January 31 2021
- Should I write Louie off no
Surprised you say that.
- I'm wanting to Ellie, you are creating,
withdrawal, in despair
- But I should cut her off for a bit to teach her
yes
- What she did about the letter was indulgent
YES
-
- Should I write Luke off no
- Am I projecting on Mouse no
- He had a soulful temperament yes
- Does Patch understand Mouse has died
no
- Does she miss him no
-
Looking for something to post tomorrow clicking in a Tom stories file.
I laugh. There's such enjoyment. It's the real adventure of my life. The
other one, the two of them at the same time. I sailed away from all defeats
in those.
2 February
This morning pieced together Mouse's obit and posted it. Deleted everyone's
messages of sympathy. Photo of Mouse when he was little lying with
Patch on the floor.
Planted onion and lettuce seeds to set on the bedroom's rad.
3
I miss caring for Mouse.
4
I meant I miss the sensation of caring. I picture him standing on his
thin legs with paws a bit turned out, looking a long way up, a little scrap
of sentient being. I'd pick him up to set him under the lamp and there'd
be so little of him left, he'd be so light and loose. As the tea was brewing
I'd start to brush his fur and he'd stand up because he wanted more of it.
I'd have to brush carefully not to press on his bones.
This morning after many good months I woke with a scary chaotic heartbeat
again. I wondered whether caring for Mouse regulated it, whether it needs
to love to work right.
- Do you think so yes
6
been there ... . oh, my chib.
Emilee's letter this morning telling her deaths of many cats and two
dogs helped me write out more of how it was. I keep noticing that it's re-reading
what I've written about Mouse that makes me feel how it has been. I'd noticed
I was maybe hanging on by my fingernails without exactly realizing, I mean
feeling unreal as if I hadn't caught up.
7
20% mortality over the next three months, if
nothing is done, the doctor tells me. and i wonder, i ask my organs: isn't
your deal 100% mortality all the time? but don't ask that aloud.
if you died i think what i'd be is angry. but what a graceful paragraph.
was thinking of mouse, or more specifically
you with mouse, how are you when you are with mouse.
were you there when it happened
could you feel
- i lived with mouse's death for the whole two months. when he started
vomiting every three hours and was hiding in the far corner under the bathtub
or even behind books in the bookshelf i had to feel: he's going to die.
the vets seemed helpless if not stupid. they were flailing: subcutaneous
saline for dehydration, overnight stays for observation and a fluid drip,
x-rays, anti-nausea injections, steroids, anti-parasite drugs, antibiotics.
there'd be short spells of hope when he'd seem livelier but then he'd stop
eating again.
-
- we didn't know what was wrong with him until his last hour so there
were always so many possibilities: was it because i'd been a psychic vampire
on his energy, was it depression at patch's rejection, was it sadness that
he wasn't going to be a real tom, was it toxic mold in the cellar, did
the neighbours set out antifreeze, was it an infection danger for patch,
should i be pushing the vets more, should i give him a different kind of
food, giving him meds is making him afraid of me, should i stop. then when
he was down to four and a half pounds and couldn't try to jump onto the
table without falling it became i can't tell if he's in pain, should i
take him to the vet for a death injection, but he's so stressed by travel
and being crated, i don't want him to have to feel betrayed at the end,
should i just let him die at home no matter how long it takes.
-
- in his last week he would be trying to eat and i had to keep wondering,
he's young, might it be something that has run its course, could he somehow
fix himself. then in his last two days i found streaks of shit up the corridor.
he'd be running for the litter box but it would be pouring out of him.
the first time was at night and i found it in the morning. the next day
i was at my desk and saw he was at my feet looking up as if he needed something.
i could smell it on him.
-
- when i saw the thread whose far end had finally be flushed out with
the stream i thought oh maybe .... called the vet instantly, we need to
do a surgery. he didn't want to believe mouse's sickness was on account
of the thread because it would mean he had missed it - he must have swallowed
it later, he said. i insisted. he wanted permission to euthanize if surgery
didn't go well. i said yes but i had to be there. he was reluctant, he
said mouse would be asleep, he wouldn't know. i said nonetheless.
