Sick as a dog

A

What I thought were allergies morphed into a head-chest cold in record time. I'm slayed. The cough alone... I made lemon garlic chicken broth and couldn't even taste the garlic. I'm not going anywhere. Too sick. Maybe there's some zinc in the cabinet above the sink. As to the retinol, won't it grow hair in my throat? Throat feels like 5 o’clock shadow stubble. 

The lemon curd is as good as sucking on ten Ricolas. Tastier. Bonne Mamam from Grocery Outlet $1.99! Tastes especially good off my granny's tiny sterling spoon. And it gives me the illusion that I'm not eating very much of it. Yes, my voice has taken a beating...keeps cracking, so painful. I'm really sick. This is a bad one. staying home. Soaked in the hot tub, and am a noodle but it eases the dry cough that is leveling me. Also, I’m using the car as a dry sauna. 

Day two of hot tub and car sauna to ease the symptoms. My granny used to bundle herself up and sit in the car to break or bake a fever. I find myself doing the same. impromptu sauna. And I don't readily sweat when I'm healthy. I'm at the impossible coughing stage so I need all the help I can get. Coughing jags are horrible. The cough is MURDER. I'm going to have six-pac abs at this rate with all the coughing I'm doing. Though I can safely say, the turning point was yesterday. I'm on the mend, after three days of misery.  The virus took the wind out of my sails. I fell asleep reading this afternoon. I never fall asleep in the afternoon. AK! 3 AM. there's a reason why I never take late afternoon naps. Still pretty shaky, though. Staying in bed the full week on this one. Other than the unproductive cough, I can feel the shift. I am on the mend. 

ANTI-VIRAL CURE

ANTI-VIRAL CURE

Lemon curd on madeleines,
that's what's for dinner.
I can't taste anything else.
Oh, hell, forget about Proust's cookies.
Notre Dame is burning, and so am I.
So, it's lemon curd straight from the jar
with my granny's silver salt spoon
minted during La Belle Époque.
You got a problem with that?

4/16/19

SPRING GOLD

SPRING GOLD

OK, so I'll finally admit it is a cold
that finally declared itself in all its snotty splendor
after a day of chasing wildflower photos
in high winds where the air was so laden with pollen
the distant coastal hills were lost in a dream haze
like an alkali curtain had descended upon them.

The first time in over a decade a ritual is broken,
no more travels to the desert in springtime.
My partner dumped me at an unmarked trailhead.
So I learned to find my way and make do
with the local landscape, sneezing all the while,
remembering the trips to the Mojave Desert
where vast floral carpets of goldfields,
poppies, and purplemat stretched farther
than the eye could see.

I release my anger, I release him back
to the darkness that is his alone to bear.
He keeps calling me but I will not take him forth
into a future where the wildflowers
steal small pieces of the sun to dress the hills
in such gilded array that I am sick with joy.

4/16/19

Tree & rock, Hick’s Valley Road (photo)

Tree & rock, Hick's Valley, West Marin. If I can take the back-back road from point A to point B, and bypass the idiot tourists, I’ll do it. This vista is my reward. I've been meaning to take a photo of this particular tree and rock on Hick’s Valley Road for ages, but there's no place to pull over. So yesterday, I just stopped right in the middle of the road and made time to just do it. I'm afraid it's a one-off snap, no time to fiddle with composition, placement, etc., so there's a random element to it. I'm thinking of making a chalk pastel of it for the upcoming art show.

A Facebook friend, Marc Nassar, who once lived here long ago, said, Like seeing a photo of a long lost old friend. Love it, thanks. I always tried to pull over and sit with it hours at a time, for years. Go for the pastel. Very inspiring spot.

Another friend, Arlyn Millie said, If Poetic License Press weren't such a tiny press, I'd publish Volumes 1-3 of Good News and Beautiful Reminders by Maureen Hurley, Artist & Writer. I appreciate that tragedy and ugliness don't obscure your view of the awesome and delightful. As I like to say: And also. That this.

At this point I'd be over the moon with a chapbook or a broadside. Hell I’d be over the moon if I could just feel better. Still feeling pretty sick, the cough is a killer. But I'm champing at the bit—this is the longest I've stayed in one place since August—I’m flat out sick. I want to feel better soon so I can do a drawing of this photo. Maybe later today.

But someone stole my iPad the other day—and I had several photos in waiting all lined up for art pieces. I’m still reeling. Luckily, I took this photo with my camera, not the iPad. So I had a backup of it. On a lark, I had entered an art show at a Senior Center (I haven't shown any art in DECADES!) so, iPad or no iPad, I gotta crank something out soon. Deadline approaches.

(I wound up making a print of this photo for the art show, which sold! Thus paying for my frames, and developing.)

From a Facebook post, revised
San Geronimo Valley Community Center Spring Art Show

SOCIAL MEDIA

SOCIAL MEDIA

As I searched for information
on the internet, whether or not
my old MacBook would run the latest tax software,
I never in a million years dreamed
I'd be plugging a laptop in-
to the wall socket of my old classroom.
My call to attention was that snap of electricity
surging as metal made contact with the grid.
I was too busy eating library paste,
peering out of the cloakroom for Miss Lenz
to imagine futures where man
would walk on the moon,
or that we'd all be joined at the hip
via social media.

4/13/19

TEMPORARY ANGELS

TEMPORARY ANGELS                       —For Linda Gregg

At Open Mike, I stood in my old 2nd grade classroom
& pointed to the room where Linda Gregg would've been,
in the other wing of the school with the big kids.
Before I read her poem, to commemorate her death,
The Weight, about a string of horses from Forest Farm Camp.

I told the story of how the Gregg's dude horses
were wintered over for the season in Tamal canyon—
after the summer campers had gone back to the city,
and how the horses crossed a liminal boundary
of barbed wire, seeking more clement pastures,
to the top of our hill, and how we
eagerly raced up the steep slope to greet them.
They whickered, lonely for the company of young girls.
We were their kin, leggy, skittish, happy to see them.
We breathed in their horsy odor as they carefully whuffed,
hoping to find sugar, carrots, or an apple in deep pockets.
They grew bored, sleepy eyed, and lop-eared. Sighed.

It was so easy, leaning on them, savoring their warmth
as they canted their hips and bent massive heads down
to tear at pale winter grasses. We scratched their necks,
leaned farther still, draped over their backs
as they drifted around the crest of the hill.
We slipped our slender legs over, and were astride.
They were all action, dancing in the wind
and we were flying. Wingless angels.
Temporary goddesses, no longer fettered to the earth.
Little did we know it was as close to heaven
as we'd ever get.

Later that night, the sheriff came knocking,
inquiring about the theft of those horses.
We trembled and of course we denied everything,
our thighs still rimed with telltale horsehair and sweat.
I used to have nightmares riding those horses to safety,
not knowing which side of the divide they belonged on.
Horses on the horizon still takes my breath away.
And now Linda is traversing the last long valley,
all the dead horses bugling in the distance.

