| volume 9 of edged out: 1984 april-september | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
 |
|
Am in back in Vancouver after the winter on Saturna, broke, actually starving at times, but set on doing anything I have to, to break up the miserable last years with Jam. In part 1 I cut bangs for my hair , buy red trousers which rapidly fade to pink, and find a young man at the Carnegie Center, where I volunteer as an English tutor in exchange for meal tickets. In July, halfway through part 3, I start keeping company with Michael Voskamp, a painter ten years younger than I am, whose generous liking and thrummingly grounded body bring me back from the dead. We play. The summer city basks around us and we're there to see it. I still panic at the thought of losing the mind I've had with Jam and the black lesbians, but at this point pleasure and colour show up in the journal again after its years of abstraction. Reading notes: Le Guin The dispossessed, the history of polyphony, Walter Branchi's seminar at SFU, Peter Redgrove. Mentioned: Jam Ismail, Cheryl S, Daphne Marlatt, Laiwan, Diana Kemble, Josie Cooke, John Guri, Michael Voskamp, Michaela Mollia and Walter Branchi, Donna Zapf, Tony Gordon-Wilson, Margaret Charland. Oppenheimer Park, Loong Foong Cafe, Keefer Rooms, Carnegie Centre, Vancouver container port, the Fairsky liner, CN Station café, Strathcona School. Tallis Spem in allium, Billy Joel For the longest time, Eddie Eastman Do you or don't you want to make love to me, van Gogh The card player, Zola Germinal. |
12 May 1984 Whether I can take the visual in what I note, into visual work. What I want to see. When he was about one year old he had visions he says of the ocean with changing colors. "And we were inland, I never saw the ocean." I say everybody has seen an ocean. Yesterday it was fairyland love, today it's straining in science. Want to show my music / want to make seeing intelligent. Feeling warmings. The work I'm imagining I am so avid in. I might lose the drive to be fine looking fine speaking careful of the whole. And - am I dropping a writing I've brought to real usefulness - because it is a future without praise - because I might be about to find myself wrong in it. In this description erasing the catchy visuals there was an image of a fast conveyor belt and something like clothes left behind on the floor; a twisting horizontal vortex. Is writing the 'stream' that brings the image, left to right. The hemisphere that responds to simulated emotion - the other presumably not. 17 With C speed talking, noticing nothing, erased delivering formations, 'listening' but never anymore as we know is possible. I am and feel I should not be - jealous envious domineering vindictive man-chasing lame anxious-looking speedy critical blank bored enthralled repelled submissive forgetting ashamed mindless inconstant anguished decrepiting frightened seductive. What kind of film - film the color of the sky - blue green pink yellow white - different blues - push - blue with small red bits - rephotograph overlay the bigger, movement at different scales Sounds go through making waves / maybe the sound after There can be other marks burns smudges fragments They can't be thought they have to be seen but the seeing become intelligent Clean color the swimming burns like that I am going into it as a shape: it takes my atoms in. Sometimes lines white shots through I want it to be true enquiry and giving them every clue how to look. 18 Through or on a silvery window pane, it goes steadily back through the frame through another frame fluttering silvery white rags off the edges, steadily back past a pink shady wall. 19 Two parts for human going-forward - clearing the inchoate wanting to see what I was before - and then learning to use senses in the world. How screwy imagination is - and what about it being the resort of the powerless - women, children, and others condemned into unusable minds - and proud of them. 20 This time: being high on the street, own work held back - fuss and bossing - she says things so dissociatedly I'm always having to ask and scramble - - whatever she comes to is going to dissolve anyway - "I'm glad we came through" - yes but you're not saying it was only partly through - the room she's taken to be the production room, saying this is not your room now - "we have different angels now" - "I don't know what you mean" - meaning, I know who's mine but who are you saying is yours? Her word so often doubted now - battling every instance is a threshing machine - I let some by and nab others - the doubt killing our time - we don't come into satisfaction - after telling the grain film yes I could see sky and clouds and wind pushing the street trees and light rocked by it - but not her - I think you were feeling competitive - why should I have to tell you that - in fact the self-disliking in this time is because I've controlled her by withdrawals after the unchecked mauling - attempt - I saw her in, last time I got sweet. 25 I want - a lab - sound generating - a fellowship - a good department head - access to music - access to animation stand - computers - England or Berkeley - some kind of sesshins - math - a way to another child - in three years. 29 I'm going to cut my hair and give up control, go back to fright and pleasure. The phlox in jars. Not repeating. Fox says. Summer heat. Phlox phlegein to burn 1st June Turning on the tap to get some minnows in the tub. It's after spring freshet, there may be none. The tub as it fills, clods of mushrooms, some white eggs. "The rainstorms we've had, the white eggs come out the tap." Other things, a rock with garnets, a long garnet crystal. "Maybe there'll be a chain and I'll wear it." Someone else a small young man turns on his taps, I think I should turn them because I have the luck, he gets nothing - but - a little creature with wings, running around scared, catch it and pet it. Just come and I'll be nice to you I won't persecute you for droning at me I'll just love you and play with you. Bring your flute beautiful one. Noticing these days which of the three places is lit. garnet grenat granate granum seed The little animal with wings I thought I was waking is the head
