12:II:78 [before my 30^th birthday]

Unbelievable pain, certain Kitty was gonna leave me at last … [early the previous week]

Bodeen phoned, trying to find out over the telephone whether his paste-ups were straight — so I met him at last and am pleased by the poems for the first edition and the way they’re set

Allen McFee on CBC: “And may angels guard your rest” … signing off for the night

Kitty came home on Wednesday as a surprise, took me to Gasperetti’s for dinner with Whiz and Wisteria — his announcing he’s buying a ’77 Porsche ($8,500), trading in the Honda …

Fine Oregon wine: Tualatin, meaning “gentle” or easy, flowing, Vineyards, a white Riesling bottled at Forest Grove …

~*~

30:II

My wife in the process of leaving me: I feel so burdened and so seldom dwell in the realm of spontaneous delight …

In Seattle for the weekend (with Celeste), so was Kitty, in another place. My realization that Celeste doesn’t fulfill me, and there’s some other reason we cannot conjoin — “You’re body shows you’re still confused” …

Spider crab, rock crab, Dungeness crab — Vashon Island, near midnight — the crabs beside starfish (headlight into the water) … boil them, eat at 2 a.m. … Brian / Paul & Judy — Marj stayed home in her robes

A seal that follows Brian fishing …

~*~

26 feb — a long week

Bought LPs in Seattle: Bolet plays Liszt, Eileen Farrell and Max Rudolf, Janacek Sinfonietta (DGG) …

On my drive home, no Kitty in E’burg apartment or her studio nor in Wapato. Learned later we had crossed between E’burg sites, had I stopped at her apartment, would have found her note; instead, not seeing her car when I drove past, I assumed she wasn’t home …

Tuesday, after a hard day at work, an icy bummer phone call from her, her hatred brewing. (Long-distance.) TV mag and farm tab, too, on my end.

Wednesday, Kent told me I had the job but not to tell anyone else yet. Worked OT, elated but still down over Kitty. Went to bed early but couldn’t sleep, watched Georg Solti conduct R. Strauss on PBS …

Thursday, talked to Kitty, told her I’d be up and take her to dinner Friday but then Kent told me we’d be taking our new deskman interviewee to dinner [instead] … went to hear David Wagner read at YVC — older than I expected, white hair … enjoyable reading, though to my ear, flawed: still too prose-like, very little magic. Despite his denials, he remains Midwestern Scots-Presbyterian. He should have gotten lost in Yellowwood Forest, Indiana, rather than by Hoh logging roads (30 minutes, he supposes) … afterwords, with Bodeen and Grimes over three pitchers at Ole’s Tavern (nudes on bathroom walls) … home after midnight …

Half-drunk, drove to E’burg and sleep.

Saturday, breakfast at Adeline’s and then off to art building …

Tender talk, realizing her need to grow yet keeping the marriage alive … off to animal shelter, found a black cat (female, seven months?) … PennZoil — saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree near the Interstate in Selah … parked and watched it … week before I had watched a great blue heron land atop a Doug fir …

Sunday, a lazy morning … made love, showered twice …

The porch, wrapped in clear plastic … the crates of books, her plaster casts for a sculpture, stones collected here and there (turquoise, too), feathers, roped-up shelves, glass canning jars, Grandpa’s sleigh bells, her fabric above the door like a banner, the copper-fish scales she wove.

I dreamed of an art show she’d mount.

~*~

~*~

9 march

Irrepressible sadness, knowledge of losing Kitty — all of her virtues and comforts I love so well, as if I’m suddenly quite old …

Mon-tue nights, I finished part 3 of the poem but can’t get the last section moving … perhaps I should split it …

The red buds on the elm are ready to burst … Belzer with his tractor applying dormant spray …

28 March .. apricots have exploded and petals litter the ground …

Last Thursday no water in the shack … Ivar broke the vein while installing new irrigation line …

Sunday, back from fragrant Seattle … Celeste perturbed by my not being more political — i.e., the Trident demonstrations and her upcoming trial … my necessity for professional neutrality versus moral responsibility … people let evil happen because of their failure to take a stand …

On way back find a note in E’burg, “I’m in Wapato,” and then Kitty in the orchard perturbed by her parents — she had phoned to wish them a happy Easter but let slip she’d gone to Canada, Victoria, with Mark but not by name … and they insisted she not return to school this term … Jeanice ready to fly out the next day. I had to call back, talk her out of it. Then Sam called last night, followed by Vince at 1 a.m. in my deepest of deep sleeps. “Guess who this is.” Moon? Gil? “Your best man.” So he could grill his sister just after he had lost GOP caucus for Wood County prosecutor.

