July 2022: Feeling the need to produce something, I pulled a journal at random from my stack of poetry journals and began to work on the year 1988 which only had 77 posts, but I managed to get at least five solid journal entries including a few Napa pieces, and some teaching notes, which I had previously neglected, and the originals of at least three poems so now 1988 has 112 posts, plus several drafts of poems that could be turned into poems. 

I found the real first draft of SUMMER SQUASH IN A WINTER GARDEN, I had no idea I had written it as a prose piece that had nothing to do with John. Summer squash, prosepoem There’s basically nothing left in the journal to cull for the blog, but revisiting and mining the past is never easy. Once again I tried to go into my South American journal and discovered that my Ecuador journalism missing. Also I didn’t date a lot of the pieces so it made it harder to figure out when things were written.

Poem poster in the style of Kenneth Patchen for Bay Guardian poetry contest

I love how the scanning process resurrects bits of this and that, and only when I began to assemble the bits in this blog, that I discovered the date, and my working notes, as well as the original Bay Guardian poster. These posters were in color, BTW. I might have a copy of one of them somewhere in my silk paintings (to do).

Scanned 2015; added 3/18

Shell, charcoal drawing

Shell, charcoal drawing, 1988

Letter to GLB, re. JOS’s Dear John birthday surprise

Journey of Clay: Joel Bennett, Potter, Sculptor 12/22/88

Mike Tuggle at 50, by Tom Roth, Dec 18, 1988

West County Craftsmen 12/15/88

Leonard Cirino, Maureen Hurley to read at Markey’s Cafe

 

Eight Local Artists Selected for School Residency 11/88

Students published in CPITS poetry anthology “True Wonders”

In Tikal

In the jungles of Tikal, I collected parrot feathers, small red flames or bright blood embedded in the grass. There is a cacophony of screeching and racuous laughter ringing through the jungle. Toucans carrying their beaks of burden, shiny black and yellow trumpets, eye us from the tops of trees by the ancient reservoir. 

The incessant thrum of insects is so loud it goes right through you like an electronic sound, amplified. The walls of vegetation hiding imaginary speakers that vibrate. It’s so loud, the surface vibrates the loose cotton sticking to us in early morning.

Promise of heat. Red road, jungle soil. Philodendron, palmetto, liana. We follow an artificial waterway, strange rectangular slots to hold water like miniature watering troughs for animals. Why did the Maya make them? Or were they more recent earthworks?

We stumbled upon an old ruin, not restored like the others, with murals still intact. John treated it like a mountain to be climbed except he can’t get down again. The murals have something to do with sex. The temple is covered with mossy epiphytes. I direct him back down the wall, stone by stone, verbally describing the toeholds. If he fell, surely he would break something and we were far enough from civilization to be concerned. He did make it back down to terra firma again, but was a bit surprised by his own temerity. 

Howler monkeys in the distance, the unseen guerilla as well as the young soldiers in the jungle with their Uzis always at the ready—among the few tourists looking for a more ancient rhythm, trying to condone the 20th century.

Teaching journal, 11/15 Stephan Torre, guest artist

11/16 yesterday Steve Torre was my guest artist and we had a good time. He taught three classes. His board work on revision is good. As it turns out he’s moving to Jenner on December 1 so he will be a Sonoma county poet. Where he’ll live will make it difficult to get CPITS work nearby with Susan and Mike working the coast. He’s moving here with his on again off again girlfriend, Carol of several years one more to go.

I think he too has a self image of being impossible to live with. In many ways he is like John. I can see he wants it to work out. The easy friendship we have is still there, but the buzz and spark of last March has gone underground, thank God. We went out and got drunk on Chardonnay at Cricklewood and ate sautéed mushrooms and nachos for dinner. I have a splitting headache this morning.

He had to drive to Inverness last night and sleep on a musty futon, no stove. I hope he made it OK. We talked of teaching, poetry, past, relationships, more poetry, ideal mates, dreams, poetry and ex lovers, poetry poetry poetry. I should’ve offered him for some floor space to sleep, but I was afraid he would take it the wrong way, and so I said nothing.

From the first time I saw him I wanted to get to know him, The Sinker, Navarro Journal made me set up and really listen. I was drawn to him and that was in Cazadero two summers ago.

In March he was my guest artist for two days so I’ve only seen him four times and we’ve had numerous telephone conversations. Yet I feel I know him so well that he is a friend for life. You can meet so many people in a lifetime. And how many fall into that intimate wisdom so quickly? Sexual attraction plays a large part, sure, but it’s the attraction of the minds that’s even more compelling, even more sexy.

I sure had a crush on him last March. Actually I’m glad we’ve moved onto the friendship stage without acting on the other. Too complicated. I could’ve acted upon the other level any time last year but I was with John and I can’t get into this multiple partners thing. Now, I am free, all the rebound is they say and Steve is is taken. C’est la vie. That’s OK too I feel that our friendship will continue to grow anyway.

We were talking about futures. He said who knows? Maybe this time next year, I’ll be married. I see a lot of myself in him. He says I need a strong feisty women who won’t let me walk all over her with my ego. Someone to keep me in line. In that way he is a lot like John. I always called it the frying pan approach. John is a taurus, a bull. Steve is an Aquarius, all hot air. Well, I told him I was his boss lady as far as CPITS was concerned and he laughed.

He’s really on the fringes of CPITS and does short one to five session visit gigs. He needs a long 10 to 30 session residency. He says he prefers to teach adults at Mendocino community college. I don’t know what he’s going to do for work in Jenner. He still on disability from his accident.

It’s so refreshing writing poems as he teaches classes I always love the new voices that come through. See In Tikal

dream journal 11/15 & 16

Alice Kent asked me if I was available to sweep their enormous parking lot. I said yes, of course, happy to be working for them again. Dear Roger was still alive. They said would I be available during the holidays? I said I wasn’t sure and promised a replacement if John and I went to Mexico. I chose my old friend Kathy over a new friend who didn’t understand why I didn’t choose her. It was a case of mistaken loyalties. I knew Cathy, unruffled would fill in well. I had to go we are on the barrier guard to sweep the debris into the ravine. By the house, there is no guard, I was in danger of toppling in. There was an awful lot of work to do. The parking lot has grown exponentially. Lots of people coming in and going and I was all alone working.

Another dream: I was going to Napa State Hospital for a party. I was invited because of the work I had done there. I remember skipping across the lawn in a bounce. It was a major function and they were superintendents and principles from many schools there including from Mark West school. Ida Victorson was walking around the corner from the outdoor reception. I was going the same way but I wanted to avoid her and slipped into the main building to see some of my patient-friends. They were technicians I knew and no patients. I met the sister of a woman who took my workshop. I told her a couple of women from Napa State Hospital were very interested in my work and wanted the residency. As I began to tell her of the money situation in Napa had me stumped she turned to someone else, laughing. So, my work was not important to her. I thought of going to the other building where a meeting was taking place with corporate types eating chocolate chip cookies.

Dream journal 11/16 the back door of my grandmother’s house wouldn’t close so I pushed it extra hard and the lintel shifted. There was dirt that got in the way so I opened the door and saw the doorstep had fallen apart. And then tried to put it back together and I had to line up the inner core with the under core and put nails back in the holes and then slip the outer cap over the whole thing like a Chinese puzzle. It wasn’t easy to do. Eventually I got it back together and the core was like a tooth cap over the core. There were years of debris trapped under that cat. Dust, dry cereal, mulch.

Inside there were several of us of the same age and we were all related but we were adopted. Our father, told us that we were related to each other. One boy had already figured out that he was related to a judge and the similarity was striking. I was related to a soldier and a musician. There were five of us. Earlier, I had told one man I didn’t care who he was related to, I didn’t like him because he was mean and small minded.

We were all standing between the kitchen and dining room. I was bent over by the table doing something, picking up cans? I was a bit distracted. Was she a singer but she was a musician and an artist, a witch? I remember being surprised by the musician part. Was it classical? 

I remember trying to compare this mother whom I had never seen, with myself to get a better understanding of myself and it did not seem to help. Mainly because I don’t know who she was. She is a random name on a mailing list for the Russian River Writers’ Guild, I don’t think I’ve ever met her. But why was her name in my dream and was she a real person?