Sitting in the garden, the porch light on beyond us, we're together looking toward the phlox and the rose wall. His tweed jacket, the way he sets his legs apart, the long shoe - my little legs twisted around each other - black - he's telling from his solitude - it's darker - the cloud that followed him across town - how pleasant I'm feeling his voice - have I ever felt that? - the current between our sides is warm and calm. "You're so much more mature than I am, it scares me" - though I patronize him - in this light seeing another face, his Spanish face maybe - a long light face - I could easily put my arms around him - a thin young man - "It took me ten years just to figure out the difference between the two kinds of forest spirits" - "You did something irrevocable" - "Or I'd just be living and dying like everybody else." And oh somewhere - the tall light straight one - sweet bones, and your thin forearms and bony hands - your great desperation - because you're mortal now. The fire and no life for it. What she - harsh blank one, not mine - she's willing herself to starve me out - my breasts swelled - but what does she have for me, she has no body - a cold appearance - "I can be inspired by anybody." -
What happened when he asked "Do you know how to do it?" - I say "No, do you?" feeling, before I say it, it's a bold move, but why. He in his pink shirt and long-hanging tie stops, bridles, smiling, is it as if caught. "I know how to do it - yes." Or what about beginning to get used to being seen greedy blind - take my chances with impressing or not - to not-seeing while I grab a little chance to talk - like all the lonely stupids - unloved women. 7 My racist flash with Laiwan, "I think a maple should be green" Specifically: sitting here fascinated at seeing a man in tweed jacket standing in the centre of the room reaching his arm to turn on the light. A sexual negotiation - looking at his lip and tooth studying the way his face is different - is there any way I could see this man so I could give myself permission to kiss him. 8th She seems to want me to. 9 "We could go on being friends" - "Yes but if we can't sit in a room like that" - laughing - the confusion is, is he a form of RM, are they all forms of each other - sitting with me changes him - he doesn't interest me but if I was true with him there'd be a beautiful depth - like Maggie and Nellie - and then I'd see him lose it again. I'm hardly able to listen to him, I'm pretending to listen to him, busy thinking, what is this. 10 There are two people sitting in a room. As they go on speaking their interval changes. When I wake before dawn is this intense electrical activity in all my body a reconstruction? It's fiery, high-pitched; and then a darker thrum maybe a train but slow. - "The way you look at the ground, it was just a split second, you were carrying your bike over a curb and there were some people coming. A movement as if you were a deformed monster." "I try not to feel ashamed that you're crippled." 12
Oh womb and cunt what are you up to. So aching but not erotic. Not another idol. 13 Wake up thinking the opposite, I have to be able to adore someone. Burnaby Mountain this aft - a moment with Barry, Walter, Peter, bodies set toward me saying interested things about Trapline to each other. Seeing Michaela's sounds floating past. What direction. Sounds I could keep attention pressed to. "I like to work close to silence." The effervescence of the static ground under. What the dancer said about the movements being feelings. The imprint of the way saying goodbye Walter put two hands around my hand - warm. "Maybe we'll see you in Rome." 14 A question about not still trying to be wonderful. This day stiller, don't know what to make of the vacuum except that it's waiting. 16 I'm on my side of the car vowing that I'm going to get it somewhere. And then with the young man not at all insisting on it or even minding the bad breath and lack of interest, calmed by small touch dry and warm. 18 Watching the soft power, following myself in it. C said "Are you surprising yourself?" I'm feeling, is this what that position is like - giving the other what they need, not fighting. Feels like the whole mount is a fine-frequency resonator. 21
22 The tall fat woman with her hair up grinning as I come, fatlip, leans past my shoulder as she leaves, to say "I know who's been tickling your goatee sweetheart." Looking at her, she over her shoulder leaving, is that what she said? Mumble. "Do you?" What happened at the Carnegie today - first that - then finding my ticket fall into two - then the good-limbed boy as my head is turned to put the book in the bag, looking with intention - as it should be - the intended smile - the frog blackman, short chin seeming to end just under the mouth and such unlikely large articulate hands fiddling matches under the cellophane skin - toward me - pale boy sulking because it's too much for him. [Good-limbed boy is the first mention of Michael.] Are there people who live over a wide range of time touching down in intermittent places supported by the ones who work through all the moments in a short span. Who else is Juan Guri - I don't know whether there's a way to listen so I'll have a better sense - no I am going to learn body now - beautiful characters I make - I listen so closely with my eyes - I'm only resolving touch and vision.
