up north 1 part 1 - 1978 june-august  work & days: a lifetime journal project  [alternative edited version] [I drive from Vancouver to northern Alberta, taking a week for 800 miles] 28 June 1978 Lilloett. Washed in river. Anxious / dove into [Pearl] Buck's sense of her life as action and compassion Lying on the slope, planetary, would sometimes look at the pines pushed and recovering, pushed and released, rocking (that's now)(I didn't see them), sky lidded close and think I'm not really here, I don't know where I was but somewhere. It had been in thoughts, which, double back. [Buck's autobiography My several worlds 1954, probably] - the red notebook from before natural light - m's handwriting what does it mean - captivity of her wrongness distress an ugly fatness in the face, the mouth going wrong - toxemia, stupidity - struggle in me between an ugliness and a beauty, and that's mary and ewald, something wrong in m I have to find, her rage satisfied me beauty belongs to essence detachment grace it's not vanity but rightness     I want to be safely out of my mother's false consciousness burn it and his misery and sickness / I needn't be either but what she's a coward 29 Joy for this - light ceremonies made, a ceremonialist for cities - then nervous drifting car and lonely evening - hunger? 30 Painful dislike of people 1 July Liking neighbours better The voyage out, for her sense of people awful/lovely, and inner detail but there's more. [Woolf 1915 The voyage out Duckworth] 2 Sunday Above Clinton blond and pines - above clinton, different pines, a buzz that stopped, stars emerging darkness strengthening, the smell and liveness counterpart of my nowhere thoughts - I looked out the car window and thought I could be free, I could be here; in the morning was glad to see the sky and the pale grass. thought of trying to write the wakings     this one was face down on the green pillow, lift the head, a brilliant height with brilliant clouds, I could get up and drive down, I could be (in) it I could sleep more I could try to remember what I was dreaming a captivity, i/she getting away from a young man whose job it was to kill me, the hiding and fleeing, not fright but balance and plan then driving something with j, a confrontation with sandy, both j and I in dresses like party girls the Steor the laws working/testing what it wants the givens trying to separate the pour 3 She [the car] and I wanted to race and came to a beautiful country, Spring Lake Ranch, the bare hills and a stopping place with lily pads, grass meadows, fresh bear dung. Will I learn to talk to travelers. The man and woman in silver Thunderbird gently over round grass hills, grey-haired, holding hands. She limps. They smile. 4 Waking with mucous and sadness thinking about losing J and then about regaining my community and freedom, ugly flesh face and wrinkles. Einstein, naked, thinking about how - spring lake ranch. an apron of grass in front of the house, three horses on it, the lame dog, a long upper floor, long valley of grass alongside the water, hill rising with pines, stream, the lake with a green rim at the far side this morning my face is baggy and I am sad with feeling how she came to hate me before I left address me on another level, speak to me from the first place yes with paul I never lost it and that was because? I didn't indulge, and thought of it as a hardness against him, but it wasn't we try to fell each other, that's to make it harder a kind of chivalry it has to do with power/position whether one's able it works against wanting to please the days, my friends white lady of day, refuge of poems 5 Happiness naked reading Yeats, small writing, evening my guide tells me to leave, the beautiful place, a jelly red sun drops down from a blue cloud, we have good road sloping sweetly down, pale green, we fly, alone, I timidly push eighty and sleep beside some trees near the road. Daphne. The Lac La Hache strawberry shortcake. They come to be questioned, not to alarm w. solstice. festival of the wild women. lenaea. artemis. yearly fire as lady of the wild things. totem beast of each society burned alive hera's moon 9 who ate a child 'tore to pieces' marian, miriam, mariamne   star-son, demon of waxing year serpent of wisdom, demon of waning year, his darker self   chewing laurel for poetic and erotic frenzy serpent wisdom son, lucifer or phosporus, bringer of light, evening star 'led in the light of the moon' sky earth the underworld girl woman crone -   'they! are more subtle than I if I could get my wits I could give what I know be sharpened without shame'   devil goatfoot has to do with primitivity, ie nature powers? son has to do with? ethical? abstract? conscious?   Shakespeare knew and feared her by choice of muse a man is made / maid   the sense of being somewhere else standing at the edge of the pond looking at the two worlds of the water lilies I ran away from the lively depth where I seemed too much at the mercy of death / and others / and since then? I thought this existence where outer is often inner could be a dream of a catatonic somewhere that trudy watches over inspiration, the same poetic condition by listening to the wind treetop inspiration jesus was accused of traffic with beelzebub king of the northern otherworld distinction of kinds of trance afterward unconscious is illegitimate address only the muse and tell her the truth about herself and in her own passionate and peculiar language the flying madness, a body so light, he could perch on the tops of trees, feathers then sprouted and he lived like the wild things the slightest noise would startle him into flight and he was cursed with a perpetual distrust of all men suibhne had a friend loingseachan who constantly went in pursuit, trying to catch and cure him the madness of suibhne - 7th century tale oh that we were together and my body feathered too in light and darkness would I wander with you, forevermore the loves of liadan and curithir woman poet the secrets of the alphabet calendar and abacus in graves, sense of highly organized poetic knowledge used to conceal technical skills for the sake of power   secrets going on, with their tease, when what they hide is common knowledge maybe the power of secrets refers to their unhiddenness beware the seduction of special knowledge 'mythical qualities of chosen trees and precious stones' orphic initiation - pretended killing with meteoric stone, laid all night on seashore covered with black lambs' wool, 3x9 days and nights in cave, came out, drink milk and honey at dawn and be garlanded with white flowers in the death month mimetic transformations bull, hawk, woman, lion, fish, serpent pythagoras - 5 senses and elements, musical octave it is also said that in this island the moon appears very