Coláiste na nGael, Leuven (photo)

In 1992, I was hot on the trail of an obscure folksong I was obsessed with, by Jacques Brel written in 1961, popularized by Theo Bikel. The euphonious Marieke was said to have died in Leuven, Belgium, a circular moated town. While visiting the moat where Marieke was supposed to have drowned, we stumbled upon an old iron gate, black and gold, with ornate lettering.

In those days, there was no internet, only this thread of faux memory to go by. So this is a cribbed-together hybrid memory fragment enhanced by Google. This memory fragment is a marriage of sorts: something old, something new. Borrowed. Certainly blue. A story that spans decades. Call it memoir. We also visited an homage statue of Marieke in Brugge as Brel sang that she was loved between Brugge and Ghent. I suspect Brel was also singing of a much older love story. And his Marieke was her namesake. 

Jacques Brel was popular well before my time. But I loved his songs, resurrected by folksingers, his songs were adapted and given a new lease on life via the 1968 Off-Broadway musical revue, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. 

Of course, I had no knowledge of any of this, but I was familiar with the haunting title as it was something my mother once said to me. It became a bit of a koan. And then sometime in the mid 1970s, I saw The Committee perform some of Brel’s songs in a street theater piece in Sausalito. Thats whers I met Mimi Fariña and Scott Beach of It’s white flower day at Macy’s commercial fame.

I first met Theo Bikel in 1981 or 82 at a Bread & Roses concert—I was working for Mimi Fariña. I asked him if he would sing Marieke. I think he was surprised by the request. I have photos of him from 1982 performing on stage. Larger than life, he stood at 6’1”, and could sing in 21 languages, whereas I could barely survive in one language. Theo made famous the songs of Fiddler on the Roof. But the mysterious Marieke took my breath away. I was haunted by it.

In 1992, my Dutch friend Vins took me to Leuven, where he had studied philosophy at the extraordinary beautiful marbled edifices of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, (est. 1425). Below the medieval moat, there was an iron gate. He couldn’t make out the lettering. Without thinking, I translated the Old Hibernian-Irish script which read, Coláiste na nGael (est. 1607). 

He said, Do you realize it’s in Irish? I did a double-take. My grandmother’s old Gaelic League copybook lessons paid off. That, and a mental crib note from an old tee shirt stamped with an antique Guinness label of St. James’ Gate. Fitting, as Leuven, the place where linen was made, was also the home of Stella Artois. Wherever there were Irish monks, there was always beer to be had—whether by morning or evening star.

This exchange sparked my interest on the role of medieval Irish monks founding scriptoria and universities on the continent—something my grandmother nattered on about, but I didn’t have the historical context by which to understand what she was saying. And here it was, proof positive. A portal to the past. An Irish gate in a medieval town in Brabant, reknown for linen manufacture, of all places. 

Marieke’s tiny moat was turbid. So small. How she must’ve suffered as the water dragged her down. Love gone wrong. I never did find the words to the song, and all I could remember was the refrain, Marieke, sea of bitterness, star of the sea, rebellious one, my namesake.

Ay, Marieke, Marieke
Your love alone, your love alone

The day is gone, the day is gone, the day is gone.

Theo Bikel, Bread & Roses, Greek Theater, UC Berkeley 1982

Jacques Brel singing Marieke, 1961. And the lyrics, thanks to Google.

THE RAPTURE OF THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE

While I watched the birds flit in the skewed rafters of Scheve Jan,

Oude Kerk, my friend pointed to a worn inscription on the stone floor.

I got down on my hands and knees in order to read it,

and shrieked, as I was sprawled atop a Petri dish, the graveslab 

of the father of microbiology, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, 

a draper who perfected the loupe and the aquatic microscope.

He, who discovered kleine diertjes, cavorting wee beasties, 

animalcules frolicking in the rainwater and in the canals of Delft—

delven means to dig, and so he delved a canal into the obscure arts.

He was the first to witness unnamed creatures of an unknown world—

paramecia, protozoa & spermatozoa—I don’t even want to go there.