If an image is a terminus - the way Robert's today looks alive. 24 O my spectre. Got focused in mid-summer fire. What does this mean: hearing his voice deliver his formation I'm rage. An hour later, friendly peace. I.e., was it his rage. And: he'll be back (but the other one's coming). Like a cold determination to get laid. In balance against and around the others. 25
26 Library - hat boy [Michael]. 28
A part-time professor light and warm, crossing the court to the lab, colleagues who see. Sitting concentration every morning, body exact. Whiskey visits till late, a judged politic and an open follow. Working on sensing - vision, hearing, 'feeling', the magnetic sense, eros - balance, force. Technology. I'd like to have to use altogether everything I've learned. 29 A colored lip, eye glow, soft crease. Glamorous nose flare, or the steady. She looks like a world worker. But what. 1st July Rober Trouvère you're looking amused. [ie his photo] Did you send this willing boy to dis-tract me. "Told me about a position where I cross my legs, you can get into it from missionary position." "Okay, we'll try it." Just a dry run. "This is missionary position." "... and then your sate will be feeled." (Too bad that was wasted, can I tell J.) Love-making is an altered mind. It begins by little. It is its own balance, it is very quiet. When I arrive in it I am a pour of thanks. I'm saying, nothing is like this, this is all I wanted. 2 It seems there should be double description - imagining myself as one among and in - and imagining myself as god in whose light all as - both to be more developed, separated - I say this often - and then to know which system one's using. 4 In night time thinking this time isn't nothing, but who should I be speaking to, to know what it is - the soft thought, ie dubious - or - that it's like an open time when I can slip into another focus - the continuous - not J or T who are tedious systems - maybe Laiwan. 7 Is it only loving gives me the force and balance to write. 8 I hold to instances when someone spoke or moved freely in a way I couldn't. As if enduring a dead time - all today gone in the journals - J on the phone trying to cast a bad spell saying she's concerned - three weeks without money coming - camera pawned - when I talk to her, sad protest I suppress - body heat died down. 17 The calculations have come to this: I should go back to UC in London with a program using the Tavistock, the Co-op, Laura Mulvey, Annabel and Scotland, I should live in Bloomsbury with an aircleaner and a bicycle, audit physics and embryology, write on the prenate, write (with J) on Dorothy, write on grain, and make two and a half minute songs; bring the location work. Keep Oxford and MIT in mind. The sci-fi U. - [transcription of conversation with Jam]
Dear Aphrodite: make me brave These days the fear of starving - a much poorer time - afraid of being made ungenerous opportunistic grim - A book on the ideas of space - embryology - metaphysics - the Buddhists - Wheeler and Pribram - new physics - language - geometry - emotion clearing - math - phenomenology - drugs. - I ate what I had - slowly - old rice and hard popcorn - I haven't salt even - mint tea [from the garden] - then I was panicked - trying to phone - taking the tape recorder down [to the pawn shop] - a young man's kindness and then the other as he passes, from a glance, says "We don't want that" - a tear jumped - I'm ashamed to be trying to cover my hurt - period came today, is that or the fear of hunger, the softness that made me feel it so harsh. I had doubted they'd take it, very heavy hanging from my shoulder on the bike - at MacLeod's five good books gone for $5 - the man from the art gallery - I'm looking at men that way again - is it a reflex of poverty and what will it go on to. The $5 got cherries and a nectarine, a loaf, butter, two fishcakes. I ate and then was stupefied and slept. Hungry now, had forgotten there's still bread and butter. 20
