fellowship journals 17th june - 13th august 2007
fellowship journals 14th august - 1st september 2007
fellowship journals  2nd - 22nd september 2007
fellowship journals 23rd september - 12th november 2007
falling into place 

sarah's journal - tenth installment continued

11/14
Wonderful reading etc. in Sheffield last night, and for that matter meeting with the Arts Council in the a.m. That let me know, or feel, how much we really have done over the last little while, so that it felt really solid, good. And that CTTB work, the little that I read out loud feeling really good....
And instead of all that still echoing sad now, sad...not sure why...or maybe sure why...or have an inkling...About three things I think. One is just that we won’t have the CD for Lancaster, hardly a big setback, but that feeling that you want to have something, you just want to have it....and of course, a sense of reassurance in that. In that containment. And there’s an e-mail the new lawyer in Maine, about the duck suit. Nothing untoward, just whether or not to drop a motion for sanctions....but bringing home that I’m bound for home very soon...and not knowing how I feel about that....and another a call from Mark about a vehicle emergency, thus underlining all the vehicle emergencies that have taken place in my absence...and that sense of still having to rescue my children....
And probably the typical terror of how it will go in Lancaster the day after tomorrow....can we really do this and all that....

11/16
And now, in a little while, off to Lancaster, while listening right now to bill...on the earphones, and liking it, really liking it...and being able to switch between tracks, savouring all the pieces, and finally not having to listen intently to me, to figure out what I should be doing, so I can just enjoy it, and enjoy Keith and Shaun....
And then, of course, the other half, being scared....what is this, what is this, how dare you try this and all that....

And then, strange narrative dreams again last night, one very dramatic, but that the one I don’t remember, something about the ocean in any case, and then, the last, about living at Georgian Villas, our first place in Calgary, and going over to the park to pick up the kids, who were Mark and Lee not Mark and Lucero, but Mark his age now, and going to tell them they could stay out another hour, only I’d drunk two thirds of a bottle of wine, which I remembered as I drove back home, wondering why in the world I’d driven a block and a half, and then the police came for me about five minutes after I got back home, and asked if I’d been drinking so I just said, Oh, yes, I just got in and downed a couple of glasses, just felt so thirsty it was so hot so of course yes, would he like to join me? And the man got so mad he went outside to Tom’s bus which was parked right there in front of the town house and demanded if Tom had once driven for Calgary Transit and wanted his radio which was one about twenty years old that we still have....and I, of course, said you can’t do that what does he have to do with me, you can’t get someone for what you think someone else has done....which is when I woke up, then went back in to further lecture the policeman....
Strange huh? Wishing Tom were here for the CD I think....So, may he be listening on that radio.....him and Bill together as far as it goes....

11/18
And now, back from Lancaster for the first bill....performance. Went very well overall I think, despite a few small problems not of our making, loved doing it, and, above all, now know it can be done, and I can hold up my end....and not only that, but that it will feel good doing it, less tension in fact, in many ways than the recording, because if I need to I can take time out (like for coughing, as happened this time) and I know Keith and Shaun will hold it together in my absence so to speak....and then there’s that sense that it’s a very good piece, echoed more and more each time I listen to the recording for the CD. Also, a strange feeling that working with Keith and Shaun has changed how I read, this piece in particular, but maybe in general, and I think, for the better. But with this piece, when I was doing the segment on my own for the reading part of the evening, found, as in Sheffield, that I missed the music and the sound art mix....

And now, looking out the window, rainy cold weather, all day for once, the first time I think, without a break, and cold too....unusual as far as I’m concerned....and thinking about that, thinking about back home, that turn around....that sense of leaving now....toward a different climate, and a different life...and what will I have taken away....and what will I do with it....

Which reminds me, the CTTB stuff again....on Thursday, this time, with the Unicorn Tapestry....

11/19
And last night, dreams again. One, which I’ve forgotten....at least temporarily....but one that I thought was real....something about a new old car....I think....
But the second, about being in a timeshare, much like Fairmont, only calling it Ainsworth, only it was on the side of a volcano that went into eruption, a periclastic (I think that’s the word) volcano, that was suddenly spewing large large large rocks, much like the volcano in Costa Rica, only we were very close, with rocks starting to land on the roof of the timeshare, and then a visible stream of lava far away enough not to effect us, but, of course, the fear being that the volcano would blow its side out and everything would change. And the rocks, deep red orange brown, pinker brown, greener brown, rolling along finally in the space below the roof so we no longer knew if it was better to stay, or just get into our car and go, as the car roof would sustain fewer of these blows than the building roof which had turned into something more the shape of a school with long corridors and duct work that you could see, and then when we tried to get information on evacuation, just got a phone message saying we were fifty-fifth in line if we wanted to cancel our reservations....then finally got out in a tough old bus.....

And yes, back to unicorn tapestry thoughts, how both lovely and awful it was playing with the images of it I was able to find on the net, printing them off and making a collage, with knitted lace edging like guts somehow, but so much in the same idiom as the ladies’ dresses in the tapestry, particularly the maiden who attracts the unicorn....but more than anything there is the sordid expression of violence on the hunters’ faces, an odd sickness to them, one looking as if he is suffering boils, another pleased to be able to stick a spear into the unicorn’s butt (I remember how we giggled at that as kids), but truly the icky medieval, and the ‘maiden’ so smirkingly knowingly seductive in her red dress, that that whole question I asked in the pieces that started me on this, as to how you can consider virginity purity when its only meaning is such violent ugly knowledge.....that you are the means to the death – or minimally the captivity - of the unicorn....the death, or containment, presumably, of magic?
And then, the collage came to form a cross....a strange form of crucifixion...the captured unicorn’s corral at the top almost like a wooden crown of thorns, I even wonder if I can find one of those spiral unicorn horn narwhal tusk inspired candles, like the one the Sufi master gave me in Morocco, about thirty inches long, that, as advised, despite it breaking in places, I have kept? Would like one in blood red.
And strange how these things work, that all this came out of another writing exercise we did to start off the Close To The Bone workshop, this time with only one word, a location, from the list we’d done on fairy tales. And I got castle, and went immediately back to the Cloisters, and from there to the unicorn tapestry, this time without the pumpkins. And I’d forgotten that thing about the Maiden until I started writing it. Another connection to that transitional period, childhood to adolescence. While I didn’t remember at all how the unicorn’s horn touching water would purify it, the way its touch would be an antidote to poison. Part of the reason for hunting it, of course. Or drinking from a unicorn horn goblet, even if it is a narwhal’s tusk. Only found that out by looking at one of the tapestries, where the unicorn dips it horn in water, with all these forest animals sitting comfortably around it at the bottom of the space, while the hunters sneak up behind it with their dogs. Though I have remembered all along how sordid the hunters were, which was amply borne out in the photos of the tapestries.
And the portrait of the maiden just icing on the cake so to speak. So utterly red dress boudoir come hither. After I’d written all the stuff about the nature of purity and innocence. That they cannot exist in such a context.
Not too much good writing in what I did that time, though. But a lot of realization....which is almost as good....

