Santa Rosa de Lima

Blonde haired beauty, Isabela Flores Olivia was the firstborn of 11 children. Her father, was an official of Lima and an honor guard of the Viceroy. When she was confirmed, she was upset by her name change to Rosa. She cried herself to sleep thinking of all the unsaved souls in the mountains, in the jungles in in China. 

She wanted to preach the gospel to the Indians but she stayed in Lima because of a vision of roses. Instead she helped the poor and the sick of Lima. In a bamboo and and banana leaf covered alcove Hermitage Rosa and the nightingale took turns singing. 

Some say she slept two hours a night in a bed made out of two branches and three stones. She hung her hair on a heavy nail so that she wouldn’t sleep. She kept the key to the well on a chain around her waist. She was thirsty, and said Christ gave her a drink from his side.

Hoping to get a palm frond on Palm Sunday, she got to the crowded church too late. instead Jesus said to her, Rose of my heart, be my wife. Rosa de mi corazón, se tu mi esposa. She was 29. She died at 31, in 1617. Her bones on the altar of the church of Santo Domingo like stars glistening in the dark. Her house was turned into a church after her death.

Lima Journal, a rough timeline (3 watercolors)

Not sure of the dates, I’m also missing one Ecuador journal but inside my watercolor block I found three watercolor sketches, one of Ecuador, two unfinished sketches of Puerto Ayora.

Timeline: 

7/3 Equator

When? Galapagos

7/12 Española Island

7/13 Floreana, PO Bay

7/17? Bartolomé 

7/19 

7/25 Ecuador to Lima

7/27 Cuzco

8/8 to 11 Machu Picchu

8/19 Arequipa, Puno

8/22 Paracas

8/29 SFO

We explore the countryside. We visit the Otavalo market to buy Panama hats. Otovaleños still speak Quechua, a hangover from the Inca conquest days but their original language is lost.

No date:

7/26. No dates in my journal…. At the airport we hold a copy of our chapbook of poetry Falling to Sea Level in hopes that the Peruvian poet Carlos Arellano has come to meet us. We’ve been told that Peru is positively dangerous for rip-offs. And we guard each other’s flank diligently.

The exchange rate about 80 intis to the dollar and so we convert money, it’s a much better rate on the black market but we need the intis now. I can’t begin to describe Peru without comparing it to Ecuador. I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico, in Baja California, Guatemala. Mexico City helps prepare for the shock but it’s far worse than that. Any port in a storm just won’t do here. There are limits. 

The city is so dismal. I thought Jesus was a being quaint when he locked us into the car as we left the airport but he was protecting us from the city. He couldn’t protect us from the view. People picking their way through piles of refuge refuge. Mongrels guarding claimed treasure. Cardboard and tin shanties and other building material. 

Where one enters a Third World country one can expect to see buildings in a continual state of growth and repair. When one level is finished, the cement, the bricks, and the mortar are used to add a second or third story onto an insubstantial first story structure. So the skyline is a series of ragged walls and tall spears of rebar. 

Chickens adapt to rooftop living, clothes hang out a long time to dry— difficult in a place where the fog comes in for six months of the year. Small fires along the street, people warming themselves. Numerous street vendors and stalls. On one street the vendors have claimed it in its entirety, so it’s difficult to navigate. It is a street of oranges and shoes and gum and motor oil. 

The only time it rains here is when El Niño, the warm, current comes, changing the weather pattern and the normally cold Humboldt current turns warm. When this happens thousands of fish starve and die. The Antarctic current is one reason why it’s so cold and foggy here. Both it and the Humboldt currents feed La Garúa, the ever present mist.

Our room is $12 a night, pricy after Ecuador, where a bed goes for a dollar a night. Even food is expensive. Meals cost $1 to 2  here. The cost of living is about twice as high as Ecuador, with far fewer services. Our Hotel Colón was $5 a night.

Lima Journal 7/26?

7/26? We walked past the American ambassador‘s residence, one couldn’t call the imposing colonial structure painted Naples yellow, a house. More like a fortress. A soldier at his kiosk stands guard. This place was mortared by the Tupac Amaru liberation front. 

Tupaq Amaru, last Inca King, prisoner, 1572 (Guaman Poma de Ayala)

The first Túpac Amaru was the last Inca king, from Vilcabamba in the 1570s. His name means royal, or shining plus mythical snake, kind of like Quetzalcoatl. Some 40 years after the Spanish conquest, he rebelled against the Spanish and lost. Then the second Tupac Amaru, 1780, also a count of royal Incan descendent, whose likeness is on the $500 inti, led another rebellion and lost. 

And then there’s the current rebellion led by the Sendero Luminoso, the shining path, they seem to be winning. All car chassis and undercarriages are checked with mirrors before they are allowed to park. There is so much unrest here, the air is seething like cicadas.