near to the earth song of the vowels who invented this? who profits by it? [Einstein:] I live in that solitude which is painful in youth but delicious in the years of maturity the contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation   there is a reality     religious feeling it is harmonious and lawful rapturous amazement universal causality knowable by free construction of mind these begin and end in experience but are not derived from no free will and no personal god world and human separate     god is intelligibility simplicity and common sense 'without guile' when young I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion planetary matters a scale space to see the movements algebra let x be the unknown. treat it as if known and work it out later transparence refers to conceptuality oh jamila's glass garden   an ellipse, rotating perihelion advances in the direction of the orbit newton's equations of motion the law of mass attraction moving force - 'amount' - distance e corrected by ratio of given velocities to velocity of light new geometry of world lines in space mathematically the elliptic interval whether the extremes are where to look ie physics and 'experience' somewhere in the universe a closed box inside lives a physicist who sees events and tries to see past them has no way to tell which of two possible explanations to choose principle of equivalence gravity and inertia of two systems it isn't possible to tell which is falling strains which begin to act when we release them the amount of energy in any given mass increases with the subtlety of the locks fire/fission telepathy, fission, transmutation all the pressures and tensions of nature seemed to be in her as inner virtues locating accurately the charm of an idea or its anti-push or what else can it have? subtle sub-tela web textere to weave fine woven there is no logical road from perfection to theory, we are led to it by intuition daily striving is from need, love (says einstein of science) among all states of motion there is none that, compared to others, can be called a state of rest the mass of a body becomes infinitely great when it reaches the velocity of light - a new light makes color under dark, thin green on the grass the fire orange and alive, brown car another sort of object, molded not grown or broken, but intent, has the light focused on its side near tree trunks have light on one side, makes them turn toward me, mosquitos' independence, I look around for the bear, the smoke blows past the car, the stream and the lamp have steady sounds, I found I could reflect the sound of the creek with a page turned only at the right angle 'spiritual exercises' exercises. give a word / say what picture it makes sensation of nearness of the dream's world, when I moved the stick on the fire imagination preoccupation with gods' discourse the process consists actually in an extraordinary refinement of perception the object of mechanics is to describe the motions that occur in nature must be an equivalent graph picture to every functional expression if we wish to describe nature exactly by means of th simplest laws we have to use a different geometry at every point of the world, depending on the physical condition at that point by our causality we have adjusted our thought to a lower order of structural limitations than seems realized in nature. science in the future will discover the restrictions of nature as compared with the apparent causality implied in physical laws time speed metabolism if life were shortened still further, light would be audible day and night would alternate as a light and a dark minute the sun's path would be a glowing circular band in the heavens   positing 'an intelligence superior to our own' nunc stans   relation of causality to time therefore will mathematics, because of magnitude, ie 27 on scale of 1-100, we don't have language so exact music is the pleasure of the soul counting without knowing it is counting goethe antimathematical, but a direct intuition what in it like, the own life. why anyone would leave it. why I leave it. what is it in dope that makes the freedom t and expertise with people and whether it matters to be 'oneself' to make the oneself behind, but it must act accurately dark moon dreamed in car at lilypond spring lake road I'm in an attic sort of cellar, connected to auntie anne, there's a box of baby clothes, while I'm looking at them I see in my mind the face of a man with a bland face and pale blue eyes, outside the 'attic' or sidewall, the man comes in, I remember how he came into my mind, a sort of click, wondered if that says he came in because he'd been seen and I followed him outside and (thinking of the principle of obeying the inner impulse and how j messes things by not) asked whether he knew anything about it (joe comerford) (went to ireland in time of fullness after sufis) (yoga) (will), he didn't want to say. I look at his body when he leans over something and I don't like it, thick and muscular fat on bum and thigh [Yeats] experimental work. he used symbols from the cabbala painted on cards, worked with others when 3 or 4 saw together, the vision would divide itself into 3 or 4 parts, each seeming complete but fitting together. an adaptation of a general meaning a man walked, as it were, casting a shadow, and yet one could never say which was man and which was shadow, or how many shadows if an idea interested me I tried to trace it back to its earliest use some memory of the race healing by image figures combining human and animal, a combination for every possible mental condition citizens of egypt assumed in contemplation the images of their gods a quickness so lovely with his skin torn I have grown happier every year of life as though gradually conquering something in myself from that day the voice has come to me at moments of crisis all must be an idealization of speech I had found again the windy light that had moved me when a child write out our own thoughts in as nearly the language we thought them in words exact enough to hold a subtle ear mind of x was constantly on the edge of trance wd pass into a labyrinth of abstraction and subtlety - a quickness so extraordinary without enough precedent, I had to find reasons for everything I did incurable provincialism I was lost in that region, the path of the chameleon genius is the crisis that joins the buried self for some moments to the trivial daily mind gates and gatekeepers to bring their chosen to the biggest obstacle she can meet without despair that they might turn passion and be joined to the hidden and so be phantoms in their own eyes the whole contest is brought into the circle of their beauty they seemed to labour for their objects and yet to desire whatever happens, being at the