Bishop to Mono Lake (photos)

Leaving Bishop for Mammoth Lakes, beautiful weather.


Mammoth Mountain, storm brewing

Hot Creek

Mono Lake, alkali duststorm, Earth Day, 4/22/2016. That's a very late season snowstorm blowing in as well. We tried to outrun the storm from Mammoth to Reno, we managed to make it over seven passes above 7000 feet, but go caught at Donner Pass. All the other passes, including Hwy 89, which was open in the morning, were closed.


Mother of all storms brewing over Mammoth Lakes


So we headed for Donner Summit, and got caught. A foot of snow fell. we made off-color jokes about potlucks, and bought very expensive snow cables to get over the pass. We also had a slow leak on the rear tire that made it even more exciting....we made it home on a bum rim, running from air pump to air pump across I-80. Flat tire in the morning. I managed to pump up the tire with a bicycle pump.

AT KEOUGH HOT SPRINGS

Eva's cat fell in love with my stewed toes,
and she polished them, every one.
Then euphorically drooled and rubbed them
like long lost kin, with head upside-down,
purring for all she was worth.
I was a stranger. And no, my feet
weren't overripe, we had soaked
at Keough Hot Springs all afternoon.
I never had such an ardent fan as that cat.
Maybe it was something I said.
The timbre of voices as we read aloud.
Or maybe it was that batch
of Billy Collins inspired poems
fresh out of the proverbial oven
that Eva was reading from.

4/21/2016

395 to Bishop

April 18, Poolside at the Nugget after a long weekend at the Highland Games, virus took its toll. Still knackered.
April 19, slept the entire day. Full body slam. Think the virus caught up with me full force.
April 20, better today, still shaky. Ugh.
April 21, Still feeling wonky, ambled around Bishop like a new laid egg (after the sweats had their way with me, others seem to have this virus too. It mimics hay fever. But it's a sneaky lying bastard). Stepped outside and was gobsmacked by beauty. Twice beauty, mountain ranges on either side. I sat and simply drooled over the mountains. In a muddle in the middle of it all. The road beckons.

Alabama Hills

Windblown in the Alabama Hills at sunset. I'm still pretty sick from a nasty virus, first day up & about. Determined, I am. More like two sheets to the wind. Bawdy betrayal. I'm too sick to fight the camera. Surrender,

The Alabama Hills are the tip of a very steep vertical escarpment, probably flipped on end from an earthquake; the Owens Valley is filled with about 10,000' of rubble. The weird rocks are 82- to 85-million-year-old biotite monzogranite. Got that? Good.

We're on Movie Flat Road. Dozens of old TV Westerns were filmed here, including Hopalong Cassidy, The Gene Autry Show, The Lone Ranger, Riders of the Purple Sage, and Bonanza. You can hear the Bonanza soundtrack in your head when you drive down the road. Hoss at the wagon yelling, hyahhh! to the horses.

Some 150 movies including bits of How the West Was Won, The Walking Hills, Yellow Sky, Springfield Rifle, The Violent Men, Maverick, Gladiator, and Bad Day at Black Rock were filmed here too. That scene of the Khyber Pass in the 1939 epic Gunga Din, was really set in the Alabama Hills, ditto The Lives of a Bengal Lancer,

My friend, Mark Adler said he and his friend John Rosenberg visited the Alabama Hills a few years back. His father, Frank Rosenberg, produced "King of the Khyber Rifles, also shot there. So crazy how this place has become, through the movies, a pop culture icon. But it's also its Own Place."

There's a reason the Alabama Hills seem so familiar. You've been seeing them all your life. The ultimate alien background. The last frontier. The Alabama Hills, named after the Civil war ship, the CSS Alabama, was once home to the Paiute, the native names are lost.


Location Filming in the Alabama Hills
Amazon

Whitney Portal

Whitney Portal 7,851'. Hard to believe I once hiked up to the top of Mt. Whitney. My knees would strenuously object. The 99 switchbacks will live on in infamy. The trail crest is about 22 miles, roundtrip. My boyfriend and I clocked in at 27 miles after hiking to the Sierra hut, and around the perimeter. There was a permanent iceberg inside the hut. Elevation: 14,505′ (it's gained some elevation since the 1980s. It used to be 14,495".) It's still growing whereas I'm shrinking in height.

Today is John's birthday. Old habits die hard, my old backpack lock is still set to that date... I said hello to Mt. Whitney for him. I can't believe we actually climbed that mountain. Yeah, another 30 turns around the sun. 

The Whitney Portal road was used in "High Sierra (1941), with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino, and The Long, Long Trailer (1954) with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz." I think The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was filmed here too. I like to think of Bogie on the flank of the mountain.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Whitney_Trail

SENTINELS

She stood by the fence gate
a sentinel to another world
a window to the past
but she was blind to the present
her imagination stronger
than the moment.

I am topaz, I am gold
I am the hidden lucre
made of iron and meteorite.

A galaxy of stars
the Milky Way
planets & meteors

Garnet is blood is meat is carnelian is death is stars

Obsidian darkness
the hunter
cave painting and story
The ruby thought
the mind's horizon
travelling homeward.

