| in america volume 24 part 1 - 2011 october-december | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Mesa Grande 28th October 2011 Friday morning. I say that to tell it to myself. It's a bit after 6, black dark at the big window. I came yesterday afternoon with just a couple of things in the back of the jeep. It was faster when I was driving. [satellite view of Mesa Grande Rd] Was aching hard. - There's the line of mountains showing to the southeast, palest orange over the cut line, fading up to pale night blue that pine and oak are showing against. Time to go out with a blanket. - Was aching and lay down broadside to the view and slept and woke well. That was the necessary ritual. And then set up the iron on the worktable and sat by it in lamplight hand-stitching the orange curtains for the north window, with Gauvin and Lemieux singing Handel, watching to see who'd show up this first evening. Sarah Black. Karina Gauvin and Marie-Nicole Lemieux, conductor Alan Curtis 2011 Handel: streams of pleasure Il complesso barocco Mail yesterday. Dave sent $2000. "This is for the move. I am one of your sponsors and this is to help." 29 Haven't stopped hurting since I've been here. In 1978 it was emotional pain, fear of cancer. This is creeping mitochondrial exhaustion, something like -
- Got the back door open. Satisfying to come out onto the step. Used my new little power screwdriver. This morning picked up from the post office the rug Louie mailed - my tapis de Taznakt, which is under the worktable now. It's twilight. I'm out on the iron chair and have just seen the new moon between fine branches. A yellow streak between flamingo smears. Mountain cut-outs different distances of milky grey-blue. One bird saying rrrk quietly. Yellow hills lightly furred. A brightest spot behind one of the pines. I haven't told the rock outcrop below here. It's a streaked granular rock like coarse hamburger, worn all over with round grinding holes, some with a grinding stone still in them. It was a work platform for groups of women laughing where they had an open view. Now the crickets have begun behind me in the draw. It's dark enough so rabbits have come out to graze, two toward the stump clump and one over there by the other draw. A crow squawking. One farmhouse light to the south. Is that a coyote yipping and howling. An owl? Broad wings, short body. Another light toward Black Mountain. 30 Sunday. Woke at 5:30 this morning and set up the backrest so I could work in bed. Western bluebird common wherever trees and open ground mix, including oak savannah ... nests in boxes or tree cavities. Usually in small groups of up to 10 that roam from one area to another. a rather small and stocky thrush of open country ... hover to catch insects or to pluck berries from branches and use a technique known as ground-sallying: flying from a perch and settling briefly on the ground to capture an insect before returning to a perch. There are berries on the pyracantha in front of the window. It's hot today. I have both of the windows in front of the couch open wide, air flowing uphill through the room as promised. Looking at work notes assembled feeling the extraordinary wait there has been, feeling it as if from the other side of the gate: those two oaks, the cattle guard. - Twilight watch. Mont St. Michel sidelit. A lot of crows making a racket down on one of the yellow humps, now flying west with an occasional bark. Oaks' shadows six or seven times their height. I think those two peaks northeast of Volcan - if that is Volcan [Cuyamaca] - are burnt. They have a look of grey whiskers. Whole lot more crows. Some little thing downhill chipping steadily in a tiny high voice. Quiet tapping I think in one of the pines. The hawk is cruising. Little thing in the canopy above me saying chut-t-t. Something with a tuft and a long beak on the snag at the top of the pine. Something bigger saying braa-aa and answered from across the way. Raucous, must be jays. Now the crickets have begun. Now dogs or coyotes to the southeast. Powdery mauve over the distance. This ridge is the north edge of a vast shallow bowl. It isn't dark enough for rabbits yet. The branches that curve down, that I see in front of me in small-leafed black cut-out, give so pleasing a sense of layered depth. Now the last pink light is gone even from Volcan. The bird on the pine snag is smaller and silent. Orange and pink clotted behind the three lowest Coulters, their Japanese profiles. More barking higher up. [southeast October 30] [oak root] [chair] 31 7:40 am tribe of 16 turkeys grazing in low sun on the yard. Then 7 more coming single-file down the path through the east side draw. - Oh the amount of housekeeping. Heavy vacuum cleaner with not much suck. Spiders running out from under the bed when I begin to make it. Dead flies at the window. Hot water heater huffing. Fridge buzzing. Pellet heater motoring when I tried to light it this morning. 1st November I don't understand the stove and am worried about how to heat this room. How to not hurt because I'm cold. Did solve internet yesterday. That's one. - Happy tonight, floaty. Was in a fret this morning about the stove, went and sat in the chair under the oak. Have set the head end of the bed - that means the backboard - so I can see dawn. There is the [sketch] quite even line of peaks showing grey-blue against pale orange that fades up through greenish yellow to pale blue. It's not so much brightening as spreading upward so the orange band is wider. The oak wriggling its leaves against the pale blue. Red flag warning today. [automated phone message] Now it's evenly pale yellow, ivory almost. The canopy both sways and stirs in overlapping layers.
