Thursday night I was a complete zombie.

Dinner at Kioki’s with the Zennys, He was delighted at the quality of their sukiyaki.

“In your school, Zenny, did you have to sweep the halls? Or did you have janitors?”

“Not the halls, but the classroom. Huh, I never really thought about it. It was just something we did. The newcomers complained, though, the parents complaining that wasn’t sending their kids to school for,” the clash in cultures between Japanese and American values.

And rice, big bowls, in the cafeteria — including cafeteria duty, twice a month.

~*~

My parents phoned: won’t be coming out: but my sister passed her nursing boards, first time around.

Assembled a cheap picnic table kit.

Cherries lack size this year — the cold snap just as they were ripening knocks the crown off their price.

Kitty: “I can’t do anything when you’re here” followed by “When you gonna mow the grass?”

Plus: “I can’t even draw when you’re home.”

Oh, yeah? Writing is damn frustrating work, even without interruptions.

~*~

She had some friends down from E’burg for a feast: crab, spring potatoes, snow-pod peas, beaucoup wine, all delightful. With my head tizzy nearly dizzy, I stepped out to look at the twilight mountains and catch some air. Saw Rena, then Zenny taking a piss in the orchard. And then, “Come on in,” he said, waving me to a small trailer parked there. And then in we went for me to make an incredible introduction to Richard “Smitty” Small Bear, a forest tree planter who works six months a year — an ex-astrologer, Zen student, and now a Friend — with his fourth wife, Pattibuff, a schoolteacher. He’s from Georgia with a nearly New England accent [how did I know then?]. We were there two hours by coal-oil lamp. “Hey! I gotta get back! We gotta party!”

I returned the next night, even better.

Told me about the two weeks he spent on the Appalachian Trail, trying to work out a broken loving. “I met an animal every day — a deer, a bear, face to face — every day except one, when I bedded down in the shelter, fell asleep, bolted upright in the middle of the night, felt an evil, a cold glowing moving my way, as if wishing to scare me out into the laurel. People step of the trail there, in that laurel, are never found again. I stared at it, thought I’d lose my mind, realized it was a contest of wills. I finally shouted, ‘Go away!’ and it retreated. I fell back into an instant deep sleep. Later, in Foxfire, I read that place was believed to be full of evil spirits.”

“Maybe you were finally facing yourself.”

“Maybe. Or maybe something else.”

“That, too.”

“To an anthropologist, it’s all real.”

He had spend five years with the Hodads, a tree-planting cooperative named for the short spades they used.

He left in the morning, back to Deadwood, Oregon.

~*~

Next night at Tinowit, the irony of ancient tribal dances on a modern basketball court. Indoors.

In one mating song and dance, the male circles an oblivious female (pecking grain) as he sings a bright, optimistic song while hopping counterclockwise except for a few steps back. Regular steps. Hops and half-turns within place before moving around the circle, singing, and then stopping to peck his own grain, very slowly, circling.

Later, when we ran into our landlords, the advice, “Leave by 11. The real stuff starts after midnight, when the men arrive with war dances. This is just a warmup.”

In other words, “Whites not welcome. Go away!” Or else.

~*~

27:VI:79

What caused yesterday’s power outage was a beaver.

Summer going smoother than I had expected …

[As a lesson in the similarities and differences between American football and opera] … both deal in the clash of power, but only one includes love and betrayal …

The Fourth of July frustrating when my fireworks didn’t burn, it was too windy after dark. Box of wooden matches, even the entire thing all at once wouldn’t burn. SHIT, SHIT, SHIT. Red Chinese fireworks, $5.95 plus tax.

Next night, potluck at the Dolphs … Zennys and the Jim Doornicks showed up. Kitty: “We don’t fit in anywhere.”

Zenny got fired a week ago. Paul Belzer, finding himself in a real jam, wants a hired man who can save his orchard. Barid got a week’s pay and two weeks’ notice on moving out. Learned from a lawyer that when housing’s part of your pay, they can just kick you out.