Soldiers armed with Uzis in a country the size of California and Texas combined, with a total population of 19 million, some 6 million people live in this city where it never rains. There are buildings covered with 2 to 4 1/2 centuries’ worth of grime. Quechua Lima was founded by Francisco Pizarro in 1535 after the conquest of 1533-34. From Colombia to Chile, there were many organized wars led by the Incas in the late 1500s.

Lima Journal 7/25?

7/25, I think…. Lima de Santa Rosa, named after the first woman saint, the only woman saint of the new world. I can’t help comparing Santa Rosa‘s namesake.

From the air one can see the desolate landscape, the mountains of feral sand, tiny irrigated plots along a dry cobblestone riverbed akin to Baja and Southern California. The Rimac, the speaking river, speaks no more. Her mouth is full of garbage and human waste. Ecuador’s prosperity and lushness does not survive this far south.

From the air one can see immense piles of human waste and burning garbage heaps. I did not want the plane to land. From Jorge Chavez International Airport it’s a grim and dismal ride. The waste disposal system in a Third World country is its precious rivers. Ecuador hardly seems Third World by comparison. Slums surround the city, this is much worse than Mexico City or even Guatemala City.

Jesus, our taxi driver, lives up to his name, and becomes a savior indeed when he drives us to yet another full hotel. Our ride through the working class slums along the Rimac, is a horror to behold. The river is a cesspool and garbage dump all at once. No matter how hard you squint, you cannot envision what it once looked like.

Water, this precious commodity by which the Inca, and the pre-Inca civilizations arose, is fouled and dirtied at the nest. This is pollution to the extreme. Garbage burnt by the river shores stinks like a tannery.

John says any port in a storm when the hotels of our choice are filled. But this shitstorm is too much to bear. The alternative, another downtrodden dive, if we reject it, will we have no place to stay? We’re afraid we won’t find lodgings until Jesus delivers us to a residency in the embassy section with classical Greek inspired fin-de-ciclé Edwardian residencies on a tree-lined cul-de-sac, replete with marbled balconies and stained glass windows.

We are told there is no room there either, and this time we truly despair, until Jesus speaks to the manager. Magically, a room appears vacant. We are led to a round room, once a foyer. We say goodbye to Jesus our milagro savior and begin the business of unpacking.

We have trouble squaring our beds in the round room, once a tower. We joke: how to drive a Pollack crazy: put him in a round room and tell him to stand in the corner. This place with its marble floors, bay windows and faux balcony truly is a refuge.

I cannot shake the images of the Rimac, an open cesspool and garbage dump, so like the Russian River.

Flying through the Andes from Quito to Lima, Ecuador Journal

At Guayaquil, the tectonic force of the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate disrupts the land. Isolated dome stratovolcanoes of Ecuador, not how I envisioned the Andes. Such enormous differences in structure, like comparing the coastal range to the Rockies or to the Cascades. Yet the name of our California andesite is derived from the Andes.

The plane takes off between the two ridges barely clearing the volcanoes. I find myself praying for safe passage, heart in throat, such vast girths. I am in awe. Cotacachi, near Otovalo, and sublime symmetrical cone Cotapaxi, Mt. Fuji's twin sister. Cotopaxi means "Neck of the Moon" and is worshiped as the “rain sender,” home of the gods. La Avenida de los Volcanes is aptly named.

One of the world's highest volcanoes, Cayembe shrouded with clouds, is the second highest in Ecuador, at 19,347 feet. But the tallest, Chimborazo at 20,548 feet, is perpetually hidden in cloud cover. Chimborazo is a massive double volcano. It was once thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain on Earth.

Chimborazo means Snow on the other side. In Quechua it's called Urcurazu,  Urcu is mountain of ice. Chimborazo is the Taita (Father) and Tungurahua is Mama, hence Taita Chimborazo and Mama Tungurahua. Pachatata and Pachamama. A reference we'll hear again and again.

At the Equator, snow level begins at 15,000 feet. It is winter here, cold on the equator. We wear our winter clothes, and still we're cold. My blue Ecuadorian sweater weighs several pounds, I am glad for its warmth.

San Francisco de Quito, at 9,350 feet, is nestled between two long Andean ridges, and the páramo, the high semi-alpine grasslands or moors between timberline and snowline—with myriad strange plants that grow nowhere else in the world. Situated north-south in these pockets, is the old city. Quito, with its colonial architecture,  considered to be the most beautiful city in the Andes.

South of Guayaquil, and Ecuador, the terrain changes dramatically from coastal jungle to coastal desert. One bids goodbye to the equatorial Andes and its massive stratovolcanoes.

