Stomach bug flattened me so I scanned photos instead

Advil. Check. Headache gone. Check. Tea. Breakfast. Check. I can do this. Check. What a difference a "down" week makes. Even if I was sick the entire week, I still got some good scanning time in.

Some Facebook collections of my newly scanned photos include:
Chris Caswell
Utah Phillips and Doc Watson, Rosalee Sorrells
Jack Mueller, national poetry week
Boschka Layton, SSU reading
Paul Mariah
Glenn Ingersoll
Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Herron
Michael Daley
Poetry Flash event QR Hand, Sharon Doubiago
CPITS retreat Noyo River 1985
Edwin Drummond
Peter Capp
Cal Davis
Brownie Mary, Tony Serra
My family, Feather River 
Kitty Ward funeral 
Wake
My 30th birthday
My grandmother

Godspeed, Edwin Drummond

For Edwin Drummond, who reached for the clouds. And got a handhold. May the mountain gods pull him up to safety to the sky and beyond. The only regret Edwin had was not climbing Everest. The gods quashed it. May he find a new toehold in that unscaled escarpment. Alas, my love, godspeed. So honored to say that I knew you when.

May 14, 1945 - April 23, 2019

I was supposed to be the second wife between Grace and Lia, but I said No, and ran the other way. He never quite forgave me. Last time I saw him was after he divorced Lia. We reconnected but the same old ghosts were still hiding in the closets of time. Lately Edwin has been on my mind. Haunting me. Almost an obsession, really. I guess I was sensing the end was near when I began to search for him on the internet in January, but I never found him. It was so ironic that he was so close, yet so far, in Oakland, right down the street from where I used to live. And we never reconnected. Weird that he died a year after John Oliver Simon. I'm losing the significant men in my life. Is there a memorial service?

Edwin Drummond shaving, Forestville, ca. 1980. These negatives were mixed in with the photos of Boschka Layton I had taken for her book jacket.

Lúghnasa

The Mórríghan, my namesake, dressed as a crow was calling outside my window at dawn: it's Lúghnasa! Or maybe it was Lúgh's raven. I couldn't see it, I was trying to sleep. The bird didn't really caw, it was more like a bark: get up you lazybones. I pulled the pillows over my ears. It kept barking. (I was up all night listening to Dick Francis' Even Money. It takes longer to listen to a book than to read it. And I can never put a good book down.)

Only the male crow sings. It's a rather mournful little warble. This one was barking orders outside my window like a drill sargeant. It could have been a raven, but ravens in Oakland? They are deep-voiced. Croak, the raven, evermore? Let's just say corvids were involved.

OK, OK, I'm up. Got it. It's Lúghnasa. (No, not the band). I can't climb the highest peak, nor dance, nor even circle the proverbial well—not with this torn knee. Yesterday I cleaned house for the first time since I was injured in March, and am paying dearly for it. But somehow the body keeps time with tradition, despite the century one is living in. About the only thing up for dancing today, is my imagination.

Sometimes The Mórríghan, the Great Queen, is called the phantom queen, or the war goddess. Or "Morrigu" for short. She's an ancient triune goddess land/ soverighnty. As in mother of the gods. Some say the Welsh Morgan le Fey is a cognate of the Mórríghan (or Morrigan), others say no FN way—it's a case of bad linguistics.

That little fada (accent) on the first syllable, mór changes the meaning of the word from sea—mor, muir, mer—(or horse—but I really don't see how anyone can get "horse" out of it) to—great, or big—as in The Big Kahuna.

My Welsh friend Mábli named me The Mórríghan in grad school and it stuck. I miss Mábli, living far awa' in Stornowa'. I know, Maureen is supposed to mean little Mary—but I fancifully said that's a Christian overlay for a name already in Irish mythology. And so, The Mórríghan moniker stuck.

Maíriín is Maíri with a diminutive ending, -ín, or in English: Maura + -een. Like Colleen: cail + în. You're probably thinking Maureen sounds nothing like Mórríghan. Welcome to Irish 1A. That -gh in the middle of Mórríghan is silent, more of a swallowed y sound. Like a gulp. Call this an exercise in false etymology, or maybe a bad case of vivid poetic imagination.

About the only thing that warring camps of Indo-European linguists do agree on is that rí = king/queen, or soverignty. The rest is up for grabs.

Then there's the thought that Mor-ríghan is cognate with Morgan idea, with no fada, as in the sea. This is where it gets tricky. She-of-the-sea, my old boyfriend, climber-poet Edwin Drummond (aka The Human Fly) used to call me. Great big sea. (No, not the band). Fanciful wordplay drives linguists to drink, but if you're an IE linguist, where consonants count for little, and vowels count for nothing at all, any excuse to drink is probably good. Or if you're a poet. Besides, who wants to be called Biitter Herbs anyway? Just don't call me Battleaxe.

You're probably wondering what all this has to do with Lúghnasa, or August 1. I'm wending my way there. Never could think straight, so it's widdershins for me. My thoughts travel at the speed of Celtic knots. Or maybe I'm bird-brained from being wakened at dawn.