Her dad insisted she not commute and she vacate her apartment. The past two days, a complete stranger to me. Yet if she returned to campus, she could not resist Mark’s invitation for her to move in with him next summer, wherever he establishes his studio nor another’s desire to take her to France this fall …

There are moments I’m ready to throw her out and yet others when I’m taken by how exquisite, soft, sensitive, psychic and nearly perfect she is and how foolish destruction would be …

Before her school vacation, she showed up at the Bushwhacker during our lunch, somehow icy brilliant “cool,” and Whiz observed her cruel side: “What right does she have to come just barging into your life like that?” … with my attempt to curb my emotions after I’d just about staunched the pain … so it would start anew when she’d gone again … she expected me to be angry with her, not kind … and she stayed until Monday, rather than living on the previous Friday morning …

My mother-in-law: You two are more important than college …

Kitty: What rights do I have!

Tomorrow, we go to the Buddhist church for the annual beef sukiyaki dinner.

~*~

6 apr

Letter from Mom noting that Rev. Joel and Sharon had split: she’s remarried, but he has the kids.

Rain in the Valley, snow in the hills …

~*~

Tuesday, 11 April 78

Full doctor’s exam today — Dr. P.H., about my age, younger than I’d thought — an English major at Wooster with Spanish, French, German studies. New practice, no one there but me, an hour and a half ($31 plus $31 lab fee, blood tests) … great relief to know all’s OK. Hearing, blood (cholesterol 190 on an acceptable scale of 150-290). Only blood element out of kilter relates to allergy reaction. No diabetes, eyes still good. Blood pressure 80 over 130. Feel like a stud again. (Only danger is all that coffee.)

~*~

15:IV

Ivar’s frost worries …

Kitty keeps asking what I’m thinking, my answers never satisfy. She wants to be “free” but with me as a friend or lover. Can’t understand why I don’t just up and quit my job, go off to Alaska or New York …

Already cutting asparagus ….

Phyllis phoned, “Wanna go to a concert,” Philadelphia String Quartet (of Seattle) … hold their bows funny — rich, velvety, but no brilliance: not hot in Haydn but great effect in Debussy …

~*~

24 apr

Kitty phoned me at the office Tuesday, she’s vacating her apartment, wanted me to drive up after work but I got mad, partly wondering where everything would go, she destroyed her tree sculpture … back in our place, crowded but cozy … boxes still to uncrate [top of the barn] …

~*~

6 May, Seattle

Kitty flying off to Ohio, Bloomington, and Chicago …

We never see Sea-Tac airport from I-5, which runs under the plateau

~*~

8:V

So mean when I called Sunday night … won’t let me say how much I miss her or love her, tells me to get a girlfriend …

Already the hills turn brown, yellow flowers in Union Gap are gone

The uncommon depth of the desert grass this year means danger: when it dries, flames will be waiting: lightning or careless matches.

Dad phoned to say Aunt Edna had passed away, heart failure. Kitty had visited, leaving a copy of Yakima review. He was going to show Edna the apple poem, but Grandpa did get to hear the piece and was “tickled by the plumbing yard” reference. So now he’s the only one, except maybe Jesse Haines, left of that end of the family. And what will happen to Kenny now?

~*~

21:VI

Ivar and Harold are bidding jointly on a piece of orchard. And Ivar has a bid on another behind Doornick’s, so to speak.

~*~

29:V, Memorial Day

Chinook Pass opened Thursday; came through this morning on my way to Sea-Tac to get Kitty … some packs of snow 20’ high

Washington State Route 410 approaching Chinook Pass on a typical June day once the highway has reopened from its winter closure. Photo taken just south of Lake Tipsoo about 1/2 mile from summit.by Mrhyak at Pexels.

~*~

Missed having Kitty at social functions: Mortons’ party Saturday night, Mtg Sunday night … the emotional support …

~*~

13:VI half-moon

After everything came to a head Sunday, a storm of accusations and truths, we drifted into sex. Kitty was closer to explosion than I’d ever seen her, and the air cleared. Still, no resolution — “I don’t love you, but I respect you.” [If only I could say the same.]