Journal entry, 11/7

 Wow, I thought I’d never fill this journal and I was determined to fill every page. I could not abide all that wasted paper. Somehow it was due to length of all the sections. I try to compartmentalize things by subject matter but I had no clear idea of how I wanted to divide them up, hence, when I’ve finished with one idea there was all this wasted leftover paper. That’s why, to follow the chronology of October and November I had to skip around. I kept running out of paper. I’m not always so scattered, the order looks worse than it actually is. It’s an order, all right. The order just is not linear. It was set up by the constraints of this journal that resisted filling. Tightwad that I am, I won’t buy another until this one is filled. Part of my resistance to writing is that John turns every little thing into writing. Sometimes I find it infuriating. Nothing is sacred. I was awakened at night, early dawn with his fierce scribbling. He can’t write quietly. He nearly punctures the page with his steel tipped pen. I won’t let him use my delicate felt tips anymore because he destroys them. But I guess that’s a thing of the past now. All things must come to an end like this section of the journal, adieu.

Dream workshop, with Elizabeth Herron 11/7

I am visiting my grandmother’s neighbor Erica Smollow. In the dream she is also Nurse Ray Perrencini whom I met in Cuzco. She’s not living in her big house, a place I housecleaned as a teenager, but in the small cabin with three beds and three children about a year old. One is hers and the others are accidents of fate. A friend’s, or daughters? The dream does not elucidate. 

The place is messy. Erica is in bed, she is exhausted. She is a woman alone. Her husband left her. The beds are covered with gold bedspreads. The clutter in her room is like my aunt Jane’s bedroom clutter when she lived in SF, clippings, stockings, piles of mail. 

Erica‘s bed faces the west window. Her head is at the other end by the front door. The twin bed is parallel, against the wall. The passageway between the beds leads to the back door. Against the opposite wall is the third twin bed, oxymoronic, I know. There was grit on the floor, so with a piece of material I began to sweep up. 

An old man was supposed to do this, he was paid to help her, but he stood smoking in the back doorway while I worked. Blankets were scattered on the floor. It took forever to pick up before I could even sweep. The babies were about a year old. What was Erica doing with all these young children? One was a dark-haired boy. 

At one point  I patted Erica‘s dark hair, and said I never knew you were a mommy three times over. How worn and pale she looked as if she were dying of something. (what I did not know is that she had MS, it would take 30 years to discover this). I sweep the wooden floor as best I can. Nothing can alleviate the desolateness of this one-room house, how has she come to this, this brilliant journalist of international repute?

Reverse the image: I am lying in bed exhausted from raising three small children alone. One as my own, the others were gifts. I couldn’t let them go, let them be a abandoned. A woman I think I know comes to visit. I see her silhouetted by the front door that barely clears the beds. I sleep with my head nearest to the front door because I like to look into the filminess of the desert, it’s like looking through milk glass. The windows at the foot of my bed offers the same featureless view but I like to look out onto the real thing not hindered by by the constraints of glass. Everything is so far removed as it is. I don’t need to get farther away. Besides, I can see the mountains from the front door. They face southwest. 

And I can see my visitor is taken aback by the condition by which we live. I can’t help that. Raising three kids on next to nothing wasn’t easy. My husband gone, dead, for all I care. Pablo helps when he can, he’s close to 100 and he can’t do much—in exchange for food and a place to sleep. That’s all that this place offers, a place to sleep. Everything else is on the floor. The spreads, the blankets. 

She comes in dressed in jeans looking of the world, a busier place than this. I can see the horror in her eyes but I am long past explaining, long past making excuses. Sometimes, all I can do is to crawl back into bed after work, still dressed in my slip and fall into a dreamless sleep. At least dreams are a refuge. 

Pablo really shouldn’t smoke so much. Ashes all over the place. The woman makes herself useful and begins to sweep the other present grit with a towel. There is a broom somewhere, Pablo had it last. He spends more time standing in the back doorway gazing off into the northwest. One day he’ll shuffle off in that direction. Sometimes I wish he would just go and get out of here. Then where would I be? A pretty kettle of fish. 

In late afternoon I love to watch the mottled blue shadows fall from the cottonwoods and jingle and dance on the wall. Especially in early spring and late summer when the sun begins to drop low in the sky again. Of course, if we lived in the southern hemisphere, seasons and directional information would be reversed. I am using my northern latitude sensibilities, from the northeast, that is New Jersey. 

This could very well be in Peru. The great desert. And no se. It would explain the presence of Pablo or is he Pepe? Living like this in one room and being better off than most. 

Summer squash, prosepoem

Sunday, November 6

The yellow squash plants are beginning to show the first signs of succumbing to winter. It begins as a small vegetable mold on the roof eventually coats the whole plant. Amid the new buds, one yellow summer squash shaped like a perfectly inverted bell. 

Acrid squash odor, crushed umbilicus. Pale white streaks among the overwhelming yellow, brighter and glossier than a lemon or an apple. Yellow, pure cadmium from the tube, so intense, it pushes the green garden air away with small vibrations of life. I want to ask it, why so yellow? The jealous sun takes its warm from the south, or are you kin to the summer sun? Small reminders of summer. 

Those vessels of light burn against the cooling soil, those furry leaves glisten with snail tracks prisms for the sun. Pale green stems against yellow orange blossoms curling their five arms around the fruiting body like fingers, or brain coral as it rises up, so phallic. The base root swelling and bursting through the boundaries of the star shaped bell, until it becomes crenelated like the sunset over the sea.

Green veins end in small claws. One set at the tip of the star-shaped flower, the other at the base, like two hands. One holding up the sky, the other holding up the sun as if from victory like a tiger without stripes, a coat of fine hair velvets the soft throat of the flower.

I remember picking the ones unpollinated, my grandmother taking the small egg suns dipped in flour pollen, frying them in butter like dinosaur tracks of the sun feeding me in late summer.

Long French curve of young leaves wrapped around embryonic clusters, diamond shaped, small flying saucers on launchpads. Large leaves jagged green hearts. Umbilicus, a small green eye, a rusted navel where the flower once raised its victorious hands towards the sun. Pointing in radical asymmetry in the direction away from the center. This extravagance of life too soon dies.

In the heat of summer, you can almost hear them growing, taught-skinned, ripening and bursting with seed—genetic code to carry them through winter. Small blind eyes in the soil waiting for the signal to begin.

The kitchen knife reveals their hidden star charts, the marrow and veins of space. Seeds sliced in half like a photographer’s negative of the night sky. Stars align in the direction of orbit.

These blossoms, bell-shaped, wine cups to drink the sun from, or knobby flying saucers severed by a knife. You rejoin the halves but the breach within your venous dealings but you can’t bridge the tension released by the knife, all that round symmetry released from a circular chamber discovers the straight edge and can never go back to that innocent immortal promise of eternity so lightly taken in summer’s mounting passion.

11/6/88

this eventually becomes 

• SUMMER SQUASH IN A WINTER GARDEN

Journal entry, 11/6 John Oliver Simon, Teresa and Sean, Guatemala

My neighbor is moving, tossing out lots of books. Always desperate for an interesting read, I scrounge through her growing bookpile in the dumpster. After all, this is how I found out about Douglas Adams and hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Mostly college catalogs and a book about asexual relationships. The play, She stoops to conquer. 

A blue notebook like the kind John uses. It says RJ Moon on the outside. Reverend Moon? Small tightass handwriting, science notes to page 59. Genetic engineering. Not my neighbor’s. Did she borrow it? How unfortunate the name, RJ Moon. Probably Robert John, not Reverend James. College catalogs for Oregon, Southern California, good old Whittier and redneck republicanism. Social low-calorie IQ and a catalog for Swarthmore. 

Will I jump anytime there’s a reference to John however indirect? Do I care that he graduated with the highest honors? Was it there he hardened into the habit of falling in and out of love every few years? I talk with Teresa and Sean, friends from the gringo trail, they reminded me that we tried to break up last fall as well. That said, it seems to be a pattern that hits a lot of people after heavy travel. 

