June 1 Career advice

I am really jumbled. It's this constant learning. I've changed my mind drastically over the last few days about what to do next. First, I was all set to apply for an entry level "editorial assistant" job with a publisher. Next, I was going to send my resume in to the tech writing people and go do financial software manuals for people in the city. Today, I became convinced that Photoshop and Quark XPress are the way to go and if I'm going to do this, I ought to give it a fair shot, Macintosh platform and all. I have to come to my own conclusions about what is inappropriate and what is reasonable. I need to commit to an idea mentally and live in it for a day or two. As reactions come to me, I can then reject or develop the plans. Easy. No more tears formula. I react badly to career advice. And it gets me into trouble. I twist myself into a knot trying to do what is expected. And then I live the expected life for 15 years with a bad attitude. When I try to float my little career ideas past counselors or recruiters or even friends, they are easily and immediately sunk by realistic comments. Part of me drowns with them -- my faith in my own intuition. Even so, sometimes I realize with a shock that I'm having a problem due to lack of information. INFP types can go a long way on intuition alone, and feel really happy and comfortable with that. But intuition still needs to be periodically primed with a few facts. Sometimes what I need is a symbol. I think "dismantling the underworld" (May 24) was what helped me break through my resistance to dealing with all that trash. And tonight I cleaned out a kitchen cupboard! It was a miracle. My symbol for my job is that of a craftsperson, a medieval scribe, or an itinerant typographer. I hate this entry. Being realistic sucks. I think I have to slog through it though. Clearer waters in sight.

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June 2 Poetry on a Wednesday

The poets got together tonight. In an elegant room in a precious museum in a ritzy town to see a working class poet read poems sprinkled with choice Anglo Saxon words in an English dialect. The poet was a friend of Paul McCartney. The reading was in honor of an exhibit of Linda's 60's photographs. The other room was filled with an exhibit on "Thoroughbreds" (horses). I enjoyed it very much, although I was in a snit about having to go. I was feeling pressured into going out on a school night and having to do the work to get a sitter (the dad) and I would rather have stayed home and pouted about GARBAGE which is making me very HAPPY after all. "a fuckwind is a kestrel" "a shag is a cormorant" "skinned like a skinned rabbit" I saw many people I knew there. The most compatible woman in graphic design class was there! I was truly happy to see her. And my son's religious education teacher. People from the poetry group. People from the open mike group. People who said "Hey, good article in the paper." "Tory and Labour - one party with two names" "limestone is very porous" "snatch of violets" So there I was in the countryside examining the ancient lead mines of Nenthead and the disappearing river at its source and the sea trout. Then I was in the shipyard Wearside, standing on the scaffolding about to fall off and break my spine and work "na maar." I was thrilled that English became so close to a foreign language. There was much translation of words. And lots of lilting mumbling. "a syke is a stream" "fiend's (?) fell" "the only named wind in England" I felt connected to my heritage. "you are lost in the maze of a dying culture" "it dies in your betraying eyes" Poetry is one thing. Standing shoulder to shoulder with a half-drunk poet who's asking if anyone has any "smoke" (what does he mean by that?) is another. Or maybe not. "and a soul poured into me" ~ Tom Pickard

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June 3 The mock orange laughs

The mock orange laughs at me. It stands still in the corner, arms crossed, in its dress of blossoms, wasp nests in its hair, glowing in the gray night, laughing. I don't want to be defeated. I don't want to be conquered by moths or garbage or kids or cats. I was vacuuming tonight. I took a lot of breaks to go outside for fresh cool air. The mock orange is in bloom. It is a big messy rambling bush. It mocks me with its sweetness. I can't write tonight. I'm trying but I can't do it. I'm defeated.

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June 4 Sugar Mountain

Brain fatigue. Every night I do a little bit more. Tonight I filed some stray account statements, balanced the money market account, sorted the bookcase full of children's books into keep, give, and throw away piles, tried to make sense out of the electricity bill. Last night, I put out the "bulk waste" for the city to take away. The Christmas tree. A vacuum cleaner with a crack in its base. Another small vacuum which was giving off smoke and a bad smell. A frame backpack as old as college days which had a yellow film peeling off its skin. A huge old TV which one kid had to have, but which was never used. My first home computer, an IBM PS1 with a broken monitor which could not be fixed. B brought over her waste too, so we had a pile that would make it worth their while to stop anyway. And then there's the emotional work with the kids. The older one and I have re-engaged in an cold war battle about his garbage, which he lovingly took back in after I tried to cruelly cast it away, and about his desire to keep pets which he doesn't keep clean. I don't really care about the results of the battle, although I do feel bad for the animals. I mostly want to rattle his cage enough so he doesn't get too comfortable and decide not to go away to college after all. I win as long as I don't lose my patience and do something unilaterally. The younger one has been excited about today, Field Day, all week. It turns out he won only one ribbon, for participation in the Tug of War. I made a big deal about the Tug of War. He came home with a big painful lump on his knee. For a few moments there, I was sure he had bone cancer and the rest of our lives flashed before my eyes. Taking him to the doctor seems like a massive logistical problem. He's also always hoarse. I was less worried about this after I went on a field trip with his class to Ellis Island last week. I saw that he yells constantly to his friends. He seemed really integrated into his peer group. It was good to see. I didn't write about that trip, did I. It was completely exhausting. I chaperoned a group of three boys, one black, one brown, one white. They wrestled and beat up on each other and spit off the edge of the boat and played hide-and-seek in the museum and didn't stay together and got bored with an exhibit after 5 seconds. Of course, they used the men's bathroom where I was forced to lose sight of them and fret that they would never come out. They came out all excited about the graffiti they had read in there. I had to keep them moving for hours. It poured rain most of the day so we couldn't release much energy outside. I still haven't recovered. I've been really close to taking a break from writing this journal. I find writing incompatible with the rest of my activities. I stay up too late writing this. I have purist objections to posting mediocrity. (What's mediocrity?) I want to start working on graphics, but I have a ton of prep work to do before that will happen, setting up the office upstairs, buying the hardware, buying the software, installing it. I need to create a "professional" website, that I can use for business. This all might not be done until the end of the summer. But I guess I'm still writing this because writing is the only real taste of Sugar Mountain I've been having. Can't resist it.

