that feeling is like cold ground around a transplanted root, bruised root. dumb about whether to breathe or grow. and sending out one long, blind, constantly seeking feeler, looking for the old bearing - are you there are you there are you there? hunting, fossicking. disturbing the earth. interrupting every train of thought. unsettling every environment and every routine. I've only just come to not feel it for a little while, it seems, although maybe there were other times. right now it's back in force.

N says there is a cafe with a second story and a view over the lake. If I set up there tomorrow morning I  may find an orientation. if that isn't suitable I'll just go back to the cafe at the women's museum. comfy chairs. busy, but in a nice way, just non-English chatter. people in their thirties, forties, fifties, with books and business papers, newspapers. one skinny older man walked through in aviator glasses and leather gloves, smoking a cigarillo as he went. young waitress smiling and quick to help us at every turn.

Writing orients me; a plan to write begins it. this is the most important thing, more important than whether or not to go to Ha Long Bay, a question which has worried me all day, because I could not resolve whether it would bring me closer to writing or further away. the contradictory answers perfectly balanced, the feeler-root confused, unable to go further this way or that. confused between the true thing which is a substitute for the long-loved false thing, and the false thing which was sat in the place of the true and was a nurse to the true, and might still....

oh - I mean - amour-de-soi, I think, vs amour-propre. because the recommendation for Ha Long Bay came from "the subject supposed to know". and oh but DID know, DID know! besides which it's a world heritage site. and maybe the healing effect of nature would outbalance self-disgust at participating in the desecration of nature? or stay in the city with horns. 

We went for a walk this morning around Hoan Kiem Lake - got about half-way and diverted into the Women's Museum, where I was unsettled by how much I have forgotten about the Vietnam War, and how much I never knew. Along the way there was a group of friends in their late thirties or early forties, relaxing by the lake - they included a couple, and the others persuaded N to take a photo of the couple, who were draped over each other on a park bench, cuddling, peacefully in love, her in thick pink socks with high heels kicked off....

40% of the armed forces in the South were women....

Bun cha for lunch - broth with add-your-own noodles, beef rissoles and wonderful mixed fresh herbs and lettuce - then back through the traffic for a nap. Reading Joseph Massey. Wondering how to pull myself together to get anything done.

We're in Hanoi. Every time we go somewhere else it becomes clear again that we live in the least cool city in Asia. In bed in the hotel now with our balcony door open - it's rowdy with traffic out there and there's a guy at some night spot nearby playing guitar and singing in Vietnamese, amplified, with the gentle inflections of Elvis's upper range and a loose melodic structure that, pleasantly, I can't quite arrange into a tune. I'm tempted to close the door to quieten things down but the fresh air is so good - it's 17 degrees out there. At home you wilt if you have the windows open for any time at all.

 We just ate dinner at a bright, bustly multi-storey restaurant down the road, and then took a little walk by the lake nearby. There was a crowd of carollers in white boiler-suits with JESUS stamped across the front. They seemed a bit timid in their singing and dispersed pretty quickly, while another crowd, of mature ladies dancing in formation to house music, went hard for track after track. There were Ceroc dancers too, and every other person seemed to have a red cocker spaniel. Cars and motorbikes talk to each other with their horns, and to walk across the road you just walk slowly with intent into the flow of the traffic. It doesn't feel scary. One block over from the hotel is an intersection lined with street bars. Many dozens of young Vietnamese in their 20s sit on the road and footpaths on short plastic stools, drinking beers for about 30c each and huddling together in their black puffer jackets against the cold. It's winter here.

The concierge gave us detailed advice on what to do tomorrow but I am so tired, and we have plenty of time here. Grandma's funeral is at 1.30 tomorrow, so I want to be careful and thoughtful with what I do. I keep feeling some kind of - like, inflammation in my old attachment wound, is the only way I can describe it. Mind going back to the same old sore spots, wants to worry over them, fruitlessly, then to pursue something to try to ease it.

