13 May 2020
They are such touchingly small people. So movingly gone when they're
asleep. Yesterday I watched Patch's tail twitching as she began to drift.
She was definitely having thoughts. This morning Mouse as usual gobbled
the treat nuggets I put down. I wanted Patch to have one too so I touched
her back and put one next to her. She glanced at my eyes as if to say What
was that for. I realized it's the way they look at my face that makes them
people to me.
- Just now Mouse is on the dresser in the laundry room. The top drawer
is a bit open and he has his long arm down into it fishing for anything
he can get. He pulls out a sock. I laugh. Patch curled on the bed looks
up.
They have a charming word that must mean hello or here I am. Mouse says
it to Patch when he jumps up onto the bed where Patch is sleeping. Patch
says it to me when he jumps onto the desk where I'm at the computer. It's
a voice sound not a body sound, indescribable but vibratory a bit like a
one-syllable purr. They also say hello by brushing each other with their
bellies. When Patch comes up from the cellar or in from outside Mouse runs
along and past eagerly bumping her flank.
Patch speaks very little, is courteous, sits in front of a door with
her back to me to say Please open. Childy Mouse talks all day long but speaks
to me only to demand - Open the door he says, or, I want a treat, or The
bowl is empty, or lately something I haven't understood that may mean, I'm
bored, find me a fly.
-
Seeing so much lovely preparation I did for work I never dared I'm exasperated
at the waste of time in romantic obsession. I need twenty years of young
energy.
In awe in awe of Eno. Reading my Eno notes I get mind-blown the way I
do with my Orpheus bits. That means a sense of knowing its utter rightness
and not being equal to it
15
A small person with small hands and feet and a large voice.
She said she was a man and yes she stomped when she walked and could
be pompous and overbearing but that wasn't always what I saw. She had slippery
Chinese hair and there was a thing she'd do in company that fascinated us
all. She'd put her hand to the elastic holding her hair back and suddenly
turn her head so her hair pulled free. Suddenly and just for a second there
was a woman in front of us, startlingly beautiful.
I can hear you thinking she said, not the words but the rhythm.
Working with sound notes seeing how much irrelevance there is in what
I took - I couldn't focus the way I do now.
17
the real risks are the ones which threaten your
mental stability - I mean which threaten your ability to have a ready answer.
Eno. Are stability and ready answers the same thing. Becca when she was
crashing saying something and then wavering into its contrary. Me when I
was up north and felt holes between thoughts. Yes that was risky. A couple
of nights ago when I stayed on the edge of falling asleep for a long time
I'd drift into some image and not like it and halt it and then again some
other image on and on. The images seemed dangerous, fiendish, not my own.
I'd try holding onto my breath but I wasn't sure I could preserve myself.
It has happened once before.
Scent of the air when I step outside. Blue sky with a lot of white making
pale sunlight, pale shadow on the cement. Photos of Mouse intent on a bug and
Patch in her shaded spot under the currant bush.
18
Reading my sound notes I'm as if feeling why I stopped making films.
The real work is in sound now. Vision isn't abstract enough. If I'd been
wise and brave I'd have gone with my pleasure into acoustic composing.
What about writing. Writing plays the brain directly. The means are not
in the same register as what's evoked. The made object goes invisible.
"You could draw and you could sing." Judie on what I have that
she doesn't. Day of Ed's funeral.
19
I was going to mine Here: a notebook for passages to give the
woman of the David story but it is a whole thing already. I'm thinking of
*.
- If I'd been wise and brave enough, but no: I was wise and brave as
a philosopher. I needed to sort something and I could. People who are only
artists can sail on intuition without nailing things down. It's a valid
conflict and I chose a branch and followed it a long way. The other branch
is still there. I don't know how much time I have. High b.p. though with
maximum dose of Ramipril.
20
Knofler last night - a pinnacle - the whole stage rocking - choir swaying
- orchestra clapping - his loose grace doing exactly what he is - manhood
for everyone. Why don't I imagine David Mac like that. He isn't famous,
he isn't physical manhood released, he gropes in outer space. He keeps his
privacy to be able to do that. He's cosmic. He wants the far edge. Like
scientists.
Knofler's lyric touch.
That Knofler and Eno are art school Brits. The way Tony and I were pleased
with each other's touch in bed and wd like the shapes we found ourselves
lying together in. "You make me happy." None of my North American
men have had intelligent touch - Don maybe for that one moment. Nellie saying
conscious kissing.
My life has been about perception. I told Luke he didn't understand my
mission. He disrespected my mission. That I have a mission has cost him
- he feels and it's true - but he doesn't consider what it has given him
too. He takes those parts of himself for granted. That's immature of him.
I'm leaving it be. I think it's alright.
During the first phase you often find that you
come to a full stop. You don't know what to supply.
-
- spruce drifted pollen from its wide wing as I passed through what seemed
like a gate
-
- it's the home of some self I'm not at this moment
- those pages of notes, the lake house that's gone
-
- the sky is delicately pale in its ordered directions
-
- he read them perfectly. I was sitting on the floor at his knee. it
was 35 years later
-
- they are read lightly and not in sentences not the way they were written,
there's a kind of glide
-
- what I like is the cadence
-
- the sparse balanced flow of time noted
-
-
- that's it isn't it
-
- the air was perfect, moving just barely so the skin felt loved
21
I drove yesterday and didn't see much. Hardly any traffic either coming
or going. Along 5A on the way home leaves and leaves and leaves, all new.