And helping Keith with assembling the text earlier. Love the look of it, in colour, but mostly in subtle subtle warm and cool greys....a few resonant glowing colours, love the look given to Cat Tail Cat Tale....an interesting thing that...how design in print stuff, books, magazines, etc. literally makes me feel good, like the taste of good food....whatever that is about aesthetic appreciation....
Which reminds me of the workshop/panel Keith facilitated in Lancaster...while the other groups were talking about how to self publish to get your books out there, we were with Catherine Sadler from Litfest, my partner for the texting, looking at how to make books, artists books and all that.....which was wonderful fun, in that aesthetic kind of way....full of practical stuff including a pamphlet stapler....
And Catherine’s own book, on a train line, made with tracing paper folded over and printed on the reverse in orange that glowed through, with a duller line for the train line changing position on the page, and just the trace of maps for stations no longer in use, and poems in black type for those that are....loved it....
Made the workshop worthwhile....

11/20
Now, sitting looking out the window, another grey grey morning the moor the slightest of purple shadows, and thinking, as of right now, it is one more month that I will be here....seems strange, almost unbelievable....and for me, always, there is that thinking about the temporary....a certain sense of being comfortable wherever I am put down, but always trying to capture in my mind, why is it different, how can I be here and not there? As if life itself were perpetual displacement....probably is perpetual displacement when you think about it...

Sarah’s Journal – Eleventh Installment

11/20
And now, a bit later in the day, having just sent the newest e-journal installment in. Overcome by sadness or anxiety, who knows which. The weather and thoughts of a winter Calgary? Don’t know what that is....who will I be then....thoughts of displacement again.....and maybe of exposure vis a vis the journal.....a bit too much intimacy for the net maybe....that world wide web thing....but the only way to do it I think.....trying to maintain a journal tone....not a blog one....the way in which I write to myself, notes to myself....the way I always have....not lecturing the world. Trying to edit this as little as possible...

11/21
Sitting in Meltham, early evening. Trying to just feel mellow. Just looked at the last journal installment that Keith just put up, and it looks quite glorious. Haven’t read it again, just looked at the photos. They comfort me in a way the writing does not. Feel like a wram fleecy coat somehow, as if their beauty – or just the thought in them -- protects me. With the ones of the moors and of Lancaster quite shocking in the rawness of their beauty somehow. Quite intense. And there’s something I love in the picture of the transparent chair reflecting Shaun’s laptop, despite being wobbly and therefore out of focus, something about the candy-like colour of the wires. A deep sense of joy.
And trying to preserve that. After a good day at the Word Hoard, working on my unicorn tapestry collage, and getting the Perspex (that’s Plexiglas to me) to frame (M)otherboard....
And being quite taken with the difference in the two collages and approaches, one so clean so abstract, so ordered – (M)otherboard) – the other so chaotic, so disturbed, so narrative (Unicorns)– but wonderful fun...and really, the two approaches, visually, that have always been there for me....

Noting again, from last night, how my dreams – especially if I’ve drunk wine – will put me back in fear mode...wonder what it is....what penetrates....since evenings that I drink are usually of intense – and good – conversation with Keith and Di....very very strange....

11/22
Or what any of this means about what I will do when I get home....how I will stop from isolating myself....and last night, as I went to bed, early, needless to say, noting how I went into worry mode....and what I chose to worry about, trying to think about what to do next, where to move or if I want to move, was to decide I had done very little over the past seven years since Tom died....
This coming up because I was thinking about a friend of Di and Keith’s who they would like to see move here, who is precisely Keith’s age (53), and then thinking that I would find it very easy to think about pulling up stakes at 53, but not so much now at 61, which is when it occurred to me that I was 53 when Tom died, and why hadn’t I pulled up stakes then and done all this stuff I’ve thought about, etc. etc. etc.
And then there’s knowing full well why not, vis a vis, money, Lee, work, jobs, estates, etc. etc. etc. – but all of it showing me, I think, what’s really getting to me, what this fear is....the fifties felt like my prime, the sixties feels like old age, even if there is so little difference....and whether or not it’s true....scary this....precisely....scary this....In fact, just writing it has made me scared....
The way sometimes this trip I can go back into the kind of fears of death that have haunted me off and on since Mark Murphy died when I was six....turning me into the child who sat on the stair feeling her face for the skull underneath....
And knowing too, at my age–especially around building a house on the land in Ontario, I would be perfectly willing to pull up stakes if I weren’t alone....

And then, there’s doing the other....realizing, if I look at it....how much I have done in the past years since Tom’s death....lots and lots and lots....and quite continuously....

And now, 1pm, so dark outside, and me, finishing editing of door frames piece....so sad....
And don’t know if it’s the piece, or it’s about calling home, or it’s about the level of sudden darkness....

And just looked up my journal from the last time I was here...and yes, I left Hudds about November 23, met Lee either the day before or the day after his birthday. When he turned 15. And now, just spoke to him. And he’s to turn 20 on Monday. Wow. The most amazing five years these.
Sometimes wonder if I could have done any better for him. Especially remembering precisely those years from fifteen to seventeen for him, how difficult and whether I should have left him in Calgary that fall, or made him come with me, and miss a year of high school. Probably really. That. Just made him not go. Suspect though, under the conditions, that there will always be regrets that way, but also that there always would have been regrets that way no matter what I’d done or not done, something about Tom’s death making me want to do more for Lee than I could possibly have done. And just talked to him, and he sounded good....
And then there’s that the outcome has really been pretty good so far. Love thinking of him out there snowboarding....

