the golden west volume 23 part 4 - 2001 september-october

work & days: a lifetime journal project

6 September One of Tom's horrible emails that I read twice and junk. Horrible how - a hard pose - profane, egotistic, loveless. I have been reading someone called Richard Nelson, a piece about hunting deer in Alaska. There is first the craft of being and seeing, and then the craft of writing in recovery of that true being. "Ever mindful of treading the edge between protracted, eventless watching and the startling intensity of coming upon an animal, the always unexpected meeting of eyes." A raven "lofts and plays on the wind, then folds up and rolls halfway over, a strong sign of hunting luck. Never mind the issue of knowing; I'll assume the power is here and let myself be moved by it." A lift of wind hisses in the high trees. His hooves tick against dry twigs hidden by the snow. I can almost feel the breeze blowing against his fur, the chill winnowing down through close-set hairs and touching his skin. He reaches his muzzle forward and draws in the affliction of our smell. A sudden spasm stuns him, so sharp and intense it's as if his fright spills out into the forest and tingles inside me like electricity. His front legs jerk apart and he freezes all askew, head high, nostrils flared, coiled and hard. The gift of the deer falls like a feather in the snow. And the rifle's sound has rolled off through the timber before I hear it. elation and remorse, excitement and sorrow, gratitude and shame. While I work with the deer, it's as if something has already begun to flow into me. I couldn't have understood this when I was younger and had yet to experience the process of one life being passed on to another. In this and other ways, she treated meat as a sacred substance, a medium of interchange between herself and the empowered world in which she lived. The sky fades to violet, darkens, and relaxes, like a face losing expression at the edge of sleep. I can see the crenulations of his nose, the fine hairs on his snout, the quick pumping of his ribs, and my face reflecting on his bright indigo eye. It's as if the deer has moved slowly toward me on a cloud of snow, and I am adrift in the pure motion of experience. the shining edge of her ebony eye lowers his head and stretches it toward her, then holds this odd pose for a long moment. She reaches her muzzle to one side, trying to find his scent. hot and shallow-breathed and seething with unreconciled intent And now the most extraordinary thing happens. The doe turns away from him and walks straight for me. There is no hesitation, only a wild deer coming along the trail of hardened snow where the other deer have passed, the trail in which I stand at this moment. She raises her head, looks at me, and steps without pausing. I am struck by how gently her hooves touch the trail. How little sound they make as she steps, how thick the fur is on her flank and shoulder ... I am consumed with a sense of her perfect elegance in the brilliant light. She makes no move and shows no fear, but I can feel the flaming strength and tension that flow in her wild body as in no other animal I have touched. She flings out over the hummocks of snow-covered moss, suspended in effortless flight like fog blown over the muskeg in a gale. Richard Nelson 1989 The island within "The accumulating ruin of the North American landscape." "I knew I was home. Something in me identified with that landscape ... Such a purity of feeling, of joy and of being in the right place, I have not often felt since ..." When John Haines says that about a hillside in Alaska I am saying it about the hillside near Santa Ysabel. That's where I'm supposed to settle. Oh can I do it soon. - What am I feeling toward - after disruption I've picked up two threads, recovered two zones of my work, Frank after his life and the mind and land notes. Their relation. In the notes there are moments of my notes in origin years. I was groping - a culture has been assembling since - people who have taken it further than I could have been assembling each other. It seems to me that Frank was ripped down the middle between land-self and land-denying self. He couldn't know land-denying self was that. What if he'd had a religion that taught him to hunt without arrogance and take hunting alertness as ethical discipline? Can only the very talented, very educated, and financially fortunate make high culture of beast nature? I sacrificed him, and others, to come to know what I know. I lived on grants and welfare to have time to come to it. What is being assembled is real only if it works for people like him too. Could he have come to it while making a living as a farmer? It says yes. He didn't choose to trust his land-self. He had already chosen wrong when I met him. Tom says what it is about me is what he calls serenity, "a good energy, an energy of goodness." I think it is trust of land-self. - And then something comes up I have to deal with. Talking to Tom about writing. He calls me on sticking barbs into him. It's true but why do I have a sore heart at being stopped. Why am I angry with him about writing. He was wanting me to say something nice about the Joe Cool junk he sent yesterday - is it about disillusion? I feel I should go away if I don't respect him as a writer. I'm angry at him for being so lax and weak as a writer, for not having done what's needed. I'm spiteful about nacreous and citron because I think they're weak self-aggrandizing effects. Is it rebellion I feel. Something saying, don't ask me to feel sorry for this man in relation to writing. I'll feel sorry for him in relation to other things but I'm fierce about writing, I should be fierce about writing. Should I be fierce about writing     no Should I