Tales of the Elders of Ireland, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
First reading response to:

TALES OF THE ELDERS OF IRELAND

Tales Of the Elders of Ireland (aka A Colloquy of Old Men) is a folkloric collection of Fenian stories, epics, poems, place names, hero, king lists, etc., where Patrick, as cultural/spiritual Savior/Arch Druid, entreats the ancient supernatural warrior, Caílte, accompanied by Oisín, one of Finn’s sons, and Finn’s surviving retinue, to tell him of the meta-history of Ireland.

As they make the circuit of Ireland (hill mounds are a prominent topos), Patrick orders his scribe/gilly, Broccán, to write down the stories for posterity, but the stories also serve to document his conversions/Patriations of otherworldly heroes (while plundering what sounds like archaeologically intact graves) in the name of the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth. (And Patrick does right well indeed—as his tithe is 1/3 of the loot while stating it is right and proper that the church should be rewarded thusly).

Many leitmotifs include the witching of magic springs and conversion to holy wells, feasting stories begin on Samhain. Most of the 80+ stories focus on warrior heroes paying homage/fealty to Patrick by laying their heads in his lap and giving themselves over to the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth (God is never mentioned). 

The Harrowing of Hell comes to mind as there was some concern that preChristian heroes were not eligible for the Kingdom of Heaven. However Finn, the greatest of the hero-warriors, knew of Christ by means of prophecy, via his Tooth of Wisdom: “I believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit at one time.//I hope for the realm of Heaven’s King...[to] keep me from eternal woe.”

The subtext of the stories reads like PR for the virtues of Christianity over paganism to the already converted. Whenever a story delves too far into magic (like music of the Sídhe) the redactor-monk is quick to insert a deliciously guilty rationalization in order to sanction the recording of such tales. 

Patrick as Christlike figure, grants the Kingdom of Heaven to several of the Tuatha Dé, esp. the musicians. Poets are a strong lobbying force in the formation of the stories as well; a lack of hospitality seems to occupy their thoughts. However I don’t recall the Old Gods receiving salvation. 

There are also several plugs for monasteries and saints as seers: Ciaran, Columba, Colman, Moling. (One wonders if professional jealousy—the prestige of monasteries owning manuscripts—comes into play here. A curious textual note: prose explains the action first, then Caílte & co. launch into poems that cover the same material. It’s as if the prose were glosses to the poems which were no longer understood...)

WHAT REALLY ANNOYS ME (take 1 &2)

WHAT REALLY ANNOYS ME                                                                        

Is being part of a captive audience, 

having to be back at school 

after 20 years in the field

because they say I need an effin dog license — 

life experience ain’t good enough for bureaucracy.

Stupid domestic things annoy me 

like when he opens the shower curtain 

from the wrong side,

tears the curtain from its hooks, 

and I’ve replaced it three times 

in the last six months.

OK, so wet towels and clothes 

heaped on the shower rod 

don’t help either.

I gotta remove everything 

before I can close the shower curtain 

or let the floor rot.

Then there’s the eternal hairball question 

for which he seems to have tunnel vision.

I don’t have a wolfman carpet of bodyhair 

and what little I do have isn’t gray. Yet.

I haven’t had to pick up after a man most my life 

and I’m way too old to start learning now.

What else annoys me? 

When I’m late for a job, when it matters. 

Or when I’m early and it doesn’t matter, 

or when it does matter, I don’t get paid, 

or brownie points for it.

Here I am giving away quarter hours for free. 

They add up. In four days, that’s one hour gratis.

Rest assured, they’d dock me 

if I took that unpaid hour off 

by turning up late 4 times in a row.

Or wat about when the effin mailman 

dismantles the cheesy mailbox letter carrier

a stupid wire that passes for an outbox 

that would collapse beneath a hummingbird

but it’s cemented into the damn wall 

so we’re stuck with it.

The landlord, see, he’s an architect, 

but doesn’t have to live her, so he thinks it’s quaint

like the cannibal light fixtures 

that assassinate bulbs on a regular regime.

What annoys me?  

