Barbie-heimer

I must admit that I don’t have an overwhelming desire to see the “blockbuster”movie Barbie. Sure, I had a Barbie doll. But I didn’t relate to her. She was tall, and impossibly thin with a long blonde ponytail. I took a blunt pair of scissors to her ponytail at one point. Her head came off so easily. As did her arms. Pieces easily went on walkabout.

I couldn’t afford to buy Barbie clothes, she came dressed in a zebra striped bathing suit, and nothing else, other than tiny white high heels. So I made clothing for her but eventually I became bored with her and abandoned her for Tonka Toy (Breyer) horses.

I don’t remember who gave me the doll, I think it was a Christmas gift from our next-door neighbor, ca. 1959 or 60. I was short and dark, and had no boobs to speak of, they were a long way off on the grown-up horizon, so I didn’t relate to her all that much. Besides, I hated the color pink. I think she met her demise via a 4th of July firecracker. Her graffitied carapace became housing for a tiny bomb.

I will probably go and see Oppenheimer, because some of my family history is tied up with Los Alamos—my mother’s cousin, who was brilliant in mathematics, was whisked away right out of high school to work on the bomb. 

We only found this out much later after Marie had died of cancer. In 1990, I made a pilgrimage to the Delgado Bridge in Santa Fe where the Rosenberg spies were captured, and also a visit to the Pajarito Plateau, where we visited the petroglyphs of T’sanque/T’sankawi, and Los Alamos where a spare shells of Fat Man and Little Boy still doze in the museum. 

The place names still haunt me. Los Alamos, Alamogordo, Stallion Gate, Trinity, Oak Ridge, Fermi Institute. I am a child born of the Age of Light. Meanwhile, on the rock outcrops, near Los Alamos, the petroglyph of Kokopelli, playing the water sprinkler, abides.

My cousin’s name was Mary—or Marie—Walsh, as we called her. She was the daughter of Wild Bill, the gambler, and grew up on Home Ranch, in the Reese River Valley. I think she was also my grandmother’s goddaughter. 

My grandmother sometimes received postcards from her, addressed from New Mexico, but no PO Box, or return address. I remember there was a letter with words cut out of it, clearly censored. Like little blank eyes. My grandmother hid them in the top drawer of the bureau beneath her handmade Irish lace, and all her sewing scraps.

In the mid-1970s, I worked for “Crappa,” retired politician Roger Kent, whose father was Senator William Kent (who gave Muir Woods to the Department of the Interior) and Roger’s brother “Buffalo” that is Sherman Kent, was head of the CIA, and they both admitted the Manhattan Project was the best kept secret. 

Even the Kents didn’t know about the Manhattan Project until it was declassified. For a government that didn’t keep secrets well, it was the best kept secret of all. And Sherman—if anyone should have known, it was him, after all, he was a CIA. But Sherman was also in the dark.They were surprised to learn that my cousin, who was gifted with numbers, had worked on the bomb at los Alamos.

Sadly, the math gene blithely skipped over me, is, despite having an Olympic gold medal winner try to teach me, but I do remember the bomb drills where we hid our heads under our desks at Lagunitas School. We covered the back of our necks with one arm, and our eyes with the other, and waited for the drill to be over. The day they were detonating atomic bombs over Jackass flats in Nevada, the entire school went outside to the playground to witness the light. 

We were in West Marin, a long way from Jackass Flats. The sky did go white. And it did sound like you could hear a muffled bomb go off in the distance. 

Later, when I tried to look this information up, I was told the detonation was underground. That what we witnessed was impossible. Maybe so, but we did hear and see something that day when the sky was robbed of color. And we were 500 miles away on the northern coast of California. It made the presence of the atomic bomb far too real for me. I was haunted by nightmares for years to come.

As it turns out, the last above ground nuclear test was July 17, 1962, so yes, we could have witnessed an above ground blast. And every year on Labor Day weekend, I can’t help but think of all the artistic hordes intent on radical self expression, gather at Black Rock Playa to ignite a Burning Man— to burn away the corporate sins of the world. (I attended the first burning man at Baker Beach in San Francisco, 1986.) 