4/19.2016
CPITS freewrites from Cleveland ES
chain poems and minerals

Good Deed for the Day

Enroute to the Golden Nugget parking lot, at the crack of dawn, I saw something hopping along the gutter, thinking it was a young rat, I braced myself. After all we were in the underbelly of the world, in Las Vegas. But it was too round. A fledgling sparrow had fallen from a palm tree, and was confounded by the height of curb. And so he hopped along it, seeking safe passage. So I scooped him up and stuck him in the shrubbery, not wanting to babysit him, as we were off to Floyd Lamb State Park for the Highland Games. He practiced with his new wings, finding his way. Each attempt a little better than the last. His parents circling him, offering encouragement.

Me & My Willy's Jeep, Tecopa Hot Springs, Spanish Trail

Tecopa, CA. No engine, no crankshaft, but hey, the wooden truckbed's intact. You can look under mah hood.

The U-We Wash steamie, or laundromat at Tecopa Hot Springs. As far as I can tell, Tecopa, named after a Paiute chief, (formerly Brownsville), an outpost of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, was never that big to warrant so many washing machines. Must be where old washing machines go to die, all that free hot running water. That's a freak spring snowstorm moving in, BTW.

Sadly, since the last time we were at the hot springs (see post below), vandals stomped their names on the fragile calcite dunes of the archaic lake bed of Tecopa (far right). It will take a lifetime to obliterate that graffiti.

See my story from last year's dip in TECOPA HOT SPRINGS  or what's left of the bitter Amargosa River (once called Saleratus Creek); Grimshaw Lake is but a puddle remnant of the once vast Pleistocene Lake Tecopa.

"The spring is on the left of the road, and flows into Saleratus Creek. Animals must not be allowed to drink the Saleratus water. —The Prairie Traveler

Old Spanish Trail: Descending from Emigrant Pass to Pahrump Valley. I think that's a spur of the Nopah Range. Not sure. It could be an isolate, Kingston Peak, to the south. Pah means water in Paiute. So all those Pah- placenames signify water: Tonopah, Tecopa, Pahrump, Nopah. In fact, the Spring Mountains are loaded with water. There are trilobite fossils embedded in the shale rocks at Emigrant Pass.

 Extra large weather greeted us as we descended into Pahrump Valley, Nevada, outracing the storm. Spring snow in the desert was the last thing we were expecting. Ever the fandancers, the isolated sky islands of the Spring Mountains and Nevada's highest mountain, Mt Charleston were slipping into fetching snowy lace négligées—only we couldn't see them.

TAXES

Doing my taxes
TS Eliott was right
Let it all arise

and wash over you
and roll through you‚ tide of grief
has its surcease.

I grow old, I grow
older yet, and deeper in debt
wearing cuffed trousers.


4/14/2016

AN OCCASIONAL POEM FOR MYLES THE CAT

    

          photo by Neil Astley

—for Neil Astley, and the cats of Sheep Cottage
          ekphrastic poem after a photo by Neil Astley

Portrait of a young tabby
with puzzled white markings
nestled in an old birdhouse, 
slaked with lichen and moss,
amid catkins, pussywillows.
First forsythia bursts into bloom, 
remnants of an abandoned garden.
Church bells knelling for mass, 
and in a far field, a wether works 
the green distance down to earth
while a homeward pair of bluebirds
circle the cat—an aureole of light.

4/12/2016

TENEMENT LIVING

On the balcony, an angry toddler
alternately screams or forlornly sobs,
begging his parents to let him back in.
All that pent-up rage waiting to grow up.

4/12/2016

To clean the floor

Desperate for a bath, aching from a virus, or old wounds, I dragged a trash can into the shower, cleaned and filled it with hot water, and slid in, fetal position. Ah, heaven. A long soak, up to my neck in hot water—in more ways than one. I couldn't get out. The suction and the slanted walls held me close as a burial urn. I was home alone, I didn't fancy sitting for hours in cold water waiting for rescue. Gawd knows where he went off to, or when he'd be back. We were beginning to unravel at the cuffs. So I rocked the can back and forth, until it tipped over onto the cement floor. I slid out, as if born naked from a trash can. I thought to myself, Well, that's one way to clean the floor. Didn't think about the metaphor, until much later.

4/12/2016




from another Facebook post

SNOW IN ADDIS ABABA

SNOW IN ADDIS ABABA

Today a rare snow fell on Addis Ababa,
catching everyone by surprise.
Though the citystate is at 7,500 feet
it's also near the equator, this sub-tropical
region never drops below freezing.
Addis Ababa means the field of new flowers.
The cradle of mankind, Mankind has lived there
since the beginning of time. First hominid Lucy's home.
A young man muses: it seems like Ethiopia
is becoming closer to the sky, you know,
like Canada. You know what I mean.
Closer to the North Pole. Trading places.
A man grumbles: it used to happen every rainy season.
Another nitpicks it's not snow! Its hail, frozen rain,
you don’t want to get caught under that rain.
It’s like little stones falling from the sky!
And he compares it to the wrath of God.
Sky diamonds. What's this world coming to?
But I guess the weather is a bit like theft,
an adulterous sky pummeling what's left of spring
in a parched land.

4/11/2016
from a news report

MARINE IGUANAS

In the Galápagos I swam
with Darwin's imps of darkness.
Marine iguanas dove into the surf
and grazed on seaweed encrusted rocks.
When they were chilled,
they hauled out to sun themselves
and bask on the hot rocks,
then they snorted the salt water
out their nostrils, spewing
like little dragons.