feel sorry for him about writing     I couldn't bear humoring him about writing     no You're saying I should     Is there a good reason why I'm resisting this     no A bad reason     An illusion I want to protect     About me     no About him     I want to imagine he's better than he is     I want to imagine he's less dependent than he is     Am I propping a straw man    no But he's lost as a writer     Do you want me to 'support' that junk    NO I wanted to believe I had that with him     I don't     I hate it when I see that I don't     What's the pain, is it loneliness    NO It's crestfallen     no Will you tell me what it is    no Is it shame     I dealt crookedly with what he sent     I indulged in evasion     It backfired     Do you want me to indulge his junk    no You want me to lead him through     Can't he do his own fuckin' work     But you want me to help     Will you tell me what the resentment is    partial loss What I'm doing without     no Resentment of his partial loss     Actual loss     Because it costs me something     As if he were a child with a bad leg     YES I'm not willing to see his losses with clarity     He has a moral handicap that shows in his writing     And do I     no, you used to Will you tell me what it costs me     integration His loss costs me     no Not being willing to see it     Lack of integration costs me something     Will you lead me to integrate it now     One card     judgment Judgment of his emails     Is my judgment wrong     no You mean what if I didn't take it personally     How would I feel them if I didn't take them personally     This is very sore     'This is very sore'?     He was listing his blocks as a writer     the ties, the cost of male privilege, the notion of style, and ignorance of high culture If I took it as a dream it would be a dream about what ties him     If I know that and he doesn't, is it helpful     Doesn't it make me his therapist    no Interpret it     no It has to do with learning     There is no hope of true intimacy     no, there is Learning about men     YES Does that resolve it     YES I do have a tin ear for what's tender     YES Take them as communications from his unconscious     I did the work with unconscious, he hasn't     He'll never be a really good writer     It's too late, he blew his chances     That's an unbearable thought     Is it true of me, that I'll never be a really good writer     Are you sure     What will we know is really good     Will you explain    look for, crisis, to recover, process One is only a really good writer at moments     I can, at moments     Could he, at moments    no Because he doesn't have the discipline to go to meet crisis     Does any of this have to do with my inner guy     It doesn't matter that he is or isn't a writer     It matters that he doesn't support my writing     7 A melancholy night. Sun on the bed this morning. Anger was saving me from depression. Stop the feisty one and there's a bitterly disappointed one. I was lying in the dark saying, I was so in love with him. I wanted to bring him books, write him letters, read him my journal, publish small pond with him. I wanted to be in love in writing with him. I no longer have a heart for any of that. The moment he read my letter in a sneering way, and all the other defeats of hope. It means it's over. We had a good time but I'm so reduced in this connection I should leave it. Someone else says, but I like his manliness, I like his voice and hands and the way he carries himself. I like having a real man. I don't think I could get another one. I like the kick. I've kept going in this self-division by shifting to bedrock with the book again and again. It says, your disappointment is a baby's. If you are in this connection for either of those reasons, it will go badly. The better way is to see him as he is and offer help. Take it to crisis every time. Go through. Now I'm saying, yes, that's right, I'm willing to go on in that spirit, but what about the sadness and disaffection, the lack of energy in relation to him? Surely lack of hope is not to be borne on and on. I get away from the question when I'm here. The phone calls I yawn my way through keep the wolf quiet, I don't have to endure separation anguish. But it is going to keep coming up. So it stands. Do you want to comment     be happy with Tom by improving withdrawal You mean energy damping     I don't know how    fight to process partial loss of the mother Connection with the mother is my source of liveliness     I recover contact with the mother in writing     I don't know how to proceed     I believe you but I'm at a loss     Will you say more     persist, (10p), love, improvement Will you point (10p)    opposite of isolation Communal     Allow love broadly     Like at the garden     YES Be candid with Tom about this     Do you want to say anything specific about loss of energy with Tom    complete unconscious defeat and anger 8 Saturday. There's sun on the bed. Dennis [downstairs] is running water. Louie is coming back from China today. I'm in the dream section of ch 5. Will go try to buy a ticket today. In this other matter, morose. I have my two pages of work summary, Tom summary. In the Tom summary I see I've been here before. Is there an exercise to complete unconscious defeat and anger     learn to recover the judgments of early love Are they unconscious     I've learned not to blame and now I have to learn to blame again     Are they accurate judgments     no Resentment is the word     YES Is there an antidote to resentment    gratitude, but don't use it that way Resent him     Resentment is keeping me from being happy with Tom     The stages have been 1. early love = joy and fear 2. struggle 3. defeat, withdrawal, resentment   Is there a