Each year, my old college friend, David Best, erects a phantasmagoric wooden temple—just downwind from that radioactive Armageddon of Jackass Flats. prayer flags in the wind. I can’t help but think of all those radical isotopes on the wing. And how we are all glowing from within during this Age of Light.

see my atomic poem list below

Marie Walsh

My grandmother‘s niece, Marie Walsh, who grew up at Home Ranch, in the Reese River Valley, a block fault valley near Austin, Nevada, was a math whiz. But she disappeared right out of high school. Whenever my grandmother talked about her, she grew sad, Marie had disappeared. She said Marie was like so like an angel with her golden hair about her, my grandmother explained, task-tisking. My grandmother, who was also her godmother, was distraught by the lack of contact. Eventually postcards with 4-cent stamps began to trickle in from exotic places like Chicago, New Mexico, with no return address. Sometimes there were words cut out of the text going right through the postcards like little windows to the soul, but we couldn't see our way in or out. In this way we kept track of Marie, never knowing the backstory, or where she was. This much we knew, she was gifted in math. It had something to do with crunching numbers. Most of our family never got the math gene but we made up for it with boisterous singing at family parties, and in the gift of the gab. It was during the late 50s or mid 60s that we got the obituary, a small column scalloped by a fingernail scissors. My grandmother kept all Marie's cards and letters in an old cigar box, on the top dresser drawer that doubled as a linen closet. The article said that she had died of cancer and there was a hint of the life she had lead, hidden in the lines. I memorized the names of places, Alamogordo, White Sands, Los Alamos. In this way I learned the reason why we practiced those bomb drills, hiding under our desks, waiting for the big one to drop. During recess we all filed out onto the blacktop to see the white flash in the east, followed by the percussion and the sound as they detonated bombs at Jackass Flats. A neighbor, Roger Kent said the Manhattan Project was one of the best kept secrets during the Cold Was, as even his brother Buffalo, who was in the CIA, didn’t even know about it.

6/16 Mill Valley Library Non-fiction class with Sarah Broderick

WAR'S END (3 days after Hiroshima)

What happened to pilot Major Charles Sweeney
after he dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki?
Did he think he could turn the B-29 Silverplate bomber,

Bockscar, around in the wild blue yonder, then fly back
on empty to Tinian, largest airbase in the world,

as if nothing had happened? After all, he'd practiced
13 trial runs, and 3 dress rehearsals. Shame to waste all that....

The Great Artiste wasn't ready, so he swapped planes.

Ground crew warned him the reserve fuel pump was bad.

The mission was moved up two days because of a typhoon.

Nearing the 11th hour, mad Sweeney circled three times

looking for a gap in the clouds, but he was low on fuel,

so his original target, Kokura, with its venerable castles
obscured by clouds, was spared to live another day.
A fuel pump sealed the fate of Japan's window to the world.
Nagasaki, home of M. Butterfly, became the hired wife, Plan B.

Tapping the fuel gauge, Sweeney ignored orders. Flying blind,
he could've aborted, but he bombed Nagasaki anyway,
when it appeared through a curtain of clouds like a mirage.

Looking over his shoulder, the pilot who leveled Nagasaki,

saw an iridescent lightning-infused cloud rising 
faster than Hiroshima, more intense, more angry, 
at once breathtaking and ominous.

Unable to reach Iwo Jima, he crash-landed

on Yontan Field, in Okinawa, both engines, dead. 

The plane hovered on the edge of the cliff like a tired gull.

An officer shouted, You fucked up, didn't you, Chuck?

Another said We had the wrong guy flying the plane.
Even Enola Gay's pilot Paul Tibbets went a little mad.

But Sweeney, who commanded the last atomic mission, 

maintained to his dying day that he'd made the right decision.
I took no pride or pleasure in the brutality of war, 

whether suffered by my people or those of another nation. 

Every life is precious. But I felt no remorse or guilt 

that I had bombed the city where I stood.

Did we also drop evacuation leaflets, like paper doves,

or was that another story of a story told after the fact?
After Tokyo, Hiroshima, then Nagasaki. Emperor Hirohito said:
We must now bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable.
A hundred thousand gone. According to the Manhattan Project,
it was a smashing success. But Shiva was unleashed,
and a hundred thousand more burned from within.
The voices of the hibakusha sang a silent aria of grief.
Oppenheimer invoked Vishnu:
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

No matter that the Japanese, already defeated, 

had surrendered, de facto. But we taught them

a lesson, not once, not twice, but three times

for Pearl Harbor. And we taught them again.

Again and again.

7/23/19

Published in the 2022 fall issue of 

War, Literature, & the Arts anthology (online)

Dept. of English & Fine Arts, 

United States Air Force Academy, Colorado

War, Literature & the Arts publication of War’s End

Learning woes, continued, no math whiz, I

I was, and still am a disaster in math, unless money is owed, or if I need to frame some art, then I’m sharp as a tack. My math teacher, Archie Williams was one of a handful of positive teachers I had at Drake High School. Did I learn foundations of algebra? No. 