-
- he had his assistant call me when he had mouse on the table. they let
me into the operating room with my mask on. his abdomen was open, i could
see the loops of his bowel. the vet had discovered the knot around the
base of his tongue and had already made three cuts in his stomach and bowel
but there was the thread still woven into the tissue of his small intestine.
the vet was indecisive. i thought no, a bowel resection and so many incisions
already and he has no energy reserves left, this has to stop. i had my
hand on his chest, saw his bowels breathing and then stop breathing.
-
- he's in my freezer now, with the containers of soup, waiting for the
garden to thaw. was thinking maybe by the cat mint. will find him a good
stone.
-
- in some ways the two months were wonderful, i mean for me though not
for him. i'd be listening all the time, is he eating, is he drinking. i'd
be raking his box, what's his poop like. where does he need to be now.
and now. in the morning it was under the lamp on the kitchen table where
he could warm up after the night and see out into the garden. he still
liked to see birds. he couldn't want to be stroked but he liked to be brushed.
he wasn't hiding anymore. it seemed he mostly wanted to be where he could
see us.
-
- when he got sick at first i kept seeing and mourning the lovely thing
he'd been but now what i keep seeing is how he was at the last, his mortal
soul so small and sweet and on the edge of ending. i was thinking of what
you said about concern. what i miss now is i miss caring for him, i miss
the sensation of caring. i picture him standing on his thin legs with paws
a bit turned out, looking a long way up, a little scrap of mute sorrow.
i'd pick him up to set him under the lamp and he'd be so light, there'd
be so little of him left. as the tea was brewing i'd start to brush his
fur and he'd stand up because he wanted more of it. i'd have to brush lightly
over his sharp little bones.
-
- meantime patch. i went off her when mouse was sick because she was
so mean to him. i don't know whether she understands that he's gone and
feels something about it but i think she does feel that i like her less.
she's needier maybe. even through the winter she was outside a lot but
then did she run into a coyote maybe, or is she spooked by what happened
to mouse. now she's afraid to go out and she's asking to spend a lot of
daylight hours in the cellar, which she never did before.
-
- been there .... oh, my chib.
- it helps me that you have. i haven't been able to tell this much of
it to anyone else.
-
There's the way my house is imprinted now. The back bedroom is where
he crouched sad and weak on the arm of the couch. The laundry room is where
in his last days he lay on the soft white blanket. The kitchen is where
first thing in the morning he'd be on my sweater under the lamp to get warm,
and where I'd brush him, and where I found the thread. The red rug is where
he looked up at me in his last hour. The freezer will always be where he
was curled in a plastic bag frozen hard.
The story of Mouse sick, December and January, the winter. I wrote about
almost nothing else. Haven't worked except those bits of FB stories.
Gideon was born. Shaun wrote about trapline and last light.
The virus got here. I sold two photos and sent Paul two. Grey skies. Deep
snow, ice, slush, rain, what's left of dirty snow. The tree of lights that
was here till yesterday.
8
Arctic air pouring down, by Wednesday night maybe -30. Have wrapped the
roses with blankets, curtains, spruce boughs, dead alyssum, tarps, garbage
bags, a sleeping bag for Graham Thomas, a featherbed shared by Alnwick and
Henri Martin.
-
How annoyed should I be with Don. He says he wants to read Being about.
I say I'd love him to talk to me about it. He reads it and then replies
as if I'm his graduate student: it's well written but he doesn't know how
my committee passed it: he doesn't know what it's about; he doesn't know
what it's for; what's at issue; what's the point; it doesn't say how we
should feel/think/hope/understand differently.
He hasn't read it carefully. I did answer all of that. I say what it's
for is reframing philosophy of mind, current phil of mind is a mess. It
doesn't say how we should think differently: it demonstrates it. I say why
it has to be hard for most people to read. I say one of the ways it can
be useful is in rethinking human's relation to the natural world.
