Letter to Charles McGeehan

Dear Bertaijn & Charles—Happy Holidays!

It’s been raining steadily for a week, a slow, gentle rain, drumming fingers of rain on the moss-green scalp of my cabin roof nestled beneath live oaks. I’m cozily curled up in bed with the flu, playing with my computer.

There are flash flood warnings in Northern California, Oregon and Washington and record feet of snow has fallen in the mountains. I’ve been lax about writing to anyone since I’ve been back home. A kind of lethargy creeps over me. I do what’s necessary, read, and little else. Perhaps hibernation. . . Of course, it doesn’t help that I have an injured wrist.

Right before I left Amsterdam, I got into a bicycle accident. As I was returning home to Linde Voûte’s on Oetgenstraat from Westerpark, some idiot took a curved wrought-iron flower trellis (the arch that goes over a gate) out of the back of his double-parked car on Prinsengracht (near Utrechtstraat), and swung it in front of me, cutting my right hand. 

I tried to protect my face but smashed into a parked car, bruising my left wrist when I hit the back windshield. It was either smash into a parked car or fly into the canal—which would you choose? It was raining, and the bike’s brakes were no good on wet cobblestone & brick. 

Anyway, I’ve been ignoring my wrist for the past 2 months—until it hurt so badly (I was smashing a clove of garlic with the flat of a knife; the little bones in my wrist made a crunching sound like potato crisps!). I finally went to the doctor who put it into a splint to rest it—a bad sprain. 

I’m slowly typing (two-fingered pecking) this letter wearing my stupid wrist brace—which looks (& is beginning to smell) like an old gym shoe, and as winter’s chill creeps in, my bones ache (snow in the Sierras); injuries don’t heal quite as fast as they used to.

I’m finally finished with my Breytenbach essay on translation. I can’t believe it took me so long to write it, but I didn’t have the background or knowledge necessary to quickly write something. 

Besides, if I knew what I was going to write about, I wouldn’t write at all. What’s the point? The essay & footnotes is nearly 10,000 words (verbose), and it was very difficult for me. It’s long overdue, I hope J.L van Schaik Publishers (South Africa) will still use it!

It’s hard to say exactly how I’ve been wasting my time as I’m never idle. You know how it is, the life of a writer is a proverbial black hole. In Autumn I never have much ($) work: I’m teaching a poetry class to children, ages 6-8; I finished 3 “Elderhostel” classes (California history, poetry, art, etc.) to 60+ year-olds—and my strangest job yet—was as a naturalist leading a group of businessmen on a day hike to the headlands near Sausalito (& the Golden Gate Bridge) last Friday (probably when I caught this cold). 

Did Paul Evans do another issue of ORAL magazine? Charles, you haven’t sent me the second batch of poems that I typeset—you were going to proof them, remember? As soon as I get them, I’ll make corrections ASAP and send you a clean copy of all that I’ve typeset so we can see where the “holes” are. 

Herman got a letter from Guillermo Gelacio, & some photos. Guillermo was concerned with, among other things, Herman’s general sloppiness in the Asian issue. I’ve tried to tell him to take care, he’s losing credibility. 

A good thing we’re near the end of the project. He’s truly incorrigable, and becoming worse with time, impossible to work with. I want to make sure we get our issue together soon so send the corrected poems.

Here’s a letter fragment I never sent:

19 Sept., 1996 (midnight insomnia) Home, I am—and after a week of sunshine, I need dark shades—unused as I am to so much concentrated light. The weather’s turning cold. Fingernail moon (and a total eclipse on the 26th—the last one of the millenium—which I doubt you’ll even see, Dutch weather being what it is. 

Still suffering from acute jetlag, tunnel vision & disorientation by late afternoon is typical (for 6 pm is really 3 am—and I wonder why I have no appetite for dinner!). 

Driving is excruciating (asleep at the wheel is a virtual reality). My cousin Dave’s having the same symptoms. We may have jumped into this culture/time zone but the bio-rhythms aren’t yet shifting. 

He said “I have to keep moving around, flapping my arms, just to keep awake at work.” I laughed at the idea of Dave flapping his wings in an airplane hangar with all those dismantled planes. 

At a lively Brazilian party in San Francisco, I made the mistake of sitting alone on the couch for a few minutes. My eyes may have been open, but that’s all. I couldn’t even speak, let alone understand the Brazilians’ Spanish (who speak with a Portuguese accent). 

I drove Herman Berlandt & his girlfriend, Verona home to Novato, literally cross-eyed, thinking “I’ll never make it home” and slept on their couch. They say it takes a minimum of 1 day of suffering for each time zone. 

I remember how it took me weeks to recover from Russia. How long will I suffer this time? Someone said that in a Concorde jet, you travel so fast, you arrive before you leave—earlier, that is, in New York than when you leave Paris! Where’s Einstein when you need him?

My cousin Sínead (Dave’s sister) and I went huckleberrying last weekend out at our secret spot on a hill near Tomales Bay, where we used to go with my grandmother. (They’re like tiny blueberries with 50 times the flavor.) 

From the isthmus, we could see Point Reyes in the distance, like a comma against the shining sea, separating Drake’s Bay from the raging Pacific—a misnamed ocean. 

Offshore fog rising up like a vast wall where tiny fishing boats disappeared into its maws, made me think of the painter, Turner. The pine forest took a beating from last year’s severe storms—so many uprooted trees met an abrupt end—we used them as aerial pathways up the hillsides. 

Since it’s all part of the Point Reyes National Seashore, we’re not supposed to gather anything—even huckleberries, so I stole an antler. We were hiding from the rangers but we had Sínead’s 22-month-old nephew, Séan to lug through the undergrowth. I had the odd sensation we were re-enacting an age-old ritual, gathering berries before the fall—no matter that our skin is white, not red. 

My aunt will make pies and ice cream, our teeth will be indigo-stained for days (like my fingers). How Pictish! The berries are so labor-intensive (cleaning takes longer than picking) we make jokes, compare them to caviar. (We went to an equinox party at Albert Straus's—a local ranch and made gallons of huckleberry ice cream).

I spent my flight over the Atlantic being terribly sleepy but wide awake with fear. Unfortunately my airplane dessert had hazelnut filling in it, tho they said it was jam. . . and I had to take antihistimines, the stewardesses coming by periodically to see if I was still breathing. I was trying to figure out a place where I could hide to inject myself with adrenaline, if it came to that. 

I’m such a coward around needles and every muscle in your body contracts at once on adrenaline. The one time I had to take it, I could hear my scull crack as every muscle in my scalp went into shrinkwrap overdrive! Zip!

What struck me most about returning home is the sharp, aromatic odor of bay laurel, poison oak pollen, and sun-burnt hay, flavored with the acrid, thirsty dust—the smell of late summer making me nostalgic (like Proust and his madelines?). 

Seeing all the lovely, steep hillsides against a cerulean sky, cloaked in tawny blond oatgrasses like sleeping lions, and the thick green-black oaks roiling in their crotches—so sexual, it surprises me anew each time I return. 

I’ll never forget how the mirrored San Francisco Bay and Mt. Tamalpias (our Mt. Fuji-san) from the fire-ravaged Oakland hills takes my breath away. The Sonoma-Marin Coast Miwok Indian word for the shining golden gate, Yulupa. 

All that’s left of the Bay Area Ohlone Indians’ stories of this landscape is: Dancing on the brink of the world. 

I love this landscape, but not the culture. I hate the vacuous American loudness, the lack of body awareness, the shallow chrome and Formica existence, the urban sprawl. . . the ultimate loneliness. I try to be somewhat tolerant, but I guess it’s not within my nature. And so I am alone, dancing on the brink of I know not what.

My 2nd night home, I was invited to a Sebastopol Arts Council meeting for the promotion of poetry in west Sonoma County, and I felt so jaded. “Been there, done that. Got the shirt. . .” 

Guess I should be glad poetry is so “in” but it just makes me bad-tempered and ornery—especially when they dream big, and haven’t a clue as to what goes on in putting on reading series and workshops, wanting more volunteer labor to make it happen. . .and I’ve got that shirt too—in several sizes. (And it’s got bloody holes in it by now!).

It feels a bit like a mausoleum here, in this poetry mecca of the world (and in my cabin too). I know I’ll grow used to it soon enough. 

I saw a bizarre English movie, The Draughtsman’s Contract, by Peter Greenaway, the director of The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover. At the end there were all these Dutch references—someone speaking Dutch which I could almost understand. It had the peculiar effect of making me homesick for the wrong country. 

They say you always leave a part of yourself behind when you travel. Does that mean there’s less of me returning home each time I go away? (Heminway said: Travel broadens the mind. Writing broadens the ass. I write standing up.)

I’ve got to find a new home for our poetry reading series—book 20+ readers thru Dec. & do a newsletter /mailing on my own (done!). I’ve got a few 2-day teaching jobs with Elderhostel (open university for retired folks) in Oct. One on creativity and the arts, the other on early California history—I’ve got to start cramming the info. in soon. It takes me a while to re-establish those kinds of facts—I teach through telling lively stories and anecdotes—otherwise my elderly “students” will fall asleep.