The contrast between Lima, Peru, and Quito is as startling as the cold weather. Lima sprawls on for miles at sea level along the coastal desert. The Cordillera Niegra at 15,000 feet on north-south block fault,  El Callejón de Huaylas. We are still on the avenue of the gods, la Avenida de los Volcanes. The Cordillera Blanca, long north-south block-fault ridges spreading out.

Escarpments and cirques, vast glacial walls. Cirques in every color of glacial blue imaginable, like blue-eyed tropical water beneath all that white. The Andes begin to look like how I imagine them to be in my dreams.

Beneath the plane, high ridges, eroded desert mountains, infrequent torrents, El Niño leaves scars, memories of riverbeds, and flashfloods, like Baja, like Death Valley, like Los Angeles Basin.

Lima is surrounded by real shantytowns, the Rímac River, the Babbling River, is a pit of burning garbage and devastation. I don't want the plane to land. The city center of Lima is inland. Lima is landlocked, while Miraflores, the place of flowers, is a long beach that we will escape to, and find blood blooming in the gutters of the Chorillos Tunnel. We have descended into the belly of the beast. Into hell. God help us.

7/25/1988
revised, added 10/16

*Rímac from the Quechua, rimaq, meaning "speaking" nicknamed El Río Hablador ("the talking river"). —Wiki

Inside the caldera (drawing)

 

Postcard from the Galapagos, 0° Lat., 8° long.

Sweet potatoes and Taro, Galápagos Journal

In the Galápagos I saw taro plants on old volcanic terraces, and caves are very much like in Hawaii. Sweet potato, a Polynesian staple, how did it get here? Easter Island? According to our guide, José, there's only one variety of sweet potato, related to morning glories. Anthropologists think the Polynesians got the sweet potato from Ecuador, or Peru – or it even came from tropical America, bringing the sweet potato with them to Hawaii—and the plantain too.

no date  7/88
added 10/16

LONESOME GEORGE

LONESOME GEORGE

Poor old Lonesome George,
the last Pinzón Island tortoise,
straddling a tortoise-shaped boulder
in hopes that it was a female.
I noted it was pahoehoe, female lava.
The last of his species, George has a long wait
while biologist yentas frantically search
for a suitable mate. A $10,000 reward
for a female Pinzón tortoise is offered.
Something that even money can't buy.
Rumors of tortoise droppings cited on Pinzón,
but no tortoises. Meanwhile George, 
knowing the end is near, clamorous up his rock
and gives a lovesick moan, has another go at it,
hissing like a hydraulic jackhammer,
thrusting for all he's worth.


7/17? 1988
added 10/16
minor revision

RICE RAT

RICE RAT

One begins to see subtle differences
among each of the islands.

The owner of Solymar shoos away the rat,
saying, She has no fear of man.
And she is a protected species, a rice rat.

He says, You should hear the guest scream
when she comes out at dinner time.
Old habits die hard. You can tell
by her accent she's a Norwegian rat.
Should I tell him that rice rats
are extinct on Santa Crúz Island?

The first family to stay here, were they
lonesome for their Old World rats?
Did they bring them with them?
Or did the rats boldly jump ship?

7/17/1988?
added 10/16
revised

Angermyer's, Puerto Ayora

Pelican Bay, Puerto Ayora

We stay in the upper story of the old water tower at the Angermyer farm outside of town, on Avenida Charles Darwin, as the hotels are full. We were told La Señora*, whom we were told we simply MUST meet, is traveling. I meet Franklin, her son, he looks familiar. Someone I once met. It turns out he married a friend and lived in Sausalito. Temporary residencies. I remember him, with his impossible blue eyes and gold-filled teeth. We used to go down to the dock and admire his boat. We were crazy about the water and desperate to learn to sail. He said, I would have taken you sailing. Why didn't you ask? But we were so young and too shy to speak.

7/17/1988

*Johanna Angermeyer may be Franklin's mother, she lived in California during the 1950s and 60s (Sausalito?), and moved back to Puerto Ayora to meet her uncles, but later married an Englishman and moved to England. She lives in Vilcabamba, Ecuador. 

PENGUINS on BARTOLEME ISLAND

Bartolomé Island.

Yesterday we swam with penguins,

poor, misguided polar birds,

lost enroute from an ice flow 

somewhere in Antarctica, 

who decided paradise 

look pretty good after all.

The water is fricking cold 

for being at 0° latitude, 

in the frigid equator.
No wonder they feel at home.

7/17/1988?

added 10/16

Imps of Darkness (drawings) Galapagos

 

PARADISE

PARADISE

I can't help but think of how this place

must have been like, paradise, 

a Persian word. To die 

with the names of God on your lips 

and go directly to paradise.

Which led me to religion,

and Charles Darwin, son of a preacher, 

who turned Christianity on its ear 

with his finches and theories on evolution.

But he couldn't shake loose 

the bindings of his upbringing. 

