from Court Evidence, the Marx Farm Daily Record for 1972-1973 in Lund, British Columbia

January 28 1973

Cold and rainy. Janet discovered Rebecca dead in the barn, hanging by her neck in an eight inch hole in the partition between her stall and the grain Michael Friedman was storing there. In order to get her out, Steven had to hacksaw her horns. We decided not to butcher her and buried her under boughs and ferns on the adjoining Crown land. Went to Friedmans place to get eggs and met Ken Law who brought our grocery order from the coop in Vancouver. Went to Pihls to get Vance, Letitia Tracy and Kelly Faire to help us do up eleven chickens including Ajax the rooster. Vance chopped the heads off and gutted them, Kelly carried the carcasses to Steven, Janet, Ticia and Tracy who plucked. It took two and a half hours. Afterwards we had popcorn and hot chocolate in front of the fire.

January 29 1973

Warm snow slush. J and S worked in barn, J transferring wet grain to dry place, S fixing the plumbing leak in the sink upstairs, cleaning up mess John left, including bleach bottle half full of pee. Barn is now ready for new occupancy. Made huge pot of chicken soup with Ajax. Froze ten chickens, one to Vance. Ken, Debby and Maz came for dinner. Ken stayed over.

Friday February 2

Steven has interview at Manpower and is told he should leave the area to find work elsewhereSeth and Muriel write offering $1500 loan. Eight acre parcel of our land is listed at Marriette Agencies..

Thursday February 8

Kenneth informed us of his decision to move into the cabin, as a result of a Tarot reading the night before. He brings string and teaches Steven how to Macrame. Steven stops freaking out for a while¦Potato pancakes and parsnips for dinner. Mrs. Williams called and asks both Jan and Steven to substitute at school the next day. Melvin Marguilis and gang arrive in time for a party. Lou T. called saying they definitely want to buy the eight acre parcel¦Ken agrees to take care of Jonah while Steven and Jan go to school. Nick Valerie, Kenneth, Melvin, stay over¦

Sunday February 11

Clear morning, cloudy afternoon. S. picked brush, K. went along. J modeled for Fred. Jonah went to Nancy Crowther’s with Doreen. J and S went upstairs. K. cut the end of his finger off. J and S take him to hospital. Bleeding stops when Dr. Warriner looks at the cut. S and J and K buy ice cream at Knight’s Weekly News.

Monday February 12

Steven goes to dentist and gets spark plug wires replaced on truck. Goes looking for work at construction site and with Durling the surveyor. Janet gets notice of reinstatement on UIC and a check for $58. Jeff Chernove says Kirpal Singh is the answer. David Creek says Primal therapy is the answer. J, K, and S work on plans for Valentines party and discuss jealousy.

Wednesday February 14

J and S go to town early for appointment with Dr. Ryan, the psychiatrist, then to lawyer to sign contract and close sale of land with Lou and Kent. Kenneth stays with Jonah and cooks all day for Valentines party: chicken in milk, dahl, yogurt salad. Steven makes Valentines cheesecake. People arrive and make Valentines and paint cookies: Tony and Maureen, Ron and Anne, Ian and Maggie, David, Susan and Jessica, Laurie and David Creek. S and J and K and Jonah exchanged valentines. S and K played recorders.

Friday February 16

… Jonah gets baby aspirin bottle and eats 10. J and S take him to hospital where he’s made to barf, but no aspirins are found¦Late dinner. Jonah calls Kenneth “Kennie,” the first adult outside of “Nanet” and “Daddy” that he’s named.

(more…)

Tester’s Testament

This is the last time that I’ll sit
Slowly leafing through this log
Searching for a contact’s spark
To pierce my boredom’s lonely fog.

There’s hours when working in the mill
Seems like punishment for crime.
You’ve got a home and family
For that you’ve got to do your time.

It takes the strength of a serious man
To work on shift both day and night.
There’s character and dignity
In holding a job and doing it right.

But my time’s up, my Winter’s passed.
Though I hate to leave that steady pay
Spring’s lecherous tickling in my blood
Wont let me stay another day.

I take with me just a little money
But maybe more important still
I take a feeling of comradeship
With the men who remain and work at the Mill.

There isn’t much I can leave behind
As a legacy to share–
Just some contacts for a spark
To light the long nights in this chair.

The Answer

1. Significator (the questioner): 2 of Pentacles

A man weighing or juggling two alternatives having to do with money

2. Cover and Cross (opposed forces now): 6 of Pentacles and Page of Swords

The just official giving money to the deserving poor [Unemployment insurance]

The young romantic knight of pain and truth [The Mill quest]

3. Crowning(outcome of conflict): King of Swords

The knight matured and sober

4. Beneath (background of present situation): 3 of Wands

Merchant watching ships embark (money-making schemes)

5. Behind (immediate past): Page of Pentacles

Youthful aesthete contemplating artistic beauty

6. Ahead: Emperor

King of Swords aged further, a land owner

7. Yourself: 2 of Swords

Stalemate, staying on the fence

8. House: The Hermit

Introspection, solitude, desiring a new direction

9. Hopes and Fears: The Fool

Letting Go, Abandon, Beginning

10. The Answer: 5 of Pentacles

Winter’s utter desolation, poverty, madness, cripples cut off from warmth, light and beauty
***
Another Tarot reading, two years earlier.

Tarot Question

Shall I stay?
Shall I go?
Which will make
The spirit flow?
Do Graveyard’s skull
And bones disguise
God’s holy light
In bleary eyes?
If I remain
By my free will
Will Spring transform
This Wintry Mill?