Last year, we had to stick it out because of the abortion. This year, there is no excuse, no reason, only ourselves. They said they’ve been going through that too. Sean says medical school is worse than travel for putting strain on relationships. They didn’t seem too concerned, like this was another phase.Teresa did recommend to book on the changing couple, especially since John has a higher rate of switching partners. 

Hugh’s parents were married eight times, and his wife won’t let him walk away from it. John‘s card came yesterday, he writes about the emptiness inside his girlfriend niche, and the emptiness where I am space that specific Ness of who I am, the companion, the friend. He says he admires my mind, my creativity, who I am but can’t live with me because he can’t live with himself. He asks should I have been more direct about breaking up? Yes. But more than that, you didn’t have to break up to work through this. Asshole.

Lynn Watson tells me it’s hideous out there. All the men are schmucks. I worry about aids and trying to find a reasonably intelligent man who is compatible, who will push me further. John doesn’t have to prove he’s smart. He has a degree that is well documented. Rhodes scholar that he is. I, on the other hand, I’m always plagued with doubt and insecurity because of my dyslexia. I’m not trained academically. I did go to school and got my degrees but it was wasn’t exactly challenging. 

I need to be in the presence of minds burning bright as my own. In the presence of James Burke,I felt I was in the presence of a burning mind and it fired off so many sparks I could barely keep up, and I loved it. I loved the challenge. I worry about finding such a mind again. Teresa and Sean said they will be up in February and would like to have dinner with us, could we behave ourselves? They said they’ll just duck when the knives get flung. They said they were used to that sort of thing. February seems like such a long way off.

Dream Workshop with Elizabeth Herron 11/6 Luis

Sunday, November 6

Lying down on a thin matt at school watching in event. There is a choice between a blue shawl and a Guatemalan hanging to keep warm. She chooses the shawl, more practical, but she would prefer the Guatemalan one. Black cotton with red embroidery. Her friend, an old ex lover, Luis, comes by and sits with her. They are in shadow. It’s chilly, a winter afternoon, they snuggle close or warm and watch the show. I don’t know what they are watching. She turns to say something and almost without realizing it, she gives him a quick peck on the lips, making a kissing sound. She’s surprised that she did such a thing. He is married. She did it without thinking, kissing him like that. He kept on talking as if it didn’t happen, but pulled her in closer. There was much comfort in his arms.

Reversed position from the man’s point of view:

I joined her on the match. It was cold and she had many wraps. We snuggled for warmth. she sat on the mat, there was not enough room for two unless we sat side-by-side. She looks so fragile and alone. I sat on the pavement behind her on newspapers and cloth. Too bad the afternoon sun had disappeared. It was getting to be that winter bone chilling cold. We were watching some musician friends of mine playing Andean music. She turned to me to say some thing, our heads were very close. I was surprised by her quick kiss, more affection than anything else. After all, I am now married and years have passed since we were once lovers.. Remembering that and how much pain she was in, I pulled her in closer, offered what comfort care there was.

Elements: a man and a woman watching something on a matt in shadows. It’s late afternoon, perhaps windchill. It was hot earlier and there are different types of blankets. They huddle for warmth, they could be lovers. He is Chinese. She is white yet there is something very brother sisterly about them. They are very similar. Both interested in Latin America. He’s married, in a good relationship. She is not. The kiss is not really one of sexual interest, so there is a small comfort. She is afraid he will take that away and it will be steamy and short-lived with disastrous results all around. He kisses her desire for a relationship, the one she has lost. He is a placeholder. If it had been her boyfriend, the kids would’ve been innocent, affectionate for checking in like saying, hello mate.

Journal entry, 11/5, John Oliver Simon, Oaxaca and promises made under the stars

 Last night was particularly rough, I was feeling the loss of John, and so much more. I suspect my abortion, my grandmother’s death are all coming out to play as well. It seems like it is a free-for-all.

Last night I went out to look at the stars. I couldn’t remember the names of the first magnitude star the one by the Pleiades is except that it started with an A. Andromeda, Antares, Aldebaran? I was so sorry I never learned the names of stars with John. Something I enjoyed doing when he took me out under the canopy of night sky, telling me all the names but I couldn’t keep up with them. Orion‘s belt. I sang Lee’s song Hunter, I swear I love you for all of winter if I could love someone at all. 

At this, the dam burst and I couldn’t stop crying. The fear of not being loved, ever. What I want. A man, and a family. I’m exploring it again. Now it’s yes. Last month I was on unsure, but I wanted time. Perhaps I could do it this time around without children. Timing is everything.

*    *    *
I got a strong image of a woman in jeans bending over two kids, dark hair with blonde streaks like the sleeping girl in my dreams. The kids were about two and four years old, and they were dirty, happy kids. The woman was wearing jeans and boots since she had hair like mine she looked like me but I couldn’t tell as her hair was full in her face so she went down to kiss them. 

It couldn’t have been me, but she was thinner than me, and she seem preoccupied with her life as a mother. The artist life was still simmering within. It was morning. The observer was looking in from the greenhouse section of Geoff’s house in Alderpoint. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at myself or at another woman. All those what might have been‘s… 

I could’ve been just looking in through the window. Am I seeing his fantasy of what he wants? The woman who dreams, his family? Am I a voyeur? The woman’s hair was much shorter than mine, a little more wavy and with grown out bangs. The whiteness of her skin so like the children’s a domestic scene of temporary bliss.

*    *    *

I am sorry I never learned the names of stars with John. I’m sorry I never got a chance to take him off to Calistoga overnight at a B&B for the weekend, a romantic weekend for two. I’m sorry I never said yes, not even once when he asked me to marry him. I am sorry I had to give up a baby. I believe in half the stars that night, drunkenly returning home from Sergio Bautista‘s with the rug of his under arms, in Valle de Teotitlan, the place of rugs and it’s midsummer. Under stars, in the center of the universe. 

To commit to each other like this. I was afraid of his intensity and his passion, I was afraid of him. That night he plowed for a universe of my womb, not hearing my warning cries, that I was fertile it wasn’t the right time. It was not quite rape. I remember him saying to himself, what the hell are you doing, John? But then he was gone to the pull of the stars. 

And in the morning he said, it’s over, I don’t love you. We manage to whimper away to Puerto Escondito. Seeing the dead man was my fault, said John. If only I had not insisted on driving up to the laguna instead of snorkeling as we had planned. We had to stay the extra day. If you hadn’t seen the dead man, you wouldn’t have gotten sick.

And in Tikal we realized I was pregnant. He said if you have a baby I will not stay with you. I felt trapped, a prisoner of my own body, knowing that I had taken the antibiotics, knowing there was no way out. Then a reprise. When next morning he crawled into my bed and after making love there was blood on the sheets. And the joy we had that we were in the clear, or so we thought, as if we were given a second chance, but that was not to be.

If only we hadn’t stopped to look at the stars, coming home from Sergio's. If only we hadn’t promised the universe. If only he hadn’t bought me that rug as a pledge of his intent and his love. If only we hadn’t made love, if I hadn’t seen the dead man, if I hadn’t gotten sick, or taken antibiotics if I had had a healthy child, then what? If, if, if, the decision for the abortion. If I had explored my options. If only I got the abortion partially to prove my love to him, of something I really wanted, for him. He made that abundantly clear. I was too afraid to risk it all by myself. 

And in the end it’s over anyway. He got his vasectomy, his choosing. So back to square one. No matter what obstacles were thrown in our path, we kept on trying to make it work. And still there was always an excuse not to. He’s right. He is unable to connect to me, to love me as I deserve. I guess we could have broken up, and if I did have a child it would be a lifetime tie between us that would’ve been stronger. There would’ve been a compelling reason to resolve it because of the child whom he named Isaac. Sea lo que sea.

Dream Workshop with Elizabeth Herron, journal, 11/5 Fire in FK

Saturday, November 5
Dream journal:

Dream fragment: The canyon above my grandmothers house, is filled with smoke, a wall of flames advancing toward me. I run into the house, dial operator for the fire department, screaming there’s a huge fire. I am informed that the fire department doesn’t begin working until April. I am in an utter rage. Luckily, the ground is damp, the fire burns itself out. But I am going to do something about this atrocity. When help is needed, it should not be denied. The fire department was intact, but not taking calls until April? What was the point?