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June 5 Growth years

Taking my son to the doctor was not a massive logistical problem, it was only a minor logistical problem. At 7 I took him to the Urgent Care center. The nice receptionist said the health insurance (new, under his dad's plan now) might not pay for urgent care. I tried to call the health insurance customer service line, but no one was there until 8 am. So we went home. At 8 I called customer service. A very helpful man told me I could take the child to his regular pediatrician who is in the network. For some reason I didn't realize that, although I'm sure I tried to look that doctor up in the providers directory. So I called the regular pediatrician. Office not open until 9 am. At 9 I called the doctor's office. A very pleasant woman gave me an appointment at 10am. By then I had my friend B's two boys over. At 10 I took all three boys to the doctor's office. A very nice doctor told us the problem was Osgood-S-something disease, which is a problem with the ligament attaching the knee to the tibia. He said very casually "overuse injury, the treatment is rest, no sports." It could affect both knees at some point. It usually affects boys later in their heavy growth years. Then the doctor said if he didn't stay off it, they would have to put a SCREW into the knee. Luckily, the child is not into official athletics as a way of life, although he is incredibly active. So this took all morning. For myself, this afternoon, I went to the library and ordered Adrian Piper's two volumes on art through Inter Library Loan (ILL). I've been wanting to look at these books ever since I read a review of them a few years ago in Women's Review of Books. They're expensive books, so I won't buy them until I look at them and I haven't been able to find them. They are about a philosophy of art. I want to be involved with Art. I am so surprised. It never occurred to me to study art in college, or for many years after. I didn't pay any attention to the signs. My happiest times in college were sitting in the reading pit in the library looking at the photography books, giving myself a treat before going downstairs to study. When I worked in the college library, I used to collect colored paper from the catalog covers we were throwing away. I never knew what to do with the paper and eventually threw it away. Calligraphy was the first adult ed course I ever took, and I didn't take it seriously. It was just play. I think it was a real turning point when I made a collage in -- September of 1997? -- for my older son. I had just sent him away to a year of boarding school and he came so close to getting kicked out on the first day. I realized it wasn't possible to say anything more with words. I tried to compose a letter to him but the drafts were coming out so badly, all lecturing, or tentative, or goofy, sickening. Making that collage expressed every ambiguous thought I had and left me feeling so calm and satisfied. Ahah. I don't know what's going to happen.

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June 6 Sudden clarity

I'm walking up the stairs with the vacuum cleaner this afternoon, and -- for a brief moment -- maybe five seconds -- I feel clear, I feel like I'm doing my own work, I feel like I'm on top of this project. The feeling is definite, it's like a breeze inside, it's like the running river water. Then it's gone and smog alert/ traffic jam/ pileup effect restarts. Brown bookcases, holes in the walls, fingermarks and doghair, rotting windowsills, old brown carved carpeting, bad doorknobs, stuffiness, inadequate wiring, tub scum, no food, weeds needing whacking, permission problems ... Microsoft Word's Tip of the Day just now was "Things that go away by themselves can come back by themselves." I found a "household" poem on a diskette I rescued from the Cleaning Times. The poem is undated. I have no recollection of writing it. Maybe I didn't write it. Just like everything else, it needs work. Aunt Kate in the Night Kitchen First I bake up a batch of brownies I listen to Laura Nyro all night long I put my little son to bed Then make tea which I drink black Hereâs what I look like Strange glossy thin brown hair flopped over an elastic brow over long cheeks and eyeglasses Iâve been coating my rims with pencil I wear an oversized turtleneck and an oatmeal fishermanâs cardigan whose collar goes every which way I have black leather mary janes spotted with paint and blue painters pants from Goodwill I eyeball the hole in the ceiling where the toilet overflowed and adjust the thermostat to make the house extra warm I have instructions from the Beats but I donât follow them Look out at the crescent moon, itâs wild.

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June 7 Frustration Q&A

The June poetry journal will never come out. There's no way. It's not happening. Everyone wants to be the editor except the editor. I can no longer work with the co-editor, or the illustrator, or the contributors, or the rejected, or the advertisers. I'm going to take my page layout program and go home. How do people actually do this on a larger scale? on any scale? You have to have an "aesthetic axe to grind" and a really tough skin. Why do I always get into things at a decision-making level? Because I'm "quiet" and appear to be calm & wise (ha). Also because I know what a decision is and can actually make one based on a principle, even if it's the wrong principle, or the right principle at the wrong time. How do I get involved in these projects which become traps? It seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought I could do three months and then I'd get out. I know how to use punctuation (usually) and I can't resist showing off that skill. I know how to do semi-neat and 90-percent-consistent page layout. I love a nice page. I don't put a jillion typefaces on the same page. I love to conjure up mysterious relationships between poems from different people. I selfishly wanted a portfolio piece or two. I like to pretend I have a mystical connection with the reader. I had this untested belief that there are a whole crowd of brilliant poets and artists lurking just beneath the surface of every silly town, and all they need is a little encouragement. How do I get out of these projects which become traps? Just stop doing it. My intuition tells me nobody really cares. Some of these rah-rah people have the intuition of a doorknob. Some of these people have other axes to grind. Let them find a way. Am I just a little frustrated? Yes. And it's hot and my forearms are sticking to the desktop (the real horizontal wooden desktop not the silly vertical virtual desktop). And I'm afraid I'm just trying to avoid taking my own writing seriously with all this external activity. What is my problem? Overcorrecting for introversion.