same instant predestinate and free had they cherished any optimism, they could have found a false or momentary instinctive beauty and suffered no change subjective person, whose body has presence in the objective, only the eyes alternation between two natures, for good beauty of the antithetical self, calls for the dissolution of the self egypt a symbol of the natural state 6 Wake from remembered dreams, Jamila was in them. Whiskers Point, walking out up to my neck in water, come back send yellow lines forward from my shadow and when I stop, a shivering of bits around the body I like. Memories. Excitement. Storm. The Native woman hitchhiker and her children and how I could hardly hold my shy tears and silly kindness. - the dream - j lives in that large building I often know, old and half empty or nearly empty, not on the ground floor but higher, there has been a tragedy on account of something israeli, a mass slides down and covers a territory, I'm sad and worried about her, she calls out goodbye and vanishes with a cap on her head. I go to her window to look in and waft through the room where she is sleeping. I continue straight through and rearrange three dark choeng sam which are drying on a bench. sandy has been weeping on the steps. I am sailing away but before I go, I am at frank's house to look at his collection of mementos, stones with images on them, and then 2 was figures in a coffin like bed, they are myself with long hair and I'm moving to make love to judy - a woman I then recognize as judy, I admire my neck. there's the big truck but this time I know how to drive what realm is this 7 Did a sink into Lessing, she and Thomas, went deep. Will we ever be together again. At the sight of three lovely people, I cried. The long twilight one road, speed, sky dying very slowly, mist standing up over a river I crossed, valleys, rising, opening, an unbelievable yellow-green beside the road. The sense for hour after hour, I'm dreaming, where's waking. Following a car 2 red lights the gentle easy road, evening driving alone on the road, then the bright lights and the radio, and coming down singing like a teenager, elated into a service station. I love you Lark. 8 At quarter to three, here to the home place. Open sky. Slept and dreamed the food packing place. Ran Studebaker into the ditch from inattentiveness. Pain of loneliness at Sexsmith, the parents' yard full of cars and a congregation around borscht that got quite high. He tells his travel stories, emotionally. - coming through mist, radio, twenty-five to three, to the old place, I dream the place, a food plant, a woman, I explain to her that it's my old home and that I dreamed it with warehouses I ask her if she has a job for me, even a part-time job; she sends me away in the morning I see that the lovely little willow has died, still lovely, with the mirrors under it. then I drive into the ditch and glen roland pulls me out for $10. I exult that I have a car and can pay not to have to ask father to help. this project - walk it v fast in the tent, visions that began, but I stopped them because I can't yet know I'm having them unless I pull up to here. a wheel with blood on it, turning, the blood on top. fires. wake with a thought a broad dark arrow springs from the belly    that's toward you responsibility, the idea of it brought to the moment. wake up 9 Late sleep and the intense sociality and propaganda, dismay, arrogance, resistance, and such a pleasure of Violet, who loved too. [Violet Willms. La Glace Mennonite Church reunion held at La Glace School] - the presence on the left, he nothing to say and can't look, go to a more distant territory for a drink     he's at the window and asks if the car is going alright     safe and easy, not hard to be the expert because I want to learn, offers to show a transmission and how to get into first I tell the story of the tires     we know this way and I want what I'm offered though I don't forget     m asks about lily and I say but not happily by the end when I say how she comes from far away and says 'what?' and that I wonder what she's thinking about     he says probably what she's going to say next, and tells a moralistic story about a young man he wanted to teach a lesson     I'm taking a detached and teaching posture, watching how he keeps declaring his faults as if they aren't his. I want to know how his mind works is there a lever     emotion so close     what's he saying (to company, I'm such a student of human behavior, I'm shrewd, people have hang-ups they get caught in and their ruts get deeper every year)     the effort to work out a psychology, for salvation tells the story of m siebert     I say I've heard it, he says he knows it but tells the story of that man who undressed him     he was unjust and hurt you very much     I tell this story as an illustration and I'll use it all my life     here my teaching and sincerity move too fast - what a terrible tyranny! to go on thinking about it all your life     it's gone out of control. if you think that, we'd better part and he strides out     in the latter time I had been looking at the wild crazy old face, he's crazy, this is his craziness this is precisely the point and no one helps him. and what I think I should have done was be willing to find out what the man said     he was rebuked and it wasn't well done     what for     what everyone's afraid to touch talking indirectly is no good, it falls into his odd system of reflected knowledge     talking directly makes him feel attacked proud - what does pride mean voices. I'm holding mine even. his is obsessed ritualistic hers at such times goes level when she read devotions she read with crude exaggerated emphasis to simple minds     expressions the same the farm wives, with anxiety     what else going home the flow of fields past and a boiling movement of all the colors in the clouds the idea worlds and how they work psychology the spiritual world 'growing' and where the mode comes from how at the sunday do a few times in false smiling exchange I would see his eyes knowing where I was and sweep past them in irritation but acknowledgement, someone seeing something this projection law. I keep seeing lost souls. he keeps seeing undutiful judgmental themes thesis something set down pain. his hers mine the guests the guests have left theirs at home     the beautiful country in penetrating colors the way they winnowed their own tads open exchange which tightened x with fear and joy what is a father j the dream of completeness. apparently the woman's body, she said the work     I still can't think of her without confusion the atavisms that are used by power for - ? joy and innocence, helplessness cunning and control the sensation of goodness law: that what preoccupies as