When hoodlums and druggies 

siphon my gas and I don’t have a gas gauge

and have to think fast physics, 

rolling down the onramp backwards straddling curbs

avoiding oncoming cars 

in order to roll into the gas station

and my truck stops short of the pump 

and everyone just watches me as I push it to the pump,

no matter that I could be injured 

or wearing a neck brace.

Or when I crammed the gear shift 

to get around some cow 

and the bleedin thing comes off in my hand

and I’m in third gear 

and there’s a bleedin’ steep grade ahead

and the guy ahead’s driving so slow 

you’d think he was pedaling 

the damn thing backwards.

What really bugs me 

is when the renegade slugs 

who’ve recently relocated under the kitchen sink

slime the clean dishes, 

especially the rim of the wine glass,

and I’ve only just noticed 

after I finished the wine.

When I can’t catch them, 

even at 4 am, except the time I was up that early, 

late for a commercial shoot

and the slugs were out in an enmasse orgy 

and me, stepping on them barefoot in the dark.

You think it odd that I’d have slugs in the kitchen?

You would too if the landlord suddenly sprang it on you 

that after months of false alarms,

he was going to paint the house 

and we had to move everything from the patio 

into the kitchen, including the slugs, 

whose progeny have migrated to tbe bathroom

and have taken to sliming what’s left of the curtain.

At least my truck’s safe from invasion. So far.

But lately I’ve been finding them in the classroom, 

parading around the podium

but the teacher never seems to notice.

TAKE 2

What else annoys me? 

What really annoys me? 

When I’m late, when it matters,

that the teacher makes an example 

of my tardiness and it’s not my fault 

that my truck decided to have an elder moment.

Or when I’m early, really early (rare) 

and it doesn’t matter

or when it does, then I don’t get paid for it 

or even get brownie points for it

and all the others glare at me 

cause they had to lift all those chairs without me.

Or when the mailman trashes the mailbox 

every time I pin bills to the outbox wire

not that I have any money  

and I have to climb into the bougainvillea thorn bush

to retrieve the wire only to find my now late payment.

I hate it when my truck won’t start 

on certain preassigned hours only it knows about

because I once left my lights on in the Caldecott Tunnel 

and hoodlums nicked my jumper cables

and when I finally did get it started, 

the gear shift just came off in my hand

and I’m holding it like a crowbar or a cattle prod, 

wondering what to do next

as there’s nothing in the manual 

to cover such contingencies

and I’m definitely in third gear 

and the hill ahead requires serious planning

and some wanker is driving in a vacuum,

 solo, or maybe not even that.

Or when the day starts out rough 

and you just know it won’t improve with time.

Like scooping hairballs out of the drain 

and they’re slimy cause he’s been hawking 

in the shower again.

Or when the renegade slugs under the kitchen sink 

slime the clean dishes and it took me a week 

to get the courage to wash them 

‘cuz it wasn’t my turn, as he defected. Again.

Or when I catch those slugs at 4 am 

except the one time I was actually up at 4 am

from the dawn side of the blanket, 

not the late-night side,

late for my first and probably last commercial call 

which I got only by default because I’m not SAG

and there’s a strike on and I’ve been bussed 

to a secret location two hours north, so I’m stuck here,

and the slugs were out en masse 

some kind of orgy on the countertop and floor

and I’m stepping on them barefoot 

and it’s not even a full moon. They like full moons.

I find it odd that someone would think 

it odd that I’ve got a lot of slugs in the kitchen.

They’re not MY slugs, so to speak, 

though they don’t pay rent.

I’ve been catching them for ages because the landlord,

after months of waffling 

sprang a paint job on us one Sunday morning

and how I had to haul all my potted plants 

into the kitchen

and now the house is lemon yellow, 

with blue-black trim and salmon barf pink walkways and curbs.

It looks like a theme park replete with pink flamingos,

only they’re made of plastic and they don’t eat slugs,

and the mailman comes up the path 

in his pith helmet and shorts like it’s a safari

carrying more bills, and he slips on a damned banana slug, 

and then, tries to blame me!

