Hoppity-hop picking in Sonoma County

Historic Walters Ranch Hop Kiln, Westside Road, Healdsburg, built by Angelo Soldini in 1905. California Historical Landmark No. 627 ©️ Maureen Hurley ca. 1981.

Before Prohibition, Sonoma County led the nation in the production of hops. Hops, a beer preservative, was first planted near the Laguna de Santa Rosa in 1858, and by 1899, more than 2000 acres were in full production. A story from 1900 in the San Francisco Chronicle estimated that 7,500 acres of hops were planted in Sonoma. From the early 1900s to about 1940, hops, not grapes, was king.

“Sonoma County produces the finest quality of hops grown on the Pacific Coast….there is more lupulin and a stronger aroma…which brings from one cent to two cents per pound more money in the market.”—Sunset Magazine Homeseekers’ Bureau, 1915

Apparently the top dollar paid for the superior California-grown hops was London, England. 

“From 1915 until 1922 California was the leading hop-producing state in the Union." (Tinged with Gold: Hop Culture in the United States, Michael A. Tomlan).

Hops (Humulus lupulus) related to cannabis, originated in Egypt and China; there is also a wild species native to the US. With hops, it's all about the lupulin. The unfertilized female blossom, or cone, laden with yellow lupulin powder and resin, is used to preserve and flavor beer. The hops varietals grown in Sonoma County were far superior to hops grown in other regions. During the 1930s, Sonoma County produced over 30 million pounds of dried hops.

Hop production survived Prohibition and the Volstead Act of 1919, but languished, shall we say, even tanked? during the post-war economy—despite the fact that Sonoma County was a bootleg capital of California. 

The use of nitrate fertilizers also introduced a mildew blight which ultimately killed the hops industry. By the 1960s, hops was no longer commercially viable, though escaped volunteers grew along the Russian River along with the native wild grape vines.

My first boyfriend's mother Leeta (a Petaluman who went to school with Lloyd Bridges) used to earn her pocket money harvesting hops (and fruit) every summer. During hop-picking-time, she waxed on poetically how families camped out under the stars all summer long picking fruit. 

However, she said that picking hops was brutal on the hands. Not to mention feet—they used stilts to reach the trellised hop buds. Hopping for hops. She preferred picking pears and prunes to hops. Hop picking season was short, at the end of summer. In 1940, when his hop pickers went on strike, Florian Dauenhauer of Santa Rosa invented a mechanical hop harvester that is used to this day.

During the 1990s, I was at Kat & Boz WIlliams' home on Peaks Pike Road in Graton and they served me steamed hop shoots and buds for dinner—they tasted like asparagus—and I was even given a furry feisty hop vine to take home, but it just wouldn’t grow under an oak tree in Forestville. It needed more sunlight. Or I was a lousy hop grower.

Hop-picking at Healdsburg, Cal. photo: MD Silverstein —Healdsburg Shed

CAMP Season: Georgia DEA Declares War on Gumbo

Ah, here's to the joys of the dog days of summer, as we head into CAMP-ing season replete with those pesky DEA helicopters hovering over our bucolic West Sonoma County vineyards, like overgrown gnats on steroids.

What I like to do during CAMP season (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting), is to set out a lawnchair, pop open a cool one, and watch federal agents risk life and limb as they practice their rope ladder acrobatics mid-air over the orchards. It's like having my own private high-wire circus. Emphasis on high, here.

A chance reading of a news headline from The Washington Post gave me both comic pause and a serious meandering of the mind:

Georgia police raided a retired Atlanta man's garden last Wednesday after a helicopter crew with the Governor's Task Force for Drug Suppression spotted suspicious-looking plants on the man's property. A heavily-armed K9 unit arrived and discovered that the plants were, in fact, okra bushes."

OK, so I'm a tad behind on my reading, that article dates back to 2014. But CAMP is still the largest law enforcement task force in the United States, I guess they have to justify that ginormous budget. Now, I can't say I especially like okra, I like the idea of okra, aka ladies' fingers, but this illicit war on drugs thing is going a bit too far. Doncha think?

Not only is CAMP a colossal waste of taxpayer money, it's devolved into a war on the Southern national dish, gumbo. I mean, really. Ya all don't find that funny? As one cannibal said to the other cannabis eater, does this clown taste funny to you? Hold the Häagen-Dazs. I respect the farmer's right to grow okra. Who knew that in Georgia, it's Give me gumbo filé, or give me death? Or at least a death sentence for cultivating okra.

I admit I like the idea of eating Malvaceae flower buds, aka mallow (origin of mauve—and purple prose). The Malvaceae family includes hollyhocks, hibiscus, cotton, and cacao—especially cacao—but noshing on gooey mucilaginous vegetables doesn't float my boat. Or slime my throat.

How the DEA mistook okra for cannabis suggests they've been smoking some of their own confiscated booty. Or they need to take a botany class. And hold the brew with the gumbo stew. 

The West African word okra, or okro is from the Igbo ọ́kụ̀rụ̀. One source suggest that the origin of gumbo is from the Bantu, ki ngombo, another suggests that it's the Choctaw word for filé, kombo. Medieval Moors called it bamya, from the Arabic. First written account of okra was in 1216, from a Spanish Moor in Egypt who described an herb the locals relished for their tender pods. It was not mistaken for ganja.

Flowering okra and seed pod—does this even remotely look like pot to you? —Wiki

Okra arrived to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade. By 1800, okra—synonymous with gumbo,  was grown throughout the southern United States—Georgia included. It also became synonymous with southern cooking—especially in Louisiana. In fact, gumbo is the official state dish of Louisiana. You'd think the Georgia DEA would know the difference between pot and okra by now. What a fine kettle of fish calling the pot back.

This is a hibiscus, it is related to hollyhocks, cacao, cotton, and okra gumbo, not grass

Reading up on this curious matter, I discovered that 98% of all DEA helicopter busts are for ditchweed, aka feral hemp, from the pre-plastic WWII day. Not pot. Or okra.

"... of the estimated 223 million marijuana plants destroyed by law enforcement in 2005, approximately 219 million were classified as "ditchweed.... Unlike cultivated marijuana, feral hemp contains virtually no detectable levels of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, and does not contribute to the black market marijuana trade.  —98 Percent Of All Domestically Eradicated Marijuana Is "Ditchweed," DEA Admits

This is a hollyhock, related to hibiscus, okra & cotton, it is not grass.

About that Ditchweed and hops, if you’re over 21, read on at your own tangental peril.

STILL LIFE WITH DEAD BIRD

"Little Sister!" he cried out. "Thank you for guiding us here. Thank you for taking care of us all this way. Wherever we go we will remember your kindness. We shall wear your feathers when you give them to us. We will hold your people in regard and tell our people always to treat you well…" The Flicker flew up into the air, flashing the gold beneath her wings one last time, and then flew back into the forest. —Ted Andrews

I found a rare yellow-shafted flicker
arranged on my doorstep,
perhaps it was a thoughtful gift
from the neighborhood cats,
perhaps not, but it was so beautiful
nestled in that blue woven rag rug,
I couldn't bear to let it go, or bury it.
I took photos of it, I drew it,
and called it Still Life with Dead Bird.
I thought of Wayne Thiebaud's pastries
and kept that bird deep in my freezer,
wrapped in tinfoil and night.
And whenever I needed solace
I took it out of the freezer
to admire its golden beauty.
It shone like sunrise, I kept it on ice
for decades, in a cabin I later abandoned,
along with the interrupted dreams of a writer's life.
I wonder what the neighbors thought
when they found it covered with hoarfrost?

