STROMATOLITES, BAHÍA CONCEPCIÓN

One Easter during the late 1980s, I was standing on a boulder, 

on Playa Santispac, overlooking the Sea of Cortez, 

when I realized the rock I was standing on, was strange,

then, that sudden flash of insight, it was no boulder, 

but a stromatolite colony—a city of bluegreen algae, 

the first I Am the earth uttered. Words failed me, 

I yelled a primal scream, startling campers and shore birds.

The colony was surrounded by strange commas in the sand, 

small carcasses of dried baby hammerhead sharks, 

the size of pencils, as if trying to swim away.

3/18/23

Sea Hunt, or learning to swim

Of course, I did not do the writing assignment. I was too much of a flibbertigibbet to settle into it. The problem always was that I never admired the celebrities. Somewhere along the way, I had learned avoidance. And so I avoided the writing assignment.

See, we had so many celebrities, mostly musicians, living the San Geronimo Valley with us that I became quickly soured, inured to fame, feeling invaded as they bought up houses, moved in and turned everything upside down with their newfound wealth. As Joan Baez said, a savior’s a nuisance to live with at home.

At an early age, I fell in love with the sea. Lloyd Bridges playing Mike Nelson was my hero, taking us down to the underwater realm in black-and-white, on a neighbor’s old television—when we could get reception, which was iffy. Usually it was electronic snow emanating from the Andromeda galaxy decorating our screens, and the hiss of deep space singing.

Camping in Baja

One time we were camping in an old abandoned mission in Baja Norte, in the Sierra San Pedro mountain range, and in the morning, I awoke to find the canyon wall glowing in the early morning sun—filled with petroglyphs, and padres' marks—curly Spanish crosses from the 1760s. We arrived at dusk the night before, set up camp in the dark, and hadn't seen the ancient graffiti. Astounded, I gathered the top of the air bed to my body in a big hug, to revel in the sight, only to discover the small rounded rocks beneath my arms began to move on their own: a family of scorpions, seeking warmth, had moved in beneath the air mattress during the night. I believe some rather primitive an ancient form of screaming and dancing ensued on my part. John, who was still asleep, leapt up in a warrior stance to meet the enemy at his feet.

2 Baja photos published in Medusa's Kitchen

St. Elmo's Fire In Our Fingertips

Sunset, El Dorado del Mar, San Felipe, BC, Mexico

Wrong passport at the US-Mexicali border

I am cranky and cold back home in Alta California after a tedious 13-hour drive north (and I very nearly wasn’t able to cross the border to get back into the United States because I grabbed an expired passport. A part of me was hoping I’d be turned away at the US-Mexicali border because I just want to return to Baja pronto! Was it appropriate to see the huge Mexicali iron fence on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, or what? Maybe someday we can tear this wall down too.

Surprisingly, the border patrol accepted my expired passport that I had written void across the front pages with a big sharpie marker. He explained to me that even a voided passport was valid, because there was no way I could get it unless I was a US citizen. The last time I was in Mexico was with John Oliver Simon in 1987. A lot has changed. San Felipe is unrecognizable. My aunt owned a barren lot there for decades. She won it in a card or bingo game. Wish we had it now.

Paul Hardstone‘s wife owned a place in a fancy development in San Felipe, that she needed to check up on, so it was a mad weekend dash all the way from Oakland. We were there for the jumbo prawn festival. Everywhere people were selling barbecued prawns the size of sausages, and I couldn’t even eat one of them because I had developed an allergy to shellfish.

