Amsterdam Journal: wrong dream 7/12

Being attracted to both Chilean poet Waldo Rojas and to Welsh poet Paul Evans is not a mutually exclusive process. I'm just not used to it. No sooner did I say goodbye to Waldo, did I meet Paul, with only two days respite in between. I met Paul at my reading at the Hotel Winston on Monday, the 24th. Charles McGeehan knows him, and I wouldn't even have come across his work, had I not gone to the reading, even though I”m collecting poems for the Mother Earth News issue.

But to meet the man first had a significant impact upon me. Each time I see Paul, it gets harder and harder to put him out of my mind. There is a moment frozen in memory where as he drank the orange juice offered, the long summer light illuminating his face, and we really looked into each other's eyes for an unguarded moment. I remember the green flecks among the brown, and his eyes, so like my own.

And I began to realize as we talked, he too was in my dreams before I came to the Netherlands. Only I mistook him for my brother. I kept thinking it was odd that my brother had a full head of hair and that there was such a sexual undercurrent. Not very comfortable. Ewww. I never been interested in my brother ever. And I couldn't seem to banish that element from the dream.

There's just enough age difference between Paul and I to keep a safe distance, to borrow a term, we”re good mates. My brother and I are closer in age, growing up. I put the man in the dream to be about age 28 and Paul is 30.

It was at the Hotel Winston Kingdom last Monday night, that the pieces began to fall into place. Our host and emcee Jacek Nichs introduced us. I need to look up the dream now but I do remember having a row with him in the dream about love, and he was chewing me out because I turned him down. And I was confused and devastated thinking it was my brother which didn't help I'm sure.

But then I wondered how does the identity process come upon in the waking world? What made me decide he was my brother in the dream? The way he looked? During the dream who was he? Did I use brother as a placeholder for whom I didn't know?

When I told Paul that he was in my dreams before I had met him, he didn't seem particularly alarmed saying that his mother and sisters were into the occult. He grew up with an Ouija board and séances.

I said this had nothing to do with the occult, I dream of the future. Precognition. It's an Irish trait, I don't particularly like it, it makes me uneasy, but that doesn't stop the dreams from happening. I told him I also dream of catastrophic events before they happen. The Challenger explosion, the Bijlmer plane wreck etc.

He laughed and said just don't tell me that I'm going to die, or something awful like that. I replied, no it has nothing it was nothing awful. I just don't remember the details. Now I'll have to look up the dream. Not wanting to give away anything in case I might sway or force the dream, I let it play out.

As he reached for his bag and leather jacket hanging from the closet door I passed close by him, marveling at his height. I never realized it before. That growing awareness of the other. Didn't give him ideas sitting on my bed like that? I was trying to act nonchalant sitting cross-legged as we typed up poems.

With both Paul and Waldo I am so at ease. Why can't I find someone like that in the states? I know that both are observing me constantly but I don't mind. Paul comments again that I'm hyperactive. I say coffee makes me even more so, I'm self-conscious about it, saying I'm trying to control it. I wonder what poems will come of it? If any?

Amsterdam Journal: La Diaspora poets

La Diaspora poets and exiled expatriates.

Today I met with Colombian poet, Annabel Torres at the Café Français. I am collecting poems in translation for our Poets in Exile issue for Herman Berlandt.

I had trouble with waking up as Vins came over about 12 AM and didn't leave until 6 AM. Earlier I had fixed dinner for Paul Evans and had some wine. And he's on painkillers for an extracted wisdom teeth and can't drink. He did have one small glass however.

With Vins drinking coffee, I decided on some wine, but it wasn't until the last glass, that he joined me, and we got pretty snookered talking of philosophy and dialectical models. If a butterfly flapping its wings over Mexico causes a storm in China, you damn well better kill the butterfly, glibs Vins.

We tease and punt, catching up on three years, a long absence. It's odd how we can't stop talking. Beneath it all, we are truly friends. I propose to him that we make a bilingual poetry book to use his translations.

Annabel Torres says that translators get paid 80 guilders an hour, and they're only allowed to work 40 minutes at a time. And she said the simultaneous translation with two other people is the hardest kind of translation to do. And I thought of my stint translating for Waldo and Robert, I thought my head was going to explode.

People say Vins' translations of my poems are very good and this pleases him. He gets little feedback from the world. Especially with these translations. Sometimes I think he would like to do more of it. We got in a good visit. Cause and effect equals synthesis. And something on dialectics.

Earlier I was floating on air, grinning away because of Waldo's postcard, running errands because Paul was going to be here at 6 PM. Paul brought a huge whipped cream cake with fruit. I don't think anyone's ever done that for me, brought me a cake. And we had dinner, salad, couscous and steak. Moving the table around until it suited us. I think we're looking more and more into each other's eyes, and I find his presence hard to shake after he leaves.

Unfortunately I have no control when I dream of him, and here I am trying to be like an older sister, because he's only 30, and I'm 43. I think nothing of being a man 13 years my senior. But the other way around is a whole 'nother paradigm. It's a bit more ticklish and we're such an ageist society. I keep telling myself there's nothing going on, like with Waldo. Yeah, right. Or, I'm just imagining things. A fertile, overactive imagination.

Come to find out it wasn't quite so. There's a bit of a titillation going on. I'm feeling torn, entertaining two men in rapid succession like that, but Waldo's married, and gone, so the letters and flirtation are for the long-term memory banks. We will see where it goes, if anywhere. We're mates, Paul calls me a good bloke, I call him dude.

And with Paul, ach! the model is similar. We see each other every two or three days. I'm to go to his place on Saturday. Nothing untoward happens, or will it. We went for a long walk after dinner to Ouderkirk aan de Amstel, a village tower on the Amstel River, near Amstelveen, talking about everything under the sun. Especially the Celtic stuff.

Paul tells me how to pronounce Welsh words, and reads me his poem in a low voice, lounging on the bed. We are frozen in time. I just wanted to lie down with him, so easily seduced by love poems.

I typed up one poem on the computer for the upcoming exile issue. And he had to go to Jacek Nichs's birthday party at 10, but stayed until 11 PM anyway. I suppose I could've gone with him, but I really wasn't up for it, and didn't know if that would be pushing my luck. Sleep is not overrated.

Amsterdam Journal: postcard from Waldo 7/11

July 11 

Finally I received a card from Waldo and it takes some time for me to decode the written Spanish. He wrote (in Spanish):

I was very happy to receive your letter. You need time to consult the dictionary, but now with the visual contact of your writing, the magic of the words, the written words exist. I was glad to know you and I can figure it out. The moments we had together, they were few, but very intense. I will write more later, but for now, a large kiss from Paris.

Tenderly,

Waldo

I have never been to Paris. Perhaps this is as close as I'll ever get to the City of Light.

Waldo Rojas-Serrano (drawing)

Amsterdam Journal: time slips away, Charles McGeehan's flat 7/10

10 July

How time slips away from me. I'm feeling guilty because there is always so much to do, and I'm not trying to accomplish it. Yesterday, I stayed at home, nursing my period. Such bad cramps. I had to soak in the tub at 3 AM to relieve the pain. My cousin Sinead called from Petaluma, she has an international line at work. She said to go out on the day trips and don't let the time fritter away.

I've been in Holland nearly a month now, and I have done very little by way of touristing. And I was so busy with Poetry International the first two weeks, I was truly exhausted by the time I got to Charles McGeehan's flat.

Charles is Bert Schierbeek's official translator. And then not having a physical space to sleep, was truly distressing. Charles lives in complete and utter chaos. Every room in the house is filled with paper, and there are tiny rabbit warrens where you can move from room to room. A lot of my time was spent in making his place habitable. Herman was right at home here. Neither have any domestic skills.

But I have limits. I literally slept mid-book stacks and made my bed with blankets on top of boxes of poetry. I was pretty busy during the first week at Charles's flat making some semblance of order out of decades of chaos. If we weren't on the ground floor, we'd be in danger of capsizing. Perhaps because Charles has had brain surgery, is why he's so chaotic. But Herman has no excuse.

Moving here was the first respite I've had in months and months. What did you do when you are truly tired, and need a rest? And too tired to rest? Fill it with things to occupy your time? Or catch up? My heavy periods didn't help. You're supposed to do things on vacation. I'm merely existing, living Dutch, as I always have, whenever I come here. My morning ritual of Dowe Egberts espresso, and wafer-thin slices of ouda Amsterdam cheese on dark bread toast sustains me.

Still so much to do. Visit Wim Hofman in Vlissingen, Maya/Maija in Almeer, and Jan Bogaerts in Liessel. I'm still not sure if we're going to France with Bertaijn, Bert's sister, and Charles' ex-wife, next weekend. A part of me is waiting for Waldo to call, dammit.

