Andean Music: Chaskinakuy

Chaskinakuy

In the Incan Quechua tongue, the word chaskinakuy (chas-keeNA-kwee) means "to receive from hand to hand among many people." Sonoma County musicians Edmond Badoux and Francy Vidal of of the Andean music ensemble, Chaskinakuy, founded in 1985, continue the tradition of interpreting and sharing the roots of Andean music—from Ecuador to Argentina— with attentive audiences. The sold-out performance at the Cinnabar Theatre on Jan 21st, is an indication of the popularity of this dynamic duo. 

Edmond Badoux, who hails from the Swiss Alps, moved to Canada where he met Andean musicians. Baxoux was a founding director of the internationally acclaimed Andean group, Sukay (open the earth for planting), they settled in San Francisco in 1975, but Badoux left the group in 1985 to do research and founded Chaskinakuy. 

I've listened Sukay on many a street corner—they were my first introduction to the nueva canción style of Andean music. (Simon & Garfunkel's iconic El Cóndor Pasa is in the nueva canción style). Badoux makes most of the instruments we see on stage. And there are a lot of them. Vidal and Badoux typically play 30 to 40 instruments during their set. 

Both Badoux and Vidal have traveled extensively throughout Latin America, collecting music and instruments—made of reeds, feathers, horns, hooves, bone, and clay. Badoux traveled extensively in South America for over a year, collecting and recording Andean music, "literally receiving it from hand to hand and heart to heart," says Vidal. 

Vidal said, "imagine you're on the road to Otavalo." That was easy. I'd just returned from the Andean town where eucalyptus forests flanked the slopes of the Andes, and Vulcán Chimborazu punctured holes in the equatorial sky. 

The other half of the Chaskinakuy duo, Francy Vidal explains that the musical instruments covering the stage are mostly wind instruments. Vidal is an eighth-generation Californio from Sacramento, by way of Mexico and the Old World. Vidal first became interested in music when her mother played the organ for the Mexican church. 

Ironically because tourists expect to hear El Cóndor Pasa, Andean musicians everywhere have learned to play the song. Francie sang songs in Spanish, "I come from the puna. In my saddlebags I bring hopes, dreams and sorrow," and in Quechua, she sang a tinku, or planting song, "...Come on little brother, it's time to get up./ The golden sun is rising." 

Tinku is a ritualistic warlike form of extreme combat dance (or brawl) both in praise of Pachamama, the World Mother, and a denouncement against the conquistadors who made them slaves. In both cases, blood sacrifice is involved. 

Vidal used the downtime between songs, as they swapped instruments, to educate the audience. The most common Andean instruments are the double-row cane panpipes, and drums ceremonially used for the agricultural calendar—planting and harvesting of potatoes, amaranth, maize and coca. 

The traditional Andean panpipes, the zampoña, or sikú—from the tiny chuli to the monster toyo—are divided into two instruments sharing one harmonic scale. To play music on these panpipes requires two people being of one mind, one breath, to coordinate the melody. Vidal and Badoux take turns demonstrating a scale. One half of the panpipe duality (or moiety) is called the ira, and the other, the arka (both male and female—or Pachatata and Pachamama). The complexity of these pipes adds a whole new level meaning to make sweet music together. 

Vidal held up what looked like wayward pipes from a disemboweled church organ. The toyo (or jach'a in Aymara) the largest panpipes in the world, are five feet tall, and contain every note (A-G). Some toyo are even bigger—up to six feet tall.

Before the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous panpipes, dating back 5000 years, were tuned to a pentatonic scale. The pipes have a deep resonating sound like Pachamama, the earth breathing, the Andean air alive with electricity and howling winds—or like insects buzzing in the jungle. 

The panpipes, divided in two parts, require two musical partners to play a scale or a melody. While one musician breathes, the other plays—to a stereo effect. The word conspiracy means to breathe together. At high altitudes. it requires a conspiracy of musicians to properly play the panpipes. What's amazing about these pipes, aside from the sheer size, is that they're typically played at altitudes of 9,000 to 14,000 feet-—more than two miles above sea level. Talk about playing in thin air and breathing together. 

We learn practical applications as well. "If your panpipe gets out of tune," adds Badoux, who makes many of the pipes, "you can drop ball bearings or lentils in the pipes to tune it—but you can only sharpen it." 

Vidal, a flautist by training, explains that the quena (kena), or the seven-holed notched flute, has at least a 3,000-year tradition and is made from bamboo, reed, flamingo legs, or even human thigh bones. The smallest, the pinquillo, or kamacheña is an annoying mosquito-pitched 3-note flute. Not recommended after a bout at the chicha bar. 

Ocariñas, are globe-shaped hunting flutes with four to six (or more) holes, often made of ceramics, in the form of flat faces, turtles, and birds. "Traditionally, women weren't allowed to play the flute but that attitude has changed since the 60's," said Vidal. 

Unusual traditional Andean musical instruments include an antara—a single row panpipe, or sikú panpipes made from the quills of turkey vulture wing feathers. In Peru and Bolivia these panpipes are made from the larger quills of condor feathers. I heard one being played on Lake Titicaca. Shrill and mesmerizing. 

Perhaps the most odd instrument was the clarin, or cana, a ten-foot long bamboo French type horn with all the kinks removed which sounded more like a trumpeting mastodon, than a horn. Cow horns (bocinas) and conch shells are also used. 

Vidal explained the European influence, musica criolla, brought to the Andes the sound of stringed instruments which all lend their charm to the native Andean tunes. The guitarra, the mandolina, the charango—the ubiquitous armadillo soundbox mandolin, and la arpa— the Irish harp—played upside down! 

Several percussion instruments include rain sticks, a goatskin drum and chullus made of hooves. "The rattle made of goat hooves was very expensive by Andean standards," explains Vidal to the audience, "a whole herd of goats went into the making of that rattle." Like a herd of castanets. Vidal and Badoux's performance is educationally entertaining and uplifting as the Andes themselves. 