4/10/2016

LAPCAT

Today, one of those dark, dreary days
where I am thankful for the warmth
of my laptop, purring so like a cat.

4/10/2016

LETTER TO COLM TÓIBÍN

Colm Tóibín, it's come to this;
a neighbor, madly in love with
the wandering road of your writing,
rang my doorbell, asking me
how to pronounce your name,
which led to an Irish linguistics course
on aspects of hidden vowels,
slender consonants, síneadh fadas,
and diminutive endings. The reason
for the shh! in my cousin Sinéad's name.
How Hebrew and Irish, despite everything,
carry the hunger of the shark-toothed sound.
And how the final -ín in Máirín, and Tóibín
are but small endearments, like cailín.
Why say the ó and not the i, she asked.
I explained the role of the fada, the haloed ó—
she got more than she bargained for,
as we wandered from the story of Brooklyn,
on how to say Saoirse, to the The Testament 
of Mary, who, despite everything, did not believe. 
What my neighbor really wanted to know
was how the syllabic dove was nestled
within the folds of your name, and Iona's naomh.
But we are also bound by testament of cold iron,
our grandparents smuggled guns to Eniscorthy.
My neighbor got a discourse on the uprising,
and hidden pocket vowels within bol-g and fil-um, 
as my grannie would say. The anaptyctic mediator
smuggling vowels and proverbial bullets
across borders. This béarla
we hold in common.

4/10/2016

Bay Area Generations #42

2/2017

SILENT HAICHES
DEEP NOVEMBER
FOUND POEMS FROM THE IRISH
Hurley: Sea Tide

Between Languages

I am in love with the skeletal poetics of linguistics, not the science of words, but with the body of language. I like the shape of words in my mouth, the way my heart feels, when I speak Spanish. My mindset changes, mi corazón! Dos lenguages, tan fuerte. They say multi-lingualism keeps the brain facile, and it is said to stave off Alzheimer's. I work with the newly arrived kids, teaching them poetry. It's a gateway to learning English. I have a profound love for them, and admire their acquisition of English, and to watch them adapt and thrive in their new language is both an honor and a blessing. Poetry is the bridge. Never forget.

On Teaching Poetry to Students

During poetry class, Katherine, a newly-arrived student in Ms. Thomas's 3rd grade, sloppily copied random words from the posters on the wall. Because I couldn't make sense of her writing, I asked her what it meant. In this way, I discovered that she spoke no English, and was attempting to write something—anything—in order to fit in. Even random words on the board.

So I brought her some poems in Spanish, and we took dictation. It was a rough process bringing her to poetry, as her skills were low. At first, she was an unwilling student. I had to remind her it was improper to sass back. Then I discovered that she couldn't read or write in Spanish either. She was trapped between languages, and unable to write in either one.

Once she saw her first poem in print, and I read it aloud to the class in Spanish, it was a breakthrough moment. The kids wanted to know what it said. As I translated her poem line by line, she beamed with pride.  And her attitude toward me, toward the class, and language radically shifted. She was aboard.

I didn't have time to take dictation from her during, every class, so on those days, she continued to practice her odd abecedario in her poetry book. But soon she became impatient, because she had a poem to tell me. And I was her only link.

The last day of class as I began to transcribe her poem in Spanish, she stopped me, and said: NO! English! English, please.

It's amazing watching her begin to grasp English via poetry. She was actually ordering me to translate and write her poems in English. Such a sweet teaching moment, as I pointed to each Spanish word and gave her the English equivalent. A long cry from where we started. She was mute, having no language to communicate. And poetry was overwhelming. But she got it! Poetry gave her a voice.

Horses in Heaven

Someone posted a meme that all your old horses will be in Heaven. I think: Oh great, I'll be stuck keeping the Little Shits, consummate escape artists, in the pasture. Pure purgatory. I spent more time chasing after them at midnight, than I care to admit....they loved to roam. Shetland-raccoon crossbreed. I used to tie them up on a long rope to graze in spring, but they'd escape. So I hobbled their forelegs, ditto their back legs. Then I hobbled both ends. Damned if they couldn't gallop fully hobbled and trussed up like turkeys. I finally resorted to double hobbling with a cross rope between the front and back end....still they'd dink down the road on moonlit nights.

4/5/2016

TANKU

 TANKU

When the old redwood tank collapsed in the storm
the trees tried to comfort it with their low branches
draped conspiratorially over its shoulders.

4/5/2016

Tired of counting syllables

IF GOOD FENCES

IF GOOD FENCES...

If good fences made for good neighbors
then our neighbors weren't particularly good
nor were we, as the ponies and deer
dove through sagging barbed wire strands
that moonlighted as æolian harps, at random.
Such sweet music, nature of tooth and claw
unfettered by fences, we were slackers all.
Nothing fenced us in, or kept us to ourselves.

4/5/2016

DESERT MIRAGE

DESERT MIRAGE

An old dirt road, and a new jeep.
She felt a wild sense of freedom
when she struck out overland
with her six-year-old son in tow.
She thought It must be right,
because the GPS said it was so.
But it's a technological illusion
that you can't get lost in the desert.
When her son died of heatstroke,
she discovered backroads led to nothing
but grief & the Funeral Mountains
were well named for their darkness,
and that glimmer of distant water she saw
was merely bent light slaking the eye.