next stage     no Will you comment     come through by persisting in lover's judgment It's central and profound work     Should I address it to my father     no To the conditions I impose on free energy     Is that the way to think of it     I'll have free energy if someone defers to me     If I'm looking beautiful     If I'm desired     If I'm agreed with     If I'm more wonderful than the people I'm with     If I can impress people     If I won't be opposed     Do you want to summarize    they're situations where you don't get into conflict The conflict is between desire for energy and what - fear?    no Shame    no Will you tell me    hopelessness If energy is allowed it will manifest as hopelessness     no I don't understand     I say 'energy will be no use'     no A kind of desire for death     NO A conviction that energy will make no difference     YES Does that tell me the condition I impose on energy     He was impervious and taught me despair     The culture was impervious to children     Men are in a position where they are first taught despair and then given power     This is still unclear     The condition I place on energy is effect     no Permission     no Will you tell me     masculinity It has to be male energy     With Tom I can't have male energy so I have none     Is that the crux of it     There is such a thing as female energy?     I censor female energy     Will you tell me what it's like    love recovered from defeat for improvement Like kissing Tom when I wanted to be kissed     no Is it energy     Is it a natural form of energy     A natural flow of loveliness and liveliness     Is it the complement of male energy     no Do I have any acquaintance with it     no Does Joyce     Marianne Williamson     Is it a state where I make someone else successful and am not successful    no Was my mother acquainted with it     no Was Janeen    no Is Louie     no Do I have it in me     Can it write     Is it Aphrodite energy     no Is there a goddess you could name     Greek    no Celtic     Titania     no The one I met on the path     Will you tell me more     process and work with childhood anger Is my relation to landscape female energy     no Do you promise me there is real energy to be recovered     Is it always only recovered in defeat     In me it can only be     In others it was never defeated     Have I ever felt it     Is it wonderful     Can you remind me of an instance     a certain kind of love Ken Sallett     What I felt for Ken was it     When I put my arms around him at the table     It knows he doesn't want me but sees it isn't personal, he can't     It's sex and compassion together     Can I only feel it if someone doesn't want it     no Was it something about Ken that inspired it     no Was it work I did with Louie     no With Joyce     The way I felt Tom in the taxi     no Does it have sex in it     no Strictly compassion     compassion but not strictly Blazing compassion     Is that female energy     Joyce is dying not blazing     Did blazing compassion kill her     no Enough for now     - Do you want to say more     esoteric knowledge More than intuition, esoteric knowledge     Eso inside, esoteric in the sense of insider, initiate     Do you mean it's about you     Is that related to the other kind of energy     What if there is really something to be found. I don't know how to think about this. As if the losses of male rule are deeper than I thought, not just losses of boldness, enterprise, but loss of some even more intimate energy. 9th Thinking there are two books and only one of them is the thesis. There's Being about, which is foundational, and then there is the one about intuition, which is working off it. First and last chapters. If I take them off, does the rest have any interest? What's the name of the second one? Something about outside. Something like Coming through. The one about intuition is the childhood of the philosopher, which is mind and land, and then more. - Then I finished ch 5 finally. Must read chs 3-4-5 together, as a section. Should I also read 6-7-8 together, should I start there tomorrow? 11 The Arabs have risen. Washington and New York. The World Trade Towers, the Pentagon. A male war: "Somebody's going to pay a very high price for doing this." They are saying 'democracy' and meaning American hegemony. 12 Notes from yesterday: Tom on the phone saying that in the last years he has not been proud of America. In the afternoon at Harbour Center there was a TV set up in the concourse and I sat with students on the floor watching the towers fall. Louie slept in her house. She had her bed under the skylight near the windows and the vines. Joyce was a hundred years old, bent, with dry brown veins under the thin skin of her hands. I was happy to tell her I'm a professor. About Tom she said, Are you bored? I said my lower self is. Because he's self-absorbed? she said. Yes. Tell him that when you shut down he could ask you about it. That would be good for him too, I say. Yes it would. Her sense was that the shutting down, since it is coming when the other defenses are gone, might be the last of it. I sighed (and now too). Then I praised Tom in a kind of gold effusion with specks of tears. I said we have done wonderful work together. The disaster junkies are feeding, feeding, on every shred. 'Continuing coverage.' That, and everywhere the massive expensive barring of doors after the horse has flown. 13 A fragile lemony beauty, Tom said of Joyce, three? four? years ago - he was smart kind and fond on the phone today - in his best language, fine company - tracked with me, asked questions. 