The crow is one of the Mórríghan's animal personae, a shape-shifter. Not only was she a triple goddess—there's fierce debate as to which three goddesses—she could turn into an eel and a wolf as well as a white, red-eared heifer (OK, so that's four critters—which goes against the Celtic trinity thing).

But in Irish literature, The Mórríghan was most famous as the scaldcrow, or raven on the shoulder of CúChullain's corpse—he died, strapped to a menhir on the battlefield in the Táin Bó Cúailnge while she ate his guts. She is the Irish goddess of war and fate. The washer at the ford, she ordains who will live or die on the battlefield.

Those two had a serious love-hate thing going on. Cú should never have spurned The Mórríghan  when she offered herself up. (She had this re-virgination land thing going on too). You know what they say about a woman scorned. Kick that up a few notches when she's an cougar sovereign goddess—and mother of the gods. Besides, Lúgh was Cú's father. So, I'm sure there was another interesting triangle going on as well. Welcoming them home with open thighs, and all that. Let's just say she's complicated.

Lúgh too had a thing about those corvids—oracle ravens. You know, the ravens at the Tower of London? No wonder the Romans had to bury statues of imperial Roman eagles there. To break up the juju. Some say London is Lugh's city, Lugdunum. Did the ancient Irish distinguish between ravens and crows? They're both Otherworld carrion birds. Some IE linguists claim that the Gaulish lugos (Lúgh is a cognate) means raven. Or maybe it means *lug as in oath, pledge, or in Proto-Indo European it could mean *leuk (light). Or maybe it's wordplay with ravens. —Check out Lugh - in Mary Jones dictionary.

The Hound of Ulster's man-handle was CúChullain, but his baby name was Sétanta (sé as in Sidhe?). There was something odd about his birth(s): unseasonable snow, birds, twinned colts (making it a triad birth), maybe some kidnapping or infantacide. Let's just say he-who-was-to-become-Sétanta, then CúChullain, died more than once, and Lúgh had to stick the kid's soul back into Deichtine's womb all over again. (Deichtine was sort of like the Welsh Arianrhod (silver wheel) and her magical sons: Dylan Ail Don and Lleu Llaw Gyffes. All these multiple virgin births. I'm sure their Facebook status is set to: It's extremely complicated. Monks trying to shoehorn Irish mythology into Biblical shoes.)

So when the Mórríghan was calling me nine times outside my window at dawn, in a place where crows don't normally visit—it got my attention. Made me realize it's a feastday. A crossroad of the year. I thought about baking some sodabread to celebrate the great wheel of the year. Not that I actually did anything, other than attempt to write this blogín.

The other ancient  Irish feast days are largely forgotten—but everybody knows of Hallowe'en, or Samhain. Then there's Imbolc (first milk) and Beltane (Bel's fires). And Lúgnasadh. Or Lúghnasa—its Christian frock is the harvest, or first-new-grain-loaf festival, aka Lammas Day. Technically, Lúghnasa began yesterday, as Irish days, like Hebrew days begin at dusk.

Today is the feastday of the god Lúgh Lámhfhada. And whenever you begin invoking the old Irish gods, they all want to come to the party. And young Lúgh, a bona fide member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, was the young rising god, a real party animal. 

Lúgnasa is the half-way mark between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. The word is a combination of Lúg (the god Lúgh) and -násad (which is an assembly, or gathering). His handle, Lámhfhada means long arm. God of all arts, he was really good with his, er… spear. (See also pan-Celtic god Lugus, and Welsh counterpart Lleu Llaw Gyffes, "The Bright One with the Strong Hand.")

Lúgh (modern: Lú) founded the Óenach Tailten (the ancient Irish Olympic Games—similar to the Greek Games) as a funeral feast for his (foster) mother Tailtiu, queen of the Fir Bolg. Royal fosterage was a big deal in ancient Irish mythology—it built alliances between clans and tribes. Foster children had mixed allegiances—to their foster families, and to their blood kin. 

Cian of the Tuatha Dé Danann was Lugh's father, and Ethniu, daughter of Balor, of the Fomorians, was his mother. (Or Lugh had three fathers, or was born three times, or was a lone surviving triplet—Balor drowned the others.) Got that? There's a test at the end, should you ever get to the bottom of it. I would imagine most of you are stark raving by now—with all those pimpley hyperlinks screaming: pick me, pick me!

So, we have three conjoined Irish races: Tuatha Dé Danann (TDD), and some Fomorians from under the sea (making Lúgh a half-god), with the Fir Bolgs as his foster parents. Add fosterage with Manannán mac Lír at Emhain Abhlach (Anglesey) too. we're not to sure what mythical race he was, TDD? Manannán arms Lúgh. So, Lúgh has three fathers, and/or is triplets, or was the product of a triple birth. Good old Indo-European threes. Surely that was significant. I said, it's complicated. Gawd, I need a drink.