* * * * * * *

Charles, today’s the anniversary of day President Kennedy was shot. The proverbial question: what were you doing, where were you? (Not on the grassy knoll, I presume!) 

I was in 3rd grade, sick with a flu (like today), sitting with my grandmother with my feet propped on the warm sides of the stove firebox (we have a gas stove with a wood burner for heat in Forest Knolls—not that newfangled modern heating! 

Bertaijn, my Grandmother’s house in Forest Knolls reminds me so much of your wonderful farm house in Rogny! Thank you again so much for inviting us, it was a highlight of my summer). Actually, she was sitting by the stove, I was wallowing around on the floor in my quilted robe like a red and yellow paisley dust-walrus. It was a dreary day, much like today.

My aunt Canice’s husband Bill (Dave’s father—they were staying with us a while. At one time or another, my grandmother’s house was a second home (a flophouse?) for three of her four daughters in various incarnations of distress). 

Bill Dinsmore (a sloppy drunk) came bursting through the front door, mid-afternoon—full of news. He was so excited, I mistook it for joyousness or frivolity. “The President’s been shot!” he shreiked. In retrospect, I think it was merely excitement and shock enhanced by the booze. 

My grandmother’s reaction of anguish (she who had buried a husband, a son and several brothers and sisters by this time), such a bizarre foil to my uncle’s giggling, I didn’t know what to think, only that Kennedy was akin to being a relative in our household. The Irish Catholics have elevated him to secular sainthood.

When visiting my relatives in Ireland in 1973, I was struck by how every house had its altar niche with Jesus and/or Mary (rarely Joseph) and Kennedy illuminated by a (red) votive candle. The sacred heart. Later, in 1989, when I visited Peru, it was like being in Ireland—Kennedy’s half-mast eyes blankly stared out at me from every niche. What do the dead still see from the eyes of photographs?

Of course, lots of controversial stories about Kennedy have surfaced since then. But, regardless of his politics and womanizing, he truly represented something as intangible as hope to so many oppressed peoples the world over. 

I can’t think of another American president that had that kind of global impact. Certainly not the Rosevelts, nor Eisenhower (course I wasn’t really politically savvy yet—born in 1952). Clinton’s been compared to Kennedy—but that’s a joke. Clinton couldn’t even fill the shadows of the soles of Kennedy’s feet. Still, I wonder, what would our perception of Kennedy been like if he’d run for office now, more than 25 years after his death; how would the world view him now?

Weird to see Fidel Castro on the telly the other night, Knnedy’s embargo from the Bay of Pigs crisis still in effect—we get little news of Cuba. I saw him on a Mexican TV channel—no voice of James Earl Jones sonorously announcing in that rich baritone: This is CNN! 

Charles, remember those radio emergency broadcast tests when we were kids? The piercing tones followed by the announcement, “This is only a test. If it had been a real emergency . . .” and we thought maybe the bomb was gonna drop? They’ve just eliminated them (I was surprised to hear them on the BBC radio broadcast you listen to in the morning). Now there’s new technology, just some computer chirps and clicks.

Charles, happy birthday to you too! I forgot the date, fellow Sagge.; my birthday’s in 2 days. I’ll be 44, or as my grandmother would say: Farty-Faer. Fulla hot air in more ways than one—nasty flubug!

1 Dec. Sun. Well, a friend (a student’s mother) whisked me away to the beautiful tourist town of Carmel-by-the Sea for the weekend, so I turned 44 beneath a full Gemini moon by the Pacific Ocean (we were 2 houses away from the beach, a painter friend of hers rented a house for a full month). 

I no sooner returned home (Tues.) and left again to spend Thanksgiving in Novato with Herman and Verona (his actress-girlfriend) and her 2 (adult) children, a Brazilian artist (Zoravia), and a Scottish actor (Neal O’Neill from Glasgow in a kilt (I think I’m in love!) played guitar, so we sang for our supper on full stomachs. 

Herman said he was going to call you, Charles, but every time we get the urge, we realize the hour you definately would not appreciate. There’s that little matter of time. He said he wrote to you but you never answered. He was worried about you, your health. Please write back to us soon.

My innards are still unhappy, so I spent the weekend back in bed reading after nearly a week of socializing. I’ve been reading more on the Celts—discovered that Laon was a celtic hillfort, and later, an Irish monastary until ca. 1500 to 1700 AD. 

My favorite mystery scholar whom I know little about, a founder of many of the continental universities, was Johannes Scottus Eriugena (John, the Irishman b. 810). He taught 25 years at Laon and at the Paris Court School for Charles the Bald (when he wasn’t being accused of heresy—which was often—for his radical doctrine preached the concept of free will. 

Note: this was long before Luther was a gleam in his great-grandparents’ eyes). In 486 the Loire was settled by Merovingin Franks, I don’t remember the dates at Marle. 

Do you have any information on the Abbey ring, Bertaijn? Suffice to say, there were probably still a few Gauls around—surely the Romans didn’t kill them all? Certainly most of the so-called “Roman’ troops were comprised of conquered Gauls—and with the fresh influx of Irish blood—well it seems to explain why everyone was wearing those Celtic beltbuckles! 

The thing is, no other group of people ever accomplished that kind of inlay design work. The Merovingian buckles were pretty crude workmanship though. Let’s all go back to Marle next summer—for a longer stay so I can scout out some history. 

Bertaijn, if you need some manual labor, I’ll be your slave. I’m very good at that sort of thing. Plastering, painting, gardening, etc. I’ve done all kinds of hard labor growing up in the country. Guess I’d better learn some French!

Here’s a little story about Eriugena: An emperor (Charles the Bald?) made a playful pun on two similar sounding words in Latin: sottum and scottum, and asked John what’s the difference between a fool and a Scot (Irishman) to which John replied, “Only the table.” (In Latin, of course: Quid distat inter sottum et scottum?).

The king must’ve been seated across from the Irishman. I bet he was flabbergasted by the answer—talk about turned tables! But then it is said in our myths, satire was the first art form invented in Ireland. 

I found this gem in my friend Vinz’s flat: Adversus stultitiam pugnare nil est laboriusius nulla enim auctonate vinci fatetur nulla ratione suddetor. Which goes something like: nothing is more laborious than to fight against stupidity for it won’t bend to any authority and it won’t be convinced by any reason. 

He must have had some very challenging students at Laon! If I don’t send this soon, it’ll be Christmas! Adieu. A’voir! Kisses & hugs!

P.S/ Well Christmas has come (the goose—well, actually, the turkey— is come and gone), and your package sat on the floor waiting for the last of my photos, and though the pieces were assembled, I forgot to mail this, so now I make another feeble attempt before year’s end. 

When I started this letter it was raining; would you believe it’s still raining! We have flood warnings for tomorrow, the Russian River is to crest at Hacienda Bridge in the afternoon, just 2 miles from my house. The power’s been threatening to go out all day, flickering—we’ve had terrible winds. Small branches falling on my roof and the hood of my truck. In today’s newspaper, a photo of ice skaters in Holland and in the Midwest—South Dakota, I think.

Charles, twice now I’ve tried calling you but no answer. Hope all’s well. I spent Christmas Eve and morning with my cousins Dave and Sinead in Nicasio; Christmas dinner and Boxing Day with Herman & Verona. 

Herman was given an old Mac computer, I have to find him a printer and a monitor. Did you ever get a better computer? What you really need is a letter quality printer ASAP! Your old computer programs might not be able to run the printer though, nowadays everything has its own special programs. 

You really should upgrade your whole system all at once if you can. Surely Anjum can help you? In the past two years there have been so many new chips (Intel, Pentium) invented, that the relatively new computers are now considered “obsolete” and if you can find someone who’s upgrading to a newer system, you should be able to find a deal somewhere. 

Since you only need a system for relatively simple wordprocessing and printing, it doesn’t have to be brand-new! You could get by with a small hard drive of 40 MB and 4-8 MB memory, both of which are upgradable. It would be nice to get a fax-modem too, because the telephone is so expensive. 

I realize you want an IBM style clone system, and they’re probably much cheaper, but if you should happen to come across a Mac system, Vinz has a Mac LC, and we can give you all the software and fonts you need. IBM’s highly touted Windows ’95 operating system (it runs the machine—you can’t get computers that run solely off program disks anymore) is merely a rip-off of Mac’s operating system invented circa 1989.

I don’t know if Dave’s sent you his photos yet, he’s been meaning to. Dave’s been working long hours on the “swing shift” (getting home at 2 am) in order to “buy” his grandfather’s house—an unscrupulous unrelated cousin managed to get her name included on the will and by California law, if property isn’t specifically bequeathed, it goes to whoever’s on the will. A real mess for him, but at least he’ll eventually own the house in Nicasio. 

The irony is that his so-called “inheritance” house will cost him about the same as if he were to buy it on the open market! But it’s a sweet old house—fraught with structural problems. That’s why he could relate so well to the problems of your house in France. 

