|
26 September Vancouver
Joyce [Frazee] red and blond. "I don't know how much you can see."
"I can't see very much."
I formulated the fright, "When I am in a moment that way, and it
opens up around me in that kind of depth, I think I'm going to die."
"Everybody thinks that." "But when I'm there it seems like
I have no more reason to be on this earth. Though I think there are people
who stay on this earth even then." "Yes, that's right."
"I feel like there is a core person, she's just there, what she
loves to do is just be in existence and describe it."
"How do you think I could mislead you?" "It wouldn't be
that you want to, it would be that you'd taken a branch that was wrong."
"But I feel responsible to the one I started out with." "She'll
be there. You can't know that."
About the others in me she said "Yes I know about that, that happens.
All I can do is try to teach you to ground yourself in it."
"If I live as I know, one, I'm out of work, two, I'm afraid of evil
coming into the world through my openness."
"But people do go wrong, when they trust." "Yes they do."
[Chair dialogue] She [power woman] said "I want your innocence,
your eyes, your beauty, your open face, your lyricism." I [love woman]
said "I want your knowledge and power."
4 October Valhalla
Driving through the brilliance and sparkle of this morning early light,
more space made by leaves' fall, yellow pale light on tree trunks, leaves
yellow just at the tops or on the lee of copses. A greyer blue in the sky.
Flowing, breaking, smoke.
Here dim in the house, wood, quickly a fire to boil water.
6
Rudy with the barrel heater.
-
The adequate form of speech is speech that draws
near. This nearing is only made by vigorous exactness.
7
Fasting, NW wind, outside scouting wood. Liking to drive to the store,
grey-silver road, color on either side.
Sleep. Drifting into pictures and stories. Listening to the wind roar
in the pipes, the two roars, fire and the pull of wind.
10
When I passed through Valhalla a coffin just coming out the church door.
[Valhalla cemetery]
11
Coming up in the morning, still in the dark under quilts, I can look
at the weather through the airhole.
I'm delighted she's coming, make the curtains listening to Dawson Creek
radio, well baby clinic, senior citizens' announcements in a false voice.
Clean the kitchen and hit the road. In the black coat, walking in bright
fast moving air, west. Turning suddenly with thumb out to stop either the
camper or the car. The camper stops. I run after it, door opens and above
is a fat man, hearty, inviting me to sit at the back or unfold a chair.
He has a rum and Coke with ice on the stand next to the gearshift. "Didn't
I pick up a beautiful hitchhiker?" A butter blond woman in orange lipstick
and well-coordinated country clothes is looking around folding her arms
over her chest. "My boyfriend is a commercial fisherman, he's in a
Cadillac behind." Sitting on the floor between them. In both I see
immediately and almost exclusively the grotesque. I look at the countryside
with them through their big screen, contemptuous of his hopelessness in
his silly rattling machine and her witless passivity dressed so nicely staying
in the background ready to be fucked when the greyface in the Cadillac wants.
-
It was one after another, them, the Tao te ching lovely notes,
going back happily peeking into J's pretty room, and standing in the bush,
in the grey, with rose in the sky, the trees weaving over each other and
the deep sound, the fright in the dusk and certainty firmness about being
able to leave it at its edge. The moment standing still with the tall dried
Queen Anne's lace stalks, touching their seed platform to hear the little
music.
Went up - I thought - and saw the wood, and Raven Darkholme - stopped
the refusal - wanted to know more, there were images too dim and the speaking
voice (that speaks ahead of this writing) said something like, It's thinking
but I'm not able to read it. Went back lying down and in Raven of course
found C the imperious curled lip. Imagined Raven seeing the one in the wood,
shabby funny haircut standing still listening with pleasure to the very
small ringing of the seedhead and looking past the first of the stalks to
more of them, presences, leaning one way.
12
I come into Epps with one of their sort of sentences half apology and
am lost from the beginning, he asks about my car, grimacing when I tell
him what's up, and goes on with woe stories. And she grimaces with everything
she says, she's grey. After lunch I ask she says it's too painful, how she
can't bridge the abyss. Doesn't want me to push. "I'm tired, I just
want to rest" with tears. Sometimes her face is quite tough and shocking
behind its glasses and bangs.
We got the table together from the old Wiens house, some little pansies.
When I look at him I feel a patience and steadiness in my face because
he can't press with his eyes.
13
Red east, morning dark.
Headlights, cold schoolbus lights, a stand of children waiting at the
crossroad
At the airport excited, pacing around, being the only one watching it
come down. She's there after the first one, the Indian sweater and red plaid
bag, a hug from behind the shoulders. Happy. She's not.
Driving, looking at the greys and browns. "I didn't expect it to
be this nice."
