HEADED FOR CHIAPAS

We rode the overnight bus cross-country, 

snaking our way from the coast up dirt roads, 

13 hours of hairpin bends threaded

up steep mountain passes like a tapestry.

You can only hold your breath for so long.

Near the Chiapas border we stopped at a pullout

to stretch our legs, while waiting for the engine to cool, 

clouds of fireflies circled us. We were so high up,

I mistook them for the stars overhead.

7/27/22 rev. 2/18

WORD BY WORD

WORD BY WORD

     —For John Oliver Simon

Because I wanted to write about risk, I couldn’t choose. 

Because I had a plethora of memories to choose from, 

I drew a blank, I was a stalled page, a blank screen

where you sit in a small storm, isolated by the elements. 

Sometimes writing is like that, a clean slate 

waiting for you to say something, anything at all. 

But I’m in love with the act of longhand, 

that journey of letters scrying across the sky, 

proclaiming acts of birdsong and mountain passes, 

earned word by word, step by step.

Was it the time I scaled Half Dome, 

and hung my legs over the ledge, 

listened to silly music rise up from the valley floor? 

Or the time we found our own Thank God ledge 

on Mt. Tallac where I hovered like a bird on the brink 

between land and air as he shoved me into the rock face?

In that moment the cliff taught me balance, 

not just a matter of passively occupying space, 

but conforming to it, becoming one with the mountain—

which required an earned respect. And trust in the other.

That time we scaled the rock chimney at Sonora Pass

where we proclaimed eternal love at the summit,

the sky and the clouds as our witness.

But the journey back down the chute was treacherous. 

Portent of things to come. I dislodged a rock 

that clattered deep into the crevasse, where I found 

a small pocket of quartz crystals gleaming like stars.

Or was it the time we tested the tensile faith 

of that rope bridge as we inched across the gorge,

the headwaters of the Urubamba River

rapids assuaging the stark hunger of the rocks 

gnashing their teeth below us?

It seems we are always on the verge of leaving 

each other behind. That is the dance.

When it came to all the men I’ve loved, 

I never learned where the trail ended, how to cleave,

or where the river began, and without wings, 

I leapt blindly, followed the vagaries 

of the heart bursting into thin air,

in search of my sullied craft.

7/27 Write On! Terri Glass

Facebook punking 4.0

Facebook is either broken or it’s found a new form of gaslighting/ punishment for those of us who think outside the box. Right now every single comment on my posts comes back as a broken link. When my Facebook account goes wonkers, I find myself asking how long am I in the Facebook doghouse this time? Set to the O Brother Where Art Thou song, You’re in the Jailhouse Now.

It seems like there is a yellow card warning, and a red card warning system, with a secret extended time out period ,followed by Facebook shenanigans, and ultimately jail. My feisty friends Andrew and Tori know it well.

Turns out the punitive time out warning penalty is much longer than the actual duration of the offense. So we’re on active Big Brother watch. I’ve been issued both yellow and red warnings for using language figuratively. Facebook doesn’t like metaphor or aphorisms either, and says it goes against “community standards.” It’s a good thing James Joyce is not a Facebook user, is all I can say.

Certain words trigger the Facebook AI po-lice bots. No one knows exactly what they are. But I have figured out some of them: Slav-  ery. Kil. il as in Bill is one. Nuk with an e, as in “to microwave something” and the use of cho- with a p, as in “to crop a photo,” triggered a few of my latest warnings. Hate speech this time. do I have to get inventive in order to use those words? Guess I’ll work out my aggression by Chopin some wood. 

Naming one’s duty

Naming one’s duty is a tricky business. I suppose I could be a tree or a horse, but then what? Having shaken off the shackles of Catholicism, the Lord’s Prayer is too deeply ingrained in my psyche to casually cast it aside. Shall I name my last request? Give it a reason? Shall I finish it off with a bird of praise? Pluck its feathers from my teeth?

7/24/22

RAINCORPS

Out of death comes life. 

Carrion wasps lift the fleece of a dead sheep, 

make it seem alive. It rises up like a cloud 

takes flight in the long sky, 

turns to rain falling on parched earth.

7/24

adjective noun verb adjective noun

Dark death emerges, shining life,

dour clouds growl, dancing wind,

fluttering stars weep, o parched earth.