1/18/2016

Bay Area Generations #42

2/2017

Party of One

Wild Oats                     ©Maureen Hurley

During the 1980s and '90s, I used to live next door, well, a few cabins up, from many blues musicians at Celli's Cabins in Forestville, on the Russian River. The rustic cabins were originally weekend summer rentals, later they were workers' cabins. Then, they became an artist enclave. I was fortunate to have lived there for 20 years among many noted musicians.

What great impromtu BBQs we had at the cabins in various configurations: we were all living in and out of each other's pockets, er, cabins—they were so tiny, you had to go out into the driveway to change your mind. In Cabin Number One, there was Alastair Ingram, saxophonist, and flyfisher, born in Dundee, Scotland, but raised in Wisconsin. His band, Blue Moon, still rises in the sky at night, blue notes and all.

And across from Alastair, in Cabin #10, there was Sonny Lowe, Chicago-style bluesman, one fab mouth harpist (and a right good a good kisser). We always loved to boogie when Sonny Lowe and the Blenders were jammin' at Jasper O'Farrell's. 


Once dubbed the "highest jumpin' white man in the US," before an injury put an end to his hopes of breaking the world high jump record and a shot at the Olympics, that long, tall cool drink of water, AKA Max "Sonny" Lowe, who could jump 7' 2" from a standstill, picked up a harmonica and he never looked back. That man had soul. And he walked with a springboard gizmo in his shoes.

Sonny was also a shade tree mechanic adept at fixing cars. He was the only man who could keep my '81 blue Mitsubishi truck, codenamed Lazarus, running. He had the magic hands. I'd sidle on up to Sonny and say, "Come look under mah hood," ala Sonny Terry and Brownie MacGhee whenever I needed a tune-up or my carburators rebuilt. He'd laugh and say, "Yes ma'am!" and always undercharged me for the work, as I babysat his son Nathan for free. 


We were all cash-strapped. (Some things never change.) Sonny preferred Peach Schnaps to money as a tip. Said it soothed his voice. To this day, the odor of peaches reminds me of him.

Sometimes Sonny's friend Charlie Musselwhite would pull up in his white van. Charlie lived in the town of Sonoma. For a while, I was Nathan's babysitter and odd mother-figure of sorts. I loved helping to raise that kid. He brought out the child in me. We were inseparable. It was love at first sight. 


Sometimes Nathan called me "Dad" even when his own dad was standing there next to him. We'd all laugh and Sonny would look down at his feet and get all uncomfortable. He knew what the kid wanted. Nathan's mother, Cindy, who was trying to straighten herself out after a half-life of heavy partying, and drugs, wanted it too—if only for Nathan's sake. But it was not to be. I regret that life not lived.

Sonny taught me the root meaning of the blues, it took me a long time to recover from that kind of class act. Living next to Sonny fostered a lot of writing on my part—some of it was decent. Most of it, not. 


Even writing about this blogpost makes me squirmy like I was doin' sumptin' wrong. But sometimes I can't help myself. The pieces just write themselves into a corner or wander where they will down a long open road—while I'm unsuccessfully holding onto some sort of a through-thread for dear life.


Ain't nobody that can croon and play that harp and tongue those bent notes like Sonny, except maybe, Charlie Musselwhite, or Norton Buffalo (rest his soul.) Norton lived in Sonoma too, then moved up to Paradise. Then he went to the other paradise. To this day, I can't listen to the lonesome wail of an harmonica without thinking of Norton or Sonny.

On an impulse, Charlie gave Sonny his big white gig van, packed full of stuff destined for Goodwill, and that gig van doubled an extra spare bedroom for various visiting folks. We had a great time unpacking that treasure trove of a van stuffed with antique furniture, musical instruments, clothes, and two dark tabby kittens. I used to wear one of Georgina's vintage black dresses at many of my poetry readings. It brought me luck.

 Celli's Cabins                           ©Maureen Hurley

Evan Morgan lived in Cabin #2. Evan's an acoustic guitarist, ukelele and mandolin picker of New Riders of the Purple Sage fame. Evan's NRPS bandmates and many other musicians rarely came to visit... mainly because Evan was usually on the road with them. He'd come back full of stories. When Evan played bluegrass and Celtic music—whether on his Martin, mandolin or on a fiddle, he was at his finest. I couldn't get enough of that music. 

At the time, Evan was touring with Lost Highway Band (not the movie), but Forestville was his base camp. I remember the buzz going round the cabins when Evan auditioned for NRPS. I'm sure we all celebrated that night. Not that I was a NRPS fan, but I proudly displayed a NRPS sticker on my rear truck window for Evan's sake. 

We saw a whole lot less of Evan when he hooked up with a French blonde welfare mom who was the daughter of a friend of mine. With a cheshire cat smile, she devoured him from the rooster up. It ran in the family. He no sooner looked, then he loved, and when he loved, it was an all-consuming once in a lifetime kind of love. Now, Evan was right fine to look at, but he just sort of wasted away when he found out she was lip-synching band members while he was on the road.

Evan and Sonny shared Charlie Musselwhite's two cats, brother tabbys, Hucky and Mucky. Hucky—short for Huckleberry—who was more dog, than cat, was a people cat. He was smarter than his brother, he could open doors, and deduce things, but Mucky, a recluse by nature, was more interested in sucking his own balls than cozying up to folks. Neutering put a stop to that vice. Couldn't suggest that option to Evan. But it might have saved him some grief. Some things just need to play themselves out. 

Hucky decided Evan wasn't around much and one day he went out to Mirabel Road to find him (he recognized all our cars when we pulled up the driveway) but he thumbed a ride with death instead. Maybe someone drove by in a car that sounded like Evan's. Maybe Hucky was terminally lonesome. Or maybe he just committed suicide. It wasn't like him to go out onto the highway. We all mourned that cat. Mucky was devastated without his brother. It was about that time that he became more people friendly.

Former NRPS band member, Grateful Dead drummer, Micky Hart, lived across the way from us, off Mirable Road, so there were infinite musical party permutations possible on any given night. I don't recall ever meeting the NRPS guy whose death spawned this particular piece of memoir, Marmaduke, aka John Dawson, but I was pretty oblivious to names, so anything was possible. 

 The road across the way         ©Maureen Hurley

I never officially went over to Micky Hart's place across the way, I was too shy, but I did stand outside in his driveway to listen when most of the remaining Grateful Dead showed up one night to play. But it was cold standing there in the dark alone, so I went home. Alone.