Lúgh's poor foster mother Tailtiu, died of exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agriculture. Not too sure what all the menfolk were doing when all this was happening. Sitting on their keisters swilling heather beer in yon bonny glen? Apparently clearing the fields was women's work—even if she was the queen. What's with that? Master and commander?

So Lúgh of the Long Arm threw his foster mother Tailtiu the mother of all Irish wakes, or funeral feasts—if you must. The first Óenach Tailten, or Áenach Tailteann, was traditionally said to be held at modern Teltown, County Meath. Telltown is a corruption of Tailtu's name. It's also the seat of the early Uí Néills, so locating it there is a dynastic thing. Turf wars and all that. They later footed the bill for the See of St. Patrick at Armagh and took on some retroactive airs.

The Óenach Tailten Games were celebrated as late as the 18th century and included feasting, fighting and fecking. Or the ritual sacrifice of a white bull, heavy athletic competitions, handfasting, dancing, pilgrimages to the top of Croagh Patrick and to holy wells (Brigid, the beer goddess and the hearth is invoked), and the ritual cutting of the first harvest grain—with August 1 as the epicenter. 

Surely you didn't think these parties lasted only a day, did you? More like a month and a day. Takes about a week or two to ease into it. Like poets arriving fashionably late. Then, it was party like a rock star for another week or so, then nurse the hangover. Willow bark tea was as good as it got for aspirin.

See, when the Games were gussied up and Christianized, the sagarts had to make the festival fall on a Sunday to make things work out right. Eddie Stack mentioned in his blog that July 26 was Féile Lúghnasa. It's a movable feast—whatever it takes to make it to fall on the last Sunday in July.

One time it was held at around 200 sites, nearly always remote, inaccessible places that were on heights, or near water. The festival was dedicated to Lúgh, the young and most brilliant god of the Tuatha de Danann. Lúgh was the god of light, god of arts and crafts, father of inventions and the likes. It was he who saved the harvest by vanquishing Bal, the sun god who was in the process of scorching all the country’s plants and crops with relentless heat.  —Eddie Stack 2010

Lúghnasa is ancestor of Aonach an Phoic Puck Fair, Domnach na bhFraochóg, or Bilberry Sunday. (AKA frachóg, whorts, or heatherberries. In our family, August is also the opening day of huckleberry season. My grannie would take us up the ridge at Tomales Bay to check on the bushes. Just to make sure.)

The Áenach Tailteann is also the ancestor Games of Scottish Highland Games—as they too were traditionally held in August. 

Lúghnasa was once called Dé Domhnach Chrom Dubh, or Crom Dubh Sunday—he was a bent/crooked dark fertility god, said to reside in a cave at the crest of Croagh Patrick. But Christianity banished him as an evil one.  Another permutation of Lúghnasa is Domhnach na Cruaiche—Reek Sunday, or Garland Sunday, is the day 30,000 Irish lemmings crawl up Croagh Patrick on bended knee. Or blindfolded, or both, while praying all the way up with myriad jaysusmaryanjosephs. Not me, my knees will never kneel again. Though I do prefer to walk barefoot.

Pilgrims climbing Croagh Patrick on "Reek Sunday," part of the festival of Lúgh since ancient times. —Wiki

Lúgh Lámhfhada was also the patron god of cobblers. Thought I'd throw that one in for free. The thought of shoes at a time like this tickles me. I can't bend down to put on my shoes. Besides, the closest I got to a holy well today was the shower. I was circling the drain. Does dyeing your hair count as pilgrimage?

So you had a few goats, some old and new, toss in a bit of the living and the dead, and the dead coming back to life again—what more could you ask for? An "A" party list.

Lá Fhéile Lúghnasa Sona Daoibh!

Letter to Ira Rosenstein

Dear Ira,

Dear friend of a friend

So you ask me if I love life? This is to ask if I also know death—the flip side of the coin. You speak of being held at gunpoint, & question where that passion comes from—if I’d ever had a similar experience because I live in a rural area.

This morning my uncle died, in less than 48 hours I leave for Russia for an unspecified amount of time, and I thought because my uncle tried to sell my grandmother’s house and land out from under her without her permission “for her own good” because I was growing up too wild and untamed (unfit for society’s restrictions) and he made her cry, bullying her with his first-born male energy—that I was somehow exempt from grief.

A son is a form of God in an Irish (or Jewish) family. My grandmother was a strong woman, stronger than most people of any/either sex and I inherited some of that strength and passion—what comes with the territory is the white-hot rage and anger—another socially unacceptable trait. 

I attacked my uncle, a 12-year-old who wanted him dead, and so now he is dead, and I’m surprised to find myself depressed, in a fog, suffering from grief—because I discovered that blood is thicker than intellect or emotion—no matter how disfunctional the family. 

I remember his wife washing my mouth out with soap and sending me to the bedroom for some minor infraction—she was unaware of the deeper mine of wrath and anger below the volatile surface. She labeled me as “child” but perhaps like Athena, I was born fully formed from my grandmother’s brow.

Do not assume that because we grew up in different circumstances that I led a ‘sheltered‘ life; it’s not that cut and dry. 

