DREAM VESSELS # 15: Jatumpamba FIRST DRAFT

DREAM VESSELS # 15: Jatumpamba  FIRST DRAFT

     —From a collage by Marsha Connell

Marsha said: A bowl, like letting go of the self.
Pottery shards from Ecuador.
A dream bowl of eggs, cracked,
cosmic shards representing red earth bowls,
in pieces—like all my bowls.
I sent back dozens, eight boxes of shards.
I was distraught. The Dream Vessels need to go to Ecuador
to heal something that is broken.
Who was to know that was going to happen?

There is the mountain and there are the women.
I went to the mountain to see the women.
They were of the earth and to find them
I had to walk in mud up to my ankles.
The streets of Jatumpamba, near Cuenca,
pre-date cars, there are no cars.
The women stay in the villages to make pots.
The women go to the cities for money,
they sell the pots in the marketplace,
carrying huge pots on their backs.
All the young women want to go to the cities
to make panama hats. They don’t want to make pots
like their mothers. Too old-fashioned. They want to be modern.

Marsha said: I met Alexandra during a performance piece
about sacred earth, about a woman storing bags of earth.
She said a name, Helene Aylon. I said that was my painting teacher.
She said Helene created rituals pregnant with women, and earth.
Alexandra, a Swedish archaeologist, didn’t understand the message.
A bowl in her country is just a bowl.
In Jatumpamba, it’s a way of life.

Marsha said: someone stole my shoes out of Alexandra‘s trunk.
And in Quito, to get to the Avenue of the Shoes
we had to pass through the Avenue of the Coffins.
I had to laugh, for John and I stayed on the Avenue of the Coffins.
Those purple lined coffins gave us such strange dreams.
Marsha said: I went to Jatumpamba to make a cultural exchange.
In Jatumpamba they’re running out of clay. Their culture is dying.
so I went to learn something.
I didn’t know what I could do.
I didn’t know anything.
so I went.

Summer 1991
it looks like I never did the free write on this collage or it is lost.

DREAM VESSELS # 11: Shards of Creation DRAFT (DV 12-17 MIA)

DREAM VESSELS # 11 Shards of Creation   

DRAFT

  From a collage by Marsha Connell

War, at least, has become the human condition.

       —William Styron

The sky is a Sistine chapel draped over the holy city at dawn;

the dome a lesser eye of the sun.

Writing on clay pots, images of the sun and zigzags

could be the rain, mountains or temples.

City of clay rising from the desert

God touches Adam, filling him with inspiration, breathing into him

and like the effigies we once were made of clay it is said

We write ourselves onto clay tablets while the angels looked on

we would prove to be trouble. They were right.

Adam is a reclining colossus on the green hills behind the city

God's balcony is overcrowded

perhaps this is why he is reaching out to Adam

It's a race, theyíre passing the baton, the invisible wand

but Adam is lying down on the job, naked and forthright

while God is clothed. original Sin?

He will take that back where it will lie on the pillows of Eve.

She will carry it forth, creating the races of Mankind

but the mother ship too is crowded.

The city wallsócells both protecting and isolating the nest egg.

The maleness of this religion cannot be denied.

Where are the women, the femininity?

Even the liongates are male, the angels, the cherubsóall male.

The sepulcher, by right, should be femaleó

like Queen bees, ants and termitesóthis is the pattern of nature.

In that gesture of God's to Adam—like gentle apes reaching

through the bars of a cage to touch a beloved companion,

God and Adam are cellmates both in prison;

who made the walls? surely not the women.

Perhaps God and Adam fell in love.

After all, God made Adam in his own likeness

or so it is written. And like Narcissus, God saw

his own reflection in the pools of Adam's eyes

and could not bear to be parted from himself.

Maybe the angels are really jealous

wanting something of God for themselves but this is blasphemy.

Blastopore; I will take that risk cursing the king

using God's nameórisking death by stoning.

Blas blas seed sprout  beginning in the beginning was the logos

blas + evil  blasto sprout seed bad polemy = speech sprouting speech

but there is a war going on in the Gulf.

Metaphors Desert Sand, Desert Storm, Desert Shield.