In winter light, the church was too dark for my camera to record,

I needed spectacles to see. But at that moment my feet 

(& knees) gave me a more pious vision. I was so enthralled,

I overlooked the plaque of that other master of ultramarine shadow 

and light, I came too late to see—Vermeer, and his camera lucida, 

but at a vlooienmarkt in front of City Hall, I found antique Delft tiles 

painted with dragonflies, and a beatific saint rising above the marsh.

9/27

Observationes microscopicae drawn by Antoni Leeuwenhoek, 1682 Wiki

Den Bosch and the world of Hieronymus (scanning old photos)

In June, 1993, my friend, Vinz van Neerven and I visited the Gothic cathedral where Jheronimus van Aken‘s paintings graced the altar. The wooden tryptic was dark and much smaller than I expected, and didn’t portray the grisly scenes of the artist’s later works. It was more like an icon. It was way too dark in the church to even think of taking photographs of the artist’s work but I was able to photograph a bookbinding and printing exhibit inside a nave of the Catholic church which was doubling as a museum. I can’t remember, but I think the artist was buried under the stone floor of the church. But the church organ was a stupendous work of art. The mere thought of it filling that cathedral with music gave me goosebumps. Even the acoustics of silence were brilliant.

Gilded dragon, Draak Den Bosch, holding the city seal

Van Aken, aka Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450 – 1516) lived in 's-Hertogenbosch, a well-preserved medieval town off the well-beaten tourist path, situated half-way between Utrecht and Eindhoven, in Noord/north Brabant, the Netherlands. OK, so it’s closer to Eindhoven, home to Philips which gave us TVs and CD/DVDs and optical media burners. Den Bosch too manufactures computer bits and is the Heineken HQ. Something about the light.

Hieronymus Bosch came from a family of painters, both his grandfather and father were painters. Bosch’s relatives were from Nijmegen and Aachen (which is reflected in his surname: Van Aken. He was born Jheronimus van Aken. Everyone called him Joen, (Jerome) for short. 

I was surprised to find his last name wasn’t really Bosch. He was from Den Bosch. But try saying the full name of the town several time really fast. 's-Hertogenbosch 's-Hertogenbosch 's-Hertogenbosch. Gesundheit! Do not attempt this exercise after three Triple X beers. You might conjure up a demon or a lemon. 

There are plenitudes of gargoyles and dragons galore in Den Bosch, subjects dear to Bosch’s heart. It is speculated that the nearby chapel of St. Anthony on Hinthammerstraat was a favorite hangout of Bosch’s. It also doubled as an insane asylum that treated people suffering from St. Anthony’s fire, or ergotism. Yep, LSD poisoning. Talk about prima materia. I don’t think I took a photo of the statue of Bosch in the town square, I was sidetracked by all the lovely dragons—especially this gilded fellow (above) on a pedestal. But I have not finished my epic scanning project. A photo may yet turn up. 

Dragon fountain, a 1903 memorial for twin girls killed at 17.

Letters to Celia Woloch

c/o Vins van Neerven, 

Hogerbeetsstraat 97 III, 

1052 VV Amsterdam, Netherlands 

   
Celia, my grlfrnd—                 Aug. Sept., 1992-93?

In the weightlessness of space, an astronaut’s heart shrinks. —Omni

AUG 20—Even in between sobs, it’s good to hear your voice via the Ma Belle satellite. And yes, I’m not writing much, lacking the focus. Where are the poems hidden? Why won’t they come?

Maybe this letter will open up the dam (Amster-dam: the 16th c. dam on the Amsterele river is real, not a metaphor. I’ve given into the timelessness of being at loose ends—with no agendas, hidden or otherwise—in a country not my own, seeking what oddities life has to offer.)

Where do poems come from? Page One of my notebook documents the oddities of The Final Frontier: After fighting nearly three years with Soviet bureaucracy for permission to hook up a computer telecommunications system with the Ukraine for a cultural exchange program, I finally let go of the idea. 

Then, shortly after April Fool’s Day, I received my first E-mail message from Oleg via GlasNET. Was it incongruous to read a satellite message transmitted half-way around the world that began with: “Cosmonaut lands, doesn’t recognize his own country?” 

Ex-lovers aside, how ironic: my first message from the new independent nation, Ukraine, is not about freedom, but about space, the final frontier. O-oh K.!?