But I held his Olympic medal in my hand and learned about Hitler and racism in America. I loved and adored Archie. I hated how disrespectful the class was. Joey Doyle’s spitwads and Rodney Warnerhoff’s rubber band missiles and lame paper airplanes. A sign of the times. 

I remember Archie, who was also a former Tuskegee pilot, picking up one of those failed paper airplanes scribbled with bad math homework from the floor and turning it into a teaching moment. He refolded the plane, gave it a bent nose, and talked about aerodynamics— lift, force, and thrust. Then let loose the plane that sailed like a hungry gull in the late afternoon classroom. 

Was he also delving into geometry? Probably. Like I said, we got much much more than foundations of algebra with Archie. I wrote about Archie many times. I can’t say the same for my other high school teachers.

“My ab-fab foundations of algebra teacher, the late, great Archie Williams was a real Olympic champion. Archie won the 400-meter race. I got to hold his Olympic gold medal. I sucked at math, but Archie was the kindest, gentlest mentor I ever had. Not his fault that math didn't take. Oh, but the stories he told us, of winning the Olympics, of running with Jesse Owens, and meeting Hitler. At 13, we hardly knew who Hitler was, but we held that same gold medal that Hitler bequeathed to Archie. Archie was a a man who broke world records, and race barriers.” Olympic Pride, American Prejudice 

During the 1990s, I had to take the CBEST test and, as expected, I passed the literature aspect with flying colors. I utterly failed the math portion, but I expected that, no surprise there. So, I began my retro homework in earnest with third grade math workbooks, as that’s where I fell off the learning wagon, the year I learned to read. A year of either, or—not both. I clearly did not operate on the proscribed learning timeline. I was madly marching off to my own drummer. I was gifted at art, something that was of no value within our culture. Education had failed me. Writing would come much later.

Determined to pass the CBEST, I had notions of becoming a certified teacher in those days, I worked my way through those old math workbooks. My head hurt in new places, and I literally cried my way up to the sixth grade level. Then, because I was stuck, I found a woman tutor on Craigslist, who was getting her MA in math and needed a guineapig for her dissertation. She was fascinated by my quirkiness, as I was pretty unschooled, as it were.

She had me approach geometry and algebra problems—unschooled as I was—to see how I would approach them—and she discovered that I was bored with lower math, plus I had a form of math dyslexia as well. Though I didn’t get the answers right, I was approaching the concept of higher math correctly. In fact, she was fascinated by how I was resolving the questions, I was innovative, and quirky, at best. I passed that CBEST test second time around. Not with flying colors. But solid.

Passing the CBEST was a big deal, healing an old wound, as I was a whack job math student. Who knew I had dyslexia in math as well? I’ve been known to add and subtract sums in the same column without even catching the error of my ways. 

Ironic, as the math gene runs in the family—my mother‘s cousin, who grew up in Austin Nevada, was a bona fide math whiz. She disappeared after high school. Government job. We never knew would happen to her until much later. She sent us a postcard from places like Alamogordo, White Sands, Chicago. Decades later, after she had died, we found out she was a mathematician working on the Manhattan Project.

Revised from a Facebook post, from the comments for the same one on learning to read, 1/21.

Protesting at the Grove

Hot July on the Russian River. Land of bathers and boaters. Land of barbecues and Bohemians. Resort towns and summer homes abound on the river from Forestville, Rio Nido, Guerneville, Monte Rio, Duncan's Mills, to Jenner.

The Russian River is also summer home to the Bohemian Grove encampment, sponsored by San Francisco's Bohemian Club, a private men's enclave, founded in 1872. The club's mascot is an owl, and their motto is "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here." The idea is that you leave your cares behind.

Imagine upwards of 3,000 big-wig male guests descending upon an old sawmill and camping out. That's the Bohemian Grove encampment. The Bohemian Club guest list has included every Republican and some Democratic presidents since 1923, and myriad cabinet officials. Add CEOs of large corporations, oil magnates, financial institutions, banks, military contractors, utilities commissions, and the national media. Let's just say a whole lot of in-bed friendships are forged at the Grove.

Weaving spiders come not here—inscription with an owl mascot on a bronze plaque at Taylor & Post Streets, San Francisco

Members of the once arty Bohemian Club were comprised of journalists, painters, pianists, and poets. Now, membership is comprised of local and global leaders, politicians, and businessmen—who are entertained by the Bohemians—those self-same artists and musicians who originally founded the club.

Bohemian tent, 1900s, Porter Garnett, George Sterling, Jack London —Wiki

Summer camping in the North Bay is a fine old San Francisco tradition. In fact, most city folks moved en masse to the river for the summer. (Probably trying to escape the fog.) Grand hotels like the Monte Rio, were vast summer palaces. The river was jammed from shore to shore, from beginning to end, with campers.