A victorious warrior returning from battle

is advised to dress for mourning (tao te ching)

We dress trees in yellow ribbons as if they were young girls.

War as a shadow of war before Eden. Pax Amerika.

Who are the chosen, and what of the Hittites, the Sumerians

and the Kurds? A continuous world war. Corporate ideo war games.

Who is taking responsibility for our shadows during this age of light?

The oil fires of Kuwait, a whole country on fire

how many days will the oil lamps burn this time?

What festival of light will lend its name to the offering from the desert?

Scud missiles exploding over Israel more beautiful than the stars

In every citadel there is a well—even the ground water is poisoned

Saddam is rebuilding the tower of Babel Sodom is Saddam in cuneiform

neb-Hussain builds for the nuclear armagedden.

There is little graceto be shed. The final prophet.

What pillars of wisdom, what articles of faith to bear witness to this?

Afraid of their own impure thoughts, men blame the women for them

in Russian every womanís patronymic name ends in the ova and ovum,

Summer 1991

DV 12-16 missing

D V #17 Grandpa Sam's Farm  (empty file..) I sure hope I have a hard copy somewhere.

DREAM VESSELS # 10: Covenant

DREAM VESSELS # 10: Covenant

If a child walks on Jerusalem's walls.

should a rainbow appear?

While in the old Jewish cemetery

a raven's wing reaches upward.

Among the stones inscribed in Hebrew

the flute player and the golden cross of the sun at T'sanque

Across from the graveyard, windows of housesóten of them

like so many eyes or commandments,

I'd swear it was Russia, 1910.

But what is the flute player doing here

resurrecting the dead.

He is the Anasazi god of fertility, his penis a flute.

He is the hunchback, the bringer of music

growing among the graves, small blue flowers, vines.

The cornices of graves like gabled roofs

all crooked, like teeth.

The child looks back over his shoulder

as he takes his morning stroll to the citadel to the dome.

A child walks on Jerusalem's walls.

This is the line that divides nations, peoples.

His shadow cast into the courtyard of the wailing wall, leviathan.

He is strutting, a soldier in the making.

Participants, celebrants the size of ants.

A child walks on Jerusalem's walls; is he Arab or Jew? some will ask.

He is a child looking back through the four arches,

portal at the top of the steps leading to the citadel.

He is walking away, looking back to a distant time

when the only conceivable answer was yes.

I dreamed I was in the courtyard, 

I was asked to chose between three religions:

 the Christian I knew, Moslem scared me,

I went to the Jewish temple. I chose the oldest,

but the choice was not mine.

Summer 1991

DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell

DREAM VESSELS # 9: I Lift My Eyes, FIRST DRAFT

DREAM VESSELS # 9: I Lift My Eyes, FIRST DRAFT
        from a collage by Marsha Connell

And the slender necks of wooden geese drink from a vessel.

Someone covered with the prayer shawl 

sits on the crest of the vessel, the eroded edges of a cliff,

minarets, a passage through the mountains.

Wild geese, the size of houses, sleep on the landscape, 

distant snow rosiated against the coming darkness.

Wind has eroded the cathedrals of the desert.

Sometimes, when the light is right, you can see distance cities 

reflected in the surfaces of ponds. Stars, the city?

By naming things, we categorize them, they lose their magic.

Sometimes it is better when they remain unnamed 

because they fit better into the matrix of things. 

Separated, they become isolated, 

like this flock of geese on a frozen landscape.

The woman under the prayer shawl, does she see herself? 

Or does she see the faces of God? Or are they the same thing?

Fingertips emerge from beneath the shawl, feminine.

Our landscape is inadequate when it comes to terms of gender.

The darkness beneath the shawl, the human form extended 

into the darkness of vessels. No one ever shows them 

pouring out of the darkness. Maybe wine, perhaps water.

But the liquid takes on the properties of darkness 

if stored long enough.

Perhaps this is why we dream of ourselves in the center of things, 

not on the edges of the dream like the retina.

Inside the vision darkens the intensity of color and light 

until it fades into the darkness.