righteousness, is wrongness the sense of being the one to see through cannot be right, unless 10 Taking Lily [my dad's sister] to town. She was there to speak to me about the Lord, she wants to think it's his [Ed's] fault. I got roused to speak myself and then was exhausted and couldn't find or enjoy her. The muddy town, Sexsmith Hotel was a haven and I went to sleep feeling myself in the hospital, the smell and feel of the bed. I said I wished Jesus would come back. The resistance. How can I fix that war. Lessing. Intense fear of the openness where nothing is known and of going wrong. - the deep north refining imagination give sins to the water and be reborn going on without pride or notions is called discipline helplessness when fear and dread have run their course is rewarding to live without fear or pride [Agnes Martin 1973 On the perfection underlying life lecture notes] loyalty isn't to pride but to - the stranger ceremony hills hand mirrors sensory writing naming the gods eros and logos / non personal relating in the rituals of soma, to give oneself over to the god when the soul is alone in sleep, then it takes on its real nature the beautiful admired crazy one the spiral of comparing vs direct path relativity world is there for us to have a relative time     other planets 11 [Camping in Grotkowskis' granary] Day spent finding the house. Lessing and [Frank] Herbert, the focus / sense of a shape that isn't benevolent but that can be partially found. I'm suspecting (it's suspicious) the consciousness technologies of destroying connections with the world (ie madness). Had a while in what felt stoned sight. The way a gentle balanced pressure (insistence) gave this house against fear. [asked a farmer's wife to be allowed to stay in an empty granary] 12 Woke from dream of a sailboat going up our creek to the road, and then turning, green sail like tent. It went fast although I loosed the mainsail, I was worried but then enjoyed it. An earlier dream had a quarrel with him that we enjoyed in the end. I enjoyed it by being cautions and removed. In Herbert and Lessing. Campstove caught fire. - [Herbert Dune] they understood each other the way siblings understood each other, each had shed a skin to become something else many times she had been set free by such a wound, moving on to new alliances which did not completely sunder the old the traditional words of triad farewell we are well and truly wed. response: by my mark, I know you while he occupies dosadi's wave locked the drugged mind onto its primary fears j: I think I know you but I don't know you a simulation model what is sexual opening and what does it give music. the limits within which a consciousness, so fascinated, can operate herbert's interested in possession the power to change your condition form. a mystery which is solved by a few best then there are explanations reflections     which are reflections and which are thoughts softeners: music, beauty what x prefers to the sense of balance in relation to another personality you'll manipulate consciously career wife child beauty health   the single essence of a situation? 'had had their wills broken and were now deteriorated'   degradation / make someone join the play suspicion and fear and the sense of being in the wrong some act just beyond what she considered right   a part of the person manipulated     now to be made an accomplice of the person who manipulates control by use of self hater which is where control it was easy to talk over his head wanting to cripple me     and why? 13 [sketch of moon] It looks like a half. The root fires. Morning in Sexsmith finishing Herbert, learning the posture of outwit. Afternoon in the hills looking for a house. Beautiful. And a few things move or begin to move / the transit / looking in the mirror trying to make the eyebrows relax, what does this body want me to be. Stone piles, wood in muddy water. I'm not able to let go to it yet. 14 White. Little sour. Very beautiful drive. Lessing through inner experiment, to T and C journal. And mistook Friday for Saturday, M uneasy and I was scared and without concentration although it might have been the tea that made fear. They are both photographers. On the way home, East Place called and I went although reluctant and saw red and black over the earth curve that made a childhood sense I thought I could work from. Falling asleep my mind moved through a checking operation without words. I struggled to call the movement into words, to verify it and it was exact. Joy that it's there. Headstand. 15 Same but less, and less sour. Morning wild energy. Sunset excursion, fire opened stones ash moon Strawberries, 3 or 5 on a fine stalk, now I've learned to pick the stalk. Most of the day on medium T and C, bludgeoned struggle with selfrespect, in the journal a few notes hold but the descriptions of events don't. Evening pain jogged at sunset crossroads, then saw the violet-blue east. 16 Sunday Morning nerves. Strange Father revenge fantasies, same (eve) I put up a circle, easy at neighbour, possible to play, be nice. Studying star maps. Small rain. Not much for museum, grump. Meeting Mrs G a little behind the scenes. Onto hill walking in wheat. All day thinking about how to make a relation between closely watched inner and outer and not having to live in only one / and whether the inner works better unwatched etc. Dizzy writing this, the dreamer. Thinking of Luke when he was new to the planet. Wondering about stops on eg revenge fantasies. Rt foot cold (hasn't been). Where the chin is. Also thinking about F and how 17 Less, paler, same taste Moon is strong but I'm less acute and doing what embarrasses, buying a Sci Month. Steak and pie. Rushed to the car, driving a body force forward. Not good at business, more solitary but not inspired by dry hills. By lantern read geological history from two billion, seas, shores, plants, animals, ice. Out to name stars but sky light. North has that orange with spruce points. Fed a sick bee and watched it lap. Insects. I like the geologic span for defending me from local religion. Can find my instinct right moving being but only sometimes feel the lost opening around me. 18 Drier. Lonely. Sad for J, cold devoured Scarlet Pimpernel, soup, ice cream, toast, music. Solidified but no sense of how to move in the open, when it comes. Body is brown and nice. Waiting for when I'll have the will. Now it's guzzling sleeping and ? The evening pond, landscapes at edge water/sky and grass/land. [Baroness Orczy 1905 The scarlet pimpernel ] 19 Drier. Clouds were there lower and higher, trees. Town and an hour of yoga. Making pleasantness over there but barren and sad, it calls itself J. Physiology for space meditation. The yoga book telling me my powers gave some. I'm far from inner