Badoux & Vidal are celebrating the release of their first cassette, Chaskinakuy: Music of the Andes. The cassette features traditional instrumental Andean music played on native panpipes, flutes, drums and strings. The cassette, available at the concert, was recorded locally at Joe Hoffman Studios, Occidental. Or you can order a tape directly from Chaskinakuy, PO Box 943, Penngrove, CA 94951. The duo also teaches music classes in Penngrove and perform in the schools as well. Chaskinakuy will be at Guerneville Community Church, Fri. Feb. 3rd (1988) at 8 pm. Tickets are $6 at the door. 

Lest you think this review is no longer relevant, the out of print Music of the Andes is soon to be released on CD. Visit Chaskinakuy's website to pre-order it, or pick up one of their other CDs Cosecha, or Flor de Tierra there, or at CD Baby. 

Chaskinakuy's 2014 address is PO Box 11421, Santa Rosa, CA 95406. If you want to book them for an event, or a school assembly, contact Francie at Bookings@chaskinakuy.com

The Paper, Jan. 1988, there were photos too. Alas, no tear sheet.
rev. Feb. 27, 2014

OUT TAKES/COLLAGE Galapagos, Gauguin

OUT TAKES/COLLAGE  

In the Galapagos, evolutionary myths
crawled out of the precambrian mind of the sea.
Birds proclaim unchartered territories.
A certain slant of sunlight grows wings.
I listen to translations of wind in the trees
and turn stones over and over,
trying to fathom below the surface.
If only we could move freely among molecules—
no separation between stone, water and air.

Civilization falls from me little by little.
I know the odor of the soil.
Gauguin said, Let everything you do breathe. 
I'm hard at work;
entering into truth, into nature.
I go deeper into the idea of word,
primal soup, blue-green algae,
the first "I am" the world uttered.
Long after we've gone, life will continue;
another blastopore, in all its variations, germinating.
The moon is made of basalt like the sea floor.
Here, poetry emerges spontaneously.
Here there are no more refuges to flee to.
We are standing on ceremonial ground.
A wobbly prayer lifts up, takes flight
across the valley.  

date?  2/89?

OUTAKES from Country of Origin

OUTAKES from Country of Origin

We have so little time
to download memory
into the fatty tissue
of each other's heart.
We savor its life-giving substance.
We eat around earlier fires
in a gesture that's timeless.
You and I shared an aurora borealis
of dreams in the night.
The air above our heads
was alive with blue light.
Solar winds enter our crowns,
our last chakra.
We are tumbled like leaves
across the bed of autumn.
In morning sunlight,
our eyelids bathed in red
corpuscles dancing
between membrane and cornea.
I think about the time we don't have.
Last night the air was alive
even the reflection
on the pavement wore red,
clearer than blood, translucent.
Last night the sky was
timeless and of no age,
Last night I burned amber from the Baltic
because a friend was suffering
at the hands of love.
The division of male and female.
What separates us from ourselves
and each other?
I burn amber, pine resin older
than the ages of man­
because finding love is rare.
Seeking an island of refuge,
we bleed back into the sea.
I wear silver horses on my ears,
and coral from the sea's garden cities
not unlike trees. Yes, birches in winter.
Will you drink birch blood and think of me?
Plant a tree so it may discover
quadrilateral symmetry,
bi-lateral agreements
while our governments talk
of disarmament.
Now your leaders fish in our rivers!
Perhaps it's already begun
but razor blades
are so thin on the tongue,
their song is quick as this life.
Why do we choose suffering, calling it love
because we can only feel it with each passing?
I am sending you stones
because I know nothing else more
enduring than their secrets.
From lapis I fashioned a blue heart,
filing it each night
because something inside me was in pain.
So I shaped stone with stone,
and found my own stone heart
was alive after all.
I've planted stones
in the garden for you.
Somewhere inside all of this
there is a story waiting.
On the telephone, precious star
sounds distorts your voice.
Sunspots the cackle of space.
Our voices, thin reeds
bending in autumn wind.
Yes, winter is a voyage
across the dark tundra sea.

Obligatory Hug, Feb - April 1989, Russian River Writers' Guild, Maureen Hurley & Marianne Ware

Dream Journal

DREAM JOURNAL
 (Before I went to the USSR, a pre telling dream)

1/10 I’ve come from across the fields. A bay horse stands in the bushes. At first I thought it was dead. A group of us—mainly teenagers— returned from an event on the beach below the cliffs. I don’t recognize any of them but I’m friends with them. Some are from another place. Some live here.

Green tableland dropping to the blue Pacific. Alluvial rocks. Jasper. Chert. We’re in a hurry & didn’t stop to browse though I wanted to. Turquoise fell from my ring. We walked along the gravel road where I gathered long yellow four-sided crystals buried point down in the mud. Yellow, golden & brown. Not topaz, not citrine, nor sulfur—not in my rock/mineral book either.

There were other crystals but the yellow ones were for me. They were important talismans. A significant source of power. I point them out to my friend. It wasn’t until they were freed from the earth prison the color appeared. I give her some, saving the biggest one for myself. Phallic beauty.

Small peninsula. Out buildings. A barn. I crawl into a deserted shack with an icon of a Madonna on the wall. Who lives here? I’m trying to escape Point Reyes. Men load alfalfa hay around me. Am I trapped? Am I trespassing? All these men working around me as if I belonged here. Where am I?

A large man and his heavyset sandy colored wife behind me. He’s interested in me and he’s kind. He is a farmer of the sea. Restores offshore sea beds. I’m swimming in the waves. Tide pools. Hundreds of empty shells. Pink & white coral. Small starfish like lace. I point them out to a student. We collect shells and coral but we’re in a marine preserve or a park and it’s illegal.

Tractors in the sea soften the waves until the beds get established. The whole coast needs replenishing. North—a long stretch of coast. Dead shells. This beauty is that of death. Iron pipes parallel the shore. In a room with old-fashioned wooden furniture he makes advances toward me. I’m not interested but am hungry for affection & kindness. She is not his wife. I’m waiting for someone else.

You can move heaven and earth but you can’t move the sea. The sea is the mother where we all began. In the shed, my head becomes an anvil. Someone places another woman’s head on top of mine. The men extract her tooth with pliers and a nail. They are doing this to save her life. They treat her like chattel. Dairymen save the cow because she gives milk. Gore drips onto my face. I run to wash it off. Trouble breathing. Allergy? My throat swells.