I used to think the indistinct edges of things 

was how the world was really formed, slovenly, haphazardly.

Images snapping to attention like soldiers under scrutiny. 

It’s a takeoff of the idea that if a tree falls in the forest 

and there’s no one to hear it, just the sound exist?

We cannot see sound waves—or radio waves for that matter. 

If there’s no antenna to translate radio waves into sound, 

the radio waves still exist. Somewhere in deep space 

scientists are able to measure such distances.

Orson Welles’ voice in War of the Worlds 

is still traveling deeper and deeper into space. 

Is anyone out there listening? 

Will the radio waves retain their original integrity, 

or will they become corrupt like a computer file with time and use. 

Does space use time, or does time use space? 

A Mobius strip convoluted back on itself, 

on the outer edges of the galaxy, only to return to its source, 

finding no antennae to receive them. 

On the slopes of Haleakalā, Maui’s house of the Sun, 

a laser measures the distance of the moon.

Conclusion: the moon is drifting away from us.

On Haleakala, the Nene, or the Hawaiian goose no longer flies, 

its feet are no longer webbed because it lost 

the reason for webbed feet—water.

A goose out of water, unafraid of man, was nearly eaten into oblivion. 

Rats jumped ship, and the mongoose brought here to prey on the rats 

both prefer the eggs of indigenous birds to exotic species. 

It’s the same old story the world over. Encrusted copper urns 

too long beneath the sea, become thin and brittle with age.

The sea’s invisible fingers massage them into papery relics. 

Barnacles colonize them, kick food into their mouths with feathered feet.

After a lifetime of standing on their heads, 

what do they dream of on the edge of a vessel?

 Summer 1991

DREAM VESSELS # 8: Masada

DREAM VESSELS # 8 Masada
      —from Gulf War Collages by Marsha Connell

Beneath a bandage of snow the stones of Masada—

wounded mathematics address a long mountainous road.

Am I dreaming a mirage of islands on the horizon?

Why not sooty chimney stacks or columns of faith?

Fluted pillars lintel the sunset. Icons of the past take flight.

I struggle with the mechanics of closed systems.

In the collage, a virginal doll fell from a brooding sky.

Names of religion, of stars. Of missiles. The sixth pillar.

From Tel Aviv, photos of the artist’s daughter in a gas mask;

an “I am” escapes on the breath of the god of collateral damage.

I thought of Georgia O'Keeffe in the desert painting the secrets

of flowers in the curved throat of mountains.

This is my body said the doll as she orbited industrial skies,

the moon is chasing the earth's darkness. This is my blood.

When the cities were bombed, I dreamed of skiing on sand.

Who told me to ski the fall-line with harmonic determination?

We traverse a slope too steep to bear the weight of the world

in the direction of declination. A leap of faith.

Sand and snow are one thing, but time stutters

and slips like old movies as we watch celluloid fires on CNN.

They say life passes before the eyes of those resurrected from death.

In those last infinite seconds, what images did the mind choose to view?

Drink from the body of memory, the world is a narrow bridge.

The mountains, stubbled with 6 O'clock shadow.

If we make it out of this one, it'll be a close shave,

no matter what icons we choose to salvage or bury.

Summer 1991/9/2001

DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell

DREAM VESSELS # 7: Grandmothers

DREAM VESSELS # 7: Grandmothers          
 from a collage by Marsha Connell

From a turbulent sea filled with icebergs,

where immigrants waited to enter the promised land,

blind and crowned with thorns, Liberty rises.

Or is she drowning, sinking beneath the waves?

In a crepuscular haze where nothing is clearly defined,

not even the edges of the sky, industrial scrubbers

breathe warm clouds into the frigid air.

Towels and aprons, domestic prayer flags;

a grandmother hangs out clothes to dry, touches the mezuzah.

In a locked cabinet, whiskered koi frozen on a ginger jar—

The memory of ancient fish, venerable as the sun.

The small child wants to touch them and wonders

if they still dream of being fish—or have they forgotten how.

Where are all the grandmothers?

How to explain to the children free carbon

cannot escape through the holes in the ozone layer.

A slow polar Armageddon ripens under greenhouse skies.

