| time remaining 3 part 2 - 2015 october-november | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
6 October [two pages of notes on the house and garden summarized in the document I wrote up for Jam:
-
7 Louie is weaseling - she is not looking straight at what's up with her and Ina is not going to know how to push her through - and I'm alarmed, why am I - I'm alarmed that I couldn't get through to Jam yesterday and she didn't reply to my text - I was in full push with researching everything about costs and got checked - I'm alarmed that I lied to Jam when she asked if I'd said anything to anyone and I hesitated for a beat and said no - I'd told Louie and Paul - that was a miscalculation - I mean I didn't think long enough - I don't want a lie at the start of my house. The evidence is that the lie has already put a scare into the field, into me certainly, and maybe Jam's unconscious and maybe Louie's too though she was freaked already. Jam may just be freaked by the realities of being a landlady.
I'm just now realizing it's a psychologically fragile field - I've been so intent on mastering the facts and inventing beauties and imagining myself at home that I have forgotten that Jam isn't a businesswoman though she seems to see herself as one. She has no one to process with. That puts me in some danger. But what's up with Louie isn't that, it's not that she's worried for me, she's disapproving of me, rather. Am I being crooked? I don't think so. So then it is she who is crooked in some way she hasn't seen through to.
8 Bought a bed. Bought a bed from Fred. 9 Getting in and out of it without thinking, without struggle. Yesterday someone on Ashcroft Buy & Sell saying he's having a moving sale, selling everything. Address on Frontage Road in 16 Mile. I have to find the place, back and forth on the gravel road west of the highway. Didn't bring the number. Man at the closed north end of the road comes out of his house because he's seen me turn around twice. I've remembered the seller's name. It's Paul. Four lots past the fruit stand. There's a Remax sign. Septic pumping going on. Three men and a pit bull puppy. Trailer with built-ons, bachelor shambles. Paul has a thin little head with jug ears. He has a bed frame but it's fancy. Do I want a couch? Paid fifteen hundred for it, he'll give it to me for fifty. He says the fruit stand man has a single bed. He'll help me load it if I want. The fruit stand is also a plant nursery and a vast junk shop behind tall hoardings. Many acres sloping up toward a fine mountainside. Half a dozen old trailers. Junk laid out weathering. Various containers with their doors open. A nursery patch with pots in ordered sections. A large area of black filter cloth held down with tires. A jerry-built long roofed structure with aisles of tables holding old TVs, dishes, magazines, furniture. The owner comes down the slope. He's surprising, a black man. He has a narrow calmly alert face and a slow soft voice. Is it an accent, I wonder. American maybe but not southern, it's just his manner probably. He's intelligent, a bit ironical, very present. I like him. I'd brought him a sprig from Paul's hedge, something with fine pointed leaves, asked whether he knew it. He considered. "I think it's li-lac," pronouncing the two syllables with a slow gap between them. "It goes like that if it isn't taken care of. It's very hardy." He says yes he has a bed somewhere, he'll have to find it. Meanwhile I can look in the roofed structure. He goes off. Then I can't find him. I'm wandering the nursery rows. There's sedum in bright pink bloom. Gangling willow. This and that, nothing he hasn't propagated himself. He comes up from the fruit stand then. There'd been a car. We were going to see the bed. He said it was blue. He chose a careful path along the slope and around obstacles. Pulled a bed frame out of a pile. I liked it. It was simple, rounded tubular metal ends, a good blue, some rusted and flaked. "How much do you want for it?" "Twenty-five?" He didn't have change for a ten so I went hunting through my change box for nickels and dimes. "What's your name?" "Fred." I asked because I wanted to be friends, go on knowing him. I asked if he had a card. He laughed, gestured to his whole jumbled spread, "This is my card." But wrote something on the back of a card someone else had given him.
