EQUINOX

EQUINOX
       When but to think is to be full of sorrow.
      —Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
               
All this week I should have known the green tremor
in the air was more than planets aligning
their sights on spring. Lent. You, banished from memory —
your letter breaking vows of silence we took
when ones more sacred were profaned.
So you toss a $1,000 peso Sor Juana coin
to ask if we'd resurrect friendship.
It comes up heads & you give the coin
to a woman who restrings your horoscope.
Did the planets halt their carnivorous circling,
are the days any less profound than those of your birth?
The brotherhood of priests
   didn't like Sor Juana Inez de la Crúz
writing poetry. They said it was a sin against God.
    A calculated risk.
So, in the convent kitchen where God couldn't find her
between passion & reason,
   she practiced a more dangerous art—
spinning dredels in flour to measure the pattern
   of rotation & axis—
hunting the stars at night,
   writing verse by day. Inquisition.
Her body does not survive the suicide of the soul.
Let life be ashamed of lasting so long for me, she cried.
Did I tell you the river rose again encircling each tree,
claiming small vertical kingdoms? After heavy rain,
silence. Then the drains of the world emptied.
La Llorona, Malinche's first mestizo son,
   with odd bits of sky for eyes —
you were born in the alien corn. Huitzilpochtli
has decapitated his sister, the moon & his 400 brothers,
the stars because they didn't want him born.
Do you remember the thrumming insects who threatened
to overtake us in the jungle & what of the small
fish inside me eclipsed by your hand?
I am not yet middle-aged & can't help but think of you,
a traitor, sleeping with someone's young daughter.
Does the bird sing any less shrilly at dawn than at dusk?
I'm still half in love with the idea of easeful death,
so days and nights repeat automatically like bullets
& when Alberto wrote in the sand, I want to cry,
the sea will do it for me,
   he stood there until the waves erased it.
No one told the girls whose papa drowned in Chiapas,
We are made of the ocean, so when we cry
we are giving the sea back her due.
Night's pale vision. The Pleiades are restless.
Orion's belt loosened from the horizon.
In the desert you unroll constellations
favoring star charts & foreign coins
to the celestial bodies themselves.
The lights we see have long since died
& we continue to call them stars.
What tomb are you opening now?
I am not waiting like Lazarus,
for we're better off in unmarked graves
with nothing to resurrect,
save ourselves.

3/20/89
1990 National Writers' Union, Finalist

Erin Go Bragh! Padraigín McGuillicuddy on KPFA 3/17/89 (photos, tearsheet)

CAMP MEEKER'S PADRAIGíN MCGUILLICUDDY

TO HOST IRISH MARATHON

ST. PADDY'S DAY ON KPFA F M
(this is from my drafts, v.1, The Paper story is different)

"...And (I) was angry that my trust could not repose
in the clear light like poetry or freedom..."
—Seamus Heaney, from "Oysters"

In a rarified patch of Camp Meeker sunlight dwells one of the most sylvian voices of KPFA FM—that of Padraigín McGuillicuddy. She will host the 12th annual St. Patrick's Day marathon on Friday, March 17th, from 9 am to 6 pm. on KPFA, FM 94.

McGuillicuddy, who is the founder of the St. Patrick's Day Marathon said, "In its heyday, the marathon went from 9 a.m. to midnight, but I'm running low on stamina these days—so I'm only going to 6 p.m." But don't let that fool you. Even so, nine continuous hours of scintillating Irish programming is the ultimate Tir-na-og (Irish for Land of Youth, the Celtic equivalent of nirvana) for the serious Celtophile.

St. Patrick, A Strathclyde Romanized Briton, was said to have rid Ireland of its snakes—but then again, there probably weren't any snakes on the Emerald Isle to begin with. The only snakes I ever remember seeing were in Phoenix Park Zoo in Dublin—unless you want to count the solid line that sometimes divides the county roads. (Late at night, after a few good Guinesses they do look a little like snakes....) Snakes aside, St. Patrick is Eire's patron saint and it's a good excuse as any to celebrate the Celtic Twilight of Irish culture.

"It's the one day of the year for anyone who plays Irish music is guaranteed a gig, and it's the one day of the year that any political issues such as the strife in northern Ireland is given any reasonable coverage in the American media," says McGuillicuddy.

Having grown up in an Irish household, I commented to McGuilicuddy, I learned two versions of history; Anglo history in school and Irish history at home. She said, "Yes—two disparate versions of history, indeed." And never the twain shall meet.