He says again that my committee should have said I should write an introduction
that spells these things out in a way he can understand. In effect he's
saying he would have managed me better than they did.
What can I say to any of that. I can patronize him back by saying he'd
best think of it as an art project. I can one-up him on his own ground by
reminding him of Wittgenstein in the Investigations saying he was
demonstrating a manner of speaking.
He asks How can I help as if I were asking for that. Tells me what it
would need if I want to publish it.
- He's not as smart as I hoped yes
- He's deeply ambivalent yes
- He cast about for a way to feel taller than me
yes
- Does he realize that he's not YES
- Write him off? yes
i really am not looking for help, only conversation, which merritt is
short of.
to that end am glad you can enjoy the daily stories.
a couple of things, briefly:
online is as published as i'm expecting it to be. have no intention
of either updating or promoting it. it's there for anyone who can use it.
there are and will be few but those few will be people i have reason to
like.
in my sense of it everything you say is lacking is actually there and
as explicit as it needs to be. it might be helpful to think of it as an
art project rather than an argument. i did begin my doc years with wittgenstein
who said of the investigations that he was demonstrating a manner of speaking.
9
Dear passionate Mouse. First thing these mornings I lay out treat bits
for Patch who doesn't demand them and is just an old mother who has lost
her nerve.
Here's a day, 7:51, Wednesday, -20, thin sift of dry snow, broken cloud
with soft edges faintly lit against very pale blue. I don't know what to
do. [Sigh.]
10
Clear sky, -25.
I notice my feeling for Mouse's death is unclean in this way: there was
curiosity.
- Did I want him to die no
- Are you sure yes
- If I hadn't been curious would I have fought harder to
keep him alive no
- Is grieving a way of excusing myself curiousity
no
- Do you mean that wanting to know what it's like to be
isn't necessarily a crime yes
The book never lets me off what it shouldn't but still I'm not sure.
- Is there something icky about wanting to say such things
well no
It does console me and balance me.
- Is that wrong no
- Mouse's death is my fault
yes
- There's no evading that yes
- It's why I'm doubting the gain I get from describing
it yes
- So I shouldn't NO
- Because it is a gift too yes
-
- Do you know what work I should be doing in these days
no
12
Pure in heart - Mouse was.
Iron cold, -25 degrees. Heart bumpiness is back. I wake at 2 or 3 and
then can't nap because of it. The Mac Pro is going wrong, it keeps turning
itself on and the fan is loud, and after I start it in the morning I have
to restart it or it can't handle Word, then sometimes later it's so slow
I have to restart again. I don't understand the new phone and don't like
it. Am up to 160 lb this morning because I sometimes eat rice or half a
potato or two muffins. Ashamed of not working. Ashamed that because I'm
starved for company I read political news.
But, but: February is half over, this G4 is fine, a dozen people on FB
are willing to like me, there keeps being enough money even after $2000
on vets, a couple of sharp-leafed little pepper plants are up this morning.
The house is good in many ways.
-
This was in M's letters. I'd never seen it before.
- Dec. 28 1954 (I just about put 1955.)
- Dear all of you,
- Thank you very much for the doll. What all did Judy and Paul get. I
got two necklaces, a book, 2 games of Parcheesi, a paint without paints
set, a tea set, a little box of chocolates, an embrodery set and a neckercheif.
I got the prettiest surprise you ever saw to from the red cross. I'll show
it to you when I get home. We have a Christmas tree and we've painted pictures
on the windows.
- I've gone to school for about 3 weeks now. Miss Boyd sent my reader
and think and do book. I'm ahead in math and spelling. I'm going around
on my crutches, 60 miles an hour. I spend my time doing jig saw puzzles.
how's Blacky? I got lots of cards. I'm running out of books to read. There
aren't as many up here. I just about forgot that I got a cut out book and
a comb and barette set. My cast is kind of tight, and it hurts. We had
a real Christmas dinner of (over)
-
- Christmas
- Dinner
-
- Fruit Cocktail
- Roast Turky. Dressing
- Giblet Gravy
- Mashed Potatos
- Fresh Frozen peas
- Turnips
- Cranberrie Sause
- Plum Pudding
- Sause
-
- Wasn't that more than you got? We have a dummy in the demonstration
room next door. By, that's all the room I have.
