February
	01 Art and Anger 02 Art and Anger, Part 2 03 The ritual disposition 04 Max 05 Things 'n stuff 06 There's a wall 07 Lost Wanda 08 "This can't be I!" 09 My search for meaning 10 Understanding typography 11 Productivity in a pear tree 12 More productivity 13 On skipping a day 14 For Lee 15 Just a glint of gold 16 Innate perversity 17 To dust I shall return 18 In which I am pathetic 19 Claiming Bad Energy 20 Snobisms 21 Old crimes that won't go away 22 Patience and Fortitude 23 Delicate raw flesh 24 I am suspicious 25 Today's walks 26 "a life free of understanding" 27 Crossing in Mist 28 Nineteen Blue Candles

February 1, Art and Anger

"Don't want to write about this." "You have to. You've been thinking about it all day." "But I can't. I'm not good at it. I was out the day they taught persuasive writing in school." "You were not. They never taught persuasive writing in your schools. You never practiced persuading anybody of anything and it's about time you started." "But it's not my style. I'm no good at polemics. I can't get my facts straight. I'm too lazy to even marshall any facts. And anything can be proven by statistics anyway. Nobody buys into any of these books." "Hey, what's going on here, who's the big admirer of Virginia Woolf, anyway? Who studied Three Guineas word by word and wrote a paper on it? What happened to all those pages of feminist literary criticism that you've read -- vaporized? gone into a black hole? You're trying to tell me you don't know how to argue a point, to make a statement? What good is all your talk of "power" in writing? Bah. What's power without ideals behind it?" "But it's so much wooooork. And I don't want to be seen as one of those aaaaangry women. And plus I'm only writing a daily journal. It's just about little things. Bits and pieces. Hundreds and thousands. And what I'm really interested in anyway is Art. And feeling good. And stories. Dreams. Nice words. Poems. Puns. Vivid metaphors." "Well, isn't that just all fine and dandy. I still think you're wimping out big time. Hey look, don't you remember that little one-page paper you wrote on the "Conceptual Framework of Financial Accounting - Dream or Reality"? You got a C on it. Your ideas were so intense, you couldn't express it all in a little one-page deal, so it came out all mangled. You were so pissed off at the grade, you had to redo it. When you expanded it to 11 pages, you got an A+ on it, and won a $500 contest prize. When, I ask you, when are you going to apply a little of that energy to the things you really care about?" ~~~~~~~ Above brought to you by: 1) Book review in the august New York Times of the book What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us, Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, by Danielle Crittenden ... a woman who "believes that when it comes to negotiating the balance between love, family and work, 'feminism has failed women.'" 2) Jane Marcus, "Art and Anger, Elizabeth Robins and Virginia Woolf." She writes "I like the image of Woolf as a Lapland witch, making war, not love, untying the knots of social convention, encouraging the open expression of hostilities. She killed her own 'angel in the house' and out of her ashes came an angel of vengeance..." This article is breathtaking, and I resist quoting at length only because I'm so angry at myself for not putting my own words to use in this moral responsibility.

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February 2, Art and Anger, Part 2

It's not a good idea to write like I did yesterday. Today I am quite stymied about what to do as a follow-up. Continue in that vein? which would really hurt the character of the journal. Or just drop it? Try to write something "indirect" or disguised or sublimated? "Stop to curse?" Sigh. I am full of questions. I need to return to the self. First of all, I don't believe in speaking outside of the "I". I can't make any sweeping statements about We or You or Them or Women or even "Modern Women." It is very false. Second, I don't want to change the character of the journal. If I'm going to write an 11-page rant, it will have to be posted in a separate section. And I can't do it in one night. And there's plenty of anger in the journal anyway. I can let it seep out in this form as well, don't worry, it's not prohibited. Third, this morning I woke up full of energy and feeling fearless. The fearless feeling lasted until I got into the office. It was unusual and felt good. Fourth, by the end of the day, I was suffering a sinking disease. Not only didn't I feel well, but I suddenly realized I had been swarmed by stories of male violence against women in the last few days. In meetings. In online journals. Today's headline in the local paper, "Police ID victim of slaying; Woman, 55, had survived 1995 stabbing by estranged husband." The estranged husband is in jail. So who killed her? More stories: I wrote a letter to the editor of our Alternative Newspaper awhile ago. It was in response to a big article about those damn men, and how they just will not help with the housework. The letter was short, and I expressed anger at women for even having this expectation. I think the letter contained some sentence like "Why would the king want to step down off his throne to help clean the toilets?" It was printed with my name and when I saw it I was petrified that people at work would read it. Silly me, I guess no one at work reads that newspaper. I didn't hear a thing about it. Or maybe it was too hot a topic. I have no personal horror stories of male violence against me. I have a lot of stories of me taking very unwise (?) risks, walking alone at night, talking to strangers, camping alone, always surrounded by an absolute aura of rage wiping out fear. I'm not sure where it comes from, maybe it's inherited. I want to write a story, based on real life, about me and men and my campfires. Tonight I asked Older One to turn off a very gory Nintendo game he had brought home from the video store. I said he was old enough to make his own decisions, but it wasn't a good idea to play that in front of women (me) and children (Younger One) (because I might bash the TV in) (I didn't say that part). I probably wouldn't have done this unless I was taken up with this subject. Here's the last paragraph of "Art and Anger" (Jane Marcus): Anger is not anathema in art; it is a primary source of creative energy. Rage and savage indignation sear the hearts of female poets and female critics. Why not spit it out, as Woolf said, blow the blessed horn, as Robins said? Why wait until old age, as they did, waiting long to let out their full quota of anger? Out with it. No more burying our wrath, turning it against ourselves. No more ethical suicides, no more literary pacifism. We must make the literary profession safe for women as well as ladies. It is our historical responsibility. When the fires of our rage have burnt out, think how clear the air will be for our daughters. They will write in joy and freedom only after we have written in anger. It is up to us to see that the academy gives its little silver cups to those who deserve them. We must outselves forge a great big golden bowl in honor of Virginia Woolf, inscribing on it her words: 'The future of fiction depends very much upon what extent men can be educated to stand free speech in women.'" Adrienne Rich (quoted in "Art and Anger," from her poem "The Phenomenology of Anger"): The only real love I have ever felt was for children and other women. Everything else was lust, pity, self-hatred, pity, lust. This is a woman's confession. Alta: the man is sick in his heart. that's what I call it.