*    *    *

A woman alone
in her grandmothers house,
afraid, powerless to stop the fire,
calls for help. None is available, bureaucracy.
The fire goes out of its own accord.
She is determined to rectify the situation
now that the danger is passed

*    *    *

Dream fragment: A ranger and I are in the house, we are lovers, we’re getting ready to leave in the jeep. Two girls, almost teenagers, are with us. We’re giving them a ride. The ranger and I are hugging and kissing, he slips into the car and doesn’t hug me again. He drives off. I was expecting more.

*    *    *          

Taking the elements of the dream fragment, my grandmother’s house, childhood connections, safety. You can never go back. Another time and place. We’re doing something inside, I can’t remember who or what. It is afternoon, hazy. It could be autumn. I’m not sure which sets off the spark, that sets the fire. I get the image of sunlight, glass, angle of light. The canyon is different with steep cliffs made mostly of rock that’s why the fire stops. If the flames had leapt any higher they were at least 100 hundred feet tall or more, the trees at the top of the hill would’ve caught fire too and that would’ve been pure chaos. It was a contained fire moving towards us. Luckily the ground was damp from rain. It must’ve been in autumn and the fire played itself out. Since the fire department was on vacation, it was just as well. 

*    *    *

Symbols of telephone and fire department. One looks up on the telephone as a tool to reach out, to call for help, communication. 200 years ago no one would run into a house to phone for help. This is a new symbol, one that I’ve grown up with. I remember when we got our first phone. It was autumn, or maybe winter. Stephanie and I dialed my number and talk to my grandmother who wasn’t terribly amused by it all. However we were thrilled, at least I was. 

The operator didn’t try to help, it wasn’t the old black phone with the rotary dial. I remember screaming into the phone so loud that my voice hurt. I remember throwing the receiver on the couch and grabbing a hose and squirting the ground. It was successful. Somehow I could squirt the hose quite far. We were able to help ourselves after all. 

Empowerment. I never had a chance to give anyone our address. I figured if they could trace the call… It was off the hook. Someone was still on the line when I came back in, explaining why they could not help us. I said never mind, we don’t need you anymore. And I said they would be hearing from me. I was that mad, mad enough to create a disturbance over what I thought was an extremely bad policy. Since I am a part-time paparazzi, I have the means to make publish my gripes. 

*    *    *

Journal entry, John Oliver Simon, poem in the mail

 I received a letter and a poem from John yesterday, so upon Elizabeth’s advice, I called him. He made first contact. I called because I was concerned about his accident and possible whiplash. He said it was karmic revenge. It happened on Monday, Halloween. He said, all the times I’ve wanted to call you on the phone but I couldn’t talk to you, not after sending you that dear John letter. He wants to move me into the rank and file of ex-wife like Jan and Alta. 

He said he truly wants to work on his ambivalence, and he wants to do it alone precisely because he is so clingy. He hates feeling dependent upon another, He feels he’s done the heavy work of breaking up, and doesn’t want to re-open those doors. As if it were a hurdle to jump through. Says when it’s over for him sexually, he never goes back. I get that but I also find that hard to believe because nothing is black-and-white. The history of the universe however, is compartmentalized. 

He says he’s sorry for me getting caught up in his crossfire, what he calls his sea cucumber vomit stage (acting out) and he's pretty sad. At least I made a firm stand and acted upon it. It’s true I’m not sure how wise it was though. 

Mexico he said he’s going, and he didn’t cancel my ticket. He isn’t inviting me either, but he isn’t not inviting me. Do we go and travel separately? Share hotels travel arrangements? Part of me wants to go, it might be absolutely hideous. It might be a good time to process information to work through things it might be too soon, and all wrong. We’ve decided upon nothing—other than we’ve broken up. He seems to think I’ll be throwing myself on him. And I said, that option doesn’t exist anymore. I won’t become lovers with you again, not after this. I am game shy. Not my style. I can tell he is offended. Ego. 

We talked about how after our fights, I was so unbending, and how I couldn’t come to him and how I always made him come to me. And yet with this call, I was making an effort to reach out to him. That last fight in Cusco, when he came to me, and I couldn’t even turn over and forgive him, let alone, let him in. That was wrong, I knew it, but with the fighting, my pride was rigid, and I felt he stripped away my secrets and lead me there, exposed my own inner workings, and I did not like it. 

Yes, because he made the first overtures, I could climb off my pride, and we could forgive each other? Yeah. No. But when he used my own self defense weapons against me, I felt betrayed I couldn’t even use my own painful defense system. I was really cut off from reaching out. The ground cut out from under me. 

Yes, I should have reached out, but I didn’t. So this time now, after it’s far too late, I reached out to him and reestablished a link—a shaky line of communication. He acknowledged it as he knew how far I had come to cross that divide. I knew this progress was new to me and we both knew how I either shut people out completely, dismissed them forever, or barely let them in again, however cautiously, slowly. He said it’s like family, they do things to you would never forgive with anyone else. But you continue to relate to them because they are family and you have to relate to them. He said, I am family but I am in the aunt Jane category right now. I am tired of all this processing. Too draining.

And then my mind wanders over to Joel Bennett across the way. I’d like a man who can take care of himself. Marsha reminded me that I once had a crush on Joel a while back. I had totally forgotten about that. My neighbor Lynn Watson had taken that dream from me. Moved in on him like a shark while I hung back, too shy. And now I feel nothing. Wondering how he too is flawed. We all are. I’m also looking at everyone negatively as static and not changing. 

I will miss John‘s nurturing qualities. I miss his bread baking, but not his bed breaking. Spoonerisms, a lack of daily sex equals dyslexia. In this case it was certainly true. My friends have been so good to me. This all makes me want to cry. It is so hard for me to cry, to open up. If I don’t love him, why does it hurt so much? Or, if I do love him in spite of it all, then what? How does one dissolve three years of relationship? No matter how rocky it was, and how we talked about breaking up—but it was always just talk. And this is reality. 

This is real, and it hurts, like with my grandmother. All the preparation in the world doesn’t lessen the blow. Lesson the blow? A lesson is a blow. The blow a lesson. It comes as a blow, severing you from the known world. What seems constant, but that to you is an allusion. At times I feel strangely confident and capable, free, and other times I feel my entire world has collapsed. There is always hope. And defeat. I need to keep talking to him and he needs to keep saying it’s over, so it will become real, like my grandmother. 

All the dreams where she insisted that she was alive saying it’s all been a mistake, I’m alive. And then I have to tell her, no, Grandma you're dead, it’s finished. I’m crying as much for the loss of her as I am for the loss of John. Grieving little pockets. She died before Halloween, so many deaths. John’s break-up took precedence over the anniversary of her death. Was it October 27? Was it an accident that he broke up with me one year from the day of her death, or that he asked me to marry him nine months from the abortion? Internal clocks ticking. 

He sent me a poem about setting the clock back, but not time itself. No retrieving the lost hours. What might have been. We’ve been to the ends of the earth together. It must amount to something. I want to go back to that innocence, and wind the clock back up again like a videotape and try a new road, a new path not taken. 

But here I sit in the garden drying my tears while the annual plants adjust their seasonal clocks accordingly and begin the process of dying. I plant winter vegetables that will attempt to bloom in spring if we make it that far. And they will die before summer is nigh. Readjusted clocks? Wrong seasonal change. Am I in season, or am I fair game to be brought down by the hunter's arrow in late fall, deep in the forest? Cupid's arrow, cannibal darkness. Caliban hiding in that elegant darkness of the cave. In dim light, red, the color of passion of life is black the color of death. Chinese corpses wear white, in American brides wear white. Resurrection and change of status. Beginnings and endings.

I wish I had said yes, just once. My pride, not allowing me to do so, and so many unresolved conflicts, even if we didn’t go through with it. I know rationally I could not say yes, but it would’ve done me and us good, an attempt to commit to each other 100% just once to see if we could resolve our differences. What might have been, probably with the same result in the end, but just a few years further down the road. Did we really give it our best shot? All that we were capable of giving? John says he didn’t, he couldn’t, and now he wants to do something about it, within himself, without me.

Joel's stereo blares muddles piano music and I am swept away by the crescendo of cords until the respiratory vacuum sucks the sound away, it’s not quite white noise and the passing cars on Mirabel Road are a background noise we look no longer hear. It orchestrates the breeze like an ocean, like jazz fission. 