[First actual meeting with Michael Voskamp] Another frightened man, another man willing to be afraid. Small eyes fixed. When the boss was harsh, cried. Brahms in a room. Those thin hands with near blood, clawnails. 'Sensitive' is what - 'meditative states' - a weak voice - with him conducting conversation, stale smoke in his clothes, he's staring at something, "I drew you," obedient, but what else - unattached - permeable - telling the sound of the crows through cold air amidst frozen wood, from far off, wings dancing something - he can have his face close - Dutch redness - The card player [van Gogh]- felt tip on napkins. 22 I said to him not knowing "You can sit here if you ever want to. It is a kind of park. People don't use it much, I don't know why. I took the fence down. I had a fence around it but I took it down." -
-
23 At the music, Oppenheimer Park, coming with the bike to the bandstand, dancers on the ball diamond dust, Tony [Gordon-Wilson] with a train of kids - he's a dancer! - there's the French girl, there's green hat jerking in a way I don't like - the catalpa with white flowers in only its top leaves - setting light on the cottonwood - sitting against the wire fence - when I walk I like knowing he sees - a long circle, suddenly met, a dance saying do you want to go on? Do you want to stay? Sitting on the slope quite far from the music, I didn't say: "I enjoy your shape." His wool sock feet in Chinese slippers - neat feet. The way I showed mine, in sandals. Sitting dancing - rolling so well. Tony's jiving with Laurel! Oh! Oh! Tony giving his arm to the spastic man to cross the dancing ground, gives them a look of high play-acting together. The small girl playing soccer with two men who tease her. Michael who again looks different, given that name. He tells his story of the shabby room in Toronto, "two broken-down people, she was in bad shape, I was drinking too but not as much as she was. She was a stripper." The baby was the one he missed most. She'd put on everything, even the lampshade, and come out parading for them. "She didn't learn in school but she knew things. She'd suddenly jump up and say something about one of the paintings." "Love grabbed me." How did he look then. Young. Composed. And now: wildly broken open, more pink and blue. A kind of midair walker, yes. My neighbourhood: the Vietnamese philosopher sentry without his shirt, gathering with others at Koo's to look at the red car's engine, touches another man on the arm. A white woman unseen in the shade by an upstairs window, has been noticing him for years. His body is rounder-fleshed since he came from there. Very slowly he is no longer in shock. And she. That's literary. It's a way of voicing aloud while writing. The hunger poem since I showed it to J says what: time poured. Wanting to sleep from. The father hand. Raspberries. Someone I don't know. Is day, dei. The tight cap. You see. And those I want to show it to. He saw me look at kids. Loneliness is the womb capped. 24
Last night - asked Paul for coffee - he brought raspberries too. Excited. Someone come. Knowing no one could come into that excited wait. 25 At dawn he kissed me goodbye and left: I dreamed sleeping on a plateau looking down out of the window seeing the black and white hat person crossing through the white under the streetlight wandering. Coming to the kitchen door in sleeping clothes. Hard hug. He says "You're someone else! You're fourteen." We arrive on the corner of Hastings and Main, he pushing the back of his hat with his stick. I in my pink and white tarred on the rear. The shoulder. That warm shape. "I wanted to touch you." "Where?" "Anywhere. I don't know. Your shoulder. Your neck." "I was so afraid of this." I'm not at all. I'm quite remote. Head asleep against the doorframe. The way he just wants to hold it against me (is this account for you) vibrating either it or from strain in his legs, his hard kind of body, "your skin;" that sends a disc-shaped thrill up through the belly-space. Swift wing. "A magnetic rise of birds." Am I making a funnel pointing toward me - I think so - curving the space so you'll slide in. Eventually. and then what.