- Elfy
13
Blue daylight on a thin still sheet of white, Sunday 7am, plant pots
on the windows' ledge, Patch asleep in my bed. It's warming, -15.
15
In bed a few nights ago, briefly slotted among the usual dissolving thoughts,
a cat's right leg from the knee down, black fur - just the leg - reaching
softly to touch me. It was Mouse.
-
Line-editing Dave's new version. Is there anything I can see. The book
is unsorted. He's doing what he knows how to do: assembling factual detail:
bushels of wheat shipped, names of businesses and business owners, layout
of the town in this era and the next. Layout and furnishings of a beer parlour
and a bachelor's shack in that town at that time. That's valuable and will
keep becoming more so. But layered into it he's doing what he doesn't know
how to do, describing a human's being in that place and time. It's as if
he hasn't read novels, he doesn't know how to move people through space
in an efficient way, He describes what they do in pedestrian detail, sees
them moving and hears them speaking but doesn't get inside them. They and
he are as if emotionally and perceptually blank. There aren't sensory or
feeling qualities. That is accurate of his characters themselves maybe -
is it? But it doesn't seem intended, it seems a blankness in the writer
himself.
Describing the old bachelors of his father's generation is worth doing;
they are a way of life particular and symptomatic at that time in that place,
Jack Arnold in his shack with a heap of beer bottles out back. But he's
describing male damage without understanding it. They're vets, they're post-traumatic
and they're alcoholic. They're dyslexic like Rudy, or ADHD, or depressive.
But the thing is that he is himself an old bachelor, maybe a drinker. The
evidence is that he hasn't taken himself on, they don't and he doesn't and
so he can't see into them.
The writing is damaged too. He doesn't notice what he should. He hasn't
proofread or if he has he has missed obviously awkward constructions. His
educated words are sometimes misunderstood and usually too conspicuous.
There are no physical descriptions of his beer parlour characters so I can't
tell most of them apart. Are the Isaiah references reaching toward Faulkner?
They don't seem earned.
There's an honest novel latent. It would be called Squaw man.
What kind of man in that time and place was that. What is it to be that
sort of man. Mary Abraham is what's missing in his conscious self. "She
wasn't a beautiful woman but she was an essential woman." His uncon.
He can't afford to be seen with her but he can be with her hunting, fishing
and camping. He can give her rides. Contact with her is the apex of his
life. She's unconscious in him as in his character so she is almost completely
undescribed.
Then to brass tacks: what's my relation to the project. He at first wanted
me to write it. I said no you do it. He did. I proofread the first version
because he gives me money. We clashed because I thought he wanted me to
design it but he wanted to design it himself. What is designing - it's a
controlling function. He's still giving me money so I'm proofreading again.
I could do more than proofread. The book needs - he needs - deep restructuring.
I don't think he's capable of what it needs so I'm in a dishonest relation
to the project. I'm getting money for less than I know how to do and that
is queasy-feeling.
- Should I refuse the money no
- Are you sure no
- Will you comment money, tempers, coming
through, contemplation
- His money helps me do what he can't? YES
- Does he know that yes
- So is it correct in him yes
- He truly can't yes
- I'm not his personal uncon but I'm a principle of realized
uncon yes
- So the money is a kind of principled tribute
yes
- Are you sure yes
- I'm what's in him to be but disabled
YES
- A lame star yes
- Should I post this later NO
-
Then I hustled to get ready for Kathy. When I told her about Mouse we
were twenty feet apart and both crying.
16
Patch's kneading seems robotic. Mouse was personal. The way when I was
sexing with myself he'd come near and look into my face with such alert
curiosity. Smelling my breath maybe. How to name his look. I know it from
inside. Tender. Sweetly vulnerable. - Saying any of those I so much feel
the emptiness of names. What I feel when I look for the name is not at all
called up by the name.