I go swimming with a svelte golden young man. Strange sensation of coming home but not being home.

WHY I AM A POET

WHY I AM A POET

The silhouette of a bird on a telephone pole
a raven, a vulture, a hawk? Too big.
I swerved and braked the truck—
in the sunlight, a golden eagle,
too close to civilization, and I understood
why they're called golden; they are luminous.
Spotting eagles within city limits
isn't reason enough to write a poem about it.
What am I supposed to do now?
Tell the world I hang eagle feathers
from my ceiling to keep away bad dreams?
We feel compelled to talk of more human things
site-specific, but now I've seen rare eagles
where they're not supposed to be.
We've come to expect vultures and crows
with whom we co-exist so beautifully.
The raptor who faced near-extinction
isn't reason enough to celebrate;
our sights are limited to an occasional red-tail
on the fringes of society, and we are satisfied.
We always have trouble imagining
anything beyond our own limitations.

1989?

EXORCISM FOR NIGHTMARES corrupted

EXORCISM FOR NIGHTMARES

The white goddess/witch

She said to me, you have nightmares

because your cabin is haunted.

She told me to invoke the four directions;

the eastern air, the shining ones,

the southern fire, the flaming ones;

the western water, the flowing ones,

the northern silence, the earth.

As you dance counter-clockwise toward the east,

cast out the evil ones from the sacred circle,

always remembering to touch the earth.

Burn sage by each door, window and mirror.

Chant: avanti, avanti,

maleficium defance.

Honi soit que mal ye panse                    (pense?)

to push them back into the earth.

She said put eagle feathers, quartz, ice, and clay

at the four corners of the bed.

And so I did. The nightmares continued.

She said the man of your dreams

has stolen your horses. Unfortunately, 
there was no quick exorcism for that.

1989

date  86-88? 
But Order of the Garter Chant was from John , post 86  Post John 1989?

EXORCISM FOR NIGHTMARES

The white goddess/witch

said to me, you have nightmares

because your cabin is haunted.

She told me to invoke the four directions;

the eastern air, the shining ones,

the southern fire, the flaming ones;

the western water, the flowing ones,

the northern silence, the earth.

As you dance counter-clockwise toward the east,

cast out the evil ones from the sacred circle,

always remembering to touch the earth.

Burn sage by each door, window and mirror.

Chant: avanti, avanti,

maleficium defance.

Honi soit que mal ye panse"

to push them back into the earth.

She said put eagle feathers, quartz, ice, and clay

at the four corners of the bed.

And so I did. The nightmares continued.

She said the man of your dreams

has stolen your horses. Unfortunately, 

LETTER TO MERIDEL

LETTER TO MERIDEL LESUEUER

In the sacred circle of Pachamama

time itself is transparent.

Temporary islands of whales

rise and fall like tectonic plates

or reed houses on Lake Titicaca.

At Machu Picchu the wind says

we're connected on a deeper level

than this earthly plane.

You say one doesn't recover from old age

but we are on that great cosmic curve the double helix.

The intihuacana is thirsty for chicha and flowers.

I dream of one rubber boot to cross the water,

and eyes painted on the bedroom of the sky.

Out of the debris, transformation.

Basements of the dead

turned into statements of the living.

Something is brewing in the five corners of the world.

Pachamama is crying but we are listening

for translations of wind in the ceiba trees.

The Cold War is ending with the children

reaching across borders and singing.

A golden eagle keens in the wind.

How quickly the night comes.

1989? 

1990 Green Fuse

1993 Mother Earth Journal

LETTER TO MERIDEL, l
this is a completely different poem

Lately, I’ve been touching the spines of your books
something speaking to me from afar
The wind says, the night sighs
we’re connected on a deeper level
than this earthly plane.
This thing called love
we never said in my family.
That the man killing me with his blue eyes
the way the glacier pulverizes stone
in its undertow of blue light called it love.

I am a mover of small rocks. 

I prefer the way of sky.
Is there nothing but emptiness ahead?

Outside of this grammar I write patriarchal nouns, verbs.
I don’t know how to pull the circle around me.
You say one doesn’t recover from old age.
It’s nymph cancer we all have
but we are on that great cosmic curve the double helix.
Invisible worms eat the rose at noon.
I don’t know how to crawl inside the structure of language.
The phallus I write with. 

On this earth we are the goddesses.
Man will destroy even himself for an idea.
Men lose their dreaming and forget why they’re live.

I dreamed that eyes were painted 

on the blue wall of the bedroom of the sky 

and the earth dam burst. The only way out was down.
I fill my house with food I don’t eat
and he hands me chocolate in a a broken bowl.
One rubber boot to cross the water.
Iguanas purring like cats.
Out of the debris, transformation.
The basements of the dead
are turned into into statements of the living.

I have been to Machu Picchu and left white stones.
On an island in Lake Titicaca
I lay in the sacred circle of Pacahmama
and understood time itself is transparent
Something is brewing in the five corners of the world.
Pachamama is crying but we are here listening
for translations of the wind.

I am on the brink, going back to Russia

to find something that was lost.
The Cold war is ending with the children
reaching across borders singing
We Are the World
We are the children on this coast.
Temporary islands of whales at Fort Ross
rise and fall like the tectonic plates.
No more otter. Just abalone and the salmon.
A golden eagle keens in the wind.
The coyotes howled.
How quickly the night comes.

POEM FOR A PHOTOGRAPHER

POEM FOR A PHOTOGRAPHER

It was first recorded
on a Paris boulevard in the fall of 1838,  
a man stopped for a shoeshine,
the horses moved faster than the speed
of silver on sunlight.

Here in America, manifest destiny
focused in on silent, grim poses.
Metaphysical stealer of souls—
all we have left of entire nations
is recorded on gelatin plates.

Obscure rooms, the heart of darkness,
the mercurial greening of plants—
art and science wrestle under bedcovers
with the names of war—
the battle of Gettysburg,
the Japanese woman bathing
her hibakusha daughter,
the running Vietnamese girl,
napalm on her arms—
these images burn into the cornea.

You prefer to do it in the dark,
then wait to see what develops.
But this is not a negative image—
every lining has its silver cloud.