The first Bohemian Club campout was at Taylorville (Samuel P. Taylor State Park), in West Marin, a little over a hundred years ago, in 1878. That's right down the creek from where I grew up on the Lagunitas/Forest Knolls border.

The Bohemian Club campout began as a rousing thespian send-off for founding member, Henry "Harry" Edwards, a stage actor (and entomologist) headed for the New York stage. The liquor flowed wild and free, men flubbed their lines, a rousing good time was had by all, and a hundred drunken men slept it off under the redwoods. It's amazing the Japanese paper lanterns didn't burn the place down. Harry went east, but such a good time was had by all, thespian camping became an annual tradition without Harry.

Why Camp Taylor, you might ask? The name of the creek should give you a broad hint: Papermill. Rags from the city arrived by train, watermills pulped them into paper, which was sent back to the city for the newspapers, mint currency and so on. The Bohemian Club was founded by newspapermen.

Because of train access, Camp Taylor was also a popular summer destination and so many folks camped all along the length of Papermill (or Lagunitas) Creek during the summer, it was a zoo. (And a cesspool, too, I would imagine.)

When the Bohemian Club's camp outgrew Camp Taylor, it moved south to Muir Woods in the 1900s, where it picked up the moniker Bohemian Grove. (There's a plaque for that.) The Bohemian Club scouted out new locations along the Russian River, and moved summer camp to a redwood stand at Duncan's Mills, near the mouth of the Russian River, before settling permanently in the Meeker Sawmill in Monte Rio in 1893. 

The Bohemian Grove, is a 2700-acre encampment with permanent dwellings. It's also the screening site for potential new members nominated during Spring Jinks, in June. Forty-year members, called "The Old Guard," are the gatekeepers.

What began as Midsummer High Jinks, the Bohemian Club's cultural centerpiece, where poems were once recited, songs sung, and dramatic readings given under the redwood trees, has, over the decades, devolved into the spawning ground of global politics.

The Owl Shrine and the lake— a man-made pond. —Wiki

The Bohemian Grove's annual commencement ceremony, a theatrical production, the Cremation of Care, commemorates the burning of an effigy of "Dull Care" on an altar of a 40-foot stucco owl, by hooded Druids, kicks off the encampment. Instead of allegorically banishing worldly cares, and the informal "Lakeside Talks," have fostered an abuse of political power. Guest speakers have included Henry Kissinger to Helmut Kohl. The virtues of lyric poetry was the farthest thing from their minds.

A dress rehearsal for the 1909 Grove Play, St. Patrick at Tara —Wiki

Maynard Dixon's illustration of the 1909 Grove Play St. Patrick at Tara, the spirit of Irish hero Cuchulainn appears to Saint Patrick among the Redwoods. —Wiki

The Grove is a place where many political webs are spun, and it's the birthplace of warmongering projects from the Manhattan Project, to the Gulf War, and the invasion of Iraq. Policies made inside the Grove affect the outside world. The decision to drop the A-bomb on Hiroshima was made at the Grove.

Cremation of Care in 1907 -Wiki

See Bohemian Grove Through The Years. (Press Democrat)

The twin Bohemias: I grew up in Forest Knolls, and came of political age in Forestville. I traded one forest for another, but unlike many a frequent Grove camper, peeing on the trees—like Governor Reagan who famously quipped, "If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all," I could see the forest and the trees. Some pretty tall Paul Bunyon tales got their bullish start at the Grove by leaving the Babe home. Some say more like Moloch.

Babe the Blue Ox, Trees of Mystery, Klamath, CA —Wiki

Fishing for stories, Paper reporter, Simone Wilson and I once posed as hookers at the Northwoods Lodge as the Boho campers furiously slaked themselves on our side of the river. There were FBI (replete in pencil pants and white socks, just like in the movies) and infamous San Francisco hookers. Only there were no cameras that night. Stealth cameras, maybe.

Frowsy redheaded Rose, the madam, carrying on the Barbary Coast tradition of prostitution during the 1980s, refreshed her lipstick in the mirror, looked me in the eye and said: I don't know who you gals are working for, but there's a bust going down tonight. 

I was oddly flattered that Rose thought I was the real deal, but then, my mom once worked for Sally Stanford at The Valhalla —as a cocktail waitress. I had the best models.

Margo St. James of COYOTE spoke to our Women's Studies class at College of Marin in the early 70s, and I've read poetry with Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot, who coined the term, sex worker. So I could namedrop and not blow my cover.