life and the outer is splendid but I miss. Pounded and cried, I've blown it with everyone I've wanted. - beginning a certain way into something - a tiny opening gesture and then a disorientation for a moment in the midst of something fear and the ordinary mind are the same here and there are those who keep themselves free in a special manner, and therefore have not lost their memory saw detachment as holding up off a surface like sandy in her canoe praying. sitting in darkness gazing at the navel, trying to discover the place of the heart. persevere night and day in this prayer, on the slow breath, one will in the end find the place of the heart and with it all kinds of wonders and knowledge your mind start at nostrils and push it down to heart the mind when it is united with the soul overflows with joy the heart becomes tender and sheds tears easily a plant's absorption in its limbs 12 on an object concentration a concentration that penetrates eg fire on every level the essence of god collaborates with the self that wants to be liberated (devotion) the cosmic substance itself works to liberate difference between magic and mysticism is devotion 20 Sad on the way to Epp's, M and I both stiff. The walk, she has child charm to try. Slides. The tape of Grandma and I speaking. He [Grandpa] prayed [on the tape], she bowed her head. And laughed. Dreamed Akasha was dead and someone was so locked in grief s/he wouldn't share. She said, such an agony, even when she woke. Back at home I felt Luke's badness of disappointment and my failures. Earlier, drawing universe circles almost concentrating. Driving, realized: concentration, that's what they have. The hood cloud, or sail, that was easterly and got sunset. In it a white cloud reared and was revealed. [Later note: Akasha sick at this time and neighbour child dies] being is assimilated by knowing a fusion of all the modalities   paralysis of the mental flow uniting the rays of his own eyes with the rays of her eyes, he made his way into her body, as wind makes its way through the air the 4 stages of bliss with support coalescences with seed: argumentative a thing a notion and a word nonargumentative memory has ceased, empty of name and meaning reflective knows the thing as energy unreflective becomes one with the infinitesimal energies without seed direct revelation of self beyond that is god by practicing concentration silencing those vibrations which release the force of I to think in an immortal way experiment very gently aumaram aham thought can't be stopped by another thought only by reaching awareness after silence, wake opened   first is light / mind / substance / knowledge / power of c move waves / minds halt, dull   individual is called (inner instrumentality) navigation instruments blisses. of an outer form ego belongs to them inner thought or word no thought bliss big I am seedless   when the powers and pictures, no action stay witness not compromise even with bliss   moon L steady, least management sun R strenuous both inner work don't attend to the actions of others quietly with the sentiments   ignorance, helplessness mixed knowledge desire, projection, action   when love appears in your mind, it's unity truthful thinking and acting not harming, non stealing, acting from highest consciousness, not to enslave (gratify) or be so   right view not conceptual, a lubricated situation complete intention incline to what is right speech direct discipline of simplicity right livelihood right energy, exertion, endurance awake and alive right mindfulness whole environment right absorption nondualist   without discursive or visionary gossip postures control of energy centres ability to pull out of senses concentration 21 The space book draws in me a sense of relief and rightness, yes this is it, or at least the direction. Direct relearning space and time. Naked outside making program for the trance lessons. Every neighbourly meeting is raw and exact, I know how to speak in the ritual way and don't mind; the eyes have a lot of time. Oh J. Hopefulness and a sad caution. Brown smoke went up into a white and blue boiling thing. Lying down Diana said to me, I don't want to be the one to tell you - and I fled to the car and there I wasn't right until town. Wine made the book give me little messages. It's much less abstract that when I left Vancouver and I tell myself I'm here resting but also I think of the end of the month and don't know. Happy smell of strawberries. 22 Sorted pictures, imagined sculpture, drew earth/solar/star conjunctions and studied astrolabe. By evening, hungry and sad. [Trip to Spirit River, Fairview, to visit Heidi's dad, Bill Holst, on his farm] Darkening hurry pack and darkness, fast. Orange deformed moon. Felt the big prairies. A delicious smell at the river. Long awake river and moon on the flank thinking after a while out of the social idiot. Dreamed a honeymoon in which I was sleeping in the car s/he in a hotel and I didn't touch myself, saving it. C was there in the car nicely before I slept. I am still working on voidness and earthness. 23 Sunday morning at the campground reading the swami and feeling wise. Drive spring north and west. The chasm is nearby on the left. Farmhouse with its smell, what is it? And the machine shop with its social life moved in cautiously/boldly licensed by the boss and performing to his pleasure. Performing but without love (liking) the crazy little girl and boy. Driving the bucking pickup having my hand shifted for gear. The canyon. Trees down, grass arcs blown up as if by direction of the setting sunlight. It went down on the other side of the divide. Earth is flat continues on the other side but here breaks into - not breaks, wears and slides [sketch] alternating. 24 Sentimental longing for J's little arms. Waking on the edge and reading comfort. At Bill's trying to trying to see. Thinking. The red flushed beautiful girl to look at jumping off the moving truck. Beautiful weeds. Something to speak to me in my own language. If there is a country of which this is the language, let that country be my country. Bill showing photographs. All day I didn't do what I knew. Evening immense sky, oh the reasonless constructions moving. I have no movie and can't imagine. Driving. Pain. Fairview and a hotel and television. Norther? Slow grass. Slow cloud. 