4/13/19

Spring cold misery

Ah, spring. Allergies morphed into a head-chest cold in record time. I'm slayed. I'm not going anywhere Too sick. The cough alone... Maybe there's some zinc in the cabinet above the sink. As to the retinol, won't it grow hair in my throat? My voice feels like that.

I swear, right now, lemon curd is as good as sucking on ten Ricolas. Tastier. Bonne Mamam from Grocery Outlet $1.99! Tastes especially good off my granny's tiny silver spoon. And it gives me the illusion that I'm not eating very much of it. Hah. I did eye the graham crackers. Next round. Or, I could just drop all the pretense and go for lemon curd on a spoon right out of the jar.

I made lemon garlic chicken broth earlier, and I couldn't even taste the garlic. My tastebuds are pretty whacked.

All this coughing, my voice has taken a beating...keeps cracking, so painful. Last night was rough. Aching hips, sieve of a nose. Advil and a soak helped. Soaked in the hot tub, and am a noodle but it eases the dry cough that is leveling me. Also using the car as a dry sauna.

Day two of hot tub and car sauna to ease the symptoms. My granny used to bundle herself up and sit in the car to break or bake a fever. I find myself doing the same. impromptu sauna. And I don't readily sweat when I'm healthy.

I'm at the impossible cough stage so I need all the help I can get. Though I can safely say, the turning point was yesterday. I'm on the mend, after three days of misery. Today I could feel the difference. Still pretty sick. Fell asleep late nap....and I never nap. fell asleep reading this afternoon. I never fall asleep in the afternoon. Other than the unproductive cough, I can feel the shift. I am on the mend. Yes. 

Not going to FK on Sun. Not going anywhere. AK! 3 AM. there's a reason why I never take late afternoon naps. Still pretty shaky, though. Staying in bed the full week on this one. The cough is MURDER. I'm going to have six-pac abs at this rate with all the coughing I'm doing.

DESPERATELY SEEKING LATTE

Stranded for a few hours in the city,
I hunted down a latte and a choco glazed & raised.
None to be had at the Starbucks on Masonic.
Even though cops, muni drivers, and the dispossessed
trolled the only coffee bar around.
The shuttered Lucky Penny hadn’t changed in decades.
I looked at the mermaid askance, sighed,
& settled for an overpriced chocolate croissant.
The barista barked, you want that thing heated?
When I bit in, I thought I had joined the fishes.
Where had such a simple pleasure
been hiding all my life? Under a rock?
I adjusted my attitude and sank
back into the restless flotsam of the streets.
Waited for my friend to resurface after surgery.

4/4/19

And then afterward, while my patient was having a recovery coffee at Peet’s in San Rafael, someone stole my iPad. So this poem was lost for a year only to resurface a year later on Facebook.

BigHairDay (photos)

Self portrait with an iPad as a young pixel. This is a real selfie. Only I can see it. My hair is an exhibitionist today. Never wash your hair in the late afternoon. When I was an extra in Etruscan smile, I still had waist length hair that went full bush ringlets because it was the first rains after the drought. They had to put a can of hairspray on it....boing! My hair woke up with an attitude for which the only fix is a drowning in floodwater. The only thing worse than not combing it, is, well, combing it. I don’t dare comb or brush it. I just need to wait until it calms down, or gets bored and moves along. Or I dunk my head in a bucket, which I usually resort to.

I’m looking for the snakes.

#BigHairDay

Near miss at the lake (photo)

A good thing I was channeling Jerry Downs, thinking of how I would compose my photo.

I think I might have just sidestepped fate. A near miss. Or at least the avoidance of a head-on collision. I was getting ready to pull into my usual pullout by the lake where there was a faint cellular signal where I could pick up my email (zero reception in Nicasio), and to take a morning photo, but a huge semi truck was coming the other way.

I don’t know what prompted me to change my usual daily pattern, other than I was thinking of taking a photo and what photographer Jerry Downs had said earlier about having the patience to wait for the exact right moment to take a photo. So, by chance, I pulled off the road to the shoulder to wait for the truck to pass—just as a pickup stuck behind it, was passing it with a vengeance. Talk about right moment.

Normally I would’ve just turned in front of the semi truck to park in the pullout by the lake, and thought nothing of it. I had plenty of time to make the left turn, the semi was slow, but I was in no hurry. Besides, I was admiring the stray wisps of morning fog curling catlike through the hills—dreamily composing a camera angle in my head. So, on an impulse, I pulled off the road right onto the bike path.

The pickup spotted me too late, slammed on its brakes, skidding into my lane just where I had just been driving, smoke billowing from the tires. But by then, I was safely off to the side of the road. I just sat on the shoulder, stunned—and popped the clutch. My poor car juggered to a stop, and turned its head as if to look back at me questioningly, like my old horse. Really?

The air is laden with black smoke, the acrid odor of burnt tires and hydraulic fluid. Black skid marks indelibly annealed to the road for months to come. A grim reminder of melted tire tracks right where I had just been driving. It all happened so quickly, there would’ve been no time to second-guess, or even to avert an accident. It was a fluke. Or Karma. Certainly cars were involved. Some cosmic April Fools joke?

Earlier, I was dwelling on the precariousness of life, and the importance of living each day as if it were the last. Fully, in the moment, as it were—I was feeling that mortal coil of time having outlived both my parents.

Meanwhile, the pelicans and grebes carry on with the business of trolling for breakfast, breaking concentric fish circles on the glassine lake, making solemn vees on the surface of the lake as they bear down on their quarry. As if a V for victory. A cormorant skims the surface of the lake, stitching the mirrored surface with its wings. Gathers in the view. In the cattails, a pair of monstrous pale bass break the surface, they lip and taste the air, splaying their tails, they are entwined in that oldest dance of the world. Life goes on.

I’m still sitting by the side of the road, shaken, trying to get up enough nerve to move down the road....as if there were a tiny capsule of protected timelessness here. I’m shaking so bad that I’m uneasy about driving north. 

The rain has arrived. I’m watching the osprey who are building a nest somewhere inland, they fly up the path of the inlet, the lake is their ley line. Earlier I was dwelling on the precariousness of life, as I’ve been living each day as if it were the last. Fully, in the moment, as it were—feeling that mortal coil. I think I’ll just sit here a while longer and shake. Maybe cry a bit.

I must admit that I sat by the side of the road and contemplated my navel for quite some time afterwards. Ironically, I was channeling photographer Jerry Downs in my head, wondering how he’d render the lake and tule fog in a photo as the light was rather flat—so that misplaced moment saved me from a potentially gnarly outcome. One time when being pokey and admiring the view paid off....

The door prize: I found a rare white Fritillaria too. Right across from where I was parked...the bladder wants what it wants, you know... I had to pee something fierce after that scare, I’m surprised I didn’t crap, my pants. I went up the hill and found this rarest of flowers—an April Fool door prize? Not every day one finds a an endangered species with a Plant Rank: 1B.2. I drove around the lake to the spillway, and suddenly the clouds parted, and it was as if I were inside of a painting by Turner.

