I still don't understand...

May 26, 1987

Many things have happened. I don't know what I wrote last time or when but I decided not to look back. I bought this book I think in January this year and now half way through the year I have bought another! Fancy that - my last book took me from September 1981 until December 1987 - most of Aja's life. Well it goes to show you what influence people have over the lives of others. Here's Phebe Hanson telling me to write. I resisted and the pressure was there, she never even was phased. She just was so calm. I write now because of this, because of her patience and understanding , because she is wonderful.

I have learned so much lately. I still don't understand the cause of the heaviness on my heart. I don't understand the weird dreams of killing the kids that I drew in my visual journal. The decapitated heads floating down the creek. The blown away faces on thin, small bodies, and more. I sense I must have dreamt more. I feel it right now, a heaviness on my heart. weighing me down, foreboding something. Who knows?

Driving down the highway on the way to Bayport on Saturday or was it Sunday, I thought of how if we were all to die here, not by nuclear means or anything, but if our civilization was to pass away now, gradually dwindle into nothing, and still survivors elsewhere, and our cities would become lost and overgrown. Highways would begin to crack and trees would crack them further and houses would be lost to one another by the trees and brush and it would be untouched until thousands of years from now people would rediscover this place and wonder about us. Tell stories. Write romantic books about our lives. Make assumptions such as we do about the importance of such things as peoples who lived eons and eons ago. Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks, Mongolians, Aborigines, Mayans, everyone. It would be all wonderful to discover such a place but it is lost to us. We plunder and can not leave well enough alone. We cannot look and not plunder, to set aside some discoveries for the future inhabitants. It is so stupid that we don't even think about this sort of thing. This is another a priori of man (A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience - I had to look it up. I am not sure what I meant when I used this term). That the idea of us looking into the future is inevitable because it has been done and we can do nothing to change this within us now.

June 3, 1987

Cris and I went to the library downtown today. I had never been there before. Cindy watched Harrison and ianthe so we could be free without children running around.

We both got a whole bunch of books. I got books on Love and addiction, Ed Gein the murderer, schizophrenia and tried to get a book on self-hypnosis but couldn't find one. That library was very larger. We went out to eat at the Lotus afterward. That was nice.

We seem to not be able to talk while eating. Weird problem. I think the television must be moved out of the kitchen to remedy the situation. We look at each other occasionally but we don't talk.

A few weeks of silence should help us learn to talk while eating again.

That's it. I'll try to move it tomorrow. I think everyone will go into shock. Oh my god! What about WKRP? Oh well, sacrifices, sacrifices!

This Stone is a Woman

February 14, 1987

This stone is a woman. I can see her delicate features her chin and nose, perfectly shaped head, long neck, wonderfully curved breasts. She has been formed of the earth and water, yet remains, rising above the massive weight of the past and into the unknown future. She has the past to turn to for help when she needs it. Her life was built upon the lives of others before her. They imparted in her the gift of life, of hope and love. She is alone yet there is no fear. She is ready to face the vast emptiness of the future before her. She has grown of this mass. She struggles to be free of it yet she never will. The past is always there, someday she will turn and face it.

February 16, 1987

How do I feel today...

I feel like a skeleton in death thralls. Contorted red pelvic area, where life began, must be where life would end last. Pelvic bones, skeletons, smaller bones for male, larger, wider for women, make room for the babies.

Chris (not Cris - this is a classmate I am speaking about) stole my Mr. Buffalo. He's bugging me, sitting against the wall - not writing - making me laugh. Doing Mr. Buffalo tricks reminding me of playing pigs: snouter, oinker...

General comments fly, "She's Hawaiian."
I say, "Who cares?"
Phebe Hanson says, "All Hawaiians are Americans."
Jimmy says, "She's a Communist."
I say, "She's Catholic."
Jimmy says, "She's an Existentialist."

Who Bloody Cares? Labels, Labels, Why all the Distinctions?

I have, all my life, carried around small trinkets, usually animals. Now-a-days, I have cats. I have real cats - four of them: Nivek, Gaz and Gir, and Sammie - but I don't carry them around - I have stuffed cats to carry around and squeeze. I take "Mrs. Norris" to the hospital with me. My husband, Anthony, will bring him to me unbidden with my toothbrush because he loves me. He knows I love my cats. Mrs. Norris is a weird gray cat that looks like a little old man. I talk to him when I am alone in the room - give him "airplane" rides on my feet. Nurses give me an odd look if they walk in on me playing. It never occurred to me before my diagnosis that this was uncommon behavior. I thought everyone played when they were alone.