I should have a money goal. This place is costing me call it $1650 a month = 20,000 a year and I only make about $30,000. Is there some way I can bring in what I'm spending? Or even another $1000 a month?
- Dream this morning. Tom comes in with two women, tells one of them to bend over. There's her wide white ass with pussy presented. He's going in. I'm wailing, Why don't you want to fuck me? - I was on the phone talking about the Beaulieu to an old man in LA. Three coyotes ran across the lower field. Is that branches scraping the roof, the wind is picking up. I'm making bread. It's rising under a towel on the windowsill. 3 How do I want to live here. Tuned the way I got to be sometimes in the Olson house and the lake house. I look at those years, the place and myself, seeing how rich it is, how paradisal. This landscape comparatively is bare, as I am; there's a wide view, as I have, but not much color or event. It isn't childhood given a young woman's sexual drive, it is on the other side of so much solving, but not only solving, so much checkedness, I don't know whether to call it defeat, so much not going forward since July 2002. - There's the first of daylight over the ridge. - I don't want any more of that lamenting. I want to seize myself if I have to, but would rather be led in the magic ways there used to be. Upland 1. The higher portions of a region, district, farm, etc. 2. The country in the interior.
4 White mist blowing from the west, what festival is it. "Along in November when the hills begin to turn green the Red Adobe dances the Grass." Nov 14, Engelmann oak, acorns, white sage, buckwheat, California batholith, John Haines, bread recipe Look at this, it's rain, but hardly. It's 10 on a dark morning. Then sound of water, downspout into a rock bowl on the terrace. Is that what I should call it. It's a front door rock apron. My toast is oh so delicious. [notes from Julie Henderson The lover within] 5 Squirrels all over this morning, I suppose because the rain knocked down a lot of acorns. This room is warm though all the others are cold. The pellet stove is at lowest setting but still brumming and whirring. Meantime the couch drawn up to the window is as if drawn up to another hearth. Replaced the side door deadbolt and sanded the edge that was sticking. It closes all the way and it locks now. I'm proud. Youtube video of a Texas family court judge whipping his 16 year old daughter with a belt. He keeps screaming at her to lie down on her stomach. She is a juicy body, bum and tits bouncing under thin pyjamas. He's cursing and whaling away at her legs because she won't lie down. She knew it was coming and had a camcorder on a dresser set up to record her room. Hid the red light with a scarf. It's had 2 million hits. He said to a reporter It looked worse than it was. 6
- Yesterday, from the road, two hawks circling above the hill hunting and sometimes screaming. This afternoon when I went out into the misty scented air, doves on the fence wire, the first I've seen though the plant I've wondered about - low, grey, hairy clumps - is dove weed, turkey mullein. It rained, was a Sunday. I phoned Luke. He asked for what I see from my windows so I ran around after we'd hung up and took pictures from all the windows. The one I like is from the side door into the little gully, a fairy depth of lacey tints. Another later of red buckwheat heads brilliant across a pale far view.