Yes. Forgotten during the 1991 August coup, stranded Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev helplessly watched his country disappear: changing its name, anthem, and political order. The abandoned space program was officially broke with no way to get him home. 

Secret calls in the night; someone trying to sell Soviet space ships for hard currency. When Krikalev eventually returned to Earth after ten months in space, he didn’t recognize his own country. It was then discovered in the weightlessness of space, an astronaut’s heart shrinks. 

Moral: be careful of hasty conclusions and hearts stranded in space. Complex metaphor swiftly approaching from the starboard side. Will I regret not going to Russia after the Fall, and seeing for myself, the changes?

Letter to Wim Hofman

Wim's Weerelt, Summer 1996 Foto Maartin Hofman

Dear Wim & Toke—Happy Holidays to you! November 22 - Dec. 30, 1996

Dec. 29: I’m so sorry I didn’t write to you sooner, it was such a delight and pleasure to receive your wonderful letter upon my return in mid-September, but the whirlwind of returning, the myriad tasks to catch up on, and the pressure to finish a large article on the Poetry International translation project took up most of my time, and here it is, nearly the end of the year, and I still haven’t sent this (somewhat fragmented) letter. (Bad dog!) 

I loved the way you describe the events of the day, Wim, I loved visiting your family, and experiencing your hospitality, warmth and bone-deep kindness. It was like stepping into a precious jewel—if for only one magical day that will stay with me always, a day so much more than the mere measuring of hours, so, of course, it saddens me that you’re selling the house, for surely it is “the world.” I adore mussels but we have to wait for a month with an “R” in it (September) to eat them due to the Red Tide. Will I never be able to visit you in Vlissingen again?

Since I was able to spend some time at a friend’s dilapidated country house in France, in a tiny hamlet of Rogny on the Abbey Road (founded by Irish monks in the Dark Ages) between Marle & Laon, in Picardy, Ainse, I can also understand your urge for more land and a garden. 

Charles (Bert Schierbeek’s translator) McGeehan’s exwife/girlfriend, Bertaijn’s farmhouse needs so much work, I’d love to stay there next summer in exchange for working on it—it reminds me of my grandmother’s house where I grew up in Forest Knolls. A certain angle of light, red roses splayed against a wall, farm machinery from another era strewn in every nook and cranny. Triggerpoints of memory. 

Charles is an interesting character, a GI stationed in Germany in the late ’60s, on furlough, who never left Holland; he’d met a Dutch girl on a train: Bertaijn. Now he’s 60 years old, an expatriate, neither wholly Dutch nor American. 

Bertaijn was Bert Schierbeek’s sister-in-law; we met at Bert’s funeral my first day in Holland in June. We were 500 strong, the coffin, a barge dressed in flowers and sheaves of poetry—including our own Mother Earth Journal. Bert used to spend time at Bertaijn’s farmhouse. My cousin Dave & I felt his presence there. . .

I’m in the process of applying for an Irish passport (my grandparents left before Ireland became a republic, so I’m the last generation allowed to apply for a passport.) My uncle was in Dublin this summer and got his inside of two weeks. The passport allows us to work in the European Community, an important consideration. 

Wim, I guess I’m tired of having to always struggle to find work each year, with no future, retirement, or security—nothing at all, for this is the life of an “independent contractor,” outside the system, so to speak. This is life in America for the struggling artist. Brains and talent account for little in the land where the greenback dollar is God. 

I think I’d like to work at one of the American schools in Europe—Poetry, English & Art. If you know of anyone who can help me, let me know as I want a life where I can spend time in Europe, as I am always unhappy to return to the states, where I need to earn money.

Did you get my Dutch translations of the children’s poems via the Internet? I was in Liessel (Near Eindhoven) visiting a photographer friend (Jan Bogaerts), we tried to send the document to both your son Maartin, and Toke. I’ve enclosed a hard copy for you in case you didn’t receive it. 

As for the books I left, don’t worry about translating it if you don’t want to—only tell me what you thought. 

From my meeting with the workshop leader, Henk van Fassen, I got the feeling we were diametrically opposed in our approaches to teaching children poetry. I believe in what is possible, he believes children are limited by intellect and scope. 