(Do you think this is a long enough P.S.? I’m obsessed with filling the entire page with writing, I abhor the blank page in a letter, squeezing in as many words as possible, thinking I’m somehow getting my money’s worth at the Post Office. I know it doesn’t make sense, this obsession of mine, that’s why it’s so difficult for me to write letters—because once I get going I can’t stop! Enough already!!!)

November 22 - to Dec. 31?, 1996 

Letters to Paul Evans

Paul, obsessive ramblings, Lughnasadh, Aug. 2, 5 AM, 1996

Have you ever had the experience of making mental notes to say this or that to someone, some thing terribly important (or at least half-way intelligible) and in their presence (either in person, or via the phone), despite best intentions, you turn featherbrained on yourself, betrayed by a cheesecloth-that-stands-for memory/mind: whatever thoughts you had, driven clean out of your head, only to re-emerge at the oddest hours—say, at 5 AM, in a strange flat (and country) not your own—even the cats have deserted you because your tossing and turning like a crazed narwhal reminds them of the bilious sea, and water is not their favorite subject, unless fish are involved. (As the actress Tallulah Bankhead said, I nevah drink the watah, dahling, fish fhuck in it. By the time it reached the public, it was piss versus fuck. As if piss were preferable to fucking. You tell me why San Francisco society (or my computer dictionary) was not ready for that Anglo-Saxon word. My first and only opera I attended (Madame Butterfly), there she was in a peacock sequined gown, brandishing a cigarette holder longer than her arm, with a sotto voice that carried across the marble lobby into the streets. Fresh from the hills, I was wide-eyed in amazement, but that’s another story.)

In my case, this mental indulgence is exacerbated by bad cramps tempered with aspirin, cognac—one gets these images of wheels spinning in the muddied ruts in the backroads of the mind, and ends up having entire one-sided conversations that never actually reach their intended victims. Hence, the letter format. The good news is that I don’t write them often—who has the time to write to anyone—I’m a lousy correspondent—either dead silence for years, or a series of volumous ramblings like this one.

On Writing & Dreams

Have you ever had the experience of making mental notes to say this or that to someone, something terribly important (or at least half-way intelligible) and in their presence, despite best intentions, you turn featherbrained on yourself, betrayed by a cheesecloth-that-stands-for memory/mind: whatever thoughts you had, driven clean out of your head, only to re-emerge at the oddest hours—say, at 5 AM, in a strange flat (and country) not your own—even the cats have deserted you because your tossing and turning like a crazed narwhal reminds them of the bilious sea, and water is not their favorite subject, unless fish are involved.

(As the actress Tallulah Bankhead said, I nevah drink the watah, dahling, fish fhuck in it. By the time it reached the sanitized public, it was "piss" versus "fuck". As if piss were preferable to fucking. Tell me why San Francisco society was not ready for that Anglo-Saxon word. My first and only opera I attended, there she was in a peacock sequined gown, Tallulah brandishing a cigarette holder longer than her arm, speaking in a sotto voice that carried across the marble lobby and into the streets. Fresh from the hills, I was wide-eyed in amazement, but that’s another story.)

This mental indulgence exacerbated by bad cramps tempered with aspirin, cognac—one gets these images of wheels spinning in the muddied ruts in the backroads of the mind, ends up having entire one-sided conversations that never actually reach their intended victims. I’m a lousy correspondent—either dead silence for years, or a series of volumous ramblings like this one. Nocturnal epistolic documents, personal essays produced under duress by the obsessive urge to write. An unwillingness to let go.

Ah, one could say, self-indulgence is a fine thing, as long as it goes no farther than the page but essays demand an audience, that’s the other half of the Faustian pact. The monks had it right: indulgences. These, my indulgences—not poems (too self-absorbed and convoluted), but poet’s work.

Practice for scholarly glosses in the margins of what may later become a poem (if one is lucky).

I like Brodsky’s attitude on writing and the personal essay: A man of my occupation seldom claims a systematic mode of thinking. He elaborates that a writer is caught up by the relentless centrifugal nature of language. . . . where . . . ambivalence and open-endedness as the essence of [the poets’] endeavor.

This of verbal excess began in earnest when I had a Ukrainian boyfriend. Suffice to say, in 1989 letters rarely reached their intended destination, the KGB (or NKVD or NVKD—they were forever changing their acronym every decade or so, but not their technique, their headquarters, the Lubiyanka, cold solemn stone fortress/oubliette in the krasnaya heart of Moscow) working overtime to intercept love letters complicated by poetry between the sheets of Soviets and Americans.

So we wrote everything in a gonzo journalistic fashion, in triplicate, mailing one copy, sending the others via “couriers.” (Yes, our mail was opened.) I met many Russian couriers traveling to the USA, I received mail postmarked from all the cities of the free world, or got late night calls from homesick Russian friends of friends wanting to talk with someone—anyone who'd been there—a sort of sympathetic magic. The friends system was amazingly good.

Luckily, there were many Russian delegations traveling back and forth because of the efforts of people like William Mandel, a NPR radio commentator, Armand Hammer, the baking soda king, and the stuffed toy animal king, Henry Daiken. They all were couriers for me, they allowed me to stay in touch, to communicate with my Soviet lover—who now lives in New York and shared afternoon coffees with Josip Brodsky—who gave his Nobel money away to struggling Russians.

Strange offerings I received from people I didn't even know from Mother Russia—pre-revolutionary peasant dresses, coral & amber necklaces, USSR army watches, belts and pins. The Russians sent things of value to the west to raise valuta to buy an airline ticket out, or to pay for delivering packets and letters.

Once I flew back from St. Petersburg smuggling out dozens of letters, lacy silver spoons and tea glass holders, and more US currency than I arrived with, I was afraid I would get caught red-handed, so to speak. A counter-counter-revolutionary of sorts, I said No when they handed me an old icon. Ironically, I’d smuggled in as much money from Russians working in California for their families to live on; a thousand dollars was worth more than a year’s salary in Russia.

I chased elusive dreams to distant countries specifically because they were off limits, I purposefully slept with the enemy because in 5th grade I learned of a mythical Russia with troikas in the snow, in love with horses, I couldn’t let go of the image, and little did I know it was somehow tied to the frozen canals of Holland—Hans Brinker’s mythical silver skates—

I lived in St. Petersburg one winter, small patches of ice-free water beneath the bridges relentlessly patrolled by the ducks who knew: to let go of the open pond was to die. Friends are everything in Russia; without them survival is impossible. On the Field of Mars I stood overlooking the converted palaces, children sledding down the steps, and really, it was no different than here in Amsterdam.

Only later I learned Tzar Peter modeled St. Petersburg after this city we now inhabit. That inhabits us and our writing. Czaar Peterstraat and the birth of the Russian Navy. Amsterdam was his window to the west.

Of course, I’d be sentenced to spend time here looking out these windows, letting go of the myths, only to reinvent them in the poem. I perversely learn history through the back door, as a traveler in search of some elusive mystery. For what reason? Why do we write, and who for?

I need that reassurance of the personal conviction as testimonial. For poetry makes us whores— it is a relentless, unforgiving mistress. I’ve found myself in unusual circumstances for the sake of poetry. I’m merely the scribe.

And this Celtic insensibility—of course I skirt the issues, isn’t that Celtic nature, the Gordian knot? The muse comes in strange forms I no longer question. And so dawn nudges the trams into play, here, as in Russia, still I can’t sleep, but soon oblivion will find me like all the rest.

The cats are semi colons at the foot of my bed: I dream of people before I meet them. Crazy? A good Cartesian response to the unmeasurable. I know craziness second-hand, my mother’s indulgements influenced by the drug-induced ’60s & ’70s.

Then, my grandmother spent her free time wandered about the house muttering Cromwell; the Anglo Saxons & Jutes. The sassanach, she spat. When I was a child, I thought they were swearwords. I knew they were bad, very bad, that I mustn’t forget my history. And so when I recognize “kin” so far from home, I am overwhelmed. There’s a word for it: anim chara (soul/heart friend).

I don’t want to “make” precognitive dreams come true. Once I went to great lengths to try to change them. To my horror, the circumlocutions were also part of the dreaming cycle. If anything, I err in being too passive, waiting for them to unfold, & then wonder what the (fuck the) significance is. It’s not like a storyline, it’s a series of isolated moments, that upon waking, I sometimes mistakenly string them together into a narrative thus confusing the picture.

Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine:
people live in one another’s shadows.

I didn’t get a chance to tell you I dreamed I had to memorise 5 lines in Welsh—it was all a jumble of sounds, with no images to hang onto. I no sooner got one line down when it forced out the one preceding it, and so on through the night. I can’t even begin to pronounce the Welsh, I barely know the rules of Irish. I awoke with the cadence.

Pay attention to the rhythms. Teachers come in the most surprising forms. Poetry is a two-way mirror. The inside looking out. The outside looking in. You have to be ready to reassemble the pieces, wrote David Meltzer.

