Novato woman found dead in pool, Verona Seiter

August 5, 2005 | Marin Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA)Author: Gary Klien | Section: Marin Independent Journal 

A 68-year-old Novato woman was found dead of an apparent drowning yesterday in her neighborhood pool, police said.
Verona Seiter, a longtime resident of the Crossroads area in southern Novato, was found around 5:30 p.m., when a neighbor saw her face-down in the deep end, said Novato fire Battalion Chief Mark Heine.

The neighbor called 911, and two Novato police officers arriving at the scene jumped into the pool and brought her to the surface.

"Initial rescue efforts were attempted, but she died at the scene," Heine said.

Police and the coroner's office are still investigating Seiter's death, but Novato police Lt. Tim Christensen said it does not appear suspicious. An autopsy is planned for today.

It was not immediately known how long Seiter was in the pool, but it might have been a relatively short period of time. A longtime companion, Herman Berlandt of San Francisco, was scheduled to meet her yesterday afternoon but his bus was delayed in traffic. Seiter left a note at her Cheda Lane residence for Berlandt to meet her at the pool.

When Berlandt arrived, police were already there with the bad news.

Berlandt, a poet and theatrical director, said he had known Seiter, an actress, for 30 years. He first met her when she auditioned for a Maxwell Anderson play he was producing.

"We became inseparable friends," said Berlandt, founder and director of the International Poetry Museum in San Francisco.

Neighbors and associates described Seiter as an irrepressible character - active, free-spirited and bold. She was known in the neighborhood both for her distinctive English accent and her penchant for sunbathing openly in the nude.

"She was very theatrical," said Mary Van Muckey, a neighbor.

Residents said Seiter performed regularly as an actress and also did voice-over work. Her recent productions included Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days," "Footfalls" and "All That Fall" at the EXIT Stage Left theater in San Francisco.

"Verona was a delight," said San Francisco director Ugo Baldassari, who directed Seiter in "Happy Days" in 2001. "She was a free spirit, an imp and a very dear old soul. It was a pleasure for me to have worked with her."

Seiter had spent the last several years battling bone cancer, enduring repeated chemotherapy and radiation treatments, neighbors said. Still, she remained active, swimming regularly and traveling. She had returned earlier this week from a trip to Europe.

"She's gone through it all and keeps coming back," Van Muckey said. "She was such a fighter."

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Preparing for the Summer Solstice

Father’s Day and Verona's birthday, the actress as Lady MacBeth, cannot distinguish between stagelight and perfumed sky; she weeps for the death of her 60 years. The day burns lust-red. We raise champagne glasses and read poetry to the sky. The guest proves this on film for posterity.

A young Peruvian offers an armload of long-stemmed red roses to the actress. I pin a rose to his lapel and come to understand that brief moment of bronzed youth is disguised as a name. We compare ages. Sing the old songs to keep from falling off the earth, recreating the words that dreamed us into being. Verona blows out the candles. We run naked into the sea at sunset.

Floating in the chill depths below the Mesa, we look back at the North American plate. Mt. Tamalpais, place of my conception. Nothing came between my mother and father: this is why I exist. The moon slides over the water. Bioluminescence scribes itself upon the waves. Our tongues answer the ocean.

The suicides of Bolinas: literary invention proscribing reality. A woman boasts she was the last one to speak to Brautigan. I think of Lew going off into the forest. No heroes, words failed them. Sick to death of the intertextual “I”, I vowed not to write about love, and so, became mute; but the poetic Left has sacrificed the author. We need a new altar for the new millennium.

Afraid of the nunneries, I was a deliberately bad child. I collected an insurance of venial sins—white lies—to keep back that abiding fear of God’s prison gate. I thought “zounds” came from the slurring of “God’s wounds.” As did “swoon.” Wounded, we’ve lost the group art of oral tradition. Blame St. Augustine, the first man to read without moving his lips.

The slow sibilance of speech went underground, the death of the spoken word. The monastery scriptoriums fell silent. The esophagus interred in the sarcophagus; subterranean words devoured the silvered sleep of bones. My father died silent in winter, alone on his birthday. A stranger by choice, his heart failed him. Word of his death restores something of my father to me.