11/23 – 5:50am
Two attached and very strange dreams, one debating cultural appropriation walking up a hill, here or in NYC, about Bill, finally saying that thing about what comes in through the eye goes out through the hand, in through the ear out through the mouth, and how as we were much more intimate with each other in terms of people of different backgrounds, we had to hear each other’s stories see each other’s arts and pass them on....that that’s how art and craft have always moved...
And stopping then in front of 26 Sidney Place and Lee coming out with a “Supreme Court” Summons from someone who had complained that he was reversing his bus when Lee ran into it, then disappeared into his house, after laughing at him, because the “parents were mired in tragedy” or some such....very strange....as if Lee running into the bus were what....a crime? As if the bus should have been reversing on a Brooklyn sidewalk....
All of which tells you something about where my anxieties lie....

11/25
And now, the smallest of crises, but affecting nonetheless. Lee’s car needing brake repair, and not having the cash flow to help him with it. Amazing that it gets to me as it does. What is this need I have to see Lee perfectly happy perfectly sheltered, in some way that I do not, and did not, with Lucero and Mark. Is it my strange sense of earlier disappointments for him, Tom’s death and school. An early shattering of faith in the world. I don’t know. But is it ever there. There. There.
Or perhaps – back to that - it’s about my own age. Something I said to Robert Kroetsch in a Calgary bar after some literary event or other, probably the Olympic literary festival, when Miranda was just out, and Lee an itty bitty baby and all that, that considering he would be twenty when I was sixty-one, it was like sending a craft off into space which you would not see return. A different sense of setting a child off in life. Don’t know if other older parents have it. Or older single parents. I should ask, as I do have friends my age with kids younger than Lee. But am convinced that’s part of it too.
Seems now he will wait for my return before he leaves. That okay too.

And the CD back. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Both the art work, which turned out exactly as we had thought it would, the writing legible, the art undistorted, the look of the old photo album just perfect, even the bloody round coffee stain (that we quite literally made by setting coffee on paper) the origami cranes, the photo Lee sent, Ground Zero Nagasaki, all of it all of it all of it.....and then the sound, wonderful, far more clear and clean than on the CDr, so that listening listening listening at Keith and Di’s last night, I really came to love it in a new way....
also by not listening critically to my own performance, trying to figure out what to do the same and what differently....a useful and necessary thing of course, but sometimes there’s just listening, and really appreciating what Keith and Shaun have done....

11/26
And happy birthday to Lee and all that....and now, off to Whitby and the North Sea....

11/30–4am
After three lovely days in Whitby now back. Will try to write about it later, or include from my handwritten journal. Just to note that on the ship in the harbour, made recently to make movies on, The Grand Turk, downstairs there was a great big circular knot made with four strands of interwoven rope...called the Turk’s Head, if I remember....and remarking on how Bill used to make one using three strands, called the Monkey’s Fist, both of them “hollow knots” as the guy said, that you would fill with weights...then him telling me making the Monkey’s Fist has been outlawed by the EU, because you would use the weighting to be able to throw a line from ship to shore, and sometimes a guy might be hit in the head and killed...and suddenly me knowing what a Monkey’s Fist was for, having forgotten somehow, so just knowing Bill made them, thought it was just some sort of cosh, the way Leroy used it to smash that carton in the piece I’ve been writing on the subject....will get this info into that....

And now writing just to report a dream. That I was pregnant. And in the dream convinced it was Tom’s baby. Then a segment about Rosemary also pregnant and miscarrying. And not taking it as seriously as Su-Zen wanted her to in an e-mail. With Rosemary the only person who knew I was pregnant, but only because I’d been too busy to tell people. So was asking her to do it for me by e-mail. Other thing was both Mark and Tim were having kids. And I was wondering whether Mark should move in with me.
But two things most interesting. Tom was one. And how much in the dream I missed him. But I knew he was dead. Just thought the time gap of seven years perfectly fine to still be having his baby. The other one was, as I faced single parenthood thinking: I’ll never get to be an adult. Never get to be on my own. The opposite to all my anxiety about being alone. Some of it in the upstairs bathroom at Sidney Place.
More on the thinking around this later. Meantime: back to bed. The gig in Sheffield is tomorrow.

And so will end this month, I think.

Only there’s one last dream. That I have a studio space. At first, seemingly, a windowless basement. Then, suddenly, it turns out there are other rooms, much like some of the ones in Mexico. Only I have my main workspace in the windowless one, so, then, I have to figure out changing stuff around and who will help me. Only to discover there’s been a girl sleeping in my space, living in my space. So she comes by, and we get into a discussion about how she can’t do that. I threaten her, she threatens me. The old You Don’t Know Who You’re Dealing With thing. So next time I come to the studio I see these drawings she’s left to prove she’s been there, and see all this rust in the bars along the windows. Realize it’s going to be hard to keep her out. Also, that the place now has a beautiful garden between the rooms, like a huge hot house with trees. That it will be awful to have to take the precautions. Somehow, find out something about her, to do with a book she’s in about violins, I think, or a book she’s written. Contact some who know her and how to find her. Show her I can get to her as well. Then suggest we compromise because otherwise doing the other one in will become a life work. It is agreed. Before one of us hires a hit man. A solution also mentioned. And the girl, and I say girl advisedly, late adolescence basically, reminding strongly of someone. Jean when young? Amaranth Pavis? This artist in Calgary, Theresa? Lynette D’anna? Or just a type that is all of them. Thin, pale, slightly dirty, a twisted smile?
Or is it just a younger me? The second story kid. Who could break in anywhere? And yes, that I have to learn to live with her again....and to integrate her fears...
Maybe that’s where to end the month....

12/02
And back now from Liverpool and Sheffield. An amazing time. Wonderful. Extraordinary. In all sorts of ways.

12/03
So much to think about in it, and still not up to writing about any of the last week...Whitby, Sheffield, Liverpool...Maybe just this, before I forget it....that right before we did bill....in Sheffield, there was a funeral in the Quaker Meeting House where we performed, of a merchant marine who had originally wanted to join the Marine Corps, who lived (?) in Japan, and visited Nagasaki, where he changed his mind about so many things, and took up the cause of peace, and was after a member of CND...seemed magical somehow to perform bill...in such a context, seemed, in fact, like a gift.....and a blessing for what we have been attempting to do....