I lived with Eeyore in my early childhood. My grandmother had sewn him for me out of a pale yellow lingerie fabric. I loved that donkey. His tail was held on by a button. By the time I was five years old, my mother had grown tired of sewing the button back on. She taught me how to thread the needle. She taught me how to tie a knot. She taught me to catch the knot in the fabric before I began. She taught me how to catch the fabric and move the needle through the button holes, back into the fabric, around, around. She taught me to tie off the thread. I sat in my little rocking chair and sewed. I sewed that button back on, sometimes more than once a day, sometimes even more than that! I attribute my sewing skills to that little donkey. 

Soon Eeyore was so filthy that my mother could stand him no longer. She took it away, maybe I was asleep, maybe at school. I think I was six or seven. I went into a deep mourning period. I was filled with such a deep sadness it was paralyzing. I remember singing a sad song with many verses about a pony. The chorus went like this...

My pony is lost to me, to me.

My pony is lost to me. 

He ran away one day, one day.

My pony is lost to me.

I think my parents realized I was not going to give up looking for my donkey. Where could he possibly be? Then suddenly, I found him! The "Easter Bunny" had left Eeyore under the cover for the typewriter. I was reunited and happy again, until Eeyore disappeared again in the same way a couple of months later. I was once again plunged into despair. I looked and looked for him. He must be hidden somewhere. I had found him once before...

When I was 10, my mother asked grandma for the pattern. Even though years had passed, I had continued to ask where Eeyore was on a regular basis. It must have driven her crazy. She sewed me a new Eeyore. He had gray fur and a black mane and hair on his tail. He had beautiful sad eyes. I danced with him in circles, in the backyard. I held him by his front legs and sang him a song. A song of rejoicing, of wonder, of joy at his rebirth.

 

Eeyore, Reborn!

Fish in my dream (wedge)

This is the strangest book I found. It starts off as a letter to myself. Then I record three days worth of dreams. There is no analysis, only the facts. This represents my tendency to start and then stop doing things. My children can attest to this annoying trait in me.

Dated Monday April 27, 1987

Dear Sue,

I've been meaning to convert this book onto a dream/journal/thought/struggle book for a few days now. Having listened to Phebe Hanson read excerpts from Eugene Delecroix's journal/diary I am inspired to do just this. I want to assure or make a contract with myself to write only for myself. I want to write with total honesty and not think too much about what I am putting down on these pages.

I woke up this morning with a vague work/refresh/vibrant feeling - could not have been from lots of sleep - could only have been from a dream. The only thing I can recall is a wide hallway with light (white?) files lining the walls.

Feeling happy today. Feeling like I want to and must live up to my responsibilities. Feeling like I want to do the best I can because I am worth it. Sue, you are a good person. I love you.

I did well, finally for Herb Grika, in imaginary architecture. He wanted us to experience astro-projection. I could not visualize anything but plunging and rising in the water. He wanted us to fly too fast - 10 seconds to California! He has got to be kidding! I think I might try some of the same technique to experience something - vague feelings on what I can possibly experience - but do it so that it is possible for me to do it. I don't know, maybe it's just silly - well - maybe it's not for me - but just the same.

Dated Tuesday, April 28, 1987

DREAM: A horse head in the back of pickup truck appearing to float above its missing body. The truck is in a junkyard full of trucks like itself.

Dated Wednesday, April 29, 1987

DREAM: Building like window broken many stories high.

Dated Thursday, April 30, 1987

DREAM: Dog; man hole covers, things partitioning of the work area; the dog was like the kind on Orphan Annie...in an earlier dream that flashes back to me...I was laying next to this handsome dark-haired man. His shirt was off. I laid down close to his face, near his shoulder at his suggestion. We kissed slowly, nicely. Later (after not doing much else)Cris walked in the door. I covered up my body (Not Naked mind you) with a snoopy sheet. Cris angrily took me home. Another part of my dream...Wedge car, driving Aunt Mary to the corner, she got lost. I see her outside crawling in the dirt. I go to a store. It is identified as Grantsburg County Store. I am confused. I am not in Grantsburg. There is more to this dream but the thoughts are rapidly escaping me. Driving to school I remember another part of my dream...Standing, crouching outside of Julie's bedroom - listening to her conversation with herself. I have the room bugged. A crowd of people around me are applauding and congratulating me for my act. I am ashamed. I stop.