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June 10 Breathless as a fish

Two days away from the journal and I feel like a complete foreigner who has never posted a word here. I could say anything! I've had poetryjournaliasis. But it went out to be copied yesterday at about 9:30 pm and never looked back. Hours and hours of class time and thousands of dollars later and I can do things like this: I'm pretty excited about it. Those blobs are supposed to be eyes. They look like the eyes of a storm. I still have a long way to go.... I'm becoming a Mac person (tomorrow, I hope). This feels much more dramatic than it probably is. I drive a Ford in a family of Honda owners. Now I'll be the only Mac person in a family of Gateway users. Who knows what will come next? It has been more than strange to have to sit in class learning the most basic basics of html and the web while keeping this site a secret. I certainly can't have people in class looking at it. They will find it baffling and I don't want to answer any questions. My fondest, most impossible dream has become to be able to get the kind of job where this site could be a plausible qualification rather than an extreme liability. What kind of job would that be, hmmm?

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June 11 Poetry Group Liftoff

Poetry evening shimmering in my head. I can't talk. All I care about is myself, my reactions, my sensations, my work, the compliments I get, the criticisms, the risks I take, the risks I don't take. (pssstst- in a few paragraphs, I will defend this rampant narcissistic individualism as the solution to world peace) The poetry group seemed to have a critical mass tonight that it hasn't had before. Including!!! Ta-dah!!! Differences of opinion!!! on whether translation removes the soul from a poem Simple answer: the translated poem is a different poem. I was incredibly pleased that we heard poems from Argentinians, Greeks, Indians, Romanians, and Irish. This was simply astonishing really, and a credit to the audience (Americans). So the issue of translation would come up. on the word "fuck" and whether it belongs in a poem I happen to like the word and use it freely in my paper journal. But when the woman told the story of her mother backing her five-year-old questioning self up against the wall and threatening to cut her tongue out with a knife if she ever said that again, I could sort of understand where she was coming from. We found a euphemism later inspired by another poem: "rude meshing." I absolutely adore word play in public. on America and involvement in NATO and stopping the bombing and benevolent aggression and richness and hogging of resources A lot of patriotism in the audience. Don't like it, never have. I think a nation is a stupid concept, a holdover from humans' existence as predator and prey. There was not space for a full discussion of that poem about America. I had very different opinions from the patriots. I was sitting there thinking about the power dynamics in the room as people are discussing NATO. I couldn't talk. I talked about not being able to talk, which was really dorky and fell to the floor like a lead balloon. At the same time, I really believe that part of the answer is in everyone learning to be resolutely personal even when faced with feeling dorky. If students learned to accept feeling dorky, maybe power-over-others through cliques and styles and guns and suicide wouldn't be so necessary. It all boils down to power. Power over, power under, power through, power full.What I wanted to say was something very subtle -- that the poem was participating in the problem. Some parts of the poem indulged in speaking from on high, even though it was written by an "underdog." Only when the poet got down to recommending that he shut his own mouth and have patience did it feel authentic and valuable to me. The power of speech, the power of silence. Is there a power in silence? I'm starting to think -- no. Is there a power in talking too much? It's definitely a strategy, but an easily defeated one. This is too jumbled. It's getting late and I can't think. I would like to come up with a coherent essay on power. (Everything I really know about power I've learned from Al-Anon, by the way.) I was filled with dread before I went. During the meeting I was very tense. It takes a lot out of me to be swimming in subtle ideas which I can't express, when the audience is full of loose cannons ... and then ... on to the next poem.... But upon reflection from the security of my own website, in general, I was incredibly pleased by a lot of things about this evening's group. This really happened, I'm not making it up.

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June 12 Philosophy in the bed

I stayed in bed most of the afternoon today. When exhausted irritability reaches a danger level, it's the only solution. This morning my son convinced me to set up the new computer. This involved moving the filing cabinets, desktop, and all the boxes of hardware upstairs into the small bedroom (office). He did most of the work putting it together. He's very competent with wires. He also doesn't need to read the directions (takes after his dad there). I'm fumbling with the guidebook and he's just plugging everything in. There's no software here yet though, so it's not very much fun. There's only so much fun can be had with electronic voices and control panel settings. Then he convinced me to take him clothes shopping. The first sign of pre-adolescence, taking an interest in labels. Oh me. After that I took to my bed. I was reading Adrian Piper, Out of Order, Out of Sight. Incredibly upper world writing. She's a conceptual artist. Many of her ideas feel really familiar -- why? Those thoughts about power and the personal that I was trying to articulate last night are woven all through her work. A lot of her ideas apply to online journaling, as "performance art." I felt very excited by her writing at first, and then I felt jealous and defensive and intellectually outclassed. We always have to situate ourselves on this scale of brightness. She says she "coined the term meta-art in 1972 to describe a kind of writing an artist may do about her work that examines its processes and clarifies its sociopolitical context and conceptual presuppositions from the first-person perspective." I am very attracted by this concept of meta. I think about the website and the idea of having a "meta" page or two behind every page. I think about the meta of this site all the time. It feels like punching a peculiar unnecessary hole through the work to talk about the meta-art though. I'm interested to read her thoughts on this more closely. When I was a lot younger, somewhere in my journal I wrote about God as being "the thing behind the things." Can it be overdone? Is the pendulum getting ready to swing back to anti-meta? "I never explain anything"? (M.Poppins)

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June 13 From the plant realm