I’m sorry I don’t have more poems for you in Dutch. Yes, I’ve been to those places in my poems, seen those sights, lived those experiences. All autobiographical. I can’t remember if I left you any Dutch translations of my work, so I’ll enclose another packet, if I’ve erred in sending you duplicates, please pass them onto someone. 

A funny connection—the translator of my poems, a college friend (and former boyfriend) of mine, philosopher Vinz van Neerven, stayed at your house some 20 years ago with his then girlfriend, Judith Smeur—I think she was house-sitting for you while you were away? Isn’t it a small Weererlt after all? 

I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures of your place, other than the scratchboard I did (I’ve enclosed a copy for you). I thought I took photos of you? Perhaps it was in black and white film—in which case, I have only the negatives. I don’t have a darkroom and have to set up a time at a photographer’s studio to make proofsheets. Yet another pressing item on my list of “things to do.”

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

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

You said you had several computers. . . do you want to get rid of any of them? Charles McGeehan desperately needs something more modern than his 15+ year old (DOS) IBM clone and doesn’t know much about modern systems; he needs a more recent model CPU(with 20 - 40 MB storage space, 4 - 8 MB memory? I’m guessing), a worprocessing program with simple graphic layout capabilities and a letter quality printer. I think he’s using one of the very first versions of WordPerfect (on floppy disks). His address is Rustenbergerstraat 66 huis, 1074 EX A’dam 020-675-0778. 

Though Charles may have severe disabilities (a serious brain tumor was removed several years ago), he actually accomplishes more work—primarily poetry translations—more than most people I know. 

In August, my cousin Dave Dinsmore came over to Amsterdam to visit me—he works for United Airlines—Dave, Charles McGeehan and his girlfriend Bertaijn and I went to France for a few days—We took the coast route from Rotterdam to Zeeland islands—dunes marsh and grey sea—and the ferry at Vlissingen to Belgium. 

I saw the windmill and had that curious sensation of collapsed time, remembering our mad walk to the train station, wanting to come visit but we had so little time, having stopped overlong in Middleburg. 

Dave was so amazed, we wound up staying overlong, and had to hurry to Brugge—which was even more amazing—we were so exhausted, we spent the night (in an inn) beneath the tower on the main square. 

We got caught in horrible traffic in Lille—no road signs on the freeways, so we circled and circled the countryside for hours trying to avoid the toll roads and navigate our way east by following topographic clues and a certain slant of sunlight until dusk overtook us.

Lille, a real hellhole. Dunkirk ever to the west. The Battle of the Bulge was fought somewhere near here. You can still feel the ghostly reminder the blood-soaked fields at sunset when the light is right and the fog rises up like apparitions.

We wound up several times in a village where Reblais was born, Proust too. Closet hysteric Charles McGeehan forgot his passport (and his epilepsy pills) so we didn’t want to get caught up in a immigration control lines. Dave and I, having no French money, didn’t want to take the toll roads. 

Asking a Frenchman directions in a village square was a farce worthy of a Monty Python comedy sketch. Only Bertaijn spoke French.

 A 6-hour trip from Amsterdam to Laon took us nearly three days. Kafavy said the journey, not the destination, matters. 

On the way back, we stopped off in Antwerp; sat in the afternoon sun in front of that glorious Gothic cathedral quaffing strong Belgian beer. We earned the sight of spires piercing the blueness of sky. Odd, Laon’s hill fortress Gothic cathedral has no spires, just stumps.

* * * * * * *

NOV. 22: 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.

Before I left Amsterdam, I got into a bicycle accident. As I was returning home to 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 to choose? It was raining, the bike’s brakes were no good on wet cobblestone & brick. 

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 went to the doctor who put it into a splint to rest it—a bad sprain with injury to the ulnar nerve. 

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 (more snow in the Sierras); injuries don’t heal quite as fast as they used to.

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).

Here’s a journal fragment: 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 millennium—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 in Marin County, north of San Francisco, literally cross-eyed, thinking “I’ll never make it home” (an hour and a half’s drive) so I slept on their couch. (Wim, do you remember Herman at Poetry International, the little old man who is the editor of Mother Earth Journal—I’ve edited some issues too.) 