Walking with Ezra a long way, crossing the dams. The stonepile. The trees
with the brown light.
Charlie Moodie's broken nose, the jelled blood.
In the bush the dark reds. Colors in swarms, clumps, places. Walking
through zones. The high trees make a roar of wind silent in other parts.
When we'd come across the dam the light was edge-on, only the poplars
showed it brown, luminous pink brown, less into the stand, grey trunks at
the depth beautiful. Moving past it.
14
First the sunrise light on west wall, rippled, two panes.
Talking in bright breakfast slowly cooking room - about - what beautiful
is.
Slowly driving to Hythe, the Swede saw, she carried it, red handle. United
Church basement, in the corner with tea talking about focus.
Home, taking a new north road, sleek sky, a sheen she said. White light
on the grass either side of the white gravel road. The pale grass, luminous,
it's so extraordinarily luminous.
Driving slowly. Light on trees across a field, pale grey cultivated fields.
Smoke came pouring off a large field on the northern horizon
and up in a broadening slant to the white clouds, where it was brown.
Sawing feeling inspired to work in good detail, carrying wood on the
screen door feeling in small steps a swaying match. The sweetness of the
right tool biting fast, and her face, working.
At Homestead Hall supper, the beautiful red-cheeked kids, new babies,
a father carrying one. Driving there sunset and moon rise, headlights in
the mirror.
15
Sunday. Morning, person in big Chinese pants and small inside-out teeshirt
leaning forward out of chair talking about finding the frights and either
staying or running.
Walking, guilt about 'work' telling myself it's alright, I'm the sort
of person who does that kind - not knowing is part of it - not wanting to
be a special kind of person. Strongest in past days the sense of this life
and all its parts being - a one-person dream, test, making a certain kind
rather than another.
The fright of responsibility not knowing.
What is this place - as dream.
16
The road turns alongside a lake with swans, many. We stop. She goes carefully
through rose thorns, I get to the firm edge of the lake, pretty cuniform
on the edge, large and small crossed swan tracks. Their calls as they go
to the other side not hurrying, the white and dark swans. The lake long,
Mareotis, a lake of some other land. My friend pointing a camera at me,
behind her a house I loved for some reason. [May 1979] Beautiful
light. One red 22 shell she picks up.
At Connely Wong's café she talks Chinese and I blush.
At home we cut posts and carry them on the sledge.
Cook and eat good cheese sauce.
She cries, wants to run away and become a saint.
Moon brightening a lot of sky in thin cloud, white curtains.
17
Morning tired but make fire and eat breakfast outside in warm sun talking
about analogical universe-thoughts.
The three men with Cherry Jack trying to be let in.
Night wind. The character of this day.
18
Stones, borders, zones, bushes. Branches so like veins into
air. The concentration and radiation of stone or bush.
20
"An irrational grief because it would all be covered with snow when
I got back"
21
Seen passing. Black field with spruce. This brief bare season, sun.
In cold, orange moon at horizon rose with Castor and Pollux.
22
Animal I thought was a cow, who turned white bullface and form and threatened
to charge - I whisked myself away
Thrashing through paths trying to see through everything said and not
letting those communications alone to look after themselves. The woods in
the cold overcast with bits of rain, dead branches among the live, life
of greys, reds and the palomino grass.
A young person in sweater, grey, carefully coming behind.
The beavers' houses and dams, ponds. They're the small people who live
there.
23
The house by the marsh. We went for firewood there, sawing soft thick
poplar as if limbs, the taste on hands. In dream I'd gone into it and found
glass in the windows, curtains, then saw other furniture and went opening
doors, seeing clothes, a room with two beds.
Clumsy in work she said. Today it was in thinking about her and me until
making supper turned into harmony.
And then the sun came down past the arch, and outside, the brilliance
of orange on the house and the blue intense shadows of grass and how fast
it faded.
24
In Grande Prairie a sort of marvel at what can be in a day, the faces
on the street, brilliant shine on the pavement as we came in from the north.
26
Quick morning, warming car in the dark. Schoolbus lights at a distance,
red flashing. Stars clear, a few very white, Orion high in the south. Car
goes sweetly, stronger. Light comes quietly. The joy and marvel of this
journey are dim and substantial, through Valhalla and turning in La Glace,
is it really so, here, with this companion, turning south, lights in farmhouses,
country mailboxes. When I can feel it I think this is heaven.
"I think we did good work yesterday, I haven't seen that face in
some time" and I could feel how clear it was, and hers, the face that
I keep in front of my eyes. It was only presence I wanted, not talking,
morning highway. At the door the stewardess smiling far in, saying "The
dog's not going and you're not going." And walking to the car with
Ezra a fright of continuing to live in happiness and confidence.
part 4
- up north volume 1: 1978-1979 june-january
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
|