17
Limbaugh has died. I don't like to mention him but it's news worth telling,
a war profiteer, a man who lived to monetize spite and degraded half a continent.
18
- when I was twelve
- boys were beautiful
-
- girls were too
- but boys were the other kind
19
Dante, Coleridge, Pound. How they do it. Lyric method.
Coleridge, Pound. Seeing them intuit cortical dynamics and the electromagnetic
ground.
Coleridge. What mind is.
what can be made of a mortal life
actual lovers, later physics
the world for its own sake
for instance today as if singing reverent thanks that the sky is bright
then reading another chapter and liking the sparse balanced flow of
time noted
it moves along in quiet assurance
accumulatively formed, a network new lines can activate
everything patterned and propagated change
field effects. dissolution now begun
20
Health has been better than other winters here but it's crumbling now
- sore L leg from hip to ankle, very sore knee; morning slime again which
there hadn't been; often waking too early, 2 or 3am; unsleeping nights closer
together; limping badly; 10 pounds I don't lose; concentration failing after
even half an hour; and the worst is bumpy heart again that keeps me from
being able to nap in the daytime and scares me at night.
21
Indra has a bag of letters to her mom that she won't read. "Uneasy
pudeur." People who burn their young journals. What are they afraid
of that I haven't been afraid of.
I posted what can be made of a mortal life this morning and only
3 people could like it, not even Susan Zimm showed up though Sue did, and
Indra.
22
Have I decided to drop Louie. I'm liking the thought. She has sold the
place we made together; she's heading to Dutch domesticity somewhere on
the wet coast; she has been high-handed and even nasty and doesn't cop to
her sins of competition and possession or deal with them; and when I confess
sorrow about something I feel she is secretly pleased. She puts herself
out to be interested in people because she needs to be popular but at bottom
what she's been most interested in with me is whether or not she is capturing
me.
- Is that true? yes
I've been shedding people. David, Mafalda, Jerry. Luke has shed me I
think though in that case I'm shedding him too - I say that with doubtful
pain. Don has failed the test of Being about. Greg is more and more
boxed-in.
It seems alright to shed people because we are nearing the time when
we'll shed each other anyway by dying. Is there anyone I still care to know?
Paul. I like Freya with Rowen. I like Jennifer in a careful mentoring way.
I would like Tom if he were still the man I last knew but he is likely to
have gone stupid again.
Alright, but Louie was someone I could talk to. Has that still been true?
I don't think so though it may be because I have so much less to say.
24
Perfectly open sky at 6.46. The biofuel plant neighbour is warming his
truck.
On 11 Feb 2021, at 15:08, Ellie Epp <elfteacher@gmail.com> wrote:
Re: wanting to send you something
Dear Jill.
Won't say something well-meant and useless but am thinking of you wondering
whether there's something else I could send.
I remember saying to you on one of my visits back to London that I wished
I lived there and you saying why would anyone want that, you'd want to
live in California. I did live in California for a dozen years and while
I was there set up online photo projects of two places I loved, one of
them in the desert and the other in oak savanna. I thought maybe in this
hard winter you could like to sometimes be in their kinds of light and
space and warm dry air? (Don't bother with the writing.)
-
Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 2:38 PM
Dear Ellie
Your email came as such a pleasure and a sense
of warmth. Not simply because the pictures brought that into my room, but
because you had taken trouble not to say something well-meant and useless.
Thank you. But you were wrong to say not to bother with the writing. It
is powerfully evocative and I traveled that journey down and then back up
and I could feel the California sun on my arms as I drove - driving in the
States has always been a great treat for me - those vast skies and distances
never reached. I drove once from Mississippi to San Francisco - it was bliss
to me. I could feel that pleasure as I looked at your pictures and read
your writing.
I am coping with grief, but sometimes poorly. It's
humbling to be 81 and yet burst into wrenching tears because the lady behind
the counter in the local deli asks after Sean, or the East European in the
laundry, with very little English, says how come he hasn't seen Sean for
a while, working hard to get the sentence out. So I stopped shopping locally
for a while. I want to tell you that Luke has been a staunch support throughout
these difficult years.