We bring in summer, talk about ancestors. The names we carry into the future. Pegasus wheels across the sky. Orion no longer hunts. The Bear dances. A name spoken, a gift crusades into the west. I want a dragon constellation for the dragonslayer. A name place where eagles come to land. Like a cloistered lady-in-waiting, I swoon from the scent of kisses. Orpheus’s tongue in our ears. Other than ourselves, we have little to offer; no talismans or silk scarves. The enduring song of the storm approaches.

At the end of the millennium, protocol demands we exchange sexual pedigrees. The dread acronym: subtext and context. I weep for the extinction of spontaneity. Dress code: who’s got the raincoat? No longer embarrassed, I come prepared for any storm, though months may pass without sign of precipitation. Except it could be any century.

Wounded, we heal a little of ourselves on this raft, ride the transitory night to completion. We don’t take issue with futures, take no prisoners. Only small translucent sacks flung in the midden heap for some future archaeologist to contemplate. Donning my habit, I celebrate the longest day, my vows clearly written—protean words spilling onto the page.


1999, revised 2000

Bolinas Journal: Easter Monday

Easter Monday, after last night in Forest Knolls, I headed to Bolinas to escape the cigarette smoke, my aunt is a chain smoker, only to find Herman Berlandt and Verona Seiter in bed like two little mice after midnight. Too tired to return home, I headed off to the monk's cell, a toolshed with a bunk, to sleep like a babe, dreaming of Celtic hero warriors. 

I kept saying in my sleep they forgot about Eochaid. What about him? As if saying his name a millenia after his death would resurrect him. (Eochaid means horse). 

I slept long and hard, perhaps nine hours, I haven't been able to do that in ages. I was glad to be free of the oak pollen dusting my roof, I can at least breathe a little more fully, escaping the itching eyes. Perhaps that is why I dream so hard. Who is Eochaid Feidlech, the high king of Ulster, and why is he haunting my dreams? This is what comes of reading about the ancient Celts until all hours. 

How many years has it been since I took that anthropology class at SF State? 20 years ago, and it's just now jelling? Though much has come to light since 1976, I'm still reading an anthropology book published in 1957, working backwards from the skeptics, and tempering the work of new age nonsense, and wannabes, with a more enduring science.

Herman brings me a cup of coffee. Verona's a little miffed that I had barged in last night, but I didn't want them to think I was a robber. We catch up on gossip Saturday's River of Words event was a six-hour marathon success. 

A San Francisco six-year-old won the national poetry contest. It was about sun and clouds and Susan Sibbit was his poetry teacher. I guess none of my kids placed. Poet Laureate Bob Hass is doing a good job, says Herman.

Now I am more fully able to comprehend the information on the Celts now that I've walked the ancient shores and have swum in the Danube, and visited the museums of Europe, and Eastern Europe and Russia. It all comes into play, what I recognized as Celtic place names, in other languages. I don't understand the many languages of the museums I visited, but art only needs the language of the eye to find recognition. 

To think I have been to Bohemia, the Russian steps, the Ukraine, finding artifacts that spoke to me of my own culture. Connections to the Caucuses, and the Pontic Steppes. Horsemen of the steppes, wagon burials, Bosnia, reference to the Scythians and the Cimmerians begin to fall into place. 

I am a surviving member of the Celtic nations, having something in common with Native Americans, folk customs nearly lost, due to repression by the Anglo world. Always, we come back to the horses as central to our culture. 

And the horseman who came from the East to destroyed Gimbutas' matrilineal culture? Now I must read of this too. Do our ancestral memories contain the memory of treks across the steppes, on tarpaulins in southern Russia, Indo-European warriors from the Asiatics steppes?

Inverness Fire

Yesterday I spent quite some time working on my obsessively long prose poem to my neighbor, Sonny Lowe, Obsession, after I returned from the Mendocino Woodlands. Like the Inverness fire, it's growing by leaps and bounds and shows no sign of ending.

I haven't had a chance to write in my journal since I came back from the Mendocino Woodlands. I came home to the big Inverness fire and to O.J. Simpson's acquittal. There was little news to be had in the deep woods, but on Tuesday we did get the news of O.J. Simpson. The woods couldn't filter that injustice out, it was so atrocious. 