Come to think of it, the Grateful Dead and NRPS connection, is probably why one member of It's a Beautiful Day, David LaFlamme of White Bird fame, was living on the River, working at the Guerneville gas pump. There's not many who can clam to have David LaFlamme—a world class violin virtuoso—pump gas into their car. His infinitely sad eyes were as blue as my VW Bug, and his hair, white blond as sunlight on the river. 


I should have just given Evan my dad's indigo blue Jaguar coupe way back then when he asked for it, when it was still running, now the carbs are frozen up and the wirings shot—but I was too unresolved and conflicted over my dad's death. Now it sits abandoned in the driveway, reduced to rust by the elements, junkyard bound in the slow lane.


Across the creek from me, ceramicist-musician Joel Bennett played salsa chord progression riffs on a not-so-baby grand piano that dominated the living room like a shiny volcano. On weekends, with artists and art lovers dropping in for Open Studio, it was like Little Havana at Joel's joint.

Italian pine   ©Maureen Hurley

In Cabin #7 there was Paul Ellis, painter and a regular Jeckyl & Hyde fiddler-classical violinist. Paul could change from classical pieces to bluegrass at the drop of a hat. Sometimes even in the middle of the same tune. He had a running classical chamber duo gig with Ron Jones and/or Don Coffin at local restaurants on Sunday afternoons, but Paul could break out into some serious barnstorming fiddling come Friday night. AKA Redwood String Trio, The Hot Frittatas, etc. (Pix of Paul & Don at the Kate Wolf Festival).

Paul painted a lovely canvas of my cabin, with all its cow skulls and art accretions, the Shasta daisies out front were in full tilt. (A pdf that mentions Paul & Kate Wolf). His friend, Don Coffin (Kate Wolf's ex-husband), who drove a vintage green caddie convertible, often came to visit. That's how I met Don, he came cruising up in this drop-dead gorgeous car and I ran out to see what all the fuss was about. 

I later realized I'd met Don years earlier when he was living in Sebastopol, so it was a reunion of sorts. Kate and Don had long since split up. I remember all of us going over to his house after a poetry reading and playing music into the wee hours, the potbelly stove belching smoke. Paul was probably there too. It was a small world.

And in the other cabins, lived various itinerant cabinmates—Cabin #4 got a real workout. George rented it for a while, then an ex-boyfriend, Jim Byrd moved some of his furniture in, but stayed with me. It mostly stood empty for ages. The last tenant was Steve DuBois, a fine drummer, who was my good buddy. Weekends, Steve played for Tommy Castro, at The Saloon in North Beach. (See Steve with The Doorslammers Johnny Nitro Salute). Sometimes I'd drive into the city to hear them play, but I was partial to Sonny's blues style. And the city was more than a long ways from Forestville.

Cabin 6                                      ©Maureen Hurley

Another shortlived cabin-mate (Cabin #6) was an official Marboro Man, Bill Dutra, who was a friend of Leonard Matlovich's, of Time Magazine fame. Ironically, Bill didn't smoke at all, but KS ravaged his beautiful sculpted face. Ironic also, that the iconic face of the manly man of the American West was a gay roving blade. 

A decorated Vietnam war veteran who served three tours of duty and awarded a Purple Heart, Leonard Matlovich made the cover of Time Magazine in 1975 when he broke cover and "came out" while serving in the Air Force. 

Come to think of it, Bill Dutra was probably plastered on the back cover of that same Time Magazine, riding a horse into the Marlboro country sunset, a filtered ciggie dangling from his lips.


Bill told me Leonard who was buried in the same row as J. Edgar Hoover—was poetic justice. His tombstone reads: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” Bill told me a funny story about "Jedgar's" penchant for cross-dressing like a girl and how the FBI had to scramble to cover it up from the press.

Steve the banjo player moved into Cabin #2 when Evan left. I can't remember his last name. Maybe Wharton? Starts with a hwa-hwa sound. But I can remember the names of all his cats. Rounder used to bring us fresh kill. Nothing quite like finding crunchy little gopher feet on your doorstep in the morning—with your bare feet, Steve playing "Cripple Creek" in the distance.

Then there's New Englander, Rob Harrison who moved into Bill's cabin (#6) after he died. Rob worked with Sonny as a counselor at halfway homes. He carried on ordinary conversation at 80 decibels. No need for a phone, you could hear Rob clear in the next county. Rob was from Woodstock. Must have been from listening to all that good music up close and personal.

The orchard                              ©Maureen Hurley

In Cabin #9 was Persian rug restorer and emphysemic storyteller George Howell, George was one of the original dharma bums who really lived a legendary life of Dharma Bums fame, having 'balled' Janis Joplin in the back seat of Jack Kerouac's car as it made that famous cross-country run in the late 1950s—I can't remember his Beat name in the book. Gary Snyder's name in the book was Japhy Ryder. 

Violet-eyed George, with the beard of a wild Armenian, who also happened to be half-Armenian, stood well over six feet, was overfond of Robitussen and speed in his youth, and so, was near toothless. He wheezed like a Wurlitzer when we washed hand woven antique Persian rugs—worth more than all our collective incomes—in the orchard. Wildness ran in the family. In Hana, stories still circulate about George's Welsh haole uncle, Dr. Howell who had a thirst as prodigious as that of Dylan Thomas. When I was in Hana, Dr. Howell was fondly remembered. 

I dragged a few musicians home from time to time. After a private party at The Top of the Mark in SF—I was a flower girl in medieval costume heralding the way for Scottish bagpiper, Peter Kapp—we held a moonlit ceili right in the driveway, with Peter piping and skirling and everyone dancing up and down the driveway until we were breathless and covered in dust.

Then there was the Love Choir's unstrung guitar hero Trygve Tryggestad, an old high school flame who could play the guitar like he was at the crossroads with the devil himself. But he had a regular woman stashed somewhere in the woodwork, I wasn't into playing second fiddle—and that was that. Another life I regret not having lived.

 River Road, flood                     ©Maureen Hurley

On hot summer nights, the crickets seethed, a chorus of mosquitoes hummed in unison, liquor freely flowed, two kinds of smoke rose, and George made a wicked raita & a baba ghanoosh to die for. Ah, yes, those were the days...in Celli's Cabins, in Forestville, by the river, the wild moon rising over the orchard. 

There was not much need to go into town to hear live music. We had it all at Celli's Cabins. Except for when Sonny and the boys were blending tasty treats up at Jasper O'Farrell's Pub. Besides, the dance floor at Jasper's was better than groovin' alone in the gravel driveway as the boys were all playing music. 


Party of one? 


I had to leave Forestville in order to get a life. But I miss those good old days, never realizing how good we really had it. We all moved on, got married, shacked up, settled down. End of an era.

Sometimes, I still dream of Sonny crooning the classic, Yes Miss Bessie, You Sure Got a Good BBQ! in a smoky voice that planted the blues deep down into my soul. And I wonder about Nathan, of course, that almost-child of mine by mutual adoption. Did he grow up to be a musician following his daddy's footprints? Or did he become an artist like me? This child I never had.

Forestville                                ©Maureen Hurley

When I began this piece, there was nothing on the internet about Bill Dutra as the Marlboro Man, but a cousin forwarded this link for The Marlboro Cowboy, March 2009.