Growing up rural is a strength that has allowed me refuge from the traumas that followed my family. I’ve faced death both in a global and a personal context. 

No, I have never been held at gunpoint, other than at a roadblock deep in the Guatamalan jungle—with no witnesses. We were lucky and escaped with our lives. 

No, I have never been held at gunpoint, but I watched the campesino sleep with studied indifference as the soldiers practiced kickboxing with uzis slung over their shoulders (a sweet US/Israeli deal—arm the army). 

The other side uses AK-47s. I’ve seen both. 

And in Peru, we came upon the body of the lawyer dumped in front of the Chorillos tunnel in Lima—his crime, a good lawyer for the other side. 

No I cannot shake the larger images of war from my mind, it wasn’t my own life I was worried about, but the perpetual genocides committed by both factions in the name of liberty—for whom? 

The passion is genetic. I am the grand-daughter of a revolutionary. My (IRA) grandfather, while working for the city jail, shipped suitcases of guns from San Francisco to New York to Ireland during the Rebellion, and knew Parnell and Liam Mellows first-hand. 

And was there when India struggled for independence—anything to be on the side opposing the English. When Indians weren’t considered human, not allowed to own land, he sponsored them, bought land under his name for them. 

Recently I came across the engraved invitation from the Indian Consulate dated 1945, inviting my family to the Independence celebration in San Francisco. Another letter from Seamus (James) Mooney, the famous longshoreman and political prisoner of the ‘30s who killed someone during a union riot (I was surprised to hear a lawyer, speaking of ethics, refer back to the Mooney case). 

My grandfather took the city on, suing them and winning (he was his own lawyer) when they discriminated against him, firing him to give his job to someone else. It's down in the lawbooks as a landmark case. Reilly vs SF. To fight is to survive. My family emigrated to America after the Famine, so, genetically speaking, we know no other way than passion to survive.

My second cousin, a mathematician, was whisked off right out of high school to a PO Box address in New Mexico. When she died of cancer, the story came out. Manhattan Project. Fermi Institute. 

In Santa Fe, I stood at the bridge where the Rosenbergs were captured, and shivered in the sunlight—born during this age of Light, I have no choice but to weave the stories. 

Nor could I stop crying at Los Alamos—what we’ve done in the name of an idea. Remember the Bay of Pigs? The scars go deep, and I cannot stop writing about it. Bearing witness—it is this writing I cannot get published because it’s too dark.

Yes, I too am uneasy about the new Russia, as I am about the new Latin America. Now that we’ve had our cake, we (who really do see the other side of the coin) have the audacity to tell them they can’t have it—when we’ve set up the wish list of ultimate attainment to begin with. 

I know we can’t convince the Olegs of the world—they are incapable of seeing out of the trench of their miserable lives, and there’s something in the Slavic character, that will continue to hold them there—the root word “slave” speaks volumes and needs no interpretation. 

Need I say that what I admired in Oleg while we were in the Ukraine evaporated on American soil? Oleg’s limited vision and inability to look inward for root causes is a microcosm of the whole; have we deluded ourselves into thinking that the ideals of communism (vs. anti-capitalism) or another system could overcome some basic human traits?

Of course, no matter the country, it’s the same old story—war between the sexes, only I’m no one’s footstool. I love life because I love my art—and every man, no matter how enlightened, seems to want that space for himself. 

Yes, I learned the term “foetid’ from Durrell’s description of an abortion in the Alexandria Quartet— Brit. spelling, but then Durrell’s Irish, as I am. Did you notice the hidden word “foe”? And having been the victim of men’s basic inconsistencies—love/mysogeny, pregnancies/abortions, I too know first-hand about death, having long-term infections that nearly killed me for my decisions to take life. 

You see, I was the product of a divorce; I saw my mother go crazy (and the suicide attempts that followed), an aunt and drunk husband & co. where violence and poverty is second nature to breathing. I knew better than to leave myself at the mercy of society as a single mother. I’ve been the psych wards and have no intention of becoming an inmate.

I love life because I know first-hand how easy it is to abdicate—the way my 17 year-old cousin did at 4 a.m. in downtown Santa Rosa on a Harley. Maybe drugs were involved. I don’t know. 

But when someone close dies, I am usually there in my dreams with them—and I never want to wake up to hear the news. I dreamed the darkness, the fog, and the red light of my cousin’s death—only we’re not supposed to remember these things during our waking hours. My mother banging on the door to wake me with the news, but I refused to waken, because waking was worse than the nightmare. 

There are things I tell no one, but it comes out in my poetry; sometimes I worry about there being too much death in my work, but I am a witness, and this is my most foetid art!

Eileen Mavorneen! (Rosenstein). What a great name. And what’s she doing with an IRISH first name, pray tell? Is it the Black Puerto Rican, or the Jewish side? 

You know of the Irish kids kidnapped and shipped to the Caribbean by the thousands by the British? This is why most Blacks have Irish in them (or Irish last names) I haven’t time to properly introduce delectable British forms of genocide, but suffice to say, centuries later, they continue to practice on the Irish. 