Meanwhile 12,000 acres of Bishop Pine went up in smoke as the Pope gave mass in the pouring New Jersey rain, drenched believers filling the football field.

Last night I went to a party with Verona Seiter and Herman Berlandt at Zoravia Bettoil's flat in Pacific Heights, she is a Brazilian artist. Full moon over the San Francisco Bay took our breath away. A magical night.

We danced the samba, the lambada, with the Latin American ex-pats. Zoravia said I can move my hips like no other. I am flattered. I guess. She said that she thought that she could gyrate and flick her pelvis, until she saw me in action. She said every man's eyes were glued to my hips. I was wearing the ruffled tea dress from my 25th high school reunion, which helped. The Brazilian Consul wanted more than just a dance in the moonlight.

That complement coming from a Brazilian from São Paulo is a compliment indeed, but then I had reason to move like that. The more I hurt inside, the harder I danced, rejected by my neighbor Sonny and his latest skank, Pat. Because of them I am somewhat homeless, she is now living with him, invading my space with her negative energy. I can't be at my home anymore. This is why I danced so hard.

Herman and I snuck off to Bolinas on Sunday. And I tried to find out if my friends were burned out. At the American Red Cross in Point Reyes, I find Stephen Torre's name on the roster. The fire left his house standing, miraculously, since it stands atop Drakeview Estates Road, at the ridgeline. His neighbor, Van Morrison, lost everything. His place burned to the ground. Even the gold and platinum records. Bob Hamilton and I once almost bought the lot next to Van's place but there was no water.

Steve's house was listed as habitable but he did not show up for the Russian River Writers' Guild Monday night reading, nor did Kathy Evans. Oh well. I called her to see why she didn't show up for her reading, and she's having a hit histamine reaction to the world, and to the smoke. I give her the allergic saga, how works the immune system.

Meanwhile, Steve is in British Columbia thinking he has no home. I tell her it's still standing. Kathy can't believe it. Stress levels threaten to undo us all. No way to reach Steve.

Anyway, to catch up on things, last Sunday afternoon, Herman and I hiked from RCA Beach to Palomarin Beach. There were very few people on the trail. We didn't realize we had hiked so far north. 

Behind the roped off area, was the fire zone. The park rangers were quite surprised to see us, saying we'd hike to a fair distance. The park is closed as the trees are still sizzling. And looters have invaded, making their mark. There are cops everywhere. The rangers rifle, a symbol for martial law.

We can't see the fire, but my voice begins to hurt by nightfall. We hiked up one creek to a waterfall. Herman, for all his 72 years, is surprisingly agile. He continues to remind me of my grandmother. How odd. How we used to go on long hikes and adventures without any real preplanning. They just happen. 

Herman too likes this spontaneous approach to dailiness, we are invincible. We spend Sunday night in his cabin on the Mesa. A nice dinner of salmon and couscous. I always take it upon myself to cook most meals, treating Herman. I suspect Verona does the same, but I like to cook for him. Maybe it's the female thing. He purchases most of the food and does the dishes, so it's a decent exchange. 

I've been managing to keep away from home because of Sonny. Which means my life is changing. I don't have my home anchor anymore. Sonny's son Nathan hardly ever visits anymore and wonders why I'm never home. I explain, it's not forever. Yesterday Nathan's mother, Cindy, came to get him, leaving Sonny and Pat alone, and I growl. 

I've taken to flipping him off whenever they drive by. Safe within the walls of my tiny cabin, I'm living between two places—my cabin, and my truck, my bags are always packed. Bolinas is my refuge, it's becoming my new home, and I am on fire, raging against betrayal, and the injustice of it all.

Bolinas Journal: Labor Day at the crossroads

Labor Day in Bolinas. A parade and drum circle at the crossroads. A chalk circle mandala.

Yesterday, we went rowing in the lagoon. Herman and Verona were content to be bickering passengers. Herman was finding arguments and everything Verona said. As usual I was the one rowing against the tide and wind.

The lagoon and the creek were beautiful. It's good to periodically get a view of the land from the water, it puts everything into perspective. Houses diminish, the streets, the cars, the people become invisible—even the pounding hammers lost their barking.