25 Woke thinking and was glad to think before knowing where I was. The Oates most of the day. And home, fireweed outside, drinking. A moth nearly drowned in the wine and crawled on my lips when I drank fast to let it out. The journal of a year ago, drunk. Pain, tragedy, endurance, waiting, and the movie, and Jamila the false legend some longing collects around, and 'thought' oh drunkenness and its slide into the sleeping bag, body goes in a certain way - every drunk night sends me further? Further out. Luke, will you come back? Slept outside. [Probably Joyce Carol Oates 1967 Garden of earthly delights Vanguard] - oates' book of generation tragedy, as it is in the middle kingdom stein writing those things without pain friends failing. those friends I have to love because they don't fail. and oh luke   there is so much making there is too much making to hold patience stay still one move head in the direction of what's loved and then starting anywhere, and after site. clear, black, clear. star points in all direction. location holds by them, go toward no not yet ship breathes, wing sounding uuuuuuh-huuuuuh the steor waits and is made able to wait delphinium, dolphin, dauphin delphus a womb 26 And woke to slant of light from very low in the east and sleep and wake, the white moon at noon's place. Going to M and F making or finding a kind of harmony. Crying telling M I'm lonely, wanting to tell about T, C and J. She said she had that pain when we were young and she despaired of making a connection between us and him. An artist is one who is dissatisfied. Bread. - one kind of experience, and the abstract variants ie experience and explanation impulse and its variants, stop, redirect   they like a good explanation, prevailing theory   when I step outside the feel and smell of the air makes me her: I need a year to reconstitute stare   crystal axis captivity in the light of the ear is the united seed of the sun and moon inside gathering energy sitting meditation the centre in the midst of conditions right companionship housekeeping movie task remembering where the thought is, where it began, and where it fades out only after a hundred days of consistent work there develops spontaneously in the light a point of genuine creative light used to study the individual examples then detached from this and absorbed himself in the whole thus a balance, together with concentration and detachment in other fields of thought and essence patiently to try it by the known faculties of the soul 27 All morning such an ache for Jam. Got into Trungpa for comfort, wrote Luke. When I'd lain down in the dark, and was watching breath, my head swelled up with a lot of room between the temples, above the little face and the little breath, a joy of relief and peace lying there with it. As often, didn't sleep until late, 'thinking.' The feel of the breath in mouth. Morning violet walk. fast walk to the hill, restless climbing a tree, not seeing, wanting comfort about the movie. It happened when I'd concentrated and seen through briefly. [Later note: J phoned after lunch.] [Not sure which Chogyam Trungpa, could have been 1973 Cutting through spiritual materialism or 1976 The myth of freedom and the way of meditation, both published by Shambala] 28 Slightly metallic but not sour. Lying awake/asleep for a long time, as most mornings. The moment comes to leave the bed. Breakfast. Coffee? Yes, I'll say yes to whatever wants it. Someday I'll say no. Movement, car, Sexsmith to mail. Shampoo and the dugout swimming a little distance, really moving in water, pleased. The haircut washed. Back to cinema writings impatient to throw them out. The Nancy Graves piece, a woman who works with what she loves, she's not ashamed yeah. Evening café for supper, watch a kid throw himself around. And then the Teepee Creek road and posts, grass, wire, soil, stones wire grass soil, the frame starts to make me move. The sky has a few diffuse streaks down as I drive up the road it grows, the dirt road and then over the hill to the fire place and there the light moves in announcing itself fire and god, some peeled branches and fireweed and the ruby light a light for red and green. I've never seen anything like it on film and I was beginning to love as well as imagining success. Driving looking through the lens, sensation like blindness. What does the sound say. Bits. 29 Sun for La Glace. Aged faces of young ones, M catching me with the message that directly heated my belly. F in his worn way serving in the kitchen. The strain of strange meetings I often couldn't lighten. "So what are you doing now?" "So where are you living now?" Except Bernice and Dorothy the look is enough. I hadn't any special penetration cos I was being seen and ashamed / and not very interested except to see the sort of happiness of the people who live in one place and build a position in it. M looked lovely in her dark hair and white skirt, red coat. A fat little girl coming on to her so confidently and she looking up into the bleachers in her willing way. After shelling peas sitting wanting to tell her about the flooding and its fright, that the world is god, she said mirrors, I said coextensive but I mean is. He said if there weren't a black meetz we wouldn't know a white one. Going home it was vague and dumb driving again. Webster's people. And the stranger. 30 Sunday Warm out, naked body brown shine pleasing under me. The camera to try things. Reading bits, sorting the esoteric notes, scattered, can't or don't latch on anything. See anxious face and don't like myself. Worried about 'J', write her and it turns angry, go out for the twilight high but it's camera experiments except for some sense of scum and mud. Division of this doing and disbelief in it and I tell myself I have to do something. But exploiting this foundation - without inspiration and so unworthy etc. Worry about brain damage. Lying down breathing, the wings in the nose. Seem to be repressing notions because they make such a garble and are always unresolved or when they resolve it's by showing themselves irrelevant. Thinking to speak to J brought such a repetition of anxieties and with them the sense of unmendable lostness, ie brain damage and impossibility of friending because it's too complex. I've accumulated so much teaching and want to be rid of it and answer my questions myself. Except Trungpa so nice and comforting says pain's the way, start simple, all you need is what you've got, Last night dreamed J threw a torch, set the childhood house on fire. It burned the parents' room and one other, went out itself and left two rooms. I was going to teach at Kingston. 