Loaded the bed carefully into the back of the jeep. - Kamloops Starbucks. It wasn't broad daylight yet. I couldn't see the country well and was driving fast but up ahead under the lid of cloud was open sky clear pale marachino pink. Sagebrush and blooming rabbitbrush on the verges are the season's color, with aspen gold and pine dark green in the creases. Colors of broken rock whose mix gives me shocks of pleasure always. A lovely road, loopy, loping through a broad valley toward and away from the Thompson. What an ugly child, and is the ugly mother quarreling with Starbucks about five dollars, or what. Uncle and aunt - 13 years - I was still in my 50s when Ed died. They'll be in their eighties. We'll all be shocked. But they camp and he's been a teacher and I hope I remember to ask him about my tires. What'll I do till eleven. The blue house. I've worked my hope and excitement off in sketchup, have it as it is and as I'd make it if there were lots of money. Imagining the two west rooms are bedroom and workroom, and kitchen and small bedroom and basement could be sometimes shared. Wondering whether it could pay for itself a bit, somehow. [blue house from the NE] [from the SW] [floor plan before] [floor plan after] - Home by four. Dustiest computer they'd seen. The wind was blowing tumbleweed across the road. I was driving fast. The road was much shorter on the way home. George and I were leaning on the deck railing looking down onto the garden. He said he'd tackled my dad. "I said 'Ewald when are you going to get right with your kids.' He said 'When are they going to get right with me.'" And then George had said "But you're the father." They were good-looking eighty-five year olds, a bit bent forward, she thinner and he a bit thicker, with Konrad water plumping his face. They live on a good street they've lived on for 35 years. The front lawn has a magisterial linden tree he planted as a sapling and the back yard a 25' cedar he pulled up on a hike. 10 My computer is really fixed. The fan doesn't roar. On the blue house again all day. Built-ins, picture rails, glass doorknobs, a kitchen table and chairs. 11 I haven't pushed, have done what I could on my own. This morning early an email. We talked on the phone. She said "Who did you tell?" and I said forthrightly, "Louie." She gave me a chance to redeem myself. I was grateful. Since it's an investment she's now thinking as an investor. "Give me your pitch." I did. I had it ready. I've done a lot this week.
12 This morning she says "i like it. and the town. if that's where u want to live."
13 We're further into negotiation and I'm stressed. Couldn't fall asleep and this morning have woken in a flare. Yesterday neuralgic pangs. J is going to talk to her accountant now she says and so wanted money details. I said I can only afford $500 and $500 almost exactly is what it costs to run the house. My in-kind contributions can't be monetized because then I'd have to pay GST and my income would be taxable. I said make it a low rent and I'll do it for joy but keep a record of what I do so you can satisfy your family if it comes to it. My sense of it is that value added would more than make it to market rent but I don't trust her to understand that. I'm worried too because she asked whether the house could be added-onto and the garage modified to live in. I'm worried she'll want to start meddling in design, which I couldn't bear. Maybe she's just into the idea of investing well, trying to be smart and diligent with the limited knowledge she has. But that motive may end up competing with wanting to give me a house, which has seemed to give her pleasure. She was ready to just dump $350,000 into my account.
I thought taxes wd take too much of it but it turns out that gifts aren't taxed in Canada.
So it has to be this route but the dependency is hard on me. The suspense and uncertainty.
Chukar - Eurasian upland bird in the pheasant family. Rocky open hillsides. Found in small coveys. This one 15. Chukar is Sanskrit - symbolizes intense and often unrequited love. Lead with love, low ego, high impact. Move at the speed of trust. [Black Lives Matter principles] 15 Blow to the heart - trembling - email from Mark saying someone's offer accepted. There was so much joy in the thought of it. I was younger. My friends came to stay and helped remodel. I had friends. The garden was perfect paradise. I'd learned how to do the remodels and was just prioritizing. Know there can never be anything as good anywhere again.
16 Jam said "Let's see what stuff you're made of." It made me remember who I'm dealing with. She jumps into the upper air when she thinks she can. It's a way of staying above herself probably but I don't like it. I notice that in our negotiations I've been counting on her being far, far away in another country and have been evading when she wants to talk face to face. I woke at 5:30 in fear from a dream in which Roy was threatening to take Luke. Alright, so where am I now, again. It's 6:30, sky showing lighter above the cliff. Colder than it's been, the floor is cold. I can hear trucks gearing down on the Transcanada. I'm in this dark den of a place and will have - I think - money enough to afford it, or almost. Should I move to Lillooet? Find a rental there? Drop Jam? Say, just give me the money if you want to, no strings? Forget house research 'til she can say she has her ducks lined up? I want the life I imagined in that house - I don't want an isolate's house now, I want a house with friends and sun in the garden and open sky beyond the gate. I want it with all the joy love faith hope energy focus and impetus of this past week. Imagining the house made me younger. I don't have the money for that life. I have what I know how to make, I have that I can learn almost anything. I have the moment, a working jeep, internet, more friends than I had, I mean Louie and Greg. Wd Rob buy me a house? It says yes.
