DREAM VESSELS # 15: Jatumpamba FIRST DRAFT
—From a collage by Marsha Connell
Marsha said: A bowl, like letting go of the self.
Pottery shards from Ecuador.
A dream bowl of eggs, cracked,
cosmic shards representing red earth bowls,
in pieces—like all my bowls.
I sent back dozens, eight boxes of shards.
I was distraught. The Dream Vessels need to go to Ecuador
to heal something that is broken.
Who was to know that was going to happen?
There is the mountain and there are the women.
I went to the mountain to see the women.
They were of the earth and to find them
I had to walk in mud up to my ankles.
The streets of Jatumpamba, near Cuenca,
pre-date cars, there are no cars.
The women stay in the villages to make pots.
The women go to the cities for money,
they sell the pots in the marketplace,
carrying huge pots on their backs.
All the young women want to go to the cities
to make panama hats. They don’t want to make pots
like their mothers. Too old-fashioned. They want to be modern.
Marsha said: I met Alexandra during a performance piece
about sacred earth, about a woman storing bags of earth.
She said a name, Helene Aylon. I said that was my painting teacher.
She said Helene created rituals pregnant with women, and earth.
Alexandra, a Swedish archaeologist, didn’t understand the message.
A bowl in her country is just a bowl.
In Jatumpamba, it’s a way of life.
Marsha said: someone stole my shoes out of Alexandra‘s trunk.
And in Quito, to get to the Avenue of the Shoes
we had to pass through the Avenue of the Coffins.
I had to laugh, for John and I stayed on the Avenue of the Coffins.
Those purple lined coffins gave us such strange dreams.
Marsha said: I went to Jatumpamba to make a cultural exchange.
In Jatumpamba they’re running out of clay. Their culture is dying.
so I went to learn something.
I didn’t know what I could do.
I didn’t know anything.
so I went.
Summer 1991
it looks like I never did the free write on this collage or it is lost.
Pottery shards from Ecuador.
A dream bowl of eggs, cracked,
cosmic shards representing red earth bowls,
in pieces—like all my bowls.
I sent back dozens, eight boxes of shards.
I was distraught. The Dream Vessels need to go to Ecuador
to heal something that is broken.
Who was to know that was going to happen?
There is the mountain and there are the women.
I went to the mountain to see the women.
They were of the earth and to find them
I had to walk in mud up to my ankles.
The streets of Jatumpamba, near Cuenca,
pre-date cars, there are no cars.
The women stay in the villages to make pots.
The women go to the cities for money,
they sell the pots in the marketplace,
carrying huge pots on their backs.
All the young women want to go to the cities
to make panama hats. They don’t want to make pots
like their mothers. Too old-fashioned. They want to be modern.
Marsha said: I met Alexandra during a performance piece
about sacred earth, about a woman storing bags of earth.
She said a name, Helene Aylon. I said that was my painting teacher.
She said Helene created rituals pregnant with women, and earth.
Alexandra, a Swedish archaeologist, didn’t understand the message.
A bowl in her country is just a bowl.
In Jatumpamba, it’s a way of life.
Marsha said: someone stole my shoes out of Alexandra‘s trunk.
And in Quito, to get to the Avenue of the Shoes
we had to pass through the Avenue of the Coffins.
I had to laugh, for John and I stayed on the Avenue of the Coffins.
Those purple lined coffins gave us such strange dreams.
Marsha said: I went to Jatumpamba to make a cultural exchange.
In Jatumpamba they’re running out of clay. Their culture is dying.
so I went to learn something.
I didn’t know what I could do.
I didn’t know anything.
so I went.
Summer 1991
it looks like I never did the free write on this collage or it is lost.
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