There is a garden. Adventuring in early drizzle under the frothing asparagus fronds, around the dark bronze spears of fennel, beneath the tumbling blood red roses, I'm searching for strawberries. I know they are there because I saw their white flowers in April. My shoes and socks are soaked. When I touch a mashy rotten berry I recoil and almost lose my balance. Lucky for me, no slugs encountered. It was a dry spring. By evening it's clear and the humidity's building up. I climb the hill to get a handful of herbs, rosemary and sage. I contemplate the herbs, and rejoice in how their noble and pungent personalities combat the coyness of gardening. Clutching my heroic herbs, I'm impelled to attack the horrid sweetpea on the upper terrace. It tries to take over. Its blossoms are so attractive, purple shading into pink shading into white, that once it blooms I'm mesmerized by its beauty and have trouble pulling it out. Then before I know it, its dark seed bombs are implanting themselves all over the border. Sniffing the sweaty herbs in my right hand for fortitude, I tear off every blossoming vine of sweetpea I see. That will hold them back for a day or two. The last light half hour, I whack weeds. I whack all along the border of the cement block walls. I ruthlessly whack off some forget-me-nots and columbines and lilies that get in the way when I'm going after that long grass. I go all the way up into the back and try carefully not to whack too close to the azalea or juniper. Something I'm whacking has strong smelling green juices, I wonder what it is. Soon I feel all prickly and realize I've whacked into an ant's nest near where I'm standing. Big black ants are crawling all up my pants legs, all the way up to my neck. Brushing ants off me, I notice trails of blood on my forearms; I must have smeared some feeding mosquitoes as well. I don't dare call it "my" garden. I'm even hesitant to call it a "garden." I don't know what to call it. It's a sensational fecund biobattleground and usually I try to stay out of it.

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June 14 From the bed of roses

Phrases I dislike: "a wake-up call" "personal attacks" "allowed as how" "confronted" "psychic coin" "playing a dangerous game" "male-bashing" "made your bed" Some of these have to do with chickens coming home to roost (there's another one). Words non-risk-takers use to try to chop the arms and legs off risk-takers. These phrases are mostly utter lies. They smokescreen a motivation or an emotion of the speaker, even from the speaker herself. Thomas Merton wrote in Seven Storey Mountain about the emotion called "joy in spite." I have experienced that emotion. He said it was very bad. I think I hate that book more than any book I've ever read. This journal was partially born from a desire for revenge. So far I've resisted taking revenge online pretty successfully. Or rather -- creative production is the best revenge. I for one am just as annoyingly indirect as the next person. I'm trying to switch from personality-based indirection (i.e., gossip) and morality-based indirection (i.e., blame) to metaphorically-based indirection (inscrutability). This effort causes an awful lot of gobbledy-gook to come out of my mouth. The first and last discussion I ever had with my mother about morality -- I think I was in high school -- contained her assertion that there was such a thing as absolute morality. This statement upset me for years. I can still upset myself over it. (I can hold a philosophical grudge for a wicked long time. Thomas Merton still owes me an apology.) The concept of absolute morality (tablets) insults the complexity and grandeur and imaginative possibilities of real morality. Once in a long fretful journal piece, similar to this one, generated no doubt from eating too much sugar, I wrote: Guess what, life is a bed of roses!

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June 15 From the chilly night garden of white weirdness

Everything seems so weird. I'm all adjectives. No verbs and no nouns. A few indefinite articles sprinkled around. Weird: B asks, "Are you writing?" I say, "Yes, I write every night on the web." Is this an incredibly weird activity? It's by far the weirdest thing I've ever done. She's completely computer-illiterate; of course she doesn't understand. Weird: Two men in my life, both of them have a consuming hobby of collecting small conifers which are only available in Oregon. They don't know each other, but maybe I should introduce them, and cut out the middle (wo)man. Weird: Two men in my life from my old job. They are best friends, they've worked together for years & years, even changed jobs together, they drive in together, they are both of Swedish descent, they are both inviting me out to lunch, and neither one knows the other is doing it. (I think.) I can't tell which of them is more conservative. Maybe I'll make a lunch appointment with both at the same time & place & then not show up (cut out the middle (wo)man). Weird: I am so out of place in this class. I have an 800-pound gorilla of a resume. I don't want to let it out of its cage. It's a gorilla, but it's also listless, lifeless, and depressed. I want to let the gorilla rest in peace while I go work in the grocery store. Weird: I could get work "selling" work for my friend A so easily. I'm very tempted because I like working with her. But isn't that the last thing I want to do? The LAST thing? She would coach me though. Maybe it would be useful experience. Oy. Weird: My co-editor of the poetry journal was gung-ho trying to convince me to publish some work and I was all hyped about it, then she abruptly changed direction and was completely against it, and I'm not sure what happened, and it's taken me about four weeks to adjust and get the adrenalin levels back under control. Weird: My kids. Goes without saying. Weird: Somehow I got myself into watching B's boys for TWO overnights, Thursday and Friday. And taking them to the field Saturday morning. Guaranteed to make me into a zombie. What I seem to have agreed to keeps expanding and expanding. The only reason I'm doing it is that I know exactly what it's like for her. Weird: I am selling this poetry journal at a bookstore where I run into people whose work I've rejected. Bleah! Well, I'll have three little boys with me this week. Maybe I can get them to sell, and I'll sit in the café and have a drink. Weird: There's a mandolin under my bed. I accidentally put this haphazard fact into words this morning and I was amazed. I kept repeating the words to myself all day to cheer myself up. "There's a mandolin under my bed." What could be done with that statement? Is this weird thinking?