Thursday night Kitty accidentally planted idea in Zenny’s head of buying a place, a joint venture, and he replied he knows of low-interest loans if you already have the land, an interesting catch. So things begin cooking. Whether they bear fruit, we’ll see.

Kitty’s still spray painting her car (using cans of spray paint). Sand off, spray again, shamrock green. Looks velvety, though, rather than shiny.

That was our VW Bug, with its bare spots from our move out from Indiana.

9:VII:79

After two or three arguments, I threw a box of canning jars across the yard. What’s happening to me? And I spent the next Saturday working on SOP [standards of performance] sheet for second half of the year and a Yearly Meeting response to a query. No poems. Five more day to vacation.

Fortune cookie: Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.

Rattlesnake Ridge, where this shot was likely taken, rose behind our shack. It was as tall as many of the mountains in the Northeastern U.S. but arid. On the other side from us was the Moxee Valley, which reached eastward from Yakima. Remember, everything green was irrigated. Photo by Z3lvs via Wikipedia Commons.

~*~

20 sept, Thursday

Cut off, irrigation ditch today.

Yesterday, looked at our first orchard purchase possibility. No way: 16 acres, $160,000, 29% down. Bad production, tiny 3-year-old apple trees, water stress. Landlord/seller is keeping the choicest spot, smack in the center, the site’s the key to pollination and wind-machine control.

Great Hawaiian chicken dinner at Zenny and Bloom’s …

Don’t know why I vote. Always on the losing side.

On the highway, precast concrete beams for Interstate 82 extension. Each beam, trucked in from Seattle, on 18 wheels with the tractor, plus the tail assembly another 18 wheels with a cockpit slung between for a second driver (crazy fool) held to the tractor by only that beam. Five to seven beams for each span of highway overpass/underpass for each double lane of highway. Six of those spans at Sunnyside Dam add up to 72 trips from Seattle, more or less. Each beam weighs 250,000 pounds — 125 tons.

One beam beside the road was broken/cracked/twisted. It had gotten loose while being moved into place. Reason only one of two cranes was on the site now.

~*~

Finally, some Hatha — last night, candlelight only — me, my skinny tent of bones stripped to brahmacharies — bone and hair, big feet, breath — stretching, bending, breaking back, getting free.

Nagging feeling something’s going wrong — at the office, especially — with Meeting and home, too. Lord, give me strength!

A dream of a party at Dave Smart’s old house. Robin Rankin and her husband were hosting — the Aldrich twins and others seducing me — or seduced. We go to an upstairs room in the back, make love in an evening rain. Outside the window is an incredible forest that had always been hidden by the houses on the street (Oakdale and Ashland retain forest names). A good-sized stream in a valley plus a waterfall. The nearest house, out beyond that. (Moler’s Dairy, in reality, where those waters would have been, had been sold or at least out of business and was being torn down. The woods of my dream were as dense as Jay Lower’s down the street, whose land probably triggered this.)

Anyway, the idea of a forest in the Sabins’ tight yard is amazing, especially considering there was only a sprawling cottonwood two yards over, plus telephone wire and somewhere beyond that WING’s two blinking radio towers at night.

23:XI:79 / Friday [after Thanksgiving]

Snow yesterday — awaken to an inch or so already on the ground, more piling up onto leaves still on the orchard trees into the afternoon.

“It’s Christmas!”

Saturday — More snow, atop the earlier three inches … yellow and green leaves scattered atop six inches of snow. A chainsaw buzzing somewhere off in a peach grove.

Black bra, black panties — kisses, full of teeth and tongue — my hot, wild honey.

Are the novel and poems, really worth the effort, time, blood? Sometimes it feels so futile.

9:XII.79

Upcoming Christmas, with its underlying depression and obligations.

BE HAPPY OR ELSE!

Extending to “We merchants are happy if you keep spending, pal.”

One time of the year everyone’s downtown. New faces. Where do they come from?