14 What I'm noticing about the event - on the day, it was as if I was tuning in to the Muslims - seeing tarty women on the street feeling a sliver of an edge of contempt at infidel depravity, for instance. I've also noticed, in the supermarket, feeling possibilities of danger just slightly more. Last night for the first time I felt a tightness - a small tightness - in the midriff. It is probably the threat of war. Not so much the physical danger as the collective rising of the stupid in all their conscious and unconscious grievance. At the same time I am noticing that I am a touch more sympathetic with the military mind. I'm thinking for instance that jihad operatives should be tortured if caught. There should be quiet assassinations one-on-one throughout the world. It should be a war targeted to the nature of the enemy, rogue males with passports and cell phones. At the same time Arab nations should be treated with much greater courtesy than they have. The US should not go into Afghanistan. They'll bomb it to no good effect. The jihad will have nukes and biological weapons on the way. Better that everyone should start paying attention now. 15 I went to Louie's last night for the first time since she has settled in and was stunned by grief at the wrongness of her furniture. In the orange room the washstand and cabinet from her mother motley hideous things. She put pictures on the fridge with fridge magnets. Her Indian glitter cloth on the floor in the living room. She could tell something had hit me and was starting to get nasty. I came home. How to think of it. Leah's arrangements gave me so much pleasure. I was grieved that they are gone forever. Second, Louie had been leading me to think she'd get rid of things and get new things and let me make something good. Seeing her things there I was understanding that it's her place and she will want to impose her things on it. It will never be anything but patchy, inharmonious and sentimental. I wanted to be in beauty with her but it won't happen. She wants to believe she has taste. I have to wash my hands of it. At another level I believe it's the end of our friendship. I'd been imagining giving her my plants and some of my furniture and being able to come and stay with her when I live somewhere else. As if it would be my place too. I've hated being in her places and this would be one where I could love to be. The sense of justice that checked saying any of it is that she is paying for it, in extraordinary complication and financial stress and must be able to do what she wants in it. There's a little feeling of having been used, as if I got it for her in the understanding that she'd make it beautiful and now she has it she has reneged. Do you want a sentence     come through a childish quest of work woman Is her furniture as horrible as I think     But my disappointment is a child's     Is the love of beauty a child's    no The place is ruined     Is it childish to be disappointed at that     I'm taking it personally     I only want to love what's beautiful, is that what's childish     I should look at Louie's tastelessness and love it     I feel it as a loss of love but needn't     I give myself permission to love beauty but not ugliness     Is that the point     YES Has that decision kept my taste intact     no If I loved ugliness would I still know it's ugly     Could I love ugliness as much as I love beauty     Should one love ugliness in exactly the same way as beauty    no Will you describe how     generous, honest, improvement and completion Say, Louie this furniture isn't good, but not take her resistance personally     Is that as much as I need to know for now     no, teach graduating by honesty about partial loss Do you mean my honesty     It doesn't have to do with shutting up     16 Something I'm feeling as a good thing in the endless press coverage is a curiosity in people about the possibilities of being. What is it like to be someone on the hundredth floor above a fire that will not be put out. What is it like to be standing at the back of a passenger plane you know is being aimed like a missile. What's it like to get a cell phone call from such a person. What's it like to be a young man who has taken all the necessary steps to enact an event that will be written large enough to read a thousand years from now. What was it like driving a rented car to the airport, silent with a companion of the mission, looking at the world for the last time. 17 Rowen phoned last night from Campbell River. He was making lunch for school, watching the news. He flashed to the implications, stunned, he said. Margo's first reply says I'm a natural. I'm feeling the tension more. My solar's tight. A long dream that had Ken Sallett naked at my school desk cutting cards with a ruler, and much more. When he met Tom, Tom offered him a drag off his joint. I walked out. Reports said Tom was drinking. The part of Ken's body I was interested in was the slender upper belly between the doors of the ribs. 19 That's the first batch of [student] letters, except for Mary's. I've liked the days: begin with bookwork about the letters, two or three hours on chapter 6, work on one of the letters for the rest of the day. Read the papers, drive to Harbour Center to ship attachments, shop, eat. I listen to the radio partly as if jihad assassins are listening. I notice the softness and openness of the speakers. The assassins are being given every quiver of the psychological effect of their action, every economic consequence. They are not being denied any particle of their success, and yet it is being given to them in a sweet-heartedness that shows the ways they have not yet succeeded. What else I notice, relief that people are less corrupt, less trivial because they are aware of real danger and opposition. It is as if a soft mentality has been fertilized by its ferocious contrary. I want to know about the