31 Lots, milky, sour. Checking through yoga sellers, mostly want the concentration but not outer nowhere. Bear Lake smell of sawdust and cabin bushes. Brown lake with rocks. The eager girl with brown skin. Coming home the presence of T freaking me, closed it with supper and reading at night. Scratch under window, fireweed moving, go out, the lantern makes strong green and pink, something scrabbles through stems close to the ground. The lantern chases a fur animal tail, around it long fur radiating quills. Porcupine. I chase it alongside the cabin and through the grass to the trees around the shed, and there it climbs a post. I hold the lantern and watch it seeking with all four scratching claws to find a way through the ceiling. It sits in a fork, first with its back and then its face toward me. Little face with hair stood up around it, red mouth. It must be afraid. I sing to it and it stops to listen. Raise and lower the lantern. I'm feeling and also thinking powerful meeting, I'm so much bigger and it has got itself stopped. I sing that I won't hurt it. It climbs four-legged down the post. It has had its searching hind legs on a window and pushed it out from the wall, it balances but gets down without pushing over the window. Hides behind something. Gets out through a narrow place in the back. I hear it running slowly through the barley. The concentration of light in night. 1 August Sore tongue, dry mouth, little. Early bright. Waking dark. Later the alternation of strong hot and cold, clouds. Sitting without pants out front. Mrs neighbour doubtful and me too. Evening back roads find a brown empty house. Bathing suit and comic. Take sky pictures. White paper shadow pictures. The shamanism notions and possibilities exciting me. What if I could work with lovely things and aren't I born for that anyway, the signs in childhood. Want or imagine to make bird poles. Imagining going on living alone. 2 Sudden to Epps to ask about, maybe seek out bird poles. M. The Indian hill gone under, angry. [My dad has plowed under the Indian graves on his ridge of native grass.] We go to pick fat saskatoons, on the way back see what's left of the slope, quite a lot, and very beautiful. Find a 4-triangle stone there. M likes the idea. At Joan's next to the current bushes. When she shows her weeds she's lovely. M is odd with me. Back at the table I find myself looking away from her, talking on about sex and kids should be able to do it, staring at the far barn thinking what's this but not able to find it. Trying to edge her somewhere? Imagining her guessing me out and that moment on the edge, that could never happen with her. He needs to tell her people have praised him for his kitchen work. A difficult situation incomplete without her comment. Lily's letter said "I don't know whether to feel sorry for her or not" and I was hurt and struggled. Beautiful cloudless sky closer than when it has clouds. The colors of grass and fields. Everything calling. Two blackbirds at a slough yelling at me. 3 Instead of touching, imagined it in my mouth. It was real and woke well. Yoga virtue and hot, out (the wings inside making [sketch]), Seventeen magazine carefully reading the ads eating half a watermelon in bathing suit thinking about American living. Evening stubble light, wide horizon clear color without cloud, trees sharp on it. The light inspired me. An oblique faint brilliance and clarity on the window frame I set out. The world goes on giving grace. Reading yoga, Eliade. Little J as a love not pain but remote. T C and R as distant companions, Daphne and Josie too. Luke a scare still. Want more time. V hot. The night of the aurora. Sleeping under them. [diagram of pivoting window set in ground] [Probably Micea Eliade 1964 Shamanism Routledge & Kegan Paul] 4 Started down the path and found myself limping. Imagined writing sci fi but even in the thrill, couldn't write more than a paragraph. The storm, watched the clouds come, wind with them, lightning veins standing for a frame, pink rain making roof plane over my head. Frightened dream of having grown a beard. Alternately imagine trusting my animal and revising her completely. Imagine finding out everything for myself and going on without cultivated notions. 5 Fright and bewilderment again, what to do. Idiocies and how I mess up simple things. A chip on the lens, out with tripod taking wind. Biel's strange nature, the fantasy landscape and then the odd structures of events. I am located oddly between ways able to see to say no but not far enough. Miss and am sore for J, try to hold that in silence. Cooking. What true thing can I make of this strong wind. Time and place. Thinking, in Biel, the thinking about thinking. The way talking, when I go for milk, is complex. Going into other thoughts, reading and coming back to this long dream. [Mary Staton 1976 From the legend of Biel Ace] - I didn't want her but agreed out of inertia. Dreamed Daphne wanted to make love to me, I took her back to the house, Ezra met us, Jam had come home, she was in the bedroom in a dress, crying on the bed. Daphne came and touched her and J in her little innocence said Oh you're hot too, and put her arms up to Daphne. 6 Strong wind. Opening the suitcase wanting to burn but working. That came after intense pain/bewilderment. Threw the coffee pot away. The vertigo and sitting raft in it. Imagining independence and my own life. Throwing out what is wrongly imagined. Relief, I think this time I'll not go under. Exact yoga and inspired. Fields, mix of greens and yellows, clouds, flying past the light. In the upper strong movements of filets, the evening sky more and more soft partitions in blue grey. I was outside looking. Inside [my parents' house] music began to go 3-D in me. Looking along the glass, the column made by drape and its reflection such depth I was in heaven. When M came the lights on and the human world. She was talking from the gathering she came from, evasive and silly. I sit down on his left and he talks about positive and negative. I say Das Magnet ist ein Uhrphänomen and he delights me by talking about substance and clumping. In the depth I thought stoned, heaven, dream, but it continued into self congratulation. His structural pleasure. In we go through them (meteors) the cross-eyed man thinking about homology, the way it's irritating. 7 Trying to fantasize barn. 'A meditation.' Wind still here, breakfast and then I got steered into the bar unprepared, to phone, and we were disoriented between then and now and I was playing tough because she'd had so many people and might not know me from them. Yoga concentration less. I visit the inside parts but it goes into thoughts of - Sleepiness / a high with G who looked lovely off the field. Buns and milk from the provisioner. Looking around with a sense of the structures of this nature world and some sense of maybe working homologies. What does it mean? The loveliness of movements, clouds appearing at edge of the roof, anything could come, and in the human too if not afraid, but that isn't it. Time, the infinities to find out. Patience, rest. If people in all this world's human experience have said one thing meaning another and been confused and well directed by that, what is there to say and what is left out when I/we try to say it more directly. But experience. Yes, it was this. Not symbols but experience homologous because of the way it is learned, sense of inside of head, and room and ? Slept outside facing west. Some stars in clear blue over orange. 