7/24 Poets & Writers workshop, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Exquisite corpse form

OAKFIRE

Yet another wildfire, 

I come undone again, 

the firescars of summer

emerge, we carry 

the scars deep inside, 

as we watch mesmerized by ash 

smoke calligraphing the sky, 

while the skeletons of trees, 

ancient oak and madrone 

hold vigil with wind and clouds. 

Living in this world of fire 

we constantly check the horizon 

for signs of the approaching inferno, 

we make plans, and wonder 

if we can make it home in time 

to grab memories packed in bags. 

Everything comes down to this:

our lives are compartmentalized 

and categorized according to 

want and need.

7/24 Poets & Writers workshop,Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, nonce based on Quincy Trope's Seven Elevens 

OH, WIND

OH, WIND

     —for Pádraig Ó Tuama

Oh, wind, with your restless hands 

rippling the deep grasses on the hillsides, 

your invisible corpse suppressing the morning fog 

until it flops over like a cat wanting a belly rub, 

your breath pleating the hems of a lake 

or fanning the wildfires scorching the earth 

until we succumb to detachment,

until there is no other choice left except now.

Oh, wind, bring me detachment,

bring me a place of no boundaries 

because we daily drown in the detritus of dailiness

and sometimes we forget the larger picture.

Bring  me no countries, no alliances, 

until we are no longer earthbound. 

Oh, let me be more like the birds of prey 

circling updrafts and searching for a pattern 

larger than the confines of the mind.

May it be.

7/24 Poets & Writers workshop based on a Pádraig Ó Tuama prayer exercise a Collect poem

In the name of the bee, the butterfly, the breeze. Amen  —Emily Dickinson

Published in Fly Like the Clouds of Time, 2022 California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology

Fugitive colors on Vincent van Gogh’s paintings

Vincent van Gogh, Bouquet of Irises, 1890, the background was lemon yellow.

I can’t help but wonder what this painting of Vincent van Gogh’s irises would have looked like when it was new, the yellow-green cast would not have been there and the blues would’ve been more intense. Perhaps even purple. His Bouquet of Irises against a Yellow Background (above) probably depicted purple irises, not blue ones. The yellow-green background to has shifted color and was probably closer to Naples yellow, as Vincent described it as a lemon yellow.

Irises painted May, 1889, at the St. Paul-de-Mausole asylum, in Arles, were once purple.

How much color degradation by photo-oxidation, or chemical reaction to varnishes added later has happened since this canvas was painted? Did Vincent use cadmium yellow or lead-based chrome yellow? Or yellow ochre? Zinc yellow favored by one of his contemporaries, Georges Seurat, too, is unstable. In other words the colors we see in La Grande Jatte are no longer true. They have shifted. 

The invention of new synthetic colors for textile dyes during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s coupled with the revolutionary invention of paint in a tube in the 1850s, directly led to the era of Modern Art. Not only had the painter’s palette, brightened considerably, painters were having a field day, literally, out painting in the fields, en plein aire. having forsaken the confines of the studio for the bucolic countryside. 

There was a major painting revolution going on. Artists were painting directly from life, not from smudged field notes and memory. Impressionism was in full swing, followed by Post-Impressionism. Color was king. No more drab chiaroscuro paintings. But artist also needed bold new colors that were more stable. There’s the rub.

What we are seeing now in many of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings—especially the yellows—is not what Vincent painted. Chrome-yellow turns brownish-green when exposed to sunlight. Ditto that with the reds and blue-purples. In his famous Bedroom at Arles painting and the many Irises paintings, Vincent used red lake with organic bug-based cochineal, and both were fugitive colors that either darkened, or faded to white. As it is, those white flowers in the field were once red poppies. And the brown buttercups were once yellow.

If we are to understand Vincent van Gogh’s palette choices, we need to know what pigments and binder mediums he used. And how they have changed colors with the passage of time. For example, linseed oil, the most-favored vehicle that binds pigments to the canvas, yellows and darkens with age. Too bad safflower (sunflower) oil wasn’t yet invented. For me, this is all sort of a hold my beer kind of epiphany. I need to recalibrate a long-standing notion of what I think of as Vincent‘s color palette.

It’s a good thing Vincent mixed cobalt blue pigment into his irises as well, otherwise we would be viewing a field of white irises. At least I think he used cobalt. He probably couldn’t have afforded lapis lazuli or ultramarine blue. There was a new synthetic ultramarine blue on the market, but it was terribly pricey. And surely he knew that azurite goes rogue and turns teal green or even black with age. 

