After teaching Fri. at Alexander Valley School, the new-to-me Nissan's alternator died on the freeway in the rain at dusk, in Cotati, and I was miles from either home...I had to literally rely upon the kindness of strangers (I was Blanche(d) alright!!! with fear)...
Filling up at the gas station, I spotted a stranger wearing a Harley cap, named Jim O'Hara (I knew I was in good hands: he looked like my cousin, luck of the Irish) after an ordeal, Jim got me headed toward home (Tara? Was I Scarlet?) with a new Kragen battery and an admonition: "don't use anything electrical" and I got to my cabin in Forestville some 25 miles away, using the wipers only when I couldn't see anymore...I couldn't make it back to Oakland (an hour) with the headlights on.
The Kragen guy said I could go maybe 20 miles on a battery & no alternator...and of course my car has ALL the idiot lights (all using up precious electricity).
Anyway, after numerous phonecall, and "hold please", I located the part I needed on Sat. from Smothers, and a neighbor mechanic put it in, but everything I earned the last two Fridays and all my emergency wallet money ($100 bill) was spent on the "free" car.
I think my mad careening around with Coyote the other night (see below) sent an already fragile alternator over the edge. So that's why the engine light was on... of course, being an idiot light, it didn't specify that the alternator was bad...
What a night. I need a cell phone.
Still reeling (in Oakland at present...)
COYOTE PANDEMONIUM
(SPIN is a silk painter's conference in Santa Fe; Isabella Whitworth (UK) is making a wall hanging for the conference with pieces from all over the world...My Coyote in Alexander Valley is one of them.
Maybe I should fix my original SPIN square and see if it'll shrink so the image will fit. I tried to peel off the affixed Pellion backing...to no avail. I prefer the original piece to the second 11th-hour piece, unfixed but now safely in Isabella's hands (vs. in the mouth of her mad howling collie named Collie with postal aggression issues)...
There's a story attached to my piece...ironically, my SPIN square is of a coyote (trickster) howling at the moon. Coyote's been in my pocket ever since the last full moon
in my other life, I'm an artist in the schools. I began a series of new silkpainting workshops, and evening storytelling gigs at schools after months of no work... Real live coyotes were howling at the full moon at my first evening gig at the Alexander Valley grange, which gave me the inspiration for my piece.
Amidst the sleeping vineyards, small leaf hands opening to the prayer of spring, Mt. St. Helena, backlit by indigo & moonlight, the Russian River murmeling to the crescendo of crickets & coyotes.
* * *
The other evening (3/18/04) I was to tell stories at TWO inner city-schools back-to-back (someone cancelled at last minute) for Oakland's Family Reading Night. So I put on my storyteller's costume, I made it to the first school ontime (despite a massive traffic snarl on 580). In a sweltering gym packed to the gills with kids and grannies, I told Anansi & coyote stories, and we all howled like mad, invoked the rainstick.
Timing was very tight. I was assured the 2nd school was merely "minutes" away but MapQuest gave the WRONG directions. Some demi-bright city planner named all the streets & avenues as numbers...AND all the avenues & numbered streets have an extension East in the title...which gives any given address 4 possibilities, all in the dicey part of East Oakland.. And I don't like numbers.
I couldn't find the second school, at Highland Hospital (gunshot capital of CA), it skipped from the 1300 to the 1900 block, no 1700... (it was an unseasonable balmy night for March, indigo sky, crescent moon).
The Brothers and the Cholos were all hanging out in the 'hood with their cellphones permanently glued to their ears: lotta shit goin' down. There I was, caught in the crosslight of a cultural conundrum called East Oakland, but I was desperate. All those kids waiting for me somewhere nearby. I was griot. I was poet. I was brazen. I was there to tell their children stories, dammit. Magic was afoot and would not be impeded.
So I had all these bad-ass guys all calling my school contacts, only no one was answering their phones. I told one cabrón (who spoke no English) that I was to tell the kids a story about el Coyote Azul, and he just roared with laughter and shouted, buena suerte! as I sped off like a madwoman possessed, myriad silk scarves wafting like Isadora Duncan's. Madre de Dios! Gawd knows I needed good luck. Who scripted this night anyway?
So I tried the other end of town, in the industrial flats, on the other side of Amtrack, by the shipping yards, (Port of Oakland, not a place to hang, even by day), I was literally airborne over speedbumps, careening around corners in a friend's new-to-me car, a Nissan the size of General Patton's tank.
I eventually found the school, but not at the given address, it had moved several blocks west to the new Cesar Chavez Center...I spotted droves of kids leaving a barred compound with pizza boxes...and I followed the reverse tide back several blocks to the school only to find an empty gym, reeking of new paint, and I just burst into tears, howling like Coyote himself.
The good news, the school invited me back to do another story. Should I tell them about Coyote? Lately I've been thinking about making a bilingual Spanish kidbook of Blue Coyote, with silk illustrations... He's been very busy these days. And we artists obviously lead charmed lives, boldly going where the sane fear to treadÑespecially in the barrios after dark.
I poured myself a rather large glass of last year's wine when I got home. Peeeled the label off the bottle, it said where I've been, Alexander Valley vineyards, Mt. St. Helena rising up to touch the sky.
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