their unusual wildness. Something confected about the book, not so much this basic structure, which is garden description and stories from his past, as the dumb way he bridges between them. There's something false about the way he describes his drunken years as unfeeling. They were the 40 years he was all sorts of successful in writing and earned whatever it took to own a half acre in Saanich and maintain a marriage with another poet who stood by him. I don't like him though he's a garden maker and when I see his photo - a bulky mass of a head with small eyes - I don't like him all the more though there are drinking men I've adored in writing - Charles Bowden, Agee. Pindar, Horace, Anacreon, Catullus, Virgil, Juvenal, Taliesen, Caedmon, Anselm, Li Po, Tu Fu, Liu Tsung Yuan, Han Yu, Po Chu Yi, Bragi, Jehuda Halevy, Basho, Issa, Abelard, Bertrand de Born, Béroul, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Hafiz, Villon. 18 A building I'd known in Chinatown - large room on the ground floor being rebuilt as a temple - I'm noticing it's cheaper to do because there isn't a basement - I want to go upstairs to look for somewhere to live - walk into a classroom full of men, some tech course I suppose - they look at me - I'm in these pyjamas - I say, joking, "This would be a place to meet men" - no one laughs - to get to the top floor there are no stairs, just a long slide and a rope, a man ahead of me is hauling himself up. I hold the rope and am pulled. The man pulling looks down at me but doesn't stop. The top floor is a Chinese dormitory, nicely clean beds laid right next to each other on the floor all the way around the room's perimeter with big windows guests are looking out of. When I want to leave I start to slide down the ramp, bump into things so I don't go too fast. - In all of this more detail than I can describe: a Chinese child looking out of a window to the floor, the dark intense face of a young man in the tech class, the questioning look on the face of the man who pulls me up, the leather objects I bump myself into, the smooth pale floor of the church or temple being built, the familiarity of the building, which I've dreamed before and thought of living in before. 20 Louie's house. Vancouver Woke from dreaming that I was looking at a cliff across a chasm - the kind of cliffs I'm living around. There was an aboriginal painting of a person large enough to see from my distance. I was thinking oh it's that one, as if I'd seen it in a photo. Then I saw the shadows of two people projected alongside the painting. They were sitting with their backs to it and they were moving, gesturing. Then I saw what I thought must have been my own shadow on the left a bit further down. I moved my arm and saw the shadow move. I was thinking it would be a good movie, could I set it up properly, but then also that there were power lines cutting across the scene, that I'd have to get under. [sketch] Driving this morning - Spences Bridge, Lytton, Boston Bar, Yale, Hope, Chilliwack, 7 tunnels. It rained light and heavy so I was always having to change the wiper speed. Sunday morning light traffic. Just the lovely dry country to Spences Bridge, then a crooked trail between high rocky mountains, heavy rain down toward Lytton, starting to be deciduous trees, that way all the way to Hope, dense green and a narrow slot. After Hope the valley widening, widening. 21 Caffé Calabria - Monday morning - the jeep is loaded - back end sagging - bit of shopping - Jam this aft - I dodged David L - there I am with my chin lifted visibly thinking - caffé latté do your best - this hair isn't bad but she's the age she is - there an old person in a képi sat down across my view - small eyes and thin mouth is the damage - thinking-looks are the gain. The sun is a marvel this morning - light thin sun on his white hair damp with bike helmet sweat - the street maples are rusting along leaf edges. A young man loading next to me at Maple Leaf - beautiful neat rump - offered tape to put across the automatic door's red beam so it won't close and crush my stuff. I asked whether the jeep was loaded too heavy. He bounced the corner, smiled, said "You can do more." Why do I want to tell that, because it's know-how and because it was one of the moments when I asked a man for help - I mean those are marked moments for me. 22 Ashcroft Yale, Saddle Rock, Sailor Bar, Alexandra, Hell's Gate, Freebee, China Bar. Late '50s to mid-'60s. Chilliwack - Hope - Yale - Boston Bar - Lytton - Spences Bridge - Ashcroft. I was watching to describe the nodes. What's the particular kind of country between each of the markers. Don't have the energy now to say anything but there's been Louie - Jam - the boxes - the jeep heavily laden but strong. Then stowing all the boxes here and now it's 6, custard baking. I'll take an aspirin and watch The good wife. 23 A false position is when in any gathering your mind is supplying a running commentary .... I have always done this, even as a child. Walking in the shade 1997
24 Vietnamese restaurant on high upper Granville, black table with sunlight on white napkins. We both headed for that one. Jam at 75 a straight small person with a dark wrinkled face and well cut short hair, dressed in layers of good wool: jacket, waistcoat, shirt, autumn colors, compact coherent person gazing from a sidewalk in front of her physiotherapist's house. I had some things to say about the misery of our years. I said for many years afterward I couldn't stand to think of her. I said the lake house was important to me. I said we'd wanted different things from each other and had been mismatched except for moments of conversation. I talked about being three years old waiting for someone to come for me and no one coming, and the way still sometimes I'll crash and feel how have I come to be worth so little, and how that affects my work. I saw her fall into silence then, she felt it. I said that will never change. She said we were both outliers our parents had been useless with, that I'd given her access to moments she still thinks of, a pond in the midst of trees. That I'd always supported her work. That young Asians sometimes make use of her puns. That she might like to travel for three or four years, live in different places for some months. She was steady and calm. She said twice that she liked my hair. She didn't try to patronize. There was a moment when I had stopped to pick her up and had to move things out of the front seat, was blocking the road. A big SUV was waiting to be let through. Jam was trying ineffectively to be helpful. Without any forethought at all I took her by the shoulders and moved her out of the way. "I know how to do this." Louie was suspicious that I had managed her into her offer.