Journal entry: Ides of March

Journal entry: Ides of March

Weeks go by, the silence of the coffined words – words unsaid. It’s been over three weeks since I left Neil‘s place. On Monday, last, I sent him a card and a poem, Leaving Casablanca, and here it is, Sunday, and still no word. Ides of March.

I awaken too early these days because of words unsaid, unspoken, and so I write long letters that will probably never be sent. Yes, I ran away, but it takes two people to not communicate. Silence is a form of communication too. Silence may be golden, but I prefer the silvered tongue any day.

I’ve had a busy three weeks, I’m teaching four days a week and have been suffering back pain as a result. Also, we did two huge silk banners for the Alexander Valley School spaghetti feed and art auction—under extreme deadline. And the silk banners sold last Saturday for $375 and $500 each respectively. I think I earned my feed, so to speak.

I also re-painted Neil‘s Celtic silk piece because the colors faded after fixing the dye, and the gold gutta flaked off. It’s taken some time to repair the damage, but I was able to add writing in both Irish and ogham. I try not to dwell on grief, I try to turn it into something creative, but sometimes grief threatens to overwhelm me. Still, I make art. I finished a small pastel of Niel’s cloak. I had started the drawing in January, working in old sketches, and giving the piece more color in depth.

I’ve been re-organizing my art supplies, doing what I can between bouts of back pain. I am on day number three, or is it four— of intense headaches so I can’t do much of anything for a while. Not reading. Not even art.

I’ve been studying Irish, I even made a found a poem using Irish phrases from Focal an Lae, and other Internet printouts, no internet in Forestville. I also had done some research for phrases to write on Neil‘s cape cum silk banner. I added two cartouches, a coat of arms, and a salmon feeding on the hazelnuts of wisdom, the writing on the intricate border adds a mysterious touch. Glamour. Magic.

Micaela came over Friday night and I was feeling particularly low but we got a good visit in. She stayed overnight, and then went on up to see her father in Mendocino. I almost went with her but began to panic about driving any distance with another person. This accident has left a lot of scarring. Getting into a car with others will never be the same.

She’s going through menopause at 45. Seems too soon, but she does look haggard and drawn thin as if something were eating her up, consuming her, intensifying its grip as the years go by. Part of it is her past, and like all of us, she can’t quell the hurts and burdens of childhood. Guilt, mixed alliances, and fear of the father.

She’s doing art again. I am so grateful. She always was such a fantastic artist. She told me a story of how, when we where children, we were drawing horses and she announced hers was way better than mine. My aunts glowered at her, saying something to her, and she still felt guilty for it, for being mean and petty. I said, you probably did draw a better horse than me. I was envious of your horses. 

And then Micaela said that my aunts were trying to protect me because they loved me, something I was completely oblivious of. So, the reason why she remembered the story was because for the first time in years, she drew a horse in pastels, and thought of me. It was good seeing her and reaffirming the self in the self of another friend.

Another pearl she left me with was that she always admired my independence, and how I refused to cave in when pressure was put upon me to conform, to become a meek little lady. That I was incorrigible and incorruptible in my belief system, and that I had paid a steep price for it. But no one ever attempted to understand me, or to figure out what was going inside my head. That I was so alone in my loveliness. 

I think of what she hates in herself is the way she does cave in, and conform to men’s needs. What she hates in herself, she sees herself as timid and weak, when she clearly is not. If only she could believe. But maybe her art is a way back to the core of self.

Singin' in the Rain while working on art

Today is one of those days when the storm takes front seat as I work on my Valentine for the Sonoma State University art auction. 

I'm sipping on Fox Hollow 91 cabernet, listening to the Glenn Miller movie, weeping, knowing I'm not pregnant, no need for the morning after pill. This weeping can be only one thing—PMS in full bloom. 

I am both saddened and relieved. It would be ironic to be pregnant at 43, having waited all my life for the right man to come along, with no man on the horizon, and the biological clock ticking into overdrive. 

Oh God, I am so grumpy, and nothing is going right, so I make multiple pieces for the art show. Test drive my art sticks when the collage fails. The bed is covered in a mosaic quilt of art pieces.

Here I am weeping over Glenn Miller's death as the band plays Little Brown Jug. I'm drinking wine in the rain, in a downpour. The rain is a posthaste tribute to Gene Kelly, who died two days ago, and I'm Singin' in the Rain with a deluge of empty bottles.

Housesitting the Heart

Yesterday I left Marsha Connell's place, homesick, no real reason to stay there, other than to feed the cats and collect the mail. I had to fight with myself all day long just to stay there, which I managed to do until about 4 PM, then the blues settled in, and I was crying for my mother, for it's been a year since she died.

I was happy to be on my home own doorstep, sitting amid the scattered rose petals, weeping, when Steve duBois came by, and invited me over for some beer and pot. We watched reruns of Northern Exposure and giggled over nothing and everything.

I confessed to Steve that my strength and self-reliance was a front. I'm very fragile, and lately the facets of being responsible have weighed too heavily upon me. I just can't do it anymore, I said, and added something about feeling out from under Sonny after my last letter, thinking of it was pretty final, when Steve pipes up, That's not what Sonny said.  Shit!

Steve said: The other day he seem to think you had a relationship after all. He didn't know what kind it was or where it was going, but he acknowledged it. And he began talking about it before he had some brandy, and he talked some more after having some brandy. He admitted he had a hard time opening up. 

That's what made me perk up and take notice. It was before the alcohol. So it all really is on a positive note and I was blown away. Here I had gambled and lost all, only to discover my observations weren't accurate. Of course Sonny said nothing to me. Thank God for the intervention of friends. Frickin' Peyton Place.

I didn't even care when a couple of hours later Sonny came home, I could hear her voice. He came over to Steve's to check up on Nathan who was snuggled up into me. And I was smelling his hair, snuffling like a mother dog or a horse those family pheromones uniting us. 

We ordered pizza, Alastair Ingram came over and we all watched The Gods Must Be Crazy. Sonny and Pat went over to the Hacienda to her brother's place to get something. Nathan didn't want to go and snuggled back into my arms. I stared at the TV, not wanting to be a part of this action anymore, knowing Pat was here. 

He didn't know that I knew what was up, of course, and I was curious to see what he would do. Knowing that his kid would Velcro himself onto me, here I was again watching him while Sonny was out with Pat, a sticky situation.

Steve said Nathan could stay, so to technically I wasn't watching the kid, but I needed him in my arms. Solace. I would've loved to have Sunny hold me too, but it was a little too crowded, a little too loaded, but if I had asked, I believe he would've done it. Even with Pat being there. There was something different in the air. And I didn't know what, perhaps, hope. 

Both times when Sonny came over, he was trying to pay attention to all of us equally, but there was certainly a charged aura between us. It's like we could almost see each other better by not looking directly at each other, by using the other senses. I know I must've shone like a lantern when he walked in the door. He wasn't expecting to see me there. But as he entered, he must've had some forewarning, perhaps my laughter drifted out into the night. But he had his poker face on. All bets were off.

Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year

(I was obsessed with the overlap of science and poetry, so these fragments represent at least a half a year’s writing, if not the entire year…At first it was an ark, a winter of massive floods of epic proportions, then it became an arc.)

—for Max "Sonny" Lowe

The story of rain begins and ends in the oceans. The river, called St. Ignacio, Slavianka, el Río Russo, the Russian River—leaps its banks, pays us a neighborly visit. Divulges its real name to the sea. Encircling each tree, the rising river claims small, vertical kingdoms. Mountains caught in the act of becoming islands & isthmuses again. Ancient shores & riverbeds unveiled. Centuries of mud erode in the afternoon, fossils come to light. We’re marooned. Again. After a decade, or two—depending upon who’s keeping score—the great California drought officially ends. The cats bitterly complain about the weather. My neighbor notes it’s been 40 days since we’ve seen the sun. On the eve of the Epiphany we measure rain falling in biblical proportions by the foot, & threaten to build an arc for when our cabins fail us.

When I found Paleolithic fossils of raindrops frozen in stone, I envied the age of redwoods on the 100-year flood plane recording weather in annular increments—decades but a moment in time. The warrior rain on the roof drums up a tattoo of words to engulf the muse. My poor drowned heart.

Journal entry, New Year’s Day, 1993

Journal entry, New Year’s Day, 1993 I dreamed of men pulling moss off the branches of oaks, gathering small green tufts of them. I don’t know what for. It had something to do with the evolution of love and time. Today it is sunny, welcoming after the hard rain. Paul Ellis said Eastside Road was pretty bad last night, he had trouble getting home, and he thought it was going to flood. Deep, distant roar of creeks after the storm, a new day. A new year. I’m catching up on the old year by reading my mail stacked in uneven piles all throughout the house, I have been away since mid-December when photographer Jan Bogaerts arrived from Holland. I’ve been booking venues for him to photograph and researching, making contacts in the gay community for his Granta photography project. It’s been a tumultuous couple of weeks, flirtations gone horribly awry. Jan is all over the place. It’s like he’s in the world’s biggest candy store—men, women, me. He doesn’t care. He’s out there. I’m so out of touch with time, that I’m surprised to find a blurb on my project, I get a mention in the cultural arts newsletter. And all I can think of is that I desperately need to sleep.

Salmon Fishing, Peacock Gap, San Rafael (photo) need story

Not sure when this was, I wrote  The Mother of Beauty in April, 1992, so it was around then. I was invited out to join the residents of the Forestville Home on a salmon fishing trip by a local contractor. We left from Peacock Gap in San Rafael. I did a story for The Paper, but haven't found the tear sheet, or the journal entry. They all got seasick, the entire boatlload was barfing. So did I. We went out to Potato Patch Shoals outside the Golden Gate, and the sea was unusually rough. By the time I caught that salmon, my first deep sea fish, I couldn't care less. But I had to reel it in on my own. Later that night we ate it. Divine.

THE MOTHER OF BEAUTY WALKS AMONG US

THE MOTHER OF BEAUTY WALKS AMONG US
                                     —for the mongoloid

Musing over complexities of love gone wrong,
of race, of gender, how the domestic warfront
is a soiled microcosm of the larger mirror,
I avoid the mongoloid man walking down Main Street,
who unconsciously slicks back his blond hair.
In that gesture, I could see the father was probably vain,
a lady-killer, but genetics betrayed him.
The shadow of beauty abandoned guilt behind the moon.
In that gesture, it came to me, how his face
held all the elements of race—who we are.
I want to tell the anthropologists—wait!
we've had the model in front of us all along.
I want to tell the xenophobes and the racists,
his face is that of our ancestors.
Caught on the street in the morning sun, 
unadulterated love walks among us.
How easily we make invisible
something common, holy and profound.
Can we still learn to emulate his heart;
he who loves so unreservedly, 
and wears the face of us all?

4/18/92
Forestville, CA

Journal entry, 6/29/91, Oleg calls from Indio, California

 6/29/91 Oleg calls from on the road, Indio California. I tell him he’s in the San Andreas Fault bed. The Salton Sea, the Sea of Cortez. He asks if the San Bernardino Mountains are the Rockies. He has no idea. No, I say the Sierras, simplifying geography a bit. I tell him how the peninsula of Point Reyes came from there along the fault, though it was probably from the Tehachapes, or at least that’s what geologist say. But most of those same granite outcroppings extend all the way to Cabo San Lucas. At Point Reyes I saw the same kind of rock as I did in Cabo. How I love the story of rocks.

Anyway, finally, I think I made a geologic impression on him after all this time. He’s never fully grasped the magnitude of the idea of how living along the fault line has shaped our culture and our coastline. He doesn’t think of the earth is moving because we can’t measure it with the naked eye.
When he called, he said he was in Forestville, he said he couldn’t leave me, then he amended it by saying he was in Indio. It was a joke maybe not in the best of taste, considering the circumstances. I had mixed reactions.

I was willing to go and pick him up, but I had a pang of dread, thinking of all I had to do before I left for Hawaii at 5 AM on Monday morning. Both of us were trying to pack at the same time. It wasn’t working. So I said squelched my needs in order to meet his needs. I still haven’t physically packed though I did all my bills and chores.

I couldn’t pack with him in the house. He was ending a way of life, while I was merely preparing for a short respite from the interruptions of the past nine months.

Having Oleg in my tiny house was definitely a pattern breaker. So, my life was turned upside down. Rather than face the emptiness of his not being here, I opted to get out of the house. A complete change of scene. Hawaii. The eclipse will take my mind off the past year’s events, and hopefully it will launch me into the next stage of my life, whatever that is.

And so, his call was welcome, though I fought down the guilty beasts rising within myself. Why don’t I like to answer the phone? Fear of responsibility, and of what is to come. I hated it when he called, asking me of my plans and is pathetic hangdog voice. I’d love to make over his telephone voice too, because I knew I always had to come and get him wherever he was. Beck and call. I was always responsible like a mother to a child, and I hated it. I loved it when he was self-reliant, which wasn’t often, but it seems we fight too hard to get there. My secondary emotions, resentment and anger included all the primary emotions.

I just re-learn the word sublime from the ground up. To pass from solid to gaseous state without going through ice to steam. Turner’s paintings are sublime landscapes, Wind, steam and fog. I too learned to pass from one state to another, bypassing logical progression, into the sublime state. Pavlovian emotions. How to stop the roller coaster heart now?

He forgot five rolled cigarettes In the Bugler can on top of the clock radio. Women are more sensitive to smell, than men—it’s biogenetic. We are born that way. It makes sense—food, danger, sex, all carrying odor with a message of one kind or another like the on/off binary code of computers. Pixels. Danger/no danger. I hated the smell of tobacco, rolled, unrolled, loose, burnt, etc. Nothing to do. My nose smells the minutest particles. I could smell him rolling cigarettes in the kitchen while I stood in the bedroom doorway 8 feet away. Sometimes it made me sneeze.