I read Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman on the plane. Mostly I think it's about time, proposing fiction as a kind of navigation tool for the future. But I don't think I like it, because every scenario Katurian proposes has only two options, bad and worse. Even his pig story has just two options - bad for me or bad for them. Tupolski's story is the alternative that turns the ending - bad vs miraculous craft, but that doesn't work for me. Caryl Churchill's  Far Away begins on similar territory - the working out of the individual's complicity or responsibility (ability to respond) to brutal power - but it ends up in much more interesting places to me. Weirdly it seems more socially mimetic as it continues and becomes more fantastic - while McDonagh seems to end up expressing something about a personal limitation? Neither of those thoughts is right, precisely. Churchill with the war incorporating animals, weather etc seems to go into some substrate of the social, into a base increment of defensive collectivity. McDonagh... what is he saying, that to save a child from the horrors of the imagination requires care plus prodigious mathematical foresight in artistry, to the point where it's inconceivable fantasy? That just seems like bullshit. And it's this elaboration - the sense that he is through all this *saying something which must be fathomed* that makes it seem weaker than Churchill's transparency.

today was a lot of slipping in and out of the rain - you can take two steps from shelter to a taxi and you are soaked through to the skin, exhausted, not wanting to wear a seatbelt because it presses wet clothes against you, worrying about the box of books in the boot and whether you can get them safely into the apartment building. the night is very blue and books want to be read. but tomorrow to hanoi, whether some quiet and restoration and stillness can be found there. in all the traffic there could be, like in bangkok, places for budding waterlilies in soft pinks and greens. I'm getting dogged by despair and need something written, something accepted. and need hours and days of quietness. need to write something for the funeral. they are writing on her coffin so I wrote some words but it is cruel because if I feel where we are together most it is three years old, holding hands and crossing the road. holding hands in the big wind and stopping and holding the lamp-post to not get blown away. on the way to granddad's shop. or cuddling up in the morning listening to the radio. hanging out the washing together. and there was a mangler. and there was a candy floss machine. so what to say? my tummy hurts, I want to go to sleep, like that....

medical insurance today. running through policies, took hours. she had a funny little laughing wheeze when she said most anything. and very bright white diamond rings. quick to notice N's changes in mood. stacking up the possibilities. Ectopic pregnancies, twins, hydatidiform moles, neo-nate care, cancer, psychologists, acupuncture, evacuation, repatriation, contact lenses..............................

My grandma, today at around 6.20 pm NZ time; peacefully, with family around her. 

Last night I dreamed that I had taken up an academic position in Hamilton. I seemed to have inherited it, and a large house on campus, that had been owned by my stepdad's uncle. The house was in a poor state inside from long disuse - dusty, dirty, things scattered everywhere. I was going through the books, trying to put them in order and decide what to take to my office. Most were philosophy. There was a huge old hard-cover copy of the works of a particular philosopher - it was the size of about ten bibles but all bound as a single book with one ridiculously long spine. It was unwieldy and and I was excited about owning it, telling myself I'd read it and feeling like this would legitimise my position but at the same time - deep down I knew I wouldn't. I didn't know what the philosopher was about, I didn't know where to start, and I couldn't even figure out if it was his works or - it seemed almost to be a compendium of works by others on him.

The great-uncle's son was there working on the garden - he was also an academic at the same university but he didn't look like one - he was too rough and physical. I asked him about his teaching and he deflected the question. I could see he was deeply uncomfortable and disillusioned as an academic, knew it was not the job he was good at, that in fact he was a gardener at heart and that was all he wanted to do. 

I can't think what I saw today, so I must have seen things I don't recognise. the secretary leaning her hips back against the wall, relaxed and smiling in her brown bob, giving good holiday wishes. N's face a little the wrong colour and with slick hairline when he brought out the dinner, as though he is getting sick too. a photo of patea beach, close to where my sister and mother and aunt are now, ready for when my grandma leaves us. the beach is silvery brown and held together with cutty grass. cliffs layer into the distance and in the foreground there are low silver log fences, to stop people driving through. but it looks deserted.

at the home my grandma is asleep in a fold-out chair. my mother is asleep in my grandma's bed. my aunt is watching them both. time is liquid.