4/1/19

It’s time for Robert Lee Brewer's Poem a Day! 2019

A poem a day writing prompts. Visit Robert Lee Brewer's blog for more prompts and example poems. I'm posting the prompts here so I'll have them all in one place as I don't always have internet.

Will Durst flyer signed

Like the returning salmon

Like the returning salmon, I only feel at ease when I return to my natal watershed. The  moment I cross the rise over the Tomales Bay Watershed I know I am home. The farmlands rise up to greet me like an old friend. Without judgement, without frame, the convolutions of road, space and time take me back to a place when anything was possible, even love.

D8C8AD, OR BEIGE BY ANY OTHER NAME

D8C8AD, OR BEIGE BY ANY OTHER NAME

A photo of a small green bird, and a series of color swatches. A chic fashion statement of sorts. But nowhere on that bird is that particular color beige, for example. Call it bone, as in bone-dead, because sometimes defining colors or what the eye sees, does not precisely fit the rigid structure as defined by Pantone color charts—D8C8AD. It is the imprecise nature of the variabilities of colors that graces that wild canary’s flanks that gives it depth and it both delights and surprises the eye with endless possibility.

3/27/19

PEN THEFT

PEN THEFT

It evolved into something like this:
She loved purple, and so by default,
all purple pens laying about were hers.
No matter that they weren’t. The siren call.
She absconded with the lot. They were like candy.
No pen was safe from her covetous nature.
Relentless as the sea. To her way of thinking:
Possessiveness was nine-tenths of the law.
Or something like that. Or that’s how she rationalized it.
With purple pen in hand, she was always at the ready
for what may, or may not, come.
Better to ask permission after the fact, than not, she thought,
knowing that the answer was always stacked.
She was well armed and at the ready.
By default, she was his Girl Friday,
even though it was not in the job description.
In the process, he, who hoarded his pens
in every possible color, had to relinquish control
of the purple pens, it was payback time
for all the pens he had stolen from his sister, the writer.
Some pens were tinted with the garish mauveine of analine dye,
an accident involving the synthesis of quinine for malaria,
that forever changed the painter’s palette,
and all the colors addressing the modern world—
not to mention mosquitoes.
Other pens were infused with a touch of the poet’s
secret midnight ink with impossible names
such as aubergine, amethyst or tanzanite.
She never knew what those dark pens
would want to say, or would want to draw, next.
Not to mention the uncharted territories.
She held them up to her ear, and like seashells,
they whispered unintelligible secrets
that were more often than not—lost in translation
on the long and arduous journey
from ear to hand to paper, or prayer,
bypassing that relentless censor, the brain.
She gave them free rein. They whispered nonsensical terms,
like blood diamonds, or high mass, and other raiments of desire.
Ultimately it was about truth. Any truth would do.
Or perhaps it was a case of free reign, because
purple was the color of royalty, after all.
It was sort of like channeling those Roddy Doyle
Facebook dialogues. Nonsensical premises
with sensical endings drowning their sorrows over a pint.
You could almost see the premises flocking
just around the corners of the mind’s eye.
She couldn’t help herself, stealing those pens.
Because purple is the color of forgiveness.
after all.

3/27/19

KILLING THE CAT

KILLING THE CAT

Cat wants in and out at the same time
But she is stuck on the stoop of indecision.
Coming and going are one thing to her.
She doesn’t differentiate, however,
she is merely exorcising her rights—
like Schrödinger’s cat. Ah, the variables of physics.
She complains. Looks up at me as if it’s my fault.
We stand in the doorway, frozen in time. And wait.
Maybe we are the thought experiment in action.
This room, this door. This moment in time
caught in the crosshairs. Not the cat—
who is neither dead nor alive,
depending upon your perspective.
And yes, boxes may have been involved.
If I think of her in the box, then, she is dead.
If I don’t, then, she she is alive. Either. Or.
What’s so ironic is that she’s not even my cat.
We wait, contemplate the vagaries of air.
Measure the depths of sky.
And close the door.

3/25/15
rev. 3/25/19
Published in Spectrum 24 August 2020

Dear Deer (Deirdre) of the Sorrows (photo)

Dear deer of the Sorrows. Last night she recognized the sound of my car and then refused to move. Nearly a head-on collision. Nearly the end for her. Right in front of the church too. Where is that young buck Naoise when you need him?

Photo is from 2018. Deirdre the deer is a little hussy, has twins every year without fail. She pops down the roses as if they were cotton candy—much to the chagrin of my cousin Sinead. Doesn’t even savor them. (Her cheekiness finally got the best of her, later in the year, now she hobbles from a run-in with a car, her latest set of twins dutifully mincing along behind her.)

Feral Friday commute

My somewhat feral Friday morning routine—get up before the crack of dawn, watch the mist rising in Nicasio Valley, listen to the cows, like a cat I sneak out of the house before my cousin Dave gets home from working nights at United—he doesn’t know I’m crashing in Sean’s abandoned bedroom— it’s a race to beat the clock. At least I’m no longer on the couch, the house is coming apart at the seams— literally. Where I’ve been staying in Sebastopol is too far from my teaching job in Berkeley. I make tea in a flask, pack out all my things, pour myself into the car, after scraping off frost, navigate icy backroads, through Lucas Valley, pick up Wi-Fi at Big Rock, the only place I can get a signal on my iPad, check the mail and FB, wait for sunrise over San Pablo Bay (none today, only fog and rain), finish off my tea, then head down the hill to outsmart the madness of the freeway and the commute frenzy of the big cities across the bay. I do all this in order to teach kids poetry.

SUMI-E haiku

SUMI-E

In a small clay bowl,
black carbon ink dreams the final song
of trees into being.

3/17/19

UKIYO-E SUMI DREAMS

In a small clay bowl,
black carbon ink dreams the final song
of trees into being.

3/17/19

Shout out from Sharon Doubiago on the publication of Hard Country

I wasn’t expecting a Facebook shout-out from poet Sharon Doubiago, for triggering the events for the publication of Hard Country. But, thanks.