Greg wrote about the second half of the grade 12 year. I've had the pellet fire going all day. Stayed in bed reading David Copperfield. 8 Phoned Laiwan to ask about jumping to Port Townsend. She says try IBA West, which will start in fall of 2012. 9 Woke to see dawn and then dozed again and dreamed two large packages had been delivered. They were packed as slim suitcases. Inside were piles of paper commenting on my poems it seemed. Large loose handwriting mostly illegible. Who had I lent the manuscript to? Daphne? It seemed a man. Colin? Probably Colin. As I was unpacking the paper a little girl was wanting me to play with her but I said look at all the work I had to do. I'd thought at first they were student work. As I was looking through them a little cat lay down against my head. Yesterday a wonderful conversation with Tom. He was his best self, smart and fond. I was loving him in his voice. What I liked best was his liking for the first photo, the fairy tints one. He said he could smell the air. Nearly full moon last night but distant and somehow dim, almost overhead with a brilliant planet near it. While I was in SY buying groceries the fire went out. I called the woman at Pott Belly in Ramona. She said It's Santa Ana-ish today, it probably didn't get enough air, the wind blew it out. On the Don's Market forecourt two country-looking men gave me a considering stare. Word is out, I thought. Said hi nicely. Later pulled into the mission drive just as the school bus had let off kids who had cars waiting for them. Indians, I was assuming, and looked carefully into the van I passed. Long-haired Indian man giving me a sharp look. He was thinking I'm a skin I thought. Looked up in the late aft to see a file of turkeys walking west along the fenceline. There were windshield scrapers on the counter at Proflame. Are you giving these away I said. They're ice scrapers she said. I'm from Alberta, I know what they are I said. Paid a propane bill for $337. In the mailbox another check from Dave, for a thousand, for the camera. In windy moonlight the broad-skirted biggest of the Coulter pines is very magnificent. Can I say more. Maybe tomorrow. 10 Haven't said that a few nights ago when the phone rang it was the satellite dish installer asking me to dinner. I said I don't do that sort of thing anymore but when I'd hung up I was giddy, it's so long since anyone has fancied me. "I enjoyed your company" he said, and I think he said "fetching". So then he said could we be friends and that he'd stop for tea when he has a client in the neighbourhood on Thursday (today). I mentioned the hawks screaming up the hill and he imitated the scream. He'd had a cousin in LA who taught him falconry when he was a kid. I'm considering how I should order my mornings. I shd stop turning on the computer to see whether anyone has written. What would be better to do while the room warms. This. And then - it's a bit after 7 - what to do for my 6 hours.
It's a dimmer day, thin high cloud. The golden hills have a greeny cast since the rain. It's not as cold. The hills are even milky blue. In my morning doze I dreamed I came to the gate at the foot of our road and saw it was open and open to the south rather than the north. I went to close it but noticed there was a man on a horse chasing a cow toward it. Get out of the way then. The rancher when he arrived had a thick reddish beard and some kind of accent that meant I didn't understand much of what he said. Something about how much he loved the view. We were standing together looking at it. I said it looked a lot like where I'm from, the road going up the hill to the east. It did look almost exactly like that. Then we were in the house talking. I was considering being with him. He had a good body. I said something I don't remember and he said no they were Jewish. That made sense of how he looked, though ranching didn't seem a Jewish thing. He was in the next room singing loudly. I said I was going to go work but he could visit. I meant later but when I came into my work room he was sitting with my little boy who looked very shiny and said "goo-kie". I said I didn't have cookies but went away to make them toast with honey. So that's two dreams in a row with an incomprehensible animus? As describing my current state of work.
11 Last night was full moon. After I'd sat in hot water and put on my flannel pyjamas I took the sleeping bag and went out to the chair under the oak. There was not a rustle. Sometimes one sharp bright little cricket to the south, sometimes a couple overlaid to the north. There was the wide, still, shallow dish of silence. I was in perfect peace, nothing hurt. I stayed on and on, thinking of nothing. The moon was in the topmost branches of the tree above me, little bright moon. Beyond the scallops of the oak's shadow was the whole world in moony night. Earlier there was my guest come from all-unknown years of truck-driving, second marriage, the army, a tame raccoon, conspiracy theory, sat installation in the Navajo Nation, and being a mechanic at the 96 station on Robinson. I chattered, I was keeping him neutralized, correctly, but at the same time was noticing that he's in his fifties not his sixties, not withering yet, square shoulders and a firm lower lip. Interested, humble. Tom said Did he bring flowers? I said No he brought a pie. In the wide silent moonlight I was feeling that would be the way to die, sitting upright in a sleeping bag overlooking the wide world, where I would be seen motionless next day from the road. Not yet. 12 Best of yesterday in the sleeping bag in the iron chair last night, breathing slowly. I could feel breath sometimes in the right nostril, sometimes the left, could sometimes pick up shreds of scent, smoke, and was that a cigarette somewhere. There would be sudden cracks in the woods behind me. I concentrated on the cricket. When the moon came out from thin cloud it would be as if a light had been turned on. I fell asleep. I need to deal with dread of work. I say I'll sit down to some hours of my own work and then I evade it all day. I'd be overjoyed to have done it, but still I fade away weakly into anything else, and am ashamed. I was thinking in the moonlight that maybe I should imagine good consequences to rouse myself? - There I got out the sound equipment and figured out what bits of adaptor and battery I'm missing and ordered them from Sweetwater and Radioshack, and got registered for Hughesnet so I can figure out why it stops, and wrote Barbara Meter and Claudia on film business. How to remember software and hardware, keep it refreshed - cycle it in flashcards with the monitor view. Keep notes. - Is Tom blocking my calls or is his phone out of money. 14 Is that a good cover for Favor, I think. I'm quickly overwhelmed when I go to the publishing work. My brain balks and I close the file. -