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February 3, The ritual disposition

I was looking at a book called Mandala today, trying to recover some of my equilibrium and soothe my eyes of words. The book didn't work for me. The mandalas seemed overwhelmingly busy. The only element that I could hold onto was a line from Confucius: Subdue oneself and recover the ritual disposition. That sounded exactly right for me. And strangely, yesterday, on one of my umpteen breaks from my desk, trying to cope with my day, I walked around into a dead end area behind the wall of cubicles and looked out on the beautiful view of downtown from there, with a little brown church nestled in the arms of a big white hulking luxury apartment / office complex. As I turned to go back to my desk, I looked at the gray wall of the cubicles and I had an intense desire to be in church. Praying. Or attending a ritual. Something dark. Something with incense. Ash Wednesday must be coming up. What are my rituals? Trash night. Writing the online journal daily. Walking the dog twice a day, and taking him out once more before bed. Graphic Design class on Saturday. Going to work. Showering, dressing, brushing my teeth. (I light the vanilla candle every morning and take it into the bathroom. It purifies pre-work dread.) Some minimal food habits. Sneaking peeks at online journals while I'm at work. Dropping Younger One off at school and picking him up. Putting Younger One to bed. Reading The Hobbit aloud to him before bed, sporadically. Picking up Older One at work, again sporadically, and fretting over whether I should talk to him about something, which I do sporadically. Monthly: contribute to the Journal M2M, Journal Shares, Writing-about-Writing. Whenever it comes around: The Poetry Round Robin. Once a month: Second Friday, Poem Alley. Sometimes: First Friday Potluck. Weekly: Al-Anon meetings, Mondays at lunch, sometimes Wednesday and/or Friday, if I'm having a bad or boring or lonely week. I haven't been to church in a while. I'm avoiding going. It always feels helpful to take the dog out for a walk after work. I feel the transition when I finally step out of the lighted house around 6pm, and start down the dark driveway, and notice the weather and the air, and take a deep breath. There's a lot of good sustaining rituals on my list. Some of them don't even feel like chores. I want to do them. There are certainly enough to support recovering the ritual disposition (one foot in front of the other?). But I'm looking for a ritual that brings beauty, symbol, worship, mystery, meditation. I don't see one.

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F e b r u a r y 4 M a x

Max is coming around the front of the neighbor's garage. I can see him from my upstairs window, his prim white bib, his black prick ears, his careful feet all neat and suspicious. He has come up through their back yard, nosing around underneath the dormant forsythias, feet wet on the cold ground. I want to be Max! I want to wander around in the dawn, nosing through the neighbors' yards unnoticed. I want to explore at any time of day. I want to hunt alone! I have my own pace, my own patience, my own persistence. I have a look of feline concentration on my face, and an arrogance that knows no boundaries, so no one bothers me. I want to be Max at the People's Poetry Gathering in New York City. On my own with my ears and my whiskers, on the outskirts and around the corners, secretly observant at dawn or after dark, hunting the elusive word picture prey. Maybe an occasional hand strokes my black fur, then -- gone again. My tail makes commas, exclamation points, a question mark? as I disappear around another corner. If I'm Max, I'll never discover the Best of Anything in the City, unless by accident. Max doesn't read those kinds of magazines. I'll never know whether I wander into the best cappuccino bar, eavesdrop on the best conversations, slink downstairs into the most happening places where hang the ultimate in stellar crowds. Any old forsythia bush or garage door, any old grocery storefront or brick corner walk, any old route over the wet cold ground, dirt or pavement as long as there are ratty smells, anywhere, that's where I watch my way along and that's what I like.

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F e b r u a r y 5, T h i n g s ' n S t u f f

A mostly frustrating day. I am writing the world's most comprehensive online help for the world's smallest and most intuitive system (kidding). I am writing online help that's way too big that no one will ever really review or appreciate just because ... it's there and I have nothing else to do and I'm tired of pushing. I'm supposed to be learning PowerBuilder so I can get a new lease on life as a maintenance programmer. I was joking with my Silverhaired Friend today that "they pay me too much to be a programmer ... a bad programmer." 'Cause that's what I will be. I do get a kick out of watching those Doc-to-Help macros run. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Hey! look what's on the web: Portrait of the Writer as a Fat Man; Some Subjective Ideas or Notions on the Care and Feeding of Prose Poems, by Russell Edson. And another tremendously inspiring site I finally looked up today: Paris Press (Daring and Beautiful Feminist Books) (or (Daring and Beautiful Books), depending on which logo you are looking at). The site contains an excerpt from Muriel Rukeyser's The Life of Poetry. But a big disappointment from The Prose Poem site. An intolerable use of frames. But their Volume 6 does contain work by Gabriela Mistral and Russell Edson, so I might have a change of heart if they ever redesign their site. Maybe I'll send them a prose poem. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Don't you hate it when people type sight when they mean site? or cite? ~~~~~~~~~~~ Crabby. I'm frustrated by the web. I'm frustrated by graphics. Each graphics site I look at is less what I need. Ugly, ugly, ugly, and time consuming on top of that. I'm gonna have to get a scanner and take a class. I did my graphic design homework tonight. I used rubber cement out of a metal can with a cunning little brush in its lid. And a "pickup" to remove the excess cement. This time last year I had no idea there was such a thing as a rubber cement pickup. It's a small thing that works really really well. My one big moment of happiness today came from buying some black poster paper, 5 big sheets for $3.99 plus tax. I am still enthralled by the need for materials in making art. That is something very foreign to writer me, who just needs notebook & pen (unless I'm using this big hulking bloated beige computer thing). In fact, I'm amazed over and over that a big piece of this whole art deal seems to be knowing some things about some physical stuff. I can tell I'm uninspired when I overuse words like "thing" and "stuff." Bogged down in the material world. I'm feeling so far from where I'd like to be.

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F e b r u a r y  6,  T h e r e ' s   a   W a l l

I found myself in a very snarly place after graphic design class, all brambles, and scratches, and lostness, and lack of vision, and sore muscles in my arms and legs, and full of feverish contradictions between elitism and egalitarianism, good design and bad design, the ugliness of brilliant originality versus the just plain ugliness of stupidity. I couldn't tell the difference and I don't see how anyone can after all. Plus after giving me much praise for the unity of my design, which was a postcard for an art exhibit, featuring a very delicate greenish-peach watercolor still life by Cézanne, with very subtle typographic treatment on the back, the instructor (she) said "There's only one problem with this design - this looks like it was designed by a woman." Plus I had one nasty household chore I vowed to do today, and I did it, and it was truly heinous and as nasty as I had feared, and it made me a martyr angry at everyone around me, and I became worried about my utter resistance to housework, and I was sure I would never be willing to do any housework again, and I was ready to leave home forever. So what am I to make of it? First I tried to sleep my evening away, taking some long groggy nap about 6 to 8 pm. I knew that wouldn't help. I was avoiding writing. Why? Don't know. I finally wrote in my paper journal for ten long pages, just getting everything out. I forget what a comfort that can be. I don't / can't do that kind of writing here. I might call it "I'm inhibited." But instead I call it "There's a wall." I've been wanting to write about the wall for quite awhile. It's a wall of artifice, a wall of intentional distance, a wall constructed with pleasure. It's a stone wall, and I'm building it. There are large rocks and small, grey and green and bluish, some with sparkles of mica. There are so many chinks you might think the wall is transparent if you get up eyelash close to it. From further away, the shapes of the rocks form pictures if you squint, an old man's head, a bear's face, a fox, a monster. Is the wall a "device"? Well, yes. Device sounds like devious. Is it subtle or obvious? It's full of decisions, some laborious, overthought, some come straight from listening. Do you feel manipulated? Do you want to buy what I'm selling? What Am I Selling? Does it look like it's designed by a woman? Can you see the shapes clearly? Or are you pressing your nose to the rock, trying to see through the chinks?