Padraigin—an Irish diminutive form of Patrick—will produce an integrated show well worth taping. Her program promises to cover the whole gambit—from music to poetry; history to politics—with several guest speakers thrown in to boot. She will open with a morning concert featuring traditional uillean bagpipes and fiddles and the Morning Reading will highlight the 1988 S.F. State Vision and Voices International Symposium—addressing the problematics of identity of Irish women.

In the January issue of THE IRISHMAN, McGuillicuddy writes of the women who "fell out of history," and suffered a saga of immigration, repression and silence. Over and over in their art, poetry, prose and very presence they conveyed an image of women moving from stone to vegetation to speech—‚ "the green leaf of speech tumbling from their mouths." And into silence.

At noon, Irish language poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill will read from selected poems in both Irish and English addressing the far reaching affects of colonialism and culture.

AN CRANN THE TREE

There came this bright young thing
with a Black & Decker
and cut down my quince-tree.
I stood with my mouth hanging open
while one by one
she trimmed off the branches.
(tr. Paul Muldoon)

Do tháinig bean an leasa
le Black & Decker
do ghearr sí anuas mo chrann.
D'fhanas im óinseach ag féachaint uirthi
faid a bhearraigh sí na brainsí
ceann ar cheann.

For those politically bent, "Mama Mac" will "shoot it out" at 1 p.m. via phone with lawyers from the Justice Campaign for Irish prisoners abroad representing political prisoner and award winning poet, Joe Doherty who has been incarcerated in solitary confinement for over six years in New York without trial—he has been accused of no crime in the U.S other than being Irish and and illegal alien.

McGuillicuddy will also cover the status of the Birmingham Six and the Guilford Four, Irish citizens imprisoned in English jails for 15 years for crimes even which the authorities consider them innocent.

According to McGuillicuddy, Amnesty International has rated the English with the worst abuse on record denying basic human rights to Irish political prisoners.

It has been said there are more Irish in America than in Ireland—and this is certainly true in the Bay Area. Rich in poetry and politics—the place where William Butler Yeats described Erin in the poem, "Easter 1916" uprising (the Irish equivalent of our Civil War) "transformed utterly; a terrible beauty is born." Little known fact: Yeats was a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley.

Ireland is Europe's most impoverished country today, and the estimated 10,000 undocumented illegal aliens from Ireland are among the highest illegal alien group in the Bay Area—higher than that of the Hispanic population.

Accurate figures are unavailable but a conservative estimated 200,000 illegal Irish aliens are living in New York alone. "And it is to them especially, this latest hemmorhage of brains, brawn and talent, that is America's gain and Irelands loss, that we dedicate our St. Patrick's Day programming," comments McGuillicuddy.

The program will conclude with contemporary Irish music with Michael Black, one of Ireland's leading folk musicians, and the hottest music from left field....that of Irish rock and fusion music, the Liffey Beat, including U2, the group that received the 1988 Grammy award.

McGuillicuddy says it's no small coincidence that the psychology the west coast of Ireland and California are similar—their rocky coasts, less fertile land—lead to wild flights of poetry and imagination, while the eastern (European) seaboards tend to breed conservativism and complacency.

"This is the time of year western Sonoma County is most like the west of Ireland—especially Colman Valley Road with its green pastures and sheep—it makes me homesick for Kerry." laments McGuillicuddy. I'll second that.

Beannachtai na Feile Padraig agus sliante agaibh. Happy St. Patrick's Day and good health!

(from EASTER, 1916) ....What is it but nightfall? no, no not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. We know their dream; enough To know the dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse— MacDonaugh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

—William Butler Yeats, 1916

3/15/89 The Western Sonoma County Paper

Sweet Life Cafe, Santa Rosa, Mar 5, 1989, Maureen Hurley, Marianne Ware

Novelist Don Meredith

NOVELIST DON MEREDITH WON’T GET OFF THE AMBULANCE JUST YET

Occidental novelist Don Meredith received a second coveted National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship in Creative Writing. His short story, “Desert Music” was among the 96 winning applications selected from nearly 1,900 entries. American writers in 33 states across the nation and two foreign countries competed for the $20,000 grants awarded in three categories: Poetry, Fiction and Belles Lettres.

The work was chosen by two nine-member peer review panels.-- a poetry panel and a fiction/belle lettres panel. A system of blind-judging was used for application review with the panelists basing their decisions solely on the literary merit of the submitted works.

Meredith’s short stories and fiction have appeared in many small press publications including The Texas Review, The Greensborough Review, Slipstream, Kingfisher (Berkeley), and Short Story Review (San Francisco). He also writes critical essays and reviews for the monthly periodical Short Story Review.