POEM FOR JULIE SANDERS

POEM FOR JULIE SANDERS
(who told me a story of a photo)

I don't remember being there on a boat
at the lake, my mother telling me
how it sank. There I am in the picture
looking up at the camera
wearing a life jacket, sitting in the boat
before it sunk, leaving me here
to tell this poem to you. 

1989

Bay Area figurative painters at the SF MOMA or the DeYoung No date 1989? Was at Cole Swensen reading at museum

When I think of Bay Area, figurative painting, the work of Nathan Olivera comes to mind, but the bigger, black-and-white pieces I was supposed to see, I couldn’t find. Walking Man (or Man Walking), is a1958 collage assemblage to the movement with a nod to the def Stijl and the European School 

—with cardboard, sgraffito and wash, etc. 

Another artist, Theophilus? Or William H Brown, two figures in a landscape looks like a 1960s tableau of suspended animation. Mime is more like a puppet or marionette but that works too for representation of the human figure ca. 1958 post World War II, with the hint of sky behind the field.

Write three questions you have about this gallery. What is he holding? Playing an instrument? Two fingers, not holding a parcel. Why is he balanced on one leg like an herbivore?Did Oliveira change his mind on the stance or were the shadows scrubbed out?

I am also attracted to the work of Elmer Bischoff, especially his yellow landscape, 1969. Serious chrome yellow. We learned how toxic that color was. It’s reminiscent of Hopper with a cityscape, but the impasto and trowel work is much more immediate. A man, a woman, an easy chair, sunset, the buildings aredark and brooding. Sunlight spills in front of the bay windows, startles the lamp into a temporary fit of sunlight. 

The woman rests her head on the table, as if to confront the man, but she turns towards the sun, her face ablaze and her arms filled with sunset. He’s non-committant, dressed in a summer suit, hands in his pockets, his body faces hers, but he looks out the window towards the incoming fog. 

The chair begs for company with arms open wide. But neither will take refuge between those arms. The curtains luff like the seasons And open window teases them with a breeze and the fading sun pioneers a long trail towards the east as to remind itself of its return. 

No date

ON HEARING JOHN HANDY PLAY JAZZ

ON HEARING JOHN HANDY PLAY JAZZ

            AFTER MIDNIGHT, NEW YEAR'S EVE

                                        —for Alistair Ingram

                   I don't practice. If I don't have it by now, it's too late.

              It's like going out with a different woman every night.

                                          —Stan Getz

           

Feeling blue because my man left for no good reason,

I crawl out of the hills to hear John Handy play jazz solo.

In my head I write poems without words, pen or paper

to every riff, growl and squeeze of his saxophone.

The music pours into me, fingers of rain on the sea.

We are shipwrecked in a blue room seductive with smoke.

Embouchure and altissimo—open octaves form a river

of birds spiraling home to the nascent shell of our ears.

On the ceiling balloons undulate, bull kelp in the waves.

John Handy brings me a purple one—the color of sorrow.

He says, I got a cabin up in Cazadero. You know Clive Hawthorne?

I say, I'm the bearer of bad news. He's two years dead. Alcohol.

He flinches. Puts his hand over his heart. Says, He was a good man.

We started out together in this business a long time ago.

He points to my name-tag and asks where I've been.

I say, measuring a passage of time on the other side of the world,

celebrating New Year's Eve in Moscow with Gorbachev via satellite T.V.

John Handy flutter-tongues and bends a few cool notes—

a sweet school of fish ah-uhm for Charlie Mingus and Auld Lang Syne.

Sequinned women in stiletto heels sway, charmed snakes

in front of the mellifluous sax. Sub-tones. Overtones.

Circular breathing. I tell him his music is poetry without words.

Perfect intonation. Harmonics. When you hear one note,

you hear every single note in the universe.

He asks for my name-tag as a souvenir, puts it into his pocket.

It says what I am—Poet. For a moment I'd almost forgotten

why I was alone.

1/1/89

Café Resalles, San Francisco

July 2022: Feeling the need to produce something, I pulled a journal at random from my stack of poetry journals and began to work on the year 1988 which only had 77 posts, but I managed to get at least five solid journal entries including a few Napa pieces, and some teaching notes, which I had previously neglected, and the originals of at least three poems so now 1988 has 112 posts, plus several drafts of poems that could be turned into poems. 

I found the real first draft of SUMMER SQUASH IN A WINTER GARDEN, I had no idea I had written it as a prose piece that had nothing to do with John. Summer squash, prosepoem There’s basically nothing left in the journal to cull for the blog, but revisiting and mining the past is never easy. Once again I tried to go into my South American journal and discovered that my Ecuador journalism missing. Also I didn’t date a lot of the pieces so it made it harder to figure out when things were written.

Poem poster in the style of Kenneth Patchen for Bay Guardian poetry contest

I love how the scanning process resurrects bits of this and that, and only when I began to assemble the bits in this blog, that I discovered the date, and my working notes, as well as the original Bay Guardian poster. These posters were in color, BTW. I might have a copy of one of them somewhere in my silk paintings (to do).

Scanned 2015; added 3/18

Shell, charcoal drawing

Shell, charcoal drawing, 1988

Letter to GLB, re. JOS’s Dear John birthday surprise

Journey of Clay: Joel Bennett, Potter, Sculptor 12/22/88

Mike Tuggle at 50, by Tom Roth, Dec 18, 1988

West County Craftsmen 12/15/88

Leonard Cirino, Maureen Hurley to read at Markey’s Cafe

 

Eight Local Artists Selected for School Residency 11/88

Students published in CPITS poetry anthology “True Wonders”

In Tikal

In the jungles of Tikal, I collected parrot feathers, small red flames or bright blood embedded in the grass. There is a cacophony of screeching and racuous laughter ringing through the jungle. Toucans carrying their beaks of burden, shiny black and yellow trumpets, eye us from the tops of trees by the ancient reservoir. 

The incessant thrum of insects is so loud it goes right through you like an electronic sound, amplified. The walls of vegetation hiding imaginary speakers that vibrate. It’s so loud, the surface vibrates the loose cotton sticking to us in early morning.