Ants in my tea

 My morning tea had a little extra zing to it—with several stranded ants madly racing around the rim of the cup. A piquant acquired taste. Or should I say piqu-ant? Since the sugar bowl is locked down tight in a clicky-lid dish, it had to be from the sugar spoon. Formalic acid, like drinking sourdough yeast starter.

TOTAL ECLIPSE ON THE BIG ISLAND, JULY 11, 1991

On the Big Island, in the City of Refuge, 

how we all stood at attention, saluting the morning sun 

as the mist parted, and we watched the bright orb 

slipping into a nightgown of stars. 

How we gasped as the stars reasserted their raiments 

and the goddess was well pleased with her handiwork. 

The black flower of the sun blossomed 

in the wilderness of the sky as the moon covered her face, 

and the solar flares became petals, a corona of fire.

Oh how we were rendered speechless, 

uttered primal guttural phrases as Bailey’s Tears 

dripped stringed pearls of light into the darkness. 

During totality, you could see with the naked eye 

the silhouette of the mountains of the moon.

And time itself stood still. Even the raucous wind fell silent.

And when the fabled Diamond Ring appeared, 

the couple on the beach, draped in feathered cloaks,

exchanged vows and leis. It was either a good time 

or a very foolish time to get married. And why not?

The moon and the sun continued their odd love affair

and the confused birds all went back to sleep.

The waves stopped conversing, the wind and fell silent.

I sat in a tidepool where bright fish gathered,

cloaking me with their yellowed brilliance 

that faded into grey in the darkness, I held them 

in my arms as if I were the madonna of fishes, 

while sea turtles hovered like islands or planets.

I took the flower from my hair, a night blooming cereus, 

and let it go into the sea, waited for the light to return.

7/20. Write On! with Terri Glass

Cormac McCarthy’s Olivetti

       —Cormac McCarthy July 20,1933-June 13, 2023

I can almost hear William Faulkner sluicing a vein with all that O-negative blood resonating in Cormac McCarthy’s writing. A seething ghost informant. Both of us distantly related to the first Cormac McCarthy, having canted back to kiss the Blarney Stone. In love with conjunctions. And, and, and…. A man who couldn’t keep his day jobs, who carried a 100-watt bulb so he could write at night—no matter what fleabag hotel room he called home. And I love the fact that Cormac used an old Olivetti that cost $50 from a Knoxville pawnshop. And that hand-to-mouth living from grant to grant, a story I know well. A well that goes dry when you least expect it. Nothing but dust and bitter darkness aligned with distant stars. There is something poignant about Cormac auctioning off his 50-year-old Olivetti for a quarter million in order to fund his writing residency at the Santa Fe Institute. A haven of scientists, and of course, Cormac. And a friend found him a replacement Olivetti for $11 in a thrift store. Those Olivettis were the Italian race-car typewriters of writers, sleek, svelte, built low to the ground, and extremely transportable. He’d take the old Olivetti to the gas station for its yearly blow-out with the air hose. To think 5 million words poured forth like a river of regret from the paten of that old Olivetti. Talk about mileage. May he be granted 5 million more words. I learned to render my random scribblings into poetry on a enameled powder-blue Olivetti purloined from my mom’s paramour. That Olivetti was more like a moped than a race car. The matching zippered case was like a mod-squad mini dress. White go-go boots and all. All those bottles of whiteout. But when I couldn’t find new ribbons for it, I let it go. I had to let it go.

Fund the National Endowment for the Arts

I have worked a lifetime in the schools, as an artist in residence, 50 years to be exact, and without the National Endowment for the Arts, which also funds our state and local arts partnerships, I could not have reached so many students where traditional teaching methods have failed them. You see, I am dyslexic. Albeit undiagnosed. The arts are the only thing that saved my life. I am both a visual artist and a poet. Because of art I learned to read. Because of art, I became a writer, and have won numerous awards for my work. Art allowed me to access my intellect, and also to grasp critical thinking skills—and my life goal has been to share this process with young students where traditional educational practices have failed them. This was all was made possible through the auspices of the NEA, and the CAC. Please support the arts. Art literally saves lives.

A weird spa day

When I saw the price of BioElements body cream on eBay I nearly fainted. $65 for 4 ounces? I got the bright idea to spruce up what was left of my old (read rancid) BioElements body cream with my equally old essential oils. 