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 and I went huckleberrying the last weekend before the Autumn Equinox 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 a party at a local ranch (Albert Straus) & made gallons of huckleberry ice cream.

* * * * * * *

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. Tamalpais (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? (Hemingway said: Travel broadens the mind. Writing broadens the ass. I write standing up.)

* * * * * * *

NOV. 22, continued: 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 in Dallas, 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! 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 and Sínead’s father—they were staying with us) told us the news. (At one time or another, my grandmother’s house was a refuge to three of her four daughters in various reincarnations of distress). 

Fresh from the Nicasio Ranchouse bar, Bill Dinsmore 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 shrieked. 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 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 Roosevelts, 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, Kennedy’s embargo from the Bay of Pigs crisis still in effect here—we get very 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! 

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 still hear them on the BBC radio broadcast in Amsterdam). Now the new technology is just some computer chirps and clicks.

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 (Thurs.) in Novato with Herman and Verona (his actress-girlfriend) and her 2 children, a Brazilian artist, and a Scottish actor from Glasgow played guitar in a kilt; we sang for our supper on full stomachs.

My innards are still unhappy, so I spent the weekend back in bed reading after nearly a week of socializing. I’ve been reading up on my ancestors, the Celts—I discovered that Laon (where I was in France) was an Irish monastery 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 (or 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).

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 University! If I don’t send this soon, it’ll be Christmas!

* * * * * * *

Weeks later: This is just to sat that I’ve obviously failed my first attempt at a quick Christmas Greeting Letter, a generic form which I find impersonal, lacking in the very juices that makes a letter a letter. It got me thinking about various forms of writing—why the epistolary letter written to one person and available to all, is more interesting than a shopping list or the dreaded Christmas Letter. 

And I realized part of the problem of the Christmas Letter was a dearth of anecdotal details and the metaphors we writers so preciously cling to. There’s no place for interaction for the reader unfamiliar with those mundane facts that comprise our lives. . . 

I used to think those self-absorbed Christmas Letter scribes, like Scrooge, must live the most thoroughly boring and mundane of lives, but when all my writer friends began sending me generic letters, I had to rethink the genre (if you can call it that). 

At least writers tend to add in a few lovely bits of human dross. When we reduce our lives to statistics, what’s left to ponder? No magic conjuring up or acknowledgement of the other. On the flip side of the coin, we live such a frenetic lives, stacks of unanswered letters haunt us like ghosts of Christmases past. 

To wit, the lowered literary standard of the Christmas Letter at half mast, or no communication at all? Dog-eared choices. Though I dislike the Christmas Letter, or any generic letter, I’ve come to the conclusion I’d rather hear some news than no news at all. This longwinded missive, a strange hybrid of journal entries and letter, I hope you haven’t found too tedious to read. The alternatave is either no news at all or generic Christmas Letter! So please forgive the amount of time I took to reply to your letters.

Dec. 30: Well, to paraphrase an olde English song: Christmas has come (the goose—well, actually, the turkey— is come and gone), all our pennies are in the merchant’s hats while we haven’t even two half-pennies to rub together—and your package still sits on the floor waiting for me to finish this letter. 

Though most of the pieces were assembled, I forgot to finish this letter, so now I must make another feeble attempt before year’s end. When I started this letter over a month ago, it was raining; would you believe it’s still raining! We had two clear days: Christmas eve and day. 

I think we got our entire 1997 rain allotment in November and December of 1996! 

We’ve just had both a flash flood warning at 2 p.m. (right now—wherever roads and creeks or culverts intersect, the water can rise several feet within minutes because the ground’s so saturated with water, and the rivers are so full, they can’t carry all their water to the sea.)

We also have a major river flood warning for this afternoon: our Russian River is to crest at about 36 feet above its summer banks at Hacienda Bridge—just 2 miles from my house. I’m above 100 feet; thank god for small favors called mountains. Of course, they’re the reason who we’re getting so much rain. 

