Remembering Jan Morris (10/2/1926 – 11/20/2020)

Way back in the yonder age, when I was an art student at Sonoma State University, circa 1976-78, Welsh travel writer Jan Morris came to give a lecture in Inez Storer’s art history class. That semester we met so many extraordinary artists, including artist and inventor, Don Farnsworth, whose grandfather invented the TV, and Sam Francis—who walked to Cotati from Point Reyes to meet us, as he was eschewing all forms of modern transport. 

I don’t exactly remember the details or the lecture itself. But what I do remember is that Jan had lunch with us afterwards in a Cotati pub and the afternoon stretched out beyond the fringes of eternity, embellished with her amazing stories. Beer-in-hand, she was on a roll. The story I remember most vividly to this day is of Jan telling us when she was in Mongolia riding a horse across the vast plains. And something about red cowboy boots stuck in the back of my mind. 

Of course, in those days, Jan may have still been a man (aka John Humphreys Morris, who was the only journalist on Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent team of Mt. Everest). But, Mongolia! When John began his ascent toward the feminine gender and reassignment in 1972, in Casablanca, Morocco, it rocked the world. People couldn’t wrap their minds around it. 

To this day, I don’t know if I imagined the story of the red Mongolian riding boots, or if I saw them in a photo. See, in those days, I was not yet a writer. It could’ve been a misplaced associative story fragment from Carolyn Leilani Lau, who followed Jan’s Mongolian path during the 1980s. I remember seeing the framed photo on her kitchen counter in Oakland. Celia Woloch too had a pair of red cowboy boots. 

Maybe it’s a poet thing. Those red boots, whether real or imagined, whether they were Jan’s or Carolyn’s, or Celia’s—on her tsigani journey to Romania—became a powerful symbol for my own wanderlust, and the metaphor led me to the far corners of the earth including crossing the Andes, the Galapagos, and to the Russian steppes when it was still the USSR. Not quite outer Mongolia. Or inner Mongolia, but I caught the firebug of travel. And ignited my mind, and my writing.

And no, I’ve never owned a pair of red riding boots, but I did travel to some of those places with red Reebock boots. Not quite the same thing, but infinitely more comfortable. I wore them out a few times over. Duct tape was my friend. In Leningrad, I discovered the Cossacks, and the ancient Scythians also wore beaded red riding boots, so I was in good company. 

But those red boots became a symbol within the distant vistas of my mind. Rest in peace, Jan Morris, and may the Elysian Fields of your mind lead you ever onward. And may you always wear those red riding boots as you travel the great plains of the great beyond.

From a Facebook note to Pamela Robertson-Pearce; rev. 11/21/21.

A note on fire and the hair trigger of memory

Sunset, during the August Fire Complex was otherworldly 9/28/20

A friend posted a photo of her sanctuary, a couthy glowing fire pit, and I found myself overreacting to the image of fire. I seem have developed an adverse knee-jerk reaction not only to the odor of burning wood, but also to photos of fire. A knot of fear that begins in the gut, then it encircles the heart, begins to squeeze its fist.

I grew up with wood heating, we had no other source of heat. It was my job to stack the wood for the coming winter. There was a satisfying rhythm to that work. The tump and twist of wood into a puzzle measured by the cord—4 x 4 x 8’ or so. As we laid in the wood, we’d venture to guess if it would be a two, or a three-cord winter. The wood stacking ritual marked the closure of one season, and the entrance to another—and to my birthday. 

I am no stranger to fire, I live in a house with woodstoves, you’d think I wouldn’t react to fire, or to woodsmoke. But I do. I used to love sitting close to the fire on cold winter days, the fire warming my face until my cheeks pulsed and throbbed. I was mesmerized by the strange hypnotic choreography of dancing flames. And seeing the heartwood, the distinct tree rings, their age cut short,  illuminated in the embers. Each tree ring, a birthday in the long count of time.

Yesterday I found a long-forgotten low fired pinch-pot I had fired in our fireplace long ago, it triggered memories of gathering and refining the clay, wedging a mixture of blue and iron rich clay into patterns, pinching it between thumb and finger, then firing it, lifting it from the ash, smothering it in husk and straw to cool slowly so it wouldn’t crack, silica annealed into the hardness stone.

This is the first year that the odor of smoke has affected me. Not the Tubbs Fire, the Paradise Fire, nor the Kincade Fire, but this fire season, beginning with the Walbridge Fire, and ending with the August Complex fires. It’s almost like having my own personal PTSD switch. A hardwired fight/flight syndrome kicks in. 

I first noticed it acutely around Halloween. Those pumpkins. Candle smoke, paraffin, a petroleum byproduct, diesel tinged with the odor of baking pumpkin pie. The mouthwatering thought of Thanksgiving, and things benign. Then begins the mental hell, checklist for evacuation. What to save? I have barely unpacked since my last evacuation. These are my sins. Always at the ready. Samhain, the gate to the Otherworld, open, always by fire.

Ever since the wildfires, I have been scanning and digitizing decades-worth of prints and negatives. Most of my writing and art is already scanned—except for my travel journals on the back burner. Soon. Sometimes I dream I am evacuating again. I sleep with my wallet, MacBook and hard drive within arm’s reach, my keys are already in the car, which doubles as a large go-bag. 

I have to talk myself out of my own tree when the terror begins. I run off a quick mental checklist to convince myself it’s merely woodsmoke from a fireplace. I remind myself it’s a benign, warm, cozy odor. I find that identifying the type of wood helps. Oh, that’s hardwood, that’s crisp black oak, pungent sizzling bay, or fruitwood. Apple or cherry? 

Mmm, applewood fire, the most pungent, the most extraordinary of odors. The secret heart, the perfume of a thousand apples released all at once like flocks of wild birds. The overwhelming odor of orchards in late summer. Mesquite barbecue. Bacon. Clean, pungent, mouthwatering gracenote. 

Someone in the neighborhood burning coal? Sniff sniff. I have the nose of a bloodhound. No, just the rotten bouquet of woodsmoke when the fire dies out. Someone needs to clean their chimney. Wildfire smoke is more complex, nuanced. More creosote laden. Greasy, acrid, but more electrical, with a slight overtone of burning brakes. Like the ember fall and the acrid ash blizzard that descended from the Glass Fire, covering the foliage with a strange blanket of snow.  

My relationship to fire has changed utterly. This year, our extraordinary sunsets came at such a cost. Fire is its own entity, far beyond our feeble attempts to comprehend it, and certainly far beyond our scope to tame it. As a child I was utterly in love with volcanoes, the secret heart of fire within the earth. Later, I watched molten rock plunge into the sea. Sublime beauty, and corrosive air, acrid rain. A terrible beauty.