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F e b r u a r y  7,  L o s t   W a n d a

I better get some of these memories out of my head, or they will be filling up my mind forever. Lost Wanda keeps coming up. I miss her. The first stuffed koala bear was Wally, as in Wally Koally. He was gray and very firm. He had black plastic claws on his four feet that were actually almost sharp. He had a hard plastic oval for a nose. A few weeks later, baby Older One got a second stuffed koala bear. She was Wanda. She was blonde and very squushy. Her whole body could be folded in half widthwise or lengthwise. Her nose was embroidered and she had no claws. Older One never played with stuffed animals much. Still, both Wally and Wanda got that clotted grimy look to their fur that most stuffed animals have when they get a few years on them. Because she was so loosely stuffed, Wanda especially got saggy and her cheeks developed wrinkles from having her head bent in two. When I was getting divorced, Older One was eight. He didn't use stuffed animals. I did. I discovered Wanda fit perfectly in the cavity formed when I crossed my arms over my chest. She didn't mind being suffocated in this position. And I didn't feel so much like I was hugging myself, since I was actually hugging Wanda. Wanda was a natural recipient of hugs. One night I remember going to rest in the little twin bed that Younger One was supposed to be using, to avoid the big trouble of the marital bed. I was full of distress, and so I got Wanda. As I started trying to fall asleep, I had the sensation of a great void opening up behind me, between my back and the wall. I felt that if I tilted my body the slightest bit back towards the wall, I would lose my balance completely and fall off the edge into a bottomless emptiness. I remember thinking, well, I could get scared and freak out and upset myself even more, or I could ignore the void at the back of my body and focus on the front, my chest and my arms enclosing Wanda. Wanda was so comfy and squushy and filling of holes that this mental refocusing was easy. The void didn't go away, but it stopped bothering me and I fell asleep full of comfort. Several years went by. One day I realized that I hadn't seen Wanda in a long time. I missed her. I looked around, but I couldn't find her. It's hard to ask your kids "Where's Wanda? I need her," but I must have finally hinted at her being missing. I think Younger One told me that Older One had given her away. He had given her to a girl. I felt awful. I tried to figure out a way I could have a conversation with Older One and tell him to go retrieve his bear, she was very important to me, and I needed her. I tried to imagine Older One having this conversation with the girl, "Um, ahem, um, my mom wants Wanda back, please go get her and give her back to me so mom will get off my back." I finally decided there was no way I could ask this of him. It's part of being a grown-up, and a parent. You lose the good stuffed animals, your own kids give them away, it's your job to get over it. This past Christmas I looked around for a Wanda replacement to buy myself as a gift. I couldn't find one. All the bears were tricky, dressed up, coy, or too firm. Or too new. I can't replace Wanda. We had too much history together. Now I just think of the words "Lost Wanda" for comfort. It works almost as well.

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F e b r u a r y  8,  "T h i s   c a n ' t  b e I!"

Now that Lost Wanda has had her turn on the stage, this little old woman is wanting it. She's been running through my head for days, first thing in the morning, at night before bed, at odd times at work ... It's the sing-songy rhythm. It just won't let go. She's the main character in my second favorite nursery rhyme. There was an old woman, as I've heard tell, She went to market her eggs for to sell, She went to market all on a market day, And she fell asleep on the King's highway. There came by a pedlar whose name was Stout, He cut her petticoats all round about, He cut her petticoats up to the knees, Which made the old woman to shiver and freeze. When the little woman first did wake, She began to shiver and she began to shake; She began to wonder and she began to cry, "Lauk a mercy on me, this can't be I!" "But if it be I, as I hope it be, I've a little dog at home, and he'll know me; If it be I, he'll wag his little tail, And if it be not I, he'll loudly bark and wail." Home went the little woman all in the dark; Up got the little dog, and he began to bark; He began to bark, so she began to cry, "Lauk a mercy on me, this is none of I!" They just don't write 'em like that any more. My first favorite nursery rhyme is November 26, but it has a completely different color scheme, so don't go there if you are not prepared to be sickened by the switch. PS If my little dog ever treated me like that, I would never forgive him.

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F e b r u a r y  9,  M y  s e a r c h  f o r  m e a n i n g

There is some kind of meaning lurking around the corners of everything, scuttling in the hallways after dark, hiding under the beds. I don't know why it won't come out, except in such signs as these: Tandem bicycles. I told Younger One this story a long time ago, and tonight at bedtime he brought it up again. "Mom, remember that time...?" On a camping trip in Indiana when I was a child, my family rented some tandem bicycles. My younger sister and I shared one. I was very keen on wanting to experience what it would be like to pedal, but not steer a bicycle. But I ended up in the front, steering, and she refused to trade places with me. No one else would give me a turn on the back. I guess that was the price I paid for being a bossy oldest sister. When Younger One reminded me of this story tonight, I remembered my dream of -- last night? two nights ago? I was riding a three-seater bicycle on a camping trip with some relatives. I was, of course, in the front, and Younger One and one of his cousins were on the rear seats. Not only weren't they steering, but they weren't pedalling either. They were dead weights. I was pedalling hard, sweating and out of breath, trying to catch up with the relatives, or trying to outrun them, the dream had both reasons. I was trying to get somewhere on a muddy sandy road that turned into a rocky wild trail. Finally I came to a big visitors' center in the wilderness, and there were drinking fountains and bathrooms and lots of tourists, and I felt relieved as I drank water and the kids got off the bike and explored. Wisdom. Today I had a beverage called "Wisdom" for lunch. I picked it out of the cafeteria cooler because it was orangey yellow and supposedly had St. John's Wort in it, and I've been feeling down. I went home for lunch, and absent-mindedly, without looking, picked up the already opened bottle of Wisdom and started to shake it. I got big splashes of Wisdom all over the kitchen floor. I cleaned it up too quickly while the dog tried to help by licking Wisdom off the floor, god knows he needs it. I went back to work with my hands and parts of my clothing sticky with Wisdom. Tonight I had to scrub all the leftover traces of Wisdom off the kitchen floor with soap and hot water. I think the steering wheel of the car still has some on it.