Pale green new grass on the slopes amid grey green sagebrush clumps.
Young security guard in the information booth at Royal Inland: "Do
you know whether 5A to Merritt is open?" "Would you like me to
look it up for you?" On his phone. That was at the last moment before
the parkade elevators, I'd been thinking I'd have to take the horrible Coque.
"5A is so much prettier." "It is!" he said.
An hour with a bulky silently concentrating masked woman called Ainsley
at a panel next to me studying sonogram images of my heart. She'd pause
a frame and draw a dotted line that was a measurement or call up a fan-shaped
close-up with flashes of red and blue that told her direction of bloodflow.
There'd be a heartbeat trace along the bottom. She could pause and rewind
by moving a red dot back to some instant in the cycle. I'd thought I'd see
my heart as if in a x-ray, I'd see the enlarged left ventricle, but I never
saw anything I could read unless maybe that long oval was a valve.
-
Manning's book arrived almost unreadable, so techy, specialist, academic,
distanced, that it's as if the text ejects me. I'm scrambling to think what
relation any of it can have to David Mac at and before 1995. And then collapsing
in relation to the task: why invent a man at all, it's trivial.
22
2:48 am. Woke thinking of David M.
24
It was 1:30 in the morning. I got up, made tea, wrote a sheet of notes.
Had a ragged day after.
What should I do or know about the way I want to wipe Louie out of the
story with an absolutely hard intent.
- Is that hardness just yes
- She did want to stop me yes
- She did use her book to try to do that
yes
- She had a wicked intent to control me yes
- She didn't yes
- It was an intent to control her own feeling for men
yes
- Which had humiliated her yes
- So do it yes
- But there is still something squirrelly about my mom
no
26
Working with the Dave C story not clear about the complications for instance
of Louie and philosophy. What I want from it is what it's like to feel for
a man as right as he was, just that. I need to see what kind of struggle
there might be without
- 1. Louie's freakout
- 2. Diffidence about leg and age
- 3. Primal crookedness about sex
The original story has its truth and power because of those struggles.
I feel that story has to abide and be shown but I also in a so-far unclear
way want to invent an alternative.
What do I want for the alternative story. A frame to imagine sound and
film as I'd like to have made them and to describe what I've noticed about
loving presence together as bodies.
Pierrakos says the struggle against addiction and defense is everyone's.
I keep being doubtful about erasing Louie. It's a hard refusal in the
present too. I feel disgusted, I hate her for her ego-rind determination
to keep me from feeling for men.
27
- Not so much your value as the value of the life you can come into.
-
- And he looks like it?
-
- Yes.
-
- How would I be in such a scene, feeling that?
-
- Partly the way you were, feeling people's distance from it, but not
frightened by feeling it, not running away from it, not paralyzed socially.
-
- It's an exercise. You have to take it as that. You have to treat it
as a place to find strangers in their own lives, however they are there.
And treat the work as if there's some one small gift for you somewhere
in it. Don't stare at it. Go somewhere and talk to your young one early
on. And you have to go deeper into the look of the freaks, individually.
Pick one and find a careful way.
Isn't that a description of the Goddard work. 1988. And it's the larger
self clear and true not mystifying like Louie's.
What I'm seeing this morning, to look separately at his rightness in
himself and how I was in relation to it.
28
A way David as Dave C can't be true - Dave C is confidently connected,
he'll always be with someone, he's not hurt and David Mac is.
I keep going back to feeling how the beautiful man story is a true whole
and I can't remove Louie or philosophy or Joyce or the book or the garden
or anything at all maybe. The actual complexity can retain more than I know.
More than 'I' know. Does it make fiction impossible, this knowing that events
are wholes irreducibly interconnected. I'm reading O'Brian differently now,
guessing that much of it is both incorrect and personally motivated.
I also feel how fine a creature he was, how feeling him as much as I
did was correct given where I was and who I was and what I so much lacked
and hadn't been able to do.
Then Kenneth and Tom who were not fine at all, who were ruined creatures
with whom I had to exercise a more sophisticated balance.
- Was that better no
- It would have been better to be able to go on with a
fine person? yes
- Could I have found one no
- Could DM be that fine if he's alone yes
- By means of therapy no
- Sheer integrity yes
- Exercise a more desperate balance yes
- Would it be better to present the beautiful man story
YES
- Is the David story futile YES
A woman in her forties, filmmaker, garden-maker, has a younger woman
lover, a younger man lover, is in a philosophy department working on an
MA to make a living.
It would begin with Rumsey Wheel, the struggle with Louie, both coming
into the larger self, then the department and Dave C and the thesis. The
thesis succeeds, I say goodbye to the ideal love I can't have and go forward
into wrong loves and philosophy rather than art.
- I should think of Tom as a wrong love yes
So Tom is a story about needing to love and loving the wrong person and
making what I can of it while tackling hard deep dry philosophy.
- Was it a mistake to go forward in philosophy
no
- But left a loose end yes
The loose ends are:
- 1. how it would be to live a right love
- 2. how it would be to go forward with the life in art that I could
foresee
What was teaching in the life of wrong love and philosophy: it was the
practical life of both of those. The social life of.