attackers, I want everyone to know as much as possible about them. I would want the numbers they care about: civilian deaths in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, (Latin America), and the rest, as a result of US initiative. The distribution of US pop culture is warfare, from their point of view. I want intelligence to come of this, a more comprehensive view. Yelling broke out on a CBC panel last night because a Jewish American woman said America was the land of freedom, etc. Latin Americans on the panel shouted that the US had sponsored the repressive regimes of a list of South American countries, each of these regimes responsible for many deaths. The paradox made plain was internal liberty supported by external murder, and a population living like rich children of a mob boss choosing to be unaware of their father's source of wealth. I want a seminar on the other side. I want the media to be that seminar. No one is mentioning the suppression of women by the Taliban and in general by religious authoritarians. No one is noticing that the attack was homosexual, missile to tower. There's a surge of male prestige in the story, Bush, Guiliani, firefighters and policemen, bin Ladin, and the highjackers, whose organization, piloting skill, commitment and success are very frankly praised. Tom tonight is saying he is keeping a distance, not getting entrained. He is understanding he doesn't have to feel guilty that he isn't joining what seems to him a pervasive false consciousness. I said I feel a philosopher's responsibility to watch the language being used. For most of the conversation we were friends and equals. I broke in and said Tom, could we think about how we could have a conversation that was more give and take, not taking turns making speeches? We're talking about your country but if I go on for too long without talking I get bored. Now that the letters are in their hands, what am I feeling. They succeeded as letters to Margo, did they work as letters to the students? Second question: I'm writing very craftily. I'm considering the readers. That's a dangerous thing to do. Terrorist is not the right word     They're global guerrilla warriors     They're cultural dissidents     They're rogue males     There needs to be deep interest in their psychology     A male need to show in the arena     Identification with their culture's maleness     Boys all over the world will have admired those 19     Male stock has gone up     Conservatives' stock has gone up     Environmental conservation's has gone down     Maleness is dangerous to the world     YES Is mind and land still relevant     Can I still do it     The definition of terrorist that says they go after civilians would include the nation states     Rogue, "a fierce and dangerous animal separated from the herd" Jihad assassins is the term     20 I'm going to have $9,700 in student loans and fellowships plus about $10,000 more from [the college]. Should I buy Rowen a computer? Lease Rowen a computer? 21 Shopping with Louie. A yellow-green Chinese pot for which I found a lacey Japanese willow. A dark-green-leafed plant for the orange room. A Mission table for a plant stand. A broad pink-topped bench just the length of the morning edge of the porch, broad enough for cushions and sitting back. 23 Beautiful Sunday. I am depressed today. There is Louie's house steeping in light. The plant ledge by the window has the living quiet of a house whose owner has gone away for the afternoon. It's worth all our years of fights, she says. Tom five years sober, safe, recovered. Louie is making $100,000 a year. What I'm feeling is that I have nothing. It is only my own fault. I have been giving not selling. Is my lack of a beautiful house reason to be depressed     no Am I wrong to give rather than sell     no Have I been wrong to give to Tom     NO I don't own beauty but I have the power to make it     YES I have a two-bit job that uses none of my real capacity     I'm physically ugly     I take care of someone emotionally and am not loved     I work and work on this project with no result     Am I living wrong     Will you tell me in what way     you haven't finished Do you mean the project     no Do you mean coming through     Is there any end to that project     Do you want a sentence     slow growth of brave mother quest I'm looking for my mother?     no Will you point it with one card     action Quest to have the mother valued     Everything I'm doing is neurotic substitution     NO I'm very discouraged today     Do you want to say more     reserve, completion, processing, completion I'm in the process of completion     Mind and land     Will you lead me    imagine action toward honest completion Alright     indecision, unconscious structure, coming through In me?     no in other people I don't understand     temperance Will you say it a different way     balance in the midst of change Conscious and unconscious     Bring other people to complete connection     Some kind of new age therapy idea     no I have nothing     Is there something I'll have    brilliance and courage Does Louie have that already     no Does Tom     no I'm willing     But I need to know it's proceeding     Will you tell me how to know it     process turn for the better by slow growth of the child If I were on the right track I wd be more beautiful     no Has my child grown     Are you sure     I'm more responsible     Anything else?     no I'm more responsible, less beautiful and have nothing, you think that's growth?     