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June 16 Grogginess alert

I was groggy today. I wore a sweater all day. I'm wearing my hair all bound back with one barrette on each side and a ponytail. I finally had web color explained to me in a way that I understand it. I am beginning to get the hang of this web graphics business. I went to a farmer's market at lunch in the next store parking lot. It was a pleasure. There were big healthy herbs, very inexpensive. I bought a Thai basil and a coriander and a huge scented geranium. I couldn't resist them. I really enjoy gardening in very small doses. I have so much work to do in getting a portfolio ready. But hey -- I never thought I would be this far along in getting the hardware and software I need. I'm still not operational enough to do the journal on the new platform, but it's in the works. I've been thinking about amateurism. Most published work has a sense of being as good as it gets. Good enough to be published. There's a static feeling, that the author and editor worked on it long enough and hard enough to make it publishable, that it's at the end of a road. Part of the attraction of the online journal is that it can represent learning. The author is not very good at the start, but improves over time. There can be a pleasure in watching that process. There's excitement in sharing the discoveries. I don't think the same charge comes through in any other medium. Assuming the author improves over time, which seems like a very farfetched concept tonight, because I am so groggy. My son is washing rocks and making some awfully loud noises. I'm falling asleep.

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June 17 Loud girl

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June 18 Antidote poem

Sometimes I walk around the world with my eyes closed. Sometimes I walk around the world with dead hands. Sometimes I walk around the world with my feet sore. Sometimes I dance. The river, the river, the river runs around the world. Her river, her river, her river of silver. Her river, her river, her river glows around the world, Silver river glitter river flows around the world. Sometimes I walk around the world with my heart rust. Sometimes I walk around the world with my skin dust. Sometimes I walk around the world with a head wind. Sometimes I swim. The river, the river, the river runs around the world. Her river, her river, her river of whisper. Her river, her river, her river calls around the world, Whisper river rushing river all around the world. Sometimes I walk around the world with my mouth bound. Sometimes I walk around the world with my head down. Sometimes I walk around the world with my feet still. Someday I will. Inspired by article in SageWoman #46, "The Great Goddess Saraswati: Flowing River of Creativity, Inspiration, and Joy," by Suzin Green "Out of her great love and compassion for the human race, they say, the mighty Saraswati transformed herself from a river of water to the river of inspiration, flowing through the human heart and soul."

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June 19 Progress of an amateur

I'm getting my dribs and drabs of graphics work together for a portfolio. What is there looks pathetic. So amateur. So a few days after I write some thoughts about amateurism, I get a great book out of the library by Wendy Lesser called The Amateur. I like this book a lot. I'm reading it very fast. She is the editor of The Threepenny Review. The blurbs on the jacket emphasize her unconventionality and "independence of mind." She is refreshing, but I don't think so very independent-minded. She just likes literature and art and has a nice clean unpretentious prose style. I'm afraid my portfolio is going to lean toward amateurism. And fuddy-duddiness. Literature and art, rather than hot young product advertisements. That stuff just wears me out. My 19-year-old son brought me a book home from the bookstore where he works. It's about graphic effects with Photoshop and Illustrator. The book will be immediately useful and I'm very grateful to have it. Today we talked for about 3 minutes, which is a long conversation for us. He described himself to me as someone who is very interested in "linguistics." He said he's not interested in the computer at all unless you're talking about artificial intelligence. Is he just saying these things or is there really something going on in his head? I remain suspicious, based on the last three years of no-work in high school. My 10-year-old son has developed a calm civilized way of conversing with adults. He was chatting pleasantly with the dentist on Friday over my mute, prone body in the dentist's chair. Today he seemed completely at ease talking with a new friend of mine -- more at ease than I was. This was the kid who used to try to disappear when faced with other people. He's come a long way. I try to feel rewarded by the progress of these children. But I'm not sure I have anything to do with it. I'm an amateur mother.

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June 20 A cave appears

Empty inside. There's no I here. Examining the walls of the cave with fingers. The walls are cool and wet, molded in curved forms. Little warm bat mammal bodies fly away squeaking, disturbed from their clinging. There is a sound of dripping water. An undiscovered cave. It's just big enough for an adult's body. Climbing down in there requires some wriggling through wet muddy passageways. Sitting there crosslegged on the mud floor choreographing a cave dance in the dark. Arms out, around, up. Creating a faint breeze in the coolness with arm movements. Breathing. Eyes closed against the sight of darkness. Breathing. There's no past and no future. The cave surrounds the person. The cave is simple. There's plenty of air and clean water. There's no food. There's nothing special about it. The dance becomes small and contained in the lap. Only the hands are moving. Symbolic gestures with no known meaning but comfort. Carving small dark cameos in the space above the lap. No one sees the dance, no one can guess, no one can interpret, but infinite elements are there. Wrists, finger joints, finger pads, palms, nails. Tension, relaxation, pressure, caress, rhythmic, random, touching, separation. Nothing and everything. Finally the hands also come to rest. Only the breath dances. Finally the cave woman sleeps. Water continues to drip.

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June 21 What "Antidote" means