4/5/2016




My poetry prompt was a newspaper article from 2009
Death by GPS' in desert 

DEATH BY GPS HAIKU, etc.

Desert superbloom
siren call of empty roads
led tourists astray.

New technology
old backroads, no cell service
= death by GPS.

Death Valley lives up
to its name, tourist follow
back roads to their death.

Death by GPS
the desert lives up to its name
wrong road led them astray.


4/4/2016



Three lines of 5-3-5 syllables, or 5-3-5 words.
(or do a haiku)

I seem to be having trouble with this prompt.
5-3-5 syllables

Heady floral scent
blossoming
in the lemon tree.

Hummingbird visits
each flower
sacramental dip.


or 5-3-5 words (easier to do, but I'm locked into haiku}.


Hummingbird visits every flower twice
seeking sweet nectar
Meyer lemons in the bud.

Moths chewed on old cashmere
sweaters leaving trails
of darkness and light behind.



4/5/2016





Death by GPS' in desert

SUNRISE: BIG SUR

I could've gone to the writers' convention.
I kept thinking to myself, well maybe I should've.
I'm supposed to be a writer, and all that.
Besides, all my friends are there.
But then, this cliff, this shore
was my view yesterday, all day.
On set for Hand of God at an ungodly hour
we watched dawn's light crawl down Big Sur ridge
and the fogbank retreated to a safe distance.
A roadside chef cracked dozens of eggs
(we ate plein air omlettes right on Hwy 1,
a fencepost with a view for a table).
Such famous beauty before us,
replete with rubberneckers and cyclists,
cavorting whales and curious sea otters.
Between takes, surcease of the sea
breathing beside me. All day long.
I saw sleepy indigo wake to turquoise
and dream itself to pale robin's egg blue
to match the celestial eyes of the sky.

4/3/2016

FIRST CONTACT

Pre dawn call, I was so frazzled they sent me right away to hair and makeup. A woman in curlers at the far end of the trailer was chapping a worker. My hairdresser said: Don't look, don't talk, she doesn't like it if anyone talks. We conspiratorially whispered in code as my hairdresser attempted to tame my unruly mop. The woman stalked to my end of the trailer, and sat down next to me. She looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't quite place her. She glared at me in the mirror and told me to move down a seat as I was in her line of vision. I stared at her point-blank. If looks could turn one to stone. She either needed morning coffee, or was already in character. The hairdressers took it all in stride and carried on as if there was nothing amiss with stars wobbling in rarefied orbits.

4/3/2016

On set: Hand of God

We were standing at the edge of a windy bluff wearing in skimpy clothing, and we nearly froze to death. We were background extras for a memorial scene. That's all we knew. I was assigned to be part of Judge Pernell Harris's family. We practiced our familial grieving stance, as the drone hovered like "Nam. Zoomed in, invaded our space.  

A young woman repeatedly poured ashes over the edge of the cliff. The wind brought it back to us. Ashes in our eyes, in our mouths. Good thing it wasn't a real funeral. Dead man's ashes. Take One,  Take Two....Take Ten... Perhaps it was Portland cement. My eyes burned, the tears were real.

The assistant director, Mario Van Peebles called for a huddle rehearsal, we welcomed group warmth. Mario did an impromptu interstellar poetry rap as an intro to our scene, everyone paled, fell silent. So I juked some words right back at him. We laughed at the cosmic joke as he swung my hands, we were dancing on the edge of the cliff like mad hatters.

We were so in the dark, we didn't even know the name of the show. How cosmic: Hand of God...and it was godlike, all right. We saw whales spuming in the distance, and a curious sea otter came into the cove to see what all the fuss was about. Seagulls and terns below us, seeking right-of-way.

Slowly I learned the actors' names. They still meant nothing. I don't watch TV, I haven't had cable in 30 years. The man in the camelhair coat, Andre Royo, (Robert 'Bobo' Boston), and I joked around. Another co-star, Dana Delany, elegant in a a black cape, and six-inch heels, stumbled up and down the cliff, we caught our breath whenever she caught her heels. Someone said she's in Desperate Housewives of... as if I was supposed to know what show she was referring to. 

We were Ron Perlman's "family" on set, and my mates were floored that I didn't even know who he was—until I saw him.... I got to study the back of Ron's head for a few hours... and watch them turn and leave over and over. I can safely say it was my first up close and personal encounter with Ron. He didn't talk much, but when I lost my mind (easily done) when I saw a whale spout, screaming and jumping up and down like a pogo-stick. He turned around and laughed at me.

When the choreography was right, the stand-ins left us. Then the stars arrived for their close-ups. Why is she familiar? The woman in the trailer. No! Not Faye Dunaway sitting next to me in the hair trailer? Get out! 

Surprise guest star Faye Dunaway (as Valerie Harris) was frail. They kept her safe inside the hive. I kept singing Bonnie and Clyde to myself. And thinking of Chinatown. Looking for Jack. Thinking Mommie Dearist. Wow, an icon. My reaction is to keep away from the famous. Unless she fell on me, which was quite possible, several of us on that cliff together took turns spotting for her.

Dana (as Crystal Harris, Pernell's wife) kept leaving the memorial early. I don't know the story, the backstory, nor the future plot of Hand of God. Operating in the dark. Later I find the grieving widow (Alona Tal as Jocelyn Harris, married to PJ Harris, Jr.), was continuously dumping her husband's ashes at cliff's edge. Guess I'll need to watch the series now. Hope I got everybody's name and character right.