What I thought was lavender oil was lemon oil that spilled al over the place—now I smell like a piano in a used furniture store. It seems like such a good idea at the time using up all that old oil. The little plastic lid that was supposed to control how much oil comes out of the essential oil bottle flew off—oil spilled everywhere. 

My Winix air purifier is going completely nuts, it’s in the red with all four fans going for all they’re worth. Soon it will achieve lift-off. Luckily because the lemon oil was so thick I was able to mop most of it up. But some was on my hands which I rubbed on my feet. I rubbed the excess oil on my feet and legs as I had nowhere else to wipe it….damage control. Put it this way, my toes think they are well lubed honkey-tonk piano keys at this point. 

I’m showing the grain all right. I was able to mop up quite a bit of the lemon oil and smear on some furniture. The furniture is happy, my air purifier is not. My little teak pullout desk board is now very shiny. Now I can’t go outside into the sun because lemon oil is phototropic.

What makes this entire story ludicrous is that I did it twice, first with Rosehip oil. The lid dolloper literally flew off. Rose hip oil all over the place. I did not expect to have two freak accidents today. It seems when I’m going to royally fuck up I do it in spades. 

Ophiuchus the 13th constellation reinstated

On top of everything else, according to NASA, the 13th constellation is being reinstated, after being in Facebook Jail for some 2000 years, thus bumping the astrological signs as we know it out of whack. I am not willing to give up my star sign Sagittarius to become a Scorpio—even if I was born on the cusp—so Ophiuchus gets a prime time slot in the sky. I only just learned about it the other night, on Crimson Rivers, a gory French murder series from Walter Presents. I can’t even pronounce it, and the snake thing, well… sounds so Medusian. Not liking this moment of synchronicity at all. Serpens Caput indeed. Give me a centaur any day over a scorpion or a snake. Had to learn to like scorpions and snakes. I used to have nightmares about scorpions. It took a lot of willpower to overcome my fear and to appreciate them. Oh yeah, and today is National Celebrate a Snake Day. It’s all in the stars. Ssssssss.

Backside of the moon

My flabber is gasted and my mind blown daily by these NASA photos. The back ass of the moon. When’s the last time you saw that, if ever? You do know that the moon always keeps its face towards the earth. I think that earth image is Baja California. This photo may be from the space station. John Butcher said it might be a Photoshop overlay since the ISS is between the earth and moon, only  230 miles out. One theory down. Jeremy M Shaver said there’s another satellite beyond the ISS space station that could’ve recorded the photo. Edward Carl Hylin said it’s a genuine NASA photo of the far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, taken by DSCOVR. Thanks, guys!

From NASA: “Behold the moment when the moon passed between Nasa's Deep Space Climate Observatory and the Earth, allowing the satellite to capture this rare image of the moon's far side in full sunlight. We don't see this side of the moon. 

This is because the moon is tidally locked to the earth and doesn't rotate. So we only see one face of the moon from the earth. Humans may likely land on the far side of the moon before the end of this Century. This is indeed beautiful shot.”

📸 NASA

Patrice Vecchione workshop: Write your life open, journal

Patrice Vecchione says to write with your heart, write with your eyes, and write with your life wide open.

What am I looking for within this writing life? To be open is to change, to not be static, to ask what if, and let’s see, maybe include curiosity and exploration, and especially trust. The closed fist and the open hand, the relief of trust and the infinite possibilities that we, as we sit at our work, will uncover truth. 

We are open, free, but not always able to speak about life as we feel it, but we mostly choose not to. So take my words, these words as strong as my mind. I would use my words to write near and far. In Galway the bird stands for all things and Saint Francis and the sea.

1. At the center of my life is my work, the calm within the urge to create. Everything revolves around it. It is how I define myself, how I see myself. I was one of those children who failed miserably at school, I learned late and I learned slow. As if in a fog. Reading outwitted me until the end of third grade. I can still remember the day I learned to read.

The overwhelming feeling I am left with at school was that I was hopelessly sad. But at the center of my life was the quest to explore distant vistas, discover secret valleys that led me up to the mountain passes where euphoria sleeps. John Denver called it Rocky Mountain high, but, for me, it was every mountain pass. 

Maybe it’s the exhaustion or a lack of oxygen, but where I feel most alive is when I am in the mountains. My knees know their relative age, so hiking is now problematic. There was a time when I hiked all the fireroads of West Marin road and the sky was the limit. 