These days, I see myself as if from the outside looking in. Bearing witness. The fire within burning bright. All I know is that there will be a prime factorization of proverbial candles on my birthday cake this year. I am mesmerized like a moth to flame. Fire-sign to the very end.

CZU Complex fire, Big Basin burning

A Contagion of Logorrhea

Bouncing off Pamela Robertson-Pearce’s post I saw out of the corner of my eye, while madly scrolling through Facebook which inexplicably conjoined, or congealed in my mind with a quote I had posted way back in 2009, I was off and running. Christopher Morley (1890-1957), an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet, who, like Charles Dickens, was once paid by the word, said, "Words are a commodity in which there is never any slump." I wondered if he was referring to himself.

That thought had me googling both Morley’s unattributed quote (how and when and why did he say it?), to a relatively new-to-me word I wanted to use in a sentence, logorrhea. It wasn’t so much a new word, but it was close to being unpronounceable and next to impossible to spell. So Google helpfully fixed my spelling to Logokorea, a sports site, I think, but phonetic Korean is not my thing.

So at the risk of becoming labeled as manky littérateur, in order to use the newfangled, if awkward word in a sentence, I constructed a faux review, perhaps with a knockoff of Finnegan’s Wake in mind. “The valiant attempt at avant-garde novel resulted in a long-winded game of logorrheic scrabble.” An old boyfriend once quipped that I was vaccinated with a gramophone needle. Better than a broken record.

I must admit that I was spurred on by this hilarious logorrhea example, an unattributed quote: “To Tom Wolfe, a dandy with an incurable bout of logorrhoea, words are like chips in Las Vegas.” Certainly The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test comes to mind!!! It was a jejune glissand of verisimilitude. I never did find out who said that word gambling line. I’d like to think it was Neil Gaiman.

Sure, the coining of logorrhea could be attributed to the prolific works of Morley, but to my way of thinking, the grand master of logorrhea before the word was coined in 1878, was Charles Dickens (no, not Samuel Pepys) who wrote on foolscap, in longhand, and was published serially, in newspaper format, which means he never revised a damned thing. And he was paid by the word which only egged him on. 

Ok, so The Pickwick Papers was written in monthly installments, followed by Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol—which covered the rent from April 1836 to October of 1839—followed by David Copperfield Bleak House and Great Expectations. After all, verbosity was his friend and rent is rent. 

A highly gregarious man, Morley believed in the 3-hour lunch, which led to his founding The Baker Street Irregulars which included Isaac Asimov, Rex Stout, and Dame Jean Conan Doyle. Holmes, James! And if the Sherlockiana wasn’t enough, he founded the Saturday Review of Literature, and relentlessly revised and enlarged Bartlett's Familiar Quotations—plus a baker’s dozen of other literary accolades.

Morley invented the bibliomystery whodunit genre with his first novels, and much of his writing was humorous enough to tickle your humerous or maybe your ulna. (Bet you had to look that one up.) But his 1939 novel Kitty Foyle was edgy as it discussed abortion which probably cost him some readership audience. He commuted by train from Long Island to New York, I’m sure the metronome song of the train clacking and swaying, contributed to his corpulent opus of writing. It took a series of strokes to curtail Morley’s voluminous output, but he continued to write for five more years until his death in 1957. 

Morley’s last words of advice were to: “Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.” 

Great advice. Besides, my addled mind was already off, and running off the long mouth of the logorrheic cliff well before I uncovered that gem. AKA, this a day in the half-life life of my mind on caffeind.

Logorrhea, noun (early 20th c., coined from Greek logos ‘word’ + rhoia ‘flow’), given to prosy, rambling, or manic or tedious loquacity, garrulousness, excessive verbosity, wordiness, and repetitiveness, verbal diarrhea, AKA press speech. Sounds so much better, if not downright clinical, than calling a manic friend a loquacious loudmouth, or a manic off his meds.

Urban definition: “a condition suffered by an individual who has the inability to shut the f*** up.”

Synonyms: circumlocution, diffuseness, diffusion, garrulity, garrulousness, long-windedness, periphrasis, prolixity, redundancy, verbalism, verbiage, verboseness, verbosity, windiness, wordage, wordiness.

In other words, a schizophrenic’s thesaurus wet dream. Steve Jobs succinctly cut to the chase: Think different. OK, I’ll shut the fuck up now.

With thanks to Pamela Robertson-Pearce who recreated the graphic with the British spelling.

MORNING LIGHT

MORNING LIGHT 

Mapplethorp’s photo of a pale daisy 

in a ceramic vase, is almost painterly—

the way the windowframe and shadow 

dissect light diagonally, the wall divided

with a Rothcoesque precision, 

done in an austere palette 

of blue and gray. Such stillness. 

Perhaps even a faint stirring of joy.

11/15/20

Lauterbrunnen Valley

I remember when I first arrived in the Lauterbrunnen Valley. We were coming from Bischoffzell (long story) by way of St. Gallen, late at night. I looked up to see the stars and then I realized those stars were the lights of houses—there was an immense cliff above us, Wengen, to be my home for the next four months. I was 19. Ah, but I was homesick, and also stranded as all the charter airlines went bankrupt, As did Lloyds of London, so getting home was problematic, BOAC offered to fly us back for free. A lot of shandys were drunk in order to send us all back home. But there was a two-week wait so I took a mad train jaunt up to Inverness before I returned. Hotel Bishofzell did ask me to stay on through the winter season. But I wanted to go home. In deep summer, I walked those ski slopes to Gstaad and later dreamed of skiing them. If only I had stayed, my life trajectory would’ve been radically different. And then, later, I inexplicably became homesick for Wengen, and nightly dreamed of the Jungfrau. If only to ski again.

Friday the 13th Deluge

Friday the 13th, it’s raining for reals—with a king tide today. Highest tide of the year. Donna’s driveway where the septic tank is, has sinkholes. What else could go wrong? Anybody up for a septic tank snorkel? Petaluma, and all the Sausalito on-ramps are underwater. King tides will be at their highest Sunday and Monday. 

coyotes howling in tandem

The coyotes are singing in tandem tonight, 

practicing call & response patterns 

that echo & roll across the valleys & canyons 

like a sonic web.

Hometown hood turning out for homie VP Kamala Harris

Hometown hood turning out for homie VP Kamala Harris. It was the most entertaining and honkingist motherfucker of all traffic jams. The Grand Lake marquee, “America just told Trump: You’re Fired” mirrors the sentiments of the spontaneous crowds out celebrating everywhere, shouting America is great again, Fock Donald Trump, Black lives matter, and Barbecuing while Black is beautiful! And everybody was waving flags. We got our flag back! People swigging champagne, partying like there was no tomorrow. One black woman ran up to the car and foisted some champagne on us, I took a swig. It was that kind of night. We hugged crazily through the car window. Solidarity in Oaktown.