I'm having an awfully hard time writing about this. I need an infusion of Mary Daly. I'm trying to convince myself to have enough courage to read Antidote Poem in public at one or another of the poetry groups next month. And of course someone will ask me what "Antidote" means (or maybe not). And I will stumble and stammer and stutter just like I'm doing here now. Might as well just say it. A priest read at the open poetry mike last Thursday. He was wearing his black outfit and clerical collar. He read three poems, I think. I think he also gave a mini-sermon. An invisible dark curtain of anger had fallen over my mind, so I wasn't able to listen very closely. He said he wrote poetry "from the heart." And what was in his heart was Jesus. I can almost accept that part of it. After all, everyone should be free to read poetry written from the heart at the open mike, no matter what or who is in their heart? Right? It was his taking the opportunity to preach while he was up there that really bothered me. What made him think he could use open poetry mike as a pulpit? Where do they teach that authoritative tone of voice? Those gestures? Those priestly words "... so tender, so gentle, such purity, such perfect love ..."? Ex Cathedra 101. Smarm school. And I have an obscure problem with religious belief finding its way into poetry. It seems to me that religion is valid in poetry only if you accept religion as metaphoric, symbolic. (Which takes the real kick out of it, I guess.) It seems so clear to me that it's all code, cultural code, and I am disturbed by people who don't acknowledge that the "great and powerful Oz" is the little man behind the curtain. So I get mad at myself for 1) not writing more about my own religious symbol system that I am painstakingly putting together and 2) not being brave enough to actually get up there and read the writing that I'm not doing. Taking equal time. So Antidote Poem partly worked. It dissolved some of my toxic fretting about #1. But I don't think a private antidote is good enough. I don't want to preach. I don't want to give a little speech about Sarasvati, and how "instead of a male consort, [she] holds a veena, the magnificent lute-like instrument of India." I don't want to explain to the audience that "the energy of creative inspiration personified by the goddess Sarasvati is whole unto itself. ... we become fully absorbed in our own process, needing nothing and no one to complete us." (SageWoman #46, page 7) I would just like to read the poem. In a strong voice. With that priest in the audience, if he comes back. Even more, I would like to read it chorally, as a chant, with one or two other women. Nothing overwhelming. Just equal time. Maybe a drumbeat. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't know any women who would go for this with me. And I'm a creature of much more doubt than belief.

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June 22 Free questions

What if ... I constructed this journal as a serial where each entry led to the next? I wrote more about those strange women whose names started with "A" who appeared to me once in a poem? There could be an interactive website where the mouse movement would appear to shine a light on parts of the screen and strange things would appear out of the shadows? I could make a site that was like the experience of walking through a labryinth? I stopped wandering online, and did some other form of activity; what would it be? What if ... I took on the personality of different pieces of punctuation and wrote from that point of view? I lifted my self-imposed censorship of writing about sex in the online journal? I only posted visuals for a period of time, no words? I sent a notice about this journal to the International Women's Writing Guild newsletter? What if ... I moved to a foreign country like India and posted from there? I let my disability insurance lapse? I spent much less time with people and projects that are draining? I wrote in the morning starting with the particle of each journal entry that stuck with me from the night before? I completely changed the character of the journal by telling local friends and family about it? What if ... Sheherazade were writing on the net? I could actually be Sheherazade? I could actually spell Sheherazade? I could live a life completely free of envy? What if ... I lived in a harem? I lived in a cabin? I lived in co-housing? I lived in a Winnebago? What if ... I could start a little business doing tedious web site maintenance? E-commerce allowed us to take down all the malls and shopping centers? I tried to write a story about Dalyria and her bird wing hat and buckskin leggings? What if ... I cut down the huge hulking white pine in my front yard and planted a multi-trunked birch tree? My son goes away to college and leaves me with four cats and an iguana and some kind of fat snake? My luck changes? The wind changes?

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June 23 The topic is purple

When writing, it helps to be just on the verge of completely exhausted. It helps to have done tedious jaw-tightening work all day in a roomful of electronic frustrations. It helps to be a little uncomfortable, a little hot, a little stiff, a little hungry, a little offended by this smell of dirty socks and humidity in the carpets. Under these circumstances, you can really feel the leap. It's a pristine leap, a precise leap, a crisp leap, only about two feet, from the edge of where you are, to the place where you are going. The tired mind noses around on this side, yuck, yuck, yuck, rejecting topic after topic, ready to move, ready to roam, ready to run away from home. It's just sick and tired enough that when that small idea chasm appears, it will go for leaping it, without any backtalk. So tonight, the idea was purple. I can't help it, it's the only idea appearing that has any depth. Purple, with a subcategory of silver. It must mean something, but I don't know what. Purple veils, purple skies, purple smiles, purple trails ... to you. Maybe it means I'm obsessed with color palettes and I think I've just about mastered three different ways to access Pantone colors (coated). Color palettes make me very happy. It is such a disappointment to have to pick one color. I could gaze at the color palette mindlessly for quite a long time. I used to stare at household catalogs' displays of towels in such an incredible range of pastels. It was so disappointing to have to buy some towels in a certain color and end up with a monochromatic bathroom. Think of it: the rack of thread displays at Woolworth's! the yarn store! paint chips! Someday I will buy an item in every color that it comes in, just to have the rainbow. But -- purple is a little perturbed that I'm allowing all 6.7 million relatives to crowd into the picture. I'm sorry -- is purple a color found in nature? I suppose the answer is yes. What comes to mind is the dark circles around Greek Limiana's eyes; no, that's a gray. The speckled soggy skin of the overripe strawberry; no, a touch too brown. Maybe I'm not writing about purple after all. Maybe I'm writing about tiredness and aging and when is there an end to striving. Purple is so flamboyant. And not effortless, either. When I am an old woman I won't wear purple, I'll wear nice soothing grays and dark maroons, or black, or white. Today I'm wearing a very obnoxious neon purple camisole made from some synthetic fabric that shines. 83% nylon, 17% spandex. It has a name: "The Naked Truth." It's making me crazy. I've got to go upstairs and change.