I know Eileen’s disappointment—looking for the bright ones—and the despair that follows when whole classes show nary a shining star. I wonder why the hell I’m bothering to reach them—but ultimately I have faith. (Faith: something scientifically unproveable). 

Then my faith in humanity is restored when a little 2nd grader, Trevor Yeats (great-grand-nephew to WBY) writes to me: 

“This body is to ask

this question of the mind: 

Is the sun to shine on the day of my death?

Is the hole in the ozone layer to stay as big? 

Tell me, tell me, where is the answer? 

This is the breath, to breathe this air.”

         Trevor Yeats

Well, since my work overtakes me, I’m not so sure I can write in sonnet format It has its own thoughts & forms—probably why I hated poetry as a kid was because it rhymed! 

Well, I’ve got to go miles and miles—to the other side of the earth—before I again sleep—and I still have to pack all this shit, or I’ll weep ere the morning comes, and have a fit of despair, with all this packing to do, or go nowhere at all, except deeper into the mystery. 

Maureen

PS Give my love to Edwin too.

10/91

Edwin Drummond, Strand magazine query (no date given)

STRAND

The universe is one poem, on-going, tending to infinity and ultimate openess, as our truer poems and science do. In an oceanic maze of mazes, a seamless matrix whose caul is language, poems, at their best, return us to discover - and recover -the process of life streaming within, and all around, in which we too swim, until de-solving within the.one continuum of all being as single drops of, mainly, what we call water.

With the kind and generous support of A.DOFE, Inc, 'A non profit, public benefit corporation supporting contemporary art and the people who make it', there is a new thread in the World Wide Web: STRAND; a monthly gathering of poems addressing 'the society in wilderness, the wilderness in society.'

Anyone who has gathered poems out of the suck and surge of nature and nurture is invited to meet, through their poems, each month in the pages of STRAND. Whether fresh from the coast or the street, in the office, in love, on the rocks... STRAND welcomes poems that have it up to Here - and then some: superfresh air. At least on paper.

In time, perhaps such poems, together, could become a new branch of the Great Green Belt of Living Poetry circling the Earth, an ecologos, an archipelago of language under pressure in the wild. Whether on the mountain face or in the computor's, looking for a ledge in the sirened night, gazing into a microscope at the Gordian knot of a strand of DNA (Do Not Amputate), waiting at the bank, on the moors with binoculars for the curlew to speak its name, or cheek to cheek on the bus... poems make oxygen. People breathe more easily, opening their hearts in their mouths.

The hummingbird imagination has to check out everything, from the black holes of rifle barrels and eyes, from ants to dictators; flower nostrils, fears, ears of grass; from words to chains, forgetting nothing, not even nothing, street trash huddled in a corner by. the driving wind, clutching its small cup of honey. Small, daring, darting, with a sharp nib for the hard arse of authority on the one hand, receptive as the monthly bed of roses a woman makes on the other, a clutch of poems for all seasons, STRAND declares open season on having any agenda other than going against the flow of what's expected.

We will be both a window in the city and its ledge outside. The poem as nest. With a small quiet bang - like the cracking up of earthworms tossing their soil caps off after rain, that have returned to fields where the chemical warfare has been ended - each new universe of discourse, each truly new poem, can not only startle us: land minds to roof gardens, thought for food, water for a dry art, or heart, it can sustain us when everything else runs out.

My name is Edwin Drummond. The author of A Dream of White Horses, reflections of a life on the rocks, (1987, Baton Wicks(UK), my earliest stories appeared in the Sierra Club publication, Ascent: (1969, 71, 73 & 1989). My current work in progress is The Stone Butterfly, (Jonathon Cape/Random House), a story of suicide and the divine. Writing poems has been my daily bread for forty years. Currently the recipient of an A.Dofe Working Artist Award, I have also received a Keats Prize and a National Poetry Award. Which I trust no one will hold against me.

This first airing of Strand includes two poems of Alison Deming, a Whitman Award winning poet. They show in some way I believe that promise of new life that Strand aims to plant in the middle ground.

Each month ten, short sharp poems will be chosen. Every sixth month, space will be devoted to a longer one or two.

People of every age, from the earliest to the latest, are invited to contribute; from anywhere; child, woman, man. Although in English only for the time being, we will always consider a translation, accompanied by its native tongue original.

Every trimester STRAND will be published as a small magazine, containing those poems■that have been published on the WWW over the preceding months. On occasion there will be a review or essay. Each year there will be an award for the single most vital poem, as judged by the readership.

Such is the map. Now let's see where the river takes us.

—Edwin Drummond

Goodbye for now (Edwin)

Thursday Edwin called to say goodbye, leveling with me, the inner knowledge that he struggling with these past two years, is that he's in the lower depths, striving to be reborn. He knows he's broken, and needs to heal. 

We covered a lot of ground and a half an hour. He was being utterly honest and open with me, saying things that needed to be said 15 years ago. And for the first time, he knew why I had left him, and acknowledged that he slid from woman to woman to woman, never really knowing what love was, and of his terrible need to hold on. 