29
Echo report seems to say nothing major is wrong. Ectopic beats. Maybe
I won't die soon?
-
Can I be clear in the story: this isn't how it's been but this is how
it could have been if I'd been less hampered in ways I was.
- Do you think that's worth doing yes
30
Well-founded rioting in the US. China cancels HK's exceptional status.
Plague almost unnoted decimating the more desperate countries further from
the center. Meantime in our sane sparsely populated northern country even
the maddest bosses are making sense and my bewildered 96-year-old mother
is confined to her room in a quite good institution that may be too understaffed
to change her diaper.
-
A pleasure talking to Paul about for instance lying, Mennonite high civilization
in the Ukraine, his kids and mine, his cat and mine, aging, Michael Mitchell's
death. His so-pleasing warm steady often-eager often-ironical voice.
I think I'm slowly very gradually working out what the story needs to
be so it isn't useless shameful fantasy.
31
Yesterday I posted the Studebaker in grass photo - just like that, no
reason. Through the day a bunch of men showed up, men who get my written
posts but don't read them I suppose. Two Bens, two Jims, Martin, Tom Mann.
Billy McKeeman! A couple of hours after I posted it I wrote a paragraph
under it about sticking the dashboard knob's shaft into my bum. I had a
little gleam about the way male automatism about motor vehicles got implicated
in a little girl's dreamy erotic play. Brome grass, Studebaker truck,
back acres 1950 it's called. Only women said they loved it, Jennifer
for instance.
It rained most of the day. Was a pleasure looking out the window at everything
wet.
Sunday morning grey light, streets dry, branches tossing.
Why did I drop CISR. I was on the verge. I got the grant, had a program,
and then ? It was before I started the doc, was cleaning, learning to be
honorable with Ken, not bluffing in the old ways.
- What I come to so early in the day, feeling too tired to work, wanting
to stop and lie down with the hot rock at my feet.
June 1st
In the last morning drowse I was dreaming I was
planning a film - I was going to make high contrast black and white films
and on this one I'd have my voice singing God bless the child with
other sounds in the foreground so it wouldn't seem so vain to use my own
voice. I was pleased I'd be making films again.
I dropped CISR not only because I went on immediately to write the doc
plan which I was still trying to make include a film, but because I let
myself get devoured by Ken. I simply dropped it!
2nd
O little beasts. I wrote that and Patch jumped onto the hassock next
to my legs. Here you are, I was just thinking about you! A couple of strokes
and she turns around, lies down, licks her flank. Meantime Mouse across
the room crying that the bowl is nearly empty, not empty but soon
will be.
(I dreamed I'd come into the living room of a neighbour's
house in the dark and seen black cats of different sizes moving indistinctly.
One touched my hand with a cool nose. I knew it was Mouse.)
Mouse is intense. Now he's crying because he needs something to do. He's
wandering the room with his tail waving above his proud little round anus,
sniffing here and there. He looks at me often with sharp distrust but is
fierce in demand. When Patch is outside and wants to come in he runs crying
loudly all the way to fetch me. Open the door! OPEN THE DOOR! Then sometimes
a rare other kind of moment. Yesterday when I was lying down reading he
jumped onto the bed, walked deliberately toward my head, lay down with his
forepaws on my chest and gazed into my eyes. Then wandered away. Once when
I was touching myself he came curiously to smell my breath. He's vividly
a child, desperate to learn.
Patch's weary trust so moves me, the way she takes shelter, comes to
lie near me many times in a day, follows me in the garden, lies under my
chair. She's like me always lying down but she can move like lightning too,
I've seen her dash to the end of the garden and back chasing with her kid.
When they wrestle she's swift and ruthless. But when he has a needy moment
and flops down on top of her she scrubs his face - the insides of his ears,
his eyes - and he purrs, sometimes latches onto a nipple, which she allows
patiently for a while before simply getting up and walking away.
Sometimes I'm her mother - she kneads my belly and sucks my shirt button
- and I think she must be mine too, I speak to her in a way I've never spoken
to anyone. I listen to myself wondering to hear childy feeling without human
cautions. I rub my face on her belly many times in a day. I say Sweetheart,
here you are. Hello Darly.
Nine in the morning, grey light, blue and white irises at the window,
the boiler grumbling though it's June, Patch's belly rising and falling
at my knee, Mouse gone quiet somewhere out of sight.
3
I posted hawk.jpg with its description from the first bit of Brain
and metaphor. Nicely observed said C. I said Fuck you
and hit delete. Cheryl and Janet leave comments I instantly erase - why
- awkward subtle completely unearned condescension - which tells me alarmed
competition. Dream on, kids. But I'm sorry there can't be better acknowledgement
in my peers. In what used to be or seem to be my peers.
4
Grey 5am - grey light in the street, patchy sky in grey batten and open
sea. Sea why: a deep transparency. Bright; almost eager though I had 3 hours
of sleep, woke vibrating from Peter Harcourt arriving
in a new suit. Along the road far below snow was cascading like water from
a long edge.
I need to sort the relation between her Orpheus plan and her cosmic shreds.