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F e b r u a r y  10,  U n d e r s t a n d i n g  t y p o g r a p h y

Phone calls: Mikey, his sister wants the kitten, Fud, that no one loves. Three down, three to go... Lawn products sales person trying to sell me a free evaluation of my lawn... Church's telephone tree to let me know the choir director, who had a heart condition, has died and the memorial service is Sunday afternoon ... Pleasant-voiced girl asking if Older One is home (he's not)... ~~~~~~~~~~ The telephone tree has not brought good news lately. One family's wife & mother, who was in a nursing home after a stroke; another family's stillborn baby; and now the choir director. This is a very hard one. And still expecting news of S, dying of the cancer announced on Christmas Eve. ~~~~~~~~~~ I'm working on typography. It's like a refrain. In one project, I'm disintegrating meaning, randomizing letters, putting punctuation in one corner, numbers in another, letters sorted by size and shape. Another project, I'm trying to read Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. He sounds like an old fuddy-duddy Reverend Typographer to me in his eloquent praise of a "good page" and then nitty concerns about letterspacing, "pig bristles" (excessive hyphenation), and "white acne." Disintegrate - random - deaths - unexpected - holes - tears - losses - the choir sang badly illegibility excessive wordspacing eloquent praise - our church family - bonds of love - strengthen us - we will come together - honor - support - one another - Dearly Beloved - flush left nitty concerns - behind on my pledge - capital campaign - the milestones take too long - the little kids light too many candles and eat too many cookies at coffee hour - never tinker with the order of service - the sign out front is too big or too ugly - who's teaching Sunday School this week - not enough ushers - burned out - ragged right

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F e b r u a r y  1 1,  P r o d u c t i v i t y  i n  a  p e a r  t r e e

250 photos filed 200 dollars to electrician 64 records loaded 35 emails read 16 chicken nuggets baked 12 type samples printed pulled in 10 directions .... 25 telephone rings .... 8 questions answered 7 telemarketers refused 6 kids came over and I'm going to go flutter up into the pear tree for the rest of the evening. And hide my head under my wing.

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F e b r u a r y  1 2,  M o r e  P r o d u c t i v i t y

iArgh, ugh, ooga booga, I just noticed I've had 1998 in my window title since oh, January. Oh well. Details, details. Just today I was thinking that I can get rather obsessive with details. (Yes, a skill transferrable from systems to typography.) I changed Kvlns to Kölns and M¦nchens to Münchens etc. today in the database. I was doing it almost manually. It was soothing after doing two hours of serious work planning in a management vacuum. I had a very Dilbertian afternoon. When I'm pushed up against the wall, I will do work planning. I can't help myself. I hate to see expensive consultants amusing themselves with toys. So even though my new boss is supposedly setting priorities and doing work planning and keeps signalling to us that he's setting priorities and doing work planning, I don't see no evidence of it. I couldn't stand it anymore, and I stepped into the void. Not only that, but I shared the plan. I e-mailed it to the boss and the consultant. I debated keeping it to myself. There's always the danger that if I appear to be in charge they will actually put me in charge. I guess I'm willing to run that risk rather than have a three-person team waste weeks or months of time spinning their wheels and playing with toys. Or am I not playing this game right? So I felt virtuous and a created a bunch of Kölns as well as a short-term work plan and I packed up to leave 10 minutes early. I'm four cubicles away from my desk when I hear a little voice calling my name. It's so little I think I'm imagining it. I look behind me. No one there. I look at the ceiling, maybe it's the angel of reward for virtue. No such luck. I keep walking. Six cubicles away. I hear it again, just a wee thin voice. No, damn, it's real. It's the boss. After ignoring me and "my" project all week, Friday at 4:55 he's come across a data question he needs to run by me. He says he'll walk me to the elevators. My tolerance is monstrous. I listen to his problem. He's obsessed with a different set of details than I am. Numbers rather than umlauts. Unfortunately, I don't believe his problem is actually happening. I have nothing useful to offer. I just about say "that's impossible." I think I mean "you must have made a mistake." At the elevators, I face him and look at him. He looks misshapen somehow. His fungal beard, his brown eyes pleading "solve it." His pink shirt is so starched even at the end of the day that it protrudes in strange empty bulges over his torso. He's a head shorter than I am. I try an often successful diversionary tactic, and give him another problem to chew on, a problem I know exists. Then I push the elevator button. Away he goes, away I go. Finally in the parking garage, many cubicles away from my desk, I have a strong urge to cry. I really want to cry. I visualize myself putting my head on the steering wheel and just sobbing. Ten years ago, I would have done that. Heck, five years ago. This year (1999) I don't cry. I just say Hey something like that is not worth crying over, honey. It's just work stress. It's a diversionary tactic. Now, what am I supposed to be doing? Now, why did I decide to even let "work" into my work tonight?

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F e b r u a r y  1 3,  O n   s k i p p i n g  a   d a y

We write fiction, I think, for very nearly the same reasons that we read it: to sharpen our senses and to regenerate those dead or dying places and parts within us where the imagination has been lost or is trying to be lost. Pine trees lose their needles every three years, and bears enter the earth, the dream-world, and float in sleep for five or six months at a time, but we humans are fragile and almost hairless, shivering on the earth, and our cells are dying and being reborn daily; we must eat often, and sleep nightly, pulled out each day by the sun. Almost all of our rhythms are compressed into parameters of one single earth's rotation. It is the rhythm into which we have evolved; it fits our bodies, physically, and it fits our minds and our imaginations. We can accumulate the days and their imaginings and then craft and create things beyond a day's work, but the days are our basic building blocks - a day's work is like a paragraph. To leave too many gaps in the thing being crafted or imagined, to work too erratically, is to run the risk, I'd think, of weakening with gaps and absences of rhythm the foundation and structure of the thing one is attempting to make real, or attempting to make be felt as deeply as if it were real. Rick Bass, "Why the Daily Writing of Fiction Matters" in Why I Write, Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction, ed. Will Blythe

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F e b r u a r y  1 4,  F o r   L e e

Something very big is sitting on me. (tired) I'm wearing black long johns under a long straight black velour skirt, with a black chenille scoop-necked top. A light gray sweater with ribs and a silver zipper pull fails to keep me warm. My little black boots are filled with fine stones so that it hurts to walk. The memorial service was at 4pm. I could still taste the leftover tomatoes and no-longer-fresh mozzarella I had eaten for lunch. The smoke from B's cigarette lay in a fog along my arms and legs, so I walked to my seat in ghostliness, with a sore throat. The living choir sang beautifully. The leaderless choir. My highs I mean eyes filled with tears every time they filed up in their heavenly blue robes and sang without direction. The church was harrowed with deep runnels of sunlight. The huge bouquets that bloomed from this vapor exploded over and over, torched by candlelight. Everyone shielded their eyes. Now I'm all strung out on tears and sugar, little Necco conversation hearts from morning till night.