The ink black marine iguanas, 

he called them "the imps of darkness."

Was he that contemptuous of those little dragons 

snorting salt sea spray spumes 

as they basked on the hot lava rocks?

Galapagos

7/16/1988

added 10/16

Post Office Bay, Floriana Island, Galápagos Journal

At Post Office Bay, Floriana Island, I collect postcards from strangers addressed to my home town, Lagunitas, and more cards to Tiburon, and Bolinas—to hand-deliver. It is the custom.

One card from an unknown traveler, is addressed to my old biology teacher Al Molina, from the temporary address of 0° latitude. Degrees of separation.

I retrieve mail from an old biology teacher who entrusted a messenger with the postcard, like a baton in a slow race played by ships traveling from one port to port, on airplanes, and by way of the gringo trail, spreading the word.

Some 200 years later, we reenact the whalers' mail system on this barren island in the middle of the Pacific. The garúa,  the winter mist blurs the definition of sea and sky, time and space.

I sent a postcard to my friend. I write on it, the person who delivers this will marry you…

7/13/1988

SWIMMING ALONE, CORONA DEL DIABLO, 2 poems

SWIMMING ALONE

At Santa Fe we learn to swim with seals. 

Fur seals roll and play tag with us, 

one holds a stick in its mouth like a dog. 

They are as curious about us as we are of them.

Their large eyes beckon, and their graceful dance 

is like an underwater ballet.

We keep an eye on the beach masters.

At Corona del Diablo, a jagged crater 

filled with sea creatures and coral caves 

and myriad fish beyond description,

I sneak away from the group, 

and swim under a sea arch to a secluded beach.

Water, an incredible blue that defies description.

I revel and frolic, having escaped my companions,
and the over-crowded boat. A bull sea lion spots me,
hits the water, charges me three times.
Three times I fight him off, rolling in a knot,
with my flippers ever in his face.

In my wetsuit, I look more seal than human.
I can't tell if he's guarding his beach
or if he thinks I'm part of his lost harem.

But I nearly drowned trying to escape.

I tell no one, afraid of reprimand.

And realize there is safety in numbers.

Corona del Diablo 

7/17/1988?

not sure of any of these dates

added 10/16  revised

CORONA DEL DIABLO

Snorkeling in the richest sea garden

Coral, caves, passengers.

A sea lion attacked me three times. 

Either he thought I was a seal, 

or he was defending his turf. 

I kept turning my flippers 

and kicking his face, 

gasping for breath 

hoping that I'll survive. 

7/13/20

In a small boat, adrift, between Islands, Galápagos Journal

Leaving Puerto Ayora in a small boat

Yesterday we saw soaring albatrosses and frigate birds, and fairy-like silver-winged flying fish accompanied the our. I rode the bow of the vessel, more panga, than boat, straddling it like a horse, the chattering dolphins brushed my feet as they surfed the crest of the bow wave.

Suddenly we stopped short, the boat stalled in open water. A rope from a Japanese fishing boat used to catch sharks, had wrapped itself around the propeller. We were adrift in this frigid, Antarctic current. Too many people in an open boat. Too far from shore to even see a horizon, other than water.

There is nothing between us and the invisible equator, there was nothing but water between us and the equator. Nothing but frigid water between us and Antarctica. We were adrift in a small boat between islands. The ocean, a vast bell curve.

How large, the sea, and the connections between two things: a marriage and consummation of rope and propeller. The first mate diving beneath the boat again and again to cut the rope free. I hold onto the rope of the panga, tossing like a small horse and these deeper than blue waters.

The sea rises and troughs valleys and mountains shifting like the aging confidence in the motion faster than the eye can see. These undulations and escarpments.

I think of my high school classmate Jeff Aloha, adrift at sea in that sailboat, The Spirit, waiting for death. Is this how the sea seemed to him, adrift 43 days without water, and five companions, one or two who lived to tell the tale, but not Jeff with those beautiful blue eyes, those Finnish Viking eyes.

And on our boat, The Ancucho, French orthinologist Michel's eyes were startling glaciers, I thought the sea would rob us for that color blue. The jealous sky is bringing in the garúa, the ever-present mist, it surrounds us. And thickens. Not a good thing if we can’t fix the boat. 

We take turns getting seasick, barfing off the other side. As the diver frees the propeller from bondage, we all cheer. One piece of rope firmly wrapped around the propeller, stays, it is a reminder of what could have happened. Tourists adrift in a small open boat. We place all our faith in our Ecuadorian diver.

The boat makes its way to Española Island, about two-and-a-half hours away, we are overloaded with a cargo of gasoline, vapor settles in the cabin. If not death by water, perhaps then, by fire? This whole trip was a mad lark because we couldn’t get on a designated tourist tour boat, so we put our own tour together cobbled with enthusiasm and remorse.