Sez she: “We have no mutual friends. You make no attempt to have friends. … We never go dancing, I’ve never seen you drunk … you’ve done all that, I haven’t … if we went to a bar, you’d criticize the band and the people.”

She’s afraid if she goes back to Central, our marriage will break up …

~*~

Kitty called from E’burg, she’s coming home tonight. Had a fight with Michael, he wanted her to have found the questions so she could examine “her problem,” which she was supposed to do over her Ohio vacation. Told her she expected other people to pick her up and carry her load.

Somehow, she’s really happy for once, and in love with life (and us)

Full moon last night/tonight / summer solstice

~*~

Flash forward to now: Revisiting the previous volume was BRUTAL, especially my conflicts with what I have to admit was my unfaithful wife. Part of her problem, as I finally see, was her failure to commit herself to something beyond the present. Her reason for not having children was not, contrary to her proclaimed concern, about what it might do to her body but rather the reality that it would be a commitment for life, hers and the child’s.

As for me? I sense a Tendrils, beginning with the fact I put the women in my life up on pedestals and worship them, regardless of their flaws. Also, the question of what I would have done without her or some replacement; she was never an “editor’s wife.” As for her value of “having fun,” how futile and infantile that proves …

Looking at what I got out of our weird relationship: time to rise early, meditate, and write intensely … something having children would have greatly limited … also, without her, moving would have been difficult …

~*~

19 july

Just that feeling of treadmill: office, home, cook, clean dishes, to bed and up again too soon, to take off once more … what for?

THIS CAN’T BE IT!

~*~

30 July

Kitty seduced me, or whatever, in my sleep this morning. So long since we’ve done anything. Great way to start the week.

Her folks here Mon night or Tuesday through Friday. The Dolphs took off sailing, left Sam and Jeanice their house — a perfect arrangement. Now the in-laws are off at the Emory’s (Claira), possibly the cabin …

~*~

5 Aug, a Saturday

Kitty’s parents here again … nice, to a point. Right night, everything’s that point.

Good time to sit in the orchard.

~*~

8 Aug, Tuesday

Ivar saying he’d have no qualms about evicting us if Zenny were to become farm manager here. He’s making $3,000 a year running the Olympia blueberry patch.

& now I’m wondering if we should be looking to buy a place in town. I sure don’t want the responsibility but space of our own would be nice.

Came home zonked from work but a dip in the circular pool was refreshing and clarifying …

How difficult it is to be “clear” in “the world” — everything is wrong: use people, profit and efficiency above all else. Deplete materials, savor nothing, run but do not center. Unhappiness is the root of materialism, which it in turn sustains.

How quickly summer’s passed, how little I’ve been out.

The in-laws back here Friday p.m., off for Ohio 5 a.m. Sunday …

The Ala, deal off when the asshole started adding “nickel and dime” like 1/2 mineral rights after he had OK’d the deal …

~*~

And here I thought this was paradise? Parts of it weren’t even a good soap opera.

Let me confess

Keyboarding and then posting these is emotionally difficult, even painful, yet also liberating.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Also from the Yakima library, at the time a volume that became influential in my emerging thinking in poetry and fiction and even spirituality: Regional Perspectives: An Examination of America’s Literary Heritage, edited by John Gordon Burke.

From the chapter, “Crossing the Midwest” by John Knoepfle:

The mind wants to entertain the notion that the further west the frontier the more primitive the life. But that is not so, and that is why the Midwest is so puzzling … And great rafts of hardwood timber were floated down the Ohio River to Cincinnati and Louisville as late as the First World War. … There is room for a native literature in German that remains to be translated … cultures that are supposedly dormant or provincial have a way of flickering into life and proving themselves dramatically related to the contemporary mind. …

Another characteristic of the mid-continental mind is its very hazy sense of itself … But their [cities’] distances from one another help them to maintain life styles that are distinct. … Where is Dodge City? [little awareness of the religious sects and traditions] … (something about a Midwestern ragtime that cannot be explained except in terms of German right-hand piano technique and Black left-hand chord progression arrangements) …

This was all a revelation to me, as would the radical element of the Midwest that Kenneth Rexroth remembered from his youth in Indiana and Chicago.

Had I stayed in the Midwest, where would any of this have shown up in my writing? Or did it, in the exile after Yakima? I would certainly find some of it in my genealogy research that would begin a half-dozen years later and, beyond that, on my mother’s side in Missouri, which technically isn’t Midwest but in my case, definitely German, in part. In discussions of blogging, I would be surprised to see that a tag of Midwest or Midwestern had no impact.