Promise of heat. Red road, jungle soil. Philodendron, palmetto, liana. We follow an artificial waterway, strange rectangular slots to hold water like miniature watering troughs for animals. Why did the Maya make them? Or were they more recent earthworks?

We stumbled upon an old ruin, not restored like the others, with murals still intact. John treated it like a mountain to be climbed except he can’t get down again. The murals have something to do with sex. The temple is covered with mossy epiphytes. I direct him back down the wall, stone by stone, verbally describing the toeholds. If he fell, surely he would break something and we were far enough from civilization to be concerned. He did make it back down to terra firma again, but was a bit surprised by his own temerity. 

Howler monkeys in the distance, the unseen guerilla as well as the young soldiers in the jungle with their Uzis always at the ready—among the few tourists looking for a more ancient rhythm, trying to condone the 20th century.

Teaching journal, 11/15 Stephan Torre, guest artist

11/16 yesterday Steve Torre was my guest artist and we had a good time. He taught three classes. His board work on revision is good. As it turns out he’s moving to Jenner on December 1 so he will be a Sonoma county poet. Where he’ll live will make it difficult to get CPITS work nearby with Susan and Mike working the coast. He’s moving here with his on again off again girlfriend, Carol of several years one more to go.

I think he too has a self image of being impossible to live with. In many ways he is like John. I can see he wants it to work out. The easy friendship we have is still there, but the buzz and spark of last March has gone underground, thank God. We went out and got drunk on Chardonnay at Cricklewood and ate sautéed mushrooms and nachos for dinner. I have a splitting headache this morning.

He had to drive to Inverness last night and sleep on a musty futon, no stove. I hope he made it OK. We talked of teaching, poetry, past, relationships, more poetry, ideal mates, dreams, poetry and ex lovers, poetry poetry poetry. I should’ve offered him for some floor space to sleep, but I was afraid he would take it the wrong way, and so I said nothing.

From the first time I saw him I wanted to get to know him, The Sinker, Navarro Journal made me set up and really listen. I was drawn to him and that was in Cazadero two summers ago.

In March he was my guest artist for two days so I’ve only seen him four times and we’ve had numerous telephone conversations. Yet I feel I know him so well that he is a friend for life. You can meet so many people in a lifetime. And how many fall into that intimate wisdom so quickly? Sexual attraction plays a large part, sure, but it’s the attraction of the minds that’s even more compelling, even more sexy.

I sure had a crush on him last March. Actually I’m glad we’ve moved onto the friendship stage without acting on the other. Too complicated. I could’ve acted upon the other level any time last year but I was with John and I can’t get into this multiple partners thing. Now, I am free, all the rebound is they say and Steve is is taken. C’est la vie. That’s OK too I feel that our friendship will continue to grow anyway.

We were talking about futures. He said who knows? Maybe this time next year, I’ll be married. I see a lot of myself in him. He says I need a strong feisty women who won’t let me walk all over her with my ego. Someone to keep me in line. In that way he is a lot like John. I always called it the frying pan approach. John is a taurus, a bull. Steve is an Aquarius, all hot air. Well, I told him I was his boss lady as far as CPITS was concerned and he laughed.

He’s really on the fringes of CPITS and does short one to five session visit gigs. He needs a long 10 to 30 session residency. He says he prefers to teach adults at Mendocino community college. I don’t know what he’s going to do for work in Jenner. He still on disability from his accident.

It’s so refreshing writing poems as he teaches classes I always love the new voices that come through. See In Tikal

dream journal 11/15 & 16

Alice Kent asked me if I was available to sweep their enormous parking lot. I said yes, of course, happy to be working for them again. Dear Roger was still alive. They said would I be available during the holidays? I said I wasn’t sure and promised a replacement if John and I went to Mexico. I chose my old friend Kathy over a new friend who didn’t understand why I didn’t choose her. It was a case of mistaken loyalties. I knew Cathy, unruffled would fill in well. I had to go we are on the barrier guard to sweep the debris into the ravine. By the house, there is no guard, I was in danger of toppling in. There was an awful lot of work to do. The parking lot has grown exponentially. Lots of people coming in and going and I was all alone working.

Another dream: I was going to Napa State Hospital for a party. I was invited because of the work I had done there. I remember skipping across the lawn in a bounce. It was a major function and they were superintendents and principles from many schools there including from Mark West school. Ida Victorson was walking around the corner from the outdoor reception. I was going the same way but I wanted to avoid her and slipped into the main building to see some of my patient-friends. They were technicians I knew and no patients. I met the sister of a woman who took my workshop. I told her a couple of women from Napa State Hospital were very interested in my work and wanted the residency. As I began to tell her of the money situation in Napa had me stumped she turned to someone else, laughing. So, my work was not important to her. I thought of going to the other building where a meeting was taking place with corporate types eating chocolate chip cookies.

Dream journal 11/16 the back door of my grandmother’s house wouldn’t close so I pushed it extra hard and the lintel shifted. There was dirt that got in the way so I opened the door and saw the doorstep had fallen apart. And then tried to put it back together and I had to line up the inner core with the under core and put nails back in the holes and then slip the outer cap over the whole thing like a Chinese puzzle. It wasn’t easy to do. Eventually I got it back together and the core was like a tooth cap over the core. There were years of debris trapped under that cat. Dust, dry cereal, mulch.

Inside there were several of us of the same age and we were all related but we were adopted. Our father, told us that we were related to each other. One boy had already figured out that he was related to a judge and the similarity was striking. I was related to a soldier and a musician. There were five of us. Earlier, I had told one man I didn’t care who he was related to, I didn’t like him because he was mean and small minded.

We were all standing between the kitchen and dining room. I was bent over by the table doing something, picking up cans? I was a bit distracted. Was she a singer but she was a musician and an artist, a witch? I remember being surprised by the musician part. Was it classical? 

I remember trying to compare this mother whom I had never seen, with myself to get a better understanding of myself and it did not seem to help. Mainly because I don’t know who she was. She is a random name on a mailing list for the Russian River Writers’ Guild, I don’t think I’ve ever met her. But why was her name in my dream and was she a real person?