These volcanoes beneath the Nazca plate, the ever present hunger from the belly of the earth. We are only so much bait for the sharks after all. The dolphins that ride air and bow are gone, like the albatross.

There is so much to record, and so little time. As I write this, I look out to sea to keep from getting ill. I write without looking at the pages.

The hieroglyphic fish with what looks like Japanese writing on their sides, have no translation for this. We impose our desire for patterns, desire for order upon this revolution of events and call it a plan. A grand scheme in this need for a god.

Random elements of the universe converge upon us as we carve and withhold the patterns to fit in like the Southern Cross or the Big Dipper, or on the equator you can see both. Polaris is below the horizon. Only by stars or compass, ferrous oxide enlightenment, can we get our bearings?

Shadows fall like clothes about our feet and we stumble along naked at last waiting for the seed to swallow us in dreams, for what is real? The time we spend earning money, too exhausted to go to to some exotic places on the gringo trail?

I was going to say, on the road like Kerouac but he didn't come this far south. We are well out of native waters tracing back the origin of order in the Galápagos, checking out the feasibility of diversification. We have a list to check off endemic species, ourselves, transient as the fish.

We come in big silver planes and then complain about our meals: arroz con pollo day in and day out, while the street children starve. Minute variations of the sea and the sameness of sea, the pale turquoise water.

Every once in a while one can feel the engine miss, our confidence is only skin deep. Like the colors of our skin on this boat, we are well represented nations ride with divergent speciation and adaptability of gene pool. Should we land on a deserted island to begin anew?

I am reminded of a story where a disease struck, nearly everyone died—Earth Abides. A new society formed. The brightest of children of this new society did not survive, only the most able.

The accidental mixture of people on this boat, the brightest of us all going to sea in a small boat, like the owl and the pussycat, who is most able? A strange marriage of sea and sky, the gray on the bell curve of sea and sky is like a toy rope and the shadow of meniscus and if the boat goes down, this  writing will melt off the page, and words will float out to sea to recombine into a new story.

7/12/1988
added 10/16

BLUE-FOOTED BOOBIES, ESPANOLA ISLAND

Blue-footed boobies sky-point
and whistle, reenacting an ancient ritual
in a slow courtship dance
where they majestically wave each blue foot
up and down for optimum exposure
and offer token bits of wood and stone
to their mates for their insubstantial nests.

A scooped out depression, hollow ground.

They eye us, bobbing their heads
like wise professors, or pompous bankers.
And point to the sky as if to say,
See how my feet are like the sky. 

7/12/1988

Española Island
added 10/16 revised

EIGHT DAYS IN PUERTO AYORA

Eight days in Puerto Ayora,
we're trying to arrange a tour,
we begin to recognize many faces,
the names of captains, and their boats,
even the marine iguanas.

One series of leads took us
back to the very same captain, Jaime
four times in one day.
Eight days in Puerto Ayora
begins to feel like purgatory.

We walked the length of the town
15 times in one evening.

We begin to know each store.
Each embedded stone in the road.

False leads, tourist agencies book
all the boats months in advance.

It's hard for an independent traveler
to arrange a tour, or anything, for that matter.

We pay $22 a day for our bravado,
while vacationers pay $45-$200 a day
for a guaranteed spot in paradise.
Hotel keepers worship the dollar here.
Money does buy everything.

Hotel Galapagos has hot water
showers at two dollars a head.

A meal costs much less, you can buy
four breakfasts for one shower.
Meals are arroz con pollo, or pollo con arroz.
Take your pick. To spice things up,

we alternate between the two.

We keep our record straight
and trade bills with ridiculously high
denominations that equal four cents, US.

Efficiency is an independent attitude here.

Eight days in Puerto Ayora.

7/10/1988?

added and revised 10/16

Lava Tunnels, Puerto Ayora

Since arriving in the Galápagos we've seen very little of anything, other than the back streets of Puerto Ayora. It is difficult to to rent a boat here. All the tourist tours have them reserved on a perpetual calendar cycle. We've had almost as many deals fall through in almost a week of days. We've been here for six days, waiting. In desperation, to escape Puerto Ayora, we went on an underground hike in the lava tunnels. Inside, I encountered my own fear, my own death. It is strange to be trapped under the earth like that. Underbelly of the world at zero degrees latitude.

July 7? 1988
Added 10/16
minor changes

LA MITAD DEL MUNDO

LA MITAD DEL MUNDO

Today I straddled the equator,
I stood in the middle of the world,
where I balanced with a foot
planted in each hemisphere,
where north and south become one,
where there is no separation of seasons,
where my bilateral body was equidistant,
where days and nights are equal,
where the garúa, the jealous drizzle
hid the volcanoes from our sight,
where we were enveloped
in a perpetual fog of misery,
Neptune's kingdom below us,
the sun's fiery eye, watching us
on any given Sunday.