In 1984, Don Meredith was listed as an outstsnding writer in the Pushcart Prize Anthology VIII for his short story, “Comic Valentine.” He is also listed in the International Directory of Biography, and A Directory of American Poets &7 Fiction Writers.

Meredith and his wife of 23 years Josie, live in a multi-level shingled house right out of Architectural Digest replete with paintings, Persian rugs and a Siamese cat named Mr. Kim, whom Meredith affectionately calls “the Chinese landlord” while outside, the deer keep the meadows mowed.

The short story that won Meredith $20,000, and his second NEA fellowship “Desert Music”, originally published by The Texas Review is about a retired couple Barney and Gladys Rose, and their relatives, who wade their way through the Sonoran desert into Mexico like snowbird Kerouacs on the road-- the distances propel them “from one shapeless event to another.” While in Mexico, Barney’s mother dies but not before pointing an accusing finger at Barney saying, “what difference does it make where we’ve been? ....you haven’t a clue in the world what you want for yourself. There’s an empty place in you, Barney. What the star people call a black hole.”

“But this trip is for Barney. Every inch of it.” Barney discovers solace in the emptiness of the desert. “Maybe the emptiness is only echoing something in himself....the desert has slipped into the envelope of darkness, a wind leaking softly at its edges.” Fearing Mexican jails and red tape might interfere with the mother’s last will, they try to smuggle the body out of Mexico. This story is a journey of a spiritual awakening, alibet late in life.

Meredith, a tall, grizzly grey-eyed Celt of Irish and Welsh descent says he’s been writing seriously for about 20 years. His first published novel, Morning Line, his first published book circulated for a year before it was picked up by Avon Books. Meanwhile, he revised the manuscript which raised a few eyebrows at Avon. His wife Josie, a freelance editor, reads all his work before it goes out. He attributes her editing skills, in part, to his success. “So many writers need a good editor,” says Meredith. Grammatical mistakes can make or break a book.

A novel typically takes two years to complete. Meredith writes four to five hours a day, every day. He also manages to write short stories on the side. Gathering material for his first published novel, Morning Line, he spent a lot of time at the race tracks taking notes and for his second novel, Home Movies he used his own life-story--- he ran track in college--- for background.

Meredith’s natal waters are in southern California and his books are all set in California though he’s lived abroad for 13 years. The Newport Beach he remembers as a child was still filled with open fields and cattle. In 1956 he went to Cal Poly to study animal husbandry and took a freshman English class. He wanted to be a farmer and raise beeves but, alas, the wide open ranges were not for him. The Irvine Ranch succumed to housing and Meredith succumed to the pen.

Reminiscing, as to why he’s a writer, Meredith said he always liked to read. Becoming a writer seemed a natural progression. In college he realized people took writers seriously and one could make a career of it. While he was there, he wrote poetry. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that in 1956, Cal Poly went from a men’s college to co-ed. Meredith chuckles, “the ratio was 55 to one. I was just a freshman and I didn’t stand a chance.” While in college he switched to theatre “to get a well rounded education.” He majored in Drama and English at Orange Coast College, Long Beach State College and San Francisco State College.

Meredith and Josie migrated to northern California in the early 60’s. He worked as a bartender at the no name bar in Sausalito when he wasn’t traveling. “Sausalito used to be a real town before the hippies came,” Meredith recalled. “Jack Aranson ran the Gate Theatre and across from Elephant Park everybody met for coffee at the Rexall counter each morning to discuss the day’s business.”

After Sausalito, Meredith went off to live in Europe and “came back a writer.” Of those 13 years spent abroad, four were idyllic summers spent on a 20 foot boat and winters on the island of Kolcula off the Dalmatian coast in Yugoslavia and the other seven on a farm in the Chianti Hills of Tuscany, Italy. They were in charge of security for estates of wealthy Americans who summer in Italy. “Ironically,” he says, “I was doing animal husbandry. Picking olives and grapes.”

After working as caretakers in Europe and Santa Barbara mansions with neighbors that included the Shaw of Iran and Gene Hackman, was when they realized it was never going to get this good again. It was time to settle down and buy a house in Sonoma County.

He has many painter friends and he marvels how succinctly they describe their work while he defines himself as both inarticulate and shy. “I’ve chosen writing to become articulate. Writing gives me the time and space to put my ideas forward in the best possible manner.” Writing is a solitary act and painting is a more tangible pursuit. “At least with painting you have something physical to show for yyour work,” says Meredith.