-
I now see why Pinsky hasn't bothered to translate the Paradiso. It's dreary exposition of theology, Beatrice the tedious philosopher. 17 I was crossing through a yard I'd crossed through before to visit Louise. My route through the fence had been blocked and the gay owners were there. They showed me a gate nearer the house. I went through with a pushchair and small Luke. Burst through Louise's door. When she came in I could see she wasn't glad to see me. Was in the middle of something, people came out of the room where there'd been a meeting. Tall Margo looking at me with dislike. I introduced Luke. It seemed there was some sort of Goddard difficulty they were meeting about. Louise is house renovation. Margo is boss. Luke is child self. Two gay men is contact with the uncon. Illegal entry. Closed and restored access. A disapproving unwelcoming tone.
I had something to do and then I didn't. I'd put away the blue house reno sketchup but yesterday I opened it again and worked all day on detailing picture rails, edge boards, colors. Added a shelf and a suitcase to the guestroom, water to the tub, devised narrow double doors for the kitchen so there'd be room to open them. the house had become another fantasy house I could love as that. Who disapproves? I do and don't. I love the work and love being absorbed in it. I've got better at it and like the defter ways I handle tasks. I'm more exact and quicker to improvise. I love the constant suite of problem and solution. I love putting colors together. I love working with the classical details of that kind of house, the accumulated taste and skill of the carpentry, the mouldings, the way they give a room high coherence, the care needed for their making. Their unity of style, the way it all goes together - hardwood floor, high ceilings, complex casings on double-hung windows, edgeboards and picture rails. Symmetries. Fireplace. I like learning to understand those details better as I work with them. [bathroom before] [bathroom after] [kitchen before] [kitchen after] [front room before] [front room after] [northwest bedroom before] [northwest bedroom after] [northeast bedroom before] [northeast bedroom after] What disapproves, do you, dear book? It says yes.
- I told Rob the tale and said "It's kind of a long shot, but ...." He said "It's not a long shot at all, I've been thinking maybe Ellie would like to do something." A relief to think of doing it with him.
"It's a good idea on so many levels." He understood the uses of the blue house instantly. The garden or shed for canning. Permaculture.
18
19 Yesterday Luke writing me from Trafalgar Square, eight o'clock in London, cool, "wanting fog," trees yellow under streetlights. I was telling him the house tale.
Saturday evening I needed cream for tea, drove to Ashcroft, winding down into the valley realized it was the first time I'd been out at night, scatter of village lights on the valley floor. On the way home crossed the tracks and sat for a while above the river that rippled sheet of heavy substance moving inexorably past. Yeats, Joyce, Pound, Woolf, Richardson, Lawrence, the headwaters. There are no others, still. London, Dublin and Sligo: the Rhymers, Irish history and the peasants: something, something and La Glace. No, the writers, the plants and buildings, space and light and their devotees, the mid-century painters all the way down to Gordon Smith. - Making this list I see that the later headwaters were not in writing and not in 20th c science exactly but in what it gave visual artists. "Experimental film" was a way station getting ready for the full digital that'll be the next headwater. Okay. Election today. The man despised by artists and scientists was not reelected. The man who won gave a speech that went from "this great country" to "working together" with no single intelligent sentence. Talking to Rowen. He and Freya moving along. Have bought a truck and have their learners. Have bought a trailer, want to tear it down and use it as a base for building their own little house. Insulating a shed to live in together. Have incorporated. "She's good at getting me to want things grownups want." I'd asked him how to embed my sketchup houses in a tumblr page with writing, sound, photos. He said use a game engine. You can tell a certain story when someone goes into a bedroom. You can arrange a sunrise on the horizon when someone opens curtains. 22 Had a new baby. Saw milk pouring into its mouth from my nipple. Two Gordon Smith books on interlibe loan finally have come through and there I see how my hero on the way to being what he became as an old man worked in many styles fashionable in his many times, all of which I hate. Until in his (b.June 1919} seventies in the mid-1990s he lent himself to many kinds of bad training - I mean humanly bad - to succeed in narrowly male-defensive terms. (One exception, Freight yards 1945.) He had the example of the expressionists all the while - Pollock was dead by the '50s - but stayed local. Was that failure of recognition? "Smith has stated recently that he feels he has done his best work since turning seventy." Winterscape 1991. Untitled 1996, 8' wide, is probably the one I saw. What they are doesn't show up in these photos at all. "I paint 6 hours a day but it doesn't just happen there. I think about it in the morning when I get up. I dream about it. I think about it all the time. I'm tired most of the time but when I'm painting I'm never tired." 2014 when he's 95. Marion died 2009.