I'm kind of disgusted     I'm angry to have nothing     Is there more I should pursue in this     YES find out what you're looking for Will you tell me     to be love That's why I have nothing    no Is it what I'm supposed to look for     If I were love I would be beautiful     no Is my mother love     NO I want to stop     no don't Completion will have to do with becoming love     I'm a long way from that     no So I should ask what is stopping me     (the tower) This isn't working     no Is there more you want to say     generous completion of happiness by coming through Of individuals     Can I stop for today     24 First letter about Being about. "Your unique way of placing the organism in the environment and the interaction of environment with organism as perception is fantastic." Someone working in vision development in optometry. What I'm thinking is that I should ignore the US war and concentrate on my own campaign, which I keep losing sight of, and which will be needed all the more because the anti-mind-and-land people are having a jamboree. Another thing I need is to find some new friends. Louie is settled into yoga and Tom doesn't have enough love in his mind to be company in my interests. I say that feeling disloyal, but I am very deprived with him. I should work on mind and land every day, I should start building a life there, I should look for allies. I should write Debbie. 25 Having to deal with a rat's nest of one idea spread through many chapters written with different emphases and vocabulary - actually not one idea but a complex of ideas insufficiently discriminated. How to work out what to have where. I'm lonely these days, anxious. Tom on the phone wanted to unroll his thinking at length. I have the usual trouble with that. Could you just give me the headlines, I say. His feelings are hurt. I flounder in silence trying to decide what course to take. We keep going. It gets better. 26 Now that he's paying attention Tom is entrained in war excitement and distress. One of the effects of the attack is loss of intelligence by way of stress. I have had a close watch on what allows and spoils unstable intelligence. The Golden West job keeps leveling him but he needs to work with men. He's grabbed by the drama of dealing with his father. The job that would be best for his intelligence would be out of that arena. Could he go to school? Visual art, it says. Not drawing, graphic design. Is one of my difficulties with Tom's long speeches the emotion in them     They are discharges     YES They make me a sewer     YES It's not so much that they are stupid as that they are discharges of distress     Can he hear that     He needs a way of discharging before he gets to me     27 a demographic explosion that has produced a huge bulge of urbanized, unemployed young men - the most dangerous social group of all, according to many social scientists ... environmental stresses (especially shortages of cropland and fresh water) that have crippled farming and forced immense numbers of people into squalid urban slums ... chronic conflict that have shattered economies and created vast refugee camps ... corrupt, incompetent, and undemocratic governments ... international political and economic system that's more concerned about realpolitik, oil supply and the interests of global finance than about the well-being of the region's human beings. Homer-Dixon. What are the relations among the notions being used in this sudden struggle - globalization - 'freedom' - 'democracy' - jihad - terrorism. Fascism, totalitarianism, theocracy, supremacy, jihad, force, control: the dominance cluster. Pluralism, democratic control, dissent, 'freedom', free market, free press: the libertarian cluster. Corporate control of national and international policy - plutocracy - is a sort of fascism, which is what the anti-globalization people object to - advertising for ideological supremacy of market interests. Values opposed by corporate priorities: environmental preservation, emotional openness, generous intelligence, transparency, maximization of universal well-being. Totalitarian vs pluralist is one dichotomy. Global-corporate control vs local self-determination is another. Globalization protest people are saying US sponsorship of international corporate interests is a form of fascism furthered under libertarian rhetoric, and that guerrilla acts are caused by (not justified by) these acts of economic and other force against groups elsewhere. Global capitalism protestors and theocratic fascists do have a common opponent but that does not mean they are fighting for the same aim - the protesters do not support the jihad -but the same measures are being used to suppress both. International corporate control is modernity's form of fascism, totalitarianism of an ideology of economic growth, consumption, exploitation of greed and its associated vices. Anti-economic totalitarian politics should be, can be, doing what, in these circumstances? Trying to get a clear whole picture. Should they be pacifists? Not for the old reasons, but because it is a trap. Go on advocating care for place. 29 What is sapping my work     lack of aggression It used to be driven by opposition     It used to be opposition to my father     This is a serious problem     I've lost motivation     Is there a remedy     intimacy Could that drive me     Intimacy with the enemy     Could I think of Being about in terms of intimacy     Can you say with whom    the mother Could it energize revision    YES I got stymied in writing for the mother     Writing to find the mother?     