Bumper sticker: fusion not fission. The bomb dropped and my heart is weary. I don’t want to go hunting. I have trouble getting excited about Geoff, that was a proposition, such as it was, didn’t do me any good. Going back to old lovers is not an option.

Time to stop all this indulgence, to cross the street and to check the mailbox to see what news carries in today. Men use letters to say what they cannot say over the phone or in person. Dutifully like the stamp that will deliver a blow at the other end. John, in a confessional mode, said, two years ago April, I wrote you a dear John letter. I even put a stamp on it but I never mailed it. I’m not sorry for it. That information hurts anew. A confession I could've done without. I think of Guatemala, Perú what all we shared. Did he say: I’m not sorry this time for sending it but I’m sorry for the pain it caused in the breaking up? No. The message I received, the words were not sad. 

He says the cat is mad at him for sending me away. I am at least as important as tunafish is to Rainycat, he says. I say you’re imposing your feelings upon the cat. He says, I should know what my cat is thinking about right now. She misses you. She asks for you, the petter. I said the cat isn’t exactly like a child keeping you and Jan together. He said, you're still family. If you hadn’t taken that mutagen we would be sharing a child. He said when he told Kia we were breaking up, she said, I never liked Maureen, but don’t you think we should stick it out? You’ve been with her for three years now. John said he was surprised by her response. And I assume he had no reply to give her.

It’s Friday morning, brightly sky of tall and yellow walnut leaves in the wind. Sun warming me. Mad flutter of blueays in the oak gathering in the harvest. I should be glad to be alive on a day such as this. Even if I cannot write about my dreams. Even if they too have abandoned me.

Dream Workshop with Elizabeth Herron, journal, 11/4 Adair Lara

Adair.

I ran into Adair, said I picked up her book. Asked her, Heig? I remember she was in my class with Jim Heig at College of Marin, but he was such a hardnose. She explains, yeah, her husband. I’m flabbergasted. She said the rest of the Daleys reacted that way too. She never said she was still with him. I didn’t ask. 

In the dream, we were in a room of dark recessed shadows. There were bars, the kind the kids played on nearby like a jungle gym. She gave me advice on how to go about putting a book together which I’ve long since forgotten. I wanted to ask her if she used a computer or if she wrote it out on the typewriter, and did she get help. 

The conversation was a little mismatched. She was telling me what she thought I wanted to hear which was how to, and I wanted to tell her about my project but I didn’t have a copy of my book. She wanted to know if I found her workbook helpful and I saiid that I did but I had only just read part of it and so I said yes.

*.         *.         *

Dream Workshops with Elizabeth Herron 11/3 to 11/7 City of clocks

Elizabeth Herron tells us to take the time to live with an image before recording it. Slow down the process (versus my mad attempt at trying to get everything down as quickly as possible and try to make sense of it). She said you need to let the unconscious mind respond. Treat your dreams as non-analytical, spontaneous creations, as autonomous works of art. Don’t analyze it. There is no wrong way. Let the images work for themselves.

The rules:

1. take the most powerful part of the dream, don’t look at it sequentially or time-oriented, avoid ego-contamination. Look at it circular, let go of those urges for the narrative sense.

2. don’t try to make sense of it.
3. if we can distance ourselves from it, we can see alternative perspectives.
4. look for concrete detail.
5. work with overlapping images, superimposed images.
6. always looking at what isn’t there, what is missing in the image.
7. what is the opposite, turning the image upside down.

Take on the dreams paying attention to the ordinary. Forget about storyline. Look at the image in a less sensible way. Pay attention to the sensory detail. We don’t want to use the dreams and we want to learn from them. It’s not reductive. Removed from the ego. Dream ego stance. How we feel to it, shape, alter it. What you bring to it, your experience. How much tension can we contain?

I write:

Sugar ants moving eggs into the house, 

small white packages on the ledge above my bed. 

A reaction to spraying Black flag. 

Again, the threat of rain is driving them in. 

Taking the dream on as if it were my own. 

Take the ants’ point of you. Danger in the nest.

Elizabeth asks, How much do we literally live in a dream? Force a storyline? Or do we look at the dream metaphorically, or as an analogy? How much can we live with ambiguity? Taking an image from the artist viewpoint, not the analytical viewpoint.

Teaching notes 11/3/88, SISTER City, John Oliver Simon, Geoff Davis

What an incredibly busy teaching day yesterday. Tuesday and Wednesday I taught the kids Pomo creation stories, Wednesday afternoon I raced down the freeway to Petaluma to do an in-service on rocks, I got a great review. And then I raced back to Santa Rosa for a meeting with our sister city USSR group with Marilyn Stocks.

John Masura was very interested in my poetry and art grant idea. He said he knew of a few translators at Sonoma State and at World College. The CEIF grant wants university participation. Mark West, Binkley that is Marilyn’s school, are interested. Link up with Karen’s school? Sister City-USSR would offer a great school network. And it wouldn’t have to be every teacher from every school. A teacher from the selected schools.

I met many great people, Sonya and Rio. We all had dinner at Burbank‘s and I forgot my pain and misery for a while. The exhaustion levels dropped away and I began to enjoy life once again. How I’ve been coping is by keeping incredibly busy. No downtime to feel sorry for myself.

A message from Geoff. I told him about John and he was shocked, he thought we were going to have babies together and all that stuff. So did I. He said we seem so right for each other. I thought so too. I thought I had met my perfect match. It’s always an interesting ritual to show off your current lover to your former lover. Sort of a compare and contrast list. And you know you’ve truly gotten to the other side when you can wish each other well.

Anyway, Geoff invited me to come up and visit and it sounds like he wants me to share the bed, long talks about electric blankets as replacements for lovers. I prefer cats. Sounds like he’s gone through a lot these past few years. And I’m not convinced I want another relationship with him. See how far the mind wanders ahead? He brushed me off like John. I don’t take abandonment lightly. I don’t know if he’s an alcoholic, or an alcoholic in progress. His father was a raging alcoholic and that is a huge turn off for me. He also lives too far away. 

John must’ve sensed the possibility, he said that I’d rot away in the woods, my mind needs the stimulation of the city. I’m surprised by that observation. But there is my career as a writer and I agree, but the pull is they are just the same.

Thinking Laterally with James Burke 11/88 (photo)

CONNECTIONS/22 THINKING LATERALLY WITH JAMES BURKE

By Maureen Hurley (The PAPER, Nov. 1988, +photo)

Sonoma State University Lecture Series broke an all-time attendance record Oct. 28; over 2,000 people paid ten bucks a head to hear British author and commentator James Burke expound on unforeseen connections between such unlikely things such as underwear and the printer’s press. Burke, better known to PBS viewers as the host of the acclaimed award-winning BBC television series and best-selling companion books, Connections, and The Day the Universe Changed, wittily untangled the threads of interconnecting events, accidents of time, circumstance, and place which gave rise to ideas: inventions and coincidences which led to technological achievements (or, as he so glibly put it—messes) of today. Burke also offered advice and models for survival in the future.

As BBC’s chief reporter on the Apollo missions to the moon, Burke developed ideas that led to the two popular series for which he received a Royal Television Society silver medal in 1973, and a gold in 1974. For the past year, he has been working on a new series, funded by PBS. “So far, I don’t know what it’s about yet,” he said. The tall, dapper 52-year-old Londoner began his lecture with examples of how science and technology have changed the deep structure of our lives by “altering our society’s perceptions.” He animatedly claimed our concepts of knowledge were “an awful lot of manure.” This irreverent train of thought developed into a lively tale of how horsedung led to the discovery of saltpetre, nitric acid and gunpowder, which led to world models and how they differ.

Burke said, “the model you use controls the universe you believe in.” In other words, “in an Omlet model, you look for the yolk. Black holes don’t fit the model, and are disregarded.” Science has a tendency to “shoehorn the universe into theories to fit the current model,” Burke said, citing the hoax of the Piltdown Man. He asked, “Why does change happen at all? Today, we live according to the latest version of how the universe functions.” He examined these moments of change and how it pertains to modern life—the implications of this approach to knowledge and what it means to our future.