23:XII:79

After driving the Dolphs to the airport in their Mercedes on the slickest roads, their flight delayed, we made a dash to the valley mall for last shopping — camera film, books, Trojans, groceries — a good day to sit tight, do nothing, except read Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon, a real disappointment in which nothing happens.

The night before, on KKHI [an AM radio station in San Francisco; its signal reached Yakima at night], a Salzburg festival broadcast of Mozart’s Magic Flute with magnificent conducting, vigorous, spirited, free, yet precise — turned out to be James Levine on the stand, doing Max Rudolf proud

~*~

New Year’s Eve party at Whiz and Wisteria’s … Purdy showing up with the wife of the Toppenish Review editor. Carla? Nice body, horsey face. (I’ll see her later, Unitarian.) And he screaming, “I’m the only religious character around here!” (Or in this room?) “And my religion isn’t! Hee-hee!” (UU)

Kitty’s SHUT UP YOU GUYS! (She beat the unbeatable Ivar at chess yesterday in three moves. He was dumbfounded, she the Big Big-Shot. Cigarettes and makeup, me sexy wife.

A whole world of fools, as Karin from Denmark toasted and then accidentally knocked the world globe off onto Whiz’s turntable and floor. Tee-hee!

Actions and accidents both speak.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Were we getting into a rhythm for now?

On the home front, here’s how 1997 played out.

~*~

Hate to see Kitty go back to school (she graduated last term) …

My next novel will probably be in Washington state, first person. Only a few characters? Newsroom?

[First mention of a novel now published as Hometown News … much earlier than I remember … what was the premise / plot at that point?]

No water since Saturday night: pipes frozen, despite drip from both faucets.

Monday morning dream: sound of thawing in the pipes, running water, “Hey! Let’s shower!” — all in dreams while cold continues driving deeper into the ground.

15 Jan /

More snow, earth’s frozen two feet deep, most in memory, from two weeks of sub-zero cold … 11 inches of snow in 24 hours last week, third heaviest on record … in meantime, haul water from the washhouse: 60 gallons over the weekend

8 Feb /

Extremely tired. At 34 John Nichols had three novels in print. Me, almost 31, still no books in type. Opportunities further and further away. And spiritual light growing dimmer.

So happy Kitty came home tonight for my 31^st birthday. Was going to take her out but came home to find her cooking her first prime rib. Excellent, beautiful meal. Candlelight, good wine. [With a rich Zinfandel, if I recall right A new variety for both of us.] White linen. African violet blooming.

Beautiful clouds tonight. Still no running water in the house.

No TV tonight. Is that why the magic?

31, still no book — what’s happening to the longpoem? And the novel, so difficult, all the odds against its publication.

The Real Work, in Snyder’s view, is not what I’m doing.

11:III /

5 a.m. Friday, gurgling under the house: running water!

JACKRABBIT

HOO-EEE!

So warm today I can sit in my yard while wearing shorts

Ivar’s about on his tractor with dormant spraying

Kitty’s creating a plastic hot-house in the garden: beets, peas, spinach, lettuce.

19:III /

While going to work this morning, [irrigation] water arriving in Sunnyside Canal, half-full.

On my return, full, placid. Like a new river.

Little Netherlands.

24 March / Saturday /

First asparagus shoots by the irrigation canal — enough for dinner for two.

Thursday, first apricot blossoms. Most of Belzer’s grove like kernels of half-cooked popcorn. Today, fully opened.

By early afternoon, we’re sunbathing in our tiny yard.

[Add to my list of “Not Here in New England, Not by Any Means!}

Portland, 3 March ’79 /

Overheard in next booth in restaurant:

Masturbation. “The left hand’s always best.”

[Not in my experience.]

“You know you’re not bored if you’re alone and tell yourself, ‘No, not tonight, I have a headache.’”

Tomatoes and cucumbers with sour cream beside half a cold wild game hen with a Henry Weintraub beer …

Pasta maker, all-metal, $39, sale price, no sales tax.

Too much unbaked happiness around here.