Once Vins and I went to Louven in Belgium where he went to University to study philosophy. Wandering the city, we stumbled upon an arch with Old Irish enscribed on the lintel. To my surprise, I was able to decipher it. . . perhaps one of the few visitors able to do so in the past several hundred years. A college founded by Irish monks in the so-called Dark Ages. And here we are, archaic sentinels from a culture (and languages) on the verge of extinction for nearly as many centuries. And we’ve so rudely taken a long time dyin’ at that.

How does one come to terms with: Cenedl heb raith; cenedl heb galon (a nation without a language; a nation without a heart).

I prefer phrases like Tá grá agam ort or Yr wyf yn du garu to the names of war.

Glamour, corrupted from grammar, this rough magic by which we strike. It’s in the blood. The dark, threatening sky. Again.

As I watched the stairs, I remembered subject/ object/ verb, but not the details—like inside vs. outside. I got to WH Smith bookstore 10 minutes early, I went downstairs 5 or 10 after 3, but didn’t think to go outside, and there he was out there all the time standing in the rain. I sat in the bay window, the rain falling, thinking Paul had gone home first, and got caught up in something. The story of star crossed lovers stood up by a miscommunication, the clock kept chiming the quarter hours with a vengeance.

What I recall of Ted Hughes’ animal poems in Thought Fox, I liked very much—especially the one about the horses. I need recommendations to “get” a particular poet. Maybe it’s because I’ve never “gotten” his voice in the small bits of anthologised poetry I’ve read in Norton, etc.

Of course, at the time (early 1980s), feminists were blaming him for Sylvia’s death. . . I was still new to poetry. So much to learn. . . In context to Ted’s poems, Heaney’s seemed a bit flat, but I was already familiar with many of the poems.

Some poems take their own time coming in.



© Maureen Hurley 2002. A shorter version/ variation of this piece, Anim Chara, takes the form of the epistilary letter—actually a confluence of two posts to Walo Rojas, Chilean poet, and to Paul Evans, Welsh poet and translator. The original piece dates back to 1996 when I was living in Amsterdam, after participating in the Poetry International festival. Amsterdam is very much a dreamlike city. For years, I repeatedly dreamed of the canals of Amsterdam, long before I ever went there. It was already part of my dream psyche, only I always thought the shining city of light was San Francisco with weird mantle clock houses. I was shocked to recognize the place of my dreams in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam Journal: editing poems for Mother Earth Journal 7/16

16 July Tuesday

I marvel at Paul's brain, the way he's able to write verse on short notice. For the Winston Kingdom intro, which is a small book that I'm to be included in, we mentioned we met there last night, but a band was booked. So did we.

We wandered into the red light district looking for a broojie or roll, which I never did find. He said. Look, I could have gone home and made you a sandwich by now. We settled for bread and coffee at the hostel and edited poems.

I was having trouble with choosing Kathy Pemberton's poems because they're inverse. Interestingly, he chose poems similar to what I had chosen and neither of us could find a poem by Ann Gartland that worked.

Yesterday I typeset 26 poems and did 4 and a 1/2 rough translation of Anna Torres's poems. I'm beginning to suspect Charles is very uneven with his translations. I did compare some of his translations with my rough ones and approximately 80% of the translation holds up and then he goes and does something lazy, or screwy.

 When I get to Enrique's poems. however, there were a few that escaped my red pen. Editors pen. Sloppy, sloppy language. For every typeset poem, I rejected another. These poems have been culled by Charles and Herman already. And while I checled most of the typeset ones, the ones that got past my security aren't terribly strong. There are some good ones. But mostly it's just run-of-the-mill poetry.

Again. Charles's taste is to uneven and we haven't a common denominator as to what is good. He is too caught up in politics, and chooses the message over the poem. I choose th poem over the message. And I worry about some of his Dutch translations as well. Paul's never seen one to compare and says what are you seeing translated seems good. Okay if it works in English, we will take it.

Earlier I had called up Paul asking him if he would look at those two files and help me choose the better one. Both of us had put in a long day's work translating and typesetting the poems. Oh Maureen, hi, he answered, genuinely glad to hear from me, though he sounded a bit surprised. I don't know why we talk, we see each other every few days. I'd have it every day if I could, for he makes me feel good.

On Saturday there was a shifting away from lust on both our parts, because it was was getting too dangerous. We're still in the Platonic mode but just barely there is a deeper intimacy in the way we sit and talk. The problem is we are forced into rushing things and once it happens the other side the intangible friendships take a bruising or are squelched, only to resurface later to play a pivotal part in the universe. The uneasiness that too soon follows.

Yes, we are running out of time, soon I will need to go home, and maybe we will never become lovers, and that's okay too. I didn't think it's only me imagining this deeper connection but he is so much younger than I, with his life experience. So I tend to appreciate what is rare from the previous experience and disappointments.

Midnight's the Witching hour in Amsterdam if one depends upon public transportation. The last tram was in as we walked to the center central-station. I quickly hugged him and turned to run and he wasn't expecting it and so it was a bit of a tangle of arms and bikes and legs. Without thinking I kissed him on the neck and ran to get my trolley, and then I was mortified, thinking now he'll spook for sure. Though we have a date at the library this afternoon, we'll see.

All the way home I was grinning, feeling a bit silly and embarrassed, the beer made me impetuous. But I hug and kiss most of my friends goodbye: Jan, Vince, Charles even Bertaijn and Annabel Torres whom I hardly know so I know him so much better than any of them. Except Vins and Jan. Oh well, I'm not going to worry about it. It's his problem if there is one. He called and said we're to meet at 4 PM in the library, and sounded fine. All that worry for nothing.

Amsterdam Journal: Vins & Joos 7/15

5 PM I'm on my way to Vins's flat to be checked out by his lady. Paul asks you haven't met her yet? I say, It's somewhat strange to me too, but Vins was an old friend long before we became lovers. I just never thought I'd be riding a tram to see my ex-lover and his woman some three years later. It takes some getting used to. Being on the outs like this.

Odder yet, since I saw Jan Bogaerts yesterday, meeting with him at the Winston Kingdom a couple of hours before I was to see Paul, the widening gyre of three men, are ripping apart the very fabric of my life.

Jan ambushed me in the alley near Winston Kingdom with his Leica. I usually avoid the camera lens. I hopped off the metro and ran through the alleyways from Niewemarkt, amazed that the map actually worked. My relationship with maps is suspicious at best, I am always the most surprised when I get to my intended destination.

15 July

Amsterdam Journal: dinner & gin

14 Sunday 1 AM

I'm back home from Paul's house. And now I'm really confused. Is it me, or him? Both of us? Is there something going on, or is it all in my head? Diffuse sexual buzz, versus pals? Or is it that men just can't help themselves? I can't tell whether he was considering seducing me or not, we were pretty cozy on the couch after dinner. And if he was truly wishing to keep his distance, he wouldn't have sat next to me like that.

I knew he was still feeling a bit addled from his wisdom teeth, no pain pills today, so he could drink wine. I keep thinking, what does he want from me? I use stories to keep our distance, to cover the questioning looks. I said I need to know how late the ferries run. Offering him a way out, and he responded by saying, If we leave now, then you can catch the last tram home. Which I did.

He rode me down to the ferry on the back of his bike, this was forgivable contact, my arms around his waist and my boobs brushing his buttocks as he pumped the petals down the streets. The stars were out, he yelled over his shoulder, It's so beautiful, and I answered, It's the first time that I've seen the stars in Amsterdam. It's so beautiful, I think I'll just ride the ferry back-and-forth all night long.

I did hug him goodbye at the ferry, because the lack of contact between us is so obvious. Everyone else is three-kissing me right left and center, but we've never so much as touched. Is it because it's a loaded issue, or is he undemonstrative like the English? Afraid I might get the wrong idea? The not-touching makes it more obvious. I keep reminding myself that each thing takes its own time wrapping its own gift. Be patient. I'm observing him, learning his patterns. Like a game of cards.

He sometimes dismisses or underplays things, so I have ask him again to see how he answers on the second or third round, and from that I learned some semblance of accuracy. For example, I asked if he understood Welsh words, and could he read a sentence? He answered, yes, after telling me he didn't know Welsh. When I questioned him he said I wasn't being precise enough. Oh?

I asked if he was using the Shell Oil building as his guide to the ferry terminal, he answered, The Galaxy Hotel. I was proposed to once in the Hotel Cosmos, I replied. What did he say? asked Paul. I said, I don't know, it was in Russian. Obviously I refused, I said, As you can plainly see.

For dinner I had brought wine and flowers from the red light district. I'd gotten them earlier with Jan Bogaerts, who met me at the Winston Kingdom. We shared oude jenevers (ancestor of gin), in tiny tulip-shaped glass filled to the brim, at Amsterdam's oldest jenever shop, Van Wees and Wynand Fockink. It tasted like I was felling a juniper tree and breathing in the sawdust. We wandered down the streets catching up with old times. I hope I'll have some time to write about him tomorrow.

