"The tree exemplifies nature as it relates with humans, feeling around the edges of our concepts, sensing openings in our awareness and forming alliances.

It enjoys contributing to our life, though there's no individual consciousness, per se.

The "tree" just chooses to focus western juniper, volcanic basalt."

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, from "Pure Immanence". Hello, the Roses. New York: New Directions, 2013.

"He could have spoken in his own name only if the machinic assemblage that was producing particular statements in him had been brought to light. But there is no question of that in psychoanalysis: at the very moment the subject is persuaded that he or she will be uttering the most individual of statements, he or she is deprived of all basis for enunciation. Silence people, prevent them from speaking, and above all, when they do speak, pretend they haven't said a thing: the famous psychoanalytic neutrality. The Wolf-Man keeps howling: Six wolves! Seven wolves! Freud says, How's that? Goats, you say? How interesting. Take away the goats and all you have left is a wolf, so it's your father... That is why the Wolf-Man feels so fatigued: he's left lying there with all his wolves in his throat, all those little holes on his nose, and all those libidinal values on his body without organs. The war will come, the wolves will become Bolsheviks, and the Wolf-Man will remain suffocated by all he had to say. All we will be told is that he became well behaved, polite, and resigned again, "honest and scrupulous." In short, cured. He gets back by pointing out that psychoanalysis lacks a truly zoological vision: "Nothing can be more valuable for a young person than the love of nature and a comprehension of the natural sciences, in particular zoology.""

D & G A Thousand Plateaus, London & New York: Continuum, 2004.  42-43. 

"At that time I still knew hardly anything of the creative gift for music with which the canine race alone is endowed, it had naturally enough escaped my but slowly developing powers of observation; for though music had surrounded me as a perfectly natural and indispensable element of existence ever since I was a suckling, an element which nothing impelled me to distinguish from the rest of existence, my elders had drawn my attention to it only by such hints as were suitable for a childish understanding; all the more astonishing, then, indeed devastating, were these seven great musical artists to me. They did not speak, they did not sing, they remained generally silent, almost determinedly silent; but from the empty air they conjured music. Everything was music, the lifting and setting down of their feet, certain turns of the head, their running and their standing still, the positions they took up in relation to one another, the symmetrical patterns which they produced by one dog setting his front paws on the back of another and the rest following suit until the first bore the weight of the other six, or by all lying flat on the ground and going through complicated concerted evolutions; and none made a false move, not even the last dog, though he was a little unsure, did not always establish contact at once with the others, sometimes hesitated, as it were, on the stroke of the beat, but yet was unsure only by comparison with the superb sureness of the others, and even if he had been much more unsure, indeed quite unsure, would not have been able to do any harm, the others, great masters all of them, keeping the rhythm so unshakably."

Investigations of a Dog

Jessie's curly hair. a shower in a diner, their baby. I have designer sandals and matching socks I pull over the sandals, this is very cool, very me. And plastic bags that fit over the socks. her husband is beside me, unresponsive, hating this, eyes closed. doesn't want to talk to us. I realise (she lets me know) the bags are just packaging, not fashion. The sandals are supposed to go over the socks. Still I can wear it that way too, it's very hip, no one else will wear it. 

"My wife whose calves are sweet with the sap of elders..."
Free Union, Andre Breton

I began a new story over the last couple of days, and yesterday felt such relief to have it find a little momentum, travel a little way on its own.

Immediately I am stuck again, wheels spinning. The problem is a composite character, who I thought I would make a little bit this person and a little bit that. But I am writing about a family, and it seems to me that no family can be composite; each member is precisely balanced in response to the others, and it seems that the biographical details of a person are also balanced like cards in a card house, and that no choice is random. So I want someone who played rockabilly in real life to now play blues, but my imagination won't have it. It's not TRUE. This man from the mines played rockabilly, that man from the refinery played the blues. This man from the mines had duck-tail hair and his friends wore suits. That man from the refinery had long hair and his friends wore beards. The man from the mines told his sad story in loops, a confused truth of heroism and pity. The man from the refinery could only tell other stories, because his own was lost. The facts of each story seem so absolutely interdependent and necessary to me. And the truth has a stranglehold, because I can't write the truth. 