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F e b r u a r y  1 5,  J u s t   a  G l i n t   o f  G o l d

I had a day off. A very mixed day full of w's (ups and downs, mood swings, resembling the constellation resembling Cassiopeia). Daydreams: I want to go to art school. I want to clean house, throwing away years of stuff I no longer recognize as mine. Chorse: picked up the clothes in my room, vacuumed my room, did laundry, did grocery shopping, paid the mid-month bills, balanced the checkbook, worked on graphic design homework. Reading: Graphic design magazines, some Poets & Writers articles, the rest of the weekend papers, articles about Gypsies, Smiths, and Sarasvati in Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, and a little Clarice Lispector. Writing: A long long long unsent letter. Excerpts: "A letter I don't want to write" "There's so much I don't want to say." "But how else am I to purchase freedom?" "There's a bed of roses. Imagine that!" "I need to come up with some sentences or some gestures that will allow me to Act as If I Forgive. What would that look like?" "Sarasvati, my patroness, tell me what to do." At the end of the letter I made a word sketch of a possible Making Peace collage. It featured Many-Breasted Diana of Ephesus, a photograph of my naked torso, many reaching hands, dead plants, a corner of blackness, spanish poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a whole section of soft and shiny stuff, beads, laces, velvet, tulle. Later I added Sarasvati, the Flowing One, close to my side. I felt a little better. Mostly because writing the letter was much less traumatic than I expected. It was very rote actually. I realized I have already purchased my freedom. The only one holding any title to my freedom is me. When I walked the dog later, I looked at the sunset painted sky. My thoughts went like this: gold    gold   gold   gold   gold I was happy for a few seconds, like I used to be. Then my hypochondria and my irritability returned.

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F e b r u a r y  1 6, I n n a t e   p e r v e r s i t y

The computer sounds very busy. It is humming and buzzing and very full of itself. However, it is not going to write this entry. Even though I have given it plenty of time to make a start, it absolutely refuses. I am very angry with it for not helping and I want to give it a kick in the pants. I'm looking around on the desk for inspiration. I see a bunch of lazy pens lying down flat on their backs with their mouths clamped shut. They lie there, all lazy and flabby. If I picked them up they would flop over limp like Dali's clocks. They are so stupid. You can't even shake them into contributing. The lamp is not helping. It pretends to look over my shoulder and shed some light on a subject. It pretends to be an expert on illumination. But it has a selfish shade wrapped around its head like a mummy bandage, and I can tell it's only interested in its own brilliant insights. It's listening to itself talk and it has no light to spare. I'm getting read to flip its switch. The exterminator called today. He was a very poor salesman. He wanted to reinstate my service that I had canceled last year. The more he talked, the less I wanted the service. Finally I just said "no thanks" and hung up. These little moths that are fluttering around -- I'm still waiting for them to whisper something in my ear, something important, something to write down. So far -- nothing. Sometimes I get so mad at them, I almost pulverize my own palms when I clap at thin air trying to smash them. ~~~~~~~~~~ *My high school physics teacher, Sr. Margaret Poyatt, wrote her favorite saying in my yearbook: "Never let the innate perversity of inanimate objects frustrate you permanently." I guess that means something to a physicist.

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F e b r u a r y  1 7, T o  d u s t  I  s h a l l  r e t u r n

A religious experience. Dare I write about it? I wanted to go to an Ash Wednesday service at Emmanuel Episcopal. I remembered their little chapel from more than five years ago. It's tiny and old and cunning, with clerestory windows, backlit stained glass, an old fashioned carved altar rail, dark wooden pews, wrought iron candle holders... I wanted to see what was up at Emmanuel, since I hadn't been there in so long. I wanted to see how I would react to the service at this point. I wanted to see the little glass bowl with the dark ashes in it, and smell the faint burned odor. I wanted that dusty feeling, marked firmly on my forehead, sprinkling down into my eyebrows and eyelashes. And I wanted to drag Younger One along with me to expose him to an Ash Wednesday service. I enjoyed all the sensory elements immensely. Younger One has the ability to mumble aloud in the rhythm of prayers without actually knowing the words. "The Lord be with you." "Huh huh huh huh hunh," he says out loud, almost in time. I kept looking at him wryly. I really wanted to laugh, because he wasn't embarrassed and he didn't just clam up. He doesn't know the "Our Father" and I felt he really ought to know that at least. There were 11-1/2 people there. The 1/2 was a toddler who had to be taken out almost immediately. I don't know what these poor mothers can be thinking (that was me once). I experienced a very uncharitable moment -- I thought "I should go offer to relieve the poor mother of that fretful child for a while so she can enjoy the service which she clearly needs otherwise she wouldn't have brought that noisy little brat here." I hardened my heart towards the woman however, and acknowledged with the remaining 10 people that "I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother's womb." The priest was a woman named Lu-chee-a with a great pile of reddish gold hair falling in a few fetching ringlets down onto her khaki linen chasuble. She had a voice like a trumpet. It was a little loud for that tiny space. I guess the previous rector (also a woman) has gone. I was glad -- she might have remembered me. Lu-chee-a gave a sermon on (predictably) not seeing Lent as a short course in self-improvement, but as an opportunity to open up, love more, get closer to God, and tell those numbing deadening cold-hearted voices to "go to hell." She suggested a practice which she had tried and found difficult. Every day, say "I Love You" to God. As I considered her words, I realized with a wonderful shock that I could do this, and I would not find it difficult. I saw the woman as big as the sky with sleeves of sunset-colored cloud. Intensely warm, intensely comforting, intensely powerful. I saw Sarasvati in her flowing robes, encouraging communication, prodding me to make contacts, write letters, make phone calls, write on the web. I saw the grandmother with her long white hair and dark dusty gown holding out the pot of magic healing ointment, wonderfully perfumed. I saw the dark woman of the earth shifting her hips in her late winter bed, yawning and stretching a little as her sleep lightened towards spring. I saw Durga-Kali with her bloody teeth, her stomach body, her necklace of heads, waving her tongue and her swords. Truly, madly, deeply, I'm in love. I looked at the beautiful Episcopal priest woman and listened to her trumpet voice saying she found it difficult to say "I love you" to Almighty God our Lord. I listened to her say all those so-familiar phrases "huh hhhh huhh hunh huh hnuhnh." I looked her right in the eye at the altar rail. I didn't feel one bit bad.

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F e b r u a r y  1 8, I n  w h i c h   I   a m   p a t h e t i c

A day of taking action on the postponed. Taking action feels very presumptuous. Sitting around like a slimy bump on a mossy log feels a lot more natural. I have to pare my actions way way down to the most minor steps that couldn't possibly be considered threatening. Threatening items I will postpone forever. Once the actions are so non-threatening that they require almost no brains, I have to find "desire." I have to want to do them, DUH. Once they are non-threatening and I want to do them, and if I'm having a good day physically -- then they become easy. Ha! I will not be stopped! To say that there's a goal in mind wouldn't be accurate though. I just want to move off this square. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Here's what I want to try to do: write a three-day series called "Claiming Cassandra." I hesitate to write on the same topic over three days because it appears to invalidate my concept of the journal form. The journal is supposed to be made up out of the blue from "where I'm at," in the moment, now or never, what's going on, what's up. But this here feels bigger than the journal form. It is daily, but there is really much more space here than I am using. I want to take on a larger subject. I've always loved the fact that Charles Dickens wrote in serial form. Not that I think I can produce any cliffhangers or plot twists that would sustain interest in that way. I just have a big topic to write about that I know will take at least three evenings. Maybe I should write it offline and post it separately. No, then I'd have to eat up my hour that evening doing the regular entry as well. Time limitations can be so helpful in decision-making. It doesn't have to be consecutive. But I want to do it consecutively. What an awful lot of over thinking. I think I've destroyed any energy in the original idea. I think it was Bad Energy in the original idea anyway. Writing sucks. Yeah, here I am back to "where I'm at." The journal. Nowhere.