I did not know then that in any field there are always only a few good people. Gordimer quoting Walter Benjamin - the experience conveyed is not "the development of actions" but "the representation of conditions." 26 Woke with things to say. What were they. Yesterday was a shamed waste until quite late in the evening. I hung around the computer pining for notice, not working, ashamed to be idle but choosing to be idle the way I do, by sickly turning away, sleeping. Then at night suddenly a moment when I sat down knowing I'd do something. In the midst of working with text I went downstairs to look for a pen in the jeep. I noticed afterward that I'd run down the steps. Then was awake until 1:30 watching The good wife. It's Juliana Margulies in the role, her Greek face, like a Medea - which is actually Jewish - and elegant very well-dressed body, broad deep flattened breasts, woman in her 40s vulnerable and aggressive. Christine Baranski and Archie Panjabi in roles that make them larger than they'll ever be again. Robert Pinsky that translation of Inferno. Accepted convention inherited from the Provencal troubadours that the poet was dictated to. Cavalcanti, Arnaut Daniel, Petrarch What 'mystic' means - I wd say an enterprise concerning quality of being - a technical interest and commitment - which wd be shared by anyone trying to do something difficult well. bodily imagination which is peculiar to Dante An apprentice being taught by the poem, an "immense schooling in a certain culture." das Nordlicht written in terza rima A poetry dictated by love had been forgotten Set up the camera to stare at the cliff and talk as if with a fine friend.
Yesterday drove as far as 16 Mile House - the verges have fall color - rabbitbrush blooming yellow and in one place small willows bright gold - other small bits of red shrub - valley floor prettier than here because it's wetter. And oh Horstings sandwich - thick slices of completely fresh bread, ham, cheese, mustard, onion, red pepper, lettuce. - Kitchen flies. I'd given up on being able to swat them but have discovered that what sometimes works is a wild swing. Any deliberate move is too slow. Wild swings often miss but not always. A funny thing is that I talk to the flies while I'm trying to kill them.
The streak of the Milky Way as a wing.
A landscape in which one meets everyone who matters personally or publicly and mythological beings too.
A sloped white marble bank along a terrace carved with stories.
Eagles on golden banners were represented moving in the wind A pavement illustrated with stories. Today the sound of the river. A spot behind the school district buildings that's above a riffle. Water a beautiful green. Loveliest sound. How deep into your own version of things you want to go, "on author" o.a. - x fact checker - "going inside" rely on editors to say it's too much, c/f reporting where you don't know what they also don't know. What I did today:
1st October
Sad dream that I was holding Leslie's baby and let its head fall back. Felt it was the end of the friendship. Couldn't find my shoes to leave. [page of focus and shutter speed notes] Jam's offer - what I shd do about it - Ashcroft town is quiet - little house near the river - big back garden faces south - $110,000 taxes $1014. No S windows - shack. House in Oliver 6970 sq' yard - hardwood, orig carpentry v classic, gas fireplace, $211,000. 2 It's raining. The cliff has a dark soaked look. The flies are making me a mad killer. I'm evolving techniques. The latest - which works for the kitchen flies - is spraying them with Windex and then squishing them with a tissue when they can't fly. Sucking them up with the car vac works sometimes. I can see why the medievals thought of them as spontaneously generated. Right now the house is almost clear but somehow there's always another. I'm finding spots with a lot of specks all together though I've never seen them congregating on those spots. When they are coupling they are easier to kill. They are slower in the dark. If there are no lights on in the morning they'll go to the killing window. For some reason they never come to the kitchen window, mostly only to the left living room window. This kind doesn't circle in the middle of the room, it needs short flights. When they feel a wind coming fast toward them they mostly drop and will often find a crevice to hide in. At night they prefer the ceiling. I woke this morning to see a whole herd of them up there. Am intent on black dots anywhere. Worst is that I now don't dare leave the door open.
The family of heaven meaning angels.
Love wishes well-being - what work against it are wanting to be more than another, fearing loss from another's good, revenge for injury. Pride, envy, wrath from perverted love, sloth from defective love, avarice gluttony and lust from excessive love. Declaring his psychology in the fourth terrace - humans are as they are - "the force that is distinctively its own" - "a force unknown to us until it acts" - "are in you just as in bees there is the honey-making urge" - "deserves no praise, and it deserves no blame" - but "there is in you, inborn, the power that counsels, keeper of the threshold of your assent." - I've copied that for its description of the monitor - the voice that watches how I'm doing, for instance when I'm driving.