For examples of changing models, he spun wild and witty tales of how the popularity of underwear in the twelfth century led to the invention of the printing press, the Reformation, and the computer. And how studies of “bad smell maps” (aka mal-aria—Italian for “bad air” because people were dying off like flies), led to the invention of air-conditioning, refrigeration, beer-making, guns, rocket fuel and landing on the moon. And the fellow who was trying to invent synthetic quinine from coal tar to combat that pesky malaria problem goofed and got aniline dyes instead (which led to the invention of aspirin, and eventually, the cure for malaria ). Incidentally, those dyes took the Paris fashion world by storm, but that’s a whole other story.

Burke stated the mechanism for change is not always smooth. Models are shifted when unexpected change occurs. Take the canal builder of England who discovered fossils of extinct species (and we know what theory evolved from that discovery). no fossil people were discovered. Suddenly, Man was a pile of chemicals and not God-made. Burke said it’s a “trick of putting things together in new combinations” that leads to new ideas. Quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity are models of a universe that’s not absolute.

Our brain works with associative pathways always making new relationships between facts and data. This associative process handles complex changes rather than the single model system. Burke ticked off examples of “single rigid models gone seriously awry—institutions, ie., the IRS and modern government,” to a wildly cheering audience.

Burke asked, “should we move to a more flexible model? Suppose we could recognize there is no pattern to the universe? How should we prepare for change?” He envisions a more contextual model.”We need to make sure tomorrow’s world is better than today’s. We ordinary human beings have power. We need a pluralist model rather than a single model because we need an infrastructure that is more flexible.” He added, “in children’s education we should teach them to think for themselves, not memorize facts.”

He envisions a world politically pluralist to the extreme; pragmatic, socialistic, culturally varied—what he calls “a balanced anarchy.” Science and technology should enrich our intellectual lives, not just our material lives. The key task for the future is not more new things. The problem is second-guessing the social effects of change. In the ‘50’s, who’d have thought deodorant would make holes in the ozone layer?

“Nothing compares with our brain,” said Burke. A generalist straddles disciplines. We need new information systems, to enfranchise the public to allow us to tap the innovative pool, teach people to think laterally, to daydream, to free people from the drudgery. Our brains are waiting to do this.”

Letting go

Like the staff photographer on National Geographic who travels alone because he can better focus his attention, I’m alone except I’m having trouble focusing the lens. Everything moves too fast and is gone by the time I’m ready to take the photo. I’m disappointed, but not terribly so. I’ll have photos, just not the ones I originally intended. One boy looks up from the drinking fountain, dark-haired and I got a good shot with great light on the left side of his face, a three-quarter chiaroscuro photo.

Before I knew John and I were going to break up that last Saturday, after making love, we lay on the front couch, the light filtering through a crack in the curtain on his face, outlined in the barest of frames, it was quite lovely. He was asleep. But my camera was across the room and I couldn’t slip out from under his post-coital sleep to get the camera. And when he awoke, the light shifted and passed through the lens of his eye, illuminating it as it from within. As if I could see inside the depths of his soul. 

I’d never seen anything so beautiful and I had to let it go. I couldn’t take the photo, only in my mind’s eye. Had I known we’d break up the next day, I would’ve figured out a way to reproduce that photo, wake him up, and tell him not to move, but I hated doing that. The face freezes and puts on its mask when the camera comes in to or it’s closer close up. Sometimes it’s hard letting go.

Notes on James Burke

James Burke reading the back blurb of my kid poetry book

I loved the PBS series, The Day the Universe Changed, by James Burke. So I was pretty excited to learn that James was coming to town to do a KCRB PBS benefit, but also to speak at Sonoma State. By the time I found out about it, the event was sold out, so I asked if I could do a story on it, so that I could get in sans ticket, which was extraordinary because I also got to hang out with Ja at the end as well. Drinks with James and no canaries were harmed in the process.

James lecture was the singlemost largest attended lecture in Sonoma State University history. As I transcribe these notes to the electronic format, a reminder this is a rereading of my rough notes—reread, I might add, decades after the fact. Since I had to write an article, most of the, ahem, original connections, were lost. Maybe you might just want to stick to the finished story: Thinking Laterally with James Burke. But I am interested in what gets lost in "translation."  Warning: these are my raw working notes.

James Burke kicks off: In the real world the right thing never happens at the right place, the right time. It’s up to journalists to rectify this. I'm condensing 22 years of science and technology into an hour. Hold onto your seats. He explains, We are always second-guessing the future. Looking at the other end of the horse, concepts of knowledge creates an awful lot of horse manure. 

Science and technology have changed the deep structure of our lives. Once we understand how technology works, it means that it’s obsolete. It means the psychotic at the beach is having a wonderful time. Ask why. 

James talks about constraints and contextualism, how constraints are composed imposed upon us. Take me for example, he says, points to his eye. The oral and the physical of what about scratching your ass? What is it that makes this perceptual itch, and then there’s the cognitive model the recognition system of our neurons and the genetic ZIP code, the basic matrix of neurons  and /vs. the physical model. 

And then James talks about how world views are radically different—for example, in the United States is that white is for brides but in China, white is for corpses. And when Greek girls nod yes, it's not yes, it's no. Now that could get a man into trouble. We guffaw.

Then he rolled into paradoxical aphorisms. Italy is not a country, it’s a disease for which there is no cure. English are desperate but not hopeless. The Irish are hopeless but not desperate. He delves further into the Irish-English behavioral models. Turns out his grandmother was Irish. That explains much.

Journal entry 11/1/1988

11/1/1988  My ability to write in my journal has been curtailed this past year. My journal begins in Guatemala and ends a year later with my return from South America. I've hardly written about anything at all in this year's timeframe. I've been in a dream fugue state. it's taking a long time for me to heal. Parts of me will never heal. That's why I didn't write about it. Everything is all jumbled about. 

Meanwhile, I started another journal that overlaps this one by four months. I don't think I'll ever be able to unravel it. And I think I lost a journal along the way. This journal I took to South America. Between the two journals, a record of sorts can be construed. I only hope there's something worth salvaging between the two journals. 

Some news stories, a prose piece, a poem about Creamery Creek. What is considered the right amount of poetry? Who knows?

Journal entry 11/1/1988 Stephan Torre, Susan Kennedy

I did spend some time on the phone with a Steve, Stephan Torre, that is, who I've used as a guest artist for many of my CAC residencies. He is also someone I’ve been interested in for ages. It cooled its heels since I didn’t see him very much other than at occasional readings. And life carried on.

When I got back from South America I did contact Steve. I noticed that I am way less interested now, he also informed me he’s got a girlfriend of seven years, and is living in Inverness. I was stunned. He had kept that from me. Why? This man who once kissed me. I was even more shocked when he said he was going through a rocky romance, similar to me and John. Maybe too much sharing isn't a good thing.

Last night I told him about John‘s letter. He paused his usual mile a minute yabber, and was strangely silent. Sometimes he’s a steamroller, and you can’t get a word in edgewise when he gets on a roll. I’ve long since learned to interrupt him. Otherwise we don’t have conversations. He talks and I listen and I don’t much like that. Anyway, he said he was going through stuff too, and there were many uneasy silences. Dangerous territory all around. 

Anyway, my first initial to Steve was attraction, to his brawn, to his husky maleness. Like John, like Geoff, like Lee. It’s a physical body type that I’m attracted to, macho, God help me. Steve is a couple of years older than John and that is not good. John and I really felt that 10 year age difference emotionally. 

When Steve and John and I were sitting by the hammock last March, after school, drinking wine and beer, I tried to undo my steadfast attraction for him. He’s older, his hair is thinning, he’s a little overweight, he’s a bit of a blue streak talker, somewhat opinionated. I could get into trouble, but it’s those pauses, those hesitancies, when he’s a bit awkward and gauche that I like him best. That unsocialized vulnerable side. 

I’ve only seen him with a few people and he seems to like people, but he’s very busy. I had the gut feeling he’s not right for me, like with John, but I can’t help but being attracted to. Like I said, the attraction is much less strong now but we will see on the 15th when he comes to Matanzas, and Mark West School as my guest artist, if there’s still any of that animal magnetism. 