Listen, tell me anything you like anytime you want, if you want. Tim - Nov 2011 - July 2012 crucial relationship development, intensity, sensitive, umbrage. Lucrative association. Money opportunities. After this period a year long splendid real estate phase. Think of these 8 months as an adventure. Mercury retrograde Nov 23 - Dec 13. Wachtel's Barry interview abt On Canaan's side. - Sound:
15 A figure just below the crest of the hill. Slender, stooping, shamanic. It's male, has maybe a plume bent forward on its head, and as if an arrow in a quiver showing at its back. I can see it from here. It stands as if opposite me, at the same height but facing east, showing in the gap between two oaks. A brooding presence. It's perfectly placed. Almost four. The shadows of the hill and the oaks on it are thrown deep into the shabby vale. I'd like to contact something, I'd like to feel there's something to contract. I'm so much stiffer now, can I? When the sun is just past the horizon a window in the midlevel of the middle peak of the eastern ridge blares out rose pink.
16 Excellent morning came up intenser apricot-gold all along the ridge, went yellower farther up. I woke at the right time to see it and didn't put the light on until an hour later. Two rabbits were standing still below the window, both facing northeast. The larger one crouched on four legs, the younger, closer to me, on hind legs with forepaws dangling. They stayed that way, little rabbit statues, for twenty minutes? while I made tea and set the fire. Now, at seven, the shaman is in horizontal sun. Is that a flock of doves. Last evening as I wrote about the shaman a red-tailed hawk was posted quietly on the bare dead leader of the furthest pine. Good morning Mr Tom, you are not going to get away with this without some trouble from me. Did a new peak show up overnight. Isn't that line of three crests usually smooth. This morning a further crag between one and two. The grassland's fur shabby in this edge-on light, all cut up with cow trails. Yesterday a shining white river of cloud was running down the notch, I think where the road is. When I walk uphill from the mailbox I hear my heart knock knock knock. Still don't understand how to order my days. First thing in the morning doesn't work for art. Last thing at night is wrong for yoga. Last night I did what I do every night, sat in very hot water in the dark, but I did it a bit earlier and stayed in longer, writing. Then sat and scribbled on the computer not here. Strokeable downy slopes. - In the pie shop a beautiful brown-eyed woman behind the cash register who said You're my new neighbour, I'm Linda. On the way home I stopped at the base of the shaman's hill and staggered up it with the trekking pole and my camera. Took ten pictures of the approach, don't know yet whether they are anything. The sun was just over his head. On the way up I passed half a dozen white-pink quartz rocks I thought meant something maybe. At the base of the shaman snag, which showed charring, was a split in toward the core, and in the split - wound into the split and dried stiff that way - the shed skin of a rattlesnake. The top of the hill had a charge. It was warm. One of the hawks circled over three times just after I got there. Some other large black bird sailed steadily southeast very much higher. The sky was dark blue. The line of oaks behind the shaman, a line sloping up along the crest, was four oaks of different ages, all sprung from rock piles, the gritty sparkly brown-mauve stone there was up there, very beautifully split into tablets and markers. There was a fire spot, not a ring, just a bare patch with a scorched look. I've seen one other in the field below here. Don't know if they're old. From the crest of that warm hill I could see a long way southwest. It had that medicine hill feel. The oak in front of the shaman had a rock outcrop with an exquisite patina, purples, lichens. I tried to photograph it too. 17 Why am I so dopey today. It's almost one o'clock and I have only wanted to zonk out, sleep. [College] calls tonight, is it that, day spoiled. It's a day to read all day but I don't have anything. - This morning a deer, big ears, small points of horn, came into sight along the fenceline, shied at a cow in the ravine, continued forward into the middle pane of the window, hesitated, turned back. 19 Formatting In America 6, ie last summer and up to coming here. What is it that goes wrong with me and work. 1. Morning loneliness. I can't sit down to impersonal work at the start of the day. 2. Dull unwellness often, don't have will and enterprise. 3. Too many projects, I get a little way into one with pleasure and then stop and forget almost everything. 4. Get thrown by trivia I make too much of. 5. Dissociation, craving? 6. No deadlines, reception, context. 7. Resistance. It's Saturday. I've been here three weeks and have done nothing but figure out how to be comfortable, couple of photos, one round of packet letters. Ten days till packet 5. When I read about it I miss the clean compactness of my little place, having a city at the door, little things happening, summer's wide brightness. Did I make a mistake. I've thrown myself into even greater dullness and isolation. My heart hurts. Grey overcast. I'm lonely and don't see how that will ever change.