-
I'm watching TV at my desk and look down and see that Patch has carried
me a roll of toilet paper using her tiny teeth - hard to do. It's a half-used
roll that must have been lost, maybe rolled under the tub, because I don't
start more than one at a time. Another day I looked down to see a yellow
scrubbie that must have fallen from a shelf above the cellar stairs, maybe
fallen as far as the cellar floor. I'm flummoxed, is she meaning to thank
me? I often feel baffled by the two of them. I love the moments of understanding,
for instance when Patch at the verandah window has scratched lightly to
say she wants to come back in we look at each other and then the instant
I begin to rise to open the door she begins to move to meet me there. She
assumes I'm coming because she knows I've seen her. And Mouse knows he can
fetch me to let her in the back door. When I get up to do it he trots beside
me as if confidently. I look at his tiny eager back feeling moved that he
has to live as so very small a person.
6
Once when I was leaning back in the desk chair with my feet on the desk
I pulled Patch from the table surface onto my chest and held her there stroking
her back. Since then when I'm sitting that way watching the screen she'll
sometimes shift her bulk awkwardly from the table to my lap and lie pressed
against my chest with her head next to my chin. It's the completest embrace.
I stroke her back and she purrs her almost silent purr that I feel more
than hear. It never lasts long, she wanders away and lies on the far corner
of the table overlooking the floor.
I woke at three from dreaming I was asking Tom
about the woman he's with now. "I'll show you" he said and called
in three nice-looking children, her children, she a 30-year-old who admires
him. I likely dreamed him because yesterday I sent Rebecca a message
asking if she knows how he is. She answered instantly, said she hadn't heard
from him directly but he'd posted on FB on June first.
Brisk bright Saturday noon. Traffic has returned. Oh the fullness of
leaves.
7
Gloria Moses called from the gate when I was working in the garden. I
begged her to stay and visit. We sat under many green plums the size of
olives. She wore sparkly earrings and has bunchy brown cheeks, is 79, said
she was ten years in Indian school in Lytton. Said that last year she had
a skin condition that itched day and night so she was suicidal. I liked
her coming out with it like that. I like her so much that I'm outright with
her, when she was leaving I said "I took to you". She said "I
took to you too, I said 'I have a new friend'."
This morning I posted a little Tom piece that has him saying we should
buy a dil so I can fuck him. My next post this aft was a photo of Krinkled White opened today,
with below it Aunt Hilda saying like. My relatives don't read the
texts?
8
Clean house! Kathy brought a bottle of something that has made the walls
glow.
9
Scent of dames rocket. Yesterday I was giving away the ugly iris and
other spare plants. A woman who came for dames rocket was a doll in her
fifties, childishly pretty, dyed blond, made-up, who said they have a ranch
on Lindley Creek Road. I disliked her on sight. Then her FB page showed
her anti-abortion, anti-carbon-tax, anti-Quebec, anti-Trudeau, pro-grandchildren
and pro-Jesus. There was also a woman with a comfortably wrinkled brown
face who came for comfrey. I gave her a lot of rhubarb for her mom.
10am. Light rain. Patch asleep on the hassock, Mouse stretched flat on
the floor. They've had their adventure among the wet leaves and their hard
fast wrestle and now they've exited for some hours. Last night when I was
catching up the garden record Patch crawled onto the chair and laid her
front half across my arm onto my chest. Purred quietly on and on. Then the
purring faded out. It's the first time she's gone to sleep on me.
Darcey Bussell opening today: first of the David Austins.
Now Mouse suddenly says Mmrrr and jumps onto the hassock, lies
alongside sleeping Patch. Two stretched-out furs, one sleek, one rough,
rising and falling, Patch's a little faster.
13
A few afternoons ago I opened the back door and called out casually.
Come on kids! The two of them shot in from the farthest corner of the garden
straight over all the intervening beds.
They lick themselves when they're stressed I think, for instance if they're
touched just an instant too long. She's high-strung. He's intense.
14
What's that smell. Mock orange next to me in a vase with dames rocket.
Sunday morning. Grey rain. Patch on the hassock licking between her toes.
15
Can I do anything about what happens with work. I sit down with tea first
thing and can work sometimes for half an hour or an hour and then it's as
if my brain glances off the work files. Or if I eat or go into the garden
it's instantly over. Is it like losing interest? Feeling no grip. Then I
give up for the day. Go back to bed and read until I doze and then the rest
of the day unless it's warm enough to work in the garden is a waste of time.
[quit hydrochlorothiazide]
20
I knew how to persist in philosophy. I don't in fiction, I fizz out in
project thoughts. This is one too.
21
Happy at the end of this day, I could work - could bend over weeding
or picking strawberries without feeling faint - didn't get tired - didn't
eat too much - sat under the plum tree holding Patch, who curled her head
into my armpit and went to sleep. I gazed down the new-mown path through
long grass. Blossoming mock orange boughs tossed in the wind. More roses
open every day. Now Munstead Wood, Alnwick, Morden Sunrise, Lark Ascending, Golden
Wings, Darcey Bussell, Sharifa Asma, the Beaverlodge pimpinellifolia, Liis's
rugosa and Harison's Yellow on the fenceline, the r.woodsii from next door,
Thérèse
and Blanc Double still going - is that it? Generous Gardener
tomorrow.