Sharon Doubiago wrote to John Crawford:

“In 1980 two poet friends, Maureen Hurley and I think Leonard Cirino took my manuscript Hard Country, to Meridel LeSueur who was teaching at the annual 2-week poetry symposium in Port Townsend Washington. Copper Canyon Press of Pt. Townsend had enthusiastically accepted it but now was making sexual demands "or no publication." I took my ms from him. Meridel said "I've waited all my life for this book and before I die I'm going to get it published." And she did by taking the ms. to John Crawford of West End Press. Upon reading it he accepted it. Thus began my publishing career (which, as with some of my longtime poet friends as good as any of the superstars, might not have ever happened—writing poetry and getting published are 2 entirely different—in many ways contradictory—endeavors). West End was in Minneapolis as was Meridel. John was wonderful. He founded his press in the West End bar across the street from Columbia University in New York where Jack Kerouac, et al, had hung out and subsequently poets, writers and students. John was a great human being of great integrity and subsequently a great publisher. He never, not even slight hints, demanded what Copper Canyon had. Nor did he require extensive rewriting, changes or cuts to my 264-page poem. Instead he created a 6 female poets committee as editors. An issue rose about the Native American poems in Hard Country, whether a poem about the history of the U.S. by a "white woman" was politically incorrect. It was the great poet, the Native American Joy Harjo, who gave the okay. While in the publication process John came to San Francisco to meet with me, took me to the Basque Hotel/Restaurant in the alley across from what is now the Beatnik Museum, and over dinner educated me in the contemporary political Basque situation. Most awesomely he took me to the Marina apartment of the great poet George Oppen and wife. At least twice he brought me to Minneapolis, for final proofing and readings. He shared with me in several visits and letters his disastrous marriage with a Southern California woman named Sharon. He warned me to never take personally any confusion he might make with my name! He told me this several times! When published he made great connections and readings for Hard Country. When West End moved to Albuquerque he published a second edition. I last saw him there. He picked me up at Margaret Randall’s house and took me to his house which was packed with boxes of West End’s other publications. When he retired West End he sent me the remaining Hard Country copies at no cost to me. In publishing Hard Country he made possible all the rest of my life, all my further publications.  He made possible my poet’s life. He made possible the hope of a great America.  Thank you, mucho gracias, merci beaucoup, shukrin  John Crawford, Love Sharon (the one who loves you).”

https://www.facebook.com/547040818/posts/10156315981285819/

Wild birds

Wild Birds

There were always unnamed rituals to be upheld. The sisters saved up their hair from the comb and each spring they’d place their old hair out on the bushes for the wild birds to build their nests. In this way they were connected to the air. The birds imprinted on their scent, and circled of them like a halo. Like Saint Brigid. Yes. In this way they were all connected.

3/7/19

There were always unnamed rituals to be upheld. 

The sisters saved up their hair from the comb 

and each spring they’d place their old hair 

out on the bushes for the wild birds to build their nests. 

In this way they were connected to the air. 

The birds imprinted on their scent, 

and circled of them like a halo. Like Saint Brigid. Yes. 

In this way they were all connected.

Fat Tueday, Pancake Night

Yes, it’s Fat Tuesday! Pancake night, that’s what’s for dinner. My granny always made crêpes and stuffed them with cottage cheese, sour cream, sugar, and lemon with zest. Erwan Bouchina’s son, Antoine’s lonely crêpe pan was put to good use. No buckwheat flour though. They’re quite filling with the stuffing. I can handle about two, and I’m done. Laissez les bons temps rouler! 

• 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.

Atmospheric river

The atmospheric river is back. Rain rain rain rain. Hope the backroads will be open tomorrow. Localized flooding this afternoon—the Laguna is back, full force. Perfect Storm.

TRUE BLUE

He said—I wanna be in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
She said—But honey, you gotta accessorize.
So he strapped on an electric blue guitar
and strutted down the street in style.

3/1/19

Still waiting for the release date of The Etruscan Smile

 

Still waiting for the release date of The Etruscan Smile....here’s the trailer. You can see Neil in the party scene to the right of Brian Cox, out of focus, Look for the white hair. I think that me standing sideways to the right of Neil.

• On the set of Etruscan Smile

AFTER THE STORM

AFTER THE STORM

Lost by the side of the road
A pair of flightless gloves
The color of bluejay wings.

Each new pot hole
Waits like a hungry bird
To pierce a tire.

On my way to work
I crossed three watersheds
Marveling how water
always seeks its own level.

Trees take on new angles a possibility.
It’s a race against gravity.
And we know gravity always wins.

The bright green promise of grass
Beguiles the eye with false allegations of spring
while herons wade along the clement shores
of new lagoons.

2/28/2019

I made a new art blog

I made a new blog, Maureen Hurley Art, to showcase some of my most recent art. Two new blogs in as many months, not counting another blog I made in December. A friend wants me to create an Etsy account and begin selling my work. So this is a stopgap. I may backfill with earlier art at another time. My artwork is lost in this massive blog. I’ve  managed to post most work when it was created, but when I post the older work, I’ll be lucky to get the year correct. Work is posted by month and by medium. As the river crests, during the record-breaking Pineapple Express storm that threatens to rival the 1986 Valentine’s flood, I am surrounded by floodwater. Massive slides, multiple road closures, the only way out is through art. So below is today’s offering, a pastel of  the Nicasio Reservoir from the spillway side.

Driving West County Roads

Driving West County roads in the dark was a nightmare—backroads were impromptu creekbeds. I hit a few water walls, watusied & forded a few new streams. Rural driving skills, no longer dormant.

Two pastels, Elephant Mountain

Two pastels, Nicasio oak & rock

Chalk pastel. I usually work wet, so this is a learning curve.

Oil pastel, same place, same day, different mediums.

Channeling the clouds on Elephant Mountain

This morning the mountain was completely enveloped in fog. It was a transcendental experience watching the lake emerge from the flat planes of the pewter mist, and the myriad possibilities of fog and light emerge and recombine minute by minute. I never grow tired of watching it. Why did I never find the time to seek out and observe such beauty? It fair takes my breath away. It seems I am channeling the master cloud painters Frangonard, Watteau and Turner—with the clouds posing like that.

Black/Elephant Mountain is made of Franciscan strata and pillow lava, volcanic extrusions from under the sea—a child of the San Andreas Fault. Meanwhile, down the valley, in the distance, I could hear the call of a flock of Canada geese on the move, and a cow bawling for her errant calf. The cacophany of wild geese grew nearer—They were accompanying a lone bicyclist, blithely unaware that the wild geese gods were overhead protecting him on that empty stretch of road. The redtail hawks are flying low, zoning in on the chickens that are digging for worms in the pasture. A flash of red against the green grass, and the intense yellow of mustard. Somewhere, just out of sight, the bald eagle is circling. Leaping bass make concentric coinage on the surface of the lake. Grebes bob on the ripples, tree swallows crochet the air. I may be living somewhat feral existence well out of my comfort zone, but I am doubly blessed when it comes to a matter of light and fog on a lake at dawn.

The bicyclist and his entourage of wild geese.
They followed him all the way around the lake.

A bird and a half a day. Cats and bird deaths—an inflated fact?

Photographer friend Jerry Downs posted a lovely photo of an orange spotted housecat sitting on a car hood enjoying a rare bit of sunshine during an otherwise bleak and rainy week. And of course someone had to go and spoil it all by stating how every single outdoor cat was responsible for 500+ songbird deaths in North America. (To the tune of  3.6 million birds a day, or 1.3 billion birds a year). A bird and a half a day per cat? Do the math. Who comes up with this stuff?