Journal entry, 11/7

 Wow, I thought I’d never fill this journal and I was determined to fill every page. I could not abide all that wasted paper. Somehow it was due to length of all the sections. I try to compartmentalize things by subject matter but I had no clear idea of how I wanted to divide them up, hence, when I’ve finished with one idea there was all this wasted leftover paper. That’s why, to follow the chronology of October and November I had to skip around. I kept running out of paper. I’m not always so scattered, the order looks worse than it actually is. It’s an order, all right. The order just is not linear. It was set up by the constraints of this journal that resisted filling. Tightwad that I am, I won’t buy another until this one is filled. Part of my resistance to writing is that John turns every little thing into writing. Sometimes I find it infuriating. Nothing is sacred. I was awakened at night, early dawn with his fierce scribbling. He can’t write quietly. He nearly punctures the page with his steel tipped pen. I won’t let him use my delicate felt tips anymore because he destroys them. But I guess that’s a thing of the past now. All things must come to an end like this section of the journal, adieu.

Dream workshop, with Elizabeth Herron 11/7

I am visiting my grandmother’s neighbor Erica Smollow. In the dream she is also Nurse Ray Perrencini whom I met in Cuzco. She’s not living in her big house, a place I housecleaned as a teenager, but in the small cabin with three beds and three children about a year old. One is hers and the others are accidents of fate. A friend’s, or daughters? The dream does not elucidate. 

The place is messy. Erica is in bed, she is exhausted. She is a woman alone. Her husband left her. The beds are covered with gold bedspreads. The clutter in her room is like my aunt Jane’s bedroom clutter when she lived in SF, clippings, stockings, piles of mail. 

Erica‘s bed faces the west window. Her head is at the other end by the front door. The twin bed is parallel, against the wall. The passageway between the beds leads to the back door. Against the opposite wall is the third twin bed, oxymoronic, I know. There was grit on the floor, so with a piece of material I began to sweep up. 

An old man was supposed to do this, he was paid to help her, but he stood smoking in the back doorway while I worked. Blankets were scattered on the floor. It took forever to pick up before I could even sweep. The babies were about a year old. What was Erica doing with all these young children? One was a dark-haired boy. 

At one point  I patted Erica‘s dark hair, and said I never knew you were a mommy three times over. How worn and pale she looked as if she were dying of something. (what I did not know is that she had MS, it would take 30 years to discover this). I sweep the wooden floor as best I can. Nothing can alleviate the desolateness of this one-room house, how has she come to this, this brilliant journalist of international repute?

Reverse the image: I am lying in bed exhausted from raising three small children alone. One as my own, the others were gifts. I couldn’t let them go, let them be a abandoned. A woman I think I know comes to visit. I see her silhouetted by the front door that barely clears the beds. I sleep with my head nearest to the front door because I like to look into the filminess of the desert, it’s like looking through milk glass. The windows at the foot of my bed offers the same featureless view but I like to look out onto the real thing not hindered by by the constraints of glass. Everything is so far removed as it is. I don’t need to get farther away. Besides, I can see the mountains from the front door. They face southwest. 

And I can see my visitor is taken aback by the condition by which we live. I can’t help that. Raising three kids on next to nothing wasn’t easy. My husband gone, dead, for all I care. Pablo helps when he can, he’s close to 100 and he can’t do much—in exchange for food and a place to sleep. That’s all that this place offers, a place to sleep. Everything else is on the floor. The spreads, the blankets. 

She comes in dressed in jeans looking of the world, a busier place than this. I can see the horror in her eyes but I am long past explaining, long past making excuses. Sometimes, all I can do is to crawl back into bed after work, still dressed in my slip and fall into a dreamless sleep. At least dreams are a refuge. 

Pablo really shouldn’t smoke so much. Ashes all over the place. The woman makes herself useful and begins to sweep the other present grit with a towel. There is a broom somewhere, Pablo had it last. He spends more time standing in the back doorway gazing off into the northwest. One day he’ll shuffle off in that direction. Sometimes I wish he would just go and get out of here. Then where would I be? A pretty kettle of fish. 

In late afternoon I love to watch the mottled blue shadows fall from the cottonwoods and jingle and dance on the wall. Especially in early spring and late summer when the sun begins to drop low in the sky again. Of course, if we lived in the southern hemisphere, seasons and directional information would be reversed. I am using my northern latitude sensibilities, from the northeast, that is New Jersey. 

This could very well be in Peru. The great desert. And no se. It would explain the presence of Pablo or is he Pepe? Living like this in one room and being better off than most. 

Summer squash, prosepoem

Sunday, November 6

The yellow squash plants are beginning to show the first signs of succumbing to winter. It begins as a small vegetable mold on the roof eventually coats the whole plant. Amid the new buds, one yellow summer squash shaped like a perfectly inverted bell. 

Acrid squash odor, crushed umbilicus. Pale white streaks among the overwhelming yellow, brighter and glossier than a lemon or an apple. Yellow, pure cadmium from the tube, so intense, it pushes the green garden air away with small vibrations of life. I want to ask it, why so yellow? The jealous sun takes its warm from the south, or are you kin to the summer sun? Small reminders of summer. 

Those vessels of light burn against the cooling soil, those furry leaves glisten with snail tracks prisms for the sun. Pale green stems against yellow orange blossoms curling their five arms around the fruiting body like fingers, or brain coral as it rises up, so phallic. The base root swelling and bursting through the boundaries of the star shaped bell, until it becomes crenelated like the sunset over the sea.

Green veins end in small claws. One set at the tip of the star-shaped flower, the other at the base, like two hands. One holding up the sky, the other holding up the sun as if from victory like a tiger without stripes, a coat of fine hair velvets the soft throat of the flower.

I remember picking the ones unpollinated, my grandmother taking the small egg suns dipped in flour pollen, frying them in butter like dinosaur tracks of the sun feeding me in late summer.

Long French curve of young leaves wrapped around embryonic clusters, diamond shaped, small flying saucers on launchpads. Large leaves jagged green hearts. Umbilicus, a small green eye, a rusted navel where the flower once raised its victorious hands towards the sun. Pointing in radical asymmetry in the direction away from the center. This extravagance of life too soon dies.

In the heat of summer, you can almost hear them growing, taught-skinned, ripening and bursting with seed—genetic code to carry them through winter. Small blind eyes in the soil waiting for the signal to begin.