Amsterdam Journal: not enough sleep 7/13

13 Saturday

I'm to have dinner with Paul tonight, and another dinner tomorrow night with Vins and Joos. She is Vince's childhood friend whom he married after I left him three years ago. I slept until 11:30 as I got home quite late. The stop-trein took forever, I traveled from 10:15 to 1:30 AM, more than three hours getting home, and it took 2 1/2 hours on the intercity train. Then I had to walk home in the dark, following the number four tracks up Rockin, Rembrandt's Plein and Utrechtstraat, then Frederiks Plein, and across the Amstel River. I now have getting home down to a science, walking in the bikepath, the wrong direction. But what else is new?

Amsterdam journal: train to Vlissingen 7/12

12 July

Finally I am on the 11 AM slow train to Vlissingen. I missed the 10 AM express train because my rail active pass fell out of my pocket. I had already taking the tram to the train station and then had to walk back, retracing my steps. The rail pass was in the toilet, having fallen out of my pocket. I knew it couldn't be in the street. Small grace.

But I'm terribly grumpy having missed the 10 AM train. Now I'll get into Vlissingen around 1:30 PM. I'm annoyed because the Vlissingen train ticket is 40 guilders. And I've wasted several hours already. I was planning to stay half the day at Wim Hofman”s, but luckily, during the height of summer, daylight lasts until 10:30 PM at night.

A business man in the next seat is permanently attached to his cell phone. I'm having visions of snatching it from him and stomping on it after he receives his fourth call in as many minutes. I can't blame my period for my vexation, perhaps I can blame my circadian rhythms. I was up until 6:30 AM the day before, and then sleeping until 1 PM, and then I was up at 8 AM today. Certainly, I'm a bit out of sorts.

Unfortunately I know what the problem is, I'm preoccupied with a certain Welsh poet who is 13 years my junior, and I'm trying to hold onto my attachment to Waldo, to keep from getting involved. If I'm this preoccupied, is he? Is this a mutual attraction? Or I am I completely out of my mind?

How come I never fall madly in love in the states and only on the road? Aside from the obvious usual fear of commitment, what else is different about me that I attract men outside of my own world? Also, poetry is my world, whether I'm in the Netherlands, or in California. I'm also uneasy about the fact that I seem to fall only for poets. Of course, I only hang out with poets, so that could explain some of it.

Amsterdam Journal: wrong dream 7/12

Being attracted to both Chilean poet Waldo Rojas and to Welsh poet Paul Evans is not a mutually exclusive process. I'm just not used to it. No sooner did I say goodbye to Waldo, did I meet Paul, with only two days respite in between. I met Paul at my reading at the Hotel Winston on Monday, the 24th. Charles McGeehan knows him, and I wouldn't even have come across his work, had I not gone to the reading, even though I”m collecting poems for the Mother Earth News issue.

But to meet the man first had a significant impact upon me. Each time I see Paul, it gets harder and harder to put him out of my mind. There is a moment frozen in memory where as he drank the orange juice offered, the long summer light illuminating his face, and we really looked into each other's eyes for an unguarded moment. I remember the green flecks among the brown, and his eyes, so like my own.

And I began to realize as we talked, he too was in my dreams before I came to the Netherlands. Only I mistook him for my brother. I kept thinking it was odd that my brother had a full head of hair and that there was such a sexual undercurrent. Not very comfortable. Ewww. I never been interested in my brother ever. And I couldn't seem to banish that element from the dream.

There's just enough age difference between Paul and I to keep a safe distance, to borrow a term, we”re good mates. My brother and I are closer in age, growing up. I put the man in the dream to be about age 28 and Paul is 30.

It was at the Hotel Winston Kingdom last Monday night, that the pieces began to fall into place. Our host and emcee Jacek Nichs introduced us. I need to look up the dream now but I do remember having a row with him in the dream about love, and he was chewing me out because I turned him down. And I was confused and devastated thinking it was my brother which didn't help I'm sure.

But then I wondered how does the identity process come upon in the waking world? What made me decide he was my brother in the dream? The way he looked? During the dream who was he? Did I use brother as a placeholder for whom I didn't know?

When I told Paul that he was in my dreams before I had met him, he didn't seem particularly alarmed saying that his mother and sisters were into the occult. He grew up with an Ouija board and séances.

I said this had nothing to do with the occult, I dream of the future. Precognition. It's an Irish trait, I don't particularly like it, it makes me uneasy, but that doesn't stop the dreams from happening. I told him I also dream of catastrophic events before they happen. The Challenger explosion, the Bijlmer plane wreck etc.

He laughed and said just don't tell me that I'm going to die, or something awful like that. I replied, no it has nothing it was nothing awful. I just don't remember the details. Now I'll have to look up the dream. Not wanting to give away anything in case I might sway or force the dream, I let it play out.

As he reached for his bag and leather jacket hanging from the closet door I passed close by him, marveling at his height. I never realized it before. That growing awareness of the other. Didn't give him ideas sitting on my bed like that? I was trying to act nonchalant sitting cross-legged as we typed up poems.

With both Paul and Waldo I am so at ease. Why can't I find someone like that in the states? I know that both are observing me constantly but I don't mind. Paul comments again that I'm hyperactive. I say coffee makes me even more so, I'm self-conscious about it, saying I'm trying to control it. I wonder what poems will come of it? If any?

Amsterdam Journal: La Diaspora poets

La Diaspora poets and exiled expatriates.

Today I met with Colombian poet, Annabel Torres at the Café Français. I am collecting poems in translation for our Poets in Exile issue for Herman Berlandt.

I had trouble with waking up as Vins came over about 12 AM and didn't leave until 6 AM. Earlier I had fixed dinner for Paul Evans and had some wine. And he's on painkillers for an extracted wisdom teeth and can't drink. He did have one small glass however.

With Vins drinking coffee, I decided on some wine, but it wasn't until the last glass, that he joined me, and we got pretty snookered talking of philosophy and dialectical models. If a butterfly flapping its wings over Mexico causes a storm in China, you damn well better kill the butterfly, glibs Vins.

We tease and punt, catching up on three years, a long absence. It's odd how we can't stop talking. Beneath it all, we are truly friends. I propose to him that we make a bilingual poetry book to use his translations.

Annabel Torres says that translators get paid 80 guilders an hour, and they're only allowed to work 40 minutes at a time. And she said the simultaneous translation with two other people is the hardest kind of translation to do. And I thought of my stint translating for Waldo and Robert, I thought my head was going to explode.

People say Vins' translations of my poems are very good and this pleases him. He gets little feedback from the world. Especially with these translations. Sometimes I think he would like to do more of it. We got in a good visit. Cause and effect equals synthesis. And something on dialectics.

Earlier I was floating on air, grinning away because of Waldo's postcard, running errands because Paul was going to be here at 6 PM. Paul brought a huge whipped cream cake with fruit. I don't think anyone's ever done that for me, brought me a cake. And we had dinner, salad, couscous and steak. Moving the table around until it suited us. I think we're looking more and more into each other's eyes, and I find his presence hard to shake after he leaves.

Unfortunately I have no control when I dream of him, and here I am trying to be like an older sister, because he's only 30, and I'm 43. I think nothing of being a man 13 years my senior. But the other way around is a whole 'nother paradigm. It's a bit more ticklish and we're such an ageist society. I keep telling myself there's nothing going on, like with Waldo. Yeah, right. Or, I'm just imagining things. A fertile, overactive imagination.

Come to find out it wasn't quite so. There's a bit of a titillation going on. I'm feeling torn, entertaining two men in rapid succession like that, but Waldo's married, and gone, so the letters and flirtation are for the long-term memory banks. We will see where it goes, if anywhere. We're mates, Paul calls me a good bloke, I call him dude.

And with Paul, ach! the model is similar. We see each other every two or three days. I'm to go to his place on Saturday. Nothing untoward happens, or will it. We went for a long walk after dinner to Ouderkirk aan de Amstel, a village tower on the Amstel River, near Amstelveen, talking about everything under the sun. Especially the Celtic stuff.

Paul tells me how to pronounce Welsh words, and reads me his poem in a low voice, lounging on the bed. We are frozen in time. I just wanted to lie down with him, so easily seduced by love poems.

I typed up one poem on the computer for the upcoming exile issue. And he had to go to Jacek Nichs's birthday party at 10, but stayed until 11 PM anyway. I suppose I could've gone with him, but I really wasn't up for it, and didn't know if that would be pushing my luck. Sleep is not overrated.

Amsterdam Journal: time slips away, Charles McGeehan's flat 7/10

10 July

How time slips away from me. I'm feeling guilty because there is always so much to do, and I'm not trying to accomplish it. Yesterday, I stayed at home, nursing my period. Such bad cramps. I had to soak in the tub at 3 AM to relieve the pain. My cousin Sinead called from Petaluma, she has an international line at work. She said to go out on the day trips and don't let the time fritter away.

I've been in Holland nearly a month now, and I have done very little by way of touristing. And I was so busy with Poetry International the first two weeks, I was truly exhausted by the time I got to Charles McGeehan's flat.