I still want to go museum-ing here and in Rotterdam. I gravitate towards museums the way others visit pubs or clubs. I still want to visit Leiden and Utrecht and Gouda. Groeningen is out as Maria van Daalen is teaching in Iowa.

I need to finish my translation article on Breyten Breytenbach and I need to also find an Afrikaans dictionary in order to finish my translations of Breytenbach's work. I am writing an article on Poetry International for Poetry Flash, perhaps interview Martin Mooij and Jules Deelder, the Night Mayor of Rotterdam, for it truly is the end of an era.

I'm hurt because Vins hasn't called me, or Marcel Koops, or Jan Bogaerts, for that matter—so much for old friends. I’ve been here a month. I guess it’s better that I’m staying with Charles after all.

Amsterdam journal: dream sequence 7/9

At 1AM, it was a mad run down the streets after a guzzling a second Guinness bought by a friend of Paul's, whose boyfriend and translator David, read a short story. Her name was Josie or Yoski, as she said it, an ex-potter

I now know who Paul is, that dream in which I mistook my brother for him, so he's on my path too. The relationship I have with Paul is very much like the dream, he somewhat resembles my brother, except for the hair, so that”s why I assumed it was my brother, a long time ago. I didn't realize that it wasn't my brother. I just thought he was had a full head of hair because it was a dream.

When Paul tilts his head down, it's scary how much he looks like my brother, not so much full on, but the brow is the same.

Ever the gentleman, Paul bought me a Guinness when I joined him. How simple. This is what I need, friends who will take me by the hand. He brought me a poetry book from England, Poetry Review, lots of articles about the Irish poets and I am in hog heaven. There is a wonderful comfort sitting next to him, nothing untoward, mind you. His role in my life will be revealed in time.

I invited him over for dinner, or for tea if he preferred. If you would like… Yes he said, double-checking that I had his number. Last time we met, I was 25 minutes late. He said Next time it's my turn to be late. Ouch!

Amsterdam Journal: Poetry International recap 7/9

Tuesday, July 9,

Small memories are flooding the morning's writing, Waldo Rojas and I waltzed to calliope music in the streets of Schoenhaven while Jules Deelder, the Night Mayor of Rotterdam, Simon Vinkenoog and the venerable Judith Hertzberg applaud, both they, and Miroslav Holub shower thin Dutch dimes down upon us like wedding rice, from the stone steps. We collect enough for a beer or two.

I curtsied, saying in my broadest Irish accent, Oh thank you kind sir. Simon, who is Holland's last hippie, asked me to remember him to Larry Ferlinghetti. Is City Lights still there? He asks. Of course, I laugh. I will give him your regards.

June 22
At dinner, I sat across from Seamus Heaney, telling them about my grandfather and Liam Mellows, whom he knew of. Seamus told me a story of going to a Catholic school in northern Ireland, making a Protestant reference. I queried, how did you wind up in a Catholic school? Because I'm Catholic, he replied, once more cracking the cap on the whiskey bottle.

I told Seamus of my grandfather's gun-running and of Eamonn De Valera and Liam Mellows visiting us. He said, You've got a rare bit of history there. And urged me to write it down.

Waldo, who was seated beside me, was silent. Of course, Seamus and I were speaking in English. Sometimes I translated, but I was often neglectful. Georges Lory, Breyten Breytenbach's translator, a cultural attaché who lives in Ghent, sat across from Waldo but they spoke a little, only having French in common. And when they spoke, I was excluded. We had not one common tongue at the table. There's gotta a poem embedded in that thought.

Waldo left early to go upstairs, and I let him go ahead, busy talking with Seamus whom I hadn't seen in over three years and then only briefly.

At Poetry International I started to follow Waldo who had asked me to join him, but he was so distant. Already I could feel him pulling away. I saw him at the credit phone, I could tell by his stance that he was calling his wife, shedding the adulterer's skin. I stopped, hesitated, and doubled back, and grabbed an after dinner coffee with Mairi, Seamus's wife. Letting him go.

I looked over the room of poets, saying my goodbyes too, and what an extraordinary two weeks it has been. This crazy tribe that I belong to. Geert van Istendael (whose real name is at least five names long) and I had a mini Celtic caucus. He is a wild Belgian Celt. By the coffee pot we concluded that the Celtic nation was alive and well and partying in this room.

I let Waldo finish his call, and then followed him up to the Klein Hall, the hospitality room. Many poets were already saying their last goodbyes. And after the final reading of our work, translating Breyten Breytenbach, we gathered in the hallowed room, a cathedral of sorts, where we all had worked so hard, as if afraid to break the spell, though there was a band, and a party in the foyer waiting for us.

Waldo left me alone in the room, and went dancing, probably with Mariolijn, the translator. She seemed quite attached to him on several occasions, perhaps caring more for him, than he did for her. I don't think they were lovers in the past. But one never knows. Not my worry.

We roasted our host, and Poetry International founder  Martin Mooij on his retirement etc., toasting the end of an era.

South African poet Dynana Kukama, from Botswana, dragged me onto the table-top to do a Xhosan song that she taught me, I learned it during a drunken evening, a few nights previously. We sang it, replete with the accompanying clicks, and tribal dance movements.A floorshow.

Siya nibonga okuba nathi (2x)
ni phumile makhaya nazoba nathi (2x)
na hlala nathi (to sit)
na xoxa nathi (to talk)
na blega nathi (to love)
na dhlala nathi (to play)
Siya nibonga okuba nathi (2x with a different melody line)


Thank you for what we have
you have left home with us
stay with us
talk to us
love us
play with us
Thank you for what we have


I'm not very good at Bantu click languages (Setswana, or Xhosa - Tswana), it's an interesting trick of the tongue to be able breathe out, sing, and click in the back of the throat, without drowning in saliva, but it was a gift to Martin and we had a good time.

Afterwards people came up to me saying, You have such a lovely voice. You could have another career singing. Or, I didn't know you could move your body like that, such wild dancing. Waldo missed it all, of course.

And I spent the rest of my time talking with Seamus. I gave him a copy of my Poem for Sarah along with some artwork of mine. And he gave me three resounding kisses goodbye in the European fashion. And then one extra big smacker on the lips—for a fellow countryman. Calls me cousin (my grandmother was a Heaney), and says goodbye.

I talked with Mexican poet, Homero Aradjis who brought me up to date on El Grupo de los Cien, The Group of 100, an organization and ecological organization that he had founded. I told him I had seen his name in the SF Chronicle a few months back in connection to logging and the destruction of the monarch butterfly habitat.

Homero said that is very frustrated because he can't seem to get much news coverage. He said that NBC, or CBS and came over and taped him, four hours worth of coverage, and then didn't use any of the footage. His program was bumped US news, something in Iowa.

We brainstormed a bit and I said to catch the US media's attention, you've got to make it relevant to the US, like tying to the butterfly trees of Bolinas. I also mentioned a friend of mine, John Knox, and Earth Island Institute, whom he also knew.

Homero felt that the US media was afraid to report on Mexican ecological issues, and of course, he's completely blacklisted, media-wise in Mexico. We talked about the dangers involved. He said, Sometimes I fear for my life, but I have to believe in the purity of the animals I am trying to protect. The energy of the whales and the butterflies. I offer cosmic energy to protect him to reinstill energy for the cause.

I told Homero I used several of his poems (the Canadian translations), in the classroom to talk about extinction, and unanswerable questions. I also used Neruda's questions. Homero, who is half Greek, said his last name was from the Arabic, his mother is Mexican, his father fled from Tyre, so he is an oddysey of many worlds and epochs.

Eventually Waldo returned, saying, Let's go. But I wanted to dance, and he wanted to walk me home. I knew we weren't to spend the night together as I had hoped, we both had to pack, but I wish he was a bit more out of control. That he'd just let go.

Waldo grumbled that he wasn't into ecology, not like what Homero is doing. I don't think he likes Homero very much. I asked him if he didn't care about ecology, or the extinction of species, etc. He said, No it wasn't that, it was the politics. I said that I admired Homero, and the work he's doing, and if not him, then who? How? What is our real job as poets?

Nota bene: All my conversations with Waldo are in Spanish, so this is a paraphrased translation. It wasn't quite a tiff, but it was a disagreement that fell away when we got to my room. I gave him a souvenir T-shirt, Alcatraz Sleep Team, or something like that.

And he began kissing me on the bed. When he fell back among the pillows with glasses skewed, shirt awry, he looked so defenceless. I realized it was all a façade. I took them from him, and he was helpless before me. I touched him, asking if he wanted me. Si, he said weakly, and we stripped off our clothes, turned off the light, and proceeded to squeak the springs on the narrow twin bed.