7/3/1988
added, revised 10/12/2016

California literature project presenter

 

Creative discourse, summer, 1988: There is so Much We Save from Childhood

 

• 
  
• There is so Much We Save from Childhood v.1 is longer

CREAMERY CREEK

CREAMERY CREEK
   —for Albert Straus

Teddy Roosevelt fished here.

That is why this part of the creek, where it enters Tomales Bay

is called White House Bend. The flash and churn 

of silver salmon spawned in cowshitted green water—

a coinage of fiery fish, unturned stones and politics.

With a pitchfork, my uncle speared a salmon

fat with roe—escaped embers combusting downstream

where the given name changes again and again

but not the creek. Creamery, Lagunitas, Papermill.

The Miwok names are lost.

With rosemary from my grandmother's garden, we seasoned the salmon.

Nestled in the resin-green needles, a surprise of pale blooms 

like fragments of the sky against sunrisen flesh 

wrapped in a tinfoil night. We baked it in butter and garlic

but the flesh was like muddied water.

The cats fought over the feathered bones.

Each pool was named: Shafter's, China House, The Gravel Pit, Taylor. 

Beneath dank redwoods, rags from the City were pulped into paper

by big paddles when Papermill Creek was still untamed.

Near the Inkwells, so deep, everyone said they were bottomless,

we found obsidian and chert arrowheads, nameless iron, 

coins and wedding rings. Who we were. Where we came from.

In summer, my chestnut mare plunged through pools,

her hair, floating in verdent water like fire.

I slipped off her back, grabbed hold of her tail

and was towed to the opposite shore

not understanding the sense of loss.

Years later, my uncle said, I feel guilty

taking that salmon before she laid her eggs.

My uncle said, Before Kent dam was built

the Cataracts were alive with falls.

When the wind blew, dense stands 

of pine and redwood roared like fire.

Now, silt feeds the azaleas, stream orchids

and huckleberries. No coinage of fish.

The forests, the dairies—nearly all gone now.

Perhaps, forseeing the end of civilization,

this is why the Romans named the rosemary for remembrance.

Creamery/Lagunitas/Papermill Creek fed by all the tributaries:

Arroyo, and Barranca—where, in the small summer pools

I caught trapped fish bare-handed; a bagpipe skirling

Amazing Grace from some forgotten canyon at sunset.

Devil's Gulch, Crystal Springs. All the names—even Kit Carson left his mark.

At the headwaters of Creamery Creek—named after Jóse Revere's milking barn

where Alexander Graham Bell set up the first telephone system

in the San Geronimo Valley—did they shout through copper wires

at midnight, The Indians are coming! The Indians are coming!

to those recording the historic event in the kitchen of the main house?

We are already here on the last wild ride of the long night.

And what of the Miwok names?

6/4/88    Marshall/Pt. Reyes

1991 San Geronimo Valley Resource Guide

1989 First Leaves

Poetry reading at Markey’s Cafe with Sharon Doubiago, Andy Clausen, Maureen Hurley

RRWG, CPITS student reading, Burbank Activity Center

Markey’s Cafe reading Maureen Hurley & Sharon Doubiago

 

Journal entry, Forestville fossils

Now that I've begun editing my student homes for the final book, only now am I beginning to feel the urge to write. It's been a long slow drought. Teaching takes away from my writing energy, like any other job.

In Berkeley we diligently conserve water, but here, on the river, we take it out and put it back in again. Even during drought, you can't ask the river to conserve water.

The orchards here are so impoverished and sterile, not the variety of plant life we come to expect from nature. Even in the creek, there's little to look for.

Was this a shallow inland sea that stretched to the Farallones? Why are there no clams here? When the embankment on River Road, they tumbled from their beds to the road cut like an Indian midden.

Beneath the fossil beds, it's hollowed out. I crawled inside and under 10,000 years' worth of history. It made me realize that every place we walk has an equal pedigree of age. 

The clams gave us something to anchor our own limited perceptions of time upon.

I find tooted clams—what species? And an olivine snail shell, 10,000 years old, clearly recognizable with today's species.

Did the farmer who first cleared and plowed these fields ever wonder about the clamshells planted here?

Susie the cat has plans for that bluejay. I can tell by her silence.

The next time I want to walk along the beach, I can do it right here in the orchard. shells and all.

I think of my grandmother daily, the pain eases somewhat. Still in dreams, she claims it's all been a mistake. She's not dead. What am I supposed to do with that?

W

Hunce Voelcker, just back from India, says Link, his old lover, long since dead, also visits him regularly, claiming it's a mistake, and leads him into trouble.

Hunce says Shasta, Benares, and the Brooklyn Bridge are his three favorite holy places on earth.