Chetana Karel’s brother-in-law, Allan Marchaud, who owns the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland should be classified as a living Alameda County treasure. He has generously offered the theater space for progressive meetings between matinees, and refused to back down from using the marquee as a community sounding board when other merchants and alders complained.

When I had out-of-town guests, I’d often take them into the theater to show off the faded grandeur of the art deco motifs, Allan, or an usher, always waved me through, never asked for tickets. you don’t need no stinking tickets. It still has the heavy brocade curtains from its vaudeville theatre heydays.

And the real treat was to go to the first evening show on Friday night, when the Wurlitzer organ came up through the stage playing scary music, the opening bars of Phantom of the Opera. We’ve slayed the behemoth. Now, to work.

An augmented beer story

A bit of an augmented beer drinking story, The last time I heard Black Sabbath was when I was forced to listen to it full blast while hung over, my cousin’s misogynistic boyfriend decided we needed to be punished for going out and drinking the night before without him at the Rancho Nicasio. 

Robbie, who owns S-Car-Go racing cars, decided it was funny to feed us Jagermeister boilermakers. Gawd knows what kind of beer—but with Jagermeister, does it really matter? It could’ve been a Grasshopper Nyquil with bubbles. I slid off the naugahyde barstool and it went south from there. I remember looking up the nostrils of the bison head mounted on the wall, thinking they needed dusting.

I was done and spun after two or three rounds. I cannot drink hard alcohol. My idea of living dangerously is an expensive chardonnay. Like Murphy-Good. My cousin has more fortitude, so I don’t know her final count but she soon joined me. I am terribly plebeian, I prefer unvarnished stout over beer. Preferably Guinness from Ireland. Murphy’s is too sweetish. Guess I’ll have to try a Beamish. Lagunitas is OK. But Guinness is as good as ten mothers. And gawd knows, my mother, a friend of Timothy Leary’s, was intergalactic. Positively orbital. But a Jagermeister boilermaker defies physics and good taste.

Luckily all we had to do was follow the dotted line on the road to get back home as she lived across the town square. Calling Nicasio a town is generous. It’s not even a crossroad, but a bend in the road. The dregs of an old racetrack. Walking across the baseball diamond was out. Mud. 

I do remember some hands and knees were involved with direct road contact because the paint on the double yellow line was smoother than the roadbed in front of her neighbor, painter Tom Woods’s house. I remember we were sniggering like raccoons by then. I guess it was a good thing there was no traffic as I doubt we would’ve been able to rise up off that road in time. Barrel rolls and dos-e-does were out. A good thing Tom didn’t have a shotgun. 

That night we out-competed the legendary town drunks, Sinead’s late dad, Bill Dinsmore (who had a breathalyzer ignition switch in his car), and Rich Gallagher, also grounded by the law, still rode his trusty steed, a dilapidated bike. A good thing the county never figured out how to attach a breathalyzer to the bike. It was a long walk back to the ranch.

And for what it’s worth Captain Kirk, or rather the actor, once stood in her yard pretending to drink from the well. It was a terrible B-grade movie, a Village of the Damnedish variation, I can’t even remember the name, not the Superman version ( that was her house too), but the Drady’s horse was in it. Poor Superman, felled by a horse. Enough to make you take to green drinkiepoos. Anne said it was called The People. More like the Pibble.

TG I was praising the porcelain god that night. It could’ve been worse. The couch was my Murphybeddish friend. The skittish kitties all decided we need some extra TLC that night and curled up around us like fat little mufflers, purring up a storm of chainsaws beneath our chins all night long. 

It was not a Pliny the Elder moment. Or was it? It was an eruptive experience, but no volcanoes were harmed in the process. Thank Guinness. Slaínte agaibh.

Signed, the beamish lass from Lagunitas.

(What is the half-life, or is it the half-lie of a story, anyway? But every word of this yarn is true, I swear to Gawd.) I think I’m channeling Eddie Stack, or is it Eddie Izzard.

Handbasket of cannabis and politics

Well I imagine that the other side of the political spectrum is feeling some of this same angst I felt four years ago right about now, but at least several more states have legalized cannabis. Consider it a door prize if you happen to live in Montana, Arizona, New Jersey and South Dakota—it’s been legal in California for for four years and we haven’t wound up in any of hell’s handbaskets. Oregon was enlightened way back in 1973, in 2012 Washington and Colorado followed suit...even Alaska! It’s funny how the pot map looks like a map of the blue states. Just don’t get busted in Idaho. But I digress.

I was appalled to find that some my friends on the other side of the political fence decided to “enlighten” me on my Hallelujah Joe post (below) wanting to correct my “wayward” thinking. The message was clear, that I’m either brainwashed by the news media or that I’m naive, and my thinking and deductive reading skills were somehow nascently flawed or impaired. Or perhaps retroactively stoned. I resisted the urge to 86 them all as we have to come together as a nation and clean up this atrocious dog mess left behind by the likes of .45 and his crony cabinet. Not to bag our own dogshit and leave it by the trailhead for someone else to deal with. As my astute school friend Claudia Siefer said, “For healing to take place there must be accountability.”

We all need to be better angels. Get to work.

Sour apples and sore losers, some Facebook notes

No sooner than the news was announced, a republican friend, whom I’ve known since grade school, quickly wheeled up his barrow of sour apples to my Facebook page to argue his points, which I’m not going to copy here. 

I hate having to defend my political position but I will not back down when men try and browbeat me with their logic and “reason.” I think they expect me to back down. If anything, it’s Game on, hold my beer. As Tad Alford found out when he insisted that the AntiFa were behind all the rioting—on my Facebook page. I took him on, post after post. We unfriended each other. 

But I usually go to great lengths to work with dissenting friends, rather than unfriend them. Too easy. It took all the cool I had not to unfriend these two blokes. My other like-minded liberal friends were puzzled as to why I even gave these guys airtime. I said, because I need to know how the other side thinks. They push and stretch me beyond my comfort zone, and make me take a stand and to define with words, what I’m feeling. The writer’s job.

I’m recording my half of the dialogue here because we are living in such extraordinary, virulent times. It is all part of bearing witness, as Carolyn Forché once said. When I first began this blog, I didn’t think to use it like a journal to recorded my daily thoughts. I thought it too mundane, not worthy. A mistake. Not art. Then I realized we can’t segment and sequester entire factions of our persona for art’s sake. It is all part of the milieu. (added 12/16/20).

Transcript:

Jeff, We are all in such grief one way or another. Please don’t be slinging stones. Now is not the time. We need to all work together, shoulder to shoulder. This finger-pointing has got to stop. Or we will never survive. We need to be better angels than this.  

Then he accused me of gloating. I said, I am hardly gloating. I am relieved because now there’s a chance for doing the good work. And if you perceive that I’m gloating, then perhaps it’s time to part ways because there is never any way to achieve anything at all. I thought you knew me better than that. I am sorely disappointed and greatly saddened.