The rest, for the moment, Whitby, bill, bill, Whitby....told Keith, maybe I’m just back to It’s fucking gorgeous, fuck me it’s gorgeous, fuck me it’s fucking gorgeous again....

journal © copyright sarah murphy 2007

Sarah’s Journal – Twelfth Installment

12/05

Thinking about what we did today for Falling into Place....

This then. In Zihuatanejo, there were horses. And larger rocks. And the sky just as blue. This then. That riding across the beach I thought: I want to see this right before I die. It was the first time I thought that. That there would be something so very full of light that I would want that. I was 23. Death, though, had long been present in my world. I wanted to have seen that when I was six. Instead of just beach balls.
The one I still see. Blue, red, yellow and white. Like the beach. The beachball I saw in the shop window in Sag Harbor. The one I saw in my children’s daycare centre. That made me say: this is the time before death entered.

I would have wished to know red, blue and yellow, the pigment primaries, the ones I had already learned, are what mark the nature of the beach. The time before time before time before language. Not before death enters but when death is already and always and forever there. With life. When they are one.

What I would have wanted to know is that comfort, from when I felt for my skull on the stair. That we are there before and after and in that red and blue and yellow. That fact of ocean and sun. I would have wanted that.

Always then. There are many oceans to wish for. To call to. But always that. In the blue and yellow and red laid over white laid over black primacy of always and of beginnings.

And of the minimal dialogue which forms language. That is place and being in place. Or out of place. Or just being in longing for place. That is the gap that is there even in trying to see it. Or see ourselves.

12/06
Time Before Time
Red blue white yellow red blue white white red blue red blue white yellow white yellow white blue red blue you remember the colours always those colours the colours of beach those colours of beach in sun those colours ocean in sun those colours always ocean in sun those colours always bright against the eyes as bright as blue yellow red red eyes closed red red yellow red eyes closed red yellow red eyes open blue white blue white blue white blue light yellow yellow red yellow dark red yellow blue red blue red dark along beach along rock ocean blue sky blue cloud white yellow white sky blue sky blue rock red against blue white blue you remember that first time in zihuatanejo blue white blue white yellow red blue white white you remember looking down riding horse across sand you remember looking down yellow yellow blue white looking over looking out sky yellow white yellow red blue red blue blue white blue you remember always these colours yellow blue red white white pigment primaries always pigment primaries red yellow blue blue red yellow against paper white white ground white white remember always red yellow blue yellow blue red red even when mixed unmixed seeing through layers always unmixing beach sky rock sky ocean sky to primaries red yellow blue yellow blue on white white shadow sometimes black tiny black you remember tiny black saying like words printing yes printing yes saying yes saying this place yes this rock yes sand yes yellow yes red red behind eyes blue blue blue sky blue red deep yes yes this place at 24 you saying yes yes show me this place this place red yellow blue blue white white this place before i die this place let me be looking at this place knowing this place this place this first place feeling first place feeling later first always first place this place robin hood’s bay first place sky blue ocean blue first place reflecting blue blue blue red yellow white white yellow white maine coast black blue rock black blue as sheltered words black blue red black white white stripe white black blue ocean blue yellow blue reflecting sky red blue yellow white white horizon cloud white white ground always red yellow blue white white blue first place oregon coast other ocean blue sky blue red yellow wave peak ocean reflection blue puerto escondido blue blue far away from height of land blue white yellow red yellow red give me this place this place this place before all places before first thought first language first move toward first tumble into story mix to ochre mix to brown yellow ochre on body of movement mix to green to purple to orange to siena earth find other colours find other colours mix your own colours your own story like depth of window behind beach ball bright yellow red blue colours beach ball not bouncing on beach yellow white blue white red white but beach ball in sag harbor at 6 store window brown wood framing beach ball in window brown sidewalk under foot creeping brown into glowing depth of window hand green tinged reaching out reaching out to story to beach ball blue white red white yellow white beach ball mixing into brown you looking you looking from beach ball in window at six to beach ball in daycare centre at 30 hallway colours faded to olive to eggplant next to your children thinking hand reaching out this is the time this is the time this is the time this is the time window and hallway at once punched in the stomach time time of no no time of memory this is the time the time before this is the time before mickey murphy called paul garcia in sag harbor called to announce mark murphy’s death this is the time before the time before the beginning of your dialogue with that story this is the time before colours mix before time changes this is the time before your dialogue with death this is the time before the time before blue red yellow blue yellow red white white white white before colours mixed when colours layered when colours spoke at their most basic at the very edge of language red yellow blue yellow white white of ground waiting for story waiting for you waiting for you to mix this is the time the time before you started out on that road this is the time before story before death entered the time before death entered the time you want the time you want yellow blue yellow blue yellow blue red red the time you have said it again and again since recognizing it that first time in zihuatanejo yes yes this place this time these colours red yellow blue yellow white you want these colours you want this time the time before death entered you want the time before death entered for entering death.

And that, coming out of that exercise yesterday, and it, so fascinating.....and so frustrating.... What I thought at the time.....this is so utterly totally frustrating....moving from words for colours overlaying the composition to colours with the words on another piece of paper, and each time seeming to capture less, until you could separate the drawing from the photo and it could become itself....and then having no words for colours just images for colours until it became the kind of repeating mantra of the three primaries above....and that making me think of Crayola crayons, the first ones always in the standard primaries, and then the ones with the secondaries, orange purple green, and then more and more, until you get the sixty four crayon box, lovely wonderful sixty four crayon box that I even did some of my first professional drawings in (now lost when I moved from Toronto)...but with all their names, periwinkle and heliotrope and chartreuse and marigold and mulberry....must get one of those and get some of the names into a later version of above...
Probably reorganize it too.....

And now, looking out my window onto the moor, the moor now visible and yellow sunlight lighting up trees, there must be a rainbow somewhere, as it still rains, rain still tinkles onto window but after hours of pounding pounding rain in day darkness....
And now, back to grey.....

12/10
And now, finally, a beautiful winter day, or evening really, about 4:30, that yellow orange light dull yellow orange light, the winter one with a lot of blue in the orange, at the edge of the horizon, and the same orange yellow feel in the lights of the windows below, the horizon line of the nab so high, and the windows with the twisting street below me, looks beautiful, but twists at the heart somehow, the way winter pre-solstice light always seems to–and a few Xmas lights up too, just a few, in long strings along the second stories of shops.....and one cross from the church across the way just sticking up above the horizon....
And a new anxiety now, somehow without the same quality of fear, but anxiety most pure, or something, the preparation for going home....