Waldo was wildly holding me, grabbing my hair, grunting my name, Mau-rin, Mau-rin, Mau-rin. I burst into tears, realizing that he was trying so hard to be civilized about it all. we had unleashed more than what we had bargained for. He wanted no long drawn out goodbye scenes, but he got it anyway. I wasn't about to be cheated of that.

Waldo is one of those rare man who can get it up a second time, replete with a second orgasm. We were on round two, when poor Herman Berlandt banged on the door, wanting to go to bed (we were roommates). It was more like a comedy of errors, we were caught inflagrante delicto, madly scrambling for our clothes, grabbing all the wrong ones by mistake. Tossing them to each other, And I kept saying, Give us five minutes! Give us five minutes! As poor old Herman grumbled in the hallway.

I answered the door with as much dignity as I could, with my sweater inside out and backwards, wearing little more than it, and my jeans, I couldn't find my underwear. Herman shuffled off to bed grumbling. It was a long night for him. Being stuck out in the corridor while we dallied didn't help.

As I walked Waldo to the elevator, I couldn't believe how calm and dignified he seemed, as if nothing untoward had happened when I opened the door, while I looked fully the part of a wild ravaged woman, my hair was a frothy Medusine mantle of passionate embraces. Does he do this sort of thing often?

Waldo stepped into the elevator facing me, and repeated, No tears, no goodbyes. The mirrored walls of the elevator reflected my face, and my tragic response, so that I could see myself simultaneously as he saw me. For once, I was wildly beautiful, standing barefoot in that hotel hall, with a crushed tuberose dangling from my ear, in the gardenia-scented night.

And Waldo was carefully stepping back into his Parisian mode. I was the wild Celt who stirred his blood one midsummer's eve, but now it was time to leave.Rejoin the world. He did leave me his address. And I did write it down. But I never expected to hear from him again.

Apparently Waldo called at Charles McGeehan's flat a few days ago, now the shoe on the other foot. He leaves his wife in Paris to sneak off and call his lover who waits for him in Amsterdam. But I never received that message that he called me until afterwards. I wonder how he and Charles got on over the phone? Waldo's spoken English is almost nonexistent. And I'm not sure Charles even speaks French. Dutch, yes.

I send my second letter to Waldo yesterday with my new address and number. So far, though Charles gave him my new number, there was no call. Every time the phone downstairs rings, I think it's him. But the upstairs phone remains deathly silent. By tomorrow, or rather today, he should have received my letter. Then round two begins—meaning where do we go from here? Or is there nothing more? Did the calliope music stop?

I am stirring up his life a bit, I think. Perhaps he has gotten too comfortable in his bourgeois existence, teaching the history of history at the Sorbonne. A man dressed in varying shades of grey. In a sense, I'm from his world, the New World, even if he left it in 1973. Waldo is a French citizen having lived in Paris nearly 25 years. That's nearly half of his life, but he still calls himself Chilean.

I had to simultaneously translate a conversationfrom Robert Dorsman (Breyten Breytenbach's translator), to Waldo. Luckily, I knew enough about Waldo to fill in the missing gaps. It was funny, because while I was being Waldo's ad hoc translator, he waited expectantly, trusting me to unlock the veiled the prison of language, as did Robert. Their combined energy focused their attention on me like a laser, as if I possessed a rare thing—with my poor Spanish. I got so nervous, I became tongue-tied. But we were among friends. Not like with Dmitri Prigov.

Several times I had explained and translated something that was said in English to Waldo, but that was in private. This was different, a public forum. I literally was the only other Spanish-speaking person in the entire room.

Of course, they could've used French with another person as an intermediary, so communication wasn't impossible. But I thrived in that moment, I was a linguistic bridge between two people. How many times has it been done for me, the gift of translation? It's not easy to do. And when you get out of synch, you wind up speaking the wrong language to both parties.

More than once, I caught Breyten looking appraisingly over at us, perhaps listening in. At that point. I no longer felt like an imposter, I was truly one of the group and I belong here.

Earlier Waldo and I were at the magazine table, and I was trying to explain something to him, intent on my language skills, how our bodies, and faces move differently in other idioms. When we speak Spanish, we move closer into the circle. In English we are at arms-length. At this point, it was obvious to all, there was more than between us than a passing flirtation.

Breyten's publisher, Francis Galloway, from Durban, came over, and said, You two look like a French painting. And then I wondered how we looked to the others in the room, carrying out a clandestine relationship in a language that only we understood. Is Waldo's wife French? Did I awaken the younger man from South America, and not the Parisian sophistocate?

He says I am O'Brien, Rojas-Serrano, I am Basque, I am Spanish, I am Mapuche Lincoyán, Aracuña (a tribal leader?). He is Chilean, born in in Concepción,

Waldo's father, a university professor, was executed, while he was in Paris giving a reading. The military coup of September 11, 1973 forced him into exile. He never returned to his homeland, and now his mother is dead. What else was there to do but to flee the country of his birth? In this, the Irish blood in him, and the Spanish blood, returned home to Europe, but what of the Indio? In Paris?

Have I, with my wild irish blood, pierced his heart, that poor weakened heart? Every day he lives on the other side of his heart attack, rescued from death, he's not exactly on borrowed time, but has a revitalized awareness of time, who he is, and where he is going.

One of the few things he said to me in English was, I don't care about money. In contrast to what? Reviewing his life? Or a general statement. And applecart I disrupted? I wonder if he will write of me. Or remember me. He gives me a signed copy of his book, Poesía continua. Yes, it does.

Another dream fragment comes resurfacing as I write these lines, I dreamed about my writing these very same lines, and analyzing his character etc. or having another chance to compare himself to my study of him. There is always more to come, contrary to what we might think. And I remember telling him of the dreams, and he asked, How can you tell the dreams and reality apart? Perhaps the dream is real and reality is just the dream.

In Neruda's Book of Questions, the first page I opened to was:

42
Who was she who made love to you
in your dream, while you slept?
Where do the things in dreams go?
Do they pass to the dreams of others?
And does the father who lives in your dreams
die again when you awaken?
In dreams, do plants blossom
and their solemn fruit ripening?

 Quien era aquella que te amo
 en el sueño, cuando dormias?
 Donde van las cosas del sueño?
 Se van al sueno de los otros?
 Y el padre que vive en los sueños
 vuelve a morir cuando despiertas?
 Florecen las plantas del sueño
 y maduran sus graves frutos?

tr. William O'Daly, 1991
Copper Canyon Press


And I still haven't written about Breyten Breytenbach, and his praise for me, and my work. I didn't know Afrikaans, so I transliterated his work, and he said it was more spot on, that what the eminent translators, including Miroslav Holub, and Edoardo Sanguineti, came up with, how, when he hugged me goodbye, I blushed like a schoolgirl.

Seamus Heaney, Rita Dove and I were definitely on the outskirts of that eminent circle, as none of us speak Afrikaans. So we coffee-klatched it a bit. However, I was determined to get something and treated it like a CPITS writing assignment, Juan Felipe Herrera once gave me making fake translations of Rilke. Francis Galloway, of Van Schaik Publishers, South Africa, wanted to use my translations in an upcoming collection of Breytenbach's.

Nor have I recorded Zein al-Abidine Fouad's extraordinary story working among the outcast women of Egypt who worked in the garbage pits, and how he brought guerilla theater to them, and changed a society. I was so caught up in living in within the moment, I never got a chance to record the event itself. My plate was so full so to speak. Perhaps photos will help to jog my memory, later, and give me reason to write about the many poets I met.

I also have a cryptic note about Irish short story writer, Seán Ó Faoláin, who died in 1991, and Homero Aradjis, I don't know what it means. Forever lost. Perhaps Seamus was urging me to read his work about the Easter Uprising. Or perhaps Homero was telling me to look up something. As it turns out Waldo was friends with Raúl Ruiz, Ken Bullock's friend. Small world. He and Ruiz were part of  La Cofradía de los Caballeros Antiguo in Chile.

There's always that feeling of life slipping away, out from under you. No matter what you choose to record, or not record it at all. Fleeting memories, not important in and of themselves, a collection of disparate lives during a a brief moment in time. Poetry was our timeline.

This was a June 22 journal entry that was later transcribed, hence the jumbled format. I may untangle it later.

7/9/96
added and revised for clarity

Amsterdam journal: predictability in writing 7/8

Derek Walcott once took a poem of mine, and folded it in half, lengthwise, and then said, if you can guess what will follow from the first half of the line to the second half then there is no mystery.

I had asked Paul, what do you think when you can second-guess all that A poet is going to say? Idea for idea. He said, I think you can say that in the structure of a common language, we unconsciously follow established paths. A manual of expression. Sometimes it is significant, how little we have we are original, or creative in our writing process, and in our reflection of predictability.