The kitchen knife reveals their hidden star charts, the marrow and veins of space. Seeds sliced in half like a photographer’s negative of the night sky. Stars align in the direction of orbit.

These blossoms, bell-shaped, wine cups to drink the sun from, or knobby flying saucers severed by a knife. You rejoin the halves but the breach within your venous dealings but you can’t bridge the tension released by the knife, all that round symmetry released from a circular chamber discovers the straight edge and can never go back to that innocent immortal promise of eternity so lightly taken in summer’s mounting passion.

11/6/88

this eventually becomes 

• SUMMER SQUASH IN A WINTER GARDEN

Journal entry, 11/6 John Oliver Simon, Teresa and Sean, Guatemala

My neighbor is moving, tossing out lots of books. Always desperate for an interesting read, I scrounge through her growing bookpile in the dumpster. After all, this is how I found out about Douglas Adams and hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Mostly college catalogs and a book about asexual relationships. The play, She stoops to conquer. 

A blue notebook like the kind John uses. It says RJ Moon on the outside. Reverend Moon? Small tightass handwriting, science notes to page 59. Genetic engineering. Not my neighbor’s. Did she borrow it? How unfortunate the name, RJ Moon. Probably Robert John, not Reverend James. College catalogs for Oregon, Southern California, good old Whittier and redneck republicanism. Social low-calorie IQ and a catalog for Swarthmore. 

Will I jump anytime there’s a reference to John however indirect? Do I care that he graduated with the highest honors? Was it there he hardened into the habit of falling in and out of love every few years? I talk with Teresa and Sean, friends from the gringo trail, they reminded me that we tried to break up last fall as well. That said, it seems to be a pattern that hits a lot of people after heavy travel. 

Last year, we had to stick it out because of the abortion. This year, there is no excuse, no reason, only ourselves. They said they’ve been going through that too. Sean says medical school is worse than travel for putting strain on relationships. They didn’t seem too concerned, like this was another phase.Teresa did recommend to book on the changing couple, especially since John has a higher rate of switching partners. 

Hugh’s parents were married eight times, and his wife won’t let him walk away from it. John‘s card came yesterday, he writes about the emptiness inside his girlfriend niche, and the emptiness where I am space that specific Ness of who I am, the companion, the friend. He says he admires my mind, my creativity, who I am but can’t live with me because he can’t live with himself. He asks should I have been more direct about breaking up? Yes. But more than that, you didn’t have to break up to work through this. Asshole.

Lynn Watson tells me it’s hideous out there. All the men are schmucks. I worry about aids and trying to find a reasonably intelligent man who is compatible, who will push me further. John doesn’t have to prove he’s smart. He has a degree that is well documented. Rhodes scholar that he is. I, on the other hand, I’m always plagued with doubt and insecurity because of my dyslexia. I’m not trained academically. I did go to school and got my degrees but it was wasn’t exactly challenging. 

I need to be in the presence of minds burning bright as my own. In the presence of James Burke,I felt I was in the presence of a burning mind and it fired off so many sparks I could barely keep up, and I loved it. I loved the challenge. I worry about finding such a mind again. Teresa and Sean said they will be up in February and would like to have dinner with us, could we behave ourselves? They said they’ll just duck when the knives get flung. They said they were used to that sort of thing. February seems like such a long way off.

Dream Workshop with Elizabeth Herron 11/6 Luis

Sunday, November 6

Lying down on a thin matt at school watching in event. There is a choice between a blue shawl and a Guatemalan hanging to keep warm. She chooses the shawl, more practical, but she would prefer the Guatemalan one. Black cotton with red embroidery. Her friend, an old ex lover, Luis, comes by and sits with her. They are in shadow. It’s chilly, a winter afternoon, they snuggle close or warm and watch the show. I don’t know what they are watching. She turns to say something and almost without realizing it, she gives him a quick peck on the lips, making a kissing sound. She’s surprised that she did such a thing. He is married. She did it without thinking, kissing him like that. He kept on talking as if it didn’t happen, but pulled her in closer. There was much comfort in his arms.

Reversed position from the man’s point of view:

I joined her on the match. It was cold and she had many wraps. We snuggled for warmth. she sat on the mat, there was not enough room for two unless we sat side-by-side. She looks so fragile and alone. I sat on the pavement behind her on newspapers and cloth. Too bad the afternoon sun had disappeared. It was getting to be that winter bone chilling cold. We were watching some musician friends of mine playing Andean music. She turned to me to say some thing, our heads were very close. I was surprised by her quick kiss, more affection than anything else. After all, I am now married and years have passed since we were once lovers.. Remembering that and how much pain she was in, I pulled her in closer, offered what comfort care there was.

Elements: a man and a woman watching something on a matt in shadows. It’s late afternoon, perhaps windchill. It was hot earlier and there are different types of blankets. They huddle for warmth, they could be lovers. He is Chinese. She is white yet there is something very brother sisterly about them. They are very similar. Both interested in Latin America. He’s married, in a good relationship. She is not. The kiss is not really one of sexual interest, so there is a small comfort. She is afraid he will take that away and it will be steamy and short-lived with disastrous results all around. He kisses her desire for a relationship, the one she has lost. He is a placeholder. If it had been her boyfriend, the kids would’ve been innocent, affectionate for checking in like saying, hello mate.

Journal entry, 11/5, John Oliver Simon, Oaxaca and promises made under the stars

 Last night was particularly rough, I was feeling the loss of John, and so much more. I suspect my abortion, my grandmother’s death are all coming out to play as well. It seems like it is a free-for-all.

Last night I went out to look at the stars. I couldn’t remember the names of the first magnitude star the one by the Pleiades is except that it started with an A. Andromeda, Antares, Aldebaran? I was so sorry I never learned the names of stars with John. Something I enjoyed doing when he took me out under the canopy of night sky, telling me all the names but I couldn’t keep up with them. Orion‘s belt. I sang Lee’s song Hunter, I swear I love you for all of winter if I could love someone at all. 

At this, the dam burst and I couldn’t stop crying. The fear of not being loved, ever. What I want. A man, and a family. I’m exploring it again. Now it’s yes. Last month I was on unsure, but I wanted time. Perhaps I could do it this time around without children. Timing is everything.

