1/30/98

While I'm reading silently, a tape is playing which represents my thoughts "about" the poem. Then I read the poem aloud. While I'm reading aloud, I'm recording the poem. Then I play the recorded poem while I write something about that. Then I read what I've written while I've listened to the poem.

2/6/98

To take a note is to think about it. To publish it is to speak it out loud.

Also: "Out loud" is said louder than "aloud."

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There are people who think that to "work with" is to subordinate. But most people sense, even if they don't know, that this is true.

2/8/98

What's The Matter (Daria Fain)

Get material from consultants

Brainstorm w/ peformers as Tuesday rehearsals

Using "art of memory"
Frances Yates
(use of "locii")

Camillo- theater of Camillo

7 different planets
7 rows- each row has a myth
store all knowledge in different place

Gorgon myth, narcissus
Persephone, etc

(ink sketch of a radiating sun)

Kathleen's article
Is there a place of origin that we can relate-

4/3/98

"God" would be an infinitely slower process than anything ordinarily imaginable, if it did exist. Perhaps the earliest monuments- Easter Island, Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Egypt and of Mexico. The same with "locale." This is a permanent "locale"- only a relationship of forces, where this locale, under those rarest of circumstances... The patient waiting attiutude of the mystics, the wild-eyed supplicants, the loneliest of ecstacies. Perhaps the body is the true unconscious of the mind. We try to separate mind from the body in the same way the child separates mother and father. To divide is to conquer. The body and the mind are not like negative and postive, but an endless dualism like male and female. Even in ths case, we too easily fall into thinking of the "war between the sexes," akin to "war." But "war" at the very least, is a sign of anxiety. It is evidenced by an unwillingness to wait. Ideals pit us against each other as they pull us towards each other. We set ideals before ourselves, hoping for an ultimate surmounting of the dialectic. But, like infinity set against limit, there can only be an oscillation, not a victory or resolution . One "spurs" the other, acts as a spur of the other, even in their occasional opposition. But this requires as much the ability to tolerate dissatisfaction as it does to combat what it perceives as the obstacles.

We always come back, that is the body. It is continually our spur, as much as it is a receiving and transformative mechanism. Our minds "ride" our bodies, much as the horse-tamer rides the bucking bronco. It is a powerhouse which will throw us around if our minds cannot comprehend it and have the ability to loosen the reins as much as tightening them. And still, as we ocassionally loosen the reins and let it go as passionately devouring it can be one of life's pleasures, and we know then to ask it to go into the background again as our mind takes over.

Sleep is like this. We have to let ourselves fall into it and this is partly why the dream is the model for an ongoing daily mechanism which graphically displays the mind and body relationship.

The patient had observed a woman give birth to a baby in a situation reminiscent of an earlier time in her life when she was still living with her son. She had to help the mother give birth but there was nothing to cut the umbilical cord with . But the baby was born with teeth and then she and the baby and the mother sit down and eat dessert at a restaurant. The all sit down to eat Creme Brulet. Then she is going up some shaky stairs.

Although this dream can be analyzed on many levels, the part I am interested in right now is how the mother can make peace with the parting of the body (to me, notably the issue of separating from the mother and still find ecstatic pleasure in life for herself.) In fact, she has never really left her child (her baby) and despite all the pain and crisis, life can be still enjoyed.

But this requires negotiations. The table is the symbolic site of negotiations, as the meal symbolically represents the totemic rite of of incorporation through oral ritual. In fact, the dream, the Creme Brulet of all pleasure sustains a special place in our feelings- child and mother are both still entitled to it, in spite of separation and loss.