Amsterdam, journal: seeking light 7/8

Yesterday I met with Paul Evans at the Café Winkler, but it was closed and I was late, having miscalculated the distance. I am sitting in the sun on court Prinsenstraat, having left my new address with Marcel Koops. I was going to invite him to dinner last night, but there was no answer. So I left a message with Vins as well.

Paul was more entertaining, he got my new number from Charles McGeehan. And so we met up yesterday afternoon. I was so happy to see him that I'm feeling a bit scandalized, especially since I took a couple of days to write a long passionate letter to Waldo, half in Spanish, my first Spanish love letter, inviting him to come visit. But hey, he's married and life goes on in the streets of Amsterdam. I certainly prefer the views of Westerpaark and the Jordaan to the industrial area where I now live.

Paul and I went out to the Soundgarden, and he rode me on the back of his bicycle, sidesaddle. I found his face haunting me last night. The way he looks at me so intently is a bit unnerving. His eyes follow me, even in sleep.

Last night I banished his image from my eyes, saying, I don't want to fall in love with a poor young Welsh poet and translator living on the dole in Amsterdam. I'm trying to strike the matronly older sister approach, and nothing untoward has happened. I've only met him three times, but somehow we're we've covered a lot of ground.

And what of Waldo Rojas, snug in his petit bourgeois existence in Paris with the wife and position at the Sorbonne. A man not crazy in love enough to come when I call, for what I want is a man crazy enough to chase me through Europe, or at least through the streets of Amsterdam.

The glass sausage tourist boats patrol the canals, the narrow-eyed tourists categorize with commercial eyes, the inner vulva of the city. They've come to the right place to spend their guilders. A glass boat with a banquet table set with shining crystal and silver amid the snowfields of Irish linen, and where are the guests? The menu: tourists under glass.

Paul and I sit on Marnixkade in the Jordaan district, watching the ducks and mudhens. He notes that I'm hyperactive. And I tell him there are times when I break down and don't even answer the phone. He doesn't know it's because I'm nervous, afraid of the silence that fall between us like an ax to sever this tenuous connection, afraid of where it might go, afraid of where it might go. Foolish, and afraid of being vulnerable.

I sent on a canal bench where no one knows me, writing on the absurdities of love, knowing full well that Edwin Drummond might be waiting for me upon my return, and I'm not sure if I want him. Second time around? I don't think so.

The woman at the petticoat shop lets me have a turtleneck sweater, a scarf and two antique nighties for only 15 guilders because I'm such a good customer. The shawl perfectly matches my jacket. I bought it there in 1993 and she actually recognized it. It's a cold summer here this year, and I want my longjohns to sit in the sun that does not warm the skin.

Paul has lived here for six years, when he isn't mooning over an ex-girlfriend or two. Am I to be added to that list?

As for poetry, he is a purist, having read the modern poets. He can quote at length any poem. And he writes and measured beats, he knows the syllabic structure, while I can't even diagram a line, as he so aptly notes. He queries me how can you write in iambics when you don't even know how to measure a line?

I answer, I physically walk my poetry, I speak English, my body knows the rhythm of language.

He said, I wanted to know what's happening first, that's why I studied structure. Of course, structure is nothing without the emotion of the poem. He pays very careful attention to his craft, his poems are beautiful, and they take my breath away.

I tell him gull is a Cornish word and we have a Celtaholic attack, deciding that everyone who writes poetry is a Celt, regardless of their racial background. I tell him that poet is a maker of truth in the various Celtic languages, but it means liar in the Germanic languages. There you have it.

We talk of prosody and whether or not it's possible to lie within a poem. Sometimes the lie within a poem points to a greater truth. We don't mean the lie within the poem is a lie, but the construct of a poem itself is a lie. In this manner, three hours pass, what's to be the outcome?

We make tentative plans to meet at the Winston kingdom tonight. He's to make a chapbook of the readers to be out in a fortnight. And I am caught up in his accent, unfamiliar, but not quite, and the words that I might not use. He says I hee-ard and I answer I usen't to, or amn't I. Our little Celtic works pepper the English syntax of the enemy.

Paul grew up in a village of 8000, in the Rhondda Valley, a former coal mining valley in Wales, and spent most of his time hill-walking in the forests and vales of Wales, somewhat like me. I still live in the country, while he has traded the Welsh countryside for the low lands, low.

I tell him about Irish mythology, and he tells me of Gaulish history, how Caesar slaughtered an entire Helvetii tribe. Men, women, children, 40,000 of them, and later, another 80,000. We agree that the Roman Celtic genocide predates the English attempts.

Paul talks about the first Gaulish group in Britain, the ginger-haired Goidelic speakers. I counter with the Celt-Iberian migrations. And we we argue over P Celtic and Q Celtic languages.

I hold out my long hair, saying, Look at us, we could pass for cousins in a policeline. We're dark-haired Celts, but our hair, look at our hair, it's fire red in the sunlight, even though it's dark. He confesses to having an Irish grandmother. I say aha. I have many ginger-haired cousins.

I ask, What does this all mean, the British are quick to appropriate us if we become famous. Take Joyce, Francis Bacon, or even Samuel Beckett—which leads us on a lively chase to Catullus and Virgil. Celts writing in the tongue of the oppressors.

This is where the life of all poets as being Celts comes in, he says. I ask if I'm born in the US, and you're born in Wales, and if we become known as writers in Amsterdam, who will claim us, the British, the Dutch? To whom to whom do we belong to and owe allegiance, as poets. Ancestry and nationality. We are poets of the world.

I walk home along Prinsengracht observing the beautiful light. When I came upon the Amstel River and the Magere Brug, the skinny bridge made famous by Van Gogh, on Kerkstraat, I thought to myself, you have to earn this view to really appreciate it, and walking this far I really did earn the view. My payment was exquisite light trapped on water.

And I thought to myself as I peered down Utrechtstraat, Vins is right, this city does have its hold upon me. What does it mean? I recognize the buildings and the light from my dreams all right, this mythical city, I dreamed of it long before I ever visited here. Was I a Sephardic Jewish refugee hidden here in a past life, a factory worker, or a street worker? Poet.

Waldo calls me at Charles' house, and I'm surprised to hear the news.

Amsterdam Journal: Sarphatistraat 7/7

7/7 1996 Amsterdam, Sarphatistraat

Ah, what I've always dreamed about, a balcony with full morning sun. Sunday morning, little traffic. A sea of rucksacks and well-wheeled luggage clatters over the cobblestones like the hooves of cart horses. The next wave of tourists from Japan has arrived. 

I'm house/cat-sitting at Dave Hansen's flat, a few doors down from Adam and Eve Avenue on the F17 tram line, a low-budget hotel, of course. 

First sunny day in Amsterdam. What to do?

Somewhere someone is whistling a Nat King Cole song, a full deep-throated whistle. Okay to listen to outdoors that is. Not like Herman Berlant's thin reedy trill that drives me crazy within seconds. On my own, shall I wander through this wonderland alone? Play Misty for Me becomes my instructions for the day. After a shower, I find the sun has nearly abandoned me again.

I was awaken by cramps at 7 AM, not enough sleep. I worked on a letter to Waldo Rojas in Spanish most of the night. It takes so long to write a letter in a language not my own, when I have to look up every fifth word for spelling.

Herman commented about a woman who learned in several languages by having lovers from different countries.Yes, well, one is motivated in a different way than in school. 

As I mended my flowered dress, I got my first phone call from a Welsh poet Paul Evans, wanting to go out for coffee at the Café Winkler at 2 PM. I'm going mad from sirens and trams, the incessant city noises are so irritating. Sarphatistraat, at the intersection of three different tramlines is noisy. And the woodpigeons are eating the cat food. 

At Charles McGeehan's house, it was quiet, but living in that chaos was more than I could bear. I am glad to be out of that place.

Sunshine to the east, Stornes clouds to the west. Seagulls over the Amstel River portend a storm, or so they say. Paul tells me that gull is a Cornish word. His lilt is so different than the Irish, but definitely related. He didn't grow up speaking Welsh and so he's not got all the cadence. 

A sudden squall turns the wheel of the day into night.

Poetry International article, Audacious tongues

AUDACIOUS TONGUES: THE HEART OF TRANSLATION

Poetry is what gets lost in translation
—Robert Frost
As you die/ you meet the light/ of before creation
—Bert Schierbeek

“Sometimes poetry is literally a matter of life and death,” said Martin Mooij, founder and shy godfather of Poetry International in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. A central focus of the 27-year-old literary organization is to liberate poets incarcerated by oppressive governments due to his or her literary work. The annual Poetry International Award “to distinguish an imprisoned poet, was established in 1979 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Poetry International,” said Mooij.