And I feel that I am not writing what I should be writing about—par for the course. Sometimes writing is a shield and when I crow about my accomplishments, I feel guilty, I am so used to being slapped down. Is it a Catholic thing? Pride goeth before the fall? Or has it more to do with not tempting fate? Not tempting the devil to eke out his revenge on your success. Not tempting the furies to take it back a few more millennia.

Jumping Jupiter!

Jupiter as it has never been imagined before. The James Webbie infrared cam has outdone itself. I am gob-smacked. OK, so the image is computer enhanced, making the invisible visible! But beauty x beauty = beauty. It’s a real gas. Planet, that is. No land. But when my eyes land on this—no words. WOW. More images here:

Approaching my 70th birthday

Approaching my 70th birthday, my journey having arrived at the home stretch and the question is, "how are you going to live out the rest of your days" arises. Yesterday‘s mail from Social Security arrived with dire warnings that time was running out, that I  needed to register before my 70th birthday, brought it all home, full circle. It’s suddenly all very real. This aging process. Time is running out. I didn't sign up for this. Yet here I am. I feel lucky having lived a life rich in creativity and adventure. All the travel I’ve done continues to inform my sullied art. I got the adventuring out of the way in my 30s and 40s while I still had knees that worked. I swam in the Galapagos, traversed the Andes, straddled the equator, went to the USSR bearing gifts, lived in St. Petersburg and Amsterdam. how I loved those cities of light. I loved fiercely and mourned when the relationships inevitably failed. But I was always running from the past. It’s frightening to see how so many people begin that cognitive slope of decline long before they reach this age, but I must be one of the lucky ones. My mind is busy putting together thoughts and rebuttals, always ready for the next argument, always ready to challenge the norm, as if life itself depended upon it. But sometimes the fear rises up like an unwelcome tide. When I was 20 I couldn’t imagine myself at 50. When I was 50 I couldn’t imagine myself at 70. And yet here I am inside this uncharted wilderness of age, the same landscape of my childhood. What I’ve gained is knowledge but that’s cumulative. Knowledge is not wisdom. Joseph Campbell talked of the hero’s journey, those rites of passage, not gathering statistics or fact. Like what Einstein said, creativity is more important than knowledge. My hero’s journey, having survived a childhood where I was shunted off from parent to grandparent, with aunts and uncles threatening to either adopt me, or to send me off to boarding school, left me shaken, with no sense of home—so the hills became my refuge. I was a feral child. And from that world of uncertainty, I retreated to the realm of my horse, she became my escape, my solace. As I rode the long ridges of West Marin, we were like needle and thread stitching together the carpet of a storied life as we traversed fire roads, into a map that I could navigate and find my way back home. How am I going to live out the rest of my days, as best as I can, savoring the odd moments of ordinary beauty, while climbing that steep slope of that last mountain pass with one foot in front of the other.

7/14 Mill Valley Library non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick

THUNDER MOON 3 haiku

In the sky’s pale arms

wind whispers secrets to the pines,
gibbous moon rising.

Thunder Moon spreading

a shimmering quilt of stars,
disturbs night’s dark song.

Buck Moon’s throbbing heart

sings a song of silvered light

& adamantine stars.


Moors are not Black

A Facebook poster from LA, in an epic sleight of hand, repurposed the story of Calafia (yes, it’s spelled that way) to fit his own modern socio-political needs, wrote, “The state of California was named after the mythical Black(Moorish) Queen Califia. (Khalifa).” Ok. The story of Calafia stems from a series of medieval stories translated into Spanish from the Portuguese. The term in Spanish and Portuguese, that means dark or black, but not white—is a case of what gets lost in translation. This idea that Amazon warrior queen Calafia was a Black African is a modern American binary interpretation.

Then the poster went on to say, “It is well documented that of the 44 people who founded the City of Los Angeles, 26 were of Afrikan (Moorish) descent. What is amazing and not taught in California schools is that the majority of the founders of San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego were of Afrikan (Moorish) descent, or that Orange County, Beverly Hills and Malibu were once owned by people of Afrikan (Moorish) descent. According to the story, California was an island where only Black (Moorish) women lived, gold was the only metal and pearls were as common as rocks. The women were the most powerful women in the world. When Cortez arrived in California, searching for this mythical queen, her influence on him was so severe, he paid tribute to this powerful Black (Moorish) Woman Queen Califia by naming California after her. California literally means, “the land where Black (Moorish) women live." History has been hidden for a long time.” 