It was truly so good to get your email
With love
Jill
-
I'm thinking just now that I'll never see Luke again but he'll have Jill.
She isn't a bitter outsider the way I am, it will feel more normal to him.
28
I'd thought of writing something about the exercise at Nyingma that sent
me back to school, 1989, and that took me to looking for how PhD thoughts
were beginning earlier, 1987. What is surprising me is how antsy I still
was about male domination - how separatist I was - how diffident really
- how harmed? I wasn't like that at Queen's, what had happened to me since?
Men started hitting me, first Peter and then Roy. Male nastiness when I
began to assert myself at the Slade.
March 1
Patch has suddenly started going out again. When I'm reading in bed she
sometimes comes to lie at my left shoulder - always from the left. Mouse
was always from the right. Last night she lay with her head on my shoulder
watching the Great British Baking Show on iPad with me.
2
Banging heart woke me at 1:30. When I was standing in the dark at the
bedroom window there were five deer on Granite Ave just next to the rowan
tree. They seemed large and sturdy, stood listening. One of them had its
ears turned toward me though it couldn't see me. Then they walked quietly
west.
I keep feeling I have one too few cats.
3
Yesterday I woke at 1:30am with heart banging and had to get up for the
day. When I tried to nap I'd be kept awake by heart stress. In the evening
heart was banging again, b.p. way up, bad arrhythmia. I was scared. Went
for a fast lurching walk up the alley power-breathing, ram 10, hot bath.
B.p. came down. Half an hour in the dark breathing and then feeling-in.
I was having to think about what to do with myself. There are some things
I realized. I've been sagged. I mean dull and weak-willed. Without
hope. Hard. Withdrawn. Ashamed. I haven't solved my difficulties one by
one as they come. For instance when I was meditating last night when I felt
the familiar longing to stop I asked why it was. Body aches. Alright what
would be the solution. Some kind of anti-inflam pain meds. I have to support
my ability to do.
4
I had push yesterday. Walked. Talked to Allan about projects. Listed
bike and windows. Ran around to buy potting stuff and look at tongue and
groove. Cleared out the verandah. Moved windows out of the garage. Planted,
soaked peas, potted-on. Didn't sleep during the day. Found and started into
a right heart book.
> If I take on a writing project, commit myself to finishing it.
The yellow Peugeot I bought in PB in the autumn of 2002 for $70 is sold
to someone who wanted it badly for $50 and I have bought a white step-through
cruiser Travis will assemble. Pushed today too. Walked. Unscrewed the bike
basket with WD-40, not easy. Started pollyfilling the bedroom holes and
painted the fuse box. Planted peas and sweetpeas. Started Wilczek on mass
and light. Kept going when I wanted to stop.
The man who bought the bike said when he passes the garden in summer
it calms him.
5
Sky blank and grey and silent at nearly 8. Line of plant pots on top
of the lower panes.
Sold Cass all the old windows $100. We talked but in the way of people
past a certain age? without being interested in each other. Rob and I though
had a fast interested gallop when I said I was reading Wilzek. Didn't know
how much physics he has actually paid attention to and thought about. He
was sitting in the bath with his phone to hand.
Why aren't I interested in Cass. There could be interesting things in
her, she has lived places and felt things, but she's taking care of an old
sick husband and lacks presence? Or she's self-absorbed in the way of an
artist who's past her friend-making age and has her arrangements firm around
her.
Will be 76 tomorrow. New bike on the way.
Discovering that what Pat called Charlotte Russe was actually Bavarian
Cream. That reminded me of when I was a kid sitting with Auntie Lill's Good
Housekeeping magazines cutting out coupons and sending for a lot of free
recipes for things like Bavarian cream from for instance Carnation Milk.
It wasn't as if we had those sorts of ingredients. I liked getting mail
but wasn't it more about sighting forward to fine things possible in the
outer world. Casting lines forward into the further world.
volume 10
time remaining volume 9: march 2020 - march 2021
work & days: a lifetime journal project
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