December 29 1975 on the road, at the Foleys
Monday, December 29th, 1975Voice of the sea
Whisper to me
Over and over and over.
Wave upon wave
Washing my cave
Clean and pure and free.
December, 1975 Archive
13 December 1975
Saturday, December 13th, 1975Prospering, prospering: joy, peace, snug warmth. Reading, drinking tea, sleeping, meditating on the saggy sofa by the stove. The Ashley works better all the time. Last night it burned 8 hours and still had three logs going this morning. The ceiling over the kitchen insulated with blankets of pink fiberglass, the holes in the floor chinked, curtains over the windows in the living room. The house is getting tighter, cleaner. And yesterday, unpacking woolies and a forgotten old tenor recorder and boxes of books from behind the eaves. And Jan and Jonah making a chocolate cake. And Janet and Martin coming to interview us about the adoption and Chantelle LeDuc playing with Jonah in the bath and upstairs.
I prepared salmon dinner and invited Janet and Martin to stay–they did–then went off to rehearsal. It’s coming together [Free to Be You and Me] and I begin to really enjoy the play.
The moon and stars are brilliant. Tonight is potluck dinner with our coop collective. This morning I ran the drain from sink and bathtub to the barnyard so Jan and Jeanne will have running water during the freeze.
The wind gusts, the stove taps lightly, the mixed-in sticks of green alder hiss, the drdaft whistles low and cheerful. The snow falls, sometimes in rare flakes, sometimes in thick clouds. Out the window, black and white and red and green.
8 December 1975
Monday, December 8th, 1975TM–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.