Charles is Bert Schierbeek's official translator. And then not having a physical space to sleep, was truly distressing. Charles lives in complete and utter chaos. Every room in the house is filled with paper, and there are tiny rabbit warrens where you can move from room to room. A lot of my time was spent in making his place habitable. Herman was right at home here. Neither have any domestic skills.

But I have limits. I literally slept mid-book stacks and made my bed with blankets on top of boxes of poetry. I was pretty busy during the first week at Charles's flat making some semblance of order out of decades of chaos. If we weren't on the ground floor, we'd be in danger of capsizing. Perhaps because Charles has had brain surgery, is why he's so chaotic. But Herman has no excuse.

Moving here was the first respite I've had in months and months. What did you do when you are truly tired, and need a rest? And too tired to rest? Fill it with things to occupy your time? Or catch up? My heavy periods didn't help. You're supposed to do things on vacation. I'm merely existing, living Dutch, as I always have, whenever I come here. My morning ritual of Dowe Egberts espresso, and wafer-thin slices of ouda Amsterdam cheese on dark bread toast sustains me.

Still so much to do. Visit Wim Hofman in Vlissingen, Maya/Maija in Almeer, and Jan Bogaerts in Liessel. I'm still not sure if we're going to France with Bertaijn, Bert's sister, and Charles' ex-wife, next weekend. A part of me is waiting for Waldo to call, dammit.

I still want to go museum-ing here and in Rotterdam. I gravitate towards museums the way others visit pubs or clubs. I still want to visit Leiden and Utrecht and Gouda. Groeningen is out as Maria van Daalen is teaching in Iowa.

I need to finish my translation article on Breyten Breytenbach and I need to also find an Afrikaans dictionary in order to finish my translations of Breytenbach's work. I am writing an article on Poetry International for Poetry Flash, perhaps interview Martin Mooij and Jules Deelder, the Night Mayor of Rotterdam, for it truly is the end of an era.

I'm hurt because Vins hasn't called me, or Marcel Koops, or Jan Bogaerts, for that matter—so much for old friends. I’ve been here a month. I guess it’s better that I’m staying with Charles after all.

Amsterdam journal: dream sequence 7/9

At 1AM, it was a mad run down the streets after a guzzling a second Guinness bought by a friend of Paul's, whose boyfriend and translator David, read a short story. Her name was Josie or Yoski, as she said it, an ex-potter

I now know who Paul is, that dream in which I mistook my brother for him, so he's on my path too. The relationship I have with Paul is very much like the dream, he somewhat resembles my brother, except for the hair, so that”s why I assumed it was my brother, a long time ago. I didn't realize that it wasn't my brother. I just thought he was had a full head of hair because it was a dream.

When Paul tilts his head down, it's scary how much he looks like my brother, not so much full on, but the brow is the same.

Ever the gentleman, Paul bought me a Guinness when I joined him. How simple. This is what I need, friends who will take me by the hand. He brought me a poetry book from England, Poetry Review, lots of articles about the Irish poets and I am in hog heaven. There is a wonderful comfort sitting next to him, nothing untoward, mind you. His role in my life will be revealed in time.

I invited him over for dinner, or for tea if he preferred. If you would like… Yes he said, double-checking that I had his number. Last time we met, I was 25 minutes late. He said Next time it's my turn to be late. Ouch!

Amsterdam Journal: Poetry International recap 7/9

Tuesday, July 9,

Small memories are flooding the morning's writing, Waldo Rojas and I waltzed to calliope music in the streets of Schoenhaven while Jules Deelder, the Night Mayor of Rotterdam, Simon Vinkenoog and the venerable Judith Hertzberg applaud, both they, and Miroslav Holub shower thin Dutch dimes down upon us like wedding rice, from the stone steps. We collect enough for a beer or two.

I curtsied, saying in my broadest Irish accent, Oh thank you kind sir. Simon, who is Holland's last hippie, asked me to remember him to Larry Ferlinghetti. Is City Lights still there? He asks. Of course, I laugh. I will give him your regards.

June 22
At dinner, I sat across from Seamus Heaney, telling them about my grandfather and Liam Mellows, whom he knew of. Seamus told me a story of going to a Catholic school in northern Ireland, making a Protestant reference. I queried, how did you wind up in a Catholic school? Because I'm Catholic, he replied, once more cracking the cap on the whiskey bottle.

I told Seamus of my grandfather's gun-running and of Eamonn De Valera and Liam Mellows visiting us. He said, You've got a rare bit of history there. And urged me to write it down.

Waldo, who was seated beside me, was silent. Of course, Seamus and I were speaking in English. Sometimes I translated, but I was often neglectful. Georges Lory, Breyten Breytenbach's translator, a cultural attaché who lives in Ghent, sat across from Waldo but they spoke a little, only having French in common. And when they spoke, I was excluded. We had not one common tongue at the table. There's gotta a poem embedded in that thought.

Waldo left early to go upstairs, and I let him go ahead, busy talking with Seamus whom I hadn't seen in over three years and then only briefly.

At Poetry International I started to follow Waldo who had asked me to join him, but he was so distant. Already I could feel him pulling away. I saw him at the credit phone, I could tell by his stance that he was calling his wife, shedding the adulterer's skin. I stopped, hesitated, and doubled back, and grabbed an after dinner coffee with Mairi, Seamus's wife. Letting him go.

I looked over the room of poets, saying my goodbyes too, and what an extraordinary two weeks it has been. This crazy tribe that I belong to. Geert van Istendael (whose real name is at least five names long) and I had a mini Celtic caucus. He is a wild Belgian Celt. By the coffee pot we concluded that the Celtic nation was alive and well and partying in this room.

I let Waldo finish his call, and then followed him up to the Klein Hall, the hospitality room. Many poets were already saying their last goodbyes. And after the final reading of our work, translating Breyten Breytenbach, we gathered in the hallowed room, a cathedral of sorts, where we all had worked so hard, as if afraid to break the spell, though there was a band, and a party in the foyer waiting for us.

Waldo left me alone in the room, and went dancing, probably with Mariolijn, the translator. She seemed quite attached to him on several occasions, perhaps caring more for him, than he did for her. I don't think they were lovers in the past. But one never knows. Not my worry.

We roasted our host, and Poetry International founder  Martin Mooij on his retirement etc., toasting the end of an era.

South African poet Dynana Kukama, from Botswana, dragged me onto the table-top to do a Xhosan song that she taught me, I learned it during a drunken evening, a few nights previously. We sang it, replete with the accompanying clicks, and tribal dance movements.A floorshow.

Siya nibonga okuba nathi (2x)
ni phumile makhaya nazoba nathi (2x)
na hlala nathi (to sit)
na xoxa nathi (to talk)
na blega nathi (to love)
na dhlala nathi (to play)
Siya nibonga okuba nathi (2x with a different melody line)


Thank you for what we have
you have left home with us
stay with us
talk to us
love us
play with us
Thank you for what we have


I'm not very good at Bantu click languages (Setswana, or Xhosa - Tswana), it's an interesting trick of the tongue to be able breathe out, sing, and click in the back of the throat, without drowning in saliva, but it was a gift to Martin and we had a good time.

Afterwards people came up to me saying, You have such a lovely voice. You could have another career singing. Or, I didn't know you could move your body like that, such wild dancing. Waldo missed it all, of course.

And I spent the rest of my time talking with Seamus. I gave him a copy of my Poem for Sarah along with some artwork of mine. And he gave me three resounding kisses goodbye in the European fashion. And then one extra big smacker on the lips—for a fellow countryman. Calls me cousin (my grandmother was a Heaney), and says goodbye.

I talked with Mexican poet, Homero Aradjis who brought me up to date on El Grupo de los Cien, The Group of 100, an organization and ecological organization that he had founded. I told him I had seen his name in the SF Chronicle a few months back in connection to logging and the destruction of the monarch butterfly habitat.

Homero said that is very frustrated because he can't seem to get much news coverage. He said that NBC, or CBS and came over and taped him, four hours worth of coverage, and then didn't use any of the footage. His program was bumped US news, something in Iowa.

We brainstormed a bit and I said to catch the US media's attention, you've got to make it relevant to the US, like tying to the butterfly trees of Bolinas. I also mentioned a friend of mine, John Knox, and Earth Island Institute, whom he also knew.

Homero felt that the US media was afraid to report on Mexican ecological issues, and of course, he's completely blacklisted, media-wise in Mexico. We talked about the dangers involved. He said, Sometimes I fear for my life, but I have to believe in the purity of the animals I am trying to protect. The energy of the whales and the butterflies. I offer cosmic energy to protect him to reinstill energy for the cause.

I told Homero I used several of his poems (the Canadian translations), in the classroom to talk about extinction, and unanswerable questions. I also used Neruda's questions. Homero, who is half Greek, said his last name was from the Arabic, his mother is Mexican, his father fled from Tyre, so he is an oddysey of many worlds and epochs.