I contemplate mailing Huncie the last of my Brooklyn Bridge stamps on Hart Crane's birthday. I will be sad to miss the party, perhaps by then, we will be in Peru.

There's so much turning and turmoil in my soul. The air is filled with anticipation, something is about to happen. But what?

Susie attains the posture of the stoic, the bluejay continues to call  aii, aii, aii.

Blue and salmon clouds huddle, quail in the undergrowth, bedding down for the night.

Twice now I've sat up in the middle of the night, still sound asleep, and I talk to a presence who is dwelling in John's back house where we sleep. I don't know who it is. My grannie?

The first night, I said, I love you. The second night I said, I am profoundly unhappy, and though I don't have any intention of committing suicide, I'm beginning to understand what drives people to it.

The sound of my own voice woke me enough to remember what I said in the morning. It left me spooked. This time John never heard me. Perhaps it's the beginning of healing, perhaps now, it will lift somewhat. Or I've gone and disturbed some other ghosts.

The clouds grow more dramatic with each minute. I can't get any elevation from the top of the orchard to see the sunset on the horizon. So cold for May, my fur coat is like a bear hide.

The blue spears of wheat I gather from the sewer barrow, taste like any other unknown grass seed. Sour, milky, and mildly sweet. 

We are all fossils, uncovering fossils. And more fossils.

5/6/1988

added 9/2016

FORESTVILLE

FORESTVILLE

Beneath the grass
of this meadow's thousand deaths,
lies an ancient shore waiting 10,000 years
for the returning tide.

The alluvial tide of clay and iron,
wild riot of rye on the new leach fields,
budding poppies and lupine
beneath, thunder clouds at sunset,
the chirrup of flickers and jays
and early crickets—all off tempo.
Early May snowstorms.

5/6/1988

REVISED

The leach field,
a barrow for sewage,
grows wild riots of rye
and poppies beneath
thunder clouds at sunset
in early May.

The scissoring bluejays
patrol the air with diligence
and energy.

5/8/1988

Home Ranch mentioned in Lander County line, Folklife in central Nevada, 1988

In the spring of 1985 we made a pilgrimage to the Walsh Home Ranch, where my grandmother first lived when she came to America. Her half-uncle, Paddy Walsh offered safe refuge for most of our family, who passed through the ranch at one point or another. Paddy became the single largest landowner in Lander County. When we first visited, I was surprised to discover the current Home Ranch owner, Jim Champie was cousins with folks I grew up with in Marin County. Mo Champie and Phil Bundschu were classmates of mine at Drake High School. He knew the names of our horses. Through him we also discovered another branch of the family we thought long lost. Apparently we were the only ones making pilgrimages to the ranch. I found this book far from home, while visiting a folklorist in the Sierra foothills.

• 
  
• Walsh Home Ranch early photos 1920
• Home Ranch, Reese River Valley
• Walsh Tombs: Photos
• HOME RANCH, 1985
• ELEGY FOR MARY WALSH
• WALSH folklore
• AVS notes: Nancy Walsh Estomba

Senator John Garamendi, CPITS Thank You letter, Sacramento Arts Day, 1988

CPITS writing workshop with Jorge Lujan 4/12/88

 CPITS writing workshop with Jorge Lujan 4/12/88

I am in my mother’s arms, the long sun in my eyes. I am mesmerized by her red lips and the jungle print of her flared skirt that later became a pillow for my grandmother’s couch. My jowls quiver with baby fat, my milk eye squinting in the sun, it’s Easter, I drool on my mother’s arms in the unbearably hot sun. By the same white car with its dusty blue top, where moments earlier my grandparents stood sternly gazing at the camera, all bright colors in my mind, all this fuss, my hand clutching red and green ribbons under my chin and I’m scratching scratching. I chew down on her arm and a rocking motion jiggles all the colors into a swirl. At the age of two, gazing out of this photograph, I see a woman older than my mother in a red dress, and an embroidered tapestry with mirrors. She is writing in a book and all those controlled marks that grown-ups call writing, I sweep my arms across the paper and tables making all this writing of lessons into vortexes. This woman has no children. Her grandmother is dead. She is much sadder than I can imagine. I have no words for this kind of sorrow that slips from her eyes in all the colors of the world like a river . She is in a classroom filled with children writing, a tall man sings poems about when he was five. There is not much difference between us, we are the same under the skin. She has collected many facts in her 35 years while I am a clean slate about to begin. 

• PHOTO ALBUM

CPITS Teaching journal, Jorge Lujan workshop suitcase words, photograph at 10

Jorge Luhan, who was our guest artist from Mexico, called this renaming lesson beautiful names. 

For example fox: the phoenix of the woods.

Moon: lost pearl from Saturn’s rings

Sun: high yellow spark that travels.

River: fleeting bluebird

My favorite was the student sample dragons: stoves on the run.