I keep thinking about that willow tree that Rousseau planted with his cousin - the diversion of water, the vigour and violence of the tree and the channel getting chopped up by the uncle, that the whole endeavour was so exciting that they held no grudge about the destruction. reading at the same time as the Deleuze about rhizomes, thinking the channel as a rhizome that breaks out of the structures of a tree. reading at the same time as Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge Hello, the Roses, - when I see a plant I expand my boundaries, it 'collapses its boundaries'. this is the one phrase that seems to me to be untrue, or I don't know yet how it is true. I think she is right that a plant Does Something in communication, that the attribution of intention is not actually a fallacy - because intention is an emergent property, and human experience of intention as independent, self-willed, self-propelling is the real fallacy. but 'collapses its boundaries' in being seen... I don't believe or don't get. 

so hard to remember my dreams at the moment. one last night was about carpet. there I was looking at the wooden floor, with one patch of vintage carpet - a mottled brown and cream pattern, with large floral indentations. I began to see how this carpet, although it was a relic of an earlier decor, would actually look wonderful throughout these rooms. it would suit the rest of the decor and the room so much better than the shining wood. 

Wake up, do a rain dance with a bloody nose. Smoke is the second thought of the day. But sitting at my desk, looking out the window, trees still rustle and shine in the wind. It's funny how their acquiescence to movement - to the movement of another force - makes them seem very alive. And if they were dead the movement would be more brittle. But the wind is not alive, unless

I went around the windows looking for air leaks, and discovered that most of them actually had condensation holes. I stuffed paper napkins in the holes, ousting a small gecko from one of them. still the smog gets in here and there and we have faintly sore eyes, lips, nostrils.

workers on the cherry pickers and construction sites without respirators. crowded streets. air the colour of milky tea. across the water somewhere peat-land smoulders on and on. 

N suggests cures for writer's block:

-Watch a lot of anime
-Fix a bike
-Watch Macgyver
-Actually consume laxatives
-Listen to some music

two dreams about friends.

One is about Meredith, at College Place. I go to visit with someone else who is showing me her life. she has things up on the walls about her next trips - she takes annual trips with friends and plans them down to the last detail. I see that she has nothing else in her life. she's very pale and dry, almost corpse-like, with painfully dry lips.

the other involves a boat trip or bus trip, by the coast in south america, we see a house that has iced over - more like a silo sitting in the water. Katrina's there and cuddling me, it's sweet and lovely. 

Dreamed about a boarding house. There's an older woman leaving - some kind of drama around this. She's beautifully groomed. I think I have to try to sort out the drama and convince her to stay, even though I don't really know what's going on, it's not my job, she doesn't really relate to me. There's a large and (to me) very special, valuable pack of cards of a particular type, sealed. I'm excited about them but she's not.

dream-words: adoption - witness/witless - Red Lakes - Victoria

---

We're staying at LA's for her birthday weekend. I've forgotten to get her a present. I want to have a shower so I hop in - she's already put it on - I'm wearing underpants, I start to pee in the shower - she comes to hop in - she put it on for her and not me - I get out to let her have it and I dribble pee on the floor - swipe it with my foot - I'm in the toilet room sitting on the toilet by the window, I try to pull the clear patterned shower curtain across the window it's very short. There's a public swimming pool outside, kids gather to start watching me - I try to make it more private. I go into the bedroom where everyone is taking a nap. I pat a guy's head because I think it must be Nic but I realise she has three other guests and none of them are Nic. she's asleep in the next room. I didn't realise she was going to have guests other than me, that it's a big weekend and they've brought presents. I start to massage her feet, that at least is nice for her. 

I dream we're living with my parents, it's a split-level house. To get to work in the mornings I have to go through my parents' bedroom. I wake up, I'm grumpy, I'm going through, maybe that's where I get dressed in the mornings. Nic's already up and about. He's left my vibrators on mum's bed or near there. I'm irritated with him, it's a privacy violation and a dumb idea but then I start thinking maybe I'm grumpy because I haven't come for ages. I realise there's a Hitachi Magic Wand there which I've never bothered using because I'm irritated with him about sex toys. So I decide to use it. I lie down and start figuring it out - it has a panel with a music selection on the back, headphones, all kinds of attachments and gadgetry.

As I'm figuring it out my mum walks in. I'm surrounded by toys and lube, it's obvious what I'm doing. I put my hands out to cover all that and say something really grumpy. Nic has walked in after her and is delighted that I was going to use it and finds all this really funny. My mum has walked off, either mutually embarrassed and annoyed at me for the violation or pissed off that I'm being so grumpy. I'm annoyed and humiliated. I walk up to the next (split) level to continue getting ready for work and my brother is in one of the bedrooms, he's young (a teenager) and slim and Asian. He tells me about once when the same thing happened to him and I'm so grateful, it makes me feel heaps better. 