Where does  the book Anti-California show up in all of this?

I thought I was free of the Midwest, in a progression my novel Nearly Canaan explores, but cruel fate would prove otherwise.

Remember, my ashram training had taught me to be aware of vibes and the fact that different places had their own vibrations. My, did Yakima and the surrounding lands!

Or, “If it’s got sugar in it, it’s cake; if it doesn’t, it’s bread,” as someone local said of William O. Douglas’ new book at the time. [The blatantly liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice had returned for his summer home in the Cascades, upriver near Mount Rainier.]

I was still trying to digest previous places I had dwelled in or otherwise experienced.

Remind me that not everyone has lofty ambitions.

~*~

As I noted:

Subway Hitchhikers?
Network of the Heart

Canary folded
= Teletype writer =
Canyon hopper

~*~

My, I was moving up in life! This journaling was getting Serious.

Trying to make sense of my work schedule at this point. “Time for a break = 4 days off, a schedule switch, my last week’s Monday off is today, then my normal Sunday-Monday off days followed by my Labor Day = a well-earned rest. I’m too tired to go to the mountains. Instead, I’m off to the laundromat.” [Good luck if you can follow that. Commiseration if it sounds familiar.]

By mid-October: Using the tape player to rework poems, a strangest joy, back to voice and recognizing what remains incomplete or experimental forms that contain more than I had thought. Also journal notes that need no revision to become poems.

~*~

18:X:77: Our photographer Whiz’s birthday (he was turning 24 to my 29): Snyder’s essays in Old Ways confirms I’ve been on the right track after all, seeking relationships of people to unique landscapes/environments/cultures … [a half century later, what happens when the land itself changes as a consequence of climate upheavals?] …

~*~

19:X, in checkout line at the library, taking a midmorning break from the office, met a pipe-smoking bearded fellow my age or so, Barry Grimes, checking out Allan Tate, Ed Koch, etc. Got his contact info. He and a buddy are editing a new journal along the lines of Paterson. I’m welcome to submit.

Wait, pipe-smoking in the public library???

[A later note in the journal proclaims the tabloid newsprint publication that resulted.]

Comparing [George] Szell’s early and late recordings of Beethoven’s Eroica against Max Rudolf’s; as always, I was amazed by the vitality and clarity / discipline Max obtained, as demonstrated in Cincinnati. The constant daring in each line, each phrasing having a stressed note. (Suppose the stress is largely spontaneous, varying from performance to performance: the players’ improvisation?) Yet the trills together (where Szell gets flutters). The amber warm clarity of tone. Structure revealed. The pivotal balance of conflicting possibilities: a disciplined wildness, savage elegance.

[And this was a period of my life with few live classical performances.]

Georgia O’Keeffe … demanded solitude as a painter … wouldn’t allow Stieglitz to enter the studio when she was painting …

As for Lake George? “Too much green.”

Not that I contested that later, in the vicinity. Green, it was.

~*~

12:XII: Conversation with Barry Grimes and Jim Bodeen: “I wouldn’t think you’d have any trouble getting published anywhere.”

My new longpoem more like Basho’s journeys — commentary linking poems rather than most English poetry.

Recitative and Aria
Potential for something there

Be clear or be clever?

Tribe: Neah Bay is our land because we spilled our blood for it,
a basket woven of snakes.

Symbols shaping the way we react to the land. [Wish I had more on that.]

~*~

25:X midnight

Acceptance of three poems from Roger and Dick (always surprising what editors choose, even when you know them) … with a note, “I like what you are doing. Your style is much harder and clearer. Keep to it.”

~*~

27:X

Among lingering impressions from Regional Perspectives ….

The belief that something remains intact in the backcountry, whether that be Vermont (and not Boston or Cambridge also as New England) or “upcountry” South (versus Atlanta or Nashville) …

How many respected but generally unknown writers are mentioned in passing?

There are great differences within each region …

Emotionally, the suffocation I’ve felt, even in Daffodil …

~*~

6:XII

… what my work lacks so much is the female (universal) element: softening, enveloping, making wet, warm …

Is all love-making feminine?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

 

Kitty’s new place: the smell, the copper drain ring in the kitchen sink, the freezer box suspended within the refrigerator all remind me of Gran’s second-floor apartment. All of those motionless Sunday afternoons hearing invisible traffic, bells, and wind.