Should I have confessed to Rose that I was working undercover, not under the covers? (The S&L bust was coming to a head at Manu Khomeini's lodge. Yes, a nephew. The family jewels reached that far.)

Earlier that day, Marin poet Karla Anderdatter of The Butterfly Tree, drove up from Muir Beach and met us on the  Monte Rio Bridge for a protest staged outside the Grove as the campers drove in. 

Camp Meeker's Mary Moore, a former beauty queen, and founder of the Bohemian Grove Action Network, and SoNoMore Atomics, rallied us on the bullhorn, declaring it a "Weapons-Free Zone" as the Bohemians barrelled through the gate.

Mary's encampment (founded ca. 1980) outside the gates to the Grove, and counter-ceremony was called the "Resurrection of Care," as a foil to the Cremation of Care. It was a reverse exorcism of the Demons. Mary rightly surmised that club members with corporate interests adversely influenced government.

The year when the Chancellor of West Germany Helmut Kohl was guest speaker (I'm still trying to anchor the date—ca, 1982-85), rent-a-cops were brought it. Things quickly got ugly. With camera in hand, I documented the event for The Paper, but they came for me too. As I outran the law, I was clubbed from behind between the shoulder blades. 

Judi Bari of Earth First! fame, was one of the eco-activists who worked for the alternative newspaper, generically called The Paper, (later dubbed The West County Paper, then the Sonoma County Independent. Now it's The North Bay Bohemian). Talk about full circle! 

They're mostly all gone now, these wild wolf women. Somewhere I have the negatives to prove it. Somewhere.

Someone asked: did we cross the river? We did the next best thing, we went skinny-dipping, and Bohos came over to our side of the river to slake their thirst. The famous optometrist returning from Russia. Nothing wrong with his eyes. Leering at our young flesh, he fed us the news in drips and drabs.

There were many allegedly said's in Simone's news story on Helmut Kohl's Lakeside Chat. Me—I hardly knew who he was. I was always finding out the facts after the fact. But I was the photographer. No big deal.

That night, while we were angling for more story at the oasis, someone asked: would you like to go into the Grove? A US Olympic swimmer, friend of Mark Spitz, was working there as a Camp Valet. (I don't remember which camp. Owl?) So, I dropped my cover and we blew the joint.

What was his name: Mike Stamm? He broke a world record for the backstroke. He also could've been lying. Pre-internet. Somewhere I have notes. Somewhere. He took me quite a ways into the grove after midnight. Not much to see in the dark. A large parking lot. Lights in the distance. Some passionate kissing in the back seat.

Manhattan Project —Wiki

Perhaps the lights I saw were of the Clubhouse designed by Bernard Maybeck the site of the 1942 Manhattan Project planning meeting. The top secret project that would lay claim my mother's first cousin's personal life, and then, later, her life, via cancer. Certainly, they were ghosts.

Not much to tell, it was during the early 1980s, AIDS was still undercover, so I took my Olympic swimmer home. He was sleek as a seal. We did the backstroke and the butterfly and the breaststroke. No speedos were harmed in the process. I dropped him off at the gates at dawn. Was I sleeping with the enemy?

All that water under the bridge.

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

Letter to Whitman McGowan, Math Rant Night Before the CBEST Test

Letter to Whitman McGowan: a Math Rant, Night Before the CBEST Test


Hey Blue Dawgge,

As ever I am amazed by your steadfastness....bravo on CD & all the gigs...

I really wish I could see youse all tonight at Cafe Amsterdam. I was also invited to see a play, Helen of Troy...but alas I have a CBEST test in the morning (math which I've already failed once; I aced the writing section...me, a dyslexic writer, I coulda passed the whole test on my writing ability alone but Noooo, I need to pass each section) the test which tests my anxiety over math, not my ability. 

It's not about logic. They're nuts asking stupid, illogical questions...splitting hairs or maybe atoms. They're the ones inventing the next wave of dumbass teachers and we wonder why our schools are so bad? If you pass the CBEST, congratulations, you're teacher material or maybe even George Bush material. And you know where that leads to. So I keep failing the practice test by a few points...

I even went to a tutor and made amazing inroads, I learned several years' worth of math literally in days, with a 95% accuracy rate—circumference, volume, equations, you name it...I even taught myself beginning algebra. My head hurts constantly: geometry hurts above the ears, algebra at the back of the head, and volume/area, the top of the head...I should be in a MRI scanner while doing math, my head is melting, no, exploding.

I have been doing math 6 hours a day for a week, I dream in mathematical symbols & equations. I even took the 12th grade math exit exam...& passed w/ flying colors (w/ exception of higher algebra which I got 100% wrong). It's all about decoding language. I haven't yet found the key, the Rosetta Stone.