And first CDs from me to Canada, all prepared today at the Word Hoard...felt good to get that done....and then there was going through the box I tried to send home last time, which came back, and going through it, so that it felt as if time had compressed, that I was both always and never here.....

12/12
and last night, dreaming forward a day. A different day from the one I will have, sitting here now, shortly after sunrise (8:15am) looking out on the pink grey light of the nab (what the moor is called that I’ve been looking at all this time). When instead what I dreamed was that I missed the last bus from Keith and Di’s, because we’d all fallen into a kind of sleepy stupor in the kitchen, so that I ran up to catch it, seeming just a bit important as they’re off to see houses today, but didn’t matter too much, and seemed real enough that when I woke up briefly I had to check where I was, only then went into the Word Hoard, and by now we’re getting a little bit unrealistic because it was like the Millennium Gardens in Sheffield, and set to work there, and had this idea that we should do a first part of Falling into Place as cards in an envelope on A4 paper, or maybe even A5....But even A5 would fit the size of a CD....so it could be in an envelope inside the envelope....
Have been thinking now about that seriously but also dreamed about it all the rest of the night....
And planned it out....not sure of the order, but have thoughts about some of the stuff.
The two series through Photoshop, backed by Keith and Di’s poems, with the small pieces on the fronts....Keith’s collages....The (M)Otherboard collage followed by the drains, with just that thing of Keith’s Who is lost and through what door. Then the drain blanket and No Innocence in Circles....
Something of Arbor Low–and then the Whitby stuff, including whatever Keith does with the limpet, the pieces we’ve done as tracing paper. And maybe end with my Time Before Time piece. And a CD....
Which could all be too much, or which might work perfectly....
And the, Kath’s photo of For Strangers Only from the pew in Whitby on the envelope..
Like the idea too of using those ones with the two cardboard circles, one on the envelope one on the flap, with the string to wind around them both to close it, maybe even the kind we use at the College with little round holes, there probably in offices so the workers don’t take them home or send them through the mail....

And am learning today how hard going/getting home is going to be. Just the anxiety of the last three days telling me that....

12/13
And then going to Manchester yesterday. To the German market. Picking up gifts for kids and grandkids. Having a wonderful lunch/dinner at Tom’s Chophouse. Too expensive, but really good. And beautiful tile decoration. Feeling for the first time in a while, that sense of travel, the parenthesis of it, instead of being busy working. Losing that sense of rushing, of not quite knowing. Of being a mind in search of a worry. Don’t quite know what all that is. Even went up on the “Manchester Eye”. A slow ferris wheel. Like the London Eye, only smaller and portable. Enjoyed the sense of it. Of seeing far. All of that. And just being there. Being a tourist I suppose. As opposed to wondering what happens next.

12/14
At the moment, looking out toward the nab. Sky is clear but hazy, and frost frost frost everywhere. The first time it’s lasted like this. And me writing a report, and getting an awful awful migraine. Weakness in the arms. Lack of clarity. Headache coming. While rooks land in the bare tree outside, and the frost melts off the grey slate tiles to reveal the green moss beneath.
And the migraine to accompany knowing that The Word Hoard has just received a horrific funding cut. Horrific.

12/16
Three days to go, and getting involved with the packing and figuring out how to take things, how to be comfortable – or at least not horribly uncomfortable – for the flight, all of that, so that it is slowly becoming mechanical, just the how to aspect of it all, but some of the same anxiety persists...about what it will be like at home, about where to go from here, all of that...and how wonderful this has been, and how strangely disorienting, a good place to be for all that Falling into Place stuff, that For Strangers Only thing, that I think should be on the covers of our envelopes – something Keith thought a top idea – gives us a way of controlling and continuing and making the things into a little present to oneself at the same time, that thing about taking out and putting back that an envelope of stuff represents....
But yes, For Strangers Only....this trip accentuating that sense I so often have, of being a stranger everywhere....legitimate I think, in any number of ways....the feeling of being divided between places, of always, in fact, falling out of place as well as out of step...made up I think by the differences in where I would like to be and where I am, or always having a reason to be elsewhere, but also of being divided in so many ways between places, seeing that so clearly in these last months, that this is a place that takes me up, even as I explore here and speak of elsewhere, being here and gone all at once, that sense very strong in that ocean piece that Time Before Time thing I just wrote, the beach here, the ocean here, but also the ocean everywhere else I have ever been...all coming into the picture...and in it speaking too, of death of that time before, before really, specificity....

And last night two dreams:
1. Of a young woman, a young poet, I think, whom I was working with, and who kind of hunched over herself far too much, somehow enclosing herself in her body, despite being very pretty, and with whom I talked about herself, her body language, what she could do with this fear of the world inculcated in her by an abusive religious cult– the kind that regards women as evil – she had been raised in, and telling her that she could of course get a ‘makeover’, but that I hated that story, that self-confidence, belief in oneself, self-esteem, all came for women from attractiveness, it seemed just as bad as the Jezebel women were evil thing, and didn’t she agree, only there was a gleam in her eye, the oh but I want to try it look, that I think all of us have, oh, yes, for this moment make me into the model make me conventionally beautiful, I even found the photos in Mickey’s archives of when I had that done at fifteen through a friend of hers who worked at I think it was Ingenue, a new teenagers’ mag in any case, and then in the dream, seeing that gleam in the young woman’s eye, deciding to go with it, to just say yes, we can do that, give her that boost that fun, that my daughter was a makeup artist and would love to do it for her, and there we were in a car with Lucero, and I was looking at the young woman’s face, while Lucero examined her, and there was faint burn scarring on her face but truly pearly in appearance without distorting her face much at all, and she was made truly beautiful just by lifting her face up to the light, so I started to laugh, and she became defensive and curled into herself again, thinking I was laughing at her, and I said, I was laughing from happiness at just how truly beautiful she was just by raising her head, and Lucero started into the makeup thing then, but I noticed that she too had not scarring but skin almost peeling away by one eye, and she let me know it was an infection which was just healing and would heal perfectly, but there was a veining of scabs around her scalp that had to be thrown away, into a trash can by the side of the road, but the two of them, in Lucero’s healing had found common ground.....and so the young woman sat up straight as if she would never hunch over again....and the dream was over then too....but the most amazing thing, which is why I think I remember it so well is how clear the young woman’s face was....
2. And the next was a dream of Tom....alive, very much alive, and that sense of actually being there and that I could touch him, could actually feel him there, and that we were walking through some kind of jungle, down by a river, and we had to get some stuff arranged, only I didn’t want to tell him he was dead....
And both dreams in the same texture.

