So why study the life and work of an artist you've never liked? Because you follow an impulse and do not question it, just move toward understanding. And over time you get why the impulse came - to hold up a mirror, offer a glimpse of self-knowledge you might not get otherwise. Readings in Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet's Life(Tom Clark, 2000):

[Olson's] dread of the blank page remained strong, a residue of his fear of the formal occasion of composition, whose challenges awakened in him old demons of self-demand. ... [H]e would sidestep the problem by doing his writing elsewhere, on quite literally any scrap of paper ... which came to hand at the moment of inspiration. (pp270-71)

and

"I have started so many birds of it [the Maximus series] not yet brought down I have to watch that the gun don't haul me up in the air, from firing itself dizzy." (p. 235)

and

his compulsive phobic relation to temporality: "I have been 'rushing,' sort of, stealing all the time I could get all my life.... It has always been a race.... [It] was compelling enough for me to continue along the same course even without interruption ... almost any time lost from the pursuit was more than I could stand." In his battle against time, family perennially lost out. (p. 274)

As good an example of Aspy obsessiveness as I have read. And on and on. Me hermano.

Speaking of brothers, artguyJim writes that he will visit us next weekend, driving up the 350 miles from Yolo to attend the annual Harvest Ball in Eagleville/Surprise Valley, 50 miles further on from here. Jim is a sculptor-in-wood of some renown, at least in California, and the person who throws the party is a former student of his, another sculptor of some renown, at least in New York. Oh but it will be very good to see him, who is like family to me in his kindness and camaraderie over the years. I own several of his sculpted pieces - mostly famously and beautifully a pair of carved rattlesnakes coiled around one another within a rattle-shaped box, a large piece I keep in storage because this house is too small to display it in.

Cool days and chilly nights. The light, the air feel and smell already of autumn. Big changes ahead, for certain. Tomorrow night we will be pleased to witness the Blue Moon of August 2012 rising over the Warner Mountains. It must be time to rearrange all the furniture ...

Mowing mowing mowing made a nice smooth yard of many greens and textures - the "lawns" comprising alfalfa, salsify, white and yellow sweet clovers, white clover (not enough!), wild asters, dandelion, bull thistle, sow thistle, and some actual grasses. The feel of the place really is quite sweet when the greens are all tall and flourishing. It's like standing in a fallow field: one keeps alert for foxes. Alas, however, it is yard, and must at intervals be cut. So yesterday all day I dragged the machine around the place and carted heaps of moist green clippings to the compost piles. Nothing burns hot as alfalfa there. And then afterward set the oscillating sprinkler going to recover everything in its slow rhythms.

I wish I had the physical juice to make a garden. But that ain't happening anymore. So I have some big planters filled with squash and tomato and herb plants, comfrey and yarrow here and there. We had an early frost night before last and probably last night, killing back the vegetables' outermost leaves. It's hard to get a full growing season at this altitude. I must do more research to find seeds for species bred to Siberia. Well, High Country Gardens for one is a good catalog for that. I must make room to start things indoors - invent a hanging nursery for the east windows. Then maybe one year finally we may get to taste a homegrown tomato.

Rough week, rough weekend. Not for the household as a whole. But for me a series of fumblings and bumblings and frustrations at every turn, howlings and wailings and weeps, topped off by an ill-conceived jaunt yesterday evening to show my support for the recent marriage of a friend.

I thought the town's name "Adin," which is 40 miles west of here through the mountains, yet for some reason still conceived of it as Canby, another, smaller town only 20 miles west on the same highway. So I misjudged the travel time and the expense of fuel, and spent a week's grocery money on gas and was 30 minutes late to the celebration.

I was surprised and glad, for the couple, to see the large size of the gathering in the little community hall there. I had my brother with me; Husband wisely stayed home, more accepting of his social limitations. And he had to work.

But I drove forth bravely, as always envisioning happy smiles of welcome and hugs and dances and new persons met and befriended. And as always confronted instead with the vastness of my capacity for self-delusion. I knew exactly one person there - the bride - and she was preoccupied, naturally. I had met the new hubby and he greeted me warmly, but as I was about to utter his name my anxiety froze my brain, convinced me it was wrong, and I faltered over it, seeming to have forgotten it instead. Thought paralysis - the Aspy reaction to social stress.

So B and I sat alone at our table on the periphery, fidgeting, watchful for our friend the bride so we might tell her how lovely was her dress and exclaim over her rings and wish her well. She walked from table to table, chatting and laughing, but returned to the front of the room before getting to us. And then a grace was said by the local pastor, and the entire assembly stood as one and rushed forward to load their plates with feast. My spirit sank through the floor: I would never be able to join a throng of indifferent unknowns in order to fill our plates, and anyway the question was moot - the offering was lasagna and bread and three beautiful decorated sheet cakes, all delicious-looking to and inedible by my brother, who has celiac disease (gluten sensitivity), and by me, determined to stay wheat-free out of solidarity.

We hadn't come for the food, anyway, and my stress level peaked with the forward rush of the crowd, and I took brotherB by the hand and fled with him out the building's back door. To compensate a little for the beautiful food he did not get to eat, I bought him a chocolate bar at the local mercantile, and then we drove sedately over the mountain passes and past the pastures with their hundred cows and finally into our driveway. We walked in the door, and Husband inquired, and I burst into tears.

So it is resolved: henceforward, however much I want to attend such events, however close I may feel to the celebrants, my response will be "We are unable to attend social events, but our thoughts are with you." And they will be. Because I do love people so much. But they terrify me.