A place called El Refugio

Where do we go when there’s no place of refuge, when all has been taken from us and we are left with the pale ashes of self after the phoenix has flown, and a breeze left lifts us from the balcony to some distant shore? The Aegean has been haunting me again in my sleep as if I had some unfinished from a lost century. The scrunch of sharp golden sand underfoot, the blue sea inviting us into our dream refuge. Refugio. I am in another language, another sea, traitorous Cortez's sea and in a place called El Refugio that is anything but. When was it ever someone’s refuge, surely not within this century. Not this wide greasespot in the road, a dusty town we can’t seem to get out of. I watch dawn turn into midday, a man in huaraches herds his goats and pigs to another sparse patch of desert sand. I’m desperate for coffee and the next bus will not come, ever. At the bodega I manage to order a cafécito of sorts. Nescafé and Cremora. I find out too late to the amount I thought trifling was worth a day's wages to this man who kisses it and crosses himself and hold sit up to the sun exclaiming Madre de Díos. Mother of God indeed. Perhaps El Refugio was the site of many lost missions strung loosely together from Sonoma to Loreto where the wolf boy was born. They all have hair on fire faces—soft, downy and black. For them, even the girls, the only refuge was to run away across the border to the circus. Wolf boy send money home to his family each week. He looks in the mirror brushes his cheeks and brow, squares his shoulders to meet the public. For him there is no refuge, only gawkers. He longs for the normal life, with friends and family. No more freak shows but he will miss the money. In Refugio, inside of the sea, prison walls, prisoners within sight of the sea the brine dark sea. 

2/24//2006 Writers' Group

CONDEMNED FLESH

CONDEMNED FLESH

Below the mission outpost of civilization,

three cultures clash with time:

tarpon roll in the Múlege River,

holding midnight's secret under their skins.

Desert palms clatter, venetian blinds in a storm.

Copper women walk barefoot & wash laundry by hand.

We live in a hostal with feeble electricity,

by the prison walls, satellite disks track quasars.

You are my companera of the mythical journey,

my lover whispers, buying me with turquoise.

We don't look too far beyond condemned flesh

and eat only what is offered—sea turtle steak

under the bouganvilla arbor of El Candil—

rationalizing: the turtle's already dead anyway.

A tide of carmine blossoms eddies at our feet.

Even from the beginning, we were planning

the extinction of love, silent tapers in the church;

the turtle's plight beyond salvation.

11/11/89, Mulegé, Baja

TALKING LEAVES

TALKING LEAVES
        Trabaja el mar en mi silencio.
             —Pablo Neruda

We watch the sky for clues.
Birds proclaim unchartered territories.
A certain slant of sunlight grows wings.
Keepers of the circle, we sit on a blanket,
listen to translations of wind in the sycamores;
palisades     summer grass      cicada song
and pass the drum. Someone hands me a piece of paper.
The source of my freedom is what I fear most.
Bluejays argue, scissor-sharp, which direction to fly.
Words fall from the mouths of bees,
deer hooves rattle—first breath or final inspiration?
It no longer matters what we believe in. It happens anyway.
Watermelon rind on the blanket—not the marriage blanket
where he undid me with promises under the stars of Chiapas
only to bury a child's eyes beneath the stones of Tikal.
From inside the drum of my heart I howled
under the solstice moon rising over Mt. St. Helena
and from deep canyons coyotes answered. What more do I want?
I wear trophies of where we've been:
Baja, Peru, the Galapagos. An equator of pain visible
to the naked eye takes on the green form of air above the pond.
I struggle for balance, drawn to obsession like fire to air,
and learn first-hand the meaning of words: betrayal, abandonment, she.
She stalks up the path; a pathetic fish skewered to her stick.
Taking my man wasn't enough, she had to kill the sunfish too;
not to eat it but to prove some senseless notion to herself—
because it was alive, an irridescent trophy. A bauble.
Its carnal colors bleed into the sky; drab corpse forgotten.
He will comfort her, call her a brave hunter.
They will build shining deceptions; whatever it takes.
Mirate, I hiss at her. Look at yourself.
The cardinal rule of the hunter: eat what you kill.
He devoured me clean down to gleaming bone.
The poets cloak me with feathers and shake the gourd;
they say the Tarot gave her Death mounted on a white horse.
I dream the medicine man uncovers a word on the photo—
heiau, and he asks me for silver coins to bury it with.
For the grandfathers, for your vision, he says.
On a yarrow stick, an "i," the letter of death
becomes a plumed serpent, Quetzocoatl.
He smudges me with wild tobacco smoke and sage,
kisses me, says, you will find what you seek.
I remember how it felt on the outside:
this circle becomes a source of acceptance.
I am the drum, I learn the drumsong.
We are standing on ceremonial ground.
A wobbly prayer lifts up, takes flight
across the valley. Heiau he way,
he noni noni ne he, heiau he way.
Oh!