To wit, I replied—The cat bird-kill statistic is somewhat inflated....that would be something like a bird and a half per day per cat. I don’t think so. Besides, not all free roaming house cats kill birds. In fact, most pet cats are clumsy lummoxes. Easy targets like lizards and mice run in front of their noses and they hardly know what to do with them. They’re not the ferocious hunters they’re cracked up to be. Besides the males (he’s orange, therefore, has an 80% chance of being male) rarely, if ever, hunt.

Since the 1970s, most of the bug population too has plummeted—especially butterflies and bees. Birds eat bugs and pesticide-laden seeds and other birds. They are apex predators. But when it comes to bird deaths, people’s free range pet moggies are unfairly bearing the brunt—convenient scapegoats for all the bird deaths. 

We’ve also systematically killed off or destroyed most of the wild birds’ natural habitat, and also their predators—from kestrels and hawks to cougars and bobcats to foxes, coyotes and wolves— which was never factored in on the annual estimated bird population death counts. 

Instead look to climate change, bird habitat loss, exposure to chemicals, fertilizers, insecticides, and collisions with man-made objects—from cell towers, windmills, airplane engines to cars and windows. A billion birds a year die from colliding with windows. Human impact (and the continued use of pesticides) is the real threat" to songbirds.
 

That said, I’m not for vast colonies of feral cats. They don’t belong here. They should be eradicated. But when someone’s pet moggie sitting outside on a car hood enjoying a spot of sunshine, being held responsible by proxy for massive bird deaths, is a bit over the top. Talk about killjoy.

RARE SNOWFALL, IMBOLC

After the rain, A surprise snow, it’s 36 degrees—
not cold enough for snow to stick in the valleys
but all the ridges are dressed in white.
Well it did snow anyway, through the night.
But this morning, not a trace,
even though the temperature dropped to 24º.
A friend who lives in sonwcountry scoffs,
says, barely cold enough for a jacket.
Black ice on the car. Traces of fallen snow—
clumps on the windshield archived in ice.
Driving north on Wilson Hill Road, today—
Geyser Peak and Mt. St. Helena,
all the peaks of the greater Bay Area
are grizzled white with snow.

2/4/19, rev 2/4/20
from a Facebook post
It got so extensively revised, I moved it to a new post.
Snow in West Marin

BLACK ICE & GRAUPEL two haiku

Black ice on the car. 

Traces of fallen snow—

clumps on the windshield 

archived in ice.

Driving north on Wilson Hill Road—

Geyser Peak and Mt. St. Helena 

grizzled white with snow.

Their lovely sparseness was eradicated when I turned it into a poem

• RARE SNOWFALL, IMBOLC

I have a Blogger stalker

Dear cerebellum, get a life
Quit stalking me.
If you don’t like my blog,
don’t read it.
So simple!
Move along now.
Nothiing to see here.

NATAL WATERSHED

NATAL WATERSHED

Like the returning salmon, I only feel at ease

when I return to my natal watershed.

The moment I cross the rise over the Tomales Bay watershed.

I let go of my tight breath, and sigh. I know I am home.

The farmlands rise up to greet me like old friends.

Without judgement, without frame, 

the convolutions of road, space and time 

take me back to a place when anything was possible—

even love.

1/31/19

Black morph hawk (photos)

I disturbed a hawk who was eyeing the La Franchi freerange chickens in the field across from the Nicasio Reservoir. Somehow I don’t think the Alsatian guard dogs will be able to keep this fellow at bay. What kind of hawk, it’s like a Mexican hawk, brown all over. Cooper’s hawk comes to mind. Not a red tail. Darker. Not striped, so not a red shouldered hawk, more like a red tail hawk, but melanistic. There are several dark hawks along Nicasio reservoir. I have many photos of them. He was upset with me because I was too close to him—and his  coveted chickens....he turned around on his post to give me a baleful stare. If looks could kill. I was shooting from inside the car but clearly that didn’t fool him. He stood his ground. Geoff Davis said, Yearling redtail—only ONE stripe on tail feathers, immature and hungry and been wet. I thought maybe his fishing expedition failed, and he was trying his luck in greener pastures.

Fort Worden Centrum summer writing conference, 1979

Fort Worden Centrum Writers Conference, 1979—with thanks to Jim Heynen

Jim Heynen posted a Facebook photo of the Fort Worden Centrum summer writing conference, from 1979. It was before my time there but the stories from that conference were still circulating in 1980 when Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Susan Abbott, Tobey Kaplan and I crashed the Writers Conference in 1980.

The photo evoked such memories. I wrote to Jim: Ah, Sam Hamill with his curly red mop (I have a photo of him from the 1980 conference), and Bob Hass as a longhair. Migod, Levertov, and Kumin. Robert Bly was born old? We were all reading Thomas McGrath’s Imaginary Letters during those years. A hero of mine. What a handsome man. Can’t believe Bly was a belligerent asshole to Tom (hahaha). Shocked! Simply shocked, I am. We heard about that embroglio when we attended in 1980. And something about the baseball story with Levertov.... I don’t remember any of the details.

Tree Swenson and Kathleene K West. I miss her. Ever the chameleon—she said she reinvented herself every ten years. She was kind to me, got me on the Montana Poets in the schools roster. We reconnected on Facebook right before her death....I had no idea she was in such anguish. She sold me her old cellphone for $15 but never cashed the check—its name was Gravity. I deleted her pictures of New Mexico, thanked her for the phone, then I heard the news.

Jim Heynen replied: Mo, I guess Bly was actually quite good in his workshops, but he tormented McGrath during McGrath's reading by yelling from the audience, "Read the Tomasito poems!  Read the Tomasito poems!"  McGrath finally addressed him firmly with, "Patience, Robert.  Patience."
At a social event, Bly insulted Levertov by telling her she was being too hard on people in her workshops.  She started weeping and came to me, exclaiming "What a horrible man!"  But Levertov had no tear ducts to shed the tears she was feeling--so her eyelids just bulged and got red.  Another tidbit: Bob Hass was reluctant to come and teach a workshop because, he said, "I don't know how to do it."  Then he did a great job.  One exercise was having participants do an exact imitation of a poem they liked--the same number of syllables per line, and accented and unaccented syllables exactly as the original.

I told Jim, thanks for the backstory. I was standing with Tess Gallagher and Ray Carver, as they, and others were recounting the stories, which became interwoven with ours...a mythos of sorts.

I only remember vague fragments of the infamous Levertov story of baseball players, drunken writers conference parties and the dropping of the f-bomb. And something about Kumin too that made the gossip train too. The stories that survived.

Where am I?

Someone posted a quote from The Prisoner.

I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!

I am painfully reminded of all the cool places in Wales to visit, my ex partner’s sister dragged us to the fake village where The Prisoner was filmed. I was fit to be tied and asked W H Y with many question marks. We were there for six hours—it was truly a life sentence. The unanswerable questions arise. Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself. 

Be seeing you, Number Six.

iPad dictation fail

A case of iPad dictation fail!

My iamb having number.
I was in about an hour.