22
Solstice, sky is light at 4. The cats were clawing the cellar door by
3. When I let them out Mouse circles my ankles crying for a treat bit. Patch
waits politely. Then they want out. Mouse flows through the door and off
the porch and into the tunnels in poppy-hollyhock jungle, Patch sits gazing
from the porch. They know it's their garden. There's enough to interest
them, they don't wander away. I like the way when I go to find her Patch
strolls out to meet me. She has shortcuts for instance through the strawberry
leaves under the cherry bush. Last night I found her in twilight just sitting
on one of the short paths. She gazes.
The garden has begun to show off to the road. Red and pink Shirley
poppies, a strong dark blue salvia at the gate with orange California poppies,
paeonies and iris along the path. A young man when I was in the front watering
roses with a jar said he always walks past to see it. A woman walking with
her friend said she likes to drive by.
29
Scared this morning - b.p. scarey high, felt whoozy - pulse more chaotic
than I've ever felt it - took meds and b.p was still high, pulse felt like
it was stopping except that I could still see clearly - centre of chest
quite sore - should I go to emergency, should I phone the doc - book said
no - sat under the plum tree in the sun - held Patch in my lap - got up
and picked the red currant bush - whole afternoon of that, cleaning, boiling,
straining, canning - now it's 10 and I'll try the monitor again.
The worst is that I don't know what's happening, I don't know how to
look after myself, I don't know how the hydrochlorothiazide and ramipril
work either separately or together.
July 2
This morning a lovely dream. I was wearing a version
of the Syrian dress - black, loose - naked under it - and zooming down streets
on a sort of skateboard with a seat hidden by the dress.
-
To Emilee:
- We've had an unusually cold wet June but on rare hot afternoons yes
there's been a chair in shade under the plum tree and Patch sleeping near
it or under it or sometimes consenting to my lap.
-
- I've been wondering about stories of cats and witches, can imagine
a sort of psychic partnership. Patch is so conscious, or should I say I'm
so aware now of how conscious she is. I've had cats before but they were
kittens and I never had them for long and it was always in times when there
were distracting people around.
-
- Mouse is a nervous passionate child, a kind of ADHD child I think.
I'm the only human he tolerates, otherwise it's straight down to the far
corner of the cellar. He seems like the sort of little boy who rushes around
blankly shooting things - he patrols the house for bugs of any kind, leaps
for flies high up on window surfaces and catches them and eats them. Is
still remarkably dependent on his mother; just now he came crying to tell
me she was at the back door wanting to come in. I don't think he has any
sort of personal interest in me except as a source of things he wants but
he stares at me with his bright yellow eyes as if he finds me outlandish.
He's doing it now from his spot curled on my bed.
-
- Patch though is utterly personal. Here she is laid down alongside my
leg on the hassock, warm fur, belly rising and falling. She's like a weary
mother who has come to me from unknown hardships grateful to be safe and
fed. Ordinarily she just likes to sleep near me, but then she has moments
of passionate attachment when she jumps onto the desk where I'm watching
my big monitor, head-butts me, purring, presses her head into my armpit,
sometimes seizes my shirt button with her teeth. Meantime I'm rubbing the
back of her head quite hard the way she likes. It's almost sex. Then one
day I looked down from my desk's surface to see her at my feet with a roll
of toilet paper she had struggled to carry with her tiny teeth. Mystifying.
Did she find it rolled under the tub and feel I might need it? Was she
intending it as a gift?
-
- When it's warm and dry both cats like to be in the garden all day.
I more and more trust them there; they don't wander out of bounds because
it's so overgrown there's enough to interest them. Mouse slips away into
his tunnels under hollyhock leaves or leaps for bugs but Patch often just
sits and gazes. I'll sometimes stand on the threshold and call them, Hey
kids come on, and they'll come bombing in both together leaping over
anything in the way. That thrills me. Othertimes they'll give me a glance
and ignore me, they don't feel like it just then. When it's wet they wait
under the porch floor for the door to open. I've laughed out loud to see
Patch swarming up the mountain ash or the Manitoba maple. Have trained
Mouse to stay off the plum tree though because it has the bird feeder dangling
from a branch. Am tickled to have made a space they can so enjoy.
-
- House dreams have seemed to me to talk about present state. In my experience
different floors speak of different (as if) levels of being. Ground floor
family and origin, top floor what used to be called spirit but for me I'd
say work life. Bright white light on a top floor seems a good thing rather
than not - and the lot of possible controls too, and the fact that you're
trying them out - and star skylights seem to say a high state connected
to cosmos. More finished connections on that level than lower levels. The
fact that you're there with your teacher suggests you're in company with
your larger self in your present ascent. Two skylights. What do you think?
Is there something going well in your present ordeal in spite of its stresses?
5
Sunday morning. Another bad night, woke vibrating hard, again later.
I don't know what it means. Am I fibrillating? Am I in danger? Is there
something I should do? Will I die suddenly? If I did and the cats were locked
in the cellar they'd starve. Should I make some kind of arrangements? Leave
keys under the porch, let Kathy know? Should I have a hospital bag packed?
Should I buy pyjamas? An iPad so I'd have internet?
6
A good night. I risked letting them stay with me, put their food and
water in the verandah, left the cellar door open in case they needed it,
didn't hear them once. When I woke in daylight I said Where are you,
cats and Mouse jumped onto the bed, smelled my face, purred, walked
around, jumped off, came back. Patch stepped off the armchair. It had been
seven hours. They must have walked around but the food bowl wasn't empty.
I had liked knowing they were in the room.