At the 1996 festival, exiled South African writer and political prisoner Breyten Breytenbach, who received the Poetry International Award in 1981, was also the recipient of this year’s translation Vertaalproject where world-class poets participating in the festival translate a selected poet during the annual two-week event. Breytenbach is the only poet to receive both honors.

 Like many of the poets chosen for the Poetry International Award, Breytenbach lives in exile, borderless, without a country, having only his mother tongue to sustain the roots of his art and culture. We began our translation workshop honoring those imprisoned poets—Breytenbach painting the name of the latest recipient of the 18th Poetry International Award, Iraqi poet, Adnam Abbas Salman al-Sayegh, on the Poetry Wall mural on the corner of Niewe Binnenweg and Gaffelstraat in Rotterdam. It is hoped he’ll be released from prison to collect his award.

Executive director Mooij explained, “The Poetry International Award began as a fluke. I'd published some Turkish children's books, and I mentioned the name of an imprisoned poet, Nevzat Çelik.” Mooij said he was merely wondering aloud what had happened to the Turkish poet. Surveying Kruisplein from the squat, modern post-war De Doelen building in Rotterdam, Mooij explained, “The editor promised to write to a government official, and in 1987. . . the poet was set free!”

Mooij continued, “We cooperate closely with PEN International, and the Index on Censorship.” Without the political pressure and media exposure wielded under the auspices of the Poetry International Award, the voices of world-class poets might not be with us today—

Two poems by Lo Ch'ing 羅青

GOING HOME

Too late
to catch the last bus...

If you must go,
ride your shoes home.

I'll pedal the evening wind
to follow you.

          (tr. Maureen Hurley with Lo Ch'ing 羅青)


CROSSWORD

One jet fighter
a single dove
bisecting the sky
draws
an invisible cross

     (tr. Maureen Hurley with Lo Ch’ing)

EERSTE LIG (AUBADE, I)

EERSTE LIG (AUBADE, I)
   —a fake translation of Breyten Breytenbach's poem, from the Afrikaans
 
Dawn light strokes the sky of the sea
chasing shadows from our heads
urgent dreams, bright, restless
against the lingering slumber
of your body next to mine. 

The uneasy origin of poet’s work
trapped within the childish speech
wants to reinvent the world
where flight was not lost to the struggle of defeat
Our mouths open, tonguing
the fleeting warmth of your throat

How certain love seemed in the morning
I held the fading eye of your body
against that deeper sleep

But you threw open the balcony windows
the blind angel trampled
the circle of light

scattering mirrored words
on the new song of the wind

visual translation from the Afrikaans

OPEN POETRY WINSTON KINGDOM

WINSTON KINGDOM
&
OPEN POETRY

by JACEK NICHS
present:
Monday, 21 June I996. 22.00 hours
(from Poetry International, Rotterdam):

POETRY FILMS & VIDEOS
FROM THE WORLD’S LARGEST COLLECTION
HERMAN BERLANDT (USA)
Editor-in-chief of Mother Earth International Poetry Journal, San Francisco

+ POETRY READING BY
MAUREEN HURLEY (USA)
co-editor
concept: Charles McGeehan

Monday, 02 July1[996. 22. 00 hours
&
HERB WHARTON (AUSTRALIA)
a prominent Aboriginal writer, essayist and poet

"One of the most important Black texts..a creative work of
significance... enthralling "
(Mudrooroo about ’Unbranded', a novel published in 1992)

"Herb Wharton - a voice and presence in Australia "
{Seamus Heaney about 'Cattle Camp ', a novel published in 1993)

concept: Scott Rollins

OPEN POETRY WINSTON KINGDOM
EVERY MONDAY 22.00 HOURS
THE MEETING POINT FOR STREAMS & CURRENTS
IN INTERNATIONAL POETRY

open microphone + free entry
Warmoesstraat 127
Amsterdam

Waldo Rojas-Serrano (drawing)

Bert Schierbeek Memorial

As you die
you meet the light
of before creation

—Bert Schierbeek

Where to begin, at the beginning with a commemorative book to Bert Schierbeek. In the beginning was light, at the crematorium, the poets of the world paid homage to the fallen hero. We, the tribe, were 500 poets strong, but down one poet, we were 499 poets, we were both deluded and undiluted by light. Bert would've liked that pun.

Charles McGeehan, and I stood with the Dutch poets, wild-maned Jan Wolkers, a painter, Willem van Toorn and Simon Vinkenoog. I was well-sandwitched between corpulent Belgian poet, Hugo Claus, and Martin Mooij, who founded Poetry International in 1970.

Festival director, Martin Mooij, had invited Herman Berlandt and I to Poetry International. Herman founded Mother Earth Journal,; Uniting the world Through Poetry, an offshoot of San Francisco's National Poetry Week festival, which he also founded. (No, not Emma Goldman's anarchist rag, but the poems themselves are anarchists, focusing on the current political and ecological global crisis we're in.)

A musician played Route 66 on the trombone, it was a Beat poet homage moment. A woman placed poems on his coffin. We paraded past Bert one last time, someone left roses, we left a copy of Mother Earth Journal with Bert's poems in it. Bert was very supportive of our journal. When the crematorium doors opened, the furnaces roared like lions. We sent Bert, liberated from life, into the flames, the furnaces roared with joy.

We sent Bert off with words that burned like the stars; his coffin was a fiery arc in search of a new art form. We blanketed it with flowers and poems to offer Bert safe passage in order to meet the light that was born before creation. 

As we wept, Remco Campert read a final poem to Bert:

BERT 

So fragile
his legs
in his trousers
his chest
in his shirt
his hands bruised
from the work
of death
yet suddenly
a glimpse of a wink
never say die
let somebody else
say it
not Schierbeek.

     —(tr. Linde Voûte)

So much as happened in the past 24 hours, I hardly know where to begin. I did not expect to step off the plane to attend a funeral in Amsterdam. Joke (Yoka) Gerritsen of Poetry International told us last night during dinner. Schierbeek, a co-founder of the COBRA movement, died on June 9, right before the festival began. I knew Bert was sick—our host, Charles McGeehan had told us, but we fully expected to see him again. Upright.

Charles McGeehan, is Bert's brother-in-law, and translator; Charles' ex-wife was the sister of Bert's second wife, Margrait, who was killed in a car crash. Charles met us at Station Central, and we drove to the funeral.

I've met so many interesting people –Maija (I don't know her last name), whose brother is a famous actor, and whose father was a famous painter, I liked her so much on sight, I was sure she was both an artist and actor, but she has a studio for photographers, she is a makeup artist. Her art is other people's faces. She lives in Amsterdam, we will visit later, she said.

The reception was at the De Bezige Bij (Busy Bee) publishers. Poet and prolific columnist who writes for a daily newspaper, de Volkskrant, Rutger Copeland said he kept looking at me all through the service, trying to place me. I'm flattered that he was trying to figure out who I was. He probably saw me at Poetry International during previous years. Rutger was one of the famous Dutch poets my friend, and translator, Vins van Neerven, had told me about. 

Dutch poet Judith Herzog, who is a bit of a recluse was there (on previous visits, Vins wanted me to meet her but she kept brushing me off), along with Remco Campert, and one of the grand old Dutch poets, Dutch-American poet and doctor, Leo Vroman, and Toon Telegen—so many faces from Poetry International, on such a sad occasion. At the death of a poet, and such a beloved one.

I met the wife of the vice president of De Bezige Bij publishers, she was interested in our Mother Earth poetry project at, and the children's work I do. I will send her my Dutch translations of This Body is to Ask, perhaps I'll get it republished after all. 

The Holland connections are strong. I've had more cultural stimulation in 24 hours than I've had in the past two years in California.

Sipho Sepala was very pleased to get our magazine. He wanted an entire collector's set, he kept saying, I will learn much from these. Thank you. Thank you while hugging me. And so from one poet to another, the tradition of samizdat is alive and well.

Last night, Leo Vroman and I talked about the nature of physics poetry and the need for accuracy. Leo is a biochemist and hematology researcher, as well as an artist. Hematologists know of him because of a discovery named after him, called the Vroman Effect, which has to do with the attraction of blood proteins, he explained.

Leo was my dinner partner. We shared drawings. Herman and I were suffering from severe jet lag, as were American poet Barbara Goldberg, a translator, and Israeli poet, Moshe Dor from Tel Aviv. We were all practically sleeping on our dinner plates, so I drew in my journal in order to keep awake. Leo joined me.

We all went walking after dinner along the canals looking at the lights reflected thinking of Bert Schierbeek, thinking of how we let him go into the light, into the darkness and into the light. Welcome to Holland.