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F e b r u a r y  1 9, C l a i m i n g   B a d   E n e r g y

This morning in the cafeteria, 8:45 am. I bought a bagel with salmon cream cheese and a grapefruit juice. The total came to $1.66. I gave the cashier a dollar bill no problem. Then I gave him two quarters, a dime, and a penny. He took the change, examined it and held it back out to me. I was baffled. I helpfully counted it out for him in his palm. I said: (pointing to two quarters) "fifty" (pointing to the dime) "sixty" (pointing to the penny) "SIX" (emphatically) He very patiently recounted for woman from another planet: (pointing to two quarters) "fifty" (pointint to the dime) "sixty" (pointing to the penny) "ONE" Well, what could I say at that point? I need a rest cure. All day I giggled and laughed out loud to myself, reenacting my lunacy. I'm still laughing! Yeah, like I could make a penny worth six cents if I were certain enough about it! ~~~~~~~~~~~~ And here's what happened right after I woke up: Hmm, house is cold. I am very cold. Register is icy cold. And -- I hear a shrill electronic tone. What's that noise? Go downstairs, check thermostat. It's turned down below 50°. Hmm. I say to Older One, who's asleep on the living room couch, "Did you turn off the heat?" "Yes, I tried to." "Why?" "I was trying to stop that noise." Hmm. Traipse down into basement. Wade through cats. The shrill high-pitched sound is incredibly loud down there. It seems to be coming from everywhere. I am baffled. Since the house doesn't seem in imminent danger of exploding, I take a break and go walk the dog. I try to think. I imagine myself calling -- who, the plumber? the gas man? the electrician? -- and saying there's an emergency, an awful loud shrill noise in my basement, come right away! When I get back from walking the dog, I tackle the noise again. Ahah! It's the sump pump alarm, which has never gone off before. I turn the alarm off. Whew. Hmm. Floods. Odd, it hasn't even been raining. I check the fuse box. I don't see anything wrong, but Younger One with his superior eyesight patiently points out to me "That one is off." I switch it back on. The washer immediately starts up. Why are household incidents always chain reactions for me? Here's the story: the electric heater for the iguana won't co-exist with the washer. The washer fills, but it blows a fuse every time it starts to get agitated. In the middle of the night, Older One put in laundry and forgot about it. The washer blew a fuse. The sump pump failed. Water filled the sump. The flood alarm went off. Older One thought it was the furnace so he turned off the heat. Then he just went to sleep. No wonder I can't count change. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ All day, in the background, I was thinking about the Cassandra story. I had several revelations. One, Cassandra is a Bad Energy. There's no getting around it. In fact, she's probably responsible for my electrical problems. Two, why should I be rigid? That's what I like about journaling, no rules. Today I had two fantastic incidents to work into the picture, so Cassandra takes a back seat, again. I'm sorry. (It's all story.) Three, history is boring. I mean, the Cassandra story would be boring if I wrote it as history. I can't write the story as a historical narrative. I don't have enough facts. I have to write it imaginatively, and in the present. Four, the story is a hypertext. No, it's a sculpture. No, it's a tombstone. No, it's a fantasy. The form is still being revealed. Unfortunately, I know I resist closure and revel in possibilities. I haven't learned to "think with my pencil." I have a fear of a shortage of stories. I have a need to keep this one in the bank. Oh, go ahead, spend it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ This too is "claiming."

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F e b r u a r y  2 0, S n o b i s m s

I've backed myself into a corner and I can't figure out how to get going again. Graphic design class. I'm becoming a design snob. It's a terrible thing to have happen. I got an A+. The teacher told me later "you get it; not everyone does." The class didn't like my design though. My design had a bad emotion in it. In fact, it was about a fight between a man and a woman. Everyone, including the teacher, ignored the emotion. Instead, she talked about getting Humor and Jokes into the design. It figures I want to get crying and tension into my design. I thought the woman's hair in my design was very moving. Everytime I looked at my design I wanted to cry. No one else's had a bad emotion in it. Mostly people did the slickest most polished computerized tricky colorprinted rearrangements. Now I've set myself up with yet another project that I don't think I can do. And this one's due by next Saturday. Each design project, I feel like it's impossible and I'll never accomplish it. This one's actually a competition for the poster of the Student Art and Architecture Exhibit. Competition makes me crazy. As far as the other impossible project goes -- I'm reading some essays by Margaret Walker. How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature, ed. Maryemma Graham, publisher Feminist Press. Jubilee is a story about her great-grandmother. She writes, "So when I say that I have been writing Jubilee all my life, that is literally true." And I figure I'm going to write about Cassandra in three days. There's not a close parallel, but there are some parallels. Cassandra was my about-twelve-times-great grandmother. From Genealogy of the Descendants of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick of Salem, MA, James M. Caller, Mrs. M.A. Ober, 1881: Lawrence came from Lancashire, England, in 1627; returned to England and brought Cassandra with John and Mary to Massachusetts in 1630 on the Mayflower with William Bradford, settled in Salem. Lawrence was the first glass and earthenware manufacturer in America. His business was on the south side of Gallows Hill where hangings occurred during the Salem witchcraft delusion. He died in the house of Nathaniel Sylvester on Shelter Island, the 10th day 5th month, 1659. But I don't really want to do genealogy. And I really don't want to be a Mayflower snob or a Pilgrim snob or even a Quaker snob. I'm already a graphic design snob and that's bad enough. I browsed the Internet for awhile tonight looking for Southwicks. It's not going to be easy. Research is SO tedious. But mostly it's not easy to keep my moral and psychological balance while researching the story. And I don't even know what the story's about. Well, that's a lie (see, there I go). I do know what the story's about. In July 1656, Cassandra was arraigned for "absence from worship." And later, banished with Lawrence, for entertaining the Inner Light in their home. Their memorial says "despoiled, imprisoned, starved, whipped, banished." I really want to grasp what this was all about, morally and -- emotionally. More than 300 years ago.