About the only useful thing I can say is at least it wasn’t in imbic pentameter.

DELUGE

DELUGE

Last night’s storm pounded
like a desperate drunk at the door,
and left potholes the size of Shetland ponies.
The Laguna leapt its banks,
and kayaks decorate the new shoreline,
a vast inland sea, a river road
drowning the oaks,
leaving cattle stranded on new islands.
I saw ravens bathing in temporary lakes
in the horse pastures.
Trees and garbage bins bowed
to the untamed gods of wind and rain
while the earth shakes its mantle
like a wet dog at the fire.
They say last night Mary Oliver died.
Today is the anniversary of my former love,
John Oliver Simon’s death. Goodnight sweet prince,
The magic realm of a year and a day
is greeted by bales of hay sprouting green crewcuts,
and fields of young mustard is nodding
their golden mantles to the returning sun.

1/17/19

Learning woes, continued, no math whiz, I

I was, and still am a disaster in math, unless money is owed, or if I need to frame some art, then I’m sharp as a tack. My math teacher, Archie Williams was one of a handful of positive teachers I had at Drake High School. Did I learn foundations of algebra? No. 

But I held his Olympic medal in my hand and learned about Hitler and racism in America. I loved and adored Archie. I hated how disrespectful the class was. Joey Doyle’s spitwads and Rodney Warnerhoff’s rubber band missiles and lame paper airplanes. A sign of the times. 

I remember Archie, who was also a former Tuskegee pilot, picking up one of those failed paper airplanes scribbled with bad math homework from the floor and turning it into a teaching moment. He refolded the plane, gave it a bent nose, and talked about aerodynamics— lift, force, and thrust. Then let loose the plane that sailed like a hungry gull in the late afternoon classroom. 

Was he also delving into geometry? Probably. Like I said, we got much much more than foundations of algebra with Archie. I wrote about Archie many times. I can’t say the same for my other high school teachers.

“My ab-fab foundations of algebra teacher, the late, great Archie Williams was a real Olympic champion. Archie won the 400-meter race. I got to hold his Olympic gold medal. I sucked at math, but Archie was the kindest, gentlest mentor I ever had. Not his fault that math didn't take. Oh, but the stories he told us, of winning the Olympics, of running with Jesse Owens, and meeting Hitler. At 13, we hardly knew who Hitler was, but we held that same gold medal that Hitler bequeathed to Archie. Archie was a a man who broke world records, and race barriers.” Olympic Pride, American Prejudice 

During the 1990s, I had to take the CBEST test and, as expected, I passed the literature aspect with flying colors. I utterly failed the math portion, but I expected that, no surprise there. So, I began my retro homework in earnest with third grade math workbooks, as that’s where I fell off the learning wagon, the year I learned to read. A year of either, or—not both. I clearly did not operate on the proscribed learning timeline. I was madly marching off to my own drummer. I was gifted at art, something that was of no value within our culture. Education had failed me. Writing would come much later.

Determined to pass the CBEST, I had notions of becoming a certified teacher in those days, I worked my way through those old math workbooks. My head hurt in new places, and I literally cried my way up to the sixth grade level. Then, because I was stuck, I found a woman tutor on Craigslist, who was getting her MA in math and needed a guineapig for her dissertation. She was fascinated by my quirkiness, as I was pretty unschooled, as it were.

She had me approach geometry and algebra problems—unschooled as I was—to see how I would approach them—and she discovered that I was bored with lower math, plus I had a form of math dyslexia as well. Though I didn’t get the answers right, I was approaching the concept of higher math correctly. In fact, she was fascinated by how I was resolving the questions, I was innovative, and quirky, at best. I passed that CBEST test second time around. Not with flying colors. But solid.

Passing the CBEST was a big deal, healing an old wound, as I was a whack job math student. Who knew I had dyslexia in math as well? I’ve been known to add and subtract sums in the same column without even catching the error of my ways. 

Ironic, as the math gene runs in the family—my mother‘s cousin, who grew up in Austin Nevada, was a bona fide math whiz. She disappeared after high school. Government job. We never knew would happen to her until much later. She sent us a postcard from places like Alamogordo, White Sands, Chicago. Decades later, after she had died, we found out she was a mathematician working on the Manhattan Project.

Revised from a Facebook post, from the comments for the same one on learning to read, 1/21.

My 19th c. childhood reading list, or learning how to read

When queried about my childhood reading list, I discovered that mine was from the 19th c., not the 1950s & 60s, the era I grew up in. ‘Splains a lot. Someone asked me, what was I, educated by nuns? Practically, with a no-nonsense Irish granny at the helm who had little interest in American bourgeois culture.

It took a while to unravel my childhood reading list pattern. I tried Wikipedia’s year-by-year entries and discovered that I’d read only a few popular books published during the 1950s and the 1960s. I went back decade by decade, from the 1940s to the turn of the last century, and still I only garnered less than a dozen books. Wow. 

Frustrated, I googled the most overlooked children’s books of the 19th c. Paydirt!  I should add that I read the long, unabridged versions. The nitty and the gritty was my childhood reading landscape. No pablum books. Unless you considered Robinson, Wilde, and Joyce to be kinder-fodder.

What a strange child I was. I hated any books that had talking animals, or anything that was properly infantilized for children. I loved fairy tales, the darker, the better. A bonus, those old fairytale books hadn’t yet been bowdlerized. I hated those upbeat false reality books with sugar-coated endings. I hated clever rhyming books, so Dr. Seuss was out. I preferred those boys adventure and sleuth series to the girly books. Hardy Boys, or the X Bar X boys over Nancy Drew or Little House on the Prairie. 

Anything to do with horses, I read it, no matter what the era. No Laura Wilder, no Bev Cleary, and no EB White. No Pooh, no thieving mice, no spelling spiders, nor even Sendak’s wild things—even though he lived in Sausalito. There was no escaping Dr. Seuss, who was trotted out by teachers everywhere. But in my horizon there were none of the usual usual childhood reading landscape popular during the 1950s and 60s. How did I not know this? 

Of course, most of my unauthorized childhood reading material came from what was on the bookshelves in the basement. My grandmother’s musty old bookshelves. Ones that survived the onslaught of eight boisterous children, and a permanent move from the San Francisco Victorian on 3rd Ave., to the old summer house in Forest Knolls.

Also, another significant source of my reading material came from thrift stores, whether from our next-door neighbor’s sister Borg, or my aunt Toddy who used to bring me books in 50-pound potato sacks. I remember one late winter afternoon, sobbing in the hedge over Lassie Come Home. It was very rare to get contemporary new books. My aunt once gave me new books at Christmas. I cherished them. One was about a flivver.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, most kids watched TV to keep themselves entertained, but I read books, as we didn’t have a TV, and reception was at best, tricky in the valley. This was before the era of cable TV. Our neighbors, the Stones, had a TV so we watched Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Sea Hunt, Rawhide, Bonanza when the reception was working. There were two to three broadcast channels, with lots of snow—depending upon the vagaries of weather—and there were few programs to watch. 