9/6/2000
Justin Chinn, Creatiive Writing 605-01
In Class Writing Assignment

Caesar’s Gallic Wars, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

CAESAR’S GALLIC WARS


Like Alus Hirtius, Caesar’s officer who wrote a prefatory letter and posthumous final Book after Caesar’s death, I too preface this report with an apologia as I found myself reading for historical and anthropological facts rather than focusing on Caesar’s use of story elements. I fear I’m rusty and it wasn’t until the end of the commentaries that I had an insight: the epistolary process. Forgive my digressions as I search for a form.

Caesar writes elegant commentaries of field reports imbued with war inspired rhetoric to please his audience, the Senate, old men whose battle days are long since done, in order to explain and justify his campaigns (more land, grain, tribute, slaves for Rome), and to raise more funding for the next war season.

His yearly Books are written in 2 - 5 parts, but 3 is the favored form which suggests they were quarterly reports—as he was in the field with his troops, wintering in Gaul. I imagine that he did not read his letters to the Senate as they were written in a 3rd person narrative, but easy to identify with (tho I cheated with Rex Warner’s 1st person translation). 

His writing is elegant and erudite, the propaganda well couched with self-aware lines aimed to enlarge Senatorial beneficence, and he makes his own flaws seem coolly rational (Hellenistic). His style is confident, superior and aloof, verging on omnipotence, yet he admires his enemy. 

He can empathize with the Gauls’ desire for independence. Romancing the Aedui in a close client relationship is his own pet project within his larger endeavor to tame Gaul. But when the Aedui bite the hand that feeds them, he is disturbed, wrathful, an angry god. Caesar tends to lose skirmishes in the woods & marshes, uncivilized terrain for proper warfare. He admires Gaulish tenacity and inventiveness but enough is enough. Even the patience of the most kind and rational of Caesars has its limits. A shift in tone occurs where he realizes the only way to put down the continued revolt is by extermination. He practices on the Germans first.

His ethnographic inserts about the Germans and Celts are reminiscent of earlier Greek writing— possibly someone else’s reports that he rewrote: a letter within a letter?). He seems confused as to who is Celtic, naming several Celtic sounding tribes as German. In fact, he knows so little about the Germans, he recycles Celtic information. 

I suspect him of paving the way for another relationship with the Senate for future campaign funding (seeding the field), and forcing their hand to further fund his Gaulish campaigns. (If you think these big Celts are bad, you should see the even bigger Germans across the river!) 

His battle descriptions become more and more elaborate. He’s killed more Gauls than is probable; I counted over 100 tribes; and some 285,000 assembled Gauls in the final battle at Alesia! 

By Book Seven, he quotes entire speeches of Vercingetorix as if he were there witnessing the event, though he’s really using 2nd and 3rd hand accounts. But Vercingetorix’ surrender is almost an anticlimax. 

Book Eight, written by Hirtius, with its epistolary letter of the death of Caesar takes us out of the narrative and into the realm of historical perspective; it’s hard to re-enter the arena and harder still to stomach the final defeat of Uxellodunum. Hirtius concludes with Caesar’s fall from senatorial grace, with an epilogue and segue/preview of the Civil Wars that followed — a war strategist’s equivalent to a bodice ripper.

I’m left with a question: why didn’t Caesar write the final chapter of the Gauls? Was he a politician to the end, his accountability no longer necessary now that Gaul was beaten? Did he really cut off the hands of the warriors (it is a 2nd-hand report, pardon the pun). Is this the beginning of his fall from grace, where he crosses the invisible line? His personal Rubicon?

Reading List: Celtic Romanticism, Klar

Celtic Romanticism

Prof. Kathryn Klar 
(Cross-registered # SFSU for grade, A)

FALL 2000: Celtic Studies 170 (4 units), 

TEXTS:

CAESAR’S GALLIC WARS

TALES OF THE ELDERS OF IRELAND: A Colloquy of Old Men

ADAMNÁN OF IONA:  LIFE OF ST COLUMBA

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A DRUID PRINCE: The Story of Lindow Man, an Archaeological Sensation, Anne Ross & Don Robins

THE WHITE GODDESS: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Robert Graves

IRISH CURES, MYSTIC CHARMS & SUPERSTITIONS, Lady Wilde (also Proverbs).

