TM–for the last few weeks it has helped, I think–and last night missed my meditation, wantonly and for the first time.  Is this why I suffer now? Does it really mean a good thing for my life? Something added?  A direction?

I am cut off. I hate to seal the break with my former life. I hate the idea of becoming a Canadian citizen.  I am still an exile.

Stan told me a story last night.  Several years ago, when he had dropped from sight altogether and his parents and family back in New York had no idea of his whereabouts, his sister was staying with her best friend Joy and discussing her lost brother.  Joy’s father said, “Oh, he’s out in British Columbia with Steven Marx, living with him.” This man said he had been Steven’s Hebrew School teacher: Leo Wolff.

Again to California.  A semester unemployed.  Babysitting, cooking, cutting wood, waxing floors in a perpetually disordered and drafty house.  Going into debt, living off patrimony, forgetting the past, and doing nothing in the present even to forget.

What frustration I feel about expressing myself in writing or any other form for the gratification of others and for the satisfaction of self.

What beauty here can I see? In the rain dripping from the eaves, the stream pouring, channeling under the bridge, the smoke, blue, passing the window, billowing up the hill, mixing with the fog, trapped in the cedar boughs.

The five years we gave ourselves in 1970 have finished.  We stand on a solid plateau.  It has been good.  What is next?  The next chunk is ten years. Why?  I think I can tell now what I want for the next ten years.  What are the needs, the priorities?

1.    Peace, space, inner order; not being crowded by excessive fear, anxiety, more to do than is possible. This has been more effectively provided by TM than anything else.
2.    Predictability, so that options can be chosen and followed up.
3.    A sense of usefulness and value to others of my work
4.    Material beauty and comfort, order in routines of daily life.
5.    Options, not feeling locked in–the possibility of change within a steady framework.

Raymond asked: “What do you really want now.  What do you really wish would happen to you?”  I took a long time to answer: “I’d like to live more productively in my head–intellectually, imaginatively, emotionally; to read, study, think,write and digest my experiences, and come up with something, maybe.  Be cerebral according to my leanings and headings.

Hey, let’s go down to Chinatown
And get a bit of Lichee
You say that you’re allergic
And it makes your elbows itchy?
Well, that’s no serious problem
I know just what you should do:
Mash ginger root with ginseng root
And get a sticky goo
Mix it up with some rice vermicelli
That you’ve dipped in a little grass Jelly
Then rub it gently around on your belly
And wipe it off when it starts to go smelly.
Do this and your elbows will never get itchy
Though you’ve eaten your fill of delitchious lichee.

(Written for the Lund Theatre Troupe’s Production of Free to Be You and Me)

A coffee break between loads of dishes
Evening sun through a gash in the clouds
Goats moving in the rain
Grass green grows lush like June.
Cat Stevens scratchy record.
Jan and Joe iron initials on his new school bag.
Tomorrow the first day.

September 12

Shingles under the arms, face broken out, insomnia, stomach tightness, irritability, the desire to run away from farm, wife, child, Canada.  Moments of tenderness and intense communication.  Tears close.

Jonah’s crying interrupts my 10 p.m. reverie.  He is shaking in fright, counting “4,5,6,7, 8,10 Mummy, mummy.” Janet is in bed with the flu.  He wants her.  Her involvement with “A Taste of Honey” has been consuming.  For days he’s been shuffled around.  Neither of us have time for him. And he’s just starting kindergarten, a world of rules and crimes and older kids and bullies and beautiful powerful girls and a friendly but harassed authority, and another not so friendly authority. He’s just back from Denver, where his grandparents provided the life he wants.  Today in the car he said he prefers Vancouver to Lund and Denver to Vancouver.  He wanted to hear Lise’s letter and Henry’s story written for him last spring.

The child has such a tie with his grandparents.  If I could be more like them he and they would like me better.  They give lots of support”as long as there is enough money and some professional status.  I fear their loss.  Henry is 70, Lise 66.  I fear them dying.

Autumn blues; the fear is descending. Perhaps with my first week of classes, the first film, it will pass. Or perhaps not, until the play is over.  The potential is here for the order we seek.  The time for each other and our creative pursuits.  Will it come?

September 13

Indian summer has deserted us.  It’s grey and blowing hard this morning.  I sigh with anxiety¦and yet exaggerate.  Jan is under greater pressure and she sleeps.  I fear the chill. I wish to placate and propitiate. When is the day of atonement?

Peace, composure. Gladiola in the red teapot in the blue kitchen. Dahlia in the medicine bottle on the little table.  Pumpkins on the mantle.  Two days of being with children, processing food: apples, tomatoes, hemp. The plants watered, the dog sleeping by the stove. Cleaning house. The dust and cobwebs and foodstains are gone, the outlines of the furniture, walls, floor are clear not fuzzy.  It feels good to look around.

I had been feeding the pigs extra ration all week to use up what was left of the Hog Grower. They sounded even angrier than usual on Saturday morning, when I didn’t stop at their pen on my round of chores. By the time I finished rinsing the milk strainer, Jonah had already belted himself into the front seat of the car.

I floored the accelerator for the five mile trip down the highway to his friend Jimmy Cox’s house, where I had arranged for him to spend the day. The inside of “the wagon wheel place” felt strange to me, its walls lined with trophies and racks of guns.

Back home, 1 started preparing. I redug the old fire^–pit in the backyard, split a good sized pile of dry cedar and alder, and scoured out the forty gallon drum. I set the drum over the pit, staked at a 45 degree angle against the heavy work table, so that we would be able to dip and pull while scraping the hides. As water from the hose slowly filled the drum, I kindled the fire. Then I went over to the collapsing root cellar and sawed off two maple branches growing through its roof. I sharpened them at both ends to make spreading sticks and placed them on the table next to the coiled ropes, the pile of folded gunny sacks, the whetted knives and the .22.

I was feeling anxious, but more focused than usual. I had to be ready by 11:00 o’clock, when Terry Kurtz, my experienced neighbor, was coming over to help out. As I had explained to our visitor from the city a few days earlier, slaughtering animals no longer disturbs me, as long as the process is carried out with order, precision and respect for the animal’s gift. (more…)

Elegy for Eric (1962-1985)

Now closer creep the shadows of the trees
The pasture’s morning mist makes squash leaves freeze.
The house without a fire’s a chilling place
Forsaken of the summer’s hot embrace.

A dullness weights the limbs, fatigues the mind
Acts fail, words trail, thoughts snap, ears seal, eyes blind
Alone sleep offers rest from fear and pain
But nightmares waken torments once again.

Bottomless and void, bereft of light
The sea has robbed us of a spirit bright
A man-child at the verge of fatherhood
Innocently searching for the good.

He dove below his depth alone for love
And left alone his loved ones here above
His friends, parents, lady and child-to-be
His boats, barn, his plans to farm the sea.

Without him we grow old before our time
But in our hearts he stays in youthful prime.
So let us gather now in deepening night
And sharing sorrow, kindle warmth and light.