But in the Stone’s old milking barn, on a high shelf, I discovered the entire Wizard of Oz collection (1900-1920) that must have belonged to Stephanie Stone’s mother—books that would’ve been considered old when she was a child. I plowed through the dusty tomes in record time. I didn’t ask for permission to borrow them, I surreptitiously snuck them home, one by one. I was transported. A baker’s dozen wasn’t enough, I wanted more. And, no I hadn’t yet seen the movie. No TV.

I also ordered armloads of cheap paperbacks from Scholastic Book Services. They were probably out of copyright, ergo older titles, not current ones. They were cheap. Most titles cost ten cents, hardbacks were 15 cents—a dollar bought an armload of books. I did chores for the neighbors in order to buy those books. Every dime represented an hour or two’s escape from reality.  

When my monthly SBS book order came, kids jeered at me, saying no way was I reading all those books, but I read every single one before my next order came. And no, I never read Clifford the Big Red Dog. It was The Little Witch, Pipí Longstocking, Black Beauty, and stories of ghosts, lost dogs and ponies. I gave away boxes of SBS books to younger friends.

Our school library was very small, we didn’t have a local public library, so the Bookmobile was our main source of books. I remember checking out a beautiful gilt-edged 1903 first edition, with an embossed cover, of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms (but not the story), to give you an idea of how old some of those books really were. 

What makes this all so funny, is that I didn’t even learn to read until the end of third grade. I hated Dick, Jane and that stupid dog, Spot. I was bored to tears with them and their goddam dog, I think I was insulted, and stubbornly refused to learn how to read. I wanted Allingham’s The Fairies. I can still quote some of it.

My mother said I was already singing my alphabet and reading in pre-kindergarten. I briefly attended a French nursery school, so I knew some things. I could count the stars and sing nursery rhymes in French. But when I went to Lagunitas School, kindergarten was for babies. And I said so. Lagunitas was regressive. They wouldn’t let me paint, school felt like pure punishment. All I wanted to do was play, or paint. I liked singing, the teacher sometimes banged out simple songs on piano. 

My mother was an artist so art was my first language. Even though I was the youngest one in the class, I was bored out of my gourd, and I dropped out of kindergarten. For real. It was also a long way from our house down Arroyo Road, to the highway. It was a whole mile, and I was only four-going-on-five years old, with very short legs, and an even shorter attention span.

Best thing my grandmother ever did was not forcing me to go to back to school. However, there was hell to pay in first grade. That negative karma followed me all through school. I had trouble learning. But I do remember the day I learned to read in third grade. 

Sometime in April or May, it was as if a switch had been thrown. And suddenly I could read. Breakthrough. The secret was simple, Miss Lenz left me alone in a corner with the new science-based SRA reading card series. I was off and running. I was a house afire—mad for reading. 

In two months, I read all those laminated SRA cards I could get my hands on—through to the 5th grade level. I learned about echolocation and sonar. But I couldn’t answer the quiz questions. No one knew that I had a learning disability. Then, when I was 30, I discovered I had dyslexia. Bingo. It all fell into place. 

In the past, I was routinely sent to the corner during reading time, with nothing to do. Punishment because I couldn’t keep up, or on track, during the reading aloud circle. I loved when Mrs. Bryce read aloud from The Phantom Tollbooth after lunch. But to this day, I hate to be read aloud to, unless I’m held captive in my car.

When I was in my 30s, I made up for lost time and finally did read some of those childhood classics from the 1950s-1960s, so that I could relate to what my young students were reading. I was teaching kids how to write poetry and it seems only fair that I was familiar with what they were reading in the classroom. I must admit that I loved reading about The Chronicles of Narnia, and Island of the Blue Dolphins. Still haven’t read any Cleary, Norton, or Sendak. 

What were your favorite childhood books? 

Revised from a Facebook  post 1/21.

SGVCC Ninth senior lunch group art show

RAIN HAIKU FOR LITTLE CHRISTMAS

RAIN HAIKU FOR LITTLE CHRISTMAS

It’s raining like mad.
atmospheric rivers
raging in the sky.

The rain pounds us down
to its level—a sea change—
salmon swimming home.

A rapid tattoo
beats a primal tympani
on roof and windows.

The old potbelly
groans like an arthritic dog—
last log on the fire.

The Epiphany
Three kings lost in the rainstorm.
A king cake of thought.

1/6/19

California Impressionism

Inspired by a desire to capture “impressions” of everyday life, avant-garde French artists, whose work was considered unacademic by the Salon, changed the face of art—from upholding the neoclassic ideal (think photo-realism) to focusing on the vagaries of weather and intimate life by using a bright palette, and quick, broad impressionistic brush strokes.

The French impressionist movement of 1874 was controversial because the subject matter was not Salon approved—no allegorical subject matter. It did not instruct. it was art for art’s sake, or rather, it found god in the sublime.

And instead of painting in isolated studios, they took it outside, to the fields, thanks to pioneer landscape painter, Papa Corot. Also, the invention of tube paint changed how painters painted—in plein aire.

By the turn of the century, however, Impressionism was widely embraced, with artists making pilgrimages to study with Paris’ finest painters.

The movement was embraced by California artists who also emulated 19th-century French landscapes for inspiration. Society of Six, William Keith. Maurice LeMue. Unlike east coast impressionism, California Impressionist works did not solely revolve around the vagaries of weather, or the grandeur of sublime landscapes (think Bierstadt) instead, they showcased the atmosphere and emotion of scenery—using lots of juxtaposed color swaths.

Impressionism and the California Impressionism school has certainly affected my own sense of art. We grew up with a WPA mural in the Lagunitas school office, which was later discovered to be a mural by Maurice LeMue. It became an unconscious reference when I began to photograph landscapes. So, I owe my vision, in part, to that school.



(Well, I found the article I was reading to be so clumsily written that I wound up rewriting it, so no quotes. So I guess this is now my writing. But there is art!) See the link here. From a Facebook post. Perhaps I will expand it into a full article in the future.

POST NASALTUDES

I’m not liking this new year  at all.
I’ve been sneezing so hard it feels like
I’ve blasted myself backwards into yesteryear.
And all I want to do is to curl up
tighter than a tortured hedgehog
& sleep in until tomorrow,
and tomorrow and tomorrow.

1/19

End of year writing stats 2018

I have fewer posts for 2018, than for previous years. But despite several major life-altering derailments, I managed to eke out some 60 poem entries (my goal is 52 posts a year)—a post a week) some poems are repetitions, or rather, revisions from April Poetry Month posts. I did very little by way of pulp fiction reading for my Amazon Reviews writing. The thrill is gone. No time or inclination to read, sadly.