The past few months I’ve had to take allergy pills day and night to suppress my allergies as it was an unusually bad pollen season. His cigarettes, my down comforter, and pollen were too much for my immune system. I kept getting short term viruses with a duration of a few days to a week, the worst part is the low grade fevers and the night sweats. Of course it scares me, AIDS foremost on my mind. None of us can completely rest assured when it comes to our sexual past. I saw a gripping documentary Absolutely Positive, how HIV affects lives, both straight and gay. I guess the hardest part is to get to the no blame section as the I Ching says.

No, I never got to the no blame, or at least it was pretty rare. I did it times achieve that state, saying to him, no blame, but when you do A, B, or C, this is what happens within me…
How can we avoid this möbius loop? Issues of time being the most prevalent.

I took Oleg to meet my family after we went to Point Reyes. He said he wanted to. I didn’t suggest it, but I pointed out landmarks dear to me— my hill, Mount Barnabe, and the Olema Hill Road. We were on our way to Bolinas and Mount Tam for the solstice. As it turned out, we hiked to the other end of the point, Chimney Rock at 4:47 PM, or whenever the precise moment the solstice was, and missed it. I wasn’t aware that the solstice happened at a certain time, I was waiting for sunset to celebrate.

At the solstice I was alone, enclosed within the circle overlook, a wooden fence, very much like a wooden Stonehenge watching the sun set due west behind the lighthouse. I was alone on the edge of the continent, celebrating the sun, something far older than me within, and across the naked fields, a small black dot, man’s torso, Oleg always lagging far behind.

I had gotten tired of waiting for him and forged on ahead, alone, but this is the way I experience the openness of nature best. Alone, elemental. Surrounded by sea and sky, light, wind, earth. But he came into my circle. And we watched the waves crash below us, I pointed out Point Reyes, to the west, Drake’s Bay, and the scalloped cliffs to our right. I’m on an island in time, we were on another island, it seems like Scotland or Ireland. Nova Albion. I get it.

I wore a nylon jacket from the 20th century and there were boats in the harbor, but it was as if time itself didn’t exist. My determined pilgrimage, my mindlessly running to this place, only to have the uncanny sensation of having had a similar experience before, unnerved me. But my relationship with Oleg has been filled with déjà vu from the very beginning. He was supposed to stay this long, I guess.

I remembered another useless dream about schedules, etc., fragments of conversation, meaningless in the dream, but they still came true nearly two years after the fact. Because I write down what I remember of my dreams, I have a running fact sheet of images. The earthquake dream came true too. The rubber band dream with the red carnations defied logic. Oleg had rubber bands around his neck with me helping him to adjust them.

In another dream, we were on Highway 101 by Cotati, heading north to Santa Rosa. Instead, in real life, I took him to the San Francisco depot late at night, I had placed a red carnation in his food bag. And there were plenty of rubber bands around his luggage items, as it seems. In fact, he took all of my fat rubber bands, only Leaving two behind, just like in the dream. I have the elements of the dream right here. The order may be out of sync or it hasn’t happened yet.

And so we went to my grandmothers house, had dinner with Jane and my mom. So many cornflowers or bachelor buttons in bloom in the field below. Oleg said they grew among the rye in the Ukraine considered a weed, but to describe a beautiful girl was like cornflowers among the rye, all blonde hair and blue eyes. I realized my darkness, my hair and my eyes were the opposite of assumed beauty in the Ukraine, with its predominance of blue-eyed blondes.

Home, this land I love, and roses filled the path to the upper garden. We struggled in the tangle. I showed him plants. Huge bushes, rosemary and flowering peach that I had planted in the rocky, barren soil as a child. I season our food with sprigs of rosemary from the parent bush of my grandmother’s garden. I’ve made many progeny. Several here in Forestville as well as elsewhere. Rosemary the blue sea rose of my name and of remembrance. Roman cliffs, Italy, the sea.

We said goodbye to the sun setting in the northerly gap on Mt. Barnabe. Fitting that I should come home, appropriate accident. Later, my mother tells me that my uncle Bill has lung cancer. I am so angry knowing he was missing a half a lung from TB and yet he continued to smoke. I’m surprised it took this long to catch up. Jane, Oleg, and my mother continue to smoke as she tells me the details.

The open window and the air purifier is for my benefit, the asthma that comes from inhaling cigarette smoke, will not help their lungs. I flash angerly at Oleg. See why I want you to stop? I say it just brings more death. He continues to smoke. I pointed to my mother, saying how our family is riddled with cancer. She had breast cancer, an,uncle died of melanoma, and my aunt Toddy has skin cancer and breast cancer. My grandfather’s throat cancer from the cigars. In defiance, he draws another halo of smoke around his shoulders, the pleasure on his face is unmatched even by sex. Even with the knowledge of death, they enjoy their guilty addiction, subtle, thorough and lasting.

I want to mail those last five cigarettes to Oleg just to get them out of my house but I am aiding and and abetting by mailing them back to him, or am I? Grim reminders of death. I leave for Hawaii soon. When my uncle be alive when I return on 21 July? I talk of returning to my childhood home, living in a trailer in the garden. Oleg says it would be coming down in life to live this way, it would be regressing, that I’m better off staying in Forestville. Wow. I didn’t see that one coming. A middle class Soviet.

I never liked my uncle Bill, especially when he tried to sell our land right out from under us. My grandmother crying one summer evening as he laid down the news. Who was he, living in a tract home, to tell us what to do with our land? In a rage I attacked him verbally. I wasn’t even 12 years old and he never for gave me for my adult anger in a child’s body.

And I never forgave him for manipulating us, trying to break up our family. Put her in a nursing home, what happened to me and Guy? The enemy was a man all right, within the family. Eldest born son with the arrogance to match. Shades of the dream. The white cylindrical tubes, the glistening silver lines—what significance can I attach to the number four?

Sarcasm is the first form of humor. I think of the word sarcophagus. Phagos. The body devouring itself. Cancer. Give me another fag. I can hear my uncle asking, as he lies, so white and pale on the bed. I want to tell him, the Little League coach, that the bases are loaded this time, and who is left to steal home?

Journal entry, 6/29/91, dropping off Oleg Atbashian

6/29/93 12:38 AM, what better time than to start a new journal, having just dropped Oleg Atbashian off at the San Francisco Greyhound station, the end of relationship, end of a project—and a new beginning with my art. I am really ready to be done with him.

Sad to report it since Oleg’s been here, I’ve only filled one journal. Nine months of relationship absorbing all my free time. So much conflict with us, the useless arguing, we even managed to contradict each other on our final ride to San Francisco. He’s on his way to LA, then to Fort Worth, New York, and then home to the USSR. He was definitely saying goodbye forever, and I guess whatever we had, the experiment that failed, it’s gone forever, though we told each other I love you, what is there really?

He goes back to his kids and wife in the Ukraine. What of her? Someone said Nadia went to the authorities to report him missing, having abandoned his family. I can’t help but wonder what horrors he will face when he gets home.