I talked a bit with Andre, and shot some photos of him on the cliffs...he was trying to take a selfie and it was a ways down to the sea. Whoopsie! What a way to lose a principal supporting actor wearing a great camelhair coat. I said, Let me do that. I was talking to everybody, I didn't realize he was part of the cast until later. As background, we're not supposed to talk to the cast. There's an invisible wall. A code of silence.

It's about the paycheck at the end of the day. Not the fame. Background (formerly known as extras) is hard work, and pay is little better than minimum wage for us non-union folks. The work can be gruelling. Standing for hours on end in uncomfortable clothes, then being seemingly carefree, and in character when the camera's rolling. 

Still, I got a vicarious thrill when Brian Cox shook my hand and chatted about my aching feet on the set of Etruscan Smile. Neither Fae nor Ron shook our hands, but Faye did say hello to us on set.

As the widow dumped ashes and sand again and again, another character (whose real name is Eric) read an eulogy poem over and over. They didn't give him a poem to read for the script, so he scribed something right on the spot, in iambic pentameter.  I made him read it to me during a break, as I couldn't hear him from afar. Poor man never got past the fourth line. Cut!  We read poetry to the sea. To the sea. Ah, poetry month. It's a wrap.

4/2/2016


Faye Dunaway set to join Amazon's 'Hand Of God' season two

Hand of God (TV series) Created by Ben Watkins (Burn Notice)

O FOOLISH APRIL HAIKU

O foolish April
showers, such sweet succor fails
to baptize our heads.

Welcome Fool, jester
of spring, motley capricious
gamboler awakens.

Green in bud and sap
the trees explode with delight
and the robin choughs.

First bird of spring coughs
complaining of the weather
magnolia blossoms.

Tree's spring laundry, hangs
its smalls for the world to see
magnolia knickers.

Wanton cat grovels
at my feet, I have no cure
for her deepest ache.


4/1/2016

April Poetry Month prompts...

Get your hot off the press red-hot poetry prompts here:

NaPoWriMo 2016

NaHaiWriMo and Haiku writing prompts  OK, I admit I'm guilty of counting syllables, I know Japanese haiku isn't syllabic. See The Discipline of Haiku

2016 April PAD Challenge

The Poetry School

Poetry Prompts

Facebook search for poetry prompt sites

If you're on Facebook, check out Molly Fisk - Poet. She often posts random prompts there on her own page, too.
Molly Fisk's ongoing poetry bootcamps require a secret handshake and small fee to join their Nicenet group.

Check out Poets.org too! A poem a day will be sent to your email box and you can use that poem as a starting point.

Or cannibalize old writing prompts from previous years! I often combine prompts until I find one that juices me. I also collect prompts from other sites in a folder and let them surface in random order.

I have lots of prompts posted in my blog and I've tried to link them, but not always. See writing prompts 

MORE POETRY PROMPTS

PAD poetry prompts 2016 (not used)

April Poetry Month prompts...2016

NaWriPoMo 2015
It's time for April Poem a Day! 2014 

November Poem a Day prompts 2013APRIL POEM A DAY links 2013

NaPoWriMo PADI, Molly Fisk, poem prompts 2013 (not used)

NaPoWriMo poem prompts 2011 (not used) Nov

NaPoWriMo Prompts 2010 (not used)  Apr 

FREE LEONARD HAIKU

FREE LEONARD HAIKU

Old Free Leonard sign
on a road at rush hour clogged
with measured justice.

Sign says Free Leonard
in red paint, old scab wounds
a detour of justice.

Old Free Leonard sign
nailed to a tree, cruciform
a framed reminder.

Decades of vigil
keeping memory alive
Leonard Peltier.

In the minds of few
he lives on, this tree proclaims
his freedom to all.

But who remembers
Wounded Knee, a stigmata
of blood on our hands.

Nothing says freedom
like a clogged road at rush hour
how progress is measured.

NEIGHBOR HAIKU

Old man sneaks a smoke
in his car, thinks he's fooling
the emphysema.

He hides evidence
from his daughter, he lights up
his first cancer stick.

First smoke of the day
greedily he sucks it down
old habits die hard.

LONG-WINDED QUESTION

Filibustering
man verbally develops
his thesis on foot.

Hot air rises up
to the surface and stonewalls
unanswered questions.

What was the question?
Rubber band string theory, an
incredulous weir

of words leading to
nowhere in particular.
Flibusted man.

Remembering Marty Kent

Facebook is like one vast John Guare experiment. Guare wrote the play, Six Degrees of Separation. The idea that we are merely six degrees separated from everyone. Say, Kevin Bacon. Facebook periodically brings that idea home.

Someone posted on a Marin page, a book that she had found, and wanted to know more about it. I was surprised to discover that I knew the poet as I had worked for her family a long, long time ago.

I worked for Roger and Alice Kent during the early 1970s. One of my jobs was running the office for Western Star Press. I remember the name Marty Kent. Still trying to line up a face. I can almost see her.

A floodgate of faces: there was Neili, Kenny Kent's ex-wife... There was Molly Kent & Max, who had two kids. Max was an architect, and turned a squash court into a cool house. And there was Molly's baby sister, Alice, but we called her PeeWee.