26 Sitting on his legs. Hat. Pyjama shirt with one button. Chest fur. Rayon pants. With his long claws on his lap beautifully smoking in white light from Rhoda's porch. And. Tucking me in. Many little tucks, remembering how to push into the little boy's side and lean her arm over his chest. I steal a kiss. He catches one on the bound. It's real. I gasp. He falls off the bed. "A conscious kiss. ... I haven't had one of those in a --- ." "Come here again." I cry out. He cries. That's after we've said our prayers. This morning I say the rich girl is the girl whose father ---. They don't talk about it. "Your big finger." My innards quite butter. Being with him in his ranging freedom and incongruous humbleness, myself seen really from somewhere else, the way I stare. The little boy who without waking and with a fierce fire in his head runs through the upstairs of the farmhouse screaming and is afraid to sleep. - Keefer Rooms. Opening the stair door into the third floor sky-lit white. In an undershirt, with a razor in his hand, old man I mean to say, embarrassed. I have much to see and want to be there to see it. Canvas jacket on the back of the door: your winter. The way the blanket is squared on the bed. The unforeseen paintings' colors. An imp in the corner. Seeing the new long face looking toward them saying "color study." This distinguished mobile face. The way the upper lip pulls back grinning, I want to flee, it's Roy, he is too beautiful and will be mean - his embarrassment is because he's flattering - I rattle in the door fleeing - but on Robson and in the library faces with freedom, I see, or they, seeing mine. Cheryl's face as we stand by her prints, contracts, the Auschwitz design in the night sky, souls' escape. Small spirit in burning wind. Is. "She gives us her blessing." 27 July 1984 Feeing a cool focus waiting behind the vapours. My body is changed as I wished. Long thin person the old man draw. I want to stare at his thighs, they're what I was after. "A life in them." Yes, that. And then also feeling it will be possible to tell him why I have to look. "I feel like I'm stealing." I'll watch to see if he steals my face. Already yesterday his bare face was slaying me. "Don't smile." Let's keep ourselves from -
Holding steadily to see - to give him a current of endurance. [notes on editing steady attention, which later became notes in origin] 28 On the street (in Paris) painting under arm through Chinatown wedding party. Going about together I see the others so lovingly it lets me know where T's kindness comes from - she is in this completedness, she's not famished. As I cross streets on the bike drivers look at me seeing my state. Bare skin everywhere basking gives the town joy. 29 "This house helps us." 30
His soft gait and hand. "It's more aggressive than I am." What happened yesterday when after he clamped on my breast he went into conniptions? "Ee-ven my tee-eeth" in his little young way. I hold on tight in case he's being born. But worrying whether he's always going to be spastic, like Arnold, leaving me out. He comes to the door naked. The little thing. Acorn. So little. Is it going to be too little? Does it mean he doesn't let himself into it? Looking closely: "Your one eye looks hurt and the other doesn't look hurt at all." The drawings. "I don't want to look at them they look so much like the way I draw." Looking to see whether they look different when he's looking too. ~ When we made the beds and lay down the great cumulous reach out from our footend of the bit-leaf cottonwood into the pale dark blue. I see a star rise from the upper leaves or momentary - really an instant - between leaves in the leafy body. A satellite crosses seriously far away. The thready (alsike - no, sweet clover, the white meliot) white clover standing high into the light from the service road. Breathes. His hand behind my head stroking tansy buttons. Lithe on the asphalt, girl with her arms in the small of her back. Thin girl with / breasts in her chemise / he sees. Wanting distance to make it the steadier face. Peering at bad smiles. Then the sun shone longwise into our pit. We heard clack clack stakes driven. Runners on the track. Telling what I found babies were in dreams. "The inner erection." With bedding in our arms we come out on the surveyor's field smiling for the telescopes. We cross the ballfield. We pass the laundry's opened wall. The orthodox church. The angry connection box. The Japanese garden with tink and tomato plants. My own healed garden (the sun did) alongside. He stops for the lilies. And push the free door. "Do you know Germinal? It's by Zola." 31 To record: the way standing among the piles of fill surrounded by directions of color he suddenly started to tell about his work that day. "At the beginning it was really beautiful." He's so beautiful in the intense light, the life light - his shining color of face, the hat and eyes - sea green - standing. The way with green book in my hand I shot round the corner out of the garden and he was there like a materialization standing still in the alley - the grab of joy that he looks like that and it's me he's come to. 1st August "If I ever start talking about the future send me away for a while, will you?" Said when he was lying next to me he started to lose his memory, "It's dying." That he thinks he could go all the way through. "I know what it is. It's the male and female, it's all ne-ew to me." - Today: after morning, silver air, birds, cool stir, and he goes home, I sleep a few hours, Trudy creeps out for the letters. Leaning on the wall eating a nectarine; she from the porch. 3 Showing how the bull throws his nose up assessing the smell. "You must be in heat the smell is so attractive." I haven't found any enclosures in him - is that true - maybe something about good looks - embarrassment. Evasive smiles. 4 "Dance for me." A longing over panic. Fur belly dance. 6 Long time in the night - he finds me to the beautiful ache - singing - "He knows how!" - oo it will really come to it - the complete - ghost covers over his head - he does return in times - has them. Morning luminous face - usually walk the twelve miles from town - stopping at the neighbours - "Well Michael, where have you been?" - road, pasture, creek - across the alley - "By that yellow and blue house" - "No, further" - "You're in a nice balance this morning" - yes - creeping in at the kitchen door - the mother's footsteps coming up from the basement. 