Longing to be seen     I don't think this will work     slow growth Would it feel the way I feel with land and mind     Can I have that feeling with Being about     Love for my topic     Can I get an energy of love     Work it up     no Release it     Is energy of love as strong as energy of opposition     In the garden I had both at once     Is that best    no Would energy of love make me sick like Joyce     no Does it need to be religious     no I've remade myself radically four times     Is this a crisis of energy     Will you advise me     gain rebalanced aggression There is aggression in love     Is that what you mean     YES Look for things and people to love and fight to make contact     YES Love things I don't love     no Does that mean break up with Tom     no But I don't love him     no you do Fight for contact and intimacy in daily life     Build out from my actual loves     Force myself through fear     Release energy for Being about by starting to promote it     Watch the smother in operation     Is this enough     no Something you want to say     work together, for overview, of search for, slow growth Cooperative search with the oppressor     Bookwork this morning - crisis of energy with Being about - it says I was sailing on energy of opposition and must now release the other aggressive energy which is hunger for intimacy. I have that sort of energy with the mind and land work but Being about was begun in war against the priests. There must be distaste making me drag. I don't like the death ethos of science, its buildings, the look of its people, the tone of its reports, its maleness, its smells, its astonishing callousness with animals, its dualist isolations. And yet wrestling with science gives much to the ethos I prefer. Not wrestling with it makes watery piety like the worst of Laura Sewell's book. Lloyd Frank Wright - wholeheartedness - the deepest wish - true = natural = organic, a house that lies has no sense of space as should belong to a free people - a broad shelter in the open, related to vista - light is the beautifier of a building. 30th Excerpt from diction air. Have I dared look at this before? What it brings back. Jam took the dictionary form from me, no credit. What else. She makes her own form. Her: the harrowed, sick but interested feeling I have when I dip into that well. Her afterword is personal. It's nice. I do not ever want to talk to her again. Do I want to claim back the beauty of the work I did alone with her? She learned the personal part from me too. Have I survived better? Yes it says. Than them too? Yes. In what sense? Your judgment. Sunday night. What. 1st October A brilliant day. Last week on Hastings at Harbour Center a man's voice spoke from behind me. I turned to find myself eye to eye with a Sikh, thirty-five or forty, turban, quite a coarse face. He was saying something I didn't catch, something about very nice. We were walking side by side for a moment as I scanned him. I found myself saying, Do I remember you? I knew I didn't. He was speaking either at random or challengingly, I thought. There was a sense that he was bolder on the street because of the attacks in New York. I had a sense of caping him easily, but I registered it as possibly a sign. No way to know. Packets. Ida. I suddenly got it. She gave me enough in this packet to see what's happening. Now I'm thanking Joyce for having done what she had to do to know something. 3 Sewell's book a model of how not to do what I want to do - her 'we' is offensive - I go tight holding myself back from her wash of sloppy metaphor - she cites men religiously, all the men she can think of - she is readable only when she is writing her own back country experience - she does not follow her own advice when she talks about the brain - she hasn't focused it - it's a half-baked book - distasteful - and yet she makes excellent points no one else has made - she's synthesizing but she is writing as if the synthesis happens in the book not in her. She needs my work. I don't know how to use her book. I want to find her personal points but I don't want to get into the greasy bath she suspends them in. I do not want to fish for them among her second-hand conventional readings of Empedocles, Merleau-Ponty, James Hillman, Wallace Stevens, on and on. Sewall L 1999 Sight and sensibility: the ecopsychology of perception Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam The phone rang in early afternoon. Hi, said the voice I've been waiting to hear. HI! HI! HI! I said. Is Luke okay    no Is there anything I can do     decision, withdrawn, subtle, valor Support a decision     Will you point this     delay An unconscious subtle valor     Needs to be made conscious     Should he leave his job     no Do you mean not yet     He needs to do something more humanitarian     He is getting tools and contacts     Tell him I believe that's what he's doing     Am I pushing him to stay in this job     YES Should I stop doing that    no I'm wanting him to be rich for my own reasons     Stop with that     His withdrawn subtle valor needs to do something else     Is that the point     no Should I ask what it needs to do    judgment, struggle, anger, partial loss His losses     Partially lost anger     The righteous anger he used to have     YES Lucid self defense     Is that the subtle valor you mean     YES Tell him this     YES It's the anger Tom still has     YES He has depression instead of that anger     YES The neurological breakdown is overload     Should he start thinking about the next step     This is his college degree     YES Would he have kept the anger if he'd been with me     Did Roy bully him out of it     no, Sara Guilted him out of it     no, bullied It would still be there if he spoke to the child     Will he find the right project    YES Is his therapist adequate     no Will you tell me how you know what you know     temperance, communal, transmission, integration The dark parts of the brain     YES Active though not conscious     YES Have I gradually been making it so that it isn't in contradiction to conscious parts     The book I read in the car on the way to Spirit River     Gestalt is the best psychology       Am I going to be invited into the MA prg     Are you sure     YES 5 Louie talked about feeling uneasy to be making so much more money than people like her brother and me, who are also deserving. I said I am not making that kind of money because I didn't take that road, and I didn't take that road because there were things I wanted to get to the bottom of. I did get to the bottom of them, and what I feel is ... I hesitated for the word - realized, she suggested. Yes but I was looking for a word that was more about the sensation. I was gesturing toward my midline. Planted. 