19 April ’79 /

Dreamt the telephone was ringing. I jumped out of bed, waking in time for work. (Dreams that lead to real action.) [Not the first time! As earlier journal entries reveal.]

Earlier, after our cat woke me, wind machines were already making a ruckus. Then looked at the barn, the door was open, meaning Ivar was about. A bit later, the smudge pots in our orchard were blazing. Saw neighbors lighting theirs. Belzer, on an ATV, zipped through his apricots followed by booming hollow explosions each time one cannister lit.

Andy, walking with flames dripping from his flame thrower, leaving steps of fire behind him …

Each cannister burping flames and smoke until settling down into a steady glow of heat …

By sunrise a blue film hangs like a gray tent over the valley’s basin …

Kitty, frustrated: “You don’t talk to me!”

This silence is restless, not solid.

26-27 April /

The apples don’t really blossom until the leaves have opened, so the fullest blooming is hidden by green …

Went to Seattle Saturday a.m.

Visited galleries, Linda Ryan’s show, especially. I photocopied the finished third of the novel [now published as Subway Visions]. Scary, taking IT [the manuscript] so far … I even hate leaving it for the day when I go to work. [Ryan? Not Kitty’s fellow student Johnson?]

[How times have changed! Digital manuscripts are easily backed up to the Cloud or even a thumb drive.]

Ate out, City Loan Pavillion. Drunks arguing, breaking bottles. Crowds leaving for the Kingdome. [Kingdom come.]

Later, seeing Celeste and baby “Cedar Davidita” [middle name after her late father] … everybody sleepy.

How I hate driving around Seattle. Easty to get lost, one-way streets, even knowing where I want to go. Barriers in my way. (Over the bridge, turn around, can’t get back: the draw’s up.)

~*~

Today with Kitty, the third annual Art Folks vs Music Folks Hoyt Axton Slow-Pitch Game, her college circle picnic beside the Yakima River, where I’m off alone, listening to the beautiful flowing. Just finished Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer, a masterpiece. [Forty-five years later, I remember nothing.]

Kitty ran over a snake just before we got to the picnic amid a few scattered long-needle pines. Shrieks from the game.

Two days she’s been a bitch: that time of the month again.

She wonders how I can stand her.

A lovely morning abed possible only because Meeting’s tonight, at the Truebloods.

Summer, and I should be hiking.

Waiting in the Burlington Northern depot (surprise, it was open) 4:14 a.m. with train scheduled for 4 a.m. arrival now expected around 5:30. Empire Builder. Half-wondering, why’s Nancy Scott coming? [Who?]

Maybe this jolt will get me back on the early-morning track but the evenings have been so nice.

3 rattlesnakes killed on the hill ranch. “Don’t tell anybody or we can’t get anyone to work there.”

“Thought rattlesnakes didn’t like the wet orchards.”

“It’s so dry, they’re coming down for water.”

Bismarck Peak from Mount Aix by Ron Clausen via Wikimedia Commons.

Did I climb either of them? Perhaps. My journals didn’t include everything.

~*~

3:VIII:79 — Friday /

Fifth anniversary — that long?

“Do you love me?”

Slept “late” last two days, meaning I didn’t rise early enough to meditate before dashing off to the office.

Zenny over Wednesday night, and then both Zennys and Dolphs up for dinner last night.

Me, to dentist for cleaning. What’s that — a sharp metal probe! An unexpected jolt: pain! The water rinse stings. Blue eyes, the dental technician. What am I supposed to be doing in this chair? Swami! What do you think about?

Two upper wisdom teeth must come out. Sometime. Meaning soon?

Yesterday, my allergies so bad I left work early. Tonight, I left early to pick up Kitty after the VW’s clutch cable gave out: she drove to town in second gear.

14:VIII:79 / Tuesday morn /

Roza [water district] went “cloud seeding” yesterday, folks with junior rights canals out-back. With the first clouds in two months and some strangely hazy air. At 10 we felt a slight drop here or there. By midnight, rain — a slow, steady rain till dawn.

1 September /

Breakfast at Adeline’s, E’burg, open 5:30 a.m. for the rodeo crowd.