Dreamed of an African-American man, thick-set and with a short beard, walking in jeans and a black turtle-neck beside the pine plantations on the way into Taupo, near the flowering gorse.
-

Dreamed that I was consulting with a student, she wants to write an essay on a particular aspect of South African history. She's written an abstract, it's quite a well defined thesis. She's asking me what grade she would get for that sort of essay. I say it depends how well she develops the argument and how thorough and precise she is with her historical detail but the essay has a lot of potential. She says could it even be an A-? I say yes, trying to figure out how to tell her it could be an A if she works hard on it, but without encouraging her to have expectations for the grading.

I go on to lunch with my colleagues, which is in a large marquee. I'm talking to one of my colleagues about this, telling the story with irritation, rolling my eyes that she'd wanted to know the grade before writing the essay but maybe not saying that clearly. My colleague indicates something to me - I turn around and the student is beside me. I am embarrassed. I try to pick up the conversation with her about the essay again, tell her I think it will be good, and she's polite but I know she'd overheard and is upset and annoyed. Eventually I say something like - you talk about these things to let off pressure at work but it doesn't necessarily indicate what you really think. What I really think is that the essay has a lot of potential. She nods and seems to accept that.

Then I'm trying to get food. One colleague wants something to cool his mouth; he's vegetarian and maybe he's eaten some chili. I indicate a couple of salads, including a tomato salad. In looking for vegetarian food I end up with half a roll of compressed spinach on my plate. I have to move this away from my boss's backside, which is inadvertently very close to it. Then I'm looking for other food for myself and others.

Somewhere in there are two versions of the "seed of life" pattern, one only in outline and one more filled in, but a little further out of sight. 

a dream I ignored (I think) from a while ago - I didn't know how to describe it but it feels important to write it down because I ignored it, quite willfully.

It's a kind of elevated twisting slide, like a waterslide or a luge, on quite high scaffolding. it extends from here across the border into one of the Koreas. 

after a long walk fell asleep on the couch facing the back cushion. wake to the neighbours arguing, palms together and fingers loosely laced above my forehead. the sound is a concrete floor plane and several sharp lines/strips hovering above that at vertical angles, past arguments, virtual arguments. teenage girl slams the front door and calls the lift.

it was a long walk with a neighbour and her baby that made me sleep, we were all too hot. neighbour in pre-grief, a family illness, anger and tension rigid. woodpecker flies to a tree. 'damn it, why are you in a state, my baby?' 'the colour of melanoma is black'. kingfisher flies to a tree, blue wings shining far off. I can't make work in this, there's no hope. yes, I feel that I don't want to spread my misery around. but a project, an event, a container, a funnel, a channel....

"In a moment the plants, the channel, the hollow, the willow, everything was destroyed, everything was ploughed up; without there being, during this terrible dispatch, any other word uttered except that exclamation, endlessly repeated: an aqueduct! he cried as he shattered everything, an aqueduct! an aqueduct!"

J-J Rousseau, Confessions.  Oxford: OUP, 2008. p23

"Besides translating inner images into a painting, for example, we unconsciously translate inaudible sounds into images, or a spring peeper translates its multidimensions aurally.

What sounds like a million frogs is a young mother and her twin girls, flute and voices casting across rustling foliage a dimension not in time but intensity, like light in all the dark places of inner listening."

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, from "DJ Frogs". Hello, the Roses. New York: New Directions, 2013. 

"my horse"

A dream about LK. the lower half of her face, broad, American housewife face, pretty in a middle-aged way - on a screen - a billboard screen - someone's making a movie or advertisement, mocking her, at the same time it's being projected/played, it's a campaign. It says that she's a narcissist, a fool, something like that. I'm horrified, people have come to this conclusion, it's exposed now, there will be no saving her. the whole town has turned against her. then I find out a little more - I realise there's a reason for it, that she was on a committee and had - self-serving, almost on a whim - decided to block funding for the town football team. the publicity is both a defamation campaign and a neutral/sympathetic documentary about that. she's a 'stonewaller', is the idea from the campaign. 

"let me have my victimhood just this once!"

Plant Society