13 June 1996 Rotterdam, Poetry International
Quite a star-studded event.

See my article:
Poetry International AUDACIOUS TONGUES: THE HEART OF TRANSLATION

rev. from journal notes 11/2/2015

Writing the Arc

My neighbor, Sonny is adrift in a hostile sea. I've not been to bed this night, I heard him come home long after the bars have closed. He's probably sipping peach schnapps from the bottle. He may be one of the best mouth harp musicians around, but the blues have got him in a headlock, and the only way out is down and out.

I had hardly graced the covers the night before, but sleep Insists upon its due. But I resist, wanting the fullest experience I can muster. I write long past the midnight oil hour.

And I rejoice in the fact that the words come unbidden – after so long, a silence, my art was weighing me down. The piece is finally done, but I worked on it some more, and I'm pleased with much of it.

It's an odd admixture of science, the flood, and the personal essay (love gone wrong), in the form of short prose poems: Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year. Every time I think I'm done with it, it comes back and insists upon another piece. Its had me in a headlock for six months, now.

I turned in a previous iteration of the manuscript to Jane Love for the Copperfield's Literary Magazine, along with some india ink artwork. This is the first official letting go, turning the manuscript loose. It's also the beginning of healing. I do feel vindicated, and relieved to receive the gift of such a powerful piece of writing—that came from a relationship that went so terribly wrong.

They say writing is the best revenge, indeed. Maybe writing the Arc saved me. But I miss Nathan, Sonny's young son. We healed each other, and the broken father was jealous of our uncomplicated love.

June 13, 1996

Somewhere over Greenland

We fly from the night, the earth's shadow is like a visor sequined with stars. Venus and sunset lingering in the west until west becomes north, and north becomes east, and the indigo crest of night escapes to the south. We are flying north towards the light, Venus on the penumbra, a watchful eye of God.

The land gives way to ice flows as we crossed the polar sea, ice packs like rotifers in a pond soup, the echo of indigo back from the sky, circles each ice flow like a wedding ring, the marriage of sky and sea. Floating islands. No anchor.

Crossing the pool, I realize I'm in the land of the midnight sun, the colors astound the eye: vermilion on maroon, and something darker than dried blood.

That place in the sky were light and dark intersect, particle or wave? A subdued rainbow, magenta and lavender hue painted on the mountains, a pale infinity without definition of time or form.

Polar ice is loosened from the matrix. Rosiated dawn, a blushing lace gown. I keep thinking of all the time zones we've crossed, our plane is an arrow dividing light and  time. 

Land again. Was that Baffin Island? We are in the land of eternal snow, crusted slabs of granite in a swirling sea of ice.

From the air, Tahoe was a skullcup of indigo wine held up to the thirsty sky, Mono Lake in a granite goblet. The earth falling away on all sides, as if by surprise.

I was just in Grand Rapids in September, I recognized it from the air, and though the approach was new, my eyes were hungry for the details of geography, dendritic patterns, the seasonal lakes alive again after decades of thirst.

We are in the air hurtling towards dawn at 33,000 feet, at 615 mph or is it kilometers per hour? Flying half the speed of the earth's rotation, the icy sea dissolves into clouds, and the repeated patterns delight the eye. 

I don't know where we are, but now the sea is free of ice flows, small icebergs, like fishing boats, or castles, are headed south for the summer, headed forward toward their own demise. 

June 12 - 13th 1996, midair over the polar circle headed towards Amsterdam.

Going away BBQ

I decided to throw a barbecue of sorts as my going away present to Steve and George. I started out by having dinner with Steve, and George. Then Paul came home and joined us, and Mark (who is Mark?) joined us too. Only Alastair and Sonny were missing from the home gang. Then Trygve pulled up on his motorcycle. Wow. Full house. Yeah, I liked the odds. I was holding court with five men, and Edwin had called today. My planets must be in lust.

Trygve and I went for a bike ride to the vineyards at Mark West Creek. Piper Sonoma, or Mark West Vineyards, some of those grapes go to DeLoach as well. Anyway, it was a chardonnay field. We parked the bike, after having ditched the helmets, we were riding free among the vines. Delicious chill of summer night against my skin. Here I am at 43 and a half, riding through the vineyards in the dark without helmet, without headlights, on a vintage Triumph, and having naughty bits.

Trygve dropped me off at the doorstep and I went over to visit Steve. I'd had a bit of wine. Wild Hog Pinot Noir and Foxhollow Cabernet, both good 1991 vintages. The Wild Hog was a light wine, with the Foxhollow being a robust fruity wine. It was one of those wonderful gossipy summer nights that makes California a special place to live.

I am no man's woman, and so I enjoy them all on one level or another, getting what I need from each man, not flirting, not acting coy, just being exactly who I am. No games no pretense. On my terms.

Then, on June 12 I'm off to Amsterdam.

Dream: Waldo Rojas

I never did write down that dream of the businessman type lover who inhabits my dreams as of late. I don't know who he is. But I remember his face so clearly. He's a bit pudgy with glasses, a short man in a suit, in his mid 50s. An unlikely lover body type, but I love him unreservedly and I have loved him before. 

I think the dream man was Chilean poet Waldo Rojas Serrano, whom I would later meet that summer, on the solstice, at Poetry International, and we would both "recognize" each other. A strange Celtic thing, but then, he's an O'Brien.

Goodbye for now (Edwin)

Thursday Edwin called to say goodbye, leveling with me, the inner knowledge that he struggling with these past two years, is that he's in the lower depths, striving to be reborn. He knows he's broken, and needs to heal. 

We covered a lot of ground and a half an hour. He was being utterly honest and open with me, saying things that needed to be said 15 years ago. And for the first time, he knew why I had left him, and acknowledged that he slid from woman to woman to woman, never really knowing what love was, and of his terrible need to hold on. 

He wasn't telling me to wait for him, he was saying, I'm not home, and I am unable to love at this point in time. I told him why I had left him, because he didn't believe me, he didn't love me per se. I was merely another pawn on the chessboard filed under the label of woman. 

I knew we were in trouble when I had found out that he hadn't taken time out to grieve for the death of his stillborn child at the end of his previous relationship, before coming to me. It was as if he had read my observations, and was reciting them backwards from my notebooks verbatim. Better now than never.

Closure on the chapter of my life. It sounded suspiciously like we were trading vows on a potential future. I said what I wanted in a relationship, and that I didn't want to live alone, but I wanted my alone time to be broody, and to produce art.

He had a hard time being so honest and not to make promises. He said he wasn't ready and he had to do it alone, for a change. He's the Knight rescuer type, saving damsels in distress. Only I don't need any rescuing. 

I asked him if he was afraid of my rage, and he said, A little. It's been a long time since I've used it as if it were a tool. We talked about art in the process of manifesting will, his extraordinary will and mine too, acknowledging each other's strengths and faults, as it were. We bared ourselves to ourselves.

He said, I'm very fond of you, several times. He praises my strength, my will, and the life I've made for myself, even through all those silent years, those 12 years. 

He brought up the lavender letter that I had sent to him in England in 1987 or was it '88? When I was still with John Oliver Simon, saying I had some regrets, his marriage bearing fruit years later. 

He said he had to do it alone, that he couldn't use women as he had in the past. He said he definitely wanted to continue to see me, to take hikes, to go to dinner etc., to keep me in his life. Though under what capacity, is unclear. No rush, no pressure.

I'd asked him if he'd bring me home on July 31 when I return from Holland, but it's the same day he sends his girls back to Tucson. He wants me to meet them. He said the last girlfriend didn't like children.

He came to me defenseless, a broken man. The towering ego trampled into the ground and I saw what I loved in him 15 years ago. And in my empathy, I wanted to draw him closer. Yet instead of pushing him away like damaged goods, like I did before. 

The auto wreck he had the last time he came to visit, a symbol of what his life had become. It said: warning damaged goods. He was still sliding from one relationship to another, with no breathings space in between, and I kept thinking how wrong it was, and I was at the other end of the spectrum. Why did I need to take so much time to heal, when it seems no one else did. We were two extremes of the same coin.

Stood Up

As it turned out, Edwin Drummond stood me up once again, first at the wedding and then again last weekend. He called last week to say he'd be up, and would I like a visit? I told him that I was beginning to feel badly, this was the third time he had canceled out on me. With no phone call, nor apology. 

Well, he did finally come Friday night, fourth time's a charm? We had a late supper and then he told me a tale of marital discord. His divorce was affecting all walks of his life. 

His ex-wife Leah's father had assaulted him last year when he came to pick up his two daughters who were nine and 5 1/2 years of age, hitting him on the side of the head with the bicycle tire and rim and the upshot was, he nearly died from head injury complications, and is now embroiled in a legal suit. He lost his job teaching at a private school and now has and enormous hospital bill to pay off. 