I imagine this equivalent would put most of Holland underwater (we crossed that Zeeland dam, saw the flood photos of’54? Unimaginable.) The power’s been threatening to go out all day, flickering on and off; my computer’s not a happy camper. We’ve had terrible winds. Small branches falling on my roof and the hood of my truck. Another storm due in New Year’s Eve. 

Think I’ll practice growing webbed feet and feathers, or build an arc! In today’s newspaper, a photo of ice skaters in Holland and in the Midwest—South Dakota, I think; -40 (that’s Fahrenheit, not Celsius) in Montana where I just got a two week poetry job at a school in Feb. Brrr!!! Luckily the post office is nearby, though I may need a snorkel to get there! Or devolve.

Jan.7-15, 1997, Little Christmas aftermath: Our New Year’s storm is officially the worst recorded storm in California’s history, and the worst storm of the century, a warm, tropical storm, they call it the Hawaiian Punch. The Russian River crested at 46 feet above its summer banks (about two stories high? 32 feet is considered to be flood stage, but 1986 at 49 - 51 feet, and 1995 - 6 at 49 feet were much worse).

When the rains moved east, they restored ancient shorelines of the Great Central Valley Laguna that once extended 700 miles from Redding near Mt. Shasta to the Tehachipi Mountains near Los Angeles, to its original pre-1850s goldrush state (before hydraulic placer mining in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range silted the Delta, and land reclamation drained the Delta). 

How soon people forget the land was reclaimed, thought “reclaimed” isn’t exactly the right word, since they claimed land for the first time within the past 100 years. The Delta region is flooded: most of the “islands” (they’re really polders) are 15 feet (I’m 5 feet 2 inches) or more below sea level, then 7 foot tides and high winds created 28 breeches along 1000 miles of levee (dijk); the ungirded rivers: the Sacramento, the Feather, the American, the Mokelumne, the Stanislaus, the Tuolumne, the Merced, and the San Joaquin mingle and wander where they please. 

Each day, a new catastrophe. From Lake Tahoe, the tentacled Truckee River in Reno went gamboling into all the casinos at once. The streets had rapids! Yosemite is a lake, not a valley. Whole campground have floated off, the bears wakened early from hibernation, are partying on food abandoned by fleeing winter campers.

Meanwhile, on the coast, the Russian, the Eel, the Gualala, and the Napa rivers have meekly climbed back into their beds after a few days’ freedom. The Russian River has now had three 100-year floods within one year’s time—January 1996-1997. 

As one man put it, “How many 100-year floods can we have within a decade?” The theory, of course, is that the river only floods disastrously once every 100 years on the average. We’ve had nearly a dozen floods since 1950, 1955, 1964, 1981 - 2, 1986, 1995, 1996 - 7. 

This year (1997) Santa Rosa got 20 inches of rain in 7 days, 2/3 of its annual rainfall. In 1996, a very wet year, it received 9 inches. We get nearly double the rainfall in Forestville averaging 40 - 60 inches, only 12 miles away. Cazadero, near the coast, at 90 - 100 inches, is an official “rainforest” receiving more than double our annual rainfall. 

Remember the scratchboard drawings I showed you of the flooded river? I’ve added some new ones this flood season. Did I leave you a copy of my flood prose-poem? Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year.

They now estimate the damage at $2 billion; 44 of our 58 counties called disaster areas; more than 200,000 acres underwater. After 40 inches of rain in 1 week (14 inches in one day), the Feather River crested an amazing 70 feet above its banks, carving a new channel (or reclaiming a prehistoric one) across the Great Central Valley. Boulders the size of micro-buses boomed and clattered down the Feather River Canyon sounding like giant pool, or bowling balls. The canyon vibrated all night long. 

Hydrological numbers are staggering. They estimated the river at the Oroville Dam flowed at nearly 100,000 gallons a second (imagine filling six Olympic-size swimming pools every second), and downstream it was even faster! 

Within the first seven days of the New Year, the Sacramento River, at 500,000 fps carried enough water to meet the needs (89,600 acre feet) of the entire city of San Francisco for 33 years. One acre-foot equals the equivalent of one football (soccer?) field flooded one foot deep; a family of 5 uses less than that a year. 