*    *    *
I got a strong image of a woman in jeans bending over two kids, dark hair with blonde streaks like the sleeping girl in my dreams. The kids were about two and four years old, and they were dirty, happy kids. The woman was wearing jeans and boots since she had hair like mine she looked like me but I couldn’t tell as her hair was full in her face so she went down to kiss them. 

It couldn’t have been me, but she was thinner than me, and she seem preoccupied with her life as a mother. The artist life was still simmering within. It was morning. The observer was looking in from the greenhouse section of Geoff’s house in Alderpoint. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at myself or at another woman. All those what might have been‘s… 

I could’ve been just looking in through the window. Am I seeing his fantasy of what he wants? The woman who dreams, his family? Am I a voyeur? The woman’s hair was much shorter than mine, a little more wavy and with grown out bangs. The whiteness of her skin so like the children’s a domestic scene of temporary bliss.

*    *    *

I am sorry I never learned the names of stars with John. I’m sorry I never got a chance to take him off to Calistoga overnight at a B&B for the weekend, a romantic weekend for two. I’m sorry I never said yes, not even once when he asked me to marry him. I am sorry I had to give up a baby. I believe in half the stars that night, drunkenly returning home from Sergio Bautista‘s with the rug of his under arms, in Valle de Teotitlan, the place of rugs and it’s midsummer. Under stars, in the center of the universe. 

To commit to each other like this. I was afraid of his intensity and his passion, I was afraid of him. That night he plowed for a universe of my womb, not hearing my warning cries, that I was fertile it wasn’t the right time. It was not quite rape. I remember him saying to himself, what the hell are you doing, John? But then he was gone to the pull of the stars. 

And in the morning he said, it’s over, I don’t love you. We manage to whimper away to Puerto Escondito. Seeing the dead man was my fault, said John. If only I had not insisted on driving up to the laguna instead of snorkeling as we had planned. We had to stay the extra day. If you hadn’t seen the dead man, you wouldn’t have gotten sick.

And in Tikal we realized I was pregnant. He said if you have a baby I will not stay with you. I felt trapped, a prisoner of my own body, knowing that I had taken the antibiotics, knowing there was no way out. Then a reprise. When next morning he crawled into my bed and after making love there was blood on the sheets. And the joy we had that we were in the clear, or so we thought, as if we were given a second chance, but that was not to be.

If only we hadn’t stopped to look at the stars, coming home from Sergio's. If only we hadn’t promised the universe. If only he hadn’t bought me that rug as a pledge of his intent and his love. If only we hadn’t made love, if I hadn’t seen the dead man, if I hadn’t gotten sick, or taken antibiotics if I had had a healthy child, then what? If, if, if, the decision for the abortion. If I had explored my options. If only I got the abortion partially to prove my love to him, of something I really wanted, for him. He made that abundantly clear. I was too afraid to risk it all by myself. 

And in the end it’s over anyway. He got his vasectomy, his choosing. So back to square one. No matter what obstacles were thrown in our path, we kept on trying to make it work. And still there was always an excuse not to. He’s right. He is unable to connect to me, to love me as I deserve. I guess we could have broken up, and if I did have a child it would be a lifetime tie between us that would’ve been stronger. There would’ve been a compelling reason to resolve it because of the child whom he named Isaac. Sea lo que sea.

Dream Workshop with Elizabeth Herron, journal, 11/5 Fire in FK

Saturday, November 5
Dream journal:

Dream fragment: The canyon above my grandmothers house, is filled with smoke, a wall of flames advancing toward me. I run into the house, dial operator for the fire department, screaming there’s a huge fire. I am informed that the fire department doesn’t begin working until April. I am in an utter rage. Luckily, the ground is damp, the fire burns itself out. But I am going to do something about this atrocity. When help is needed, it should not be denied. The fire department was intact, but not taking calls until April? What was the point?

*    *    *

A woman alone
in her grandmothers house,
afraid, powerless to stop the fire,
calls for help. None is available, bureaucracy.
The fire goes out of its own accord.
She is determined to rectify the situation
now that the danger is passed

*    *    *

Dream fragment: A ranger and I are in the house, we are lovers, we’re getting ready to leave in the jeep. Two girls, almost teenagers, are with us. We’re giving them a ride. The ranger and I are hugging and kissing, he slips into the car and doesn’t hug me again. He drives off. I was expecting more.

*    *    *          

Taking the elements of the dream fragment, my grandmother’s house, childhood connections, safety. You can never go back. Another time and place. We’re doing something inside, I can’t remember who or what. It is afternoon, hazy. It could be autumn. I’m not sure which sets off the spark, that sets the fire. I get the image of sunlight, glass, angle of light. The canyon is different with steep cliffs made mostly of rock that’s why the fire stops. If the flames had leapt any higher they were at least 100 hundred feet tall or more, the trees at the top of the hill would’ve caught fire too and that would’ve been pure chaos. It was a contained fire moving towards us. Luckily the ground was damp from rain. It must’ve been in autumn and the fire played itself out. Since the fire department was on vacation, it was just as well. 

*    *    *

Symbols of telephone and fire department. One looks up on the telephone as a tool to reach out, to call for help, communication. 200 years ago no one would run into a house to phone for help. This is a new symbol, one that I’ve grown up with. I remember when we got our first phone. It was autumn, or maybe winter. Stephanie and I dialed my number and talk to my grandmother who wasn’t terribly amused by it all. However we were thrilled, at least I was. 

The operator didn’t try to help, it wasn’t the old black phone with the rotary dial. I remember screaming into the phone so loud that my voice hurt. I remember throwing the receiver on the couch and grabbing a hose and squirting the ground. It was successful. Somehow I could squirt the hose quite far. We were able to help ourselves after all. 

Empowerment. I never had a chance to give anyone our address. I figured if they could trace the call… It was off the hook. Someone was still on the line when I came back in, explaining why they could not help us. I said never mind, we don’t need you anymore. And I said they would be hearing from me. I was that mad, mad enough to create a disturbance over what I thought was an extremely bad policy. Since I am a part-time paparazzi, I have the means to make publish my gripes. 

*    *    *