I also think your timing was unfortunate. Too soon. Right now, for most of America, a huge yoke of oppression and grief has been lifted—this current government has been a living nightmare for far too many people. We may disagree politically, but living under .45 has been an absolute nightmare for me, as I am an independent contractor, no umbrella. No cushy middle class job with benefits. 

So please understand that your working view of .45 does not hold for far too many of us—too many of us are disenfranchised by this regime. A president is supposed to represent the United States, not one segment of the population. A president is supposed to unite the people of the United States, not divide a nation.

And I might add that your perception of .45 is just that, your perception. As is mine. Please don’t make the (unintended) assumption that you know the bigger picture, and that I am somehow, sadly misinformed. That I don’t see the bigger picture. That you shed light.

You’re right, in that if we were talking in person there would be more give and take in this conversation. But I (perhaps mistakenly) perceived a pejorative tone that I now see was directed at a friend, Terra Firma, not me—nonetheless, I cannot abide what I perceive as an attempt to foist one’s own opinion at the cost of another’s dissenting voice.

He doubled down his efforts to either convince me or air out his griefs.

I said, Jeff Sousa Sorry, some of your stories do not add up. I could easily look them up and refute them. I have in the past double-checked some of your facts and have found that with any story, there is a kernel of truth in them but there is also a healthy accretion of secondary interpretation and hyperbole too. You are defending someone who was unfit to be president and did more harm than good, and he must be held accountable for his criminal actions. You were associated the health profession realm. How can you continue to defend someone who did not have the nation’s own health at heart. He didn’t have our backs. Ever.

Then Robert Campbell piped in, and said, You have been fooled by he corrupt media. Biden is the bad guy. President Trump got 80% of the legal votes. Trump is not a racist. He is taking no salary as President. He is doing this for the people.

I completely lost it. After all this was my Hallelujah Facebook post, and they seemed to be determined to undermine it. I said, You may rationalize any way you want, you’re entitled to your opinion, this is still America, but .45 was NOT good for this country, he divided us, made racism ok, made a schism that will be hard, if not impossible  to heal. He was no leader. And you’re making a  huge assumption that I’m paying attention to mainstream media. Actions speak louder than words, and certainly louder than the media...and by his own agencies, he was found wanting.

How do you even begin to rationalize fascism? You claim that he took “no salary” but he took innumerable trips to the golf course at taxpayer expense, racking up a bill higher than his salary, he padded the wallets of his friends, practiced nepotism, cronyism, broke more laws than one can count, not to mention the litany of daily lies, he destroyed critical infrastructure, like the CDC, I won’t even mention the deliberate attempt to destroy the USPO. We are now more in debt than we ever have been since this nation was founded, he was vindictive and abusive, in short, a bad president and he will go down in history as such, the man who nearly foundered America. How could anyone with a conscience or moral compass, possibly support him?

Robert, I love your photography, but not your political world view, and your attempt to “guide” the somehow “misinformed” me.  I don’t mind your playing the court jester, which I perceive is behind many of your political comments. But I am hardly “misinformed.” You’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to try and foist yours atop of mine as the correct world view. Your strongest world view is up there in the skies with the clouds and the land, not in the political arena. Pax out.

from Facebook posts—you can read Jeff’s arguments here.

Biden is President Elect! The tidal wave of justice

Look, the first image Joe used to thank the nation in a video Tweet,
our family church Our Lady of Loreto, aka St. Mary’s in Nicasio.

Hallelujah! I am thrilled to the moon and back that Joe Biden is president-elect, but I don’t feel the joy I had when Barrak Obama was elected. How do we get back to that joy? 

We have to figure out how to heal a fractured nation at odds with itself. There’s a frightening amount of work still to be done —just to reverse some of the damage that was inflicted during .45’s disastrous tenure. America is at a crossroads.

Like when Covid came along, when the entire world stopped, offering us a chance to change the things we once thought we could not change, I hope we don’t go back to the same old status quo of the Democratic (and Republican) Party system that contributed to this schism. I hope this time is an interregnum of structural rebuilding as it were.

When Obama was elected president, there was hope, and joy. Oakland was one big street party. Neighbors hugging each other. Strangers hugging each other. Everyone walking around with grins so big that their ears were conjoined. I want to get back to that joy. Instead we are wary.

Thank God nothing rhymes with orange. I never want to see that color again. All kinds of emotions are bubbling up now, tears of relief, the years of capped and stoppered grief, rage. I keep taking deep breaths and sighing. Asking, is it over? Is it true? Or merely an alternative ending to a bad nightmare?

I think perhaps now I have the ability to process the place where grief has been a fugitive in hiding for so long. At least now, there is hope. And perhaps the wings of hope will carry us as we get back to work rebuilding our nation. I am tired of living the Divided States of America. 

Plus now we get to take back our hijacked flag. Yes, the work ahead of us will be arduous, but we’re keeping the faith. Indeed, today is a good day. We can breathe again. Finally we can all learn to breathe together again.

As Heaney said, “the longed for wave of justice can rise up and hope and justice rhyme....Believe that farther shore is reachable from here.”

MSNBC just quoted Biden's favorite poem, "The Cure of Troy" by Seamus Heaney:

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

FIRST RAIN

Is that rain I hear
with my little ear?
Four drops, I’ll take it.
And 10 more drops.
What’s this, hail
drumming up a storm
on a hot tin roof?
Hail yeah!
We’ll take it.

11/6/20

San Geronimo Valley community center virtual art show, In Place

 

 I have two drawings in an online art exhibit, IN PLACE hosted by The San Geronimo Valley Community Center. You can also see it on my art page

An online group art show, In Place, presented on the SGVCC website through the Community Center’s Facebook page and Instagram on October 15 through November 15. The exhibit features work created during this time of isolation and stress. The art work in this exhibit is a follow-up of the Where Were Call Home exhibit but also expresses our inner geography, rather than our place on the planet. —Anne Faught

And now The Big Tam, RIP, 007

And now The Big Tam. RIP, 007. there can be only one.

The Irish sure pick their days to depart. My grandmother, mother, and brother all departed during this time when the gates to the Otherworld are open. The banshee always came when my grandmother’s siblings died. She found my grandmother in California. The bean sídhe, the woman of the Sídhe has no borders, other than the the liminal boundaries of the otherworld. Tonight she freely roams both worlds.

And now 007. The only real 007. We will miss you, Big Tam. Yesh. There’s a simple bronze place on the building where he was born in Edinburgh. An auld fellah ambled over to us and told stories of Tom (his first name) the milkman, as he was known in his youth.... 