He wasn't telling me to wait for him, he was saying, I'm not home, and I am unable to love at this point in time. I told him why I had left him, because he didn't believe me, he didn't love me per se. I was merely another pawn on the chessboard filed under the label of woman. 

I knew we were in trouble when I had found out that he hadn't taken time out to grieve for the death of his stillborn child at the end of his previous relationship, before coming to me. It was as if he had read my observations, and was reciting them backwards from my notebooks verbatim. Better now than never.

Closure on the chapter of my life. It sounded suspiciously like we were trading vows on a potential future. I said what I wanted in a relationship, and that I didn't want to live alone, but I wanted my alone time to be broody, and to produce art.

He had a hard time being so honest and not to make promises. He said he wasn't ready and he had to do it alone, for a change. He's the Knight rescuer type, saving damsels in distress. Only I don't need any rescuing. 

I asked him if he was afraid of my rage, and he said, A little. It's been a long time since I've used it as if it were a tool. We talked about art in the process of manifesting will, his extraordinary will and mine too, acknowledging each other's strengths and faults, as it were. We bared ourselves to ourselves.

He said, I'm very fond of you, several times. He praises my strength, my will, and the life I've made for myself, even through all those silent years, those 12 years. 

He brought up the lavender letter that I had sent to him in England in 1987 or was it '88? When I was still with John Oliver Simon, saying I had some regrets, his marriage bearing fruit years later. 

He said he had to do it alone, that he couldn't use women as he had in the past. He said he definitely wanted to continue to see me, to take hikes, to go to dinner etc., to keep me in his life. Though under what capacity, is unclear. No rush, no pressure.

I'd asked him if he'd bring me home on July 31 when I return from Holland, but it's the same day he sends his girls back to Tucson. He wants me to meet them. He said the last girlfriend didn't like children.

He came to me defenseless, a broken man. The towering ego trampled into the ground and I saw what I loved in him 15 years ago. And in my empathy, I wanted to draw him closer. Yet instead of pushing him away like damaged goods, like I did before. 

The auto wreck he had the last time he came to visit, a symbol of what his life had become. It said: warning damaged goods. He was still sliding from one relationship to another, with no breathings space in between, and I kept thinking how wrong it was, and I was at the other end of the spectrum. Why did I need to take so much time to heal, when it seems no one else did. We were two extremes of the same coin.

Stood Up

As it turned out, Edwin Drummond stood me up once again, first at the wedding and then again last weekend. He called last week to say he'd be up, and would I like a visit? I told him that I was beginning to feel badly, this was the third time he had canceled out on me. With no phone call, nor apology. 

Well, he did finally come Friday night, fourth time's a charm? We had a late supper and then he told me a tale of marital discord. His divorce was affecting all walks of his life. 

His ex-wife Leah's father had assaulted him last year when he came to pick up his two daughters who were nine and 5 1/2 years of age, hitting him on the side of the head with the bicycle tire and rim and the upshot was, he nearly died from head injury complications, and is now embroiled in a legal suit. He lost his job teaching at a private school and now has and enormous hospital bill to pay off. 

The girls' grandfather is an ex-CIA Republican from Arizona, so Edwin is facing a tough opponent. He is trying to block Edwin from seeing his own children. This strife has taken an enormous toll on Edwin, both physically and emotionally.

I could see that Edwin was depressed, as that was the only way I could explain away his odd behavior, and not calling me. Or wanting to see me. Then the no-shows. I too, get that way myself. Pull my snail horns in.

But I told him it made me feel badly, that I was beginning to take it personally. He promised it would never happen again. Turns out he thought I had his number and where he would be staying at Steve's in Berkeley, and he thought I would give him a call if I was really into seeing him. I said, But I don't have your phone number. In a situation like that I would never call. 

Steve's wedding was different I knew and liked Steve and Carol, and I would've loved to have been there. He said the wedding made him so depressed, harkening back to his own failed marriage, conjuring up too many painful memories. 

Like I said, I had already put two into together and it did not equate Prozac. I knew the symptoms. And when I reached him via phone a week after the wedding, his voice was dead flat. He abruptly said, Can I call you back later? And hung up before I could answer. Some serious warning signs there, but I have a compassion for him, and I'm touched knowing that I'm still within his thoughts, as a relationship from the past to salvage. 

In other words, I suspect that he never really fully got over my breaking it off 12 years ago. But I was being smothered. It was in 1982, I think, when we first met. I was still in love with Lee Perron, and even though we long since broken up, I still carried the torch for Lee, because I had a boyfriend, Lee and I became closer. Lee considered himself safe. Ironically. I don't think I loved any man the way I loved Lee, but he couldn't handle it.

When we broke it off, Edwin got vindictive and began to show up at Garbo's Open Mic in Guerneville, though he lived in San Francisco, just to read spiteful poems about me to publicly humiliate me. I, who had done nothing wrong, or dishonorable, was mortified. Lee took me in his arms, cradling me from the wrath of this man who claimed to have loved me, who wanted to marry me, then shamed me, thus driving me away from him forever, or, so I thought. 