THE TÁIN, translated by Thomas Kinsella

THE POEMS OF OSSIAN, James MacPhearson

CELTIC TWILIGHT, WB Yeats

CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE, Lady Gregory

THE BARD, Thomas Grey

THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL, Sir Walter Scott

THE WONDER SMITH AND HIS SON: A Tale from the Golden Childhood of the World, Ella Young

CELTIC WONDER TALES, Ella Young

THE HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN, Geoffrey of Monmouth

LE MORTE D’ARTHUR, Sir Thomas Malory

ONE BRIEF SHINING MOMENT: Remebering Kenendy, William Manchester

SIR WILLIAM WALLACE, Blind Harry (Henry) the Minstrel

THE BRUCE, John of Barbour

THE WALLACE, Nigel Tranter

THE WILD HUNT, Jane Yolen

THE KING OF IRELAND’S SON, Padraic Column

THE HOUNDS OF THE MÓRRÍGAN, Pat O’Shea

THE FAIRY-FAITH IN CELTC COUNTRIES,  W. Evan Wentz

Plus a reader: The Wanderings of Oisin, Yeats; Death of CuChulainn, L. Gregory; Misfortunes of Elphin, Peacock; Last Minstrel, Scott; 

I don't think I ever read so many books for one class as this one. But what a fun class. Luckily I was a speed reader. Sadly I have dyslexia, so recall is problematic. Having to do these short reviews honed my reading skills, and focus. Alas, now I can no longer read for pure escapeism. I am an avid underlighter, and marginalia writer. With Kindle ebooks, there's a brilliant highlighter. I use it to highlight typos, then I review the books. So evil. 

Discovering Ella Young was the surprise nugget in this class, as my friend Micaela's family knew her, so I might have even met her when I was young. We met all sorts of people in those days, growing up Bohemian. Rosalind Sharpe Wall, Micaela's mom, wrote about her. As Kathryn lectured, I kept having this deja voodooish feeling in the back of my head. When I put it together, I was gobsmacked.

I eventually plan to transcribe my Celtic Studies class notes, so this post is a placeholder (as well as a reading list). A reminder, a smack in the gob. What brought this on: I was asked to do a lecture on Celtic Bardic Poetry at Sacramento Poetry Center, and a) I was far too long gone from this material, b) I couldn't put my hands on the notes,. But I at least still had some of the books, and TG for the internet. So many medieval texts are now online (not so in 1999). I was able to reconstruct what I needed. But it was almost as bad as reinventing the wheel.   —MH 11/2015   

Readings in Old Irish, A.D. 700-1200 Holland

Readings in Old Irish, A.D. 700-1200 ; 
Prof. Gary Holland, 
FALL 2000: Celtic Studies 105A (4 units),  
(Full participation/ grade/audit) I'm afraid I flunked this class (even though I was auditing it), but I sure learned a lot. And I am ever grateful for Gary putting up with me. Everybody else was a linguist. I was the lone poet.

Designed to offer students who have already taken the basic grammar course in Old and Middle Irish (105A) further opportunity to work with important texts written in the period A.D. 700-1200 and to refine their knowledge of the language as well as their grasp of the vernacular tradition as a whole. Texts will include both prose and poetry, and major genres such as epic, legend, and genealogy.

TEXTS:

A Grammar of Old Irish, Rudolph Thurneysen, tr. D.A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin

Old Irish Reader, Rudolph Thurneysen

Old Irish Paradigms & Selections from the Old-Irish Glosses, with Notes & Vocabulary, John Strachan

Old Irish Workbook, E.G. Quin

Stories from the Táin, ed. John Strachan

Old Irish Verbs and Vocabulary, Anthony Green

Bethu Brigte, ed. by Donncha o’ hAodha


I don't think I ever worked so hard in one class as this one.

I eventually plan to transcribe my Celtic Studies class notes, so this post is a placeholder (as well as a reading list). A reminder, a smack in the gob. What brought this on: I was asked to do a lecture on Celtic Bardic Poetry at Sacramento Poetry Center, and a) I was far too long gone from this material, b) I couldn't put my hands on the notes,. But I at least still had some of the books, and TG for the internet. So many medieval texts are now online (not so in 1999). I was able to reconstruct what I needed. But it was almost as bad as reinventing the wheel.   —MH 11/2015   

Dear Dr. Gaines

6/23 junque mail

Dear Dr. Gaines,

We can't go on meeting like this via email and in the hallowed halls of Kaiserdom! Actually I hang out in lobbies for art's sake. Some of my colleagues (the art, not themselves) are hanging on the walls. Great gallery space!