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June 24 Femage to Natalie Barney

Oh, my comfort! Journal rereading tonight, I found a quote by Natalie Barney I had transcribed in July of 1998. So long as I live, the love of Beauty will be my guide. ... I therefore have to find or found a milieu that fits my aspirations: a society composed of all those who seek to focus and improve their lives through an art that can give them pure presence. These are the only people with whom I can get along, and communicate and finally express myself openly among free spirits .... let's discover real values which alone can inspire us or make us comprehensible. The quote is from Natalie Barney's unpublished autobiography, as quoted in Shari Benstock's Women of the Left Bank; Paris, 1900 - 1940. This is a wonderful, wonderful book that kept me alive last summer. I have been noticing lately that I am lonely. (Introverts tend to long mistake loneliness for being utterly contented.) I notice I have lost hope in being able to "find or found a milieu that fits my aspirations." Even the Internet -- I had hopes -- they're not happening. I admire Natalie Barney's aspirations. And even more, I admire that she realized them. Of course, she was helped out by being fabulously wealthy and an expatriate, but I like what she did with that. As for her writing: The very forms of Natalie Barney's art -- Romantic poetry and the epigram -- were considered slight, occasional, sentimental, glib, and clichéd. The Modernist enterprise would strip such forms of artificiality and convention in order to expose an essentially banal and outmoded core of thought. So she was both ahead of and behind her times. That touches me. Earlier today before I reread this quote, I was mentally exploring an idea I called "the secret trendiness of middle-aged women." This was a Natalie Barney type of aspiration -- I wanted to invent what a secret group of trendy middle-aged women would be like. (Trendy like surfers are trendy, in that they create culture in their words and fashions and 'zines and mythology, and take extreme physical risks, and spawn trendy people like graphic design hot boy David Carson.) What's the middle-aged female equivalent of surfers? I'm drawing a blank. (Maybe Wiccans, but that's a whole other can of worms.) I can't think of any secret trendy middle-aged fashions. 'Zines like "Victoria" and "Martha Stewart's Living?" The only extreme physical risks I could come up with were "getting up in the morning" and "mowing the lawn." Maybe I better look for more Natalie Barney reading to cheer myself up.

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June 25 A Resumé Day
**Web: Adobe ImageReady 1.0 Adobe GoLive 4.0 Symantec Visual Page Adobe PageMill Native HTML WS-FTP **Publishing: Quark Xpress Passport 4.0 Adobe Acrobat 4.0 MS Publisher Doc-To-Help **Graphics: Adobe Illustrator 8.0 Adobe Photoshop 5.0 Adobe Type Manager Deluxe **Microsoft: MS Project MS Word MS Powerpoint MS Excel (including application development) MS Access **Groupware: Lotus Notes 3.0 and 4.0 usage Lotus Notes 3.0 development **Quality Assurance: SQA Manager SQA Robot **Operating Systems: DOS Windows 3.1 Windows 95 MAC OS **Application Systems: Financial Reporting (AR, AP, GL, Payroll) Human Resources Investment systems Insurance systems **Programming Languages: PowerBuilder 5.0 Visual Basic COBOL **Database Management: Sybase DB2 SQL ERWin Paradigm Plus IMS MS Access Paradox VSAM Watcom **Mainframe: CICS TSO/ISPF JCL **Networking: Novell Netware **Hardware: Experienced on both PC and Macintosh platforms		I worked on my resumé today. I always feel an uncontrollable urge to put blatantly inappropriate items on my resumé. This time, I put in under Education that I had studied Feminist Theory and Virginia Woolf at UConn in 1993. This version of the resumé went out in ASCII text. It will be torn apart and entered into a database. The more detail provided on products, the more likely to get a hit on my name. At least I didn't put "Notepad," "Calculator," and "Solitaire" on there. I could just suffocate from boredom remembering the hours and hours spent with this stuff. I played with Photoshop today. Now that is a program I could learn to like. I copied in backgrounds from this flat and uninspired photo of a boat. Grandma took the photo on a trip to Alaska. I cut out ripply water, foggy sky, and rocky channel. Then I placed these cutouts over a background of purple-to-blue gradient. Use Layer Multiply at a medium opacity -- voilà, a very eerie looking night scene on the water. I added a quarter moon made of yellow neon using techniques out of the new book. Then created a moon ripple for the water. It is so easy to manufacture visuals with Photoshop, I have to wonder where the quality comes in. Photo retouching takes some skill. You need attention to detail. Knowledge of color theory would help. The moon ripple is still not shaped correctly. What I personally would like to strive for is a conceptually aware and emotionally sensitive use of symbols.

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June 26 Saturday reading

I found this magazine in the bookstore today. It is the first fresh anti-establishment statement I have seen in a long long time. The enemy: consumer culture. The Swarthmore alumni magazine is always dangerous. So far I have avoided reading the Class Notes in this issue. And I feel much healthier for it. There's an article about a conservative activist on campus. I cannot for the life of me understand what drives a young intelligent person to conservative activism. Young people should not be subject to such fears. She's a poli sci major. I refused to study political science or economics when I was in college. I had an irrational, inarticulate hatred of both subjects, although I barely knew what they meant. In later life, I changed my way of thinking about poli sci and economics. Now I am very interested in them. But not the way they teach them in college. Political science = the study of power Economics = the study of survival They both begin in the home. Why don't they teach them this way? I spent my most contented moments today reading the first ten chapters of Lynda Weinman's <designing web graphics.3>. It's very readable for a technical book. It's also filled, absolutely crammed to overflowing, with errors, from minor typos to downright huge mistakes, making me suspicious that web mavening is incompatible with proofreading. But, no matter, I'm absorbing the information from this book, which is more than I can say for the Adobe GoLive manual. And tonight I gagged down a pile of advice on preparing resumés. The piece of advice that I hate the most is "quantify your accomplishments." Like who can actually do that? And who believes those numbers anyway? I moved 10 billion pieces of data improving company results by 0 percent.