When asked what his novels are about, Meredith is at a loss for words. He is at his best when he can spin stories about family and friends. Leaning back in his grandmother’s rocking chair, he said, “ this chair has a history. I put my father in it and asked him if he remembered it.” His father rocked a while, felt it with his hands (he was blind) and said, “my mother used to rock me in this chair.’ “

A phone call interrupted Meredith’s story. In almost the same breath, he told the caller, “did you know I got a NEA? My father died January 6th. He was 94. When we came back from the funeral, Josie found the envelope in the mailbox.” Meredith confided to me, “when you win a NEA it comes in a big envelope. When you don’t, it comes in a business envelope.” I said, “I know. I have eight of those business envelopes so far...”

Meredith once considered a career in writing for the theatre. “Theatre encompasses all art forms-- poetry, painting and music. Drama is the oldest profession. When I was going to school there was no humanities major. That’s why I took drama. It makes me wonder about all those creative writing majors. Henry James was a late bloomer. He didn’t start writing until he was in his 40’s.” He quoted James, “one needs a little life under one’s belt before becoming a writer.”

When he’s not writing, Meredith works as an EMT--emergency medical technician for the Palm Drive Hospital Ambu-van. He needed a part time job when they lived in Sebastopol and he was a medic in the National Guard. He says the job allows him some free time to write but the NEA fellowship will allow him to devote himself full time to his writing.

He has two “pre-first novels.” Pendragon-- “everyone’s first novel must be about a sexual psychopath” muses Meredith dryly. “I guess you’ve got to get it out of your system,” and his second unpublished novel 86 is set in Sausalito. The title comes from bartender slang, “nix, nix, 86.” “It was two-three years before Pendragon was put to sleep after making the rounds. 86 is still out there somewhere.”

“I’m not writing anything right now. My last novel Marginal Characters has been out there two years and hasn’t found a publisher yet. It’s clearly my best work... and that troubles me,” said Meredith pensively. One chapter from Marginal Characters was published by Kingfisher of Berkeley last year.

His next novel in the works “is set in Santa Barbara in the year 2050 and it’s NOT a science fiction novel,” he says emphatically. He’s still playing with story line, characters and plot so he can’t tell us much more about it ... yet.

When asked if receiving the last fellowship put pressure on him, he said, “when I got the NEA, I’d published two novels in two years, several short stories, and the Pushcart. Then I had a terrible dry period.” He sold the option on his first novel to a movie producer. It didn’t fly. He labored over a novel that went nowhere, but he was able to salvage a short story, called “Wing Walker” from it. “I don’t want that to happen again.” He doesn’t have plans to quit his part-time job as a medical transporter at Palm Drive Hospital just yet.

Meredith pulls out a dog-eared manuscript from a cardboard box. I commented on the ubiquitous novel slumbering in a cardboard nest while awaiting its fate. Rocking in his chair, Meredith laughs, “I got it out of the dumpster at Palm Drive Hospital. Someone saw me and exclaimed, “Jesus Christ! You win a $20,000 fellowship and you’re scrounging boxes out of the trash?”

When I asked Meredith what was the latest book he’d read, he said a biography of Nora, the real-life Molly Bloom of James Joyce’s Ulysses by written by Brenda Maddox. Writers who have influenced Meredith are the greats: Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitsgerald, Faulkner and of course, Joyce.

Meredith concludes with an image from the biography of Nora. When Joyce finished Ulysses, Nora says to him, she says, now that you’re finished with that book, why don’t ye become a singer?”

* * *
For all you closet writers the next application deadline for the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creatrive Writing is March 3. For application deadlines or more information, contact the Literature Program, National Endowment for the Arts, Nancy Hanks Center, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20506 (202)682-5451.

SIDEBAR

Home Movies (1982) is about the world of athletics, of a father who pushes his daughter’s Olympic potential to the limit, and of the tragedy the whole family faces as a result. Sherry Kincaid has been in training for track as long as she can remember. She does not know why she runs-- only that she does. She is caught between comraderie with her great rival and the pressure to win; between the desire to quit and her father’s insisting she continue to compete. After her brother’s suicide and her own breakdown, Sherry is forced to view the splintered fragments of her family, pick up the pieces of her family and possess control over her own destiny.

TELEVISION

TELEVISION

I have nothing more to work at 

than to make silvery images.
Flickering horizons. Imagined vertigo.
I have nothing more to do than sift icons.
I make sense of random patterns and snow.
They occupy the space in front of me 

in perfect obeisance. My body is a temple.
A life without complications, Alberto said.
They worry about all the stories inside me 

they wish were theirs. I play out 

visions over and over 

as if there were no future, no history.
Though I cannot offer them anything real, 

my seeds are broadcast beyond the living rooms 

of their minds and out into the universe 

where only the stars can decode the signals.