Inside the MRI, the experience was odd & acoustically interesting. All that knocking, if you're a poltergeist, a woodpecker, or a jackhammer's dream, that is. You can feel the microwave pulses. The technician was a bit dull; didn't know how the machine worked, didn't even care. Said: “I just push the buttons.” How could anyone NOT care about the electro-magnetic spectrum? I didn't even bother to ask to see the images.

But I did envision images of my shoulder sailing past Alpha Centauri along with the ghostly pulse traces of myriad coffee cups heated in microwaves across America, and original episodes of The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy... Jack Benny's ugly mug, and the Beatles' debut on The Ed Sullivan Show with all those bad TV commercials ricocheting through space and time. 

How we measure time is relative to planetal orbit. What's a mere half-century of earth time to the speed of light? or sound? So I'm orbiting 40-something in earth years. Jovian or Venusian reckoning automatically makes one older or younger. It depends on which perspective one chooses to wear.

Inside the MRi machine is like a cybercoffin, or a smali rocket with air conditioning and disco lights. I thought of HAL's hapless charges in suspended animation: 2001 is nearly upon us! I thought of Capt. Kirk saying “Ha ha, very funny, Scotty. Now, beam up my clothes.” And Carl Sagan droning on and on and on about “Billions and billions of stars...” 

Images of SETI forlornly sweeping the skies in the distance, for some trace of life long after we're gone from the face of this earth, perhaps picking up doppleganger traces of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, and the stardust remains of Timothy Leary... who else was shot into space? Arthur C. Clark's ashes (not Angela's)?

Imagine extraterrestrial beings some time from now in another dimension receiving all that junk mail. Bizarre remnants of what we politely call culture.

Did you envision living to the end of the century, and the end of the millenium? I was in 5th grade, Lagunitas School, much like on a day like today, time telescoping back and forth with no sense of linear direction. Einstein folding the map of the universe into the pockets of his brain, poor brain that could envision the relativity of time and space continuum...but forget simple math, it was kept in a jar by the door in some lab. I envision time as a möbius strip teaser. We find ourselves coming and going at the same time. But I digress...

Finnegan's Awake Poetry Festival

Finnegans Awake: A Festival of Irish Writers
May 4-7, 2000
presented by the Irish Consulate in San Francisco
in association with the Irish Arts Foundation

The Consulate of Ireland, in association with The Irish Arts Foundation, presented the first major Irish literary festival in America. We were fortunate to have Kevin Conmy as our Cosulate General. He was the driving force in gathering 23 major Irish poets and bringing them to the Bay Area.

The Consul General said, "This is a significant historical moment for Ireland." He elucidated that the purpose of this event was to hear the voices of—and have conversation with—some of the most important poets in Ireland, a country for which poetry is an integral part of culture, identity, and politics.

The readings and discussions provided an opportunity for us to consider the current state of affairs in Ireland and its impact on their work as poets. The festival opened, appropriately on the real Beltaine date (May 4), and for four liminal days and night days in May, dozens of readings were held at Stanford University and at San Francisco’s Golden Gate University.

The Irish writers who attended “Finnegan’s Awake” —all are poets and novelists, some are screenwriters, and a surprising number speak Irish (I've listed them geographically—many also teach in the US).

From Northern Ireland: County Antrim: (Public Enemies), Ronan Bennett, Belfast singer, Irish-speaker, (First Language: Poems, The Star Factory) Ciarán Carson, (The Weather in Japan) Michael Longley, Glenn Patterson, Antonia Logue, Medbh McGuckian, Co. Tyrone Paul Muldoon.

The Republic: Connemara  Mary O’Malley, Co. Claire Edna O'Brien, Westmeath/Cavan (I Could Read the Sky) Dermot Healy, Tipperary Dennis O’Driscoll, Limerick Desmond O’Grady, Lancaster/Kerry (Pharaoh's Daughter) Irish speaker Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Corconian-Dubliner, Irish speaker (Rosa Mundi) Theo Dorgan, Wexford's  Katie Donovan, (The Heather Blazing) Colm Tóibín; (Crazy About Women) Paul Durcan, (The Captains and the Kings) Jennifer Johnston, Paula Meehan, Mary Morrissy, Eamon Grennan, Colum McCann, and Stanford's resident Dubliner (Object Lessons), Eavan Boland.