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June 27 Trying to read Rilke

Out on the back patio trying to read Rilke. Why won't it sink in? A big ant is bothering my legs; I brush it off, it climbs back up. The dog is barking inside the house. My skin is sticky with heat and humidity. Occasionally, a phrase, a breeze, comes along, soothing. ...his interior world, his interior wilderness, that primal forest inside him, where among decayed treetrunks his heart stood, light-green. Many more words go by unheard. I find I'm reading the German; I understand it just as well as the English, meaning not at all; I'm playing at puzzling out the translation. Lovers Liebende Dear Girl O Mädchen Dead children Tote Kinder Better: the prose from Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. I like the catalog of childhood fears. "... the fear that if I fell asleep I might swallow the piece of coal lying in front of the stove..." And the whiney ending: "I prayed to rediscover my childhood, and it has come back, and I feel that it is just as difficult as it used to be, and that growing older has served no purpose at all." I just don't like most of Rilke. I keep thinking I should like Rilke, but I don't. I'm reading him as an assignment from the poetry group. "Archaïscher Torso Apollos" is awful. I don't like it any better than when I read it in college, with the ripening fruit eyes. They sound to me on their way to decay. But there's that last line. I have repeated it to myself so many times over the years. It's the only bit of German literature I can recite: Du mußt dein Leben ändern. You must change your life. And today, not listening to Rilke, or the Torso of Apollo, I got all excited about applying for a job I found on monster.com. It couldn't be more like my last job if I tried. Except it's internet. Hmmm.

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June 28 Reflections

Huge menacing mirrors tilt around every corner. I want to walk around the house in the dark with my glasses off to avoid them. Instead I keep stumbling into them, seeing myself. I look ugly, garbled, pitted, and distorted. Is that me? Black oxidation of the ancient silver crawls up my neck and over my chin. Watery wavery ripples make my flesh look even more liquid than it actually is. The distortion -- am I tall? am I short? thin? or fat? destructive? overqualified? underqualified? isolating? stubborn? impatient? selfish? lazy? Did I create the mirrors? Or are they projecting me? Are they alive? Will they get up on their stumpy wooden legs, and use their ornately carved arms to raise their glass skirts from the floor, and waddle on to some other house when this one's gone? Resumé mirrors. Online journal mirrors. Interpersonal mirrors. Parent mirrors. Children mirrors. Weather mirrors. Heat causes the air between my eyes and the mirror to grow thick and golden. The air buzzes with conductivity, mirror power leaping between one dust particle and another toward me. The humid air allows the mirror to zap my eyes, leaving their surface pitted and crusted and crazed, just like the mirror glass, lens to lens, glass to glass. The truth is, I know all this is a fiction. I can take off my glasses and make the mirrors, the heat, the people, the judgments, the air disappear. What remains? A steely cylinder, clean, invisible, not reflective, not reactive, eternally emitting light.

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June 29 Doldrums

I'm probably too tired to write. Trouble sleeping last night due to the heat. I finally had to reorient the bed so that it was in front of the fan and splash water on my head and shoulders. This did the trick. It's much cooler tonight after thunderstorms this afternoon. Summer doldrums. I am ready to get out of this course and start working again. I've got to go buy some interviewing clothes. I've got to get another "professional" website up. I've got to get some sort of crude print portfolio together. All this activity seems very irrelevant. What I really want to do is develop a graphic approach to this journal. Wasn't that the whole point of this venture in the first place? I'm feeling a need for some Ursula LeGuin. Her science fiction is very grounding for me. I especially love the stories of Arha and Tenar in The Earth Sea Trilogy (tetralogy). LeGuin has been doing translations with some obscure method that doesn't require knowing the original language. I need to pick out some of her work that's new to me. "Crossings in mist." What do I want to write? I don't know. This seems like my natural form. (arrrgh -- bleah) LeGuin's work is inspiring. I can't think straight. I'm going to go walk the dog under the stars and then get some sleep.

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June 30 Story dream mind mistake

Story: Amanda the gray one sits in a tree. She of course appeared gradually, starting with her half smile, close-lipped. Soft lined skin appears, her long thin gray braid. Gradually her body and limbs, all draped in her fluid gray robe. She leans forward, not far enough to lose her balance and fall out of the tree, but far enough to express interest. She wonders what I am doing and whether she can help. I'm ignoring her. Or rather, I'm talking on and on about banalities. How we did this before. How we usually do this. How can he do this to me. What I will have to do for a living. She doesn't say anything, just looks gentle and interested. She reaches into her gray silky pocket and pulls out a small beaded evening purse. It attracts my attention. The glittering silver fastenings come into sharp focus. Pinpoints of light gleam off the many beads, mostly white, also red, green, and blue. I'm curious. Dream: I was in a meeting like an Al-Anon meeting, but more a "Council of Elders." Ursula LeGuin was to my right, an older woman like Grace Paley to my left. They both spoke at length about something, calmly and very wisely. Of course, I can't remember what they said. My main contribution was to tell them what the "regular" meeting's customs were. They were interested but not too interested. Ursula had a beautiful evening purse covered with silver ornaments and multi-colored beads in a complex pattern. She was going to pass it around to take up the collection. Mind (analysis): I want to know why reading other people's dreams is so dull. I have heard people say that, and I've experienced it myself. Is it something about the way dreams are narrated, the language? Is it the passivity of the dreamer? Maybe the missing details, the inexplicable jumps, the illogic. Maybe the personal symbolism is nontransferable. Maybe dream isn't supposed to touch waking mind, and repels it like the opposite end of a magnet. Mistake (sidenote): It doesn't make a fair comparison to put one of the story characters in a tree. In the dream, we were sitting on folding chairs in a very plain basement meeting room. The tree part came from misreading a sentence, which, now that I look at it more carefully, says "Amanda, who sat in her old grey dress in the deep shade of the pecan tree." Not in the pecan tree. Darn. The sentence is from LeGuin's story "A Trip to the Head." Someday we'll try writing new stories based on leaving out selected key phrases from other people's stories.

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