So how did Marty fit in? It took a while to place Marty, but by happenstance, somebody told somebody who told somebody who told Marty's daughter about the post, who enlightened us. It turns out Marty was a cousin.

Marty's daughter, Littlest Alice and I struck up a Facebook friendship. It turns out that Alice and I both worked for Western Star Press. We began to swap stories. One thing led to another, and lo! and they've a few copies of Marty's book, and she'll mail me a copy.

How small and lovely the world, that which separates us also brings us together with few degrees of separation.

Splitting Hares and Rabbiting on

A young brown hare, watercolor, 1502, Albrect Dürer —Wiki

A photographer, hoping to sell prints, conflated rabbits with snowshoe hares calling them Easter Bunnies. Augh! For the record, hares are not bunny rabbits. They're not even distant cousins either. They may look alike, but it's convergent evolution. It's a great herbivore model. But they are a very separate species, even more divergent than sheep are to goats. More like gazelles and sheep. Different genus, Genius!

Through I suspect the hare was the mythological pre-Christian role model, the term, Easter Bunny referred to a rabbit, because in the Middle Ages rabbits (not hares) were called cunnys, which rhymes with bunny and hunny. Baby cunnys were called rabbits (or kits), but that word cunny was later changed to coneys, because prostitutes were called... Well, you get the picture. Coney Island. Rabbits, or....?

European cunnys/conejos (Oryctolagus cuniculus) are not native to most of Europe, they came from Iberia, they're not even native to Northern Europe or Britain. Some historians think rabbits were brought to Northern Europe and Britain by the Romans. But the Romans preferred to eat sleepy doormice. So, this speculation is wrong, as “during the Middle Ages, they were regarded as a high-status food and transported across Europe.” —Discover Magazine

Most historians agree that rabbits were introduced to Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. The Normans brought rabbits to Britain and Ireland. And cunnys were easy dinner fixins'. Which led to a population explosion, and some really weird Medieval manuscript drawings of bloodthirsty hares (not bunnies) armed to the teeth with lances, axes, swords, hellbent on harming humans. 

Hares do not make good pets, they're not domesticated, and share few traits with rabbits. They're solitary creatures, prone to boxing and brawling with potential mates and interlopers alike. The term "mad as a March hare" came from observing their combatative breeding nuptials. (Don't preach to me about the "wrong" use of combatative vs combative. Just. Don't. It's in the OED.) How mad? Go ask Alice.

Lewis Carroll's Alice and the Mad March Hare (a European hare)—Wiki

Mountain hares are smaller than European, or brown hares. The maigheach bhan, or bocaire fasaich, or Scottish mountain hare (Lepus timidus), is a hare of many colors and an astonishing assortment of names: whiddie baudrons, bawtie, cutty, donie, fuddie, lang lugs and maukin. AKA the blue hare, tundra hare, variable hare, the white, snow, or alpine hare (but never an Arctic hare), the mountain hare is big on camo—like ptarmigans and stoats, it turns white in winter—except for the Irish hare (L. t. hibernicus), a separate (sub) species—it prefers to tan the beaches. 

(In Irish mythology, the shapeshifter hare, the giorrea (little deer), is associated with the realm of the Otherworld. To harm a hare carried dire consequences. The warrior Oisín was spirited away to the Otherworld for accidentally wounding a hare with his dart, who was a woman of the Sídhe. Druids used hares in divination and prophesy by catching them, then turning them loose to guise the path of their escape.)

There are hares, and there are even more hares. There are 32 species of hares worldwide, and not one of them can crossbreed with rabbits (they have 48 chromosomes vs. rabbits' 44 chromosomes.) According to an article in LiveScience, “There are … "cryptic species" that appear identical but are genetically distinct.” Probably a good thing too, otherwise we'd have Monty Python killer rabbit-hares running amok armed with swords and whatnot whacking the bushes and our kneecaps.

European explorers were terribly cavalier at identifying Old and New World animals so there were bound to be mix-ups. Take our native North American hares, for example. Jackrabbits are not rabbits. Hares are larger, have longer black-tipped ears, large amber eyes, long hind legs, and are positively antisocial as compared to cuddly wabbits. They also tuck their tails down when they run—and they’re faster too, clocking in at 45MPH.

Despite its confusing common name, a jackrabbit is a hare. Short for jackass-(who looks like a)-rabbit. Got that? Of course, the word “jack” in front of rabbit, sort of like a Cousin Jack reference, as in being distantly related (not Cornish miners), was probably a nod to the fact that the explorers knew the New World creatures were hares. Jacks and Jills refer to hares, not rabbits.

On the other hand, a Belgian hare is not a hare, it's a true rabbit bred to look like a hare. A cottontail, on the other hand, really is a wabbit. Rabbits are social animals and make great pets. Think Peter Rabbit. Not anti-social Jack, or he'll smack the shit outta you. That goes for Jill too. Especially Jill.

According to H. L. Menken, "Zoologically speaking, there are no native rabbits in the United States; they are all hares." I guess he never saw a cottontail. Or perhaps fuzzy logic was involved. What he probably meant was there are no European rabbits (Oryctolagus) vs. native rabbits in America. Which is true as cottontails (Sylvilagus) are a separate species.

Rabbits and hares from the Leporidae family (not its sub-order, Genus), which is a sub-branch of the order Lagomorpha, which includes rabbits, hares and pikas (sometimes called rock hares). Got that? It's a Kings Played Chess On Fine Grain Sand ss moment... Order, Family, Genus, Species: it goes Lagomorpha, Leporidae. And that's where the semblance ends.