I've studied dead languages. I can translate from the archaic Irish. I can tell you of the battles of Fergus and Cu Chullain, the Hound of Ulster and of Medbh's arrogant pride. Or of Pryderi's follies, the one who knew for naught, in medieval Welsh.

But I can't pass the fucking CBEST so I can't substitute teach in the schools...and artist in residency programs are up shytecreek, thanks to Bush & team. In other words, I'm broke, outa work for way too long (any leads?) first time in 20 years, and I'd really rather come hang with youse guys but am feeling positively homicidal (a side effect of doing math—why the fuck they want to test us with dumbass trick questions, they don't even want the answers...the most senseless hurdlejumping I have ever done, otherwise why would I be doing this to myself in the first place, worse than Soviet bureaucracy and I speak from personal experience there too...)

So I'm wondering what patron saints to invoke tomorrow morning, maybe you, maybe Helen of Troy, I mean I can't take this too seriously, right? You guys are the doctors of irreverence. And then I thought of my second cousin, Marie Walsh, the one who died of cancer, right? I mean, she qualifies.

I come from a family of geniuses. OK, so they're all whacked, eccentric. But brilliant. My mother's ghosts: her father taught himself algebra, read at the speed of sight. He left her with other genes more insidious, the random Foresight upsetting the linear logic of the present. I can even tell you the words for it in several dead Celtic languages.

And her cousin, Marie, the math genius, was whisked away out of high school, she had the highest math scores in the state of Nevada, my family didn't know where she was but she had all these weird addresses: Los Alamos, Alamagordo, White Sands, Oak RIdge. We never saw her, only occasional post cards. 

My grandmother said as a child she was like a little angel, always worried someone was going to blame her. Saying I'm a good girl. I'm a good girl. Really I am. Maybe it was the Foresight having its way with her. They say Julia, her eedjit cousin, still haunts the International Cafe in Austin. She makes coffee for the unexpected travelers from the other side.

Wooden horses aside, ask Helen about those names. Helen was my mother's middle name. That expains a lot. Ask her why my cousin lived so long in secret in the desert heart of New Mexico and we had to wait until her death to find out the code names. 

Say it: Manhattan Project. Say it: the Age of Light. Say it: fusion/fission. Say it. Fat Man, Little Boy. Big Bertha. Mea maxima culpea. 

She died for it, she died for it, the equations glowing in the dark like star patterns in the geometric vortex of the sky. The dark cancer growing in exponentials, growing toward the light. The white desert sands of Alamagordo melting into kryptonite at her feet. Emerald green like her lost homeland, her lost blessed isle of green. No Superman to save her. Just her fate. All the pure numbers and equations dancing in her head.

Just let me pass the fucking test!

maureen

PS Tell Gary I miss him...how long is he here for?

(And so I did).



Dear Hurley,

Yeow, I am way behind in some emails!  I'm sorry, you asked me at the bottom how long Gary was around and I didn't read that in time before he left for San Jose or something.

I hope things are turning better for you, I really do.  Have ye a paddle at least by now?  Are you clinging to a branch about to go over the falls?  I hope not.  C'mon you genius descended of geniuses, you will think of something.

I've got a buddhist name now so I can probably burn the candles of least three religions for you now: Christian, heathen or buddhist. First I was an alter boy, then a born again nutter, then I went in a couple of other directions. I was made an honorary Druid the day I met your Mom and now I am Trungpa Bumbleshe, according to my minister friend, as of yesterday!  Now all we need is a power outage.  I forgot to tell you I'm part Scottish?

You missed a rather poor showing by moi in Marin. Gary and Margery were good, but I am not a great team poet, and the group presentation has a different set of problems than a solo set.  I guess I wasn't as into it as I should have been and I didn't like being a part of a sideshow of a three ring circus.  The rest of the show was pretty good, a jazz band and a human beat box, not to mention a balloon lady, a magician and a poetry slam, which was kinda of cool, kind of lame.  But it took forever and the service sucked.

If I owned Cafe Amsterdam I would hire some extra help and sell a thousand drinks. Nobody came to our table for two hours. It was kind of stressful, not knowing why I was waiting to be told to cut our set short, playing the poetry fool, paying for my dinner and dying of thirst at the same time.Had a couple of real good session since then, so I'm over it now. But enuf about me!

Are you okay?  Are you dancing barefoot because you passed the test?  Are you cutting yourself because your cousin helped blow up some atoms?  Your mind, is it still full?  Your body, is it all systems go, in harmony with itself, healing you?  You were going a mile a minute when crammed full of info for the test; do you have a brain chock full to the brim with something tonight?