No longer feeling trapped here makes me want to stay. I think of the Christmas tree brought by the Grindermen, decorated with industrial lightbulbs and pieces of dried pulp, the newsprint draped from grinder to grinder, the times of whooping and hollering and singing in the grinderroom. I think of Tiny Beacon and his ex-army hockey-ref gung-ho marching spirit, of the old timers and their bitter sense of the company’s change from a local enterprise to a multinational giant, of the discipline I’ve developed to manage shiftwork, of the intimations I’ve felt on graveyard. But then I remember what the job is doing to our marriage: how it forces me to make demands on Janet that crowd and threaten her, how it takes our space and time, how it’s cut me off from Jonah…and I feel undecided and in need of outside counsel.

This is my last graveyard. Sitting in Bob’s car this morning, off shift and waiting to go home, I decided to give notice. Called in this afternoon.

It’s hard to let go of this weight.

My “graveyard” piece–story, essay, film–never materialized. Probably wont. I haven’t finished with “The Mill,” haven’t made much contact with the men who work here, haven’t learned a great deal about the production process, have only begun to understand the shiftwork experience.

As for influencing the place, that too is an aborted project. Right now two grindermen, Wayne and Bob, sit writing verse satires. They’re less depressed than any grindermen I’ve seen. So? My presence has stirred up hopes in them, but we’re all isolated; it wont add up to much. Bob and I were like brothers for a while. Now we have nothing to say to each other. The forcibly repressed background distinctions have surfaced.

I could have tried to make noise, but I never was able to decide what I wanted to change. I came to make money like the rest of the workers. There’s no sense of class oppression since there’s no ruling class in this town. Everyone is in the same boat. The necessity of having the job is a given. The only improvement conceivable is a little more money per hour, a few hours more overtime, a little less work per hour, a few more lightbulbs to steal.

So what do I want? To raise consciousness by creating discontent and at the same time provide my family with enough income to allow for a good life in the country. And to be able to express my own creative energy. I’d have to work here much longer and be less attached and self-involved to take any political role.

Though we still have no money in the bank and the only significant purchase allowed by my five months stint is an automatic washer, working in the Mill has cured me of financial anxiety. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I experienced a way of life motivated solely by that fear for long enough that I feel I dont need any more of it. I know the time I need to put in will come to an end for me, and though it’s been hell, that time hasn’t been lost. I learned that suffering has its rewards, the colder the winter the richer the spring, the longer on the job, the longer you can draw pogey.

Some day I want to write about what it feels like to get off graveyard: the slow deliberate ritual of cleanup with broom, air and water hose at the end of each shift; filling out your punch card and totalling what you’ve earned, always more satisfying than the paycheck with its heartless deductions; meeting your relief man, fresh from sleep and breakfast and tense while you’re stale and tired and loose; waiting for Bob in the roar of the steam plant; lighting the joint as you pull out of the parking lot; following the black-white track of snow on the powerline along the twisting highway; coasting the last four miles down from the summit; seeing the smoke from the stovepipe at the head of the clearing, blue against the tall firs as you walk up the driveway; the clank of the thermos in your empty lunch bucket, Ajax crowing in the chicken coop, frost outlining the jagged ends of roof shakes, the orange glow of the skylight, Janet feeding the baby in her chenille bathrobe next to the barrel stove, splitting the wood for the day in the half dark, eating a bowl of porridge and sinking into oblivion as night turns into day.

Letter in a Lunch Bucket

Hello Steven

I feel your 3AM weariness now, as I pack your food for graveyard. And I feel flooded with love for you. You give so much, and the rewards seem so small most of the time. When I came home today and saw the work you’d done with the house, and the light in Jonah’s eyes, I knew you. It meant so much and the dinner was so beautiful.

I feel moved by your love for order, for all the things that make our home hearth-warm and snow-moon clear. I want to tell you I love you–you are so beautiful to me–I know how hard your struggle is.

But two things always–to know struggle brings strength–to know we have the power to change the outward terms of struggle–but struggle continues always. As does love. I LOVE YOU.

HEY–wake up! Take vitamin C.

Yew Street Basement

Here is a still life: the wheel thrown pot
Amidst the grids and graphs and charts
Scales and rule, calendar and clock
On the steel top desk in the pulp-test station.

There is still life in the centered cup
That holds the instant coffee I must drink
To keep apace the thrumming frequency
Of the sprawled electric death machine I serve.

There is still life in the ceramic mug
The elemental spirit of the hands
That mold with Nature’s art the water’s flow
The glaze of fire, the earthly body’s clay.

Still life
Soft frozen
In stone
With thumb
I feel.

4-12 shift

1

Your love is more than I deserve
Let me learn to treasure it
Without greed
Like the sinner loves his God
Who punishes
And cherishes his pain
Let me cherish pain
To purify my heart
That it may be transformed
Into a worthy sacrifice
To you.

2

Love me dirty, love me lewd
Keep your clothes on in the nude
Turn me inside out with lust
Send juices flowing through the crust
Of frazzled nerves and leathered skin
That locks my languished spirit in.

3

The worker’s goddess is his wife
The only meaning in his life.
To dignify his slavery
He raises her to high degree
Surrounds her with a million things
Home and kids and diamond rings.
When he’s about to lose his head
He remembers her in bed.
Lost his soul to please his Lord
Wielder of the mighty sword.