7 In the room as it gets dark - my face in the mirror seeing myself carrying him to see us - beaming - lying chuckling and beaming ontop the sleeping bag pile - watching can I surprise him - and then from slightest touch on the breasts feeling an acuteness like an electric field flow and ebb into my bum and feet - erotized - when I told him what it was doing - "Now the other one is starting to sympathetically vibrate" - "a hot canal" - "a hot canal" - it's swelled and prickling - the way my breast and his hand, couldn't tell which, were a hot pile. "I'll show you a position I like." His legs on my shoulders as he's saying he likes it too. Chokes laughing. My houri's light voice and so well-boned shoulders and waist near for the arm. Philomenes - liking to be lying with its heat along me somewhere, side of the arm, knee, bum, abdomen. Afternoon's research I can build with in the eve. 10 Taking the pants down a liddle. What is the magic of the narrowness of hips. At the west window last night with a candle further on the table writing for the small movies - a harsh face but hanging next to the evening color and red conté and dark grey, white on white - the swift rubs through - and waiting for the shape I'll recognize - there and googling out of a shadow at the top of the alley - I don't have to pretend not to be happy you're here - I can actress as much as I want - and shine down. Janeen's flush and silk eyes. Judy listening. Wrapped elvish around a meter as I limp beautifully away: pose. 12 The good rays soaking out of muscle shapes. Lying on the floor one hand on his knee. Feeling the sun heat in the belly. Then the moment stroking it hearing myself having said "I have a sun here." Talking about London looking at him sitting in the big chair, we've been to Gomez for Saturday bread, a little overwhelmed then knowing to erupt, from behind with a pillow whapp whapp You're sitting there looking so handsome I want to beat you. Attacking with tickles and bad words. Ugly toes!
- Absorption: Love eyes: a scientific, erotic and prenatal attention; as to chemicals diffusing in a cell, emotion welling in the belly, sound registering on unborn skin. I was a child on a farm in northern Alberta. When I grew up I went away as I had dreamed to cities and other countries but in my mid-30s I had to remake myself, and I went back to my first landscape. For parts of three years, 1977-1980, I lived again, often alone, in a farmhouse among fields. As much as I dared and was able I made myself available to the spirits of the place. I was trying to feel out the idea of location. I made tapes, slides, study notes and other writing, a garden. Steady attention is the series title of the small movies made in this time. My camera takes 100' two and a half minute rolls of filmstock, and I used that length uncut as a simple limit for the shape of completed films. 'Steady' is from OE stede meaning place, as in 'homestead' and 'instead'. Attention as steady as a space. Scientific, erotic, prenatal absorption. Love eyes. - Who he's missing too. Wondering if I'm going to be too tough for this loving one. Wanting to say to her, I'd have stayed with you forever if you'd wanted me and enjoyed me. 13 Sore hearted - the losses. As if I was by myself really married to J and am breaking the last real tie I can have. The frivolity of taking up blind with someone whose legs I liked - like someone with no chances - it doesn't matter who, any body I want. - The sense of, as if, is it, always two people speaking in the one statement. She said sound and meaning. Starting the day at sundown, an equal dark. Nyx goddess. "It seems there should be double description, from myself imagined as one among and in, and as the god in whose being all else is. (Both to be more developed, separated; and then to know which system one's using.)" 16 Walking on Hastings past the kung fu theatre seeing that his wiry hairy high bum does hold itself as if it's carrying a tail, and the way his clothes aren't quite buttoned, pants with raveled legs and safety pin. 18 The way he's living, I like it, but as if in relation to another time. He's been more singly what I also thought was right to be. Wayfarer. The way he's taught himself to clear so he can sit in Carnegie feeling everyone - clear the brick out of his head. So loving to look in his face. Winter in Edmonton, but just him, he didn't try for a friend. Distrusting, he too, our easy forms, seduction and past. I forget to know him inward, I forget I can. 20 Going home gladly to wait for my boy's good arms and shoulders - "smoking too much, I was painting." They crouch by the sea - where there are boulders and a great plaza of crushed clay - a crane standing quiet for a Sunday - a seal in the dirty bay swimming slowly like a man - a red fireship alongside the new fill, small gravel truck working alone, dust, colored containers piled - they only want to crouch with their bodies close and at the top of a warehouse street hugging - big blank air - car drives around them - then he goes home and paints - in his hotel room. 21 I'm staring, he folds his pillow and lays his arm and head on it so like a girl lover I do smile. The mail brings from Robert two horses in a red-light bush, soft land, veins and falling white from Alberta. The sight of them kissing the way they do. J bitter and displaced about partnership in a way to make me want to pay her off to be rid of her drag. 23 The white ship in lights, a Starliner, the Fairsky, webbed alongside into floodlight by white lines, long quayside concrete receding, yellow taxis backing up turning around two in the same motion at the chain link gate, my movie man like me with his head on his arms on the sightseer barricades, in the beautiful coloring light like people dreaming, an image with me, and others told. Living for a year driving buses, Winnebagos, trucks, in cavalcades anywhere
in the country, "My early twenties, a little town near where my parents
live." The trick with a Coke can between the brake and the accelerator.