Then in 1993, we found ourselves working on a project, writing grants. Climb for world peace in the Bay Area. We targeted three peaks, Mt. Diablo, Mt Tam, and Mt. St. Helena, for a simultaneous climb, linking them with laser beams, and transmitting poetry readings via cellphones and Mac laptops. The climbing teams were behind it. We were way ahead of the times, both conceptually and technologically, but there wasn't that kind of support from funders. The recession didn't help either.

We spent quite some time together working on the grant, but I was chilly and distant, and sexually I wanted nothing to do with him. He complied with my wishes, commenting that we were like an old married couple, sleeping together, barely touching.

I thought of my anger towards him. Ten years is a long time to hold a grudge. I was angry with him for something more fundamental than him running off into the arms of one woman to another, both before me, and after me (Leah), and after Leah, without taking any time to center himself. They were the symptoms. Ironic for a world class rock climber to be so emotionally off-center.

This time Edwin came to me armed with nothing more than hope, his arms were full of fruit, bread, chocolate, flowers, and wine. I'd forgotten about his excessively generous side. Does he give because he's empty?

This time I could sense there weren't the warm sheets of yet another cast-off relationship trailing about him. And when we did finally make love, it was an admixture of familiar and new, the body remembers quite well and so it wasn't fraught with the discomfort of the new and novel. Yes, everything still worked, though he's around 50, he's never had any trouble in that department. But when he was 36, we had to be cautious as he was long. Something that my friend Boschka took rapacious delight in.

There was lots of catching up to do. He confessed that had a relationship right after his last visit with me, how could I tell? I knew that if I had turned him away, he would just seek another woman. Heat seeking missile. Well, she didn't like children, and it fell apart. 

He hadn't been with a woman in quite some time, and without my asking, I could sense it. We shared our AIDS test information (the new sexual passport) after we had made love, but we trusted each other enough to know that it was okay. I said I had barely been with anyone since my father had died in 1994, a few isolated skirmishes with Jim Byrd, with very long intervals in between. And a visit from Sean Kilty and a couple of visits from Trygve.

Trygve, out of the blue, pulled up on his motorcycle an hour before Edwin was supposed to arrive. I knew Edwin would be late. Trygve threw me down on the unmade bed as I was trying to clean the cabin. I must be putting out pheromones. Or starring in a porn movie.

Trygve said he was going to hang around and bad vibe Edwin. I was feeling a bit frantic by then and shrieked, You have no rights! And he said, I hope he doesn't come back for two or three more years. It really was quite funny. Trygve finally leaves on his motorcycle. 

As I run past George to take a quick shower, he snickers, and asks, The wrong one? I laugh at my escapades and how it must look on the outside—it's either all or nothing. 

In today's mail, a card arrives Rousseau's Tiger.
My teeth are chattering, the storm is frightening.
Renewing, thank you, dear friend.
I am yours too in the storm and in the aftermath.
Love always, Edwin

It was mailed yesterday from Oakland. Is he still here? Do I call saying I'm feeling a bit peckish?

One funny moment was when I leapt onto the bed, saying, Good bed, strong bed, then realized that he had made that very bed for me. He had made my bed and I had been lying in it ever since. Yikes! Is there some still some mysterious homing pigeon link? 

My common sense warns me to beware – he seems to ignite catastrophe, or at least he's living in the middle of hell, and has been for quite some time. I don't know the extent of his depression, whether it's long-term, or chronic. 

At least he's gotten his immigration papers in order. Last time he was afraid of being deported back to the council flats of North Wolverhampton. And now he's in debt. On the other hand, he's a real survivor, tenaciously clings to his daughters, despite tremendous odds. 

He's a generous man, and a good provider. As he was leaving, he clung to me and I whispered words of comfort to him, telling him to cling to the islands of happiness and joy, to expand them, to make them grow. He knew I had been there, in the depths of depression with my parents deaths, and that I too had to pull myself out of hell. I told him no one but himself could help him out of that darkness. He wept and my compassion becomes a temporary island of refuge. 

Wherever you are, Edwin, I wish you well. Godspeed.

Journal entry, 5/29-6/12/96 bbq long v.

5/29 my high school classmate, and sometimes boyfriend, Trygve Tryggestad came over on the 19th and we went for a long motorcycle ride on Willow Road, a dirt road that connects Coleman Valley Road to Highway 116 at Bridgeport, near the river mouth. It's a special secret road that I haven't been on in years.

I figured Trygve wouldn't show up again because I freaked him out last time wanting more than this mutual masturbation thing. And he so afraid of AIDS, so he says or is it also his way of non-commitment? Your Honor, I’m innocent, I didn't actually fuck her. Then, there’s the girlfriend.

I figure I wasn't all that interested in sex, but on a sunlit hillside meadow far from civilization, shades of spring, it seemed the right thing to do to roll in the grass. Hooray hooray, it’s 1 May. Outdoor sex begins today. We had a good day but I needed to work, and didn't succeed. I was so tired.