Eventually Waldo returned, saying, Let's go. But I wanted to dance, and he wanted to walk me home. I knew we weren't to spend the night together as I had hoped, we both had to pack, but I wish he was a bit more out of control. That he'd just let go.

Waldo grumbled that he wasn't into ecology, not like what Homero is doing. I don't think he likes Homero very much. I asked him if he didn't care about ecology, or the extinction of species, etc. He said, No it wasn't that, it was the politics. I said that I admired Homero, and the work he's doing, and if not him, then who? How? What is our real job as poets?

Nota bene: All my conversations with Waldo are in Spanish, so this is a paraphrased translation. It wasn't quite a tiff, but it was a disagreement that fell away when we got to my room. I gave him a souvenir T-shirt, Alcatraz Sleep Team, or something like that.

And he began kissing me on the bed. When he fell back among the pillows with glasses skewed, shirt awry, he looked so defenceless. I realized it was all a façade. I took them from him, and he was helpless before me. I touched him, asking if he wanted me. Si, he said weakly, and we stripped off our clothes, turned off the light, and proceeded to squeak the springs on the narrow twin bed.

Waldo was wildly holding me, grabbing my hair, grunting my name, Mau-rin, Mau-rin, Mau-rin. I burst into tears, realizing that he was trying so hard to be civilized about it all. we had unleashed more than what we had bargained for. He wanted no long drawn out goodbye scenes, but he got it anyway. I wasn't about to be cheated of that.

Waldo is one of those rare man who can get it up a second time, replete with a second orgasm. We were on round two, when poor Herman Berlandt banged on the door, wanting to go to bed (we were roommates). It was more like a comedy of errors, we were caught inflagrante delicto, madly scrambling for our clothes, grabbing all the wrong ones by mistake. Tossing them to each other, And I kept saying, Give us five minutes! Give us five minutes! As poor old Herman grumbled in the hallway.

I answered the door with as much dignity as I could, with my sweater inside out and backwards, wearing little more than it, and my jeans, I couldn't find my underwear. Herman shuffled off to bed grumbling. It was a long night for him. Being stuck out in the corridor while we dallied didn't help.

As I walked Waldo to the elevator, I couldn't believe how calm and dignified he seemed, as if nothing untoward had happened when I opened the door, while I looked fully the part of a wild ravaged woman, my hair was a frothy Medusine mantle of passionate embraces. Does he do this sort of thing often?

Waldo stepped into the elevator facing me, and repeated, No tears, no goodbyes. The mirrored walls of the elevator reflected my face, and my tragic response, so that I could see myself simultaneously as he saw me. For once, I was wildly beautiful, standing barefoot in that hotel hall, with a crushed tuberose dangling from my ear, in the gardenia-scented night.

And Waldo was carefully stepping back into his Parisian mode. I was the wild Celt who stirred his blood one midsummer's eve, but now it was time to leave.Rejoin the world. He did leave me his address. And I did write it down. But I never expected to hear from him again.

Apparently Waldo called at Charles McGeehan's flat a few days ago, now the shoe on the other foot. He leaves his wife in Paris to sneak off and call his lover who waits for him in Amsterdam. But I never received that message that he called me until afterwards. I wonder how he and Charles got on over the phone? Waldo's spoken English is almost nonexistent. And I'm not sure Charles even speaks French. Dutch, yes.

I send my second letter to Waldo yesterday with my new address and number. So far, though Charles gave him my new number, there was no call. Every time the phone downstairs rings, I think it's him. But the upstairs phone remains deathly silent. By tomorrow, or rather today, he should have received my letter. Then round two begins—meaning where do we go from here? Or is there nothing more? Did the calliope music stop?

I am stirring up his life a bit, I think. Perhaps he has gotten too comfortable in his bourgeois existence, teaching the history of history at the Sorbonne. A man dressed in varying shades of grey. In a sense, I'm from his world, the New World, even if he left it in 1973. Waldo is a French citizen having lived in Paris nearly 25 years. That's nearly half of his life, but he still calls himself Chilean.

I had to simultaneously translate a conversationfrom Robert Dorsman (Breyten Breytenbach's translator), to Waldo. Luckily, I knew enough about Waldo to fill in the missing gaps. It was funny, because while I was being Waldo's ad hoc translator, he waited expectantly, trusting me to unlock the veiled the prison of language, as did Robert. Their combined energy focused their attention on me like a laser, as if I possessed a rare thing—with my poor Spanish. I got so nervous, I became tongue-tied. But we were among friends. Not like with Dmitri Prigov.

Several times I had explained and translated something that was said in English to Waldo, but that was in private. This was different, a public forum. I literally was the only other Spanish-speaking person in the entire room.

Of course, they could've used French with another person as an intermediary, so communication wasn't impossible. But I thrived in that moment, I was a linguistic bridge between two people. How many times has it been done for me, the gift of translation? It's not easy to do. And when you get out of synch, you wind up speaking the wrong language to both parties.

More than once, I caught Breyten looking appraisingly over at us, perhaps listening in. At that point. I no longer felt like an imposter, I was truly one of the group and I belong here.

Earlier Waldo and I were at the magazine table, and I was trying to explain something to him, intent on my language skills, how our bodies, and faces move differently in other idioms. When we speak Spanish, we move closer into the circle. In English we are at arms-length. At this point, it was obvious to all, there was more than between us than a passing flirtation.

Breyten's publisher, Francis Galloway, from Durban, came over, and said, You two look like a French painting. And then I wondered how we looked to the others in the room, carrying out a clandestine relationship in a language that only we understood. Is Waldo's wife French? Did I awaken the younger man from South America, and not the Parisian sophistocate?

He says I am O'Brien, Rojas-Serrano, I am Basque, I am Spanish, I am Mapuche Lincoyán, Aracuña (a tribal leader?). He is Chilean, born in in Concepción,

Waldo's father, a university professor, was executed, while he was in Paris giving a reading. The military coup of September 11, 1973 forced him into exile. He never returned to his homeland, and now his mother is dead. What else was there to do but to flee the country of his birth? In this, the Irish blood in him, and the Spanish blood, returned home to Europe, but what of the Indio? In Paris?

Have I, with my wild irish blood, pierced his heart, that poor weakened heart? Every day he lives on the other side of his heart attack, rescued from death, he's not exactly on borrowed time, but has a revitalized awareness of time, who he is, and where he is going.

One of the few things he said to me in English was, I don't care about money. In contrast to what? Reviewing his life? Or a general statement. And applecart I disrupted? I wonder if he will write of me. Or remember me. He gives me a signed copy of his book, Poesía continua. Yes, it does.

Another dream fragment comes resurfacing as I write these lines, I dreamed about my writing these very same lines, and analyzing his character etc. or having another chance to compare himself to my study of him. There is always more to come, contrary to what we might think. And I remember telling him of the dreams, and he asked, How can you tell the dreams and reality apart? Perhaps the dream is real and reality is just the dream.

In Neruda's Book of Questions, the first page I opened to was:

42
Who was she who made love to you
in your dream, while you slept?
Where do the things in dreams go?
Do they pass to the dreams of others?
And does the father who lives in your dreams
die again when you awaken?
In dreams, do plants blossom
and their solemn fruit ripening?

 Quien era aquella que te amo
 en el sueño, cuando dormias?
 Donde van las cosas del sueño?
 Se van al sueno de los otros?
 Y el padre que vive en los sueños
 vuelve a morir cuando despiertas?
 Florecen las plantas del sueño
 y maduran sus graves frutos?

tr. William O'Daly, 1991
Copper Canyon Press


And I still haven't written about Breyten Breytenbach, and his praise for me, and my work. I didn't know Afrikaans, so I transliterated his work, and he said it was more spot on, that what the eminent translators, including Miroslav Holub, and Edoardo Sanguineti, came up with, how, when he hugged me goodbye, I blushed like a schoolgirl.

Seamus Heaney, Rita Dove and I were definitely on the outskirts of that eminent circle, as none of us speak Afrikaans. So we coffee-klatched it a bit. However, I was determined to get something and treated it like a CPITS writing assignment, Juan Felipe Herrera once gave me making fake translations of Rilke. Francis Galloway, of Van Schaik Publishers, South Africa, wanted to use my translations in an upcoming collection of Breytenbach's.

Nor have I recorded Zein al-Abidine Fouad's extraordinary story working among the outcast women of Egypt who worked in the garbage pits, and how he brought guerilla theater to them, and changed a society. I was so caught up in living in within the moment, I never got a chance to record the event itself. My plate was so full so to speak. Perhaps photos will help to jog my memory, later, and give me reason to write about the many poets I met.

I also have a cryptic note about Irish short story writer, Seán Ó Faoláin, who died in 1991, and Homero Aradjis, I don't know what it means. Forever lost. Perhaps Seamus was urging me to read his work about the Easter Uprising. Or perhaps Homero was telling me to look up something. As it turns out Waldo was friends with Raúl Ruiz, Ken Bullock's friend. Small world. He and Ruiz were part of  La Cofradía de los Caballeros Antiguo in Chile.