On prairie stretches, the game seeing how far back in the bus he could run
and still get back to keep the bus on the road. They were long buses, he
got to the back and waved to the driver behind, a car passing would see
there was no one in the seat. Drunk in motels sometimes he might have had
a bath with someone but never this way, arms around each other in the middle
of the tub, dips water onto my back to warm me, and then coming to the tastes
on his face, on top of the eyebrow in the eye corner in the nostril corner
against the hairline all different concentrations of salt and vinegar, and
the feel of wet skin, and then from the other side watching him find the
interesting corners and feeling myself the cushy tongue in the eye dish. In the morning over Trudy's yelling radio looking at a beautiful one. "You have a light in you this morning! You should see." And when I'm cooing at him he suddenly "Straighten out" orders me and instantly I do.
The moment when the forehead opened completely into fine grained silvery space and when the whole body gets light the way as time goes on I find a different less heavy balance, working quite quickly moving to feel different parts trying is it going into the feet that lightened it, or was it when I was in sensation not talk anymore. 25 "I was cryin' an' sayin' 'He can't feel' and she was nearly cryin' too sayin' 'I know but he can't help it.'" Seem to have to keep telling the story otherwise I can't believe it. Standing at the window now, your shape narrow like someone in another kind of life, so light. Standing with your left leg bent to just touch the floor. 26 "A racial comfort." Looking out the window far across town to the Dutch watery air. Pink in the harbour where cranes like masts. What race are we - Looking west at the fire sky, the water in the air, the light in the air, orange on us. It looks like acid he says, red neck and head, both bare chests, a penetrating orange into his skin under the fur on his chest makes it come up black and red. Angry by the park, he grabs around the neck from behind, the most final wrestling hold. Bent over nearly to the grass both arms quite a brutal pressure. I agree it is that and then suddenly know to set my teeth into his wrist. His hold flies open, he knocks me down, I grab his leg and he crashes, I bite his thigh, he jumps into a crouch and I can tell by the way I'm sitting beaming with my legs folded beside me that it's over. The peaceful grass. Big rags of cloud steaming north in train. Coarse dark green with a dark red straw laid straight. He finds: a grape: held up: like a jade bead. "Your body just wants to give me something." That my wanting him makes the peace - are they all like this - another sense of man, is it in sexual body really that the peace is. If I don't refuse wanting you, if I gave any of them the exact wanting there is (would they have loved me this way). 31 Then comes again lying two rib cages together melting genital. "Let's just fuck and let the gods decide." A pang in the left side. "How can you be so brave about it, don't you have anything to lose?" He's clear, not foolish. My collection seems weak. Easy to slip into the moment that trusts the gods. "When I first came I thought, she's got a big house." The sense that if I don't do it on purpose I'm going to be doing it by accident. 1st September She suggests the Carnegie. I walk down finding it fall. Mist and red shrubs, neon. A chair in line with the door, not J but M, feels like the whole day has a fearsome sequence I have to let past, just noticing, no strength to feel I'm moving, though there's my walking and speaking necessary in the turns. (Had wanted to write what I said one night that seemed a nearer speaking, "What we've been doing is working with time a lot.") He stations himself. She sees me then him. I know he's looking long. Walk walk. "I think you've met my friend, MICHAEL" too loud. Jamila, his look on my face, why is, stunned, how's he looking, open mouth, clear, looking to see him, is it a foolish smile, pink. "Is that introduction enough or should I go away?" Begging her. On the street so unusually distraught, like her. "I can't stand this." In Hon's knocking the soup almost over. She knew there was an urgency (wanting to be in Sandy's with that music and neighbourhood). Having to come to the telling. "He says he thinks what this is about is is having a child." "I understand it better than I said. ... The father hand, it was to me by way of him." But I can see she's going to say she refuses and it doesn't mean she does refuse. "I want to go home now." "It's been seven years of a certain kind of existence and if none of that feels like wooing to you it's useless and I'm not going to talk about it any more, I'm going home." Going away thinking it's true I haven't earned her attachment. The wooing she meant was that I should come with her for this night, a taxi. No that's skillful lying, I won't. The wise human. I won't. Getting home five minutes before Michael comes. Morning, still exhausted, "from the side and slower." Yes! Head lights right up. Posing