Our emcee and host, and driving force behind the festival, bookstore owner, Connor Howard, said that the purpose of Finnegan's Awake was to draw attention to the fact that Irish writing did not end with Joyce and Beckett. There is a renaissance of creative work in all areas of the arts in Ireland today, and especially in the literary arts for which the country is so well known. This festival brings together over twenty of Ireland's top poets and novelists—an unprecedented gathering in the United States!

EXTRA! (AT&T commercial)

EXTRA!

I came back from the fields of West Marin having spent 2 long days with a thousand others an untrained army of first-timers like myself.

Come as you are, most of us were not actors the logistics of moving us in geometric formations when we've had no formal training, never joined the army, or never stood in bread lines, is daunting.

Across the potholes, the stars arrive in a stretch limo and a woman in a pink bathrobe and curlers steps out to join the Basque herder with his sheep and all the Japanese business men bow low.

People hover like guardian angels to powder and primp them while we, AT&Ts legions of feudal peasants, the ordinary, the mundane, we are left to fend for ourselves against the elements.

My lip doubled in size from windburn and a spiderbite. It looks like I’m wearing a lip plug.

As we stood in countless formation, conversation wandered from boundary to boundary.

The young woman Shauna, who'd beaten childhood cancer and won, was fey and could see my well-dressed wounds

Santa Claus (you’d recognize him from the magazines and catalogues) limps from a bad car accident down the Grapevine. Those having survived near death experiences shed a different light, a homing beacon to others, tribe within tribe.

As the camera crew aligns us for the nth take, the ‘copter again swoops up the valley like a large mosquito. In this setting, conversation takes on epic proportions and people's lives become poignant when they’re reduced to five-minute fragments shaped by location and group consciousness.

Despite the fact that we are doing a commercial for cell phones where we are too far away from civilization for the real cell phones to work, we reach out and touch the Basque farmer (really some guy from Tomales). 

The idea being one small planet.

Cards and stories swapped like a swap meet, or stockbrokers we had transcended the mundaneness that is the death of art, and the prize was the sky and wind.

Journal entry, AT&T commercial shoot, Chileno Valley 5/3/00

5/3/2000 We are at the L. Ray Jacobson Ranch on Chileno Valley Road for an AT&T shoot. What are the chances, it’s a place I’ve been to before, a raucous party with Jayne McPhearson. I didn’t know anyone there, and I had a right miserable time while Jayne gadded about. I’m waiting by the roadside, standing in the dirt, pondering the fact that I may have inadvertently crossed a picket line. And we all wait in the dust while the cows watch on. Two herds. Make that three, there are sheep. A motley crowd, many of us were hired before AFTRA/SAG decided to picket the event. We’ve all been bussed here from San Francisco, and we have nowhere else to go. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Ironic, as I am closer to home here than anywhere else, via backroads. Tomorrow I will drive here from Forestville. I stand in line, waiting for instructions. Ranchers from Tomales arrive. Bill Crane owns a café in Tomales, we have people in common. Andy is a carpenter in West Marin. These are people I know. Intersecting lives. We make vast formations in the field, near the site of my car accident, on the other side of the ridge. Action, roll. We march in geometric formation up the rise, and trample on the nests of ground-dwelling birds. Killing their young. The meadow birds fly in front of us, keening for their young. The roar from the fake fog machines is deafening. The air is laden with diesel fuel. I feel I am living between worlds. We’re all extras here.

Journal entry, casting call AT&T commercial

5/2/2000  Something must finally be working as I got a call back from Bo Bonneau casting studio for an AT&T commercial which landed me my first job as an extra, along with about 1000 other lemmings. Without Neil’s help, I might add. We will relentlessly march through the hills of an undisclosed location, a ranch in Marin County, we will be bussed in in droves, and we will march, seeking stellar telephone experience—with a herd of sheep. Real sheep. Not cattle. I kid you not. What does that say about us? The hours are long, and the pay is terrible, but it’s better than no income at all. I get a little buzz when I see the meager checks from Burbank Studio, etc. Don’t quit your day job has never been more true.