Did his lifetime of fashionable experiments make him able to do what he does in his few stupendous works? Did his generosity in friendship and teaching and his sober discipline keep him from getting there sooner? Untitled in the VAG is expressionism taken further, the way Bontecou's later work is something taken further. Joan Mitchell made a lot of junk too. Krasmer was almost where he is in 1961, Primeval resurgence at MOCA. Needless to say she isn't mentioned in either book. Meantime I'm laughing at the unsuccess of my efforts with writing public guys. Harold Rhenish. I wrote him about his mind vs body language. We were back and forth a couple of times and then he dropped me. Now Antonis about Gordon Smith. Greg sent a New Yorker piece about a writer who wrote a lot without publishing and then sent something to a known young guy and once he replied wd send him 5 emails a day, brilliant emails. But 1. I haven't picked anyone my own size, and 2. I'd never be so persistent, and 3. I don't know what size I am, exactly. Wd I know by who wanted to reply? No, because there's so much prejudgment blindness of women. It makes a fog. 23 Chantal Akerman committed suicide this month at 65. Her mother died and she lost it. When I interviewed her at the conference she was 23 and pink. 26 Two nights ago a collection of flat oval stones each a different color. I meant to give them to small Luke to play with. Toronto in two weeks. I looked up Dave's address and felt o city, cafés! shops! streets I don't know! A park across the street. Yesterday and Saturday all day refining the Oliver house. It's something to do; have nothing to read. It's the Oliver house because it's the size of the little wreck I thought of renting, on the alley, with an apricot tree. Began it on the 17". It was a careless experiment. It's still not wonderful but I devised this and that, a way of setting the bathroom sink in front of windows, a shallow shelf-box fitted in next to the oven hood. Had new things from the blue house: cupboard hinges, long drawer pulls, a much better bed, a nice kitchen mat, bathroom cupboard doors that work. I like the 1' walls. Two many panes I think. 18x22 = almost 4002. [floor plan] [french doors] [desk corner] [Gordon Smith painting] The pillared house was 14x25 = 3502. They're almost exactly the same size if I subtract wall area. So what's my best one-person small house - this one, I think, if I were to put it on the ground and add north windows and orient it. Meantime: haven't heard from Rob, haven't heard from Jam, the blue house has disappeared off the listings, and there's nothing else I like. House in Oliver, but it's in Oliver. 27 Judie was dj-ing a pop music program, I noticed. Later I was standing in a bare community garden sort of field and saw someone I thought might be her crawling toward us. I checked whether she was fat so it was Judie about the age she is now. Got down on my knees to be able to look into her face. Yes it was her, it seemed she couldn't walk but was determined to get around. Yesterday I checked the realtor's customized-to-me listings page and saw 1121 had vanished so the sale was final? Later in the day a note from the realtor that he'd updated the page. Nothing on the regular tab but when I checked the favorites tab there was 1121 again with a BOM marker next to it, back on the market. Little gasp. Then the rest of the day a dark muddle of feeling. Sent a note to Rob, but was keeping myself dulled about it. Thoughts about the book, hadn't it been saying I'd lose it and then get it? How would it know? And why wasn't Rob answering? He didn't phone after 9 when he'd have gotten home. A note from Jam saying that horizon has sailed. Suspense v uncomfortable. Everyone but me lagging, lagging. Realtor hasn't replied, Mark in Lillooet didn't let me know, Rob hasn't replied to either of the docs I sent ten days ago or to the note yesterday, Jam is out of it with dentistry. Was holding myself at bay yesterday because I didn't want the fever again. -
So then I walked into Remax in Ashcroft and asked if it's really back on the market. Cindy phoned. It's not. Sunday I lost phone reception for half a day. This aft there's no internet. I'm going to lie here with a hot rock at my feet and read a novel. 