Sigh. Of course he provided no references for that last bit of repurposed history. Whereas it is true that Hernán Córtez named the long peninsula Baja California Sur, thinking it was an island, after Calafia. But we seem to be mixing apples with oranges. Calafia was an Amazon from the Hyperborean north, beyond the realm civilized (Classical) Mediterranean world. She was other, therefore exotic. And the term negra could mean swarthy, or dark, but not African. And certainly not a Moor. This is like saying Cleopatra, a Ptolemaic Greek, was black.

Also the term, Moor is not synonymous with Black. If anything, it’s the opposite. A Moor can be anyone from Arabia to Iberia to North África—Egypt, Alexandria, Morocco Mauritania—which probably means homeland the Moors—regardless of skin color, and the Berbers of North Africa were all called Moors— because they converted to Islam, and spoke Arabic—and literally shoehorned their own culture into Arabic ideals in order to be considered part of the elite ruling classes.

The term Moorish refers more to religion and the Arabic language/culture rather than to skin color. Also, for centuries, the Arabs were the undisputed ruling class, so to self-identify as a Moor was to be part of the ruling elite, or not be a slave (Black). The matrilineal Berbers were in a fix and they had to wholesale invent patrilineal Semitic genealogies in order to fit into an Arabized world.

The Habesha Ethiopians, Eritreans (Abyssinians), and Tuareg—who self-identify as Berbers, though dark-skinned, do not consider themselves as Black, but Semitic, though some are also Christian. And for the record, sub-Saharan and Sahel Africans, the Arabized Maghreb Berbers, aka Moors, during the 15th c., are light-skinned.

Sadly when the Berbers began to identify with the ruling class Arabs they gave up their matrilineal society and had to construct a patrilineal Arabian lineage which create it all kinds of havoc—especially for the Berber women who lost most of their freedoms in a Moorish world.

Moorish means more than anything else—meant non-Christian, therefore, in European eyes, exotic. Shakespeare’s Othello was a Moor. You see where this leads to. Let’s just say, it’s complicated. And if you actually read the novella from which the name comes, Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) penned or collected by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the late 15th c., Calafia is referred to as an Amazonian warrior woman who lived in the far north—beyond civilization.

So here we have a strong woman, with warrior superpowers, from a post-Moorish subjugated world, call it Iberia, where women collectively had few personal rights. Perhaps the model for Calafia was a Sub-Saharan Greek, or a Maghreb woman. 

Note the use of the terms Moor and Arabic in this quote, taken from references of 14th c. Arabic scholars….

“In contemporary Hassaniyya Arabic, the language spoken by the Moors (Arabs) of Mauritania and Northern Mali, the terms ‘Whites’/‘Blacks’ (b ̄ıda ̄ n/su ̄ da ̄ n) are used to distinguish between Moors who are, in status, freemen, and those who have a slave past. A different Arabic word for ‘Blacks’ (kwa ̄r) is used to identify non-Moorish Africans. In contemporary Tuareg discourse, colour-based terminology is used to distinguish internal social status and to denote those who are termed ‘Blacks’ (koualnin), whether people of servile origin within Tuareg society, or to refer to non-Tuareg ‘Blacks’…. In the pre-colonial Arabic literature of the area, the term ‘su ̄da ̄n’ is most often used to refer to ‘Blacks’ who are ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Moors…” THE JOURNAL OF NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES

But Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), a novela redacted by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the early 15th century, is a sequel to a popular 14th c. chivalric romance novela, Amadís de Gaula. While the novela suffers from a lack of literary style, it achieved notability “in 1862, when Edward Everett Hale concluded that the novel was the origin of the name California.”

“Sabed que ala diestra mano de las Indias ouo una Isla llamada California mucho llegada ala parte del paraiso terrenal la qual sue poblada de mugeres negras sin que algun uaro entre ellas ouiesse: que casi como las amazonas …”

OK, not only do we have Amazons from somewhere beyond the Black Sea, but also a mythical knight from Gaul. A far cry from Africa. Here’s the thing, the Spanish term negra/o is also used to refer to any people with swarthy or dark-colored skin (both native and foreign). Including the Moors who were considered freemen vs. slaves. 

• Califia, warrior queen
• POETRY TEACHING NOTES: Naming Califia
• CALIFIA SPEAKS:
• I DREAM OF CALIFORNIA

WAKING SLOW

I wanted to waken slow 

and write something holy and profound 

like finding a buried treasure trove 

on those gleyed trails deep in the forest. 