from the bathtub. Look at her I make. Turning to show her best. Ah! Beautiful brown sleek, this flat round bum, twist up to the waist, a breast, the green wall, and then seeing !! her delight doing it. 2 There being that girl suffering the battle of good and evil in the hotel room next to Michael, I feel complacent toward, but keeping a doubt, and he too. His young self looked at us lying together. "He wouldn't be able to do it, he was obsessed with himself." The way his arms around my shoulders and chest are perfectly there, perfectly fitted. - Ringg- "What I'm more afraid of is that it would be weedy," the shape of his head. "I don't want to kill the womb, I want the power to be of the womb and in the womb's knowledge." "You can't con me with this, I'm certain you'd be sadistic in any circumstance." Weaker light further into the room - I'm saying the issue in conception is power not gender, he's courting me by giving me lots. Wanting to take fertility without paying in slavery and without abandoning (myself) the little girl. Many sirens these days and nights. 3 Anguish memory of the Tibetan bride in my arms in the red and white house. "We still remember what it used to be like." Waking at night wanting to fuck, thinking of her touching swelled breast. This morning blood, very early. In exhaustion saying and saying. "I feel I have to decide whether you're wise or dopey, I can't decide." "No, you can't." Trudy sneezing downstairs. In the night hearing her cross the floor. The election. Mrs Gomez smiling, "Did you vote?" To Nina in earrings, "Did you vote?" Polls in the school bootroom. The quiet in the room, electric light, dull citizens lining three sides, Chinese boys sponging rainwater at the door. 6 Someone who wants to be no better off than the poorest. He sits up with covers on his head like a baby staring at his bed. The green sweater for him. Cold wind at the sea. Powell Street. In Oppenheimer goodbye kissing he flies away, four on a bench observing whose smiles as I go up the green grass, men, one woman second from the end, they together, I can make true by the way I smile too. Looking with him into the linings of black suitcoats, a Japan tailor's secret perfections, satin-bound ticket pocket slit under the lapel, stripes inside the sleeve. The Indian girl's suitcase. By the sea looking at what's left of her trip from the reserve. Margaret Charland. 8 In the CN café when I said "Are you sad" didn't he say it was for a companion in quiet. The bench opposite an empty bench under catalpa leaves, rain through on the centre walk at the train station park. Farmhouse only fixed up, in poor land, potatoes, a neighbour man. What did he say, "Then let me be their father!" with passion I don't show how much moves me. Only heart opens. The man his friend who goes about town with his partner the little girl. 9 The grasshopper was at the new container plaza, a hop in small grass I disconnect to follow. Easy to put my palms around. Sticking little feet. Carrying it to the end of the landfill. Can't set it out now, the gulls standing around. He's walking slower. I have to go back to him. It was sun, Sunday, windy, standing water, brown silt and gravel, open my lid palm to show him the thing like cut rock, rock cut like metal, even the eye membrane though transparent, glint showing from inside it, grey chips, exquisite shawl and tail, fit of the jumping legs into the side of the keel. It sits still. "It's vibrating - I can feel the life in it!" Getting it to walk onto his hand to feel it. The grasshoppers with J - three of them, was it something, or crack-mindedness - the ancestors, the dead - The watering truck is rounding toward us, loud. It jumps off my hand but then more, it flies, with butterfly wings! Black with a white band. Flaps. Lands without gulls' notice on gravel over the other side. Seduction. Unconsent eroding. "In some well-hidden way quite shocked that you would never hold me to you, when I was on top of you." "Why you didn't want to sleep with me anymore, that's what I've been asking you in these days. Do you mean it was because I had started to want to?"
I've put myself so in danger being her dream. 12 "No that isn't what it is." "Then what is it." "It's embarrassing. It's hard to say." (His breathing changes.) "It's saying something like, is this a face I could be married to," (solar plex squirms) "how long could I go on wanting to look at it. Is there another face I'd rather be seeing." He gets up like a kid covering a scare. Cornflakes, a smoke, chat. Wrapped in the downbag, to the nose, staring at what I think is anger, cold, not wanting to look at him, transfixed, go home, froze. Something will have to come from there after a while. "Hu bein du?" And I confess it. "It really upset me to say that." And then it goes on, laughing. 13 The way looking at notes and books these days the abstract stays cold, it's a blank, but when I come to a sentence where someone says "I", it perks up. Though sexual body isn't hot anymore. The hot days are gone. Evenings outside. -
The problem is - HOW TO MOVE TO THE DEPTH? Deepness.
|