My old boyfriend John Oliver Simon died in January, that left a deeper hole than expected. I also had to jump into the fray and manage his two California Arts Council grants, and there was little money to pay for my time as the majority of the funds were tied up in residencies. So I was poor as a churchmouse most of the year, with the CAC money tied up in knots. Then, the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, ended it—after 20 years. Just like that. I’m still reeling from that one.

So, I’ve been living rough on people’s couches. No fixed abode. Which also means no fixed job. No income. I’ve been living thin. I had to give away most of my possessions. I still need to rehome my books and art supplies. So, keeping up appearances has not been on the list. I wouldn’t wish that kind of year upon anyone. So, 2019 will be my year of massive change.

On the blog timeline front, I’ve managed to add a few old bits from those lean years. But it’s been slim pickings. I picked up a few posts in 1980, 1982; 1997, 1998, 1999; 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006. But I still  haven’t reached the magical formula of 52 posts a year on those lean years. I've come to the conclusion that I may never reach my goal.

However, I did manage to pick up a few odd post entries—mainly posters of readings—for those early years when I created the Russian River Writers’ Guild blog (a big scanning project—still not finished, but the bulk of it is done.) Most of the RRWG memorabilia was buried within this blog, so I’m pleased that the extended RRWG memorabilia is now a different entity. I also began scanning work for Herman Berlandt’s memorial blog as well, but it’s under construction (not posted).

If I ever am able to gather up my old  pottery and ceramics pieces from the 1970s, and take photos of them, that’s on the back burner to add to this blog. But it’s extremely difficult for me to return to Oakland to get the rest of my stuff—let alone, my mail. Besides, I have nowhere to put the rest of my stuff. My books, art supplies and plants, especially.

I don’t have it in me this year to do a deeper Bill Jamesian-detailed statistics spreadsheet on my writing progress. Perhaps another time when I’m better dressed, emotionally speaking.

see 2017 stats

For some reason, an unknown twat named Susan sent me a comment, not once, not twice, but thrice stating it’s my karma. Of course, I marked them as spam. She has no other posts, no other comments, not even a blog. Why would people even do such a hateful thing?

On learning language equivalencies

Equivalencies. My mind is a bit like like Swiss cheese, full of holes when it comes to languages. I took the equivalent of two years modern Irish at UC Berkeley one summer, nearly 20 years ago, but I bottomed out in July, as my learning button broke. My head no longer worked, and the thing is, I’m usually pretty good at picking up languages. Possibly the toughest course I ever took was modern Irish. Bar none.

Our Irish teachers, Joe Nugent and Breen Conchubhair were pushing us so hard that many of us lost the thread. I gave up somewhere around the cupula. The class was supposed to be the equivalent of one year of Irish crammed into an intensive summer course. They opted to give us the equivalent of second year Irish, too—and my head broke. I couldn’t absorb any more. I’ve never had that experience before.

I later took a year of Archaic/Old Irish in order to translate the medieval Irish epics (it was all bookwork), alas, I still can't read Irish—other than to recognize words and occasional phrases here and there. People from Ireland assure me that I still know more Irish than they do....

Sometimes foreign words arise unbidden, I’ve no idea where they come from. Or even what language. It’s all a mystery how we acquire language. I mean, it’s all nice and textbook and ordered in a classroom—but that’s not how we acquire language. You have to create memories. It’s messy. You know, like go down to the pub and raise a jar or two. Get stinking blind drunk. That’s when my Russian comes back. Chut-chut.

However, I can swear profusely (and rather inventively) in several living languages, and a few dead languages. When I combined the words sabaca/dog and pizdah/cunt in a spontaneous invective, let's just say I brought the Russian house down. I lived one summer in Switzerland, I didn’t pick up much Switzerdeutsch, but let me tell you, I could swear like a troll of the highest arcana with a mere handful of words.

I also studied a semester of medieval Welsh, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I was completely ADD as it was during the 9/11 crisis. We were all out to lunch—as it were. I remember that we held class outside on the DOE library steps at UC Berkeley because the building was shut down... So surreal.

Medieval Welsh is much easier to learn than Irish, no doubt. But there's not that much crossover with learning Irish. Brythonic vs. Goidelic. And of course all the extra "vowel" types and double consonants are maddening. But I can do a pretty good hll sound, as in Llewelyn.

Even Russian is easier to learn than Irish. I remember looking longingly into the other classrooms, that summer at UC Berkeley, where other students were learning easy languages like Spanish, Latin, and Russian, and it seemed like the students were all wearing PJs and comfortable slippers by comparison. I could understand what they were saying with little effort, just by standing in the doorways like a demented peeping Tom.

Learning Irish is hard, very hard. At least they don't conjugate prepositions in Russian. I mean—prepositions fergawdsakes. I get conjugating verbs and nouns.What kind of language needs that kind of precision that directional words need to identify who is speaking? And what direction is involved? Just never attempt to explain going up or down stairs in Irish. Just don’t.

I lived in the USSR for a while during 1989 to 1991, so I had to pick up Russian fast. Talk about total immersion. If I wanted anything I had to learn how to ask for it. Food. Beer. Necessities. Black market. Also, when I was traveling illegally to Leningrad, I had to watch my Ps and Qs. Everyone thought I was from Kazakhstan or somewhere exotic. I was labeled “ethnic. And I’m ethnically Irish, that’s as close as it gets.

Though I heard Ukrainian spoken often enough, I was living in Cherkassy, near Kiev for a while, I never picked it up. Like with Dutch, Ukrainian just didn’t stick. Ukrainian is sort of like Welsh with all those extra vowel-y things running amok and creating havoc with your eyes.

I lived in Amsterdam on and off during the early 1990s , and because everybody in the Netherlands either bi-, or tri-lingual, not counting several dialects. However, they all spoke to me in English. Whether language, or dialect, the Dutch seamlessly code-switch between linguas francas. It’s kind of fascinating, really watching the Dutch effortlessly slide through the indo-European continuum.

I regret to report that I was lazy, that I merely learned the usual sound bytes, but not the language. Hooey Dag, bedankt, dank u wel, and alstublieft. And place names. I can even say Scheveningen perfectly. I’d never be mistaken for a German spy.

Weirdly, I can mostly make out the meaning in Dutch, if it’s in print. Ditto that with Latin. Church Latin, that is. I never studied Latin. Just 15 years of church Latin. Ecum spiri tutu o. I barely studied Spanish either but at least I’m fluent in Spanish—unless I panic. Then it’s curtains.

You should've seen me in Portugal right after 9/11. I was waving my arms like helicopter blades trying to achieve liftoff as I spoke a a bastard Portuguese-Spanglish to the taxi drivers. Everyone thought I was Italian. The only Italian I picked up was when I was a child living among immigrant families. Random words. Food.

But in Portugal, it really was a matter of survival. We didn’t want anyone to know we were American for fear of reprocussion. So my cousin and aunt were schtum/mum while I was gibbering on like a polyglotted gibbon while waving my arms as if to take flight—to the taxi drivers who didn't know what to make of us. I was negotiating the equivalencies between languages to create a pidgin dialect of survival.