I wanted to be paid in birdsong and stellar light, 

reflecting off mirrored montane lakes 

deep in the mountains where carnivores

hunt on glaciers older than civilization. 

I wanted to waken with a cup of coffee in hand 

ready to render those fleeting moments 

into words, polished and sharpened 

with nuances of carborundum 

where the opinions of poets 

aren’t brushed off linen tablecloths 

by the baseless butler brooms of apathy. 

I wanted to mend the rents and tears in the fabric

of those missed moments in the past 

with a polished thread, where the darning needle

becomes a silvered road to stitch 

all those lost moments into a quilt,

those lost moments that have slipped 

irrevocably into a skein of untended fields. 

Those golden what if moments 

where only in hindsight, do you realize, that yes,

there were always other choices to be made,

but the bouncer at the trapdoor of the heart said no. 

What did he know of love?

I wish I had married the men I loved 

at least once, maybe even twice. 

I wanted to look back and say that I lived 

every moment fleshed in the round, 

that the prisoners were of my own choosing. 

I wanted to swing on the long arms of that clock,

stop time in the middle of the town square, 

dangle my legs into the air like a heron or a stork, 

say, that clock in Prague that charts constellations,

but my gut said no, and stupidly I listened. 

I wish I had traveled more. Just like that time 

I turned down a yes to the Great Barrier Reef, 

or to the Outer Hebrides dressed in indigo twilight.

I always thought there would be more time, 

but now as I stand at the lintel of that waiting room 

where age, and the erosion of memory is palpable.

I want to contemplate the sand left in the hourglass

as an end to a life well lived, as best as I was able,

considering the crossroads of familial inheritance

I was given—with no roadmap, or Michelin guide. 

InterestI squandered my days curating the detritus of the past.

All those portmanteaus of wrinkled what ifs

lost luggage circling all the carousels of the world

waiting for someone to take them home.

I wanted to inhabit a place of memory where love 

was the only viable stamp in my passport.

I wanted my heart to say yes yes yes.

7/13 Write On! with Terri Glass

First views from the James Webb Space Telescope

 “We are stardust, we are golden.” How can you not love this stuff? I’m all agog and a-drool here. Pure poetry to be able to see back in time into the heart of deep space star nurseries. 

The progeny of the 1990 Hubble, the colossal JWST, or Webb infrared telescope camera, was conceived in 1977. After many mishaps and missed dates (it was supposed to be built in 2002, and ready in 2005), it was finally launched Dec. 25, 2021. It took six months for Webbie-cam to reach its destination, and to send back these stellar photos. Wow, I am gobsmacked. This is the most extraordinary news in three years.

Hubble photos took weeks of constant exposure, Webbie-cam managed to see through all that cosmic dust and achieve absolute clarity and enlightenment in just 12 hours. But unlike Hubble and E.T., if something goes wrong, the golden-eyed Webbie cannot call home, nor can astronauts take a space jaunt to tweak it. Webbie has enough juice to last about 20 years. Then it’s lights out. Sayonara, so long and thanks for all the fish.

The gold-plated lens array, designed at Stanford, is 21.7 feet across, the size of a VW Bug, and looks like  bee’s dreampad, or a MI6 prop from GoldenEye. Because it is infrared, it has a special shield array, and orbits in the forever shadow of the moon and earth. “JWST operates in a halo orbit, circling around a point in space known as the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point…” In other words, direct exposure to light or heat would fry Webbie-cam san. It’s like totally chill, dude.

Webb is orbiting a million miles from Earth, and is geared to peer through impenetrable clouds of thick cosmic dust, into the secret hearts and wombs of the earliest galaxies and stars ever born. We are literally looking back billions of years in the space/time continuum with these images of ancient “high redshift” starlight. In this case, red stars are the oldsters. White stars are teenagers. OK, my mind is sufficiently blown, folded, stapled and mutilated.

One of my favorite nebulae along with the Horseshoe, or Omega Nebula, is the Eta Carinae Nebula, host to a hopping hot young star nursery, and home of the Mystic Mountain, the Homunculuse Nebula, and the Keyhole Nebula in the Carina-Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, at a mere 6,500 and 10,000 light years from Earth. And who doesn’t love the gas ring of the Southern Ring Nebula? Aka the Eye of God. And for the record, I’m a Sagittarius. We don’t need no stinking badges.