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F e b r u a r y  2 1, O l d  c r i m e s   t h a t   w o n ' t   g o  a w a y

I was going to write in my paper journal today. I had been to church; I was good, saying hello to the old and the new, the perfect and the disabled, commiserating and lending support to friends. I had done my grocery shopping at 7 o'clock in the morning, which is just SO efficient. I had read some of my book, Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, a history of the Congo, which is a nice counterpoint to my last book, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. I was going to write in my paper journal until I had solved the whole Cassandra problem and decided if it was my story or not and why, and where I should go next. I wrote about half a page, usual get-the-whining-out-of-the-way stuff, when I saw a big gold car pull up in front of my house. Three unusually burly men got out dressed kind of like lumberjacks with neat haircuts. Older One's friends don't usually look like that, they're more hairy and waifish, so I was alarmed. Turns out they were police, come to arrest him. This is the fourth time, so I'm sort of getting used to it. But I thought we were kind of past that. The explanation was: he had a court date that he knew nothing about from the first shoplifting -- or was it from the trespassing incident? -- I don't know, but they had a warrant and took him off to the pokey. I didn't much like having the three burly men in the house. They came in with Older One, sticking close to him as he went to get his coat and some ID, kind of tracking him, and they didn't even give me time to restrain the dog. Luckily the dog acted like they were his best friends. It would not have been good for me if he had bitten a policeman. Then we had an adventure in banking. I had to get $1000 in cash bail. I mean Cash cash. My ATM card worked much better than I expected, getting $500 out of the machine. Then I remembered I had Older One's rent money stashed away in my sock drawer - $425. I got $75 from Younger One, which I then gave back to him because I remembered I still had birthday money stashed in my purse. Amazing how much cash I had just lying around. We had to wait at the police station for almost an hour. It was very dull. Only one guy with a broken nose and one quarrel, which was out of earshot on the front steps. Older One got served lunch in the pokey, a dry turkey sandwich and an orange soda. Younger One got so hungry while we were waiting, I sent him to the deli down the street. But the deli was closed, so he came back with a gigantic Hershey's bar from the drugstore instead. We were pretty perky considering the circumstances. I was so relieved that there were no fresh crimes involved, only old crimes that just don't seem to go away. The paper journal is still open on my desk upstairs, with the open pen lying on it. Somehow I lost the mood.

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F e b r u a r y  2 2, P a t i e n c e   a n d   F o r t i t u d e

Programming class in the City. The strange, automatic motivation of school. I think redemption is a matter of being on time, paying close attention to the instructor's every boring word, doing all the extra credit work, and explaining everything over again to my classmate who is not catching on. Save me! A completely distinct section of my being cannot believe anyone could take this crude form of language seriously, the fractured syntax and bizarre punctuation required to communicate with a machine. I was trying to make a comparison between programming and writing, in the writer's desire to evoke a certain response in those receiving the words and the completely free capability to craft within a strict set of rules in order to evoke desired response. And how is a compiler like an editor? But there is such a qualitative difference of light-years between the simplest imaginative writing and the code required to make certain numbers pop up in certain boxes and certain little gifs wave their little hands.... My attitude is not very good. At lunch time I skipped off through the most freezing wind to the New York Public Library, having become fed up with the Powerbuilder libraries, which are called "pibbles" because their suffix is dot pbl. There was an exhibit of library materials. The items of most interest were: cuneiform scratches in a little tablet of white clay a Cyrillic Bible from the reign of Ivan the Terrible, created by an "itinerant Eastern Slavic typographer." (that's what the world needs, more itinerant typographers!) a pencil made by Thoreau. His dad owned a pencil factory, but Thoreau strangely had no desire to go into the pencil business, preferring to "write and walk in the woods." There was also an exhibit of photographs, called OrderDisorder. I got to look at photographs of one of my favorite subjects, disorder and destruction, ruins, decay, to dust you shall return. The Library Lions, Patience and Fortitude

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F e b r u a r y  2 3, D e l i c a t e  r a w  f l e s h

My mind is blank Tissue paper Tracing paper       dolls fluttering in       wind       air       conditioning? sushi lunch insubstantial This absent-mindedness has got to stop. I have cramps Depression of the womb The blue womb Losses Lost gains Eel avocado roe The delicate raw flesh of salmon       A tiny tray for soy sauce       A packet of wasabi       A cellophane envelope of pickled ginger I eat a minute flake of ginger Press the salmon to the mound of wasabi Traces cling to its pinkness The plastic trays are imprinted       with an image of an       artificial leaf Beauty still I came within seconds of missing the train this morning because I was trying to phone home because I was worrying that I had left candles burning on my dresser The vanilla pillar candle for work dread The beeswax one for D. K. (my enemy) The way to deal with all of it is -- give voraciously Excerpt from lunchtime journaling Setting: sculpture court, Whitney Museum at Philip Morris Installation: Lynne Yamamoto - "The Long Twilight"

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F e b r u a r y  2 4, I  a m  s u s p i c i o u s

(I can't. I just can't do it. It's too much. I know it's too much. I'm at my wit's end, my pencils won't sharpen, and I can't think. My arms are jittery, my thumbs are bothering me, and my eyes are surrounded by those tiny slubs and imperfections that are part of the natural character of this fabric ...) I'm watching a man cutting through an iron bar with a power saw. I am mesmerized by the shower of sparks. How wonderful in the pastel gray morning light. When the man steps away from his work, he realizes his pants are on fire. Paul Simon sees "angels in the architecture," but I see flying buttresses of guilt and betrayal. The rose window is a dim vengeful eye seeking me out, the traitor. The angel's white marble wings make a cold shoulder. I slink around the sanctuary, keeping close to the wall, looking for clues, looking for a safe place, but the dome of the ceiling is too high and the pews are too dark. I go into the Ladies' Room, where I feel happier, and I relax for a moment. There's a powder blue loveseat and ancient faded wallpaper with brown flowers and blue stains. St. Bartholomew's Church in the City of New York Racing back to the training center, getting lunch to go at Longwood Gourmet, a place which has every food imaginable in the salad bar. I put a spoonful of each of my choices in a small container: raspberries, blueberries, kiwi, strawberries, perfect avocado, crab salad, shrimp salad, octopus salad, all topped off with a hairdo of skinny noodles. Since I've been reading about the Congo, every luxury in this city has become suspicious. Where did these foods come from? Under what conditions were they harvested? These buildings, these buttresses, this stained glass, these giant flags waving, this golden ornamentation -- monuments to what?

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F e b r u a r y  2 5, T o d a y ' s   w a l k s