The seas will rise, the cities will flood.

No time to worry about the trees.

Though everything is cyclical, we can't see into the next one.

Both enemies shrouded under the same veil of history—

Liberty ages, ice melts into the sea.

Her eyes seem to say this too shall pass.

Prayer flags continue to do a brisk trade with the wind.

Summer 1991

DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell

DREAM VESSELS # 6: Cellist

DREAM VESSELS # 6: Cellist
      —from a collage by Marsha Connell
       War is a symphony of destruction
       orchestrated by few & paid for by many.
             —anon.

In the gnarled bark of white pines,

an angel is hidden. Once a primordial sea

covered Owen's Valley. Sometimes

when the light is just right,

if you don't quite look, angels lean out

as if the tree were the prow of a ship

launched on the crest of the White Mountains.

We've sailed to the New World and taken the moon hostage.

Who spilled the moon? Who will drink to it, or mend its shell?

Annularity at sunset. Light knows its own source.

An eclipse swallowed the moon burning from within.

The faceless musician in a trenchcoat holds the cello—

concealed behind the saturnine curves of resonant wood.

Who gets to be the cellist in the next incarnation?

Or the cat? Where is the orchestra?

Who's left to interpret the dreams of 1644? Or now?

Morphos is asleep. A netted fish for Medusa's hair.

The moon is made of basalt like the sea floor.

More dead than alive, the tree hangs onto dreams,

hangs onto life by a thin Cambrian cord,

umbilicus to earth; its roots—archaic seeds

that sprouted before the Bible was proscribed.

Shadows of branches finger the air,

ply the wind, fretting the traces

for an ancient symphony of light.

Summer 91/92

DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell

DREAM VESSELS # 5: Shards of Destruction

DREAM VESSELS # 5: Shards of Destruction

           — from a collage by Marsha Connell

Twilight comes ponderously of age in the tropics.

Birds gather to watch the jewels on the shores

of Waikiki glisten with that peculiar illusion of light

when the blurring of headlights becomes a serpent

winding along Ala Moana Drive. Streets converge in an X.

A multitude of shoes come to mind; Imelda's maybe—

Kept in her exiled husband’s air-conditioned maseoleum

in the Valley of the Temples, where he waits for a political thaw.

Above the white void, it is equally difficult to hide,

or to find one's way to the other side of the question.

Should it be so strange to see skyscrapers rise

from the curved smile of pots, or lipstick crosses

lodged   between fixed systems of thought?

Blue macaws witness iridescent missiles

shove the horizon against the edge of the rainforest;

they wear broken shards for cloaks of mourning.

The household of the earth torn open,

labia pierced by the jeweled cities;

the rapists asking if she enjoyed it.

What's the use of asking those kinds of questions

when even the birds lean away from each other?

A bamboo torii gate with enough sense to grow

out of the confines of the sky cannot close the hole.

Broken vessels cut just as well as shrapnel.

It's only the context of violence which is different.

The boats in their berths, coffins of light

crusade against the darkness of the sea.

Summer 91 & 92

1992 Chaminade Review

DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell

DREAM VESSELS # 4: Witnesses

DREAM VESSELS # 4:     Witnesses

                                               

   from a Gulf War collage by Marsha Connell

   The women soldiers will go first.

            —Marsha Connell, dream fragment

   The skies over Bagdhad have been illuminated.

            —Bernard Shaw, CNN

She is a woman veiled. Roses dangle from stalks of lightning

against a blood-red sky, a tree of strange knowledge.

In a dream she was asked to witness war games.

Sometimes life is like that—the artist observing

simultaneous layers of time. Mediators in occupied territories:

A child in a pink dress watches reflections in the water.

A woman shakes darkness from the folds of her robe.

Laser-guided missiles on the banks of the Tigris. Confluence.

The idea of a key, a kite, and a storm unleashed itself

from the sky to illumine the night. Tender filaments,

fragile blossoms of light burning from the coil.

But now, the ultimate burst which spawned the Age of Light

yields roses of another kind. At Pearl Harbor

she saw Japanese men crying as they struggled to understand,

because so much was hidden from them.