12/17
Now, sitting up in Meltham, just having talked to both Lucero and Mark....that funny feeling of almost being home, just in the sense of listening to the kids’ problems....and it making me feel safer somehow, which I suspect is not a good thing, something about the safety of solving other people’s problems instead of the ones that most count for you....or maybe, the sense that if I am in the area they will be safer, who knows what it is....but it is truly strange
(And maybe it is the use of that word that makes that For Strangers Only thing on those Whitby pews so attractive....)

12/19 – 5:30am – Yorkshire time
And now, almost over....leaving Meltham in two and a half hours....just the last minute packing to do...awful this, five months into two bags, one carry on....and several small packages to be mailed....hibernate now...the computer that is...wish I could, at least until a good view of Greenland...

12/20 –7:40am – Calgary time
Home now, and wide awake of course, despite not going to sleep until twenty-four hours after I woke up yesterday, that being of course, only half midnight our time here, and of course going through twenty-four hours or thereabouts of solid night, or not so much night as post sunset twilight, going from red, yellow and teal blue striped sky to white light on the southern horizon but sun below the horizon for all of the flight and then, of course, solid night after getting here at 5:45 pm, all this of course being the second shortest day of the year yesterday, and today the shortest....and strangely as we came back south toward Calgary into a brighter twilight than when we were coming across Baffin Island and then Hudson’s Bay, the desire the almost compulsion to think of it as dawn rather than the last moment before sinking into true night.... very strange all of that...
And the landscape too, managed some photos of leaving England with the sunset on the horizon and the lights of Manchester as we flew north from Heathrow, then saw Glasgow and a number of smaller cities always leading out into intense light and landscaped patterns, then after Scotland (and not all of Scotland) didn’t see a single electric light on land or sea until the Southern edge of Lake Athabasca in the North West Territories, and most of the time over land, with one incredible moon on broken ice pattern like nothing I’d ever seen, glowing back in the most amazing fractured translucence and then even coming into Southern Alberta, how scattered the lights were, and a few towns like superimposed insects, and one, like a Petroglyph of a shaman that I just couldn’t quite get a photo of....and thinking....how different this is.....but failing to think: I’m home – and remembering that last conversation with Keith at the Word Hoard, about how once you displace yourself, it’s not that you can’t go home again, it is that you’re never home again, you are always from elsewhere, always with that longing for the place you’re not. Or just the sense of not quite being in the right place, in your place, of staying in your place.
Which suddenly brings that other sense of what it means to stay in your place, that thing too about class positions, class positioning (including racialized class positioning) and the concept of staying in your place: I love those people as long as they stay in their place.
So that it occurs: I’d love myself if only I could stay in my place. Whatever place that is.
Which brings me to a new thing about home. As in the house. This house/home I’ve created– (and the anxiety it creates...)

That what I’ve created is almost the home as a museum to being elsewhere, and that, in my own way, I quite love it. All the things on the walls, from rugs to jewelry, the artwork, the shamanic figures in the window (though almost none of my houseplants have survived my absence, making me think that maybe I have to rethink houseplants, even after designing a special place with a tile floor in the front bay window for them), even Lee’s posters of macho movies with De Niro and Pesci and Paccino and Liotta....the arrangement, the richness of it, like turning the positions of the lamps around last night to the way I had left it, so that I could see the Moroccan rug on the wall, how the colours shine in the pre-dawn in the moment that I turn on the light, and I feel content with being here. But here is this house I’ve created, not this city, not this wider territory, though I love this place in its own way, love its landscape, love its community, but it’s not all I love or all I want, nor–as above–does it feel uniquely mine, definitively mine....but back to that, nothing does, not here, not Brooklyn, not Oaxaca, not the Kootenays, not Yorkshire....but the house, yes, the house....what I’ve done with the house, as opposed to when it was openly for both of us, a staging ground for me and Tom, somewhere you stayed waiting to get away. But part of me feels the staging ground would be better....because I don’t know to what extent this sense of the self-created monastic cell (even if it gets tossed by the kids every time I leave), does not help to attain to that greater lightness of movement that I want just as much or more....yet it does comfort, to such an extent that, despite the anxiety of my return, of knowing I’ve got problems to solve, bills to pay, etc., already it comforts me, and I wonder if that fear that would return again and again in Yorkshire was not that particular feeling of displacement, that the room of my own was not my own room.... curious, eh?

And in here too is the stuff of personal history, Bill’s stuff, Mickey’s stuff, Tom’s stuff, that all has special meaning to me. And once, I would have said my own stuff, my archives, and maybe a bit of that true, but my archive feels more objective, why it’s so easy to give it all to the university, and the sense of personal legacy, perhaps why I couldn’t stop myself from pursuing the decoy suit....

And have just listened to bill...sitting here in my room, and yes, it’s as good here as there filling me with a real sense of being me, of being so much a part of me and what I wanted to do, just as it did back at the Word Hoard, and that sense of being surrounded and contented by being here as well, by the pure sensual me-ness of this room, that I understand why this place is the way it is, and why I would miss having this....
And thinking about that and Sor Juana and manchamanteles, that recipe for “table cloth stainer” Lupita gave me so many years ago, and stirring it up and the world as monastic cell again, as both wide and small, and travel I guess doing the same, but right now, this, the pure sensuous delight in this aspect of home....
And the CD magnificent in the same way, in its range of sensation and emotion, though so different from the peace I have built - with Bill’s help, Bill’s things are still here, in this particular room.
And there was more on this, a precise sense of it. Destroyed by a call from Roger’s AT&T, for the money I haven’t paid for my unused cell phone while I’ve been away....

12/21
And now, everything slowly getting organized, except I don’t seem able to send e-mail, and have no idea why it is happening. Can receive. Just can’t send. So what’s that about? But the oddest part, that it seems to make me feel blind.