28 Henry Olidam. I was walking somewhere maybe in Alberta and saw Henry through a doorway. Stopped, was pleased, went to talk to him. He was running some sort of shop. There were beautiful square-cut pieces of layer cake he'd made. He talked about how much he liked Scandinavian things, brought out a large Norwegian kettle to show me. Am not remembering dreams as well as I always have. There are scraps from what I dimly know was a longer story. Sitting on a bus with a young girl next to me leaning against me, beyond her a little boy, her brother. We are holding together sweetly though displaced. Had asked Rob to phone when I thought the blue house was unsold again. He didn't, but last evening an hour and a half after he said he would, he did. He likes to talk. Wanted to tell about a customer at the store. He could only take one step at a time and had bursts of anger. "I liked him." "She was very smart. She reminded me of you. She asked good questions." He was feeling their lives. Talking about the house quest he said "I want to take care of you." He said it in passing, very lightly. Henry Olidam is the kind of man Rob is, sweet-hearted. For himself he wants to spend more, up to six hundred maybe, acreage. He'd buy me a house without thinking, two hundred is not much. But he doesn't want the first time house buyer tax break to be wasted on small cost. So I'll look for acres for him, acres he can build on. I'd like him nearby I think. "It's a good idea on so many levels." He's going to want a different landscape than I do but he's amenable maybe. I looked at higher end properties yesterday and they are horrible palaces, 'cathedral entrance,' 'en-suite with hot tub,' 'gourmet-style kitchen,' 'desirable neighbourhood.' 29 And then the huge house on Bale that overlooks the Thompson facing south. I look at a place and start to imagine a life, imagined futures begin to make claims. Dreaming many things. Had noticed I was walking in my socks, soft white socks. Could feel the path underfoot quite realistically. Toward the end a shortcut toward the train station where I was going to try to remember the route back to Auntie Anne's. I could see the roof above other roofs. Asked someone if there was a way through. She said yes. Had to climb over a fence made of bed frame ends to waste ground with some flowers showing, iris. I'd look at one and see others, the blue kind and the brown kind. There was a ditch full of water covered with weed but I saw a place to cross it. Then a stone passage, steps going down and others up. I went up and found myself too high off the road to jump down. Maybe there were steps down - was looking toward the right and woke. The plan to find the way to Auntie Anne's involved a train platform or line I remembered from other times, other actual dreams I think. The image that sticks is the stone passage. It's the sort of image there often is in video games. The iris were quite distinct too. 30 [page of 1253 Bale Rd Walhachin facts] I drove through changed color - rabbitbrush gone furry buff, bare trees, sweet mild light. Bale Road a gravel track. Then there it is. Low to the ground, really, except in its southwest back corner. "It's an estate" said Dan the realtor. Yes but an imaginative one. The stone steps. The deep stone at all. The fact that it's been unsold for years and the bank has given up on getting back what it's owed. It's romantic. There's a west wing. There are baronial fireplaces. There's a pool. There are immense beams. There's a pool wall. I was planting roses and an orchard oh yes. I love the low stone wall, the stone at all. The kitchen cabinets are ridiculous, the kitchen ridiculously large with a massive hearth, but it has two lovely doors, one to the west and one to the east onto the morning verandah. Noticing I've left the blue house behind. This one is not true love in the same way but I notice that I immediately begin to invent ways to live in the space. There's a screening room. There are small guest bedrooms, maybe four. Work party guests. I'd want to change its color - it's too brown. Pink. Orangey-pink wd be just right, and paint some of the beams white. Louie could hire it for yoga weekends. Rob's brothers could come up for Christmas and birthdays. It wd be cool in the heat of summer. I'd move into small rooms with an electric heater in winter. The poolside wall for espaliered trees - a fig. Rob could have a specialty nursery. There could be a greenhouse in the basement. The lower SW corner has the best view - have a little paved area under that tree. See? Rob meantime is feeling doubts. But I'm more sanguine now, imagining these futures is its own pleasure. Rob doesn't have my bold stretch into possibility, I could make it work but he doesn't leap. If he did he'd have done it long ago. 31 That one photo looking SW past bare tree and low stone wall toward the river and curved line of track and further hills. It's a precinct. - Donald Davie Pound - Prophetic dreams, vision experience, ceremonial songs. "Sing with them," ie the people seen in vision. - Now I'm tired - the blue house was just right - Bale would need full-time commitment from Rob and then I'd have to live with him and he'd have to have a job in Kamloops and we'd be a couple on an isolated piece of land, yikes. So much depended on the blue house.