Rushing down 42nd Street on lunch hour -- I have a vague goal of getting to Broadway, 561 Broadway, Kate's Paperie? -- but when I get to Times Square it's almost 12:30 and I'm in the 1400's and I'm not even really sure which way to go. So I bag that idea, though I'm not good at giving up, and I figure Times Square is my lunch time destination for today. But Times Square? Times Square is really not my kind of place. I feel jangled and frenetically dissatisfied. The sunlight looks all wrong here. I decide to race back toward Lexington at top speed and stroll more contemplatively through Bryant Park on my way. Bryant Park is the most beautiful place in the City. I love the way the trees bend sinuously inwards, offering a decorative sensation of shelter. Their bark is a monotonous soothing gray green. There's an illusion of quiet here also, and solitude. The open space of the lawn calms me. I go pay homage to the statue of Gertrude Stein. Every time I've visited her, there's been some small offering in her lap. I climb onto the pedestal to see. At first glance I think it's half-size eggshells, from a quail or maybe a songbird; then I see it's a handful of snail shells, maybe from someone's gourmet escargot lunch, although I prefer to think they were gathered at the shore. I wonder what the offering means. I want to make an offering to Gertrude Stein's statue. What would it be? Tender buttons -- mushrooms? A rose? I really think she could help me. I can't even think of Gertrude Stein without feeling a surge of confidence. By now I'm really late, so I rush to the Chinese noodle store and get a way-too-big container of noodle soup with roast pork. I wolf down enough of it so I won't be hungry in the afternoon. The roast pork is that delectably smoky-sweet Chinese barbecue flavor that I love. It reminds me of London. I'm very happy with my lunch. ~~~~~~~~~~ Snowstorm at coming-home time. I am thrilled. I can't bear to get into a taxi from the station back to my car parked at the office, so I walk in the snow. It's snowing and blowing, hard but not too hard. It's about a twenty minute walk. About halfway there, I hit the perfect long stride, the perfect combination of exertion warmth versus freezing wind, the perfect level of endorphins flowing in my bloodstream. I feel like a walking bird, maybe an ostrich! free! I'm free! I can choose to walk in the snow back to my office! I didn't have to spend all day enclosed, moving from the car, to the cubicle, and back to the car. I raise my free face into the snow and almost stick out my tongue to catch flakes, gloating in the open air, icy crystals falling down into my neck, performing joy for the steadfast drivers backed up in the street at the stoplight.

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February 26, "a life free of understanding"

Exhaustion. People appeared in my life today out of the blue: a message on the answering machine from someone important to me, a lost person from my past reappearing in a completely different context, a letter returned unexpectedly quickly. I was startled, but grateful. I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'm going to blow it. I read Clarice Lispector on the train this morning. Her tone or mood or quality -- something -- the trace of her perfume -- surrounded me for about an hour in PowerBuilder class. I came into class exhausted by contrasts and clearing snow and I found it hard to work on programming. From The Steam of Life (Agua Viva): I shiver with pleasure in the midst of the innovation of using words that form intense underbrush! I struggle to conquer more fully the freedom that I have of sensations and thoughts without any utilitarian meaning: I'm alone, I and my freedom. ... I go ahead intuitively, and without looking for an idea: I'm organic. And I don't question myself about my motives. I immerse myself in the near pain of an intense happiness -- and to adorn me leaves and branches are born from out of my hair. I don't know what I'm writing about: I'm obscure even to myself. Initially I had only a lunar, lucid vision, and then I clasped that instant to myself before it died and perpetually dies. I transmit to you not a message of ideas but rather an instinctive voluptuousness of what is hidden in nature and that I sense. And this is a feast of words. I write in signs that are more gesture than voice. All this is what I used to paint, probing into the intimate nature of things. But now the time has come to stop painting in order for me to remake myself, I remake myself in these lines. I have a voice. Just as when I throw myself into the outline of my sketch, this is an exercise in life without planning. The world has no visible order, and I have only the order of my breathing. I let myself happen. I'm really really sorry to have to say this after all these years, but in spite of train schedules, and compiling, and prices, and costs, and expenses, and requirements definition, and data modeling, and protocols, and packing, and grocery shopping, and utilities, and insurance, and registration, and careers, and keys, and locks, and concurrent updates, and so on, and so forth, this is an exercise in life without planning. I believe what she says completely, and I become saturated with it. When I read her, I feel a self residing just inside my skin coming to life. I learn from her. It's a different kind of learning.

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February 27, Crossing in Mist

I am at the very fretful low ebb where everything irritates me. I need a good night's sleep. My dear sweet one, don't lose your temper. It won't help. Tomorrow is Older One's 19th birthday. It's a priority. Try to celebrate. My voice still shook with rage today when I talked about Thomas Merton and The Seven-Storey Mountain. I am not even sure why. Am I overreacting? Nothing I say makes any sense. I have to gesture wildly to try to communicate and then I emit weird phrases like "there's no future where she's going." I feel like the sea turtle Aliens in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven. Here's one: It was grotesque to the point of being funny, like a sea turtle, and yet like a sea turtle it possessed a strange, large beauty, a serener beauty than that of any dweller in sunlight, any walker on the earth. And here's how it talks: "We have also been variously disturbed. Concepts cross in mist. Perception is difficult. Volcanoes emit fire. Help is offered: refusably. Snakebit serum is not prescribed for all. Before following directions, leading in wrong directions, auxiliary forces may be summoned ... Speech is silver, silence is gold. Self is universe. Please forgive interruption, crossing in mist." The Alien, though neckless and waistless, gave an impression of bowing, and passed on, huge and greenish above the gray-faced crowd. The only thing I remembered from reading this book years ago was the sea turtle Alien saying "Crossing in mist." I was moved by this phrase. I read the Alien's speeches over and over again, because I sort of understood them better than the rest of the story. "Crossing in mist" has become a code phrase that I use to comfort myself about the difficulties of ever making coherent contact with anyone. I know it is so hard for you to share your dreams. You have held them so close, and so invisibly for so long, you don't even know their shape or their smell or the colors of their eyes or the shades of their skin. You are valiant trying to bring them into the world half-formed (deformed? No). I know you will start to feed them and they will gain flesh. Please believe me.

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February 28, Nineteen Blue Candles

Okay. I was dragged through the day by the momentum of life, although I was not very happy about it. We ate sushi, the three of us, for Older One's birthday. Younger One, who has been a food fussy until recently, ate sushi with roe and raw tuna, following his brother's recommendations. Now he's lying on the couch moaning with a stomach ache. We had orange pound cake & chocolate ice cream & nineteen blue candles & happy birthday & two Older Friends & one Younger Friend. Older One blew out all the candles with one mighty breath and didn't even catch his goatee on fire. I had to pray hard for forbearance (or something like that) to get through the birthday. I was very anxious about it, mostly about the participation of the dad, but it worked out fine. I am feeling adrift in this journal recently. I've stopped learning anything technological. Maybe it's time to investigate style sheets. I tried to shop for a scanner but I am stumped by SCSI versus parallel port versus USB and I know I ought to get a backup system first (zip drive or something like that). I know I will eventually solve these problems, but every step takes SO MUCH TIME. I resent every minute that I'm in the office doing someone else's irrelevant computer work. Back to PowerBuilder tomorrow. And the content of this journal is weird. My life is utterly boring. Especially on a daily basis. I'm trying to inflate this lame tire with some stale breath of interest. I'm wheezing. I am some freak anonymous amateur know-nothing with too much (or not enough) technology at my fingertips and absolutely strange non-mainstream interests and no love life. (Maybe I surfed too much today -- hey, I only surfed for about an hour -- found nothing exciting as usual.) I feel lonely. I had to pull off the birthday myself, but I was happy the dad didn't participate this year. I could have called a friend but I didn't. I need help. I need other voices around this journal. I need computer assistance. I need a housekeeper. If I were a baby, I'd be cryin'. It's rainy. It's February. But almost March. The yellow crocuses are up. They always seem to appear ridiculously early, to me.

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