AVS notes: Nancy Walsh Estomba

I taught poetry today in Peggy Maddock's 3rd grade class at Alexander Valley School and one of the mothers brought in some treats. Green cookies, and green punch. It was St. Patrick's Day, after all. I introduced Neil to them and Nancy Estomba said her maiden name was Walsh…

I jokingly said, Oh, we're probably related, not thinking it was true. Where from? I asked. Cork, she said but she didn't know what town.

So I asked her her grandfather's name. And she answered, Bill. He came to San Francisco and had a ranch in Nevada. The hairs on my arms stood up. You mean Wild Bill of Home Ranch? I said. She said, Yes.

Oh my God we are really related, we're second cousins! I yelled, hugging her. She did look related. And I told her stories of her grandfather, and of Wild Bill, the ranch, and the name of the Irish town her family was from. All in a day's work.

Which meant, my favorite 3rd grade poet in the class, Samantha Estomba was really my cousin. The news spread through the school like wildfire. Kids looked at me with new eyes. Not a stranger to the valley, but one of their own.

3/17/2000

The idea of genius, odd notes from Danny Langton’s class

3/7/2000 The word genius did not exist during Shakespeare’s time. It is a modern concept. The idea of genius, that people who are divinely blessed, was an anathema to 30 centuries of art. It is the death of art. It puts artists on a pedestal. We know nothing about Shakespeare, other than a meager handful of facts. In France they paint what they feel; in England they paint what they see; in Russia they paint what they hear. Or is it what they fear? Literature is an accretion of culture, literature collects barnacles. As in Nora Barnacle? We do not speak through language, it speaks through us. The subject is dissolved. The symptoms count, not the theory. The US is the only country to have slaves and expound freedom. At one time horses were necessary, but invisible. What am I doing invisibly that will be insensible 30 years from now? I write music the way a cow pisses said Mozart. When the railroad came, we had to shape time to fit a standard. No one can agree what metaphor is. The poorest way to read Finnigan’s Wake is in decipherment mode. Our imagination participates in poetry. Poetry is a special mode of discourse with a foreseen end. Poet as maker. As truth sayers. As liars. Poets can think literally, and are in touch with a primitive part of the brain. they have pictures in their heads long before they have the words for it. Poets shape moral reality into a moral world, said Picasso. And so we lie and lie and lie until you see the truth.


A poem should surprise and delight the senses. Listening to a craft lecture by Danny Langton was like falling down the rabbit hole into the creation of one of his poems. I was easily sidetracked. I guess these could be considered found poems of sorts.

Poetry and art, odd notes from Danny Langton’s class

3/7/2000 If poetry is a relationship between the subject and the poem, what is criticism? Did you get it right? A preoccupation with something in artistic puts poets on the defensive. Aristotle objected, although poems are imitations, that is, mimicry, it’s more than just history. However, if poetry is imitation, then what is it? A lie?A tiger is easier to grasp than a star. I miss the children I never had, especially the dumb one, said Aristotle. Cicero replied, the poet does not imitate nature. Stendhal interjected, a novel is a mirror riding along the highway. So, where does that put Baudelaire’s mirror of art. If art is the imitation of nature, then the primary way of looking at art is through nature. A syllogism. Is the goal of art truth? Is truth beauty? Art is about power. Literature has become an image rather than a meeting of the influence of art and thought.

Journal entry, 2/9/2000, Dan Langton notes

Utile dulce. Learning should be useful and sweet. What came first, the big bang, or the big tear theory? The stars are older than the universe. Then there’s the theory of inevitability. It will never happen because it’s never happened before. it’s inevitable. On 2 July in 1776, women could vote. Then they couldn’t. Then 29 years later when women could finally vote again, it was defeated. What goes around comes around again. Did you know that we share 90% of our genes with primates? And we also share 60% of our genes with bananas. The theory of commonality, literature is an artificial language which deals with ordinary circumstances. metaphor in literature. Metaphor is for what ails you, Metaphor: to diagnose. Symbols go from material to immaterial. Writers see symbols as obscure defeats, connects to an image with an idea or conception. Our emotional investment in symbology. It’s chalk on a chalkboard. A mark. Symbols gain strength with associative value.