One thing will have changed, I'll finally have stopped leaking money every month when GIS and SAFER will have kicked in. Now I have Bale Rd's rock steps and river view in my head I'll be hard to satisfy. It's the 31st. Tom and I at the mission in Mesa Grande. Joy to have my feet on the yellow grass at last. Tom smoking by the Virgin. That was 1994, the beginning. Then Hallowe'en night bringing him to his best own home. 2006. I've been living badly, hiding from my days because they aren't right. This house isn't right. I'm not working, I'm not loving, except yesterday oh that stretch of road with pink bushes in a shallow draw. The stone steps. The stone wall. Flying on the highway. Tom was my depth and now I have none. I've been in suspense for 14 months and more to go. My hair is lank. The gods don't like me, they are teasing me with houses I can't have. My skin hurts. Tom wasn't my depth, I was. Lit 5 candles. Read GW3-3. Not so much Tom as the writing. By which I mean the being. Realness balancing with something to meet. 1st November The clocks have been set back, it's 3:42. I woke desperate. Realizing my desperation. I'm desperate for a place. I don't live right in this place. It's blind, it's enclosed, I'm not in the world when I'm here and I'm here most of the time because there's nothing for me to do outside. The yard is hard to walk on and the neighbours' yard is ugly. I like to go to Ashcroft but there's nothing for me to do there either. I go to the library, I go to the market, I buy water at Irly's, I take recycling to the bins, sometimes I stop at the post office, and then I have to go home. I look at cashiers and talk to them, have pleased words with anyone but no one knows me. I've been here two months. They've been laid waste except for driving through autumn country. The drives to Lillooet, Kamloops, Bale Rd. Some Facebook photos but not many, the river bloc of five, the subtle cliff. Haven't set up a here site because I'm not here, I'm transient, I'm waiting, I'm in a holding cell. The shape and surfaces of this place are all wrong, I shut down to not see them. I can't make the room hold me right. It's a mess. It can't matter. There's been nothing to read, interlibrary loans take six weeks to come through and I'm only allowed to ask for six at a time. I don't work. I kill time all day. I'm squalid. I'm ashamed of myself and lost. My systems are breaking down. The keyboard is shot. This morning I discovered the scales are shot! Internet has slowed. Had to replace the Powerbook adapter. My hair has grown out of its cut and is lank three days after I wash it. I'm eating carelessly because I'm invisible. I'm appalling in the bathroom mirror. My teeth hurt because this mouthwash isn't working, or is it the toothpaste. My mother won't die though she's dead. Tom doesn't reply. Louie's aware of my desperation. Jam showed her old hauteur. Rob doesn't know what he's doing. Hopes have started up and then sagged. Luke sometimes writes, loves me. Rowen is happy. I am about to have just enough money. There's Toronto. Will I like my films? Will they flop? Can I be ready? If work is all I have why don't I work. It's as if my human self, my ordinary self, digs in her heels: I want, I need, I refuse until you look after me. Give me a home, give me a lover, give me friendly company and play. Give me confidence and admiration and affection, somewhere, somehow. Give me loving company, a personal life. Is that it, I don't know. It says yes. Sweetheart I don't know how. I'm trying. It's not going well. You're not helping. You're old and ugly. You're shut down and lazy. I'm angry at you for that. You are holding me back. You just eat and sleep. You are missing teeth. You limp so that's the first thing anyone sees of you. You don't have good clothes. You don't wash your hair. You are stuck out in the middle of nowhere in a dark hole with nothing to read. You've been losing money for years. You'll never have a lover again. You're a washout, you're living dead, you're done. You'll never write well again because you'll never live with energy again, you'll never be in love again. It's an impasse isn't it. Self-interfering. I'm angry at you because you're a failing body, you humiliate me. I'm angry at YOU because you don't look after me, you don't provide for me. It says it's not true that I'm old and ugly and it's not true that I'll never write with energy again but the rest is true.