North and South American cottontail rabbits Sylvilagus are the ONLY rabbit that doesn't burrow, like the hare. They're sort of a straddle-the-difference species niche. They're not Old World rabbits. They're more rabbitish than rabbity, at this point, I'm probably splitting hares. Sylvilagus xx— (13 species) are not European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus—there can be only one!), starting with its tail, and its habits. But I'm not about to list all the burrowing/ feeding differences, let alone, weird kinetic skull differences. You'll have to look them up yourself hare. 

BTW, since I know you're dying to ask, cottontails (Sylvilagus) cannot interbreed with domestic European (Oryctolagus) rabbits. Though they can do the down and dirty, and even produce embryos, European rabbits have 22 pairs of chromosomes, while native wild cottontails have 21pairs of chromosomes. Score one for DNA! At least that gene pool's clean.

Zebras Spotted Running Loose In East Oakland

Zebras Spotted Running Loose In East Oakland. Spotted zebras? Did they use the zebra crossing on Hegenberger? And they're not escapees from the zoo? Hee-haw. They ran away from a circus. The UniverSoul Circus at Oo Stadium. I didn’t even know the circus was in town. You can’t make this stuff up. But the zebras made a jailbreak, all those stripes and secret spots converging in the concrete jungle. Were they looking for the Oakland Zoo? Eli’s Mile High Club? What would Dr. Parrot say? (Look up Oakland Zoo director's name, I double-dare ya.) Just another day in the Bay Area.

AT THE BOTTOM OF FALLEN LEAF LAKE, rev

AT THE BOTTOM OF FALLEN LEAF LAKE

 
Ancient submerged trees
3000 year-old forest preserved
beneath the surface.

In icy waters
dead trees still reach for the sky
a green blob hiding

between the branches
the last holdout of algae
neolithic bloom.

3/20/2016
From a much shorter poem

Fallen Leaf Lake

Avocado vs Squirrel

Mr. Squirrel shows us how to chow down an avocado

Avocado vs Squirrel. Our neighbor's avocados are far too enticing a treat for the street squirrels. All that fat. They know there's a huge nut embedded inside the unripe fruit. No matter that they can't eat that giant mother of nuts, as it contains a potent toxin, persin—when mixed with cornmeal and lard, is used as rat poison in Latin America. Don't know how effective it is.

Squirrel never got the memo that unripe avocados too are toxic, or so the internet says. Horror stories abound—people feeding pet squirrels avocado, rodents croaking within days. No such luck in our urban neck of the woods. Squirrel (who is a non-native redhead) and equally stubborn, tries an avocado each day to see if it's edible. Every day he peels a new avocado. Maybe this time. Sometimes it's a three-avocado day. 

We’ve taken to putting some of his discarded meals in the elongated swan-shaped dish nailed to the fence. He nibbles most delicately on the ripening fruit, peeling the avocados as he goes. He drapes his tail across his back like a feather cloak, shimmies and flicks it to show his pleasure. When he’s done noshing, he strokes his cheek along the enormous avocado nuts, scent-marking them for later. Funny, because avocado means testicle in Nahual, and Mr. Squirrel has some big nuts. He speaks fluent chatter.

Avocados are a bit of an evolutionary anachronism, as the original seed transporting avocado tree’s sole desire, was an extinct megafaunal species, a gomphothere, a snouty elephant-like monster with a shovel mouth and a friendly GI tract. A farmer of the first degree, he gombed down the tasty fruits, and pooped all over the place. Until he became extinct. The avocado didn’t get the message. The Cenozoic nut should’ve gone the way of the dodo, according to a Smithsonian article.

Lately I've been rescuing Squirrel's discarded avocados. They usually split upon impact, but I douse them liberally with lime to prevent oxidation, the squirrel chew marks too, and the avocados usually ripen. Unless they don't. Into the compost they go. Sometimes Squirrel scoots down the tree to balefully stare at me eye-to-eye when I steal his ill-gotten treasure. It's a bit of a standoff. Then he races back up the trunk to pluck another, scolding all the while.
 
Needless to say, we have gleaned his previously taste-tasted avocados. We are swimming in mangled avocados, avocados on the counters, in the fridge door, me, tending them like babies, searching for signs of softness. I'm inventing weird new recipes daily—from the usual guacomole, to fetttuccini primavera with avocado sauce, and avocado key lime pie. 

The neighbors are too lofty to take Squirrel's discards. They toss perfectly good avocados into the trash. And the myth of the poisonous unripe avocado has them flummoxed. Good neighbor deterrent, but Squirrel, himself, is another story.

another squirrel joins us

Junior!

LOST POSITIVES

Is gruntled the opposite of disgruntled?
she grunted, mucking about with language,
making a pig out of a sow's ear.

It made her feel so disconbobulated.
Can one conbobulate, or bobulate?
And who was Bob, anyway?

She couthily worried about
all those lost negative prefixes:
un- im- in- dis- de- non.

It was not (h)eveled and acculate verbage 
she sook in the land of lost positives.
But it was evitable she persed.

3/13/2016
rev 3/21




more on lost positives here.