- On Jim's page a beautiful wedding picture of Mr Mann in uniform. He looks seventeen, innocent, alight, utterly sweet. Compare my dad's wedding picture, sullen, egotistical. - Tom was back to his old ways, broke, and not caring enough to do something about it, and I was alright until the phone started ringing last night. I pulled the plug, as I think is right, but I'm back to lamenting at him and reproaching myself for having been lured into false hope. Why haven't I found someone who wants to be with me, I say, drying off in the corridor. This morning I was longing for sex. 20 Dreamed three scrawny little children I was trying to put to sleep. Nothing would calm them. Woke at 4:30 miserable, feeling it's a mistake to have come here, feeling seduced and abandoned and a fool and victim, even more backed into a corner with no possible plan that would bring me back among humans in a right way. I should notice something in me is interested in suicide.
- Brought home Anna Karenina and find I remember almost nothing but where I was when I read it. Something about Levin on his farm. The moment she jumps. - Amazing pain this afternoon - I did a laundry, made custard, carpet-swept the floor, took out the compost, studied a bit of Soundtrack Pro, and come back to heart pain worse than since Christmas. It was so bad I tried to phone. 5 o'clock. No answer.
21 When I called again he was there. I poured. He listened. He was sorry. He sighed many times, which means sincerity. We laughed about how his cursor hovered over the like button under the pussy cupcakes. This morning when I went out to try to photograph the bright broken clouds I heard a turkey gobbling to the west. Greg this morning had read the About section of Frank after his life. - Toward the top of the road a delicious cold smell of rotting wood. Sycamores are yellowing. 22 Someone at the University of Ottawa all over my site, last two days. Someone else in Colorado Springs. -
- It's an English professor, Arnold's friend, the guy who sneered at me in 1968, who is scandalized but riveted, spending hours. So he emailed Arnold, Arnold emailed Greg, and Greg has got back to me saying,There's a case to be made that you have perpetrated a large and inappropriate invasion of the privacy of others. I said, Yes, there is. What's the opposing case. What parts of their privacy will people mind. 1. If I say something about them is ugly. 2. If I describe sex with them. 3. For some people, descriptions of emotional vulnerability. Is that it? 1. Ken saying I was cruel because I said I didn't like Sylvia's small hands. 2. Descriptions of Rob's penis. 3. Trudy and Rhoda because they try to project an exclusive, superior image. Using real names is a way of not dodging consequences and it's outing, first myself but them too. It says "Yes you have ugly parts, you have the powers of body, are bodies, and you are not your social veneer. And I don't think there is social harm of any important kind in all of us knowing that about you." What you risk is certain of your seals, what I risk is finding I've given all that and nobody is interested except in their own vanity. "Using real names makes sense to you but may be disadvantageous, hurtful, resented, off-putting, outrageous, etc, for others." "Second-most scrupulous would have been to assign pseudonyms to all of those who might possibly be adverse to their real names appearing would have diminished the value of the project to you." - That's his fear of offending people, he hasn't been able to imagine that offending them might be alright. I think too that he's more scandalized now because somebody else is. 24 Woke at the right moment when fire was starting to show above the mountains, long rim lit orange. In first twilight six small rabbits near the window, nibbling, very lightly hopping, with ears translucent showing red. Brown back of a hawk on the pine snag where he's like the finial on a post. He's just sitting, warming after the cold night. It's a perfect morning, still, still. Emerald green islands under the oaks, wherever they are. - Realizing I use the other rooms in the house as if they were outbuildings. The bathroom is an outhouse, cold and not very clean. I rarely go there. The middle bedroom with its closet is a shed and so is the laundry room. Will two and a half bags of pellets last till Tuesday? I think just? But have to go to SY this morning for cream and the Sweetwater package. What else will I do today - finish going again through In America extracts to catch up with all my projects, start to. Review Soundtrack Pro. Zip through Pizzuti. - Of course it's been incredibly difficult to live for twenty-two years now not knowing where my father is but also here's a man ... he was honorable, he was brave, sometimes I feel that the sympathy that was directed toward me might be better directed toward somebody whose father sold out. I think that's a much more