3 6:30 in the dark. It's a draw time for Toronto. I have to get my head lined up. Washed clothes yesterday. Will have to go through them looking for what to take, repairing maybe. What will there be. Mafalda on the 11th, sound check in the morning of the 12th, Cheryl's dinner on the 14th, or is it the 13th? Chris, Jacob, Auntie Anne, Franci and Dave and Tomas, will I be able to dodge Tia, probably. Would like to meet Susanne. Phil? Cheryl has invited the Can Lit woman. They're paying me $250 which won't cover my city expenses. Film rental later. Get ready to talk about the new films. Get ready to talk to Cheryl about her book. Get ready to be turned on. It's grim here, I've been grim here. I look at any praise dubiously, hold back from it as if it's a social lie. Haven't thought to be excited about being featured somewhere. Has Jacob been getting ready to do more, maybe. He's so polite. Will the streets be snowy so it's hard to walk, will I have an injury that makes me hobble, will my clothes be shabby. Will Franci and Dave secretly grumble that I'm there too long. Could I finish pale hill before I go. - What do I like about this photo. The cloud is so tender a being. It's three kinds of softness. Toned to each other just right. The cloud is ephemeral but distinct, as if a young thing. Yes a young cloud at a soft edge. 7th Hello Saturday. I make tea and sit down to real estate. Rob likes the adobe house. I can't afford it. It's a good house, a lovely house in a good place. Is the railway too near? - Mainly there's a blur about whether Rob is thinking of a house for him or for me. Wd he buy a house I live in and he visits? And we make a garden? Or is the house for him? it's a hard passage, going on uncertain. Meantime Toronto very soon. Have to get into an artist state for it. 8
"I want security for my fruit trees." 9 [From the G4: I need to unload stress after talking to Jam - jangled trying to call her just now - want to say that I knew right after we hung up that no I must not accept 60 thousand dollars from her - not for teeth or for housing - I don't want to be involved in secrecy with her - I don't want to be sealed off that way and certainly not with her - I deeply don't trust her - sigh - big sigh - I don't think she knows what she's doing - am glad I blasted her but it shook me to come out bare in rage - it rose as I started to speak - it as if welled up from under me and lifted me - I said when she first knew me etc - but now I have a fucking PhD and was a professor for 12 years and the stuff I'm made of is not in question - then later she called me 'my dear' twice and I said stop this my dear thing - very directly that - irritated - and there was more nonsense - she was assuming her special friends and I are on the outs on account of her - I said it's sexual and work rivalry and it's nothing to do with her - she tried to explain away the moment I saw through them - in mad terms, in the old mad terms - and as if it was about what they were thinking about her - I said no, it was because it was good - what else - I think that was it - I don't trust her sanity - big sigh - she's still harping on being in the middle of rival groups of girls in school as if it's her trial in life whereas it's her game - keeping secrets on both sides and feeling in demand - it's stupid - big sigh - There was another thing, what was it - she didn't like that I'd told Louie - said it twice - she was mysterious about falling - 'something has come up' - was warning me about things that could go wrong with Rob - I didn't want her to have his name and didn't tell it - she thought I was angry about the blue house rather than what I said I was angry about She's been thinking about Lillooet - she says her special friends are thinking about 'the Cariboo' - I said tell me where so I know which little town not to choose - will they get it together? - no - nor will she About the money, I'd been wobbling, I was thinking if she'd just given me the 350 when she first thought to I'd have bought the blue house or at least wouldn't be having this long suspense waiting for other people - and I wobbled when I spoke to her this aft - the thought of fixing what's ugly in my teeth - I got out my check book to find the routing number and suddenly remembered social services maybe wanting to see bank statements. What should I do, should I open another account - we said she'd speak to me tomorrow or Tuesday morning - and then I got angry and then when I hung up was so disgusted altogether that I said this is wrong, this is wrong - big sigh - I should be gentle in saying no - she's scared of her health and confused in her mom's death - what's the best of the truth of it - I don't want a relation with her based on money - it's too fraught between us - I liked the thought of being more the way I used to be when I was with her, more porous and feeling, love woman being an artist, going for broke - the best of my relation with her was Titania in the bushes / something intently - she supported it in me by being Oberon in her way - didn't she? - yes - ashamed intently
- Text message:
Big sigh. Something more to be said about why I'm that angry with her and what it has to do with her special friends. She humiliated me with them. The way I say 'special friends' is certainly a clue. Even now thinking of it a tight heart. She won a competition with me: she rather than I ended up with them. And they used her to win a competition with me. I was shoved out. Shoved out of Titania is the feeling.
What's the best I can want from this trip -
Some money - 7 films at 35 = 245
Six in the morning. Sent the text. It's Monday. Yawning. Some things to do I guess.
time remaining volume 3: 2015 may-august work & days: a lifetime journal project
|