They learned for themselves what happened

from the things which did not survive.

The last of the Hibakusha, nearly all gone now.

She has more questions than answers, keeps looking

for hope, but finds only compelling darkness.

That child born during the Age of Light

holds onto a shadow woman of the desert,

the hijab hides her from prying eyes

of the 20th century, but cannot shield her from it.

The vase on a pedestal—a ballet dancer,

refined white gloves of ghosts,

the peculiar weight of roses.

Carrying dead grandmothers into marriage,

we were all young once, didn't notice the paradigm

between a love of nature, and dominion over the weakest.

What of the child who will inherit the dowry of the sky:

the seductive beauty of a mushrooming cloud, incandescent roses,

the breathing of some unnamed fear in a dark room

where we can't find the switch in time.

Does she not see the lights of the city,

minute grains beneath her feet?

Spring 1991

1993 Dream Vessels, Marsha Connell
DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell 

DREAM VESSELS # 3: Night Goddess

DREAM VESSELS # 3:   Night Goddess          

            from a collage by Marsha Connell

The hawk Horus landed here first, or at least that's what is said.

Seated on funerary divans, the rulers of the Upper and Lower kingdoms

wear the sun of Horus; the bull between the sun,

and the root hunger of cobras, rays of Ra. Amun.

The sun in gold cartouches immortalized on temple walls.

Nefertiti sleeps, her profile, a landscape.

What is Egypt but an fertile dream of Africa?

The Fellahim, tillers of black earth.

Did worry beads first appear when the two kingdoms

were united in marriage and death?

Plenty of sand in Egypt; who first thought to melt sand

into faence? Tin from Welsh mines took cooperation, not war.

Another ridge on the ribbon road. Ivory and beads,

as if coral wept from all the blood spilled.

In the presence of so much stone, the rider

on a white horse is but a small afterthought.

Moving through worlds, searching for a sense of place,

we disturb what's taken out of context: millions of potshards

from the pilgrims who fed the gods millenia on end.

The sun's rays fracture and separate on the lintel

the way a child's drawing depicts the sun with rays—

all curved and geometric at the same time.

Where is the white sand island rising from the sea of chaos?

The reed shrine holding the image of the hawk?

Why are all the women asleep with their unadorned profiles

to the sky? Where is Isis?

Here, there is no personal story to lean on.

Juxtaposed against two worlds,

our modern debris is seeking home.

On hands and feet, the goddess of the night, 

Nut, has stretched her body across the sky.

Nefertiti's Nubian ear, a dark shell

in the wrinkled folds at sunset.

Anubis, God of the Dead, seeks New World Order.

Summer 91 & 92

DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell

DREAM VESSELS # 2: Earth Palette

DREAM VESSELS # 2: Earth Palette
—from a collage by Marsha Connell

Somewhere in Central America
blue shutters closed against the blue wall,
the indigo sky in the midst of war.
Guarding against the evil eye, Babylonians,
and later, the Arabs painted beads blue.
This is why blue beads dangle from the mirrors of buses,
donkey's halters, and women's necks on both continents.
The blue-eyed language of a Mestizo child—
Cortés, Cabrillo, Pizarro, & Las Malinches of the world
who suffered at the hands of love.
All we have to measure entire civilizations
is blue tile from Inanna's ancient city,
vessels filled with golden beads, and arabesques—
images in the shape of God. Names of stars.
The midday sun seeks refuge at the base of shutters.
Behind closed doors a Yemenite bride is sleeping.
Soon she'll assemble herself in the form of desert crystals.
Gathering the sun in her robes she turns
to catch the light, all she sees is ultraviolet.
Reduced to silica, she is pure transparency.
The calligraphy of wheat fields after scything
combines arranged in bezier curves,
visible only to the birds who are not bound to this land.
Cuneiform on clay tablets: writing began when the silos
and graneries were overfull, before the desert was at hand.
Times of plenty, and of need. A blue-eyed daughter in Israel,
far from home. Who is her spirit guide? the mother asks.
A map of civilization is scattered in that wheat.
On the edge of the steppes, horsemen wait
against the sky for someone to trespass:
they say, one must die to become a man,
to take one's place in the community.
After a good harvest of wheat, of bodies—
it's all the same in the end. On any of the continents
nature doesn't distinguish between blood and chaff,
or invent abstractions about the shape and color of space.
Where is the juncture where the desert shrub antlers itself
against the brooding sky? Teased into patterns by the wind,
it yields in random mathematical increments.
How then, to explain away those missiles,
more beautiful than the stars?