Yesterday I bought an iPad and began to understand it. Watched Netflix,
downloaded the Odyssey. This morning caught up with my finances.
7
When I woke sometime in the night I felt Mouse settling at my knee. When
I really woke in beginning daylight he came and peered into my face, purred,
turned around, lay against my arm still purring, circled, tossed himself
down against me, and on and on until I got up - sniffed my sweat. Patch
strolled past below.
Dr McLeod yesterday said he'd ask Dr Chu to order a two-week holter and
if I'm fibrillating there's a pill to fix it. "You're not going to
die." I said I needed to know whether I'm going to die because of the
cats. The worst that could happen is I could get dizzy he said and in that
case should take myself to the hospital.
I have to be careful when I phone Paul. I like talking to him, and who
else do either of us talk to now, but he's nervous that I'll overrun him
with my old brilliance and nervous the other way too that I'll be needy.
He wants me curbed.
16
Hollyhock masts at the window, white, black-maroon, peach, pale pink,
darker pink, ivory, swaying gently. 6am, sun caught in the lower branches
of the linden, tip of the Russian olive. Street absolutely still though
the biofuel man's truck has small getting-ready lights on.
When I'd begun to fade last night my heart went uneasy. Was it vibrating?
Was it fluttering? I never know what is happening when it does that. Is
it dangerous? So I talked to it. I kept repeating Calm down on the
breath, kept having to do it again, waking and changing position and talking
myself down. I didn't want to take my pulse at night because I didn't want
to be still more anxious but when I took it this morning it was so weak
that at first I couldn't find it.
There goes lumberyard Tom walking his wife to work. He always holds her
hand, which makes her seem somehow damaged.
- Is this heart thing psychological no
- Is it because of isolation no
- Is it heartbreak NO
- Nutritional? no
- Is there anything I can do about it no
- Is the vibration trying to fix it no
- Do you understand it yes
- Can you tell me something yes, community,
oppression, death, come through
- It's the times? yes
- The times are affecting me yes
- Are you telling me to come through YES
- Does that mean feel it more NO
- What is coming through in this friendship,
power-tripping (Devil), Ellie, community
- Do something about the evil miasma no
- Make friends with my will to power yes
- My heart is like this because I'm powerless
yes
- Do I have to oppress someone NO
- Do you mean promote my work YES
- Can you help me do that YES
- Are the FB stories useless no
- They give me a sense of readership yes
- Should I do a Mesa Grande book yes
- E-book so there can be photos yes
- If it succeeds it will fix my heart yes
Working through the Mesa Grande years. Eight years ago letters from Luke
that he was so miraculously lucid and open-hearted in. I have to feel now
that he'll never be with me that way again but we did have those times.
- I mean a sense of the value of banked time that I don't think he has.
-
Have been meaning to tell two cat moments. Some nights ago when I had
the verandah door open Mouse was outside wandering on the paths cut around
the edges of the long grass. I was wanting him inside so I could start shutting
doors so I was chasing him but he kept dashing ahead. We went round and
round in the near dark, I in my socks, he a light fleet young creature down
there in the stubble enchanted by little white moths.
First thing every morning Patch goes out to her garden security guard
job. Sits on the porch platform where she can see out. I check on her while
I'm making tea. Today I opened the door to see her shooting straight up
the path toward the flying back legs of a cat stranger. There's also a place
under the raspberries she goes to be out of sight but she's often just sitting
on a path or on the coldframe's rim.
One afternoon when I was in the chair under the plum tree I lifted her
onto my lap and sat stroking the back of her head as long as she'd let me.
She remembers that so yesterday when I was in the chair topping and tailing
gooseberries she stood on her hind legs and put her paw on my knee as if
to jump up. Looked at me questioningly. My lap was full so she wandered
back to the raspberries' corridors.
Mouse these days is both more withdrawn and more forward. He mostly stays
in the house and when he's inside he's often under the bed. When I'm napping,
though, he'll lie at my feet as usual but then wander closer, gazing and
purring. Lies down almost at my shoulder and lets me lay my arm close enough
to hold him.
17
Always feel that I am wonderfully slowed down
and brought into a realm of senses feeling and thought all inseparable.
sue. thank you. 'senses and feeling and thought all inseparable' is
what i've worked my whole life to try to be and i do thank you for noticing.
-
Could there be a Mesa Grande e-book with photos properly published? My
FB posts have been trying text with sort-of relevant photos. Aspects of
place. - Was realizing in bed last night that the Mesa Grande work is the
Lake House work realized properly at last.
How to proceed. I'm going through the two years cleaning up journal pages
and editing index pages and at the same time deciding on and polishing bits.
It's prep but I don't know yet whether focused in the right way.
18
Patch never says much but sometimes when she's urgent for something,
for instance when she wants to be let out the back door or just now when
I was coming up the path from the jeep and she came out from under the porch
wanting to be let in, she'll say meee, meee in such a pathetically
tiny voice it's as if she hardly dares ask.
This moment a van slowing outside the windows, a woman with a pink phone
leaning out excitedly taking a photo of my hollyhocks.
I'd been awake too early yesterday so had a nap in the aft. Woke suddenly
not with the usual black arms blast of pain but with an orgasm that seemed
to rip through a stiff womb.