“Is the parade today or tomorrow?”

“Today, 10 a.m.”

“Sounds like a good time to sleep in.”

In Seattle, the NW Photocopy Center

COLOR CONTROL

“the Jewish question”

while fussing with his master copy

“Hey, man! There’s a place for guys like you. It’s called the Soviet Union.”

WHITE PICKER

“I’m just an old tramp”

Look the other way, there’s always a garden. Say Daikotoji, Tokyo Zendo.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

On Labor Day weekend, I noted:

Summer almost gone, haven’t really been to the mountains this year — is it Kitty (together only on the weekends, and thus me reluctant to take off without her?) or the fact I’m working so long and hard I just want to collapse on my time off, making hiking/camping/travel too much (circuit overload) or that my days off now coincide with everyone else’s meaning the mountains are crowded? I wish I knew for sure. Or even so much rain in the mountains on weekends, each one at least cloudy?

But this has been a good summer of reading, novels, mostly.

~*~

Somehow, every time I suggested we head off into the mountains, her answer was, “What for?” meaning no interest on her part. It always put me in a bind.

As she said on Tuesday: “Hope today was better than yesterday.”

“Jesus, did it!”

“Well, cheer up. I just checked your horoscope and Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will be as bad as Monday.”

And were they!

 

While the Canyon Highway was slightly shorter, the alternative route between Yakima and Ellensburg (and on to Seattle), Interstate 82, took a higher elevation course to the east but was faster though less dramatic as it ran through largely sagebrush barrens. Still, returning to the valley on either end felt like landing in the cockpit of an airplane, especially after dark when layer after layer of dazzling arrays of civilization lights unfolded. Sorry I haven’t found images of that, though I’m sure nothing could match what I remember.

~*~

Kitty called me at work to tell me she had found a new apartment for the upcoming semester.

“Expensive,” said she.

“How expensive?”

“$110 a month, with utilities. But at least I won’t be embarrassed to have you over.” Adding, “Since you like my friends, you may want to spend some weekends up here.”

And, for once, we talked about Mark. [Or was it Michael?]

“Well, maybe the new place will help you keep out of trouble.”

“That’s over, anyway. Don’t worry.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t want to get a situation that brings me down, and he only brought me down.”

“You realize this is the most we’ve ever talked about that?”

“I know, Jnana. I love you.”

“I love you, too. That’s about the first time in eight months I’ve told you that.”

“I know, but I mean it. I sure enjoyed your visit Sunday.”

“Me, too.”

7:IX

Jupiter entered Leo on Wednesday, “personal relationships will be much improved.” Also, “You will meet very interesting new people and find success working with a partner.” Also, tomorrow, “Venus enters Scorpio, where it will remain the rest of the year. This is your Business House and indicates that your relationship with business associates will go smoothly. You may receive favors from influential people.”

But Saturday? “You may spend the day with a group or organization, but do not get along with the group’s leader. You resent people’s telling you what to do.” Huh, the UPI meeting?

And Sunday, when our Friends circle resumes: “Mercury enters Virgo, your eighth house. Your mind is once again focused on hidden or spiritual matters. You are eager to explore occult ideas.”

~*~

Journaling 11 September, [Monday] Port Townsend again, first day out on vacation. Half-moon.

[Note that the UPI trip took a day out of my vacation] …

~*~

15 Sept / Friday (wait, a full Friday off?)

What a lazy, wasted day!

Tonight, watch the Ali-Spinks rematch. [Was it with anybody else?]

Apples picked and gone once again / circles, circles with a bullseye wide as the universe

~*~

1 Oct / First-day, after Mtg

in the morning like, Adams and Rainier as corral pink as the conch shell vulva

my only tranquil moment within a long day

mushroom growing in our shower stall

11:XI

Hit with my annual flu-symptoms

2:XII

Kitty wondering why people don’t like her.

Call at the office from a friend from high school Her husband has taken a pastorate in Grandview, moving up from California.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

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.