Sign outside her window

FORD (blue
LINCOLN (white
MERCURY (red

just like our place in Prairie Depot, Ohio

~*~

A fine salad Kitty created tonight

Pieces of homegrown
watermelon
cantaloupe
peaches

~*~

One of every five commercial apples in the U.S. was grown in Yakima County. Peaches, pears, plums, apricots, and cherries were also valued fruit harvests. They play a major role in my Nearly Canaan novel.

Irrigation had come a long way from the ditches used in orchards in this circa 1913 Webster & Stevens glass negative photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

Orchard labels from Yakima in a Chris Light photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Lithograph label from California Historical Society collection …

~*~

13:IX:77

Pickers began on the apples this morning

seis y media

first the Goldens: the reds come off later

man with a limp
carries the ladder

~*~

14:IX

Ordered new car yesterday, Subaru

Legs for Kitty’s loom finally arrived after a long wait: it’s now “grown up”

Mention of Kitty taking the Greyhound to Ellensburg …

~*~

Where did I hope to be at 30? And how close am I?

Where have I been? What dreams and teachings have I forgotten?

A dusty novel manuscript, an unopened violin case, a holy title I seldom use — and all of these chains to Maya

~*~

28:IX

apples, gone from the orchard
at least around the house
prop sticks stacked between the rows
ladders, folded
sweet smell of bins
awaiting the straddle buggy

She’s in a bummer today. Not a single good word till I got mad and screamed and left the house and mowed the lawn.

Our orchard shack cleaned, inside and out, everything back in place and straight. TV moved from the meditation room [living room] to the bedroom. Good vibes back, our home is home.

~*~

3:X:77

[Desert reality}:

How strange that dew should be a sign of autumn!

This ink has an odor I now associate with Mr. Weiner’s junior high school art classes and later with my high school art class wash room.

Overheard: Yeah, Fort Lewis is a wild place. Kids go in, find live grenades. Fort Carson, too — stretches almost from Colorado Springs to Boulder. They wanted to expand it but faced a vote.

~*~

10:X:77

Called Subaru, told our car’s on the way, probably off the boat on Friday. Last boatload, they couldn’t get our five-speed, though it was promised, per the salesman.

The mail had a letter to Mrs. James Hodson from Mom Moran …

~*~

Later in month:

Sharon P from Kitty’s Ohio Northern days showed up in the Central State art building, wants to be an actress, just got a divorce. Seems Kitty really dumped on my in her journal the night before, can’t figure out why we’re married, “Most people need each other but we don’t,” ignoring the joys of shared freedoms. So Sharon’s husband had come in and asked why not, I’d say they were never married. And now she’s coming to visit us in the orchard?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

An evening party in town, a political party fundraiser, after a rare rain had finally soaked the earth …

An old woman’s bathroom, ointments, creams, bottles of prescriptions, tweezers, scissors, lipsticks, perfumes, dirty towels, an unpleasant smell. Quotations taped to the wall.

Hamburgers on the grill. Why do none of their names stick for me? Why don’t I want to speak?

Two old women sit mysteriously behind their cigarettes, one in golfing attire, the other in a pink dress. Sometimes I don’t want a cocktail. I can’t find my friends. Who are these infants, crawling around my legs? Why did I find this place?

~*~

Don’t ever want to live again where I can’t see the Milky Way — Eternal Light — River of Light — our home in the universe.

[Not knowing there was a long dark period ahead.}

~*~

Kitty found an apartment in E’burg and is excited, a “place like Laura’s” or our “town house.” A bohemian dump. Maybe even my encampment on Mondays with a college library or movies and jaunts to the mountains … even courting her anew …

Dinner at New York Pagoda Café …

~*~

Picked up a hitchhiker on my way to work this afternoon. Seldom stop nowadays, did so today as an afterthought, his smile and the modesty of his destination: Union Gap. Fact was, he was walking, not standing; his big backpack barely fit in the Bug’s backseat. Turned out he’s a picker from Tempe, Arizona. Worked last five days on pears, $20 his best day’s pay. Got his check today. Getting cold, wished he hadn’t lent out his second sleeping bag to a friend with a job in town. He puts one inside the other. Once he’s home, he’ll play basketball, get a student ID, perhaps take an acting class.

“Oakland,” he says, “a lot of baseball players come from there.”

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.