(more)

You profess to believe in love....

You profess to believe in love,

and on the intellectual level, perhaps you do.

But there’s scant evidence 

that you practice it on the ordinary, daily level.

Whereas I practice a more plebian love, 
but don’t talk about it

because it remains too painful a subject. 
I’m too sensitized to it.

When you came back from the retreat, 
you confessed to love me,

affirming what I already knew 
from the beginning.

You were like a card shark 
laying one card face up on the table,

hedging your bets even as you spoke.

(I can hear you denying it even now, Indian giver.)

However, my steadfastness (call it love) 
has suffered the severe erosion

of 2 and a half years of the shabby baggage 
of your insistent denial

which has taken a deep toll 
on even the ordinary affection between friends.

The real test of love is in the doing,
the practice, if you will.

But you’ve done little to change your modus operandi.

The business of denial remains central 
to the protocol of your idea of love.

The irony is that you’ve remained stuck 
in an adolescent state of mind

unable to step back to the next level 
to see the paradox that contains your love.

That’s why I don’t want to talk about love to you. 
It’s become an oxymoron.

You’re so well fortified,
having had decades to armor yourself,

there’s little room for change 
or growth in this state of denial.

I am acutely aware of the difference between 
how you treat me and how you treat others. 

Can you imagine being in my shoes for a moment

having to endure living with someone 
in such a profound state of denial

that I despair there will ever be a thaw? 

That there’s so little to hold onto?

But I do believe in the power of love 

to the extent that there is room for change. 

That love saves lives. 

Question is, do you want to be saved?

2/3/00

Literary ancestors, odd notes from Danny Langton’s class

2/15/2000 Literary ancestors. Words, in English, are losing their positive meanings. Shirts were worn by men and women of questionable character. Ruth to her mother-in-law, Naomi: I entreat thee not to leave me… Wherever thou goest, I will go… Ruth was someone with extremely desirable characteristics. And we all know the meaning of ruthlessness. History tells you what happened. Poetry tells you what ought to have happened. So said Herodotus. Only ten people in the world understand Ulysses. So said Crane. English soaks up other languages. Arabic words: zero, zenith, mattress, sherbet, paradise, alcohol, sugar, assassin, hashish. And Sputnik means fellow traveler. French babies are trained on mild cheese to sharp. Writing is like that.

Journal entry, Bo Bonneau casting studio

10 Jan, 2000 I’m waiting at the Bo Bonneau casting studio in San Francisco trying to look like an affluent golfer for an Ace Hardware commercial posing as Neil’s wife, but after a blowout, it loses us any chance of the commercial. The strain on our faces is palpable, not exactly a harmonic convergence. It’s a real cattle call. I fill out the database, return the clipboard, never expecting to find work.  Golf clubs and tassel shoes everywhere. The overt preppiness of the crowd is a real mulligan stew. I’m blinded by the white.

2 May, 2000 Something must finally be working as I got a call back from Bo Bonneau casting studio for an AT&T commercial which landed me my first job as an extra, along with about 1000 other lemmings. Without Neil’s help, I might add. We will march through the hills of West Marin in droves seeking stellar telephone experience with a herd of sheep. Real sheep. Not cattle. I kid you not. The hours are long, and the pay is terrible, but better than no income at all. I get a little thrill when I see the checks from Burbank Studio, etc. Don’t quit your day job has never been more true.

Journal entry, back pain

6 Jan, 2000 A bit distraught I am, as the spasm in my back finally began to lift yesterday. I’m still easily tired, I need to soak and stretch. I’ve been walking around the lake the past three days to see if it will help. The only way out is exercise. The spasms are reduced to stretch pain. My ribs may not have ever mended from the accident. The pain was similar to what I experienced during the first 6 to 9 months. My orthopedic nurse practitioner said I may always have pain there, but the spasm was the worst that I have ever experienced, aside from the accident itself. It’s made me short-tempered, and Neil has been a bit obtuse, and self-involved, which doesn’t help.