Journal, Life

Reading tonight notes from a journal written in the year after John died.

Careful notes.

Quick notes.

Notes for a lecture.

Notes from a lecture.

Thoughts, dreams (troubling dreams), worries, hopes, dreams (hopeful dreams).

Drawings, maps, dreams:

With a woman. She’s not very attractive, but because she wants me to I begin to caress her stomach and then her breasts. Finally we take off our clothes, both excited. Once inside her I find her so loose I can hardly feel anything. Still I thrust until I am about to come. Then I pull out, still erect, still excited. As I lie there she picks up a huge polaroid and takes my picture. Then she walks over to the door and opens it. In walk five or six of my students. They are witnesses she has brought, and they see me in unequivocal adultery. She has planned this so she can blackmail me. Before I know it she escapes and I am left with the students. I tell them something about my relationship with my wife that appeases them somewhat. The woman has taken something of mine, but she has also left her purse, so she will have to come back.

The journal is bristling with notes, including ideas for a book about John, who has just died, and a book about standing as metaphor.

Those two books at the heart of this year’s work. 20 years later.

Entries from the trip from Land’s End to the Orkney Islands.

My mind was buzzing, my emotions strong.

Shit, I say to myself while reading it.

What am I doing now?

 

8 May 1992

[opposite a page with a drawing of Avebury’s standing stones]

“A Walk with Richard Long”

South

wind

chalk

uniformed school children

a skirt over chubby legs

Reisebus–HH

trail

ravens

snail

trees

wind

figure on top of Silbury hill

green

photo

stile

white cow

130 feet

“Don’t Climb Fence”

birdsong

heavy steel harrow

East

verge

traffic

good boots

Roman road

high grass

car park

gate

cows

stream

long, uphill path

West Kennet long barrow

115 strides long

dark

megaliths

small flat stones (anti-megaliths)

votive offerings: wild flowers, crossed sticks, remains of candle, carrot

wind so hard it makes barbed wire sing

no sidewalk

trace of path in grass

white-and-grey bird feathers

traffic, too close

hills

[does Richard Long risk his life on roads like this?]

West Kennet

thatched cottage

North

motorist gives way and waves

a line of stones in a field full of sheep

photos

step in fresh sheep shit

lambs

wisp of wool

round barrows on horizon

another hiker, with beard and backpack (Richard Long?)

dead sheep

West

stone circles

sketch from hill

wind