Today's the big Bolinas Labor Day street party and I'm alone here.

Verona and Herman went back to Novato early and I was too tired to return home to cook dinner. I read until 10PM and nodded off to sleep. I only had a 12-hour day, so I had lots of wild dreams and slept until nine AM. It's unusual for me to sleep 11 hours unless something's wrong.

It's as if the ache has settled in my hips, I don't think it's depression, it's more like physical contact. The outside and inside worlds colliding.

September 4, 1995 Bolinas

Bolinas Journal: Labor Day Weekend

Journal Entry: September 1, 1995 Bolinas

Last night, over for wine, I read some new work to Herman Berlandt who said I have a very distinctive voice and style. He notes the image, voice, language, emotion, intellect, philosophy, social theology, even political, the layers I try to include.

Yesterday on my way to Bolinas, I stopped off at Point Reyes, at the vet's office to see if I could get a prescription for Panalog, and worm medicine from Dr. Fisher. I'd written a note explaining how I had lanced and treated the cat's leg wound, having massaged the puss out from between the muscles. I irrigated it three times a day with HCl. I kept wanting to write it in shorthand but I can't remember the periodic table formula and confuse it with the formula for bleach.

So I knocked on the door though it was 6 PM. A cleaning woman answered, and I handed her the note for Dr. Fisher. Then I said disbelievingly, Debbie? She looked dumb was about to close the door on me, then changed her mind, saying she had changed her name.

She said she was known these days as Nina. Now she had to explain to the two younger women who this Debbie was, yes. And she nearly tried to shut the door on my foot and the past as well.

Debbie Howard, who was a friend from my childhood, and I talk about old home week. We gossip for a good two hours. She and Sarah live in Inverness. Their brother Guy lives in the city and has two kids. One's going to Harvard like his grandfather, ken, and their little sister, Jennifer, too has a couple of kids.

When I got to Bolinas I told Patrick Flynn the stories, and he wondered what the moon was in. We seem to have all these crazy meet-ups while the moon is in Sagittarius according to the Bolinas Hearsay News

My horror-scope reports an adventurous road trip was about to happen, and so it did. All the way to Bolinas. Yes, I'm feeling lighter, Jupiter is the planetary ruler of Sagittarius. Gemini and the moon squares that Virgo symbolic fire. We walk down to the Bolinas Library and dance to grunge music until the cows come home, I can barely make it back up to the top of the Mesa.

_______

With powdered lime I purify the outhouse, dusting it white, the piles of shit slowly climbing towards the toilet lid. Herman says lime is the secret, but the stench greets us anyway. I admire that ongoing whitewashed sculpture.

There's something to be said how we daily contribute our communion. There is beauty even in shit, the layered rosettes of toilet paper bloom against mountains of dung, and the sun warms our legs as we sit and survey the garden of what we will later eat. The bowels letting go of the burden of our eating existence.

Verona goes over her lines as Eleanor of Aquitaine. I listened to her pain, the irony, he who imprisoned her, loved her. But he was meant to rule, so he imprisoned her for waging war against her husband.

Herman in Verona ask about my love life. I have no ready answers to give, for I created the distance between us. Vorona asks if it's better to have meaningless sex with someone you don't love, or live in a sexless country.

Herman says the distance between Sonny and me has more to do with that sexual potential, of what might happen, rather than a lack of desire. Verona tells me if he keeps going back to the ex-girlfriend, and has been picking fights, he's afraid of commitment, so the trouble between us is sexual though there's no sex between us. Therein lies the rub.

What would I do with my life if there was no possibility that I would fail? Herman asks me. And I can't get past that domestic laundry of wanting to be with someone, be it Sonny and Nathan, knowing there'd be times when I'd go crazy.

But if I had the option of having both the domestic and the artistic life, what would I choose? It's more than what I have to give, give up my art even when it doesn't come to me easily? I remain loyal to it.

Herman notes that I'm not producing much these days, but it's strong and succinct. What would happen if I was able to live my dream? Well, the element of surprise always arises, how would I survive? Words like "but" and "how" are open to interpretation.