2/27/1989 

Mark West School

STRAWBERRY POT

STRAWBERRY POT

In this span of curved earth 

baptized by fire,

my many breasted hands 

hold the soil, empty as night.
But I dream of strawberries 

and the wisdom of cobwebs.
Each small spider, 

each half moon, 

is a repeated pattern 

where fishers crack me open 

to reveal an empty vessel—

the earth-stain, and the water stain.
Without the tempering of fire 

I dissolve and melt back into earth 

after the first rain.
As it is, the stones know me as kin.
The enduring plains and relentless sun 

brings me back to myself. 

The passing of days are but fleeting.
My hunger is for the cycles 

of the earth, again and again.

2/27/89

STEPLADDER

STEPLADDER

I am silvery horizons
distant lakes
a step between
horizon and sky.
From the bowels of the earth 

miners wrested me from soil 

where I journey 

to assumable heights.
I am below your feet 

and I raise you a little closer 

to the sky.

2/27/1989

STEPLADDER, ii 

From the bowels of the earth 

men have pulled you up 

from bauxite and bass rock 

to place me beneath your feet 

to raise you a little closer to the sky. 

I am silvery horizons, 

an arch, distant lakes, a mirage, 

a bridge to lift you up like a bird 

to dizzying new heights 

bringing you a little closer to God,

to yourself, one small step at a time.

3/89?

FAN l, FAN ll

FAN I

Three blades gather dust inside a silver cage

where, in summer, yellow yarn flutters 

like  suspended birds

& the bones that hold me up to air have no body.

The cord, a tunnel for riversóturbines

churning and grinding, spitting out air.

FAN II

Out of orbit, three blades, 

a trinity of air.

Water-smoothed stones

gather the dust of time and neglect

inside the silver cage.

In deep summer, yellow string flutters

like yellow tropical fish called tang

against the current.

The bones that hold me up 

are not corporal.

Turbines churn and grind

shoving the air forward into day

& nothing more.

My inspiration, vocal

I speak of the air

& rotate like the planets.

2/27/89

ABORTED WORDS

ABORTED WORDS

In the Chiapas dust I have found stone

And from beneath the moon's gibbous face; bone.

Owl's feathers candle the sky into flight,

And the lactating stars witnessed that night,

A marriage blanket. We built a landscape,

Imagined futures to harvest and rape,

Though dew on the grass is primordial,

And memory transmuted into glass, real

As blood—the things said that cannot be undone.

And love we have killed before its begun,

Comes back to haunt us in our dreams, like birds

To ply the Icarus inside us with words.

In dust I've found the ancestor of stone.

It is this life we choose to live alone. 

2/27/1989 

Maureen Hurley & Mexican poet Alberto Blanco to read at Copperfield’s Books, Petaluma

EL SOL

EL SOL
             —for Jorge Luján upon the birth of his son

With his birth, Uriel divides the year in half
because he unites two continents and cultures,
his father says. Jorge writes of his new sun,
making apologies for his poor English.
His words glow with such paternal pride,
there is no mistake of grammar.
He asks if I'll write a poem for Uriel.
And to the unasked question–
No, my life didn't end when I gave back the sun.
The magician's fruit was filled with bitter seeds,
a womb of fish eyes glistened under his knife,
but the heart of the papaya was no less sweet than any other.
Once severed, we couldn't put the two halves back together.
Excuses issued from the corners of our dreary hearts
into the small casket where the moon sleeps.
Jorge, you hold the sun in your arms
while I continue to chase shadows in darkness.
And these unintended words, a labor of love.

1989

THE SAVAGE DREAM

THE SAVAGE DREAM

Gauguin imagines his own corpse devoured by ants.

He carries arsenic in a Peruvian olla up to the mountains.

When suicide fails, cursing God, he returns to painting

the myth of abundance, the golden tropics without a shadow

on the horizon. Te oviri rerioa. The savage dream.

He writes: your work can never be too luminous.

Let everything you do breathe. I'm hard at work.

I am entering into truth, into nature.

Civilization has fallen from me little by little.

I know the odor of the soil.

The concept wells up like a volcano blossoming

strong, hard and pungent, a tapestry of color.

Here, poetry emerges spontaneously.

There are no more refuges to flee to.

The imagination of a lonely man

has devoured his hope with dreams.

Strange white birds eat lizards—

the uselessness of this life.

2/14/89

"Cupids and Lonely Hearts" The Paper, Feb 11, 1989

Art is Better than Chocolate; SSUs Art from the Heart Auction, no tear sheet (need to find file or type

Russian River Writers’ Guild 10th Annual Neurotic Erotic poetry reading

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