difficult fate to live with. Hasham Matar on Here and now, heard in the jeep winding down the Mesa Grande grade. I think this is a time, actually, where we need to understand that the Quaddafi reality oppressed not only those like me but also those whose will and pride and respect for themselves has been bent. Revenge misses something about the reality of these circumstances ... what led them to these actions are a series of circumstances and also the reason why I am the way I am is because of a series of circumstances ... I had an invitation to be this or that and I decided to be the way I am and they decided to be the way they are. - deep time plate-margin encounters slidepast plate contact, transform faulting orogeny, mountain building country rock, native to an area, basement, wall oldest rocks intermittent, thin spine of primeval metasedimentary strata dating to about 500 mya, eastern edge of peninsular range roof-pendant rocks molten emplacement of peninsular batholith from beneath limestones were metamorphosed into marble, sandstones into quartzite, and sandy shales into schist and gneiss ancient mountain roots Mesozoic 250-65 continental breakup, volcanism Cenozoic 65-5 recent epochs 5-.1 million slide blocks from the peninsular escarpment low angle slip planes or detachment faults pluton body of intrusive igneus - crystallized from magma cooling below surface incl. batholiths, dikes, sills petrology - Anna Karenina serialized 1873-77. This time through it wasn't the bliss it was the first time. I read it interested and convinced but not lifted. What was it then. I can try to guess. The closeness of his attention for instance in conversations between his characters, the way he sees their instantaneous turns, what they say and what they feel after they say it. The concreteness of his descriptions in the country. Levin kept turning into Frank. In 1969 I wouldn't have been interested in the social panorama, civil servants, balls, aristocratic ways with money, peasant labor, district politics, all that. This time I liked seeing how Russia was then, liked seeing him lay it out, but I liked it mildly. I can see it's a sophisticated book. Compare David Copperfield, 20-some years earlier, which is populist sentiment, cartoonish. (Compare Germinal, that desolate book, ten years later.) But the closeness of attention that elated me when I was 24 is more familiar to me now. Dickens b.1812-1870 (58) David Copperfield 1849-50 (37) Tolstoy b.1828-1910 (82) Anna 1873-1877 (45) Zola b.1840-1902 Germinal 1888-1885 (45) Eliot b.1819-1880 (61) Middlemarch 1871-1872 (52) - I'm irritated by Greg's persistence. He takes issue with something - my use of Courier, my not using pseudonyms - and I tell him why I chose as I did. I expect it to end there but he presses me with arguments as if he has some kind of stake in correcting me.
- So what do I know so far about this geology.
medium grey plutonic rocks of the batholith xenoliths intruded pegmatites white veins late state intrusions, gems metamorphic foliation gabbro very dark, like granite foliated Julian schist with quartz veins, oldest, metamorphosed sedimentary [last seventeen pages of the book: shopping lists; recipes for bread, baked custard, bran muffins; lists of expenses foreseen and actual; pellet stove notes; gopherproofing garden notes; cat adoption notes; bus schedules; utility contact numbers and notes; FCP notes; InDesign notes; calendar; banking records] 26 November cottontail rabbits Rabbits have remarkably wide field of vision and much of it is devoted to overhead scanning. Lifespan 9-12 years Graze heavily and rapidly for roughly the first half hour of a grazing period followed by about half an hour of more selective feeding Forage mostly at night Conceal in brush during the day, a depression called a form Nests in dense grass near the base of a tree, rock, wall, etc, 4" deep 8" long 15% of young survive the first year purring, gruowling, grunting, screams 3' high mesh with 2"x2" mesh most active around dawn or dusk only during severe storms will shelter in a woodchuck hole or rock crevice have trails, travel lanes the doe only comes back to the nest at night, squats over the hole by the 4th or 5th week they are on their own will live under buildings - Under the oak, cup of tea, sun in my eyes. There's a notch to the southwest where with the field glasses I can see the towers of a city. The furthest hill, palest blue, a bit of a rim, almost due south. There's Linda going to work in the pie shop. I want someone to sit with me and name the peaks and explain how these landforms were made. The first sign of dawn is that my white headboard begins to glow. This morning the full event about an hour. Cottontails crepulscular. Their delicacy of movement. Oak lattice squirming in dawn breeze. Whiffs of smoke from my chimney. At night the oak's black imprint trawling for stars that flash in the little gaps. Wind sounding in the pines, especially in the pines. This formidable grandmother shedding needles - uch I hate these messy unnative cypress, want to cut them all down. They spoil the shape of the yard. The day is sublimely warm, a free mobile air. Here I am! What's this little bird with a red head - a pink head. Another with an orangey-brown vest and black on its head. Very small asters still blooming. Something yellow, a mustard? Little dark bird with a crest. 