The girls' grandfather is an ex-CIA Republican from Arizona, so Edwin is facing a tough opponent. He is trying to block Edwin from seeing his own children. This strife has taken an enormous toll on Edwin, both physically and emotionally.

I could see that Edwin was depressed, as that was the only way I could explain away his odd behavior, and not calling me. Or wanting to see me. Then the no-shows. I too, get that way myself. Pull my snail horns in.

But I told him it made me feel badly, that I was beginning to take it personally. He promised it would never happen again. Turns out he thought I had his number and where he would be staying at Steve's in Berkeley, and he thought I would give him a call if I was really into seeing him. I said, But I don't have your phone number. In a situation like that I would never call. 

Steve's wedding was different I knew and liked Steve and Carol, and I would've loved to have been there. He said the wedding made him so depressed, harkening back to his own failed marriage, conjuring up too many painful memories. 

Like I said, I had already put two into together and it did not equate Prozac. I knew the symptoms. And when I reached him via phone a week after the wedding, his voice was dead flat. He abruptly said, Can I call you back later? And hung up before I could answer. Some serious warning signs there, but I have a compassion for him, and I'm touched knowing that I'm still within his thoughts, as a relationship from the past to salvage. 

In other words, I suspect that he never really fully got over my breaking it off 12 years ago. But I was being smothered. It was in 1982, I think, when we first met. I was still in love with Lee Perron, and even though we long since broken up, I still carried the torch for Lee, because I had a boyfriend, Lee and I became closer. Lee considered himself safe. Ironically. I don't think I loved any man the way I loved Lee, but he couldn't handle it.

When we broke it off, Edwin got vindictive and began to show up at Garbo's Open Mic in Guerneville, though he lived in San Francisco, just to read spiteful poems about me to publicly humiliate me. I, who had done nothing wrong, or dishonorable, was mortified. Lee took me in his arms, cradling me from the wrath of this man who claimed to have loved me, who wanted to marry me, then shamed me, thus driving me away from him forever, or, so I thought. 

Then in 1993, we found ourselves working on a project, writing grants. Climb for world peace in the Bay Area. We targeted three peaks, Mt. Diablo, Mt Tam, and Mt. St. Helena, for a simultaneous climb, linking them with laser beams, and transmitting poetry readings via cellphones and Mac laptops. The climbing teams were behind it. We were way ahead of the times, both conceptually and technologically, but there wasn't that kind of support from funders. The recession didn't help either.

We spent quite some time together working on the grant, but I was chilly and distant, and sexually I wanted nothing to do with him. He complied with my wishes, commenting that we were like an old married couple, sleeping together, barely touching.

I thought of my anger towards him. Ten years is a long time to hold a grudge. I was angry with him for something more fundamental than him running off into the arms of one woman to another, both before me, and after me (Leah), and after Leah, without taking any time to center himself. They were the symptoms. Ironic for a world class rock climber to be so emotionally off-center.

This time Edwin came to me armed with nothing more than hope, his arms were full of fruit, bread, chocolate, flowers, and wine. I'd forgotten about his excessively generous side. Does he give because he's empty?

This time I could sense there weren't the warm sheets of yet another cast-off relationship trailing about him. And when we did finally make love, it was an admixture of familiar and new, the body remembers quite well and so it wasn't fraught with the discomfort of the new and novel. Yes, everything still worked, though he's around 50, he's never had any trouble in that department. But when he was 36, we had to be cautious as he was long. Something that my friend Boschka took rapacious delight in.

There was lots of catching up to do. He confessed that had a relationship right after his last visit with me, how could I tell? I knew that if I had turned him away, he would just seek another woman. Heat seeking missile. Well, she didn't like children, and it fell apart. 

He hadn't been with a woman in quite some time, and without my asking, I could sense it. We shared our AIDS test information (the new sexual passport) after we had made love, but we trusted each other enough to know that it was okay. I said I had barely been with anyone since my father had died in 1994, a few isolated skirmishes with Jim Byrd, with very long intervals in between. And a visit from Sean Kilty and a couple of visits from Trygve.

Trygve, out of the blue, pulled up on his motorcycle an hour before Edwin was supposed to arrive. I knew Edwin would be late. Trygve threw me down on the unmade bed as I was trying to clean the cabin. I must be putting out pheromones. Or starring in a porn movie.

Trygve said he was going to hang around and bad vibe Edwin. I was feeling a bit frantic by then and shrieked, You have no rights! And he said, I hope he doesn't come back for two or three more years. It really was quite funny. Trygve finally leaves on his motorcycle. 

As I run past George to take a quick shower, he snickers, and asks, The wrong one? I laugh at my escapades and how it must look on the outside—it's either all or nothing. 

In today's mail, a card arrives Rousseau's Tiger.
My teeth are chattering, the storm is frightening.
Renewing, thank you, dear friend.
I am yours too in the storm and in the aftermath.
Love always, Edwin

It was mailed yesterday from Oakland. Is he still here? Do I call saying I'm feeling a bit peckish?

One funny moment was when I leapt onto the bed, saying, Good bed, strong bed, then realized that he had made that very bed for me. He had made my bed and I had been lying in it ever since. Yikes! Is there some still some mysterious homing pigeon link? 

My common sense warns me to beware – he seems to ignite catastrophe, or at least he's living in the middle of hell, and has been for quite some time. I don't know the extent of his depression, whether it's long-term, or chronic. 

At least he's gotten his immigration papers in order. Last time he was afraid of being deported back to the council flats of North Wolverhampton. And now he's in debt. On the other hand, he's a real survivor, tenaciously clings to his daughters, despite tremendous odds. 

He's a generous man, and a good provider. As he was leaving, he clung to me and I whispered words of comfort to him, telling him to cling to the islands of happiness and joy, to expand them, to make them grow. He knew I had been there, in the depths of depression with my parents deaths, and that I too had to pull myself out of hell. I told him no one but himself could help him out of that darkness. He wept and my compassion becomes a temporary island of refuge. 

Wherever you are, Edwin, I wish you well. Godspeed.

Journal entry, 5/29-6/12/96 bbq long v.

5/29 my high school classmate, and sometimes boyfriend, Trygve Tryggestad came over on the 19th and we went for a long motorcycle ride on Willow Road, a dirt road that connects Coleman Valley Road to Highway 116 at Bridgeport, near the river mouth. It's a special secret road that I haven't been on in years.

I figured Trygve wouldn't show up again because I freaked him out last time wanting more than this mutual masturbation thing. And he so afraid of AIDS, so he says or is it also his way of non-commitment? Your Honor, I’m innocent, I didn't actually fuck her. Then, there’s the girlfriend.

I figure I wasn't all that interested in sex, but on a sunlit hillside meadow far from civilization, shades of spring, it seemed the right thing to do to roll in the grass. Hooray hooray, it’s 1 May. Outdoor sex begins today. We had a good day but I needed to work, and didn't succeed. I was so tired.

We went out to Goat Rock and Bodega Head. Each smell was sharp like a door opening into another world. New mown grass, fresh cow plops, amorous skunks, apple orchard in bloom, the odor after rain. Petrichor. One is so much closer to nature on a motorcycle. As we traversed the ditches and potholes, I realized it was somewhat like riding a horse, something that I missed terribly.

5/29 fragment from the Edwin Drummond piece, Stood Up

Trygve, out of the blue, came over an hour before Edwin was supposed to arrive, but I knew Edwin would be late. Trygve threw me down on the unmade bed as I was trying to clean the cabin for Edwin's arrival.

I was a little slow getting started and finished. Anyway Trygve got off quickly and there there are some advantages to walking off, but he thinks he needs me to get off too. Because I excite him when I touch myself. I must be putting out pheromones. Or starring in a porn movie. I was so horny in the morning I already got myself off. I, who can go for weeks and months on end without any interest whatsoever. Scary.

I am the wanton woman. I was too freaked to come again, and Trygve was laying around with his pants lost somewhere in the rubble of clean laundry, telling me how he much loved me. Yeah, lust wears many hats.

And when I said an old boyfriend was coming to visit, he wormed it out of me, he started saying he was going to hang around and bad vibe him. And I was feeling a bit frantic by then and I shrieked, You have no rights! And he said, I hope he doesn't come back for two or three more years, when I told Tryg the last time I had seen Edwin. It really was quite funny. Trygve finally leaves on his motorcycle. I needed a drink.

I barrel out of the cabin. My neighbor George snickers, and asks, The wrong one? as I run past him to take a quick shower. I laugh at my escapades and how it must look on the outside it's either all or nothing. 