20
When I pass through the kitchen door a blast of sweetpea scent. Next
to the sink Graham Thomas with carrot flower in a vase. On the other
counter four crimson velvet heads of Munstead Wood. On the plate rail in
front of this chair a single soft cream Litchfield Angel nodding
next to my pinch pot. Another with the two NASA xeroxes. On the desk the
pink vase with scents of Generous Gardener and Sharifa Asma. Flower scents
in the house are what I mean by wealth. Patch saying mmrrrr twice
and jumping onto the hassock.
21
I've realized today that I can use the monograph's Indesign file as a
template for the Mesa Grande project, then Indesign to pdf, then pdf to
ebook.
So patch something together using Here, the journal index pages,
the original journal pages and the the Mesa Grande FB stories I've been
editing.
What do I know so far. Some of the Here pages are already stories
but I was using it as place study so some of it is too scholarly. I'd want
more of the feeling-and-being story.
- What to call it
- Build it around the best photos
- Comment on photos
- Artist self not teacher or philosopher
- Season chapters?
- Bibliography
Go on to Borrego? It says yes.
Leave out:
- Luke
- Vancouver
- Vermont
- Anything that doesn't hold my interest now
22
Tasnimal Hasan Toki - very young man in Bangladesh who saw Trapline
on the pirate download site Karagarga and wrote for possibly suspicious
reasons.
24
These nights I've been often awake feeling my heart bumping my chest
wall, which I think goes with a chaotic pulse. Somewhere toward morning
when I woke worried by that Mouse came onto the bed and flopped down next
to my chest and vibrated quietly against me. When he got up and wandered
away a bit later my heart felt better.
I think what's been happening to him may be his age. He's about eight
months old. I don't see him cuddle or play with Patch anymore. She's distracted
when he's near and I've seen her hiss and scratch him off. Maybe he doesn't
risk the garden now because she treats it as her territory. Maybe when he
hides under the bed he's hiding from her. Maybe he's more cuddly with me
though in his nervous way because she won't tolerate him anymore. If it
goes on this way does it mean one of them will have to leave? If they weren't
neutered he'd set off to find his own territory and she'd set off to get
knocked up. As is we'll wait and see. He's as long as she is now though
nowhere near as heavy.
25
The Borrego journal goes to near the end of IA28-4. In the last months
there I'm already gone, escaped into house fantasy, but the last San Diego
visit is vivid and like an end to an earlier story, lovely but parenthetical
where it is. Mesa Grande and Borrego really don't seem to be one story though
they both are photo stories.
26
For the last couple of days and nights my heart is scaring me almost
all the time except when I'm working in the garden or distracting myself
with work or iPad TV. Now it's not vibrating but bumping in the way it does
when pulse is very uneven.
I need to try to let loose - unconsidered - what these days and nights
are like - worried - worry as if constant - what is my heart doing - there's
no one helping, no one who will help when it gets worse, will it get worse
- am I going to die soon - am I in danger of dying at any moment - could
I hire Kathy to feed the cats - if I get taken to the hospital I'll need
my phone and charger and the iPad for email and its charger and warm socks
and clean pyjamas - and money - and my credit cards - KEYS - toothbrush
and tooth oil and mouthwash - my garden will die unwatered - my cats will
starve if I don't make arrangements - will I have to give them up - is the
slight garden work I do making it worse - is tea making it worse - I want
them, someone, to tell me what is happening - can they fix it - but they
don't seem to be paying attention - should I try reiki - are the meds making
it worse at the same time as lowering bp - if I can't garden will I have
to give up the house - hire a young apprentice? - Chief Webber saying "I'm
not afraid to die, it's the end of a beautiful journey" - because I
live here not in a city no one is competent no one is paying attention -
is that it? - puzzled too, there were, was it four years when I'd be in
bad pain with inflammation, shoulder, neck, hip, knee, ankle, wrist, one
side or the other, and before that black arms disease and acid ache disease
and this year there's been none of that and instead this heart worry - pulse
so weak and chaotic - so that even picking raspberries can seem a strain
- do I need a pacemaker? - a different med? - and then, is it emotional?
is it anxiety? - these are such bad times and though they don't touch me
directly they are in the air - vile things happening in the US, hideous
Trump sending troupers to progressive cities - the world-wide plague that
is worsening it seems everywhere - paranoid caution it sets up in everyone
- reports of many deaths while there are none here - the long cold dark
spring - I have safe money but other people don't - dim worries about Luke,
I have to let him be but does he have money, has he lost Nelida, is he safe
in London - should I send him and Row money -
What's good - the house - flowers - the sun - cat love - people who tune
in on FB - Freya - Jennifer - that I have work, today must pick currants,
clean up dried poppy stalks - watch the apricots - water the roses -
-
Just now Mouse and Patch and I gazing at the twilight garden, I in the
silver chair on one edge of the porch, Patch sitting straight in the centre,
Mouse on his folded paws on the other edge, spaced and motionless together
under an ivory glow that picked out the white flowers - silverlace on the
garage roof, tall anise hyssop, bowing clumps of carrot flower. Mosquitoes
were out. In the dark kitchen behind us hot jars were cooling on the counter,
red currant jam and raspberry preserves. I'd picked the currants in the
morning and gone out again when it was cooler to water and weed. Rob had
written asking about Austin roses. I'd sent Paul a landscape with stooks
by a Scot Antonis discovered. Mike Zyrd and Jim had liked the high-end post
my girl fans don't. I'd shopped for peaches, blueberries and greengage plums
at Jason's truck on Voght. An old man in a clerical collar had sat in the
St Michael's garden waiting for congregants who came to a service they held
sitting in a circle on folding chairs carried from their trunks. The Uniteds
rang their bell.
