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Dreamt that V’s wife drove up to my house in a car packed with her belongings; it had been arranged that she could store them all at my place. I offered to give her a hand. The house lacked storage space but I saw I could pile her things up against a wall in my bedroom, which was enormous, bare, di…

Swam ten laps at 6 am. Now I feel my stomach muscles. Read some Hemingway, then Carver again. Carver’s middle period. Large respect for him, the jagged voices, the catastrophes, the spare language and the striving for spare imagery. In such a landscape of struggle, panic, despair, the old images he…

I am a woman. I (i) long to be of service (ii) like domestic order (iii) am socially quite skilful—at organising lists of appointments etc (iv) can do basic cooking (v) feel an urge to fill gaps where otherwise chaos, awkwardness, discomfort (physical, emotional, social) might occur (vi) like to ma…

R says that now is the time when I should consider what giving up my separateness could mean, that if I live with him I will of necessity become ‘cook and bottle-washer’. Painfully I consider these propositions. But how could I not live with him? Could I fight him about the housework? Could I make …

On the spare bed at R’s in the afternoon I try to sleep, counting my breathing, but wide awake. Something’s gone. I know what it is: the necessity for stoicism. A hard jacket’s been taken off me. At first what I notice about its absence is a kind of blank surprise—then a fencelessness. My thoughts …