He’s a representative of my rough pioneer side, we’ve had so many similar experiences. He’s a mountain man type, like Geoff who didn’t have his act together. Alcohol, weed and no creative outlet. But Steve, Lee, and John all strong writers with their act together. Professional, that’s what I mean. I find it attractive.

But I feel so sad. They were so many things I still wanted to do with John. And then this all happened so suddenly. One moment I think we will stick it out for a while longer, work through the shit and the next moment I’m out in the cold. No warning in the sense that we’ve always been on the edge. I figured it was another crisis that we’d weather through. But I like working on stuff, getting deeper. 

Journal entry 10/1/1988 All Saints’ Day dream

Dream journal: Steve Tristano, someone I went to grade school with, I run into him in San Francisco. He’s black, not dead. But he hardly remembers me. I’m getting ready for an event, a wedding, whose? John’s? And I am traveling around California. The ocean. It feels southern like the Bahamas but it’s in California. 

I don’t know why Steve is in my dream, quite frankly I haven’t talked to him since high school, and he was so heavily into drugs it was hard to have a conversation anyway. Steve’s father, Lenny Tristano was a famous jazz musician who invented the boogie-woogie. Steve used to play the boogie-woogie for us when the teacher was out of the room.

Another event. I’m waiting for the shower so I can change into my green skirt and blouse and new silk magenta shirt. But someone is in the bathroom. I thought I was with John in the dream. It seems like Bob’s sister Nancy Hamilton, is in the dream. A judger. It seems my all my old lovers are all blending into one persona. All my past sins.

My clothes are in the back of the car, it’s Bob‘s blue squareback. I’ve gone back in time all right. I gather them up. And then I’m in Forest Knolls again. Somehow I’ve managed to relocate Steve in my dream. But we are on Magnus Street in San Francisco. Magnus is the last name of another boy I once loved, Danny Magnuson. I remember overhearing Steve saying he had to fix his car on Magnus Street. Magnus means the king, it might as well mean the magician. All these cars again. Vehicles how we get from place to place. 

Journal order, on the writing process

10/1988

The order of entries in my journal is more haphazard than usual. Too many major life traumas in September and October threw me off. Meanwhile halfway through the year, I started writing in another journal but I am unwilling to abandon this one with all its virgin paper patiently waiting for me to scribe it with knower's ink.

Journal entry 10/30/1988 to 11/7 John Oliver Simon

10/30/1988 Lee says to do nothing, grieve for a month. Do nothing. Let him make the first move.

11/4/1988 Elizabeth Herron said to call him, find out how he’s doing. After all, it’s been three years that you’ve been together. The next day a letter and a poem and arrive in the post. It’s the accident that makes me call him. Elizabeth is right. He is grateful that I have open the doors.

11/6 Many moods, up and down. Real depression and despair. I sent him an apology card, saying I’m sorry for not saying I’d marry you not even once, even though it wasn’t right. I’m sorry I never whisked you away for a romantic weekend in Calistoga where we could soak our bones under the stars. 

Yesterday, Sunday, I wrote a poem to my summer squash. After 11 revisions the poem devolved into a bitter piece about John’s inadequacies. Today I will send it to him along with some clippings from the Sunday paper from the horoscope and the grab bag. Like your cat has more muscles and its tail then you have in your head. I tell him 3% of all mammals or monogamous, 88% of all birds are monogamous. Pacific islanders kill off all their old people at the age of 40. Horoscope says you will end a bitter relationship. Mine says after 2 1/2 years you’re in the clear, it can only get better. And so it does.

CAC grant awarded

NAMES FOR TIME, NAMES FOR TIME, long v. after Charles Simic’s Stone

Names for time, insufferable on human terms
100,000 years. How does a stone
measure time and distance?
I've always wanted to see Lascaux and Altamira
(look up!). The first Greek goddess,
the great mother, was not Greek, but a meteorite
that struck the earth with sudden impact.

10/1988

NAMES FOR TIME, long v.

     — after Charles Simic

Insufferable on human terms, 

small durable objects gathered in green seas. 

They say that no two crystals are exactly alike. 

If I could go inside a stone I would find 

fractals opening doors into new worlds.

Small, base molecules always in a hurry, 

bouncing off time as if it were repeatable. 

Who really knows what’s inside a tiger’s heart,

or a stone? 

Names for time, insufferable on human terms, 

100,000 years. How does a stone measure time and distance? 

I have always wanted to see the painted caves 

of Lascaux and Altamira. Remember to look up. 

The first Greek goddess, 

the great mother was a meteorite 

that struck the earth with sudden impact.

10/16/1988

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

Reina, a blind, dowager cat of 15,

who has learned to tell lies for more food

and has a paunch to prove her success,

ignores the catnip-stuffed mouse I bring her.

We can't tell her facts:

why it always rains outside each door

in the house at the same time, the dilemma

of eating tuna and the diminishing dolphin population,

or the effects of mercury poisoning.

Has it begun to manifest

its mad-hatterly ways in this idiot savant

well into second childhood?

Mornings, we find her upside down and drooling;

rubbing her whiskers and head ecstatically inside our shoes.

We make jokes about the narcotic effect of ripe shoes and laundry.

But when my new shoes are also

singled out for euphoric distinction,

I realize, slowly, how our conclusions are hampered

by our own anthropomorphic limitations.

It becomes clear, her need for scenting—

In cat terms, as we walk our daily rounds,

our shoes mark the outer boundaries of her territory.

Who'd have credited this blind old cat

with enough foresight to keep tabs on her realm—

She, who had us barking up the wrong tree all along?

10/15/1988  first draft june?
Berkeley

1995 CQ #22 California Quarterly
1991Poet Magazine, Fall issue
1990 Poetry USA
         Sparrow Grass
1989 Green Fuse
         A Night Full of Doves
         Outerbridge

Young HES poets published

Young HES poets published

Four Healdsburg Elementary School fourth graders have had their poems published in the California Poets in the Schools book of poetry, True Wonders. The young authors include Merwyn Kinton, Todd Williams, Logan McEwan and Tommy Jordan and their poems are reprinted here. The students are members of local artist and instructor Judy Sohigian's class. Sohigian. in turn, invited guest artist Maureen Hurley into the classroom to conduct the poetry program with the students.

A STONE WITH ME IN IT 

A stone hidden inside me 

A stone in the water 

Just a stone secret 

A stone twice my size 

A stone in the water 

A stone with laughter 

A stone in the water 

A stone with me in it. 

Tommy Jordan

MY STONE 

A light in the darkest of places 

My stone holds a secret no one knows
But only those so powerful can know

The stone's secret. My stone cannot talk 

But sometimes I feel a stinging in my head

And my stone grows weak 

and my knowledge and will grows strong.

Merwyn Kenton 

THE STONE 

...like a grandfather
that will never die or go away, 

you can keep this rock forever. 

you can keep it a billion years 

and it still won't wear down. 

Todd Williams 

THE STARS SPEAK 

My rock is like the red hot sun around my soul 

It keeps the secret of my heart. 

The stars speak as I scream with tears. 

It has given me the power to stand 

in this dangerous world 

to keep many wonderful secrets. 

It has given me things to keep forever. 

The hidden places I go where eagles and hawks soar... 

Where stones shine with beauty and kindness. 

Logan McEwan

THE AUTHORS - Four HES fourth grade poets were recently published the California Poets in the Schools latest volume of poetry. They are pictured here with teacher Judy Sohigian.

Big Doings at Poetry Fest, National Poetry Week Festival, CPITS, SF chronicle

October 9, 1988 | San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Author: Patricia Holt | Page: 2 | Section: SUNDAY REVIEW | Column: BETWEEN THE LINES

The National Poetry Week Festival is producing quite a shindig this year in San Francisco. Spilling over to 10 days (October 14-23) of events at Fort Mason, the festival begins with a champagne reception and dance on Friday the 14th.Space forbids complete listing of dates, times and locations (for information call 621-3073 or 776-6602); here's a brief summary of NPWF's incredible lineup:

WOMEN'S POETRY: Curator Joyce Jenkins of Poetry Flash, San Franciso poet Edith Jenkins and other women poets discuss the theme, "Stealing the Language."