We went out to Goat Rock and Bodega Head. Each smell was sharp like a door opening into another world. New mown grass, fresh cow plops, amorous skunks, apple orchard in bloom, the odor after rain. Petrichor. One is so much closer to nature on a motorcycle. As we traversed the ditches and potholes, I realized it was somewhat like riding a horse, something that I missed terribly.

5/29 fragment from the Edwin Drummond piece, Stood Up

Trygve, out of the blue, came over an hour before Edwin was supposed to arrive, but I knew Edwin would be late. Trygve threw me down on the unmade bed as I was trying to clean the cabin for Edwin's arrival.

I was a little slow getting started and finished. Anyway Trygve got off quickly and there there are some advantages to walking off, but he thinks he needs me to get off too. Because I excite him when I touch myself. I must be putting out pheromones. Or starring in a porn movie. I was so horny in the morning I already got myself off. I, who can go for weeks and months on end without any interest whatsoever. Scary.

I am the wanton woman. I was too freaked to come again, and Trygve was laying around with his pants lost somewhere in the rubble of clean laundry, telling me how he much loved me. Yeah, lust wears many hats.

And when I said an old boyfriend was coming to visit, he wormed it out of me, he started saying he was going to hang around and bad vibe him. And I was feeling a bit frantic by then and I shrieked, You have no rights! And he said, I hope he doesn't come back for two or three more years, when I told Tryg the last time I had seen Edwin. It really was quite funny. Trygve finally leaves on his motorcycle. I needed a drink.

I barrel out of the cabin. My neighbor George snickers, and asks, The wrong one? as I run past him to take a quick shower. I laugh at my escapades and how it must look on the outside it's either all or nothing. 

6/4 I decided to throw a barbecue of sorts for as a going away present, as it were, to Steve and George. I will really miss these guys. I started out by having dinner with Steve, and George, then Paul came home and joined us, and Mark? joined us too. Then Trygve pulled up on his motorcycle. Wow. Full house. Yeah, I liked the odds. I was holding court with five men, and Edwin had called today. My planets must be in lust.

Trygve and I went for a bike ride to the vineyards at Mark West Creek. Piper Sonoma, or Mark West Vineyards, some of those grapes go to DeLoach as well. Anyway, it was a chardonnay field. We parked the bike and after having ditched the helmets, we were riding free and crawling among the vines. Delicious chill of summer nights against my skin. Trygve taking my breasts in his mouth, the hard green fruit on the vine like tiny nipples, with the promise of what was to come. 

Somehow, outside I don't mind this no muss no fuss, zip up and we're ready to truck. Here I am at 43 and a half, riding through the vineyards in the dark without a bra or knickers, sans helmet, without headlights on a vintage Triumph, and having naughty bits. 

Trygve dropped me off at the doorstep and I went over to visit Steve. I'd had a bit of wine. Wild Hog Pinot Noir and Foxhollow Cabernet, both 1991 vintages. The Wild Hog was a light wine, with the Foxhollow being a robust fruity wine. It was one of those wonderful gossipy summer nights that makes California a special place to live. 

I am no man's woman, and so I enjoy them all on one level or another, getting what I need from each man, not flirting, not acting coy, just being exactly who I am. No games no pretense.

June 12 I'm off to Amsterdam. A new adventure awaits.

Early childhood memories, teaching notes, Westside school

From my CPITS teaching notes. don’t know if I was teaching the workshop or Lee Perron was, but my boyfriend Edwin Drummond was there, which leads me to believe it was me teaching. Or perhaps, Lee and I were co-teaching. Personification, early childhood memory.

The first thing I remember was crawling in the grass. I opened up my hand and there was a leaf. A —student from Westside school fifth grade.

I was walking down a circular staircase, lost my balance, and fell. I remember my head hitting the stairs and my vision blurring as my head struck each step. I didn’t have any word for pain so I didn’t feel it. I remember seeing the walls in the sky bounce around. —Maureen Hurley.

I was chasing my brother down a long, circular stairway case on Cape Cod. We came around the corner, and I saw my father on the landing, putting trash into a wastebasket. There was a lightbulb on over his head. My father looked up at me, and smiled. —Lee Perron

 I was two years old. I was at the ocean and a shiny glistening star was floating in the water. I went to pick it up. The water was deep, and I walked up to my chest and brought it to my mother. She screamed. It was a jellyfish. —Edwin Drummond

I was standing on a stonewall. I was waving goodbye to my sisters as she was going to school. Suddenly, I’m crying, my mother picks me up, takes me inside and takes off my shoe, four wasps crawl out. —No name. The teacher?

RRWG Reading Garbo's, Feb 9, Press Democrat article 1/30/81

Andrea Granahan, Edwin Drummond, Eve Chung, Fran Carbonaro, Gail King, Gerry Haslam, Gerrye Payne, Jim Jacobs, Margie Summerfield, Maureen Hurley, Melvin Muller, Ramon Sender Morningstar, Rick Duvall