Summer 1991 DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell

Maui Mindfulness

MAUI MINDFULNESS

This is a story of mindfulness, or the way of things. My introduction came painfully, after a poetry reading I did with a friend and poet Will Staple, at the now defunct Garbo's in Guernewood Park.

It was the last day of the Fall semester, December 18, 1981. I'd passed my exams, including the dreaded senior seminar—necessary for me to enter the Master's program in creative writing. In those days I had no concept of pacing—everything was done full-bore. I needed to slow down, and nothing seemed capable of stopping me. I had a whole vacation stretching out in front of me, vast as the horizon of the sea.

Still steeped in the melancholy liquor of a bitter break-up, I was uneasy about bringing Will home, and I remember a small moment that changed my life: I was scrambling around looking for the seatbelt, but it was underneath the cab seat of his truck, which meant getting out of the truck, lifting the seat, and retrieving the belts.

It was late and rainy along the river. I opted for au natural, no constraints. Tension, thick as clotted milk filled the cab as we wound our way along the river. A late-model '60s car in a hurry to the next watering hole, overtook us with impunity along the midway stretch, only to signal left into Dino's bar.

We wanted out of his way, and passed on the right, only to have them plow into us—they'd changed their minds—but not their blinkers. Bracing myself, I flew up against the window, and thought nothing of it.

By the telephone, where Will was about to make the call to the police, the driver motions him aside. Will, trying to be a nice guy, is agreeing with the driver—it would look bad on both insurance policies. Besides, he was a prominent realtor in the community, with an Irish name—his strange redheaded son lived two cabins down from me.

The next morning, when it was obvious something was seriously wrong, Will contacted the police, but the driver, Bruce Collins was sober as a judge, so to speak. Of course, I had no idea of what was to follow, the months of lying flat out on my back, unable to even hold up a book, let alone read.

I remember the victory of when I could carry in a small bag of groceries, or sweep the floor without experiencing nauseating pain.

It was just as well I didn't know I would never be able to do calligraphy or graphic arts again because, ten years later, I still can't tilt my chin down for any length of time. (I use my computer on the bed, with pillows propped behind my head.) Every time my neck bothers me, or the blinding headaches come, I am reminded of the lesson of mindfulness.

Will went off to Maui to join a zendo. His lesson on mindfulness continued in the dailiness of running the zendo as head resident. "No more Mr. Nice Guy," he wrote. "I've learned about appropriate behavior." Two years later, I got a small settlement from the accident, and, in order to go on to the next level of healing, I knew I had to go and see Will.

The daily chores, the cooking, the gardening, cleaning the dojo, stacking wood—were all part of the lesson of mindfulness. I suffered after stacking the wood, but it was a small victory over the body.

That night, on the slopes of Haleakala, in a hamlet appropriately called Haiku, we fired up the wine barrel hot tub, and had a poetry reading under the stars of the Southern Cross, drinking rum and eating May apple pie.

It was there, under the bodhi tree I met Robert Aitken Roshi. I admired his translations of the 16th century Japanese haiku poet Basho. We were preparing for a deep ecology conference, and poet Gary Snyder needed to be picked up at the Maui airport—such as it was.

I don't know who made me more nervous—Snyder or Aitken. My banana-persimmon bread, a smash success the week before, came out of the oven looking more like a brick than food—they were polite and ate it anyway.

The lanai was redolent with gardenia scent; the gekkos chupped, the famous Maui cockroaches spun on their backs like draedls when we entered the kitchen. Will taught me the Maui cockroach shuffle—namely, don't pick up your feet, because it's not a good idea to kill other living things.

They instructed me in the manner of mindful thinking by not instructing me at all.