PET WORDS

Yesterday's small children
petted me like a soft kitten
as we wrote poetry in an inner city school.
I wear 2nd-hand cashmere sweaters
because I am allergic to sheep wool.
(Cashmere is goat). Their petting me,
and its tactile feedback, reminds me
of the difference between their world,
and mine.


3/8/2016



There's a haiku embedded in there somewhere.

What's in a Nickname?

Remembering my childhood name, my cousin Dave posted this photo on my Facebook Wall.

I replied: I am The Baba! It was a name I kept well hidden from my classmates, because they teased me and sang the nursery rhyme.

Baa baa black sheep have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.
One for the master, one for the dame,
One for the little boy who lives down the lane...  

Aside from the fact that I endlessly puzzled over the identity of the little boy who lived down the lane and and wondered why did he need a big bag of black wool? What use was it to him? I'm sure he would've much rather have had coin, or chocolate or a toy sailboat. Besides, I didn't like being compared to a sheep. All that baaa-ing about. I figured out early on I was the black sheep. Trust me, I didn't trust Mother Goose either.

Who knew the nursery rhyme was a complaint against the the Great Wool Tax of 1275? Or that the master who was the evil Plantagenet King—Edward Longshanks, at that, the dame was the greedy church, or that the wool-sack itself was a symbol of power of the Lord Chancellor?

Now do the math—66% went to Church and State, and 33% went to the sheepherder. And if it was black wool, it was more valuable, as it didn't need to be dyed, therefore subject to higher taxation. No wonder there was a rebellion. And now the rhyme has been blacklisted for being politically incorrect. Talk about dyed in the wool. But I digress.

Then there's the meaning of teacher as in a monastic siddha leader, or father. Baba Muktananda, or Neem Karoli Baba. You can imagine what confusion that caused me during the dawn of the New Age.  By 1970 there were more babas out there than I could count. A swami from Miami? No, Marin.

Since one didn't have to be a believer or profess anything to be a follower of Baba, I followed myself. I had no mother, she was off joining communes, and no father either. By that time my own father had slipped truly, madly, deeply into the deep well of Seagram's. None of this I only drink what's in the neck stuff. His middle name was DUI.

I was a self-raised swami baby. Baba means baby in Irish. I was the first grandchild. My grandparents called me Baba.We were a multi-generational family under one roof. Halcyon days. Then my grandfather died. Hell arrived with its hand-basket of tithes. My grannie sold the house and moved to the country with me in tow. And she grieved. That's how I was raised as Baba, wagging my tail behind me.

Now it's a sharp nostalgic sensation, a whiplash to the past when someone calls me Baba now, as it's such an old name, known only by family and close friends. But it is the only name I answered to for ages.

Maureen usually meant I was in deep trouble. Or at school. Or both. At the same time. Guess that's why I grew to like the nickname Mo... A name where I was not in trouble, or about to get into trouble, or be called on for the right answer in class that I didn't know, or did know, but was too shy to answer. So much pain associated with a given name, my mother's name, she who was crazy and unpredictable right up to the very end. Enough to drive one to drink. Did I mention I'm allergic to wool?

• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

The Mighty Mo

I am The Baba! A name I kept well hidden from my classmates, because they teased me and sang the nursery rhyme. It's nostalgic when someone calls me Baba now, as it's such an old name, known only by family and close friends. But it is the only name I answered to for ages. Maureen usually meant I was in deep trouble. Or at school. Or both. Guess that's why I like Mo... Not in trouble, or about to get in trouble, or be called on for the answer in class that I didn't know, or was too shy to answer. So much pain associated with a name, also my mother's name, Big Maureen, whose nickname was More, she, who was crazy and unpredictable. Always asking for more. I am the Baba, but I am also the Mighty Mo.

• This morphed into a much longer piece about the nursery rhyme.
• What's in a Nickname?
• Changing my Facebook name It took me two more years to own my nickname
• from a facebook post
• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

YESTERDAY'S CHILDREN

Yesterday's children petted me like a soft kitten
as we wrote poetry in an inner city school.
I wear the castoff cashmere sweaters of the affluent
because I am allergic to sheep wool, but not goat.
Their petting me, and the tactile feedback,
reminds me of the differences
between their world, and mine.

3/6/16




There's a haiku embedded in there, somewhere.

On the set of Etruscan Smile

 

It looks like The Etruscan Smile will be released in 2018. Here's hoping all my scenes haven't been cut out (story of my life—the cutting room floor.)

March 2016. On set for Etruscan Smile. Role: power elite background at 4AM, Day 2, and drop-dead tired. The wine is fake. Alas. The hair is not, alas. They tried to tame it, Waspify it, or maybe even Trumpify it. They tried to straighten my Medusine mop before a rainstorm, LOL. 

I could have taken swimming lessons in the dress, or used it as a tent—replete with mosquito netting— I'm fully clothed underneath it all.  Camera, cellphone & spectacles all shoved down my cleavage. No pocketses. An iPad shoved down the back of my jeans. I was prepared. Albeit barefoot, if the Big One struck.

My feet were killing me so I was barefoot in City Hall which was doubling as a museum. It was then that the star of the film, Scottish actor, Brian Cox, came over to introduce himself and to shake my hand. I scrambled to attention in my tent of black chiffon and he laughed at my bare feet.

Uncle Argyle (Brian Cox), was laughing at my abandoned heels and bare feet. And said it must be murder.  Ah, the cool marble floor chilled my aching feet.