27
I have a pang remembering the sweet confident way Mouse used to run alongside
Patch and bump her flank. That happy child is gone.
28
People liked the Patch and Mouse piece I posted yesterday. For the love
in it I think.
29
I'd been watching Grey's Anatomy endlessly on the verandah couch.
It was hot. I'd begun to ache a bit, which is unusual these days. About
6 I went inside to be cooler. Was lying on the bed holding the iPad. The
thermostat said 84 degrees but my hands were cold. I got under the green
blanket but I was getting colder all over. Am I getting sick? Is this it?
By the time I stood up to get into a hot bath I was shaking with cold. My
hands were shaking as I turned on the tap and got into the tub. I kept shaking
as the hot water filled - really hot water. It took maybe five minutes to
stop shaking. I put on flannel pyjamas and got under all the covers. Had
the iPad on not watching just listening to its endless hysterical yelling.
After a while I could get up and make sure the cats were inside, close doors,
lower venetians, put the house to bed properly. No longer hurt. Woke very
damp with sweat in daylight and am not sick though I felt I'd fall over
when I tried to pull weeds. Then non-Scottish Saskatchewan-oilfield Men
in Kilts guy estimating for window-washing.
30
5 this morning when I opened the back door to let Patch out there was
Mouse coming in. Last night when I'd chased him in the front door he must
have shot straight through the back. Was he scared? I can't know but he
did jump onto the desk just now and lie still to be stroked for longer than
he has.
Have just posted had to revise philosophy for her. Yesterday I
posted Susan's beautiful paragraphs about watching her father die and only
three people wanted to notice. When I post a garden photo or rose portrait
it's a dozen.
-
was editing this page this morning and thought you might like it. it
is a summary index page so it's probably more readable than the full version.
you accompanied parts of it and feature well in it.
-
well that didn't work.
i was trying to entice you to read a later journal by mentioning mentions
of you and they caused you to skim for just them. i was hoping you would
read it like a short story, enjoying the writing, and what you made of
it was historical summary: "The year in question, 2011, judging by
my quick perusal, was a big one for you and felt like it as it was happening.
The move out of San Diego to the Mesa Grande ... not only fulfilled a long-standing
desire, but also, due to the developments at Goddard, was the start of
a period of considerable and extended uncertainty and change, especially
since it included a forced move back to Canada."
i've had a suspicion that the later journals scare you in some way.
I mean fear of something you might feel in relation to them. you won't
necessarily know that's what you feel.
it's good of you to have wanted to read the early journals but the later
journals are what that unformed early person was working to become. they
are the further arc. you join the many other people in my life who insist
on staying left behind.
-
Expensive clean windows.
Should I cut down on b.p. meds when it's this hot.
1 August
Last night I remembered Greek salad. It's Greek salad season! Farmers'
market this morning for cucumbers and tomatoes, Save-On for feta and olives.
Greek salad and big prawns with mayo.
3
So far I've chosen the photos I think are best as photos and how I have
to:
- simplify and revise the template
- decide on fonts
- design headers and footers
- choose a title
- design end pages
- choose and edit texts
- move photos around
- find a title
- design a title page
Main thing I have to do is decide what kind of book it is.
4
- Is it an artist's notebook no
- Is it memoir no
- Is it a place book yes
- So I don't talk about the photos no
- I talk about photos relation to place yes
- Is it just journal no
- Fill in yes
- Do I have to leave out Tom no
- He becomes a character yes
- Is Borrego a different book no same
- It will be mediocre no
- It won't carry me any distance no
- Orpheus would be better no
- Theory's practice would be better no
-
- Is my heart getting better NO
- Worse no
- Is the vibration fixing it no
- Making it worse no
- Is low-carb better for it yes
- Are the cats good for it yes
- Can I improve it yes
- Nervous system yes
-
I was dosing in one of my wakings during the night, on the way to being
back asleep. Mouse came and lay against my face. My hands were under the
covers so I didn't stroke him. He lay still for a long time, maybe went
to sleep. I drifted away. So that's how, I was thinking, stroking him makes
him jumpy, just let him be.
6
5:14. Woken at 3:30 by heavy vibration whatever it is, now tea with a
bite, pale ivory sky, both cats out in the wild black, hollyhock masts swaying
at the window, scent of lilies, lit screen in the dark room.
- Grim, dull, exasperated by pain, sameness, aloneness, daily wastedness.
-
- So extraordinarily unmotivated.
-
- Why has this adventure taken such a sour turn. Is it since Tom chopped
me. I sometimes think of Marianne Williamson saying that when a woman doesn't
love she can lose her will to live.
-
- Going through IA24 noticing that I was railing against conditions I
don't rail against any more. Though they are worse.
-
- -
-
- Yesterday I got on the ladder and picked apricots. There were 30 or
40. I canned 7 half-pints and have been drying a trayful. They're so so
good.
part 3
time remaining volume 9: 2020 march - 2021 march
work & days: a lifetime journal project
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