All his American loot will bring much excitement. Two heavy suitcases, a backpack, and a Macintosh. Between the two of us, we could barely carry it all. How will he managed if no one meets him in Fort Worth, or New York? I can’t imagine him in the Moscow Airport trying to get to Kiev train station. But that is no longer my worry.

When I think of my lover leaving, it makes me cry. When I think of all the technical difficulties, I remain dry-eyed. I can’t imagine why he so easily riles me up. Yesterday, after making love, we finally talked a little bit about ourselves, and the relationship. The scary part is how alike we are. So, even though he was from a completely different culture and language, we managed to find a twin of ourselves. Dysfunctional match. He said I was like his grandfather and I said he is like my grandmother.

The constant contradictions in arguments over trifles—we both became our own worst enemies, and exorcised our personas on each other with predictable results. We’re both equally guilty of something we had little control over. I often felt possessed by a demonic urge to challenge, to be hard, and he really brought out a side of me from my childhood that I don’t like at all. He says we’re too alike to have a relationship. We are two pluses, we each need a negative to balance us out. He thinks similarity is a bad thing. I think it’s positive.

Stalemate. Checkmate. Guilt is a motivating factor, feelings of inadequacy. He says I’m more of a male-female while he is a feminine male. The problem is, it’s easy for him to not develop and grow, he lets me take the role of responsibility and he becomes a parasite, like the male parasite fish attached permanently to the side of the colossal female, so huge, that scientist at first assumed they were two different species.

He said he learned a lot from me, not necessarily positive. He said he learned that he needs to be kinder. I probably tenderized him enough to make his relationship with his wife better, such bitter  irony there. Where does love fit into all of this conflict? He says to remember the bad times when you wanted me out of the house, it’ll make it easier.

So easy for us to cry, and to hold each other. In bed we were friends, better lovers than workmates. A reversal of our role in Cherkassy. Emotionally, it was a roller coaster, though I seemed to retain a clarity as to why I reacted, and felt the way I did, but I was helpless to prevent the emotional upheaval.

What do tears mean, and those three words, I love you? Values. Sex wasn’t enough to make the relationship work—really work. We both wanted something more tranquil and supportive. Instead we got chaos, and fireworks. I felt angry because I was having to do so much work to keep us physically afloat. Maybe having him in my territory was the real problem. We talked about the conflict there too—we both want to occupy the same territory and I’m not used to sharing that space, and neither is  he. He thinks he began to recognize some of my criticisms were based upon truth after all.

It’s going to seem strange sleeping alone, our silly mammalian talk, horses and rummaging rights, penguin talk and blue sky acts. Once he rubbed my ass saying blue sky! And the sky turned blue. It stuck and every time he wanted blue skies to appear, he’d rub my ass. Silly things that lovers too. I’ll miss the affection and the sex it was satisfying—for the most part.

His odd quirk, his dislike of my breathing on him never changed, it continue to hurt my feelings when he turned his head away. He had enough phobias, it sometimes made life difficult. He was so intolerant of my animal love noises, my licking and biting and scratching. I was surprised when he asked me to scratch him very gently the other day. It took us a long time to trust each other sexually.

His changeability, apparently a cancer trait, was very unhealthy for me, creating a whole scenario of mistrust. We never quite molded each other into the likeness that we each desired. We never quite accepted each other the way we are, flaws and all.

Luis says there’s a danger in trying to remake someone, codependency. I was definitely trying to remake Oleg over. The entire fucked Soviet system of co-dependency equaling love. And to his credit, he did improve in many areas. I told him how difficult it was for me to have someone entirely dependent upon me. How it drained me. He really was foolishly wise. Childlike in so many ways. We really were from different eras, time travelers. But the hourglass shattered.

Letter to GLB, re. JOS’s Dear John birthday surprise

FORESTVILLE

FORESTVILLE

Beneath the grass
of this meadow's thousand deaths,
lies an ancient shore waiting 10,000 years
for the returning tide.

The alluvial tide of clay and iron,
wild riot of rye on the new leach fields,
budding poppies and lupine
beneath, thunder clouds at sunset,
the chirrup of flickers and jays
and early crickets—all off tempo.
Early May snowstorms.

5/6/1988

REVISED

The leach field,
a barrow for sewage,
grows wild riots of rye
and poppies beneath
thunder clouds at sunset
in early May.

The scissoring bluejays
patrol the air with diligence
and energy.

5/8/1988

Red Heifer on Trenton Road, Ralf in the Swimming Pool, Best friends

THE OLD HEIFER

The elderly red heifer on Trenton Road in Forestville, lived in an upscale horse paddock; she was daily fed grain and good hay, windfall Gravensteins and an occasional carrot. Somebody’s pet, probably an abandoned 4H project, the child having long since left home.

The old couple faithfully feed their ward, sometimes grooming her red flanks, as she cuds the alfalfa. A Hereford heifer, never bred for milk, not for beef, she leads a solitary existence, the people who feed her have become her herd. She bats long white eyelashes, rolls her eyes nervously until the whites gleam like marbled fat.

Her coarse tongue flicks rhythmically from nostril to nostril in nervous anticipation. That sandpaper rasping noise of her tongue, threads of saliva spool and stretch in the wind like spider webs. If you come too close, she’ll back off—blowing, but soon curiosity will get the best of her.

But today, the fat, barren lady is gone from her whitewashed paddock and I fear the worst. Did they finally give her to a rancher where she’ll have to learn the ways of being a cow? Did she die old and in the mud of the back pasture or was she slaughtered for beef?

How I miss her corpulent exactness, somebody’s pet. Or am I homesick for another life? Did they buy her as a token pet to keep them in touch with themselves? The past she kept alive in me?

*        *        *

RALF IN THE SWIMMING POOL

We called her Ralf because we liked the rough transition from the tongue into the air—like the feel of her tongue on our bare skin as she bathed us so tenderly, we were her changelings. No amount of parental explaining would convince us to change her name into something more suitable for a Jersey lady cow with the hugest eyes you ever saw.

When my best friend Steph’s dad dug the hole for the swimming pool, it filled with rain water and Ralf went in to quench her thirst but couldn’t get out. It took several men to rescue her from the shallow end.

Ralf was a consummate escape artist. She also get stuck climbing over the electric fences—she’d always forget that her udder hung well below her hocks, and she’d mournfully low for help until someone came along to rescue her from the electric fence. Zap. Zap. Zap.

Ralf was a wayward cow, she'd disappear each winter to find a bull, then sneak off each spring to give birth to a fawnlike calf. We’d track her down following the calf’s mustard yellow milk spoor and marvel anew at the life quivering in its luminous blue eyes.

Ralf gave Stephanie's family many calves siblings: there was Thumbelina, Thelma (yeah, a bull calf), Mr. Schmitz, also a bull calf, who having been raised by ponies, thought he was one—forsaking the company of split-hooved ungulates for horses.

Mr. Schmitz was also confused about his sexual orientation. He’d mount the ponies and then with a look of utter despair he’d slide off them, and resume chewing his hay as if nothing had happened. In the company of ponies he remained a miniature Hereford bull that we’d sometimes ride, with our legs dangling to the ground. We used his horns as a steering wheel, but soon he got wise to us and would kneel down to dump us off. Or he’d ride the back end of the ponies, as we rode them—a strange piggyback beast. We were in constant danger of getting horned in the back.