I think I may take a bubble bath now, and I suggest you do the same.

Whitnaked "T.B." McGod, Doctor of Irreverence

Dr. EyeReverence,

Well burning candles at both ends leads to a hot arse, but at three ends? What does that lead to, Trungpa Bumpershoot? T.B.rolly in the bath with bubbles? How does that affect the outcome of luck, good, or otherwise?

I already knew about the Scottish bits...probably one of the first things out of your mouth when I first met you... It was the blue woad thang.... I'm trying to remember when/were that was? Do you? Was it thru Gary at that place on Roblar Road in Cotati-Petaluma? I remember later, being surprised that you knew my ma. She moved in exquisite, if torturous circles.

I haven't much felt like performing ever since the car accident with fucking Verona Seiter nearly 7 years ago!!! I think I tried to perform too soon after, I remember gettting sick, throwing up, the shakes, my pain threshold overmaxed and absolutely no reserves. My candle at both ends was very nearly snuffed out, now it's only lit at one end these days...yo pienso que si pero...

I still get back spasm from stupid stuff, probably from sleeping wrong, spent Mon/ Tues (last fortnight) in amped pain module trying to break spasm with Flexeril. Genius? stupid as a fish comes to mind.

Cafe A'dam sounds like a 3-ring poetry-circus.  And a dry one at that.

May 9 I'm off to Miami to perform with world-class pianist duo Kirk Whipple & Marilyn Morales, from the Unconservatory. I wrote a suite of poems as Kirk was composing them: 12 nocturnes, Elemental Portraits of Sonoma Co. musicians. 

I used to lay under the piano and freewrite as he tried out riffs, read from his dreambook, etc, then wrote, and then I interviewed the people. Wove the story around them. We were going on the road when the accident happened, with a punctured lung, I literally had no breath by which to read.... 

They moved to Miami (bigfish/mudpuddle syndrome; Mari's family is Cuban--she missed them) and enroute, they got sorta famous. Played at the Kennedy Center. So, we're resurrecting the old show (vs saw?) for da SnowBirds and Republican JebBush supporters. Oughta be real interesting.

And yes, I passed the effing CBEST math test with 18 points to spare (55 out of a total of 80; 37 was passing) and no, I can't remember much of what I learned other than E=mc2 but I already knew that fission/fusion thang. We're having a rare Walsh clan gathering in Santa Rosa June 27. Home Ranch & Marie Walsh will be invoked at one point or another.

I got a few CPITS gigs in Fremont, Healdsburg, and a YABA gig in Clayton so I'm spread pretty thin, I'm working but earning diddlysquat and resenting the shit outa the govt thang, etc...fuck taxes, the irs, etc....

Other than that, all quiet on the western front. We're still on spring break. More like broken spring for me with the rental manager hanging me up for days on end while fixing the sink (it was literally falling thru the counter) and he took apart every faucet in the house, while painting the closets with sealer as the roof leaked, and ALL my clothes & things are mouldy. 

I won't mention the mondo moth attack. Well, I needed to downsize and get rid of sweaters (the past) anyway. I had to wash every stitch of clothing and the dryer isn't working right. Talk about being the Irish washerwoman! I've wet clothes everywhere.

And last week, the ONE day I left my silk painting manuscripts out of the portfolio, leaning against the piano bench--as I was scanning them--and I wanted to redo them--I went off to teach a class in Healdsburg and when I came back they were all wet!!! The ceiling had to leak in that one spot in the whole house. Luckily, they're covered with visquine but the mats got wet and I was afraid of migration...not one color shift. I must've used fixer in the dye with them, thank gawdess!! I had to spread them out all through the house to dry.

I'm borrowing a digital camera (from my aunt) and I'm having a blast taking pix of flowers, cats, etc. I was worried about not having the software, drivers, etc., for it, and of course, I couldn't find Toshiba drivers for it, but it showed up anyway on my elder Mac's (8.6) USB card, like a little itty-bitty hard drive. I was so thrilled! Now I can document my art work after all these years.

Neil returned home Friday from Scotland last night reeking of cigarette smoke, (his mum is a chimney) and I'm so allergic it's not funny, so now his clothes are all outside as well...what a time for the dryer to break!

About the Scots, to avoid Longshanks (Braveheart comment), Neil got inducted into the Caledonian Club...they put on the Highland Games, oldest in the nation I think...you gotta be Scots born AND male!!! we went to the Tartan Ball...I just don't DO that sort of thing...like put on a dress, nylons (hose) I refused at that...let the men do that, skirts, I mean, not hose unless they really want to.... Anyway, they were toasting this and that...And I about gargled when they toasted "our dear President Bush," the office, yes, but NOT the man. Needless to say, the mayor of Pleasanton (where the Games are held), my tablemate and  I abstained from toasting.