9/18/89

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

Baja, Mulegé, Cabo San Lucas, watercolors

Baja Journal from the Air: revisiting the past, ruminating on photography and art

1/17 Remembering the past, exploits, from the air.... these second-hand memories, once removed, like unfamiliar second cousins.

I sit in my bed remembering an airplane ride, which in turn, reminded me of three previous trips. Memory within memory within memory—everything reshaping to fit the current turn of events. Reality vs. memory.

As I write about this, what is real? What becomes the synthesis for my poetry? Or my art? When I can record so little during the actual experience? I am so absorbed, so involved in the new experiences, it leaves little time for reflection, and recording of observation.

Even my photography falls off the wagon. At least I do it, but I forget to use the tools. Also, a part of me doesn't want to disrupt the absorption process with the intrusion of my camera.

Behind the camera, I become an organ, sensing only light and shape. I lose contact with where I am and what I'm doing.

At the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, after I'd shot a roll of B&W kid shots for John's book, I said I wanted to go back in to see the Mayan exhibit. John said, "But we've been in the Mayan exhibit for the past 20 minutes!"

POP! ZIP! A strange scrambling of perception as I take a few minutes to refocus on my surroundings. Oh. Of course.

To photograph, sometimes my other senses retreat. My eye, the part of the brain that sees shape and light comes forward, becomes dominant. Nothing else exists. Speech is laborious. Exhaustion falls off. The world exists only in a dimension of light, shadows and shape. I am always dazed, and somewhat exhausted after an hour of shooting. It is so intensely absorbing. Utterly so.

I believe the Indians who said that he camera takes a little bit of their soul. It takes something of the photographer's soul too.

I did some charcoal pastel drawings of an Edward Curtis print of an Indian holding up a buffalo (bison) skull to the sky. In the second drawing he holds a box camera up. In the third drawing, he becomes the buffalo with the camera.

And in the fourth drawing, he becomes a shape in contrasting colors. Red and green, like a color negative. Horribly naive drawings. The four pieces are not particularly successful as far as art goes, but I like the idea that spurred me to do it. I destroy them. Baby and bathwater. The art is a byproduct of the experience, a symbol of the thought process.

Sometimes it takes on more, or other meanings beyond the original intent. But for the most part, the finished product is only the tip of the iceberg. What leads me to art is a long, and complicated process. A jumble of memories, conflicting sentiments, and ideas pour into a piece.

When a piece is completed it takes on a life of its own. All that underwater ice. The subconscious, if you will, is no longer relevant, or important. Ghostlike, it's both there, and not there.

added 9/17

Baja Journal from the air: Bahía Concepción from the air

Bahía Concepción from the air. I can make out Sanispac Point where John Ford lives. I saw his tall daughter, Angelica, watching us as she walked along the shore in a long white peasant dress, as we desperately rowed against the afternoon wind from Lighthouse Island.

How foolish we were to go so far out, and then to not leave the island before the afternoon winds arose. We took turns in the water, using our fins to propel our raft. We made it to the lee side of Sanispac, but offshore winds made rowing impossible. I waded among the boulders towing the raft. The sharp coral punctured my diving booties.

Someone in a boat gave us a tow to shore that last half mile, thank god. We could've done it on our own. We'd made it through the worst part, but we were cold and exhausted.

From the air I can make out Lighthouse Island—a fair distance to row against the wind and current in a small leaking rubber boat. In hindsight, I am impressed by our past exploits and our sheer foolhardiness.


added 9/17

Baja Journal from the air: Lagunas Hanson, Salada, & the Salton Sea

Baja—flying up the peninsula. I am struck by the geologic nakedness of the land. It's as if someone had peeled the skin back to reveal a layer of muscle and tissue and bone beneath. Erosion. Etched canyons on smooth mesas. 