One of my favorite stories of Sean Connery was that he was visiting a friend in Marin, and she  needed to pick up a few things at the Mill Valley Safeway so he was pushing the cart for her while she grabbed items from the shelves. People would stop and stare, then shake their heads in disbelief, and leave the store, mystified.

Oh, my.... a fit 40ish Bond in a red loincloth. I don’t think the loincloth ever recovered from being such an intimate costar. Or coaster. Shaken, not stirred, I’m sure. The irony was, that Sir Sean couldn’t get any rolls in films after being typecast, then decommissioned as 007 by The Home Office. So, he starred in some rather dodgy B grade movies, and was the better for it, as he made a comeback as a bald man, making bald beautiful. Who knew! There can be only one. Yesh.

And for the record, Sean (his middle name) was of Irish descent, born in Scotland. His great grandfather was a Wexford Irish traveller who fled to Glasgow during the Great Famine. Sean’s father never gave up his Irish Catholic roots. The Irish Scots settled in the toughest slum, the Barrows, or The Barras, as they were called, which made New York’s Hell’s Kitchen look like candy floss. Glasgow was one mean city. Most of the Barrow has been razed in the process of urban sanitization.

The great-grandson of an Irish Wexford traveler, Sean traveled far into the world and to the outer reaches of the galaxy. But his Irish accent sucked. RIP, big fella. There can be only one. Yesh.

Go n-éirí on bóthar leis. May the roads rise with him...

On learning Irish

I learned some Irish from my grandmother, and studied Gaelic league Irish on my own. Then I tried all the tapes, from Buntas cainte to God knows what. Learned to say there are eels in my hovercraft. Not a useful phrase. Better than the donkeys and goats phrases. Then I took a summer immersion course on modern Irish at UC Berkeley. I have never worked harder in my life, some of it stuck, most of it fled, screaming for its life. Sometimes, if the wind blows right, I can actually read Irish. But God help me if I have to speak it, or worse, understand it if spoken to me. I can however bibble-babble niceties when pressed. I can even fool enough people into thinking I speak fluent Irish. I also took the year of ancient Irish where we translated the medieval Epics. I was lousy at it but I loved it. I remember the moment when I translated Cuchulain saying the enemy of your enemy is my friend. Goosebumps on my arms the size of mountains.

THIRD EVACUATION IS A CHARM

THIRD EVACUATION IS A CHARM

After weeks of scanning photos 

and poems resurrected from the past, 

revisiting old ghosts, and tropes, 

from a time when poetry was new, 

remembering when we sat at the feet 

of Diane Di Prima at the old Zen Center on Fell Street, 

and we slid into the slick canyons of words, 

while Loba paced the streets. She said the writer’s life

is a balancing act, a juggling of disparate entities.

Frances tags me to write something, but I am lost

in the technical jungle of negatives and proofs,

and the way silver bromide on film outfoxes the lens,

chopping off the hands of the dead poets, Kizer,

McClure, Rexroth, a weird sacrilege of sorts.

I think of poor Victor Jarra in the stadium,

when they cut off his hands, he sang his poems to la gente.

The price paid. All I can think of now 

is how to save the film archives of the poets

before the wildfire climbs the next ridge.

The past is an albatros around my neck.

As the ashes fell like snow, we learned new words: 

ember fire, and we stomped on the burning souls of trees.

I cannot find the exact right words to say anything.

I keep thinking I should write something profound

but the blank page just snarls and drools.

Crouches, slinks off into the night,

eyes burning like coals.

10/27/20

rev. slightly 10/21

Remembering Diane diPrima

College classmates Jack Crimmins and Gregg Lowe were reminiscing around the death of Beat poet, Diane diPrima, who once read with Elizabeth Herron in Cotati when Loba was first published. At Sonoma State College, 1979-80, we resurrected a defunct reading series, called the Public Poetry Center, where we hosted community readings with local poets paired with luminaries including Michael McClure, whom Jack introduced, Lewis MacAdams, Joanne Kyger and Bobbie Louise Hawkins at the Cotati Cabaret and the Inn of the Beginning.

As Jack and Gregg reminisced, I realized I was quickly being written out of the collective post-narrative, and it was my project. So I did a diPrima, I chimed in, and reclaimed the past, and then I realized I’ve never properly documented the project, as I was living in the moment producing events.

I told Jack, Yep, The Public Poetry Center, the idea, or concept was to bridge the gap between the writer community and the isolated university. I wasn’t entirely happy with the name, I think it was something my professor, poet David Bromige had coined, but it stuck, and served its purpose. Before that, there wasn’t much going on at Sonoma State. Jack said he came up with the title.

Our job was to resurrect SSU’s defunct Public Poetry Center and to create a liaison between the university and the community We hosted campus literary and art events for the English Dept., The College of the Humanities and the ASUC InterCultural Center. We also had to negotiate around David Bromige who wanted to present a very different poetry scene.

I began booking readings as an undergraduate art student, after attending The Child in Changing Times Conference in either June of 1978 (I don’t have a notebook for 1978, and so, can’t look it up) and/or another conference in 1979, The Arts in Everyday Living (they could be one and the same conference), that changed my life’s direction. It was hosted by the SSU Dept. of Psychology, coordinated by Terry Doyle, psychologist, and poets Michael Dow and Lee Perron who both taught for an organization that would literally change my life, California Poets in the Schools (CPITS). 

The organizers were setting up kiosks with photos of children, and their poetry. I had my calligraphy kit on me and offered to make signs. I was the signmaker for the Sonoma Student Union. Once they saw that I could make huge banners, they roped me in, made me part of the conference. 

• Summer Workshop: A conference on developing more effective, loving relationships with children, Growing Up Sane: The Child in Changing Times, will be offered at Sonoma State College from June 22 to 25, 1978. The conference will provide new insights, practical skills and usable methods in raising and educating children. For information call Neil Schifiman, 565-9280. 

That conference is also how I got roped into both the Russian River Writers’ Guild, and CPITS at the same time, via poet Lee Perron. Anyway, by circumstance, or by accident, I became the default student liaison between the university and the Russian River Writers’ Guild. The Cotati Cabaret was off campus, and it drew much large crowds. (Besides, there was booze). The other tenant was that we always paid the poets, no matter no small the stipend was....

The Arts in Everyday Living: The Real Basis of Education Conference, 28 June - 1 July, sponsored by Sonoma State University, Office of Extended Education. The workshops and an ongoing art project are geared toward teachers, parents, administrators, artists, counselors and community members. Kenneth Rexroth, poet and critic, and Jose Arguellos, educator, artist and writer will be the featured main speakers. Also included are an Arts Festival and Resource Center. For further information, contact the Office of Extended Education at SSU, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928 or call (707)664-2394. 