27 Sunday. A west wind. My lovely bed. Bottom sheet: flannel, black watch plaid, green and blue with crossed red and white lines. Top sheet: flannel, navy blue, white lines. White duvet. Wood blanket, thick, dark green. Two white pillows. Every night I fold myself into it thankingly. Look at the oak's black company that will be there all night. The window open some inches from my head. Web monograph intent for hours - get it finished, please. 28 Highway 43 [the day in Demmitt Alberta] 29 It's five in the morning, dark. I'm thinking about the month or 6 weeks I lived in Mrs O'Hare's back bedroom, September-October 1969. Finished Anna Karenina this morning, Levin's surrender to faith, like the enlistment of the "men who have lost caste, a restless crew who are ready for anything," like Anna's death under the train, and Karenin's fall into evangelical Protestantism. Tea and toast in bed, as now. There I check email, has Coral come in. Yes there she is, at the end of her semester, grateful. This has been a pivotal time in my life and your uncanny way of seeing me and making some sense of the piles of junk I've sent you has kept me here, inside of it. In the past, I may have contrived some brilliant reason why none of this would work for me, and I would have packed it all up, shut the door. Thank you. I am working on giving myself permission to write. Ellie, you know all that I have needed to seek your permission all semester. I have felt doubtful about the value of my voice, about anyone wanting to read it. I kept shutting myself down. After I'd start warming up, getting into writing, I'd shut down. This happened several times I didn't mention to you. There's the beginning of daylight in flamingo pink streaks on thin cloud above the ridge. Pink and blue streaks. Stars: Casseopia almost overhead, Orion on its side, brilliant and quite high in the east, the Swan arrowing northwest up the Milky Way. The Pleiades a speckled spot. Edward Harvey David 1862-1951. Moved to Mesa Grande 1888. Ceremonial chief of MG 1907. 320 acres near Lake Henshaw. Built Powam Lodge on the Mesa, showcase for pottery and baskets. San Diego History Center, El Prado 1649 suite 3, photographic archives 619 232 6203. 30 Meleagris galloporo of the galliformes Males typically have a beard growing from the center of the breast. In some populations 10-20% of the females have a beard, usually shorter and thinner. The adult female is typically much smaller. Ideal habitat open woodland or savannah Solid white head and neck most excited Nests are shallow dirt depressions in woody vegetation, 10-14 eggs, incubate at least 28 days. Probably Rio Grande wild turkey, relatively long legs, buff to light tan tail and lower back feathers. Adapted to prairie habitat. Gregarious. Body feathers of Rio Grandes copper to greenish gold. Merriams purplish bronze. 1993 230, mix of Rio Grande and Eastern, mostly from Kansas, released near Julian, no Merriams. Rio Grande adapted to less than 10" of rain and no snow, hens unable to protect. Rio Grande poults roost, hen can't keep them under her wings while they are still downy. Avocado and citrus groves of North County, golf courses. Range extension Keen eyes, see color Fly up to 20' into branches. Winter flocks may be 50 or more. - What's this powder in the air. Cold wind from the southwest, dazzling silvery white painted over the nest of ridges toward the city. Is there a scent in this wind from that direction, not ocean but something. Waxing moon at noon's position. Crow rowing sideways across the blue. Turkeys this morning under the first oak. Ten just the same size, not all with the little beard-tufts on their chests. It was early. The sun shone through the red triangles under their jaws. Otherwise they are soberly dressed and remind me of Pilgrim Fathers, circumspect. They will graze like cows with their long necks down or stop and seem to listen. Sometimes one will suddenly stretch its wings to the side and shake them for a moment, no reason, and that may set off a couple more. It's a startling unfoldment, they are so slender and wear their clothing so tight that when they fan out sideways they metamorphose. - They always seem to me to be human beings, thoughtful. I stare as if to see through their disguises. It's partly that their feet are so large they have to lift them high before they put them down, and so they seem to walk with great care. - Web monograph - in the writing