Vulcanism. Perfect craters on top of the mesa. One half of a moon crater casting a perfect shadow behind it. The escarpment, a rift that divides Baja west and east. Sierra de San Pedro Mártir looms, and Picacho del Diablo, pink granite rises straight up 10,000 feet. Cerro del la Cúpula's observatories, like strange fungus.

A misplaced wedge of blue: Laguna Hansen, on top of that flat crest. When we drove in 30 miles on dirt roads—if you can call them roads—and pygmy forests. We never could see more than a few feet ahead of us. And beyond that isolated blue ledge, a piece of sky? A tiny mirror of the sky, the Sea of Cortez.

The shallow basin where the Colorado River enters (negligible), and the seasonal Laguna Salada, an inland sea, ten meters below sea level, is like its twin, the Salton Sea, in the Coachilla Valley. Like the Salton, it comes and it goes.

From the air it's so obviously part of the Sea of Cortez bed. Very little elevation separates Laguna Salada, the Salton Sea, and the Sea of Cortez from each other. Just a little rise of sand dunes, and flat sand bars several miles wide. I imagine how it must've looked before we robbed the mighty Colorado River of its mouth. A vast delta and miles of wetlands. Lagunas reflecting the sky.

Laguna Salada 1984-2016 Laloxtreet, YouTube

These lakes may be man-made in recorded history—when we began tinkering with the Colorado's flow. But these bodies of water have come and gone so many times without our help. All are rifts, from the San Andreas Fault.

The Salton Sea is rising, inundating the houses along the shore. Agricultural runoff from the Imperial Valley. It’s seeking the ancient Lake Cahuilla shoreline. You can see the bathtub ring along the foot of the mountains. The Colorado  River aqueduct burst in 1906, and ran into the dry lake bed for two whole years. But there's also a record of the Salton Sea having water in 1849 as well, with no help from man—meaning Europeans. And of course, the Coachilla Indians claim it always had water. Until the arrival of the white man. There are ancient fish weirs along its archaic shores.

Ditto that for Laguna Salada. Who was around to record it, other than the Coachilla Indians?

Mexico/California: two "manmade" seas straddling the border. They say Laguna Salada is manmade too, and will evaporate within 20 years. It's happening already, the beach resorts no longer fringe the lake. A dock surrounded by sand. We walked out a long way before we could swim.

We swam out to some submerged trees covered with barnacles above the level of the lake water. And we had a lively discussion as to what came first, the barnacle or the tree. The tree, of course. But barnacles? How did they even get here? There is no passage to the Sea of Cortez.

Of course, I'm still trying to grasp the idea of what look like oak trees growing in this barren land, in the first place. Lake or no lake. This was once a wooded valley with vast marshlands.

The Salton Sea, also well below sea level, has become a poisonous wasteland from agricultural runoff. And the New American River drains effluent from Mexicali, on the border, into the US. But the US has something to do with the pollution returned to our shores from the other side of the border. The pharmaceutical companies evading US pollution laws, are on Mexican soil. Exempt.

The politics of land use: only the land suffers.

What we cannot change.

added 9/17

• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

LUNAR ECLIPSE, MULEGE, BAJA

LUNAR ECLIPSE, MULEGE, BAJA 

Sunlight surreptitiously
slips out from under rocks
to reveal the age of trees.

Dust beneath us,
dust above.
Pale green bloom on leaves
like spores.
Winged half-moons
in symmetrical repetition.

why so sweet
why so yellow
sun and moon

The beast rises from the swamp.
Tattered cannibals
devour this darkness.

Civilizations rise and fall
by the edge of this fruit.

When will we pass this way again
calling out the names of cattle
on the last handhold of sliding earth?