Ultimately that Arts in Everyday Living conference was where I was first exposed to accessible personal narrative poetry that even kids could write. Hooked, I took to the streets running: I undertook the equivalent of a second BA in Expressive Arts, a cluster school offshoot of the psychology department, along with my BA in Art Studio (my connection with the English Dept. was a bit of a fluke), and I trained to become a poet-teacher for California Poets in the Schools. 

CPITS Area Coordinator for SoNapa counties, (we called it SOCPITS) Michael Dow’s writing workshops were vitally alive and I wanted more, but I was also simultaneously taking poetry workshops with David Bromige, so to ameliorate the schism, I created a bridge of sorts between the three groups to make sense of it all. It was an octopuses eight-handed nightmare, as I didn’t quite fit in anywhere. Besides, I was an art student.

Without poetry I never would’ve gone back to school as I had dropped out of SFSU, and was floundering around at Sonoma State trying to finish my BA degree in Art Studio at a school where few art classes were being offered. Luckily, both David Bromige and Psychology chair, jazz musician, “Red” Thomas became my SSU liaisons. But the English/poetry department and the Expressive Arts department, even though it was a cluster school, were not connected at the hip, or anywhere at all. So that was yet another matchstick bridge to build. When I landed in Expressive Arts, I felt I had finally come home.

“Red” Thomas, more than anyone, gave me belief in myself and lent credence to what I was doing, even if I hadn’t a clue as to what it was. He gave me blanket permission to “follow my passion.” What stayed with me were those weekly seminars, group meetings when we had to report back to our peers our successes and failures.  I was always so terrified but poetry was this large brontosaurus rucking round the room, I was merely holding on for dear life. Even tho I wasn’t officially in the program, I joined in. It was like a 12-step program for enabling artists and poets in their communities. “Red” Thomas and Mac McCreary were at the epicenter of change.

And because we didn’t know any better, we all dreamed big, and that’s how Diane Di Prima came to SSU to give a workshop and a reading—either in the fall of 1979, or the spring of 1980. Her exploration, and navigation of the feminine archetype as a she-wolf, a hunter of lost things, became my mantra. Her epistolary manifestos in Revolutionary Letters gave us permission to address the universe not just as participants, but as activist poets on the cusp of change.

Some say that she wrote Loba as a counterpoint to Ginsberg’s Howl. None of that matters. She was a woman before her time, and she ran with the wolves long before it was a concept. I took workshops with her in June, 1979, at the SF Zen Center, a converted Victorian flat. Her open narrative process allowed us to generate our own major arcana of mythos and symbolism unimpeded by the tight corners of male-dominated academia.

Another college classmate, Rebecca Clintron reminisced, Diane was palpable, she was elegant Wildness itself bringing 'Loba' workshop to us almost immediately upon publication, fresh and clear w a subdued gravitas. what i recall most poignantly was her speaking of the 'vulnerability of youth' (our ignorance and openness) was nothing compared to the vulnerability of an aging woman in our culture, approaching cronehood. i recognize now that she was barely into middle age!”

Jack answered, “ Rebecca, very cool, your recollections of Diane...thank you..."Wildness"...! Diane's book "Loba" such an important cross-cultural, mythopoetic long poem, written over years, added to as she went, and as Diane said, as she heard the poem voices emerging, a poem that powerfully explores feminine consciousness and beyond...so cool Diane was out teaching early and throughout her life.”

There is a woman whose poems are bread & meat 
hyacinth nightmare crepe paper 
I close a window, she is not reflected in it 
but I see her silhouette against the glass 
she is crisp as ice, is soft 
as russian vowels”

—Diane diPrima, Loba

From Altar, Diane diPrima's workshop, SF Zen Center, June 1979.

From the Naropa broadsides 1974

My Covid project, scanning old negatives

My crazy scanning set up. I use John Oliver Simon’s cranky 2010 Canon Lide 210 scanner to scan the proofsheets, it rarely wants to actually work so I have to cajole it. Then I load the negatives into the film strip holders for the big Epson 550 scanner (from 2013), processing both proofsheet and images at the same time on my elderly 2010 MacBookPro, which has its challenges (not to mention mine, from multitasking), then I file everything. 

Since the software and technology are a decade old, the process is cranky and slow, if I unplug anything, if I sneeze, fart, or look cross-eyed, things quit working. They all need massaging, ego boosts, and replacing, if not downright retirement, as we are all at least a decade older than dirt naps. I tried using a more modern MacBook Pro, and discovered that there were no drivers that would run the old scanners. So I’m stuck with the Snow Leopard era.I have not tried it with High Sierra, but I suspect it may not work at all.

If I’m lucky, I can scan 10 proof sheets of negatives a day, the average tends to be around six. It takes about an hour to scan, edit/crop, and file each sheet of negatives (about 20-35 images per sheet). Whaddya mean you forgot to flip the negatives upside down and backwards? Rescan.

I am nearly finished with my negatives from when I worked at The Paper into the digital age. Next up, the Slug Fest, and the Russian River Jazz Fest. I have a box of negatives of travel photos and another big box of poet photos on deck—some of which I’ve done scanned, but it’s still a lot of work. The old Epson scanner is challenged by low light imagery and chops people up like Mad Sweeney Todd. I’ve tried scanning the negatives directly but that doesn’t work either. 

I always knew that I’d eventually have to deal with my negatives but after having to pack them up for three evacuations, three boxes weighing at least 30 pounds each (all that silver bromide), I decided that now is the time to do it even if I don’t have the right equipment. I really want the better scanner before I tackle the poets. So many times I took photos of people because I like the way it looked, or the lighting intrigues me, I often didn’t know who they were. I sure have a lot of photos of Norton Buffalo hamming it up.

Jerry Downs tossed a closetfull  of slides... I loved the photo of him in the dumpster under an avalanche of slides but I was also aghast. I replied, well, I’ve been scanning all my old negatives and I’m glad I did, rather than toss them— as I found photos I never printed and in several cases, didn’t even know I had taken photos of—including Robin Williams and Emmylou Harris. But having to evacuate three times with three heavy boxes of negatives, plus several boxes and crates of writing and art nearly killed me as several flights of stairs were involved. I took a few days off from scanning, I’m burned out, but every time someone asks if there’s a fire, I feel the urge to redouble my efforts.

I am still waiting for the perfect refurbished Epson Perfection 850 to be in stock (but they are rare as hen’s teeth), so that I can do a decent job of the poet photos. My budget is a shoestring. I need a GoFundMe. I will need a wet mount easel to scan some of the photos—like with the Robin Williams photos. I am learning as I go. No manuals for this stuff. Some images I will need to rescan. 

At night all I dream about, is editing and filing problem negatives... and finding lost ones. Then there are the pages I didn’t date, thinking I’d remember...like the Forestville Poison Oak Festival, because there are male strippers wearing masks and little else on that roll. Sadly, some of the negatives I was looking for, specifically Brownie Mary, Tony Serra, and Dennis Perón have not turned up, and since I am down to a handful of files, they were probably nicked by the same jerk who took my Ella Fitzgerald photos.