12/22
And that of course, now solved. Same thing as has happened before, that my outgoing settings which have been the same for years and always worked suddenly don’t, and there I am talking to the people at Telus to try to straighten it out, again, and I change two numbers and suddenly it’s all working again, but it’s as if whoever it is I’m talking to doesn’t know how it ever worked at all....so it’s very very strange.....and strange too, that it would happen the day I got back....

And still contemplating that thing about home and about space in its own very intimate way, and how I don’t quite understand how it works, though thought through (isn’t that a collection of interesting gh’s right in a row) some of it yesterday, but now have forgotten, quite what that is....
Strange too, sitting down typing on the laptop here in my own office into which Lee moved his stuff while I was gone, because Jenny in a fit of pique because he was working such long hours once more chewed up the IP cable, all the IP cable that was connected though I discovered one yesterday hidden away in a drawer, so the office thing is weird too, not quite knowing how to work here, what projects to take on, how I will organize myself, get everything I need reconnected....
And that relating to the realization of how I haven’t been doing my usual daily life stuff for five months, like grocery shopping, really cooking meals, that sort of thing, so have so far only bought milk and am living out of the stuff in the freezer, which is probably a good thing, haven’t quite figured out what I want to eat seems to be the problem, or maybe that the stuff I made and froze five months ago or a bit longer reminds me of who I am by reminding me of what I cooked and how I cooked it, so far a great chicken soup thing, with chile guajillo, and a brisket of beef deshebrada – pulled I guess that is in English, like pulled pork – with lots and lots of chile chipotle, then yoghurt and rice to almost bring in a curryish side from all the curries with keith and di I expect, so maybe it’s a way of combining things....

12/24
Unicorns again for Christmas I suppose as I sit in my room in front of my Frida chair, the children’s rattan chair covered in colourful bottle cap art dedicated to Frida Kahlo, next to Lee’s computer, this room in any case better taken care of than I would have imagined, though there’s stuff all over the place of course, but the thing about sitting right here right now, the most amazing I suppose, considering the residency–something I’d completely forgotten about–there’s the tile I made as a kid, painted really, there are some solid clay ones like the ones Kath and Di make with the kids in their workshops up to a point, though without the clay that dries hard without being fired, so as if fired once, and what do you call that, I forget, unfired is greenware so it’s not that anymore but something else, it’s the stage when you paint the clay and then clear glaze it to be fired again, but yes tiles made in tile molds but with relief animals, one cat one horse on them, cat Chiquita from when I was about eight, the horse far better in terms of shape and perspective type things like the far legs in less relief than the near, so maybe at about twelve, all of these tiles, of course, brought back from Mickey’s apartment, when I’d totally forgotten about them, but not those totally Sarah-made ones that suddenly amazed me, it was the ones that we just did painting and clear glazing commercial ceramic tiles in the clay room, the ones already fired once, perfectly shaped rectangles so you could mount them in shower stalls if you wanted or find some other way to actually use them as real tiles, and the two I found at Mickey’s, the first a wonderful joke, because it was a two tile piece, young again, donkey’s years ago so to speak, because it was of a donkey, the fact that its legs are just straight up and down unjointed things making it probably my first year at City and Country, but the best part that I only found the rear tile, so not quite a horse’s ass, but yes an ass’s ass– or ass’s arse –as they would say back in England--

And still, I’m not where I want to go with this, because the other tile, one that’s dated so I know I did it just after I turned eleven, because it’s dated May 1957, and I would have turned eleven April 5th of that year, know it too even without the date because it would have been that winter in the last part of 5th grade, what we called The Tens in C&C, that we studied the middle ages and went to the Cloisters–and it’s of the unicorn from the last piece of the unicorn tapestry, that one with the green but flowered ground, The Unicorn in Captivity, the one that I used to make what is either a mantilla or a crown of thorns in that weird Unicorn Tapestry collage I did for the Straying from the Path workshop, only the unicorn taking up the whole tile, so no fence, so there’s that sudden strange irony of memory, almost an overpowering feeling, all that anger at the unicorn myth and that combination of pumpkins those pieces I wrote that I know will go somewhere... and how amazing it was for that to come up as we did those pieces on magical beings and objects and fairy tales....
All that stuff about unicorns and maidens and puberty and mythology and Native America and EuroAmerica, but more than anything, that danger of becoming a woman of that year and the fights between Mickey and Bill, and how that came up over and over in those workshops even when I just got the castle it was the Cloisters and the castle in the background of the unicorn tapestry, so more than fairy tale danger in the figures in that collage I made, with writing that stuff about how virginity is hardly innocence if it’s used to trap a unicorn and all that, and then there it is, that tile that is certainly about how I identified far more with the unicorn than with that simpering seductive sly looking maiden....that tile of that year that I’d forgotten once and then twice and now looking at it, sitting just above to the left of my Frida chair under the window, but now, broken in a corner because one of the rocks I keep on the window sill, where the Whitby rocks are now included, fell on it while I was gone.
Or maybe before and I just didn’t notice, the time I last had to break into my own house, climbing through the window....
But weird I think, really weird, maybe take a picture of it, to go with all the rest of this unicornish pumpkin work, in front of the Frida chair, or maybe better, in top of a mola from Panama, as it’s no longer the season for pumpkins.....
And yes, that worked.....especially since the one I picked, by no means as well done as some, but still with the original impulse of the mola, they’re applique and drop out work used on the fronts and backs of Seri women’s blouses, has the most amazing shamanic intent, despite the fact that the circles and squares around the central being are of the few that are sewn by machine not hand sewn, but that magical being in the centre, so much like a small whale, perhaps a small narwhal, in search of its tusk.....that it would seem the legend of the unicorn has appropriated.....

And then there’s sitting here still, and wondering if I will be able to organize myself for business in this space with Lee’s computer here too, business like duck business, i know it shouldn’t affect my creative space, as I have proven amply with the Word Hoard I don’t in the least mind working with other folks around, that true even way back when with Tom, when we even shared this room to work in, but yes, harder to organize to make sure I do that daily stuff that needs to be taken care of, and that I know where stuff is, and yes, the ducks besides----

12/25
So now, before dawn on Christmas morning, once more I sitting but up in my own room where I took the laptop last night, just having dreamed of Tom and the land in Ontario, trying to figure it all out, which of course I won’t, that where to go from here, and listening to Army of Briars and feeling inspired by it, that sense of walking on the back bone of the earth and how that was there too in Arbor Low....
Back to no truth but in things....repeated beautifully on the album...