We made lists on the board and we combined the ideas.

It rained and all the names were lost. Ask the wind, you want me to do your work. Ask the fox but he danced. Ask the moon but it was cloudy. Ask the sun it was also cloudy. Ask the wind when you were so beautiful a hovering blue river of the sky redwoods, the sky on fire. wash your feet in the sea smooth lavender rocks, so warm, smooth rock in the hand of the earth in gods hands. Dusk: a forest on fire waiting for a visit from the moon. The wind took the names to the next village and the first poetic words were spoken, they were born. This is how poetry was born.

Jorge takes all the ideas and then tells us a story, a little boy and girl return return home to tell their mother: we have been moving the smooth blue river of the sky, where the trees were rockets to the sky, where the smooth lavender rocks were in gods hands and a forest was on fire waiting to visit the moon.

My definitions:  Marsh: sky catcher of sunset where wild geese squabble and sing in their floating nests. Candle: with its burning eye piercing the night of false dawn. Jasper: a bleeding stone of crushed embers from the first fires. Breeze: a fire roaring in the pines with no flame at all.

Metaphor is discovering the mysteries of the New World around us. Write a poem containing the four sentences from your definitions ask yourself what kind of water, involve the elements, give lots of details.

Senator Jim Nielson CPITS Thank You letter, Sacramento Arts Day, 1988

VENUS UNEARTHED

It was an unusually dry year in 1820 when the
farmer's plow hit a stone in the fallow field of Melos.
Thinking it was a building block to salvage,
Theodore Kentortaus wrested from the earth
the object of perfect love.

When he pulled the goddess Aphrodite (or Venus)
from the shallow grave, he fell in love,
spent an unmeasured amount of time in his shed
gazing upon her beauty, 'til his wife, jealous,
sold her to the French. Was it the maddening April winds
or the vestiges of an older story
that fanned her rage?

When Venus was hoisted onto the French frigate
she saw the sea was curved like a bell,
she escaped into the water. Her white arms
were lost when the sailors tried to raise her
from Posideon's watery depths.
Some say it was because she didn't want to leave Greece.
A fisherman fell in love with her,
gathered up her pitiful broken arms,
rowed far out into the Aegean and tossed them overboard
so she would always embrace the boats of the fishermen.

Men searched the sea in vain for her arms,
unable to find the watery X the fisherman marked.
Now, only fish gaze upon the beauty of her white arms:
one hand holding the hard-won golden apple of discord 
the other gathering up her robes as she received
the judgement of Paris. Hera's final revenge—
a skirmish broke out between the French and Germans.
A stray shot chipping a piece from the face of Venus,

mutilating the immortal beauty that Paris claimed.

4/1/1988
rev. 3/89

Notes on my poem, Venus Unearthed, or what John calls poet’s work

Since I am working back in time I write backwards in my notebook. Perverse, I know but I wound up gathering much more information than I had pages left in one section of my journal—which later caused confusion when I tried to revisit it later. I thought the Venus notes would take a couple of pages, and then I could save the rest for poetry. Alas I filled the entire section with notes. What started out as a simple OED hunt became a day-long adventure. In other words, instead of writing a poem, I lost an entire day in a dictionary. I didn’t know I’d find so much information, I found the entire Greek pantheon. And one thing led to another. I followed every lead. After spending six hours looking up this information, who begat who and who murdered who, how they’re all related to each other, that they all had ulterior motives to do each other in. I guess the best revenge in this case, is not just living well, but outliving your enemies and their progeny, and so on. adds a whole new meaning to the term, the sins of the father, or mother.

All this legwork and I don’t have the energy to finish the poem. But, as John said, it’s all poets work. Like the time I spent the day memorizing the poem Innisfree by Yeats because I was missing my grandmother.

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY outake

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY OUTAKES

1. If word processing is possible
with only a limited memory,
how many rams does it take to equal one rom?
If I work in total darkness
will my eyes reflect the phosphor tubes
or will I pass for a feral night animal
hunting under the cover of darkness
for prehistoric prey in a literate world?

Is there total enlightenment at the end of the screen
or is the dark worse than the byte?
Ram Ram Ram Ram


2. The ultimate dada experience:
to write the manuscript of a lifetime
on a floppy disk, not make a hard copy,
and then run a magnet across it.
The ferrous molecules will line up
and attain perfect enlightenment.
Ram Dass Baba Ram Hass
Bob Doss Ram Baba peach flambé.

4/88? 89?

when was this first written? was filed in 1980, I think that's a typo
from newspaper clippings
WOOFITIBOOTAH

Oh dear, this is rather striking too close to home.

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY is MIA (hard copy)
(See Hidden Logic)

I found a hard copy of RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY, two versions, actually... no date, but v.1. is dot matrix, so 87 is probably correct.