All rivers have either reached or exceeded their highest recorded flood levels recorded in modern times. Needless to say, most of our major highways across the state have been closed at one point or another. The smaller mountain highways may be closed indefinitely. Highway 50 to Tahoe lost 39 miles of roadbed.

Row crops washed out to sea: asparagus beds, wheat, rice—gone. The orchards & vineyards will probably survive. After the water receded in Forestville, cabbages & “yuppie designer” lettuce floated across Guerneville Road at the Santa Rosa Laguna; like dense mats of colorful leaves, unharvested red chili peppers and enormous yellow squashes floating atop the orchards & vineyards on River Road; you could mark the high water mark by the chilies dangling in the treetops on this last day of Christmas! 

Massive livestock losses. The surviving cows refuse to leave pastures and spend their days looking like spotted hippos in a chocolate sea. No way to milk them, creatures of habit, they resist rescuing. The legs of the unlucky ones pluck strands of barb-wire fences until they drown. Or hypothermia kills them. No arcs or hot tubs in sight. 

Now ironically, we have blue skies, sunny days, and an Arctic cold snap, black frosts, snow on the way (very rare by the coast). It was 18 degrees Fahrenheit (-5° Celsius) one night; my outside plants survived summer drought & winter flooding only to die from frost. My fingers numb, this time from the cold. You might not find it cold, but we’re not used to such weather in this “Mediterranean” coastal climate zone.

California reminds us that it’s still a wild untamed animal, a sometimes dangerous land of extremes. Important reminder as we continue to mindlessly grow (31 million) develop and build on fragile land that should be better left for agricultural use for that very reason. 

Once again I’m under the blankets, this time just to keep warm! The kitchen heater doesn’t heat this part of the room, it escapes through the uninsulated knotty pine walls of the summer cabin, never meant for year-round habitation, nor severe winter cold spells. 

Unfortunately only my poor refrigerator freezer is warmed by the heater’s valiant efforts, and keeps melting faster the colder it gets. If only I could train the hot air to enter through doorways and lay low like groundfog instead of uselessly rising to the ceiling like the floodwaters. 

Sometimes I stand on a chair to reach the heat just to and thaw my hands and nose! (I over-exaggerate! hyperbole thins the blood. I’m never too sure where one paragraph should end, and another begin, I fall victim to runaway sentences and ideas, switch thoughts mid-stream. . . all this coupled with a miserly compulsion to fill every page.)

And I never even mentioned the event that derailed me from finishing and mailing this letter: the rain falling in sheaves New Year’s Eve practically on the stroke of midnight! It was as if the sky had opened a vast drain, water flooding the roads so fast. 

Driving home from a friend’s in Santa Rosa (I left at the stroke of midnight, as a severe thunderstorm began voicing a warning of more rain, the Russian River was already at 36’ above flood stage, any new rain meant getting stranded in Santa Rosa). I nearly went off into an embankment twice, skidding out of control when I hit invisible pockets of water. 

My New Year’s resolution was to find my driveway, which became an impromptu creekbed; I think we had something like 7 inches of rain. A 20 - 25 minute drive took me nearly an hour to get home. I went down to the river, it was about 40 feet above its banks and rising. I knew we were in for a big flood, but I had no idea the Central Valley would fare worse than us. A big surprise. 

I understand you too have had your share of cold weather. When we haven’t been preoccupied with water, we’ve seen photos of frozen waterfalls in Hungary, skating festivals in Holland, some 200 dead from the cold? Welcome to 1997? Dare I ask how you’re faring? I’d best send this soon or I’ll feel compelled to report on yet another catastrophe of biblical proportions like pestilence or famine.

Note bene: (2/18/2012) apparently my missive and care packages laden with poetry never arrived to De Weerlet, a house built in 1606, with De Weerlet and clamshell stucco over its door lintel—in Vlissingen, Netherlands, as Wim had moved. Sixteen years later, Wim found me on the internet via an article I'd published on Antarctica on RedRoom. Small weerlet indeed. So for the first time, I've got a photo of me painting Wim's garden, and the image on the same page. Circles colliding. A gift. It's rare that one gets closure, a circle of time completed like this.

Here's a Wiki entry on Wim.

Wim Hofman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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: 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: 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