Dolce stil nuovo
What do I think of his similes - his rhythms are exquisite - and the similes -
He makes us see qualities of motion. There's no other way to do it. Each time we're taken by exactness.
Punishment of the lustful, purification by fire. Canto XXV spirit physiology: Human is body: vegetative, sensitive, made in fetus. self-aware/rational = soul, added by G 'Active power' of male's body working on passive material in the female receptacle "The powers it's seeded" The outside force 'First Mover' breathes into it "intelligence and memory and will" The power that gives form remains in it when divided. "This airy body"
-
email or fax - negotiate an offer in my name and/or a signee - is legal 4 or 5 contractors in Ashcroft
check:
-
The unselfconscious mixed phantasmagoria of Christian and pagan. In the earthly paradise the air is seeded with plants when the constant breeze strikes existing trees, "impregnates air with seeding force."
seven trees/ of gold
Paradiso
He invokes Apollo to help him tell the Christian heaven!
- Questions
Maintenance needed: exterior paint, yard mowing, chimney cleaning - available? [page of data on Lillooet] 4 Jam's voice when she said she'd been livened after our visit and when she said she liked the energy in my voice talking about it. What I wrote this morning on the G4: The blue house for one thing the excitement, I was turned on bright - began yesterday before - when I phoned Jam - she was happy she said she'd put 360 into my account within the next three weeks I said no the house should be yours and I'll rent it, it should be a good investment for you she said she liked to hear the energy in my voice. I said a small house with a big garden, she said what no river, no lake with swans - I said those are hard to come by but should I be holding out for a magic of place rather than the magic the blue house has what is it about the blue house the color for one, but then also the windows in the front and the way the little front porch is set, the windows are good windows with storm windows. There's wainscoting and a brick fireplace. Someone who lived there had taste. There are right things about the kitchen, no tacky brown wood, a plain counter but a dark stove quite high tech. Lot of it I don't see. It's between Fraserview and Church Lane, the address should be Church Lane. Rather than. It's all the way fenced with white picket, there are trees planted to hide the industrial level of the view. It's above the tracks. Lillooet as a town isn't pretty. The river is brown. It's not sagebrush country it's more mountain and forest but there's sagebrush country close, and that plateau on the way to Whistler, which is maybe a better road than the canyon. It's not the colored cliffs of Kamloops. It would be a garden-making life, yes that, I'd hedge the neighbour side, plant raspberries, strawberries, what are the fruit trees there already. I want paeonies. There's a space between the shop and the garage and house, an enclosed space facing south, where there could be a stone floor and some ravishing flowers. So it would be an enclosed place rather than a wide open place. Is that the way it should be. Would I work there. I'd have the company of a small town, a Greek restauant, a library to walk to. I could ride my bike all over town, have a circuit, it's flat on the bench. There'd be a lot of open sky at night, over the chasm of the river. There are no buses or trains, but there's a hospital. There are Indians. Wasn't there a train, isn't that where Lis and I got off and turned around. It's where Tom was afraid of the heat. It's near the wild canyon land. Is there sage country nearby? Ten years in a garden. Is it the place to write coming through and other things. I do need garden work every day. It's not a small house, more cleaning, maybe I could have a cleaner. All my food? Or nearly. There seems to be a sort of tv room and bedroom in the basement, which could be the guest room. Who, Rob, Tom, David, Paul, Louie. What would it be like to feel I had a home. And could unpack. And could bring my furniture from Vancouver. And unpack my files and put up my few bits of pictures. And have dishes. Maybe a freezer in the garage. Give out I'd bought it, which I would have done. Run a publishing house. 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 visibly. 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. Here for good. Should I hold out for country it says yes. Don't live in that house, it says no. Do both, it says yes. Find the fine place outside of town. Yes. And camp in it. There'd be maintenance costs. Painting. Could I find stone, slate paving. It has hardwood floors I think. I'll see it tomorrow, go early before I talk to the agent. Measure, look around at the gardens to see what they can grow.
It's a bungalow. A Dutch person called Boom called tree lived there and lovingly planted trees. I couldn't sleep last night or concentrate for slow breathing.
I could have a kitten. Or two. I could have a neighbour to feed the cats. Rowen.
I was yesterday. I was sparkling with energy. There's the brightness moving down the slope. It's all bright on the yard, all the bunch grass. And tufts of rabbitbrush.
Roses!
Reading books on house inspection, remodeling and buying. Last of the hard pears. They're just right. Lillooet tomorrow - phone computer place - phone Uncle G. Phone about GIS. 5 I like the way he's always telling us where the sun is in relation to the framework of the day. Series of informants. Dislike the lurid symbolic show - eagle, chariot, dragon etc.
time remaining volume 3: 2015 may-august work & days: a lifetime journal project
|