There's always that feeling of life slipping away, out from under you. No matter what you choose to record, or not record it at all. Fleeting memories, not important in and of themselves, a collection of disparate lives during a a brief moment in time. Poetry was our timeline.

This was a June 22 journal entry that was later transcribed, hence the jumbled format. I may untangle it later.

7/9/96
added and revised for clarity

Amsterdam journal: predictability in writing 7/8

Derek Walcott once took a poem of mine, and folded it in half, lengthwise, and then said, if you can guess what will follow from the first half of the line to the second half then there is no mystery.

I had asked Paul, what do you think when you can second-guess all that A poet is going to say? Idea for idea. He said, I think you can say that in the structure of a common language, we unconsciously follow established paths. A manual of expression. Sometimes it is significant, how little we have we are original, or creative in our writing process, and in our reflection of predictability.

Amsterdam, journal: seeking light 7/8

Yesterday I met with Paul Evans at the Café Winkler, but it was closed and I was late, having miscalculated the distance. I am sitting in the sun on court Prinsenstraat, having left my new address with Marcel Koops. I was going to invite him to dinner last night, but there was no answer. So I left a message with Vins as well.

Paul was more entertaining, he got my new number from Charles McGeehan. And so we met up yesterday afternoon. I was so happy to see him that I'm feeling a bit scandalized, especially since I took a couple of days to write a long passionate letter to Waldo, half in Spanish, my first Spanish love letter, inviting him to come visit. But hey, he's married and life goes on in the streets of Amsterdam. I certainly prefer the views of Westerpaark and the Jordaan to the industrial area where I now live.

Paul and I went out to the Soundgarden, and he rode me on the back of his bicycle, sidesaddle. I found his face haunting me last night. The way he looks at me so intently is a bit unnerving. His eyes follow me, even in sleep.

Last night I banished his image from my eyes, saying, I don't want to fall in love with a poor young Welsh poet and translator living on the dole in Amsterdam. I'm trying to strike the matronly older sister approach, and nothing untoward has happened. I've only met him three times, but somehow we're we've covered a lot of ground.

And what of Waldo Rojas, snug in his petit bourgeois existence in Paris with the wife and position at the Sorbonne. A man not crazy in love enough to come when I call, for what I want is a man crazy enough to chase me through Europe, or at least through the streets of Amsterdam.

The glass sausage tourist boats patrol the canals, the narrow-eyed tourists categorize with commercial eyes, the inner vulva of the city. They've come to the right place to spend their guilders. A glass boat with a banquet table set with shining crystal and silver amid the snowfields of Irish linen, and where are the guests? The menu: tourists under glass.

Paul and I sit on Marnixkade in the Jordaan district, watching the ducks and mudhens. He notes that I'm hyperactive. And I tell him there are times when I break down and don't even answer the phone. He doesn't know it's because I'm nervous, afraid of the silence that fall between us like an ax to sever this tenuous connection, afraid of where it might go, afraid of where it might go. Foolish, and afraid of being vulnerable.

I sent on a canal bench where no one knows me, writing on the absurdities of love, knowing full well that Edwin Drummond might be waiting for me upon my return, and I'm not sure if I want him. Second time around? I don't think so.

The woman at the petticoat shop lets me have a turtleneck sweater, a scarf and two antique nighties for only 15 guilders because I'm such a good customer. The shawl perfectly matches my jacket. I bought it there in 1993 and she actually recognized it. It's a cold summer here this year, and I want my longjohns to sit in the sun that does not warm the skin.

Paul has lived here for six years, when he isn't mooning over an ex-girlfriend or two. Am I to be added to that list?

As for poetry, he is a purist, having read the modern poets. He can quote at length any poem. And he writes and measured beats, he knows the syllabic structure, while I can't even diagram a line, as he so aptly notes. He queries me how can you write in iambics when you don't even know how to measure a line?

I answer, I physically walk my poetry, I speak English, my body knows the rhythm of language.

He said, I wanted to know what's happening first, that's why I studied structure. Of course, structure is nothing without the emotion of the poem. He pays very careful attention to his craft, his poems are beautiful, and they take my breath away.

I tell him gull is a Cornish word and we have a Celtaholic attack, deciding that everyone who writes poetry is a Celt, regardless of their racial background. I tell him that poet is a maker of truth in the various Celtic languages, but it means liar in the Germanic languages. There you have it.

We talk of prosody and whether or not it's possible to lie within a poem. Sometimes the lie within a poem points to a greater truth. We don't mean the lie within the poem is a lie, but the construct of a poem itself is a lie. In this manner, three hours pass, what's to be the outcome?

We make tentative plans to meet at the Winston kingdom tonight. He's to make a chapbook of the readers to be out in a fortnight. And I am caught up in his accent, unfamiliar, but not quite, and the words that I might not use. He says I hee-ard and I answer I usen't to, or amn't I. Our little Celtic works pepper the English syntax of the enemy.

Paul grew up in a village of 8000, in the Rhondda Valley, a former coal mining valley in Wales, and spent most of his time hill-walking in the forests and vales of Wales, somewhat like me. I still live in the country, while he has traded the Welsh countryside for the low lands, low.

I tell him about Irish mythology, and he tells me of Gaulish history, how Caesar slaughtered an entire Helvetii tribe. Men, women, children, 40,000 of them, and later, another 80,000. We agree that the Roman Celtic genocide predates the English attempts.

Paul talks about the first Gaulish group in Britain, the ginger-haired Goidelic speakers. I counter with the Celt-Iberian migrations. And we we argue over P Celtic and Q Celtic languages.

I hold out my long hair, saying, Look at us, we could pass for cousins in a policeline. We're dark-haired Celts, but our hair, look at our hair, it's fire red in the sunlight, even though it's dark. He confesses to having an Irish grandmother. I say aha. I have many ginger-haired cousins.

I ask, What does this all mean, the British are quick to appropriate us if we become famous. Take Joyce, Francis Bacon, or even Samuel Beckett—which leads us on a lively chase to Catullus and Virgil. Celts writing in the tongue of the oppressors.

This is where the life of all poets as being Celts comes in, he says. I ask if I'm born in the US, and you're born in Wales, and if we become known as writers in Amsterdam, who will claim us, the British, the Dutch? To whom to whom do we belong to and owe allegiance, as poets. Ancestry and nationality. We are poets of the world.

I walk home along Prinsengracht observing the beautiful light. When I came upon the Amstel River and the Magere Brug, the skinny bridge made famous by Van Gogh, on Kerkstraat, I thought to myself, you have to earn this view to really appreciate it, and walking this far I really did earn the view. My payment was exquisite light trapped on water.

And I thought to myself as I peered down Utrechtstraat, Vins is right, this city does have its hold upon me. What does it mean? I recognize the buildings and the light from my dreams all right, this mythical city, I dreamed of it long before I ever visited here. Was I a Sephardic Jewish refugee hidden here in a past life, a factory worker, or a street worker? Poet.

Waldo calls me at Charles' house, and I'm surprised to hear the news.

Amsterdam Journal: Sarphatistraat 7/7

7/7 1996 Amsterdam, Sarphatistraat

Ah, what I've always dreamed about, a balcony with full morning sun. Sunday morning, little traffic. A sea of rucksacks and well-wheeled luggage clatters over the cobblestones like the hooves of cart horses. The next wave of tourists from Japan has arrived. 

I'm house/cat-sitting at Dave Hansen's flat, a few doors down from Adam and Eve Avenue on the F17 tram line, a low-budget hotel, of course. 

First sunny day in Amsterdam. What to do?

Somewhere someone is whistling a Nat King Cole song, a full deep-throated whistle. Okay to listen to outdoors that is. Not like Herman Berlant's thin reedy trill that drives me crazy within seconds. On my own, shall I wander through this wonderland alone? Play Misty for Me becomes my instructions for the day. After a shower, I find the sun has nearly abandoned me again.

I was awaken by cramps at 7 AM, not enough sleep. I worked on a letter to Waldo Rojas in Spanish most of the night. It takes so long to write a letter in a language not my own, when I have to look up every fifth word for spelling.

Herman commented about a woman who learned in several languages by having lovers from different countries.Yes, well, one is motivated in a different way than in school. 

As I mended my flowered dress, I got my first phone call from a Welsh poet Paul Evans, wanting to go out for coffee at the Café Winkler at 2 PM. I'm going mad from sirens and trams, the incessant city noises are so irritating. Sarphatistraat, at the intersection of three different tramlines is noisy. And the woodpigeons are eating the cat food. 

At Charles McGeehan's house, it was quiet, but living in that chaos was more than I could bear. I am glad to be out of that place.

Sunshine to the east, Stornes clouds to the west. Seagulls over the Amstel River portend a storm, or so they say. Paul tells me that gull is a Cornish word. His lilt is so different than the Irish, but definitely related. He didn't grow up speaking Welsh and so he's not got all the cadence. 

A sudden squall turns the wheel of the day into night.