Captain Beefhart, AKA Thelma, was Ralf’s first bull calf who grew into stupendous well-muscled Hereford proportions and eventually we ate him—a just revenge for the time he treed me up the telephone pole covered with poison oak. I didn’t know I could climb such a pole so fast. He turned mean when he bulked up.

Not like Ole Grandad, the Hereford bull up on Mount Barnabe, who was a bit long in tooth but was still able to put out, or should I say, get it up, so Ralf  managed to pull off a yearly tryst.

When the freezer filled with white wrapped parcels we didn’t think too much about where they all came from, until the house filled with a strange dark aroma of beef heart for dinner, more powerful than new blood. It was the odor of the soul, of life itself, dressed in laurel leaves and thyme. It escaped from this world and the small lessons of death filled our stomachs that night.

Death in the barnyard was not something new to us. We’d seen the chicks, kittens and puppies that didn’t make it. At the time we had no name for it, but the idea of soul was something new.

*        *        *

Ralf’s idea of being milked was to stand in the milk bucket or to kick the pail across the goatshed but Steph's mom, Johanna must have managed it somehow because I remember how sore my arms were from churning the butter lifting and plunging as we took turns while watched TV: Rin Tin Tin, or Sky King. We also learned that butter won’t churn during a thunderstorm.

I spent most of my waking hours with Steph. We were blood sisters. Kinship—these stories are not about my family they’re of kinship, of bonding. Like a stray cat, I adopted, and was adopted by people. Maybe I was following the traditional kinship patterns of Irish foster parenting: maybe it's because of my own divorced parents who left me with my grandmother, so I gravitated toward that strange unit, the nuclear family. From each family, I learned a little of how to survive. The same is true of recent friends and lovers—they are my teachers. I only hope I gave them something in return for all the meals I ate as they gave me much more than food.

*        *        *

How much to trust memory with adult concepts of childhood feelings? Memory is faulty, a kind of fiction, what we remember and want to believe in, searching for patterns in this chaos we’re born into.

School in a random universe would have no logic; it is like memory—or false cognates in a foreign language— meanings suggested because our experiences with our natal language but the word means something entirely different—like exito in Spanish does not mean exit. When I was young, I remember saying to myself: Remember your childhood, remember your dreams, remember, remember everything because you will write about this one day when you are seeking something that was lost. And so my apprenticeship began.

7/1/ 1987

Slightly revised 2/26/2014

The Paper, Trina Castleberry death (photos)

Not a front page photo credit I wanted. Trina was one of my young poetry students.

 

Home Language, Another Gopher Rescue

While my neighbor Richard played Mozart on the piano, a tiny gopher dragged himself across the piano strings, adding an Aeolian touch. The cat had re-caught its prey, and let it loose in the house. Surprise guest appearance. A musical one, at that. After getting over the shock, we fished it out of the piano. A chorus of eager cats resounded an unfinished sonata.

Instead of letting nature take its course, I retrieved the bedraggled, broken gopher and took it home. Sensing refuge, the gophers nestled deep in my hand, and I made it a home in the birthday gift Richard gave me. It's wonderful to receive presents in June even though my birthday was in November. The gift of fishing tackle box for my calligraphy pens, became an apartment for the baby gopher.

On the second day of captivity, he began to eat. He was enough of a baby. that solid food gave him pause. So, I fed him milk, the language all mammals understand. Seeing him his crippled state, the way he dragged his hind end, I wondered if nature should have just taken its course.

I seem to attract wounded baby animals who no longer can go back home, nor can they fully join the world of humans. This is my second gopher rescue for in six months.

In November, a gopher, the color of champagne, was lost above ground, scurrying in the oak leaves after dark. I mistook him for a wild hamster because of his odd coloration. He lived in a glass salad bowl. I drew him from several angles, and fed him grapes.

Biting the bullet, I couldn't release him. He wasn't taming up. What was I going to do with a rare leukistic gopher? I called the animal sanctuary. (One of there servals had camped out in the garbage, so we were on first-name basis). They were happy to take him. I imagine he lived out his days in the lap of luxury at the preserve.

But this one was an ordinary gopher. Besides, two gophers in six months was a little suspicious.

By Thursday, the injured golfer clearly understood the bond of milk and allowed me to stroke him without flinching, the way a mother strokes her young. The way we put pet animals is the equivalent of mammal mothers bathing their young—going back to a universal language.

As I write, he sleeps in the warm hollow of my left hand. Sated from his meal. His tail sticking out the back. He's so gentle. I am amazed how quickly he has tamed up.

But then I realize gophers have no desire to challenge. They spend the course of their lives pushing dirt around and nibbling on routes, unaware of the havoc they wreak on our gardens above.

Gentle creatures with tiny earlets—not like a hamster's, and mouse-like fur, more like burrowing hamsters. They readily respond to affection like any other rodent.

This state we call domesticity, is the language of gentleness asleep in my hand. He dreams and grinds his teeth. This tiny trust of sleep. This country cousin of the hamster cleans his dreaming in his home language, the language of roots.

6/21/1983? It could be July 17, poems are out of sequence. for June
cleaned up a bit 9/2016
He must've died. I didn't write about what happened to him.

THE ILLUSION OF LIGHT: notes to a landscape painter (Frank Gannon)

THE ILLUSION OF LIGHT
Notes to a landscape painter

Just as I'm beginning to see color notes
the way fog resting on a green-eyed patch of ocean
turns to pale jade, or a wedge of sunlight
carves a bright cerulean wafer of sea,
and cantilevered mountains amidst swells
tease color across its taut surface,

you said, "find a red-tailed hawk circling in the sky.
His cry will make you forget the pain."
What I didn't see was how light belays notes of color
to your eye as you stroke the landscape.
"There isn't anyone else I'm seeing," you said,
and it dawns on me that this light is your mistress.

A web of my hair fell across your face
and you said you couldn't breathe.
A friend once said, "when lovers disagree,
one casts his vote and the other negates it."
No one told me the choices would be so limited.

Our conmingled clothing in a dark pile
at the foot of the bed casts tall shadows
as you held them up, a hooded cloak of darkness
stealthily slipped over the hills robbing them of color.
No one told you the night is for lovers.

At Bridgehaven, I found a hawk crouched on a pylon.
I said, "if he flies away, I'll forget the pain."
But he wouldn't fly away. Dammit!
I had to shake my fist at him and scream.
A hawk is not a feather daisy one plucks petals from.

Now, the dark painting you gave me makes more sense.
Who breaks up with someone on their birthday?
When I looked, it filled me with a feeling of loss
What I couldn't understand, because it wasn't
anything like your impressionist landscapes
but of a fence hemmed in by shadow.

The light peeked out from behind trees
teasing the viewer's eye around the corner, out of reach.
But, a painting is only an illusion of light after all,
just as these words are an illusion of feeling.
Didn't they tell you—if you stare at the sun too long,
you'll go blind?

12/4/82