NATIVE AMERICAN POETRY: Mary TallMountain, Dennis Jennings, Lorenzo Baga, Janice Gould and Ramone Wilson offer poetry from early American history to "the present cacophonic and multitudinous society."

ASIAN AMERICAN POETRY: Marilyn Chin hosts a program with poets Genny Lim, Richard Oyama, Jeff Tagami and Nellie Wong.

CELEBRATION OF THE WORD: Maya Angelou and Janice Mirikitani - two of the most rousing and moving poets - will be joined by Guy Johnson in an evening of poetry readings.

LITERARY SAN FRANCISCO: A review of San Francisco's literary history will be launched by Jack Mueller and Kevin Starr.

BLACK AMERICAN POETRY: A great afternoon of readings hosted by Guy Johnson, featuring Opal Palmer Adisa, Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa and Reginald Lockett.

HISPANIC POETRY: Latino, Chicano and Central and South American poets will appear under the direction of Martivon Galindo in a program including the work of Francisco X. Alarcon, Carlotta Caulfield, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Victoria Mirinda and Piri Thomas.

POETRY OF THE SACRED: A program ranging from ancient Indian perceptions to modern celebrations of the holy will include Hindu temple dances by Uday Shankar Sengupta and readings by James Broughton, Andrei Codrescu, Mary TallMountain, Jerome Rothenberg and William Ruddy.

POETRY IN FILM: National Poetry Association chairman Herman Berlandt will lecture on synergistic art with illustrations from 12 poetry film festivals.

POETRY IN DRAMA: Patrick Finley, Kush, the Noh Oratorio Society, Titch Jones, Verona Seiter, Paul Finocchiaro and Larry Maraviglia will perform poetry from dramatic works.

LANGUAGE WRITING: New trends in poetry will be explored by language writers Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Michael Amnasan and others.

POETRY AND HEALING: Santa Clara State Hospital Poetry Therapy director Joy Shieman will host a seminar with Dr. Jack Leedy and psychotherapist Sylvia Lange.

PRISON POETRY : San Quentin Poetry Workshop director Floyd Salas introduces works by inmates, guards and outsiders from many poets including Judith Tannenbaum, Shawn Murphy and Raymond Thompson.

POETRY FOR PLANETARY SURVIVAL: Mary Rudge features Miriam Patchen, music by Will Sand Young and Jesse Beagle, Haiku poets of Northern California, Julia Vinograd, Jack Hirschman, Native American drumming and poetry - all in celebration of the environment.

CALIFORNIA POETS IN THE SCHOOLS: John Oliver Simon and Tobey Kaplan present poetry written by students and teachers.

APPRECIATION OF THE TRANSLATOR: An afternoon of understanding how translation shapes poetry, with Etel Adnan, Geoffrey Cook, Michael Davidson, Barbara Paschke and Paul Vangelisti.

EROTIC POETRY: Mary Mackey hosts readings by Alta, Ivan Arguelles, Jane Hirschfield, Lynn Lonadier, Viola Weinberg and Jeremy Larner.

THE LIBERATED MUSE: Gay and lesbian liberation is the focus in this program of poetry, with readings by Neeli Cherkovski, Judy Grahn, Susan Griffin and Harold Norse.

THE BUSINESS OF POETRY: Jan Butterfield of Lapis Press and Joyce Jenkins of Poetry Flash present ways to expand the poetry audience and break into the media.

POETRY IN WORK AND PLAY: Longshore poetry, trucker ballads, sea chanteys, union songs and cowboy poetry will be read by poets Bobby Erikson, John Devore, Billy Fouts, Gino Sky, Jesse Smith and Piano Jack under the direction of Buzzy Vick.

POETRY IN POP MUSIC: Jesse Beagle, David Brian, Mathew Robertson, Chuck Brodsky and Beth Margolin appear with Ted Czuk to explore the historical development of poetry in music from troubadours of the Middle Ages to to contemporary songwriters.and many more.

All this plus creative writing workshops, round-robin readings, open readings, marathon readings, poetic dance performances, book tables, poetry video theater and visual poetry exhibits. Tickets for any part or whole are cheap (call 762-BASS), thanks to grants from the California Arts Council and the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

PHOTO ALBUM

PHOTO ALBUM

1. By the same white car
where my grandparents stood
sternly facing the camera,
was that me in my mother's arms
or someone else, milk eyes squinting
as she drools, her fat starfish hands
clutching a red and green tropical sea.
My mother's skirt, an island in paradise
and later, the jungle print will become
a pillow for my grandmother's couch
where I will wait years for my mother
to reclaim that skirt, and me.
All this fuss for a photograph.
who'd have thought those faded photos
marked the end of an era?

At the age of two,
that isn't me looking in.
I'm looking out of the photo
at a woman, older than my mother
who is still holding me in the picture.
She says she knows me but I know better.
I am cross without my nap
so I squint and sing and coo
to the sun in a blue sky.

Now she makes some other writing marks
but I swing my arm across the paper
and the table and the wall
filling the world with rainbow color
putting an end to all this writing.

2. That can't be me at 13
about to start high school.
That's someone else who looks like me,
who feels very grown up and eager to begin.
I'm looking out at myself, looking in.
She looks different, she isn't smiling, like me.
Are we related?

Her eyes glow red from the flash of the camera
making her look like an albino rabbit
while my eyes are brown.
My mother's skirt, a pillow on the couch
is now threadbare.

My red dress is embroidered with small mirrors
reflects a cloudy sky, like a pond,
a mirror full of algae.
I awake at night full of fear
I can't hear what she's saying.
a namelessness in the dark, like a sudden flash
that bleached the color form her hair, from her eyes
turning them from brown to red
like the rabbit who said yes.
All the times she turned them down,
every single one of my children.

10/7/1988 rev.4

10 6/88 journal

This morning the phone wakes me, Fotomat saying the small albums I had ordered are in. Then she calls me back, says it's the wrong size. I didn't order either size album and I don't like 7 AM phone calls telling me to buy something. If anyone calls me at 7 AM it'd better be for a good reason.

I can barely remember my dreams except that John looked a little like Bob as if bits and pieces of Bob had rubbed off and attached themselves to John's face. Most notable was the patches of beard and hair – as if John were a prisoner behind the mask of Bob's face—someone whom I haven't seen in over 10 years. Perhaps all that talk about abortion brought Bob back into the picture.

Not so much the first one, God. But I remember the day it happened so well. I just come off the pill, tired of being continually nauseous. One afternoon, we weren't careful. I knew then it was too late, the moment frozen in my mind.

It reminds me of the story of the fifth-grader, when asked when he was born, he said, My mom and dad went on a picnic, and she got pregnant. It was in Germany. The teacher and I manage to keep a straight face but, as she said, the times they are changing. Quoting Dylan and our own lost youth.

10 6/88

Phone calls to the dead

Today I was asked by the San Francisco Bay Guardian to be a screener, a first reader for the Northern California poetry contest. My penance for having won it in the past. The woman who called, Jane Sullivan, was not related to the Jane Sullivans in my family. She said I've never received any calls from another Jane Sullivan. I said our Jane was long dead, so it would be hard for you to receive her calls. I always thought it would be an ingenious invention if someone would developed a telephone to call the dead. AT&T would make a killing. Only one dollar a minute, evenings and weekends free. Call home.

I Won $50 for Horseflesh at National Poetry Week

National Poetry Week, II

I won $50, second place for my poem, Horseflesh, poems on everyday experience.

Horseflesh was a dream fragment. John and I were in Mulegé, Baja. I was going out to the bathroom and I met someone outside in the moonlight. It was unnerving. Another guest at Nachito's.

I'm not sure if I was awake or asleep when the Horseflesh poem came to me. Whether it was dreamed before I woke up to go to the bathroom, and I added this skull image, or whether I was still in the dream state, as I stumbled off to the bathroom.

And I don't remember if it was happening and I wrote it down when I returned, or if I wrote it afterwards. What I do remember was the brilliant stars above. The broken bed, the sandy sheets, the abject poverty, all contributed to the imagery. And there were many more fragments which I wasn't able to retrieve.

10/1988
DATE?

HORSEFLESH

Sacramento Poetry Center Poet News letter from Patrick Grizzell, (Jim Dodge)