7 Peter at his hotel door. Swollen. He doesn't look old but he looks corrupt. He has his hair - a large belly - is broad and stiff at the hips. His eyes are very dead, small, crowded in a water-swollen face. He was barefoot. We sat looking north toward near mountains blue between West End apartment towers. He greeted me the way he does, with effusive praise. I was watching him with quite a cold eye. He flatters but doesn't support. Praises my creativity but has no impulse to further what I do; praises my rigor but glazes over if I begin to talk about what I want to do with it; wants to hear that Tom is happy with me but doesn't want to know how it is done. He's a fame groupie. Whines that women are asexual, not passionate, don't want to be with him. I didn't say: Peter, sexual women will not want to be with you. If his wife had loved him properly, he says, he would not have been what he became. Peter - I said - you don't still believe that! 8 Milling this morning. Longing for something other than the grey life of work. Frightened of the next moves. I want to put my head under the covers. I want love and beauty, adventure and newness, the green and gold of heart life. 9 Talking to Tom last night about the war. He says the start of the bombing raids was timed to coincide with Sunday/holiday weekend football, so that men gathered in living rooms together and the thousands of fans in stadiums became war rallies chanting USA, USA. I've noticed two things about this very small taste of the state of war and threat of war. One is just the tension, there every night. I sleep less well. My blood pressure is higher. Across a population it means worse physical function, which is lesser intelligence. The other is the threat to good completion of a life. What I am building could be completely interrupted. I was working toward something inside a particular circumstance. I had slowly found the work relevant to the circumstance. My relevance depends on the continuation of institutions that would incorporate it. A British Middle East correspondent for the Independent on CBC this morning talking about Arab agreement with bin Laden's cassette addresses. He was the voice saying there is long-standing real injustice. Bin Laden is articulating what any Arab feels. There was somebody Cohen, an Israeli hawk, saying These people are vowed to exterminate anyone who doesn't agree with them. From the latter point of view the former is weak and treacherous. It's the home front debate I guess. The synthesis should be: deal with the injustice first, and then deal with what is left of the fanatical impulse, which is another dynamic. The paper yesterday had big head shots of Bush and bin Laden counterposed across two pages, Bush a weasel-eyed pinch-mouthed hard-suited soulless little jerk, and bin Laden stately, fluid, soft-mouthed, dressed in white, with large, soft, glowing eyes. Bush on the right, bin Laden on the left. The good news yesterday was that there is a TV station out of the Emirate of Qatar broadcasting all sides of the debate. It is being picked up by satellite everywhere in the Arab world. Oh, but are the women listening to it? No. There's a question I have about peace. I can see that the circumstance of peace on this continent - my whole lifetime - allowed long slow completion of something. At the same time, for those others it allows Britney Spears, SUVs, the Hollywood culture, the decadent worlds of Architectural Digest and fashion advertising. Is that culture the sign of lack of war? It looks for sensation, which war and deprivation give. So is it peace that destroys many? It says no. The many are destroyed because they don't look to the larger world for the things there are to do. They are destroyed by insularity. So will this crash course in world reality help? - The MA program and how I should be intervening. Where's my pivot. Philosophical, certainly. Q. What unifies transdisciplinary studies? A. Questions, for instance in cognitive science the question about how to understand mind or intelligence. Q. What provides the discipline in transdisciplinary studies? A. The two senses of discipline, an established knowledge culture, established sense of what constitutes competence in that culture, vs discipline in the ethical sense of it, honesty, scrutiny, debate, effort, and integration. Q. What is the ground of any form of study. A. The structured body, including but not limited to its nervous system; the community; the rest of the physical world - the structuring interplay of these. This ground is common to all the named areas of study and so gives us a question common to them all. - Do you know where the safety pin is     Is it under the bed     no In the bed     no In the kitchen    no In the back room      (I go to the back room and find the safety pin on the rug under the computer table.) So I guess the question is, how do you know things I don't know     Can you answer that     Is the question why I don't know what you know?     no Would it be possible for the I to know all you know     Is there a reason it doesn't     YES   part 5 the golden west volume 23: 2001 may-november work & days: a lifetime journal project