8 Tempted to think of wise good guiding. Piperazine. At yoga went into body to feel the quality of each part. Wind. Correction goes on often, esp morning? The wind, what's it like, here cool on one side, like shadow, fluctuates with the sound, leaves and grasses. The grain of the edge of its contact and sun, which parts feel it most, and how palms and forearms, sex. At the sex it's very strong. Face looking up to see brown clover heads, a few white and yellow, the fireweed tower and intense blue. I go naked in to get the camera and look for things, tell myself it's teaching me. Some swallows? Peak wing and tail with white band, 3, fly through the space between tree clumps, above me. Reading Tulku and finding him advising the porousness I know from fearing to fall in. Staton, her mix of exact subtle description and idle stupid metaphor. Her sense of moving in mental space. A dancer. Also sound. I don't know whether to believe her. Talkative all day telling things. In the morning T and C here, R too, nicely. Impatient at the post office. The moon's position pulled up my head and I invented a form, not fast enough and the camera jammed. Swimming, a sense of having more time, let body rest in it and had time to know the warm above cool below and the colors coming toward me on the face of my waves. The place where little mud-colored frogs went into the water to greet big tadpoles with formed legs and the frog body still jelly! [Tarthang Tulku 1978 Time, space and knowledge Dharma Publications] 9 Morning dream. La Glace. Esther has brought me egg pudding very good and soup from J's wedding, I had been expecting J but she's having desert at the La Glace Co-op. I tell Esther I wanted to marry J myself, she says Oh but you're too ill and tired, she shoes with a gesture the man's confident chest and tie. I say I was but I'm not any more, Luke comes and wants me to take him to school. I say but J won't be happy with him. the mother-in-law arrives and there's a fight behind. Luke and I get out of the elevator and I look around for J. Sun wakes me. Earlier, dancing in the church cloakroom singing, I look at M and say When you make up music do you hear the individual instruments' sounds? Like right now I'm hearing an oboe and trumpet in parallel (I did). Triumphed. Asking David what he thinks about possession. He starts to tell a story about when he was a boy, they would have a group and I was wondering, as I slept I'd seen a picture of a diagram from Andy's wall [sketch] and I wondered if I'd taken Andy into me and had him ever since as the other person in my split, who I was when I wasn't me. Impatient, running to get money. "Well you come and shoot." Packing. The bliss already past and that life finished as the combines roared around and they wanted me out, and unease installed. Hello today says the garage boy. Yoga on grass behind car, night airport. 10 Vancouver Looking in the mirror at the airport, the woman in black, handsome. Low over the fields seeing the marbling, flow, original ground, and low enough to see reflections in the lakes moving at a different speed. The white stroke trees turning from root up textures around sloughs, lakes, the marks of cultivation, brush pile squares cut out of bush, a river with banks still [zigzag sketch], another in a wide open path. Clouds slight mass so exactly edged, the open level between two different cloud layers, it's open country and I thought about wanting to walk in it, tried to wrestle that to present perfect, made it so that it was being in an airplane imagining walking the road flying (cross-legged, on a plank, etc). Rain runs [horizontal sketch] across window. Diana. The shoes left on the sidewalk under her window. Story of the porcupine told at a wrong time, but the frogs, right. I'm holding distant and tensed to see the errors of our captivities in wrong notions. Daphne and Roy, coming to supper making pleasure, Kit. And with that something generous and delighted. Watching Roy smoke and get more on and more off. Frogs a good strong laugh. R went to find a Japanese frog artist. Daphne on knoll, releasing the thoughts needing to be said and Daphne meeting them all. And you in your new face closely watched. Who is this who thinks she knows me to have an ownership. But vigilance turned into a sore belly. 11 The dog at waking and seeing her body, opening the bed. All day fast talk, at first taking a position. She talks looking inside and not apart. The theories stories gossip plan. D's place scaring me. The reflection of myself and surrounding objects on the piano scared me, I thought I could lose myself in it. It was the sense of dope openings (doors, trapdoors) waiting all around to be sprung. Playing the prelude very well. Music. Confessions of brain damage, tournament rules, the tree that died of mirrors, language rubble. She of words dropping her out. Fascinated stories of Cheryl. Bach's oboe and violin sinuosities still going. Much more in earlier part. Dream, in the dream a nearer waking mind, on a narrow boat going up a river, grey wide swift but smooth, a stranger is steering or paddling, I'm there at random, realize it's going to go a long way, ask to be let off there, a part of London I've heard of but not seen, old stores with apartments over, they rent to each other and outsiders hardly ever get a chance, I'm walking, see a big space converted to studio with a printing press, want something like that, am shown a place so decrepit the ceiling joists fall as we stand on them, they're hardly nailed up, another place where I am with J, the windows have frosted glass like dentist office with Venetian blinds, and outside off the corridor are rooms with old people lying in near dead sleep among broken bedding rags and filth. Rotherhithe a long way on the tube. Does Lessing make captives and does that further her. 12 Evening reading the journals, unclose. 13 All day in bed flying, exchanging, in love and seeing. 14 Unable to do anything. 15 Josie? Slides bad. 16 Jungle, red feathers, she saw acacia. This was a night one and perfect. Waking in love and kissing her palm. "Oh me too." Exquisite loving moving, gone deep. 17 Camera, Stude parts. 18 In the morning suddenly finding ground under her mother, I talk about Richardson. 19 Daph, enmity misery. In the bed sleeping together/apart. Often lost by now. 20 The Steveston marshes. Crying, in pain, locked out of her and out of everything. Make friends with Daphne but something's cheap in it, I try to make her guilty. She's sleeping full of Sandy.   part 2 up north volume 1: 1978-1979 june-january work & days: a lifetime journal project