The bee-ginning of the end is nigh

I always get a kneejerk reaction to the Facebook honeybee memes. At least the circulating memes have been updated to include other (native) bees. Part of the premise of the so-called Einstein quote in conjunction with bees is that we will disappear from the earth in four years as well if the honeybees disappear. But most New World foods are not pollinated by bees—and certainly not by European honeybees. Not that I think extinction of any species is ever a good thing. 

Speaking of truth versus fiction, it’s interesting to note how many memes are but half-truths. They need a pithy quote, an authority figure (in this case Einstein) and an erroneous extrapolation to support the straw argument. It’s not a question of challenging one’s faith or belief, but a willingness to look at both sides of our quasi-scientific biases in order to see the larger picture. 

Folks from my California native plant groups, are focused on helping the environment, but in their misplaced alliance, they don’t see the irony in planting native plant gardens in order to feed non-native European honeybees, which are classified as livestock. Euro-bees certainly help agribusiness, but not necessarily the environment—as they compete with our native bee species. Besides, butterflies want equal rights and equal billing as super-pollinators when the next doomsday bug meme comes along.

Many native bee dining favorites happen to be toxic to European honeybees including buckeye, azalea, rhododendron, death camas, corn lily, mountain laurel, sheep laurel, and locoweeds. Do we next suggest getting rid of those native species because their nectar kills those euro-bees? Gardening articles actually suggest not planting these native species for a more “bee-friendly garden.”

We have 1600 species of native bees in California alone, including Yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, Sweat bee, Halictus spp., Wool carder bee, Anthidium manicatum, Mining bees, Andrena spp., Long-horned bee, Melissodes spp.,  Leafcutter bee, Megachile spp. to name a few. They can drink the toxic nectar, ingest the pollen from these “toxic” plants because they co-evolved with them. 

Here’s the thing, honeybees certainly help the farmers but they don’t necessarily help the environment as they are non-native species—except in Europe and North Africa. If anything, they drive the native populations of insects away, and hog all the local food sources. Check out this National Geographic article. And this Scientific American article.

What’s really killing the honeybees? Pesticides, and varroa mites are a real problem. Monoculture is the real killer. And it is having an illicit affair with Round-up. As for our native bees—they too are threatened by pesticides, loss of habitat, and competition from those Euro-trash bees. 

We need to build more bee hotels and create habitats for our native species too. And maybe send those non-native honeybees to bee school. All is not woe. Italian x Carniolan hybrids, are supposed to be more resistant to the narcotic charms of the buckeye. Sounds like both the nectar and the pollen is toxic—like the hallucinogenic mad honey produced by rhododendron and azaleas. I wonder if honeybees hallucinate?

TODAY I AWOKE

1. Today I awoke wanting a divorce 

from my country of origin, and

I'm not even married, but I’ve had enough 

though we’ve been joined at the hip since birth. 

Somehow I always found a path forward 

even when ideologies clashed like cymbals 

on the bloody killing fields of Vietnam, 

of Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Aleppo.

And the glistening wounded words of my despair,

is the destruction of women’s rights, human rights.

We have spiraled into a second-world country status.

But the world itself has changed irrevocably, 

young men mow down fellow citizens with A15s

as if life were a weekly video war game. 

I don’t want to live in a country, 

trapped in this marriage of convenience,

where we routinely slaughter children in schools,

(two dozen massacres since Uvalde), I weep 

for the fallen in niteclubs, theatres, and parades,

where we strip the basic rights from people— 

where we legislate who to love, who to marry, 

who to give birth to, all regulated 

by repressive “Christian” ideologies. 

What happened to the separation of church and state?

I'm too depressed to even render this into a poem. 

I don’t want artifice. Like Dylan, I too want 

to rage against the dying of the light.

I’m too angry for my sullied art to emerge. 

I cannot think on those terms,  

because to do so, is to render and to codify it,

and codification, the heart of the problem

those SCrOTified codpieces of (in)justice 

sitting on the bench draped in robes of darkness,

where they truly believe women are unequal. 

I just want to stop this world and get off. 

America is a failed post traumatic experiment, 

and to think it all began with a tax on tea 

and we are daily taxed, both mentally 

and physically. The problem is I see no way out, 

no shining dawn to bring us new hope

in this country of origin and this is not a poem. 

It is the dark venous blood of broken treaties

seeking the formless tears of the sea.

Rain on the Fourth of July