I thought I was in for a right torturous dour evening, until about the 10th toast, when they shed their wee dour selves and the party began!!! ... isn't there something, say, a nice medium between dour and stroppy/ lunatics? Anyway, it really did take them the entire evening to warm their cockles, the real party or should I say, ceildhe, began in someone's hotel room after midnight, with Neil on the guitar and all these drunken Scots caber-catching themselves in kilts...mine wasn't the only stray hand feeling the underside pleat job. And hotel security (Airport Hilton) coming in to join the fun or to shush us up...was it the snare drums or the pipes someone had the audacity to complain about???

Hmm, forget the bubblebath, the sun's out. I must flog my man around the lake (Merritt) if he's to shift his circadian clock from Scottish time...

Moski

PS I sent rhiannon your Colorado gigs, you may want to follow up.

4.21.04

BLUE WINDOWS freewrite

                  

Betty's window frames are the color of the sky

Lucia starts each morning with a cigarette

The sun weaves patterns through the vigas,

the bars in the adobe walls

imprisoned sunlight

the leaves of the cottonwood

elaborate on the small breeze

and cast long slanted shadows

on the wall

Mayflies dance vertical spirals

in endless progression

like an elevated vertical infinity sign

Maybe it's because they don't live so long

they make the sign

Cathedrals of light spewer from the steeple

a sign of light flooding the room, the walls

Beyond the cottonwoods

a garden of cosmos alizarin godetias and cornflowers

Someone has just laid a lawn squares of a living carpet

the mayflies dance above it

The window in the wall with its vigas

casts ladders of light across the patio floor 
and onto the lawn

a bridge into another world

This morning I awoke in a strange house

made tea, but drank coffee instead

that familiar slow ponderous crunch 
of Betty's foot on the gravel

an old woman who spends her final days 
in this house her parents built

soon she will move to a fine new apartment on the Santa Fe river

The house is getting to be too much for her, she says.

The infrequent rain has stained the wall

with heiroglyphic code.

There is no water in the Santa Fe river

This is the end of the trail that leads to Mexico City

the mute clarion announces Sunday

Yes, today the sun also rises (to borrow a line)

I held a Pueblo pipe stem in my hand at midnight

No bowl, but as I made the proper pass from right to left arm

I felt the medicine anyway

A tuft of coarse strawberry hair—a scalp?

We introduced the notion of scalping our enemies

Who was more savage? 
The names speak for themselves

Kit Carson, Billy the Kid, Pancho Villa

They all rode into town one way or another

We arrived in a white ford with the latest technology

computerized excess

When the shadows of the cottonwood leaves

fall on the ground, they make circular patterns

like cluster of people

Teenagers line the plaza last night in tight knots

the light intersects shadow on the peach

This is like arriving next door to home 333 on an aqua door

I used to live at 333 Third Ave

My life dominated by the second prime number

or third of you count zero

Is zero a prime number or is it transparent like water,

like sly only giving the appearance of un divisibility

A cat wanders along a high wall the watertower on stilts

peers over a neighbor's fence into their private refuges

We are always seeking refuge.

Lucia and Betty talk on the island of bed amid boxes

We are four women in transition

young Michael, the only balance

Soon we will need to plan our days here, so little time

Words to know: Bering  Straits

civilization, Ice age mountains

boulders migration, mammoths, obsidian

stone age mica surplus specialize cahokia

an endless progression of shops up canyon road

one gallery after another in all the same hues

art for sale in cloying pastels

the written word

should be clean and bare

clear as light

firm as stone

two word are not

as good as one

            —anon

Two blocks from this palace where I sleep

where Delgado crosses the Santa Fe River

is where the Rosenbergs were arrested says Lee Rosenthal

Tomorrow we go to Los Alamos

the cottonwoods where the Manhattan Project was born

I am chasing my own ancestors across New Mexico

Last night we had rain, today the cottonwood leaves 

have that preternatural rustle of fall in the air 

a state of being

The peaches are gone from the windowsill 

I miss their elegancy against the cerulean sashes 

I've bought Betty nectarines as replacements

though I know it won't look the same 

Today we go to the pueblos

They say rainbows signify hope

over Frijoles Canyon 
Clouds dressed in salmon hues
four corners for rainbows 
lightning striking the earth

9/1990 (not sure why I put 1991 as Hotel La Flnda, Taos is 1990)