What I’ve learned is that you can’t pick and choose, the only way out is through, begin anywhere, as long as you begin—and there are no shortcuts, I’ve found them all... Ah, but the treasures I am uncovering! So, what is your Covid project?

Aaron Shaw photos

I remember when I first met Aaron Shaw of the Wicked Tinkers during the San Francisco Caledonian Club Highland games, or was it Seaside? circa late 1990s, we got to talking, and I kept having this nagging feeling that I had met him somewhere before. I have a good memory for faces. I never could place it so I figured he must’ve looked like somebody I knew. And it was merely a coincidence. And then when I was scanning old negatives, there he was. Since I have photos of him in a few different spots at the Santa Rosa fairgrounds clearly I spent some time following him around with my camera.

Aaron Shaw, 1982 SFCC Games, Santa Rosa. I've known him a whole lot longer than I thought! Scanning all my old negatives. Oy! Found a slew of pix of him, Peter Capp playing piobaireachd too. What a rollercoaster. I must admit I did a double-take as I was scanning those negatives, never expecting to find anyone I knew, other than Bill Merriman. Obviously I was following Aaron around, as I have several shots in other places. All out of focus.....

Confirmed: Aaron Shaw and Francis Elheran. And Cutty Sark’s knickers. There's enough sleeve there to go into the sailmaking business! Just a few years ago. Yeah.

HUITZILOPOCHTLI

 Something I found in my note—sometimes I dictate to my iPad’s Notes app while driving the backroads to Sam’s. 

Molly blamed herself for the old cat launching up to snag a hummingbird at the feeder. That cat who can barely bring himself to the next sunny spot on the rug, and curl up properly, needed that strange inner, fire, the soul of the war god just to make it through the day. 

10/9/20

Bad scanner day

As if the appearance of a brace of morning vultures weren’t enough to set off my day, my not-so-perfect Epson Perfection scanner was going AWOL. As I scanned old b&w negatives, it refused to scan certain images, it either chopped them up, or  cropped half-frames, or scanned them too dark. I was too tight to buy the Cadillac model and now it's payback time. Now, these negatives were perfectly good images. Not overexposed or underexposed. No excuses.

First, the scanner chopped off my head, and then it nibbled the top off a man’s head. He had really nice hair. Then in the next image, it whacked off the entire top of his head. Wow. My scanner is either possessed or taking instructions from Dr. Frankenstein. The guy with the nice hair didn’t deserve that. He was someone whom I vaguely knew, someone who once took my photo a long time ago. And I took his. A mutual snapfest. It was a bit of synchronicity at work. Our photos were placed next to each other in a portrait exhibit at the Falkirk Center. 

I deliberated what to do with the Epson scanner, aside from drop-kicking it out the window. I reset everything, no luck. Repeat. Still no luck. I went through every setting and function. I even reinstalled the software. The demented auto-trim button was stuck on the on position, and greyed out.

The scanner kept chopping up my negatives like Mad Sweeney Todd—it chopped off Carolyn Forché‘s hands, it chopped off Carolyn Kizer’s nose, and Michael McClure‘s entire body from the neck down. I couldn’t even get Kenneth Rexroth‘s face to appear. It ghosted on me. I tried everything I could think of—from drawing on the edges of the negatives with Sharpies, a no-no, to masking them out with tape, but nothing worked. 

To be fair, I often shot low light images in chiaroscuro mode—I like intense black and white photos. Especially when I’m shooting in poet mode. Maybe my scanner is stealing small pieces of their souls and is planning an ad hoc poetry assemblage TBA. The scanner is demented. My friend Miceál suggest ordering an online exorcist session.

Then I discovered that if I chose the normal “no thumbnail” option on the preview marquee, I could scan the entire strip of negatives. Not the best solution as the negatives were now out of focus. But apparently switching from marquee to film strip resolved the head-on-the-chopping-block problem. Not exactly practical, but it works. It also reset the auto trim button. Lo, as I flipped the Epson setting back to marquee mode, so I could make separate prints again, the negatives appeared in their dusty glory. 

Back to that guy with the great hair. Luckily I had written his first name on the proof sheet, but that’s all I wrote. What was I thinking? I can’t even remember people‘s last names. Except for Chester Arnold’s name, who was also there, but he has two first names in a row. He also entered so many pieces, he stole the show. Then I noticed I had taken a photo of the guy in question holding up a check. He had sold one of his photos and there was his name right on the check, Jay Daniel. Cool!

You know that I had to look him up on Facebook. And damned if I didn’t find him, as we had many friends in common: Mark Adler, Andy Giddings. Who is this guy? Then I discovered I went to high school with him. Oops. Oh dear. Ok, you gotta admit it’s been a very long time since 1985. Or 1970. A lot of water under that bridge. So naturally I befriended him. He probably doesn’t even remember me either. But you gotta admit Facebook works in mysterious ways. So does my scanner. Apparently.

I can limp along with my Epson imPerfection v.550 scanner to scan the rest of the news stories—my big Covid project. But I’m afraid the poet archives will just have to wait for a better scanner as it’s also not the sharpest lens in the toolbox. I will need to rescan the images I want to keep. Perhaps it’s time for a GoFundMe?

All these photos should have the same greyscale value. There is no reason why my scanner did this. None.

• 
  
• Bad Scanner Day redux, with Jay Daniel

A two-vulture day

 

Feeling a bit under the weather. Not one, but two vultures—are loitering outside my window. Should I be concerned? The weather is foggy with a threat of grounded vultures and a slight promise of rain.

I do love watching vultures—amazing birds. When the first vulture landed, he was peering my direction. It was comical because the branch he landed on is so tiny, and he was such a big boy that it was bobbing up and down as if he were riding a possessed sea-saw. His head was contra-bobbing up and down as if he sought equilibrium on a bilious sea or he was doing the Egyptian.

It’s an overcast day, portent of rain, all the birds are flying low, even the ravens, the poor creatures have lost much of their habitat because of the fires. These young vultures—their heads are not red, but grey (I learned that from Geoff)—are intently watching the road. It could be that one of the chickens got run over. Again. Not the same chicken each time. But the chickens tend to get terribly excited when they’re let out of the coop, and, yes, Virginia, they do cross the road. And you know what that leads to.... Bugs, ya know.

I guess I’m safe for now. They flew off—the vultures, not the chickens. Did you know chickens can only fly for 13 seconds? All that white breast meat, they’re devolving towards flightlessness like the Carol dodo.