section I have wwwk - what else shd there be? Overwhelmed to think of it. 1st Dec Dictionary of the Mesa Grande Diegueño 1973 Belongs to the Yuman which includes Mojave Distantly in a greater family called the Hokan Margaret Langdon names her two main informants as the authors. Tchemakui at, on, in Mesa Grande - Which theory précis besides Leaving. This morning I set in part images including some that aren't right for full pages - bridge, burka, Schmidt's bench, clean edge. 3 What do I think of Updike's book. It's a couple of separate things, first a portrait of a semi-famous old woman living alone in the country. How old was he when he wrote it - 70, nine years younger than he made her. Why did he make Lee K fourteen years younger than she was? She was 37 when she married Pollock. He wanted to bring her life up to the present of writing was one reason. But an effect is that he misrepresents her in her relation with Pollock - she was four years older - and he misrepresents her as a painter, makes her weaker and later than she was. It's true Primeval resurgence was (1961-1956 =) 5 years after Pollock died, she was 53. Start again - 1. A portrait of an old woman living in the country. 2. A guess at a female artist's life as it might have occurred for the generation ten years older than he was. 3. A glancing history of New York art over 40 or 50 years 4. And most importantly to him, I assume, a discussion of value in visual art, which Updike also did, I mean as a writer. 5. A cultural sweep of changes 1945-2002, Updike's changes. Structurally the book is no shakes: the 5 things it is are just glommed together - it's readable, it's interesting, but it's not good. Rilke: Cezanne did not paint "I love this here," he painted "Here it is." In great art we cease to be in order to attend to something else. Mathew Arnold "Homer invariably composes with his eye on the object." "If the gift is there, the self burns away in the act of art." Galen Strawson thinking about Seek my face. - Do I believe anything like that or is it another kind of female-bashing. Composing with the eye on the object, to say here it is, IS loving the thing seen, and is selfless in the sense that one isn't being about oneself rather than it, but it inevitably has to be about oneself too because by means of oneself, no matter the gift. Pollock's canvases are certainly about Pollock's motion, thus his body, among other things, including his inability to draw and a historical moment. I guess those formulations are dualistic, the self is being equated with selfconsciousness thought of as ontologically separate. I was interested in how he was inventing the old woman. Because she was a visual artist he has her studying shape and color all the time. The interviewer's nose. She imagines the interviewer's pussy hair - wd a woman painter do that? She is constantly glancing outside noting the color of the weather. I do that. He tracks the fluctuation of hostility and friendliness in the conversation well. The conversation itself is implausibly literary, carrying much too much of 3 and 4. Whenever he has the two of them moving around the house and yard it's concrete in his excellent way. The fact that the interviewer has parked where she shouldn't and the bare muddy patch where she opens the car door, the details of the house - beadboard under the stairs, chipped burner plates on the stove. Kathryn finds the door handle of Mac's car; the dark and rain release the concussive pang of the driver's side opening, spilling a wedge of light onto Kathryn's square-toed boots, the patch of ground turning to mud beneath them, some flattened blades of grass here at the lawn's edge .... The guess at a female artist's life is cursory and I'd say stupid. The guess at a female artist's current consciousness was unstupid enough to keep me reading but the life story was just there to hang 3, 4 and 5 on. I was interested in the discussion of value in visual art and the history of discussions of value in visual art of course, but skeptical all the way through. It's not clear. He lets sophistries past. How does he feel about the visuality of his writing, which has been his edge? He must have been thinking about writing as he wrote the book, for instance how did visual art change writing after the war. What have been the sweeps of style in writing, what have been the specifically male styles of driving ambition in writing. If he has her living until 2002 there should have been a harder critique of maleness in his intelligent character. She'd have been 48 in 1970 - is that too old to have shifted? Who else was born in 1922. Le Guin is 1929, Lee Bontecou is 1931. Those women are Updike's generation. "You have to make yourself an artist. You have to last through time." (Nancy Rubens) Greg said I'm east of La Glace and it's true, though it's in the Mountain Time Zone.
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