4/21/ 1986

GOOD FRIDAY IN SAN IGNACIO

GOOD FRIDAY IN SAN IGNACIO

We're back in Baja, Sur
at the Hotel Presidente, riding on empty,
and it's 65 miles to the next Pemex.
We stalled at a granite oasis
where a Roberto Acosta died at age 21.
His blue iron cross bleeding with rust
etched with his dates 1956-1977.
Born after me, died before me.
Did he live a life worth choosing?

At the San Ignacio Mission
we walk amid pastel shrines,
carapaces to house the dead,
on Good Friday, under a waning moon,
listening to the rosary in Spanish,
the padre's face, lit by candles
and the dark gold sheen of the altar,
a subtle coinage of faith.



28 March, 1986
San Ignacio, Baja California Sur
added & revised 2/17

A CAGE FOR THE WIND

Claimed in the beginning faces

of defeated children,

our shadows fall

from the smoking mirror

and hurry through the window.

This harvest of bone,

and dust—wind spews debris

from which to hang the heart

under a nervous moon.

Sweet lies, shipwrecked flesh

could do no better.

Let the wind pass.

 Spring 86

3 Freewrites

My revolution is a synonym of arguing
but my youthful virgin eyes turn with the sun
and the karma of mutineers and thieves
hailing us, lonely for the cultural palaces,
laden with pretensions and validations
of villas and money and mantillas.
Soon there will be a Taj Mahals in every yurt
and on the killing fields, only the Russians
laden with raiments of politics,
will slice open the heart of the country
under an ancient earth.

 1/9/1986

No school today again.
Herefords wary of our methods
meander away from us.
They say his mother was worried
because the wilderness father saw
goshawks dipping from the ladle of the sky.
Who arrested the sun for idolizing itself?
The black bear awakens from slumber.
I think: heart and health, hailing stipends
in the motherland, firmly folded
in monosyllabic words
dripping day after day.

1/9/1986


FAN PALM

Enclose your yards with words,
close your mind to syllables,
count the vowels moaning
in the deepest throat of the night.

Independent drugs on Thursdays
will provide nothing as usual.
it is necessary to offset the cost.
There is no end to this relief.

Memories slip under the cogs
and movie star voices trespass
through thin hotel walls
to enter the surreal stirrup
of sound in the ear canal.

But the instant ocean of sand at our feet
continues its cease and surcease.
The fan palm outside the window stands vigil,
keeps rhythm to the sound of rain.

1/9/1986
added, rev. 3/18

TENGO DINERO

These silver fish in my pocket
sing for their supper
sing for flies and oranges
under a full moon.
At Cabo San Lucas,
the wind through the arch
is like the sighing of empty vaults.
The fishing banks are open for commerce.
"Silver sinkers from old dimes
make the best lures,"
an old Indian said.
The mines are empty.
The mines are empty.
Let's lift the moratorium.
We need silver to seed the clouds;
to line the sow's ear.
The gypsy's fortune speaks in tongues
when the fish won't bite.

12/5/1985

1989 Poetry SF Quarterly, Honorable Mention, spring issue, 

1987 Sculpture Gardens Review

         Marin Poetry Review

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

TENGO DINERO

Aquellos peces de plata en mi bolsillo
cantan para comer
cantan para moscas y naranjas
bajo de la luna llena.
En Cabo San Lucas,
el viento por el arco
susurra como bovedas vacias.
Los bancos de las pescas
se abren para negocios.
"Los plomos de plata
de las viejas monedas
de diez centavos
son los mejores cebos,"
decia el indio viejo.
Las minas estan vacias.
Las minas estan vacias.
Levantemos el moratorio.
Necesitamos la plata para sembrar
las nubes;
para forrar la oreja la cerda.
La suerte del gitano habla en lenguas
cuando no muerden los peces.

tr. John Oliver Simon y Juvenal Acosta
needs correction accents
1985

Baja journal: Writing in arrears, spider dream 12/5/85

it is ironic that I begin to do most of my writing in arrears. In retrospect, while traveling, it was difficult to take it all in. I did a few watercolors, but not enough, and no poems came. I am gathering new material I keep telling myself. John writes many poems that captured the moment. And I have nothing more to add. So I write very little in my own notebooks.