Perhaps I’m atoning for past sins. Once, long ago, I tried to scavenge some vulture wings. The cats sometimes left presents—dead birds at my doorstep. I figured, the least I could do was to photograph and draw them. Small ones, mind you. Not whole vultures. It began innocently enough—a yellow-shafted flicker took my breath away—he was my first real study. I’d never seen anything quite like him up close like that. 

I’ve also scooped up birds struck down in the middle of backroads and given them more fitting burials. A bluejay, I couldn’t bear to see all that extraordinary blueness of sky lufting down the middle of the road. Ok, so maybe I did nick a tail feather or two for the dashboard. They help my car to fly down the road. Right now I have a fall bouquet of wild turkey, barn owl, bluejay, and raven feathers. Molly said it was a female barn owl. Hoo knows?

That vulture was dead, he didn’t need his feathers anymore. I tossed it in the back of my truck. I had planned  to make an assemblage to Raymond Barnhart as an homage. What struck me was how hard it was to cut his wing off. The vulture’s, not Raymond’s. And the sheer size of those outspread wings was extraordinary. I took photos and left it at that. I was in over my head. I couldn’t even pluck wing feathers. But I did admire his strange beauty. His skeletal head. The dendritic perfection of those rows of wing feathers. I took my photos and then buried him in the orchard.

Katie astutely notes that today’s vultures are looking the other way.  She says, If they turn around, start doing your jazz-er-size. I can’t tell if it’s allergies or if I’m warding off a cold. No fever. Congestion. A little achy. I’ve been scanning old negatives for days and one folder was quite musty. Photos of a bright lemon finchy bird struck down by a car, that I meant to draw, but never got around to it. And I began to sneeze horrifically yesterday—it could be allergies. Trouble is, I can’t tell until it’s too late. So I’m laying low. Not quite as low as those vultures would prefer, though. 

Maybe I should go back and finish what I started, and draw that poor dead bird. Maybe then, Molly can identify it. The next folder I grabbed from my to scan pile, contained the negatives of Raymond’s vulture. Synchronicity works in strange ways. What would Lew Welch say?

Remembering David Gitin and John Tchikai (photo)

John Tchicai and David Gitin in Half Moon Bay, California (1996) Ken Bullock photo

I awoke at 3 AM, thinking of John Tchikai—a fine musician who played with the best. And there he was in my Facebook memory feed. Kindly man and a lively mind. I spent a memorable afternoon and evening with him and Ken Bullock at Ken's parents' house in Inverness—we talked until the stars faded. Ken produced some events for John at Stern Grove, etc., and I went to hear John play whenever I could. He deserved a lot more recognition. He played with Coltrane and Lennon! John sometimes recited David’s minimalist poems as he played jazz riffs. We kept in touch for a while but I quit writing to folks after my car accident. And now David Gitin is long gone too. I knew David Gitin from the SSU Cotati days. We lost touch once he moved to Pacific Grove. Ken kept up the connection. So I would hear fragments here and there. Funny I gave Ken Bullock credit for this photo and he thanked me for taking a good photo. So I don’t know who took it.

"For John Tchicai"--David Gitin reading (56 seconds, inc intro) Ken said, “David was a great editor, just as he was a fine teacher & unique poet. He midwifed countless poems for his colleagues, friends, students, poems in a wide array of styles ... As one student & friend put it, "He's the Daddy! Precisely. The image/analogy everybody focused on (me, too!), muffling/obscuring the poem ... (And no pun, "dread end.") A lot of his poems known now as short epigrams—Jack Marshall once joked that David would open a reading by reading his complete works in 15 minutes--started out as pages long, then went through years of a method of reduction ... by ear & eye, not conceptual. He studied Phenomenology with Husserl's principal American student. That lent something to the condensation ...And he told me once that Pound influenced him more than anyone else. I've never forgotten what Pound said Thomas Hardy wrote him about "Homage to Sextus Propertius"--advice to concentrate ever more deeply on the subject.

John on alto (& Gato Barbieri on tenor: Barre Philips, bass; Makaya Ntshoko, drums) Abdullah Ibrahim's Ekaya, 1968.

Dave Guastavino sent me this poster. I have one somewhere.

• John Tchikai 1936-2012 (drawing/photo)

2020, Hell’s handbasket

Learning quirks

Jannie Dresser asked about writing in long-hand, she loves the feeling of moving her hand and ink across paper. But at one point, we need to transcribe our  poems from journals to digital format. She asks how we manage. I’m not sure when the transition from journal writing to writing digitally occurred, probably after my 1997 car accident. Was just too difficult to write, yet the rhythm and physical act of writing soothes my soul. It doesn’t help that I have several odd learning quirks including dysgraphia, dyslexia, and some form of aural aphasia. I took calligraphy in college and it helped to iron out some of those kinks. But then I got in a car accident and it all came tumbling back. Perhaps the worst thing was beginning my Latinate words at the third syllable, so I’d have to unwrap my writing like a strange fruit. That’s when I switched over to the Mac. And it was a major revelation, especially the revision part. Pure magic. Like writing writing longhand. My calligraphy has given me elegant handwriting as well. Before, it was very choppy-leaning left, right. I do miss not writing in longhand but I don’t miss the struggle. And lately I’ve taking it a step further, dictation but it is fraught with all kinds of strange errors, and unhappy word combinations I would never dream up in a million years.

Harvest moon & massive Mars

 

A friend writes: we saw a bit of blue and now smoke is back, saw some stars last night and the moon was actually white.....

GST 944 Spirit of John Muir, our new state bird

 From Mike McGuire, 8 AM

Continued progress in Sonoma County on the #GlassFire. No significant issues over night. Winds continued to cooperate.

Big picture on the incident: Approximate 450 acre growth in the last 12 hours between Sonoma and Napa Counties (good news!).

Just under 2,800 firefighters are battling the 63,885 acre blaze, 17% containment. Please stay alert. Still a ton of work to be done.

Taking a look at the weather for the week ahead: We’ll start to see temperatures become more mild through the week. Rain still a potential for next weekend.

T.rump-19

COVID-19 update: What do you think about the timing? Don’t you think it’s more than a little suspicious that after the so-called debate debacle, that DT has suddenly has Covid? Convenient?

A friend said she is reciting the rosary for all her initial bad thoughts, another says she will need a an entire novena. I think I just doubled my purgatorial sentence. All the Hail Marys in the world aren’t going to help me now. Michael Ellis asks me what about turning the other cheek, I replied, the other cheek tested negative for sympathy and forgiveness. I seem to have developed a stiff upper neck along with a stiff upper lip.

It’s hard not to feel a little schadenfreude. The mouth-breathing wolf has taught us all so well to be cynical. It was totally on my bingo card. Just saying it was a matter of time. And that time is come today. I do not wish COVID-19 on anyone, but I could certainly see it coming. Here’s hoping he’s not indulging in a Clorox cocktail. That “cure” I would not wish upon anyone.