6/4 I decided to throw a barbecue of sorts for as a going away present, as it were, to Steve and George. I will really miss these guys. I started out by having dinner with Steve, and George, then Paul came home and joined us, and Mark? joined us too. Then Trygve pulled up on his motorcycle. Wow. Full house. Yeah, I liked the odds. I was holding court with five men, and Edwin had called today. My planets must be in lust.

Trygve and I went for a bike ride to the vineyards at Mark West Creek. Piper Sonoma, or Mark West Vineyards, some of those grapes go to DeLoach as well. Anyway, it was a chardonnay field. We parked the bike and after having ditched the helmets, we were riding free and crawling among the vines. Delicious chill of summer nights against my skin. Trygve taking my breasts in his mouth, the hard green fruit on the vine like tiny nipples, with the promise of what was to come. 

Somehow, outside I don't mind this no muss no fuss, zip up and we're ready to truck. Here I am at 43 and a half, riding through the vineyards in the dark without a bra or knickers, sans helmet, without headlights on a vintage Triumph, and having naughty bits. 

Trygve dropped me off at the doorstep and I went over to visit Steve. I'd had a bit of wine. Wild Hog Pinot Noir and Foxhollow Cabernet, both 1991 vintages. The Wild Hog was a light wine, with the Foxhollow being a robust fruity wine. It was one of those wonderful gossipy summer nights that makes California a special place to live. 

I am no man's woman, and so I enjoy them all on one level or another, getting what I need from each man, not flirting, not acting coy, just being exactly who I am. No games no pretense.

June 12 I'm off to Amsterdam. A new adventure awaits.

An Uneasy Truce: family

My publisher asked if I loved life, for he was held at gunpoint, & he questioned where all that passion came from. I’m not sure which passion he was referring to, living, or the taking of a life. The question came on the eve of my uncle Bill’s death, his funeral was on the day I left for Russia, I didn’t cancel my tickets, I wrongly assumed I was exempt from grief because he was an enemy. He once tried to sell my grandmother's house and land behind her back “for her own good” because she was “getting on, and I was growing up too wild.” 

My uncle Bill made her cry, bullying her with that first-born energy. My grandmother was a strong woman but a son is next to God in an Irish family. In a white-hot rage, I attacked my uncle, pummeling him with my small fists, a skinny 12-year-old who once wanted him dead. I felt nothing when I heard the news of his lung cancer. Now he’s dead, and I was surprised to find myself in a fog, suffering from grief because I discovered that blood is indeed like the cliché—thicker than reason or emotion—no matter how disfunctional the family. I will learn this lesson again when my parents die.

I’ve never been held at gunpoint, other than at a roadblock deep in the Guatemalan jungle—with no witnesses. Does that count? We were lucky to escape with our lives. I have never been held at gunpoint, but I watched the campesinos sleep with studied indifference as the soldiers practiced kickboxing with Uzis slung over their shoulders. I did count how many. 

Back home in the safety of America, I will have nightmares about snipers. In Peru, we came upon the body of a lawyer dumped in front of the Chorillos tunnel in Lima—his crime, he was a brilliant lawyer for the other side. I cannot shake the larger images of war from my mind, it wasn't my own life I was worried about, but the perpetual genocides committed by both factions in the name of liberty—for whom?

I am the grand-daughter of a revolutionary but I keep an uneasy truce with those roots. My grandfather, while working for the San Francisco city jail, shipped suitcases of guns to Ireland during the Rebellion, he knew Parnell and the executed Liam Mellows first hand. We have photos of him and Mellows in the field below our house in Forest Knolls. Did he know Michael Collins? Probably. My mother’s cousin is named after him.

My grandfather and my grand-uncles met in safe basements, filed serial numbers off the guns confiscated by the police force, and shipped them to a contact in New York. To Liverpool, and then onto Cork. A grand-uncle missed one serial number in the muzzle, and the shipment was traced back to my grandfather. When the feds tried to intimidate my grandfather into a confession, he said, just try and prove it, for he knew his law. Some vow there will never be peace in Ireland until the fifth field is no longer in British bondage. My aunt Jane helped airlift Irish kids out of Belfast so they could experience a normal life, if only for a summer.

My grandfather was a thorn in the side of the English. When the Germans fought the British in WW1, he was an acting German Consulate for San Francisco. We don’t know the details, he was a closed-mouthed man. When India struggled for independence, he was involved. When Indians were not allowed to own land, bought Fresno farmlands for them. 

A grateful Jahn Singh (Singh means lion) sent us crates of oranges and raisins every Christmas. My grandfather must’ve sent guns to India too. I came across an engraved invitation from the Indian Consulate dated 1945, inviting my family to the Independence celebration in San Francisco. A thank you letter from (James) Seamus Mooney, an infamous political prisoner of the ’30s who was held responsible for the death of a longshoreman during a union riot (I was surprised to hear a lawyer, speaking of ethics, refer back to the Mooney case). 

My grandfather took the city on, suing them and winning the landmark case (he was his own lawyer, having “read” the law, the Bar didn’t exist) when they discriminated against him, passing him up for promotion to High Sherriff in favor of someone else. My family emigrated to America after the Famine, so, we know no other passion, other than to survive.

My second cousin, a mathematician, was whisked off right out of high school to Chicago, to White Oak, Tennesee, to Alamagordo, then to a PO Box address in New Mexico. When she died of cancer, the story came out.  They said Manhattan Project. Fermi Institute. In Santa Fe, I stood at the bridge where the Rosenbergs were captured, and shivered in the sunlight, Born during this age of Light, I have no choice but to weave the stories. Nor could I stop crying at Los Alamos—what we've done in the name of an idea. Remember the Bay of Pigs? The scars go deep, and I cannot stop writing about it. Bearing witness—it is this writing I cannot get published because it's too dark.

Yes, I am uneasy about the new Russia, as I am about the new Latin America. Now that we've had our cake, we (who really do see the other side of the coin) have the audacity to tell them they can't have it—when we've set up the wish list of ultimate attainment to begin with. I know we can't convince the Olegs of the world—they are incapable of seeing out of the trench of their miserable lives, and there's something in the Slavic character, that will continue to hold them there—the root word “slave” speaks volumes and needs no interpretation. 

 

What traits I admired in Oleg while we were in the Ukraine quickly evaporated on American soil. Oleg's limited vision and inability to look inward for root causes is a microcosm of the whole; have we deluded ourselves into thinking that the ideals of communism (vs. anti-capitalism) or another system could overcome some basic human traits? He seem to think America owed him something, he could sit back and take life easy.

No matter the country, it's the same old story—war between the sexes, only I'm no one's footstool. I love life because I love my art—and every man seems to want that space for himself. And having been the victim of men's desire, I know first-hand of death, having nearly died because of the babies I gave back. I was the product of a divorce; I saw my mother go crazy (and the suicide attempts that followed), an aunt and drunken husband & co. where violence and poverty was second nature to breathing—to know better than to leave myself at the mercy of society as a single mother. I've been the psych wards from the inside and have no intention of becoming an inmate.

I love life because I know how easy it is to abdicate—the way my 17-year-old cousin did at 4 a.m. in downtown Santa Rosa on a Harley at full throttle. Maybe drugs were involved. I don't know. But when he died , I was there with him in my dreams—and I never wanted to wake up to hear the news. I dreamed the darkness, the fog, and the red light of my cousin's death—only we're not supposed to remember these things during our waking hours. My mother banging on the door to wake me with the news, but I refused to waken, because waking was worse than the nightmare. There are things I tell no one, but it comes out in my poetry; sometimes I worry about there being too much death in my work, but I am a witness.

Perhaps that’s why I teach poetry in the schools. I search for the bright ones—and despair when whole classes show nary a shining star. I sometimes wonder why I bother, the work is so exausting, but ultimately I have faith. The brilliant gift of a 2nd grader, Trevor Yeats (great-grand-nephew to William Butler Yeats) sustains me:

This body is to ask
this question of the mind:
Is the sun to shine on the day of my death?
Is the hole in the universe to stay as big?
Tell me, tell me, where is the answer?

Where is the answer to lie in today’s hands?
This is the breath, to breathe this air.

Trevor Yeats
2nd grade,
Higham Family School
Santa Rosa, Ca

© 1996 revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Up a hill, and down a mountain

I've consumed more than a half bottle of Gamay Beausoleil, I mean Beaujolais, a light 1994 Forestville wine, while watching Two Englishmen Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain. How Celtic, adding 20 feet to the summit of a hill to turn it into a mountain for the geodetic record. Stature matters. The village is in cahoots, and collusion is a Celtic artifact. Colm Meaney is playing Morgan the Welshman. It takes an Irishman to play a Welshman? I'm reminded that I am Welsh on my maternal side, what the Walsh name signifies, does that make me Welsh, or Irish? 

5/13