But in which things? Those you touch upon, or those you possess? That would be the question in the duck suit....but maybe the question in a lot of things....like why I have what I have, why the Frida Kahlo chair downstairs for example, it’s gorgeous but does it stop me from moving, or does it, like the Colombian folk art chess set to its right, does it fulfill me, make this my home, make it easier for me to move, to work, to understand, and is it the possession that’s important, or just the grabbing out of the immense entropy of the world that dismember making, and its truth, so that making something your own is a way of making sure it can be passed on, as in Bill’s collecting, is that what makes it all make sense....
And then thinking about how Mariam has torn that apart, how his last illness simply let all that he had rescued and organized and spoken to, come apart again, because he didn’t have time to work with it, only then I think, the truth is he did, working with other carvers and collectors, even up there in the loft, it’s just that Mariam’s depredations, her need to hoard, instead of preserving, tears apart....and how that’s one of the borders of having too...that clinging too closely produces not order but chaos....
And yes, then thinking too of my own lack of loyalty to things, thinking about the collapsing–surely collapsing–cabin on the land we once called home that I dreamed about last night....
But how there was such a need to move on....even leaving things behind the way I have so often....the way I have often spoken of the advantage of books being that someone will always have a copy in some library somewhere.....and then there’s documenting things...

It changed my life, that one small thing, I think sometimes. That, when was it, years ago, over twenty I’m sure of that, 1984 perhaps, yes it must have been, on that trip to Nicaragua with Marie Jakober when we stopped in Mexico City to see Lupita, living then up on the mountain edge of the Ajusco, during the stage that she did her wonderful Mexican cooking, now with rheumatoid arthritis she doesn’t do it anymore, and I would stand behind her, stand behind her and ‘la muchacha’, the maid, forever present still in all Mexican even mildly middle class homes, and watch her doing it, and talk about how I hated cooking I did, I really did. But still, hating it or not, one thing that I knew was that there wasn’t a restaurant in Calgary, still isn’t, aren’t many anywhere in fact in North America north of Mexico, that could make the kind of regional dishes Lupita could, and that I wanted to taste no matter where I was. So that I asked her for her recipe for escabeche oriental, chicken in eastern vinaigrette you could translate it, and she did, together with cochinita pibil, two wonderful recipes from the Yucatan, but what changed my life, was that she handed me what she swore was Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz’s recipe for manchamanteles. Or maybe what changed my life was thinking about Lupita cooking it, I never did, and standing there in the kitchen, the way Sor Juana must have, looking at the pots, grinding the spices, her ‘muchacha’ helping her, there in her cell, a large apartment really, in her convent of San Jeronimo.
And I’ve thought of it a lot since, both Sor Juana, and Lupita, and their ‘muchachas’ and that line that goes back to the 17th century, that truly goes beyond, that is women and cooking, cooking and women, in the small spaces that they have chosen. This time, chosen. And in it, too, resolved my own hatred of cooking through a new way of doing it. As often as not I would stand in front of my stove, thinking about Sor Juana. Not all of you may know of her, some may, some may not, the whole world should, but that’s another question. Or maybe not, maybe it’s the same.

And that’s the beginning for my essay for the ‘gender cookbook’, who knows where it will go, starting it today probably having to do with Christmas and being about to cook roast beef for Mark and Lee but thinking of crazy dinner parties and turkeys and wanting to crawl into a monastic cell....

12/29
Funny, it’s only four days later and the article is finished. Sent away yesterday actually. Worked on it for two days. Knew the word count, so it was a lot easier. But also knew more of what I wanted to say, so none of the difficulties of doing the narrative one around Ground Zero, maybe less controversial, or not as layered. Interesting though, being able to just do that. Two days and I’m done....
Nice to know I can do that...now whether it will be liked or not is a whole other question, but it did feel good....lot of what’s in that beginning is out too, like talking about the ‘muchachas’, dealing with class and servants besides everything else would have made it so much too long....that always a problem, loss of layering....

12/31
And then yesterday, walking in Fish Creek Park with Leila, after a brunch at the Ranche, best brunch in the city as far as I’m concerned, and going for a walk out to the creek itself, and getting into taking photos, thinking of sending them on to the Word Hoard, and getting once more into that whole close up thing (as well as documenting landscape from a distance), just like of the canals, or of the rocks at Whitby, only this time the body of water is frozen, so shapes in ice and rocks, and thinking about how Fish Creek is as wide, and for that matter - in the non-navegable parts – as deep as the rivers by the canals in England, but how no one ever tried to navigate this one, not even by canoe I don’t think, though some do raft it for fun, but then there’s watching people kayak the Elbow, and then there’s white water rafting the Kootenay or floating down the Bow, and then there’s thinking about those almost inconceivable fur trade canoe trips the 2500 or so miles along the Bow to the South Saskatchewan to Lake Winnipeg to Hudson’s Bay, and I’m thinking about the immensity of these spaces and the nature of their history, and how different the history in terms of erasure rather than accretion, but also the enormity of it all, and the different ways of knowing it, and I’m back into that sense of circling again and Falling into Place, and wouldn’t it be fun to be able to internationalize it and all that, like going not just to the rivers here but to Writing on Stone Provincial Park, and seeing if there was anyone who could trace out the routes once taken by the Blackfoot Confederacy, as they would come to that place and write out their petroglyphs, some from less than two hundred years ago containing men with rifles, and then those that go back 5,000 or more years. Seems so amazing...so different, so the same.
And then this morning, taking pictures from my window. And from the attic with the Rockies in the distance. As if ending a chapter. The way I began it with pictures out my window in Meltham....

Oh, yes, and the ducks....Maine two weeks before I came to England, and now, the post....with its summons to mediation, and the ducks again, so Maine again two weeks later...once more at the Charles Inn Bangor and driving to Cherryfield and yet another landscape another place to displace in....same week too last January for the inspection....though they’ve had about four feet of snow by now, so it won’t be like here with the low growth showing through, no pink and purple Thanksgiving blueberry barrens this time....just black and white and grey...
So happy New Year and back to decoys and listen for geese flying...honk honk and on it goes....