However, we did do several collaborations in English and in Spanish in his notebooks. Sometimes I dictated to him in my simple Spanish. All in present tense of course. I will need to get copies of them and put them into my own journal at one point.

Rereading my notes from Thanksgiving Day I realize I've come full circle from the disillusionment of Tijuana to the tropical ease of La Páz and Cabo San Lucas. It took a long time to process the Third World shock. Nothing can prepare you for it. My second day in La Páz restored my equilibrium.

We stayed at the Hotel La Perla, right on the waterfront on the malecón, facing west over the harbor. Hotel la Perla is a Mexican middle-class hotel and there were very few gringos staying there, El Arco took that crowd in, at considerably more pesos per day. The Hotel La Perla was about nine dollars US, per night.

It is hard to remember not to drink the water here, especially when they bring you ice drinks on a hot day. Brushing the teeth with tapwater is one of those automatic responses, like opening your mouth in the shower both are no-nos. I began to brush my teeth with a hot top tapwater at Hotel La Perla, and to drink some things with ice. Even a lettuce leaf or two.

Everything was suspect and I became rabid for the taste of fruit, anything fresh. Mexican fare begin to tax on my system. I thought if I saw another huevos for breakfast that I'd absolutely die.

I reread all those poems you wrote me: odes to orchards, satellite discs, drunks in a one-hearse town. You wrote enough poetry to paper a wall, and, there's more to come. The last man to write me poetry got bitter and vindictive when I said no to him, and after that I never could read his poems. I've been saving them for old-age.

When romance becomes a dim habit, I can burrow through the mountains of paper and old love letters and say yes I was loved. Yes I was wanted once. Men found me desirable.

Your stack of poems keeps growing—some of them good, and it doesn't seem like we're looking for it to end. Last night you told me that in the last 40 nights we've only spent eight of them apart. And here we are living in separate houses trying to live together at the same time. You say you want us to live together and I say that we already are

DREAM JOURNAL

One night I dream of entering my front door but across the opening, spiders have done their work. This web cloying thick and sticky— only the web of a black widow spider is like that. Soon there are hundreds of shiny black bodies dancing on the snowy white web, like cloth draped over me. I am killing spiders right and left. And I can't get rid of the web. Their bodies are shiny and tough, and they make such a cracking sound as I squash them but there's too many of them and no matter how fast I swat them. Some will survive and it's only a matter of time before one bites.

12/5/1985

Baja Journal, San Diego to Oakland, air 12/5/1985

San Diego to Oakland

Flying north at 26,000 feet one can see the slipstream of boats as if the ocean were sky. The afternoon sun's reflection races across the ocean, and the dark webbing of calm water weaves a net of waves, broken in concentric rooms by Santa Catalina Island.

A sudden reflection of light leaps the boundaries of the ocean to strike the land and finds arroyos flooded by rain, silver threads of rivers, swimming pools, lagoons, and it makes a grid of light and shadow. Even the cars and windows join in.

The captain of the airplane announces that the space shuttle just passed directly over us.

We enter a cloudbank a weather front...
A sundog of light
like a satellite follows us
the sun's reflection refracts
making a small silver patch of light
against the dull gray clouds
following us like a small satellite


We return home, keeping well to the edge of this continent. We are shaking granite sand from the last mountain and the last beach of where California disappears into the sea for the last time. We feel as if we are weightless, as if gravity also left the ends of the earth, and the sea continues to cradle us. After so long at sea, we must learn how to walk again.

Date I don't know it's after December 5, 1985


AT 26,000 FEET

Flying at 26,000 feet
80 miles to the right of us
the space shuttle passes overhead
as the reflection of the sun
races across the ocean,
a silver needle making a grid of light
across swimming pools and cars
As we enter a cloudbank
a sundog of light follows us.
The sun's reflection refracts
making small silver patches of light
against the dull gray clouds
following us like a small satellite.

12/5/1985