The Christmas We Had Two Trees (Prose) v2

The Christmas my grandmother broke with tradition and returned home dragging a bare madrone tree instead of the typical evergreen tree, I was thoroughly scandalized. Already on shaky ground with the thought of Santa Claus squeezing his girth down the stovepipe—no more than my plump Irish grandmother could do—I was convinced it was an unwritten sin NOT to have a real tree. These Things Mattered. The world might end if we didn’t stick to the pattern.

The previous Christmas I’d had my Santa logic seriously challenged with multiple Santas ringing bells over black cauldrons on street corners. Then one Santa dragged my onto his lap, I could see his beard was fake so I wet my pants and cried.

Early Christmas morning I tripped down the stairs, head over heels, but the sight of the Christmas tree with its multicolored glass bulbs and icicles caught my attention; I forgot to cry. All those presents! Since I was the smallest, I reasoned all the small presents were mine. Bewildered, I stared at a dozen key ring sets nestled in shredded wrapping paper.

The New Year: we closed up the three-storey Victorian house on California Street in San Francisco with its leaded glass cabinets, mahogany paneling, hidey-holes, fireplaces in every room, and moved to our West Marin summer home with its firebox attached to the Wedgewood stove—our only source of heat. No fireplace chimneys, only a stovepipe the size of my leg.

I was newly five and on loan to my grandmother to keep her company: from a bustling household of a baker’s dozen, we were reduced to only two: the aunts and uncles scattered to the winds, my parents were divorcing, both my uncle Myles and my grandfather, dead of cancer.

Etched into memory: the indelible image of my grandfather standing at the front door with suitcase in hand, saying goodbye. Suspicious, I wanted to know exactly where he was you going for Uncle Myles hadn’t returned from the hospital, would never return. I remember an archipelago of freckles set adrift on the bilious sea of jaundiced skin, his punishment for burning a mole with a cigarette.

Later I learned to wrap my mouth around the word “melanoma” and to watch my own skin.

My grandfather rasped, his soft Irish brogue interrupted by the throat cancer, “to the hospital.”

I demanded in typical almost five-year-old temerity, “When will you be back?”

Startled by the answer of “heaven,” I asked where else it was beside trapped in the vast painted dome of the Star of the Sea church.

My grandfather pointed up to the clouds grazing the brilliant blue sky and mentioned something of angels.

Of course I wanted to come too; he’d need someone to blow out his cigar matches there as well, I reasoned.

They laughed uncomfortably and shuffled their feet.

I was born on his birthday, a month before Christmas Eve, we were twins separated at birth by 60 years. Incorrigible equals in temper and temperament, I was Grandpa’s little monster: at a tender age, I’d learned some nasty habits from him—to cuss, smoke cigars and drink beer—to the horror of my family. Between tantrums, I wasn’t above snacking on stale cigarette butts soaked in beer or licking the festive red and white sulphur match sticks.

Uneasily I stood amid a forest of legs watching the stained glass window spill its crimson and green tide onto the black and white tile floor, the known world unraveling at the seams. If I went with my grandfather, would I see my family again?

I was relieved when he didn’t ask me along. I wrapped my arms around my grandmother’s leg. I don’t remember my grandfather returning home from the hospital, but he did—only to die New Year’s Eve.

The family all returned home from their New Years’ parties early. No one could say exactly why: a premonition. Our last year together as an extended family. Little did we know my mother's loan of myself to my grandmother was to last some twenty Christmases until I moved away from home.

Our first Christmas season on our own in the country, I was miffed that my grandmother managed to sneak out of the house undetected by me on the morning of St. Nicholas’ Day. (Dec. 6th; Old Saint Nicholas/ Sinterclaus/ Santa Claus is the patron saint of children and sailors).

My grandmother hiked up the hill with tree saw in hand, bundled in sweaters, longjohns, and baggy homemade black pants; she returned home the hunter dragging a bare madrone tree, a nest of leaves and twigs in her hair—smelling faintly of Wildroot—she swore by the men’s restorative hair tonic. Not that she was in any danger of going bald with a thick white thatch of hair she trimmed herself in front of the bureau mirror, with an audience of Jesus and Mary behind their gilt frames and a crucifix overlooking the unused bureau brush set and a small harbor of perfume bottles—unopened Christmas gifts. She preferred the heady scent of Bushmills. Uisge beatha, she’d say, giggling, water of life, dabbing it behind her ears.

At a loss, I wasn’t prepared to let go of the Christmas Tree symbol too. Ever the determined curmudgeon, I trudged up the ridge in a drizzle with my short five year old legs, and dragged home my own tree: a spindly Douglas fir that was more sprout than tree.

We made another cross for the base and the two trees stood side by side. My green tree was far too weak to hold ornaments or lights, the one angel we had kept doing swan-dives off the top. But the red-skinned madrone tree, aglow with its lights, silver glass balls and songbirds, was strong enough to hold up the Christmas angel. Begrudgingly, I climbed up the ladder and placed her at the crown of Grandma’s tree.

In retrospect, her madrone tree was beautiful, but at the time it just didn’t feel right. Only now does the metaphor shine through the branches of that tree, ten years after her death.

Resurrecting pieces of the story of Rhiannon’s Birds, we were building a new life, starting with the bones of the tree, the grief shining through the skeletal branches, the red-skinned flesh of madrone, peeling from the heat, revealed the green heartwood beneath, with the promise of the life to come in spring.

© 1990?   1997  Maureen Hurley

The Christmas We Had Two Tress rev 3

THE CHRISTMAS WE HAD TWO TREES

THE Christmas my grandmother broke with tradition and returned home dragging a bare madrone tree instead of the typical evergreen tree, I was thoroughly scandalized. Already on shaky ground with the thought of Santa Claus squeezing his girth down the stovepipe—no more than my grandmother could do—I was convinced it was an unwritten sin NOT to have a real tree. These Things Mattered. The world might end if we didn’t stick to the pattern.

The previous Christmas I’d had my Santa logic seriously challenged with multiple Santas ringing bells over black cauldrons on street corners. Then one Santa dragged my onto his lap, I could see his beard was fake, so I wet my pants and cried. Besides, I knew where Santa lived. That nonsense about north poles was just grown-up talk to kids. Didn’t I just see him on the hill straddling the Presidio tunnel? Early Christmas morning I tripped down the stairs, bumping each step ass over teakettle, but the sight of the Christmas tree with its multicolored glass bulbs and icicles dazzled me; I forgot to cry. All those presents! Since I was the smallest, I reasoned all the small presents were mine. Bewildered, I stared at a dozen key ring sets nestled in shredded wrapping paper, jingling them—their false notes grated.

The New Year: we closed up the three-storey Victorian house on California Street with its leaded glass cabinets, mahogany paneling, hidey-holes, fireplaces in every room, and moved to our West Marin summer home with its firebox attached to the Wedgwood stove—our only source of heat. No fireplace chimneys, only a stovepipe the size of my leg. I was newly five and on loan to my grandmother to keep her company: from a bustling household of a baker’s dozen, we were reduced to only two: the aunts and uncles scattered by the winds of change, my parents were divorcing, both my uncle Myles and my grandfather, dead of cancer.

Etched into memory: the indelible image of my grandfather standing at the front door, with suitcase in hand, saying goodbye. Suspicious, I wanted to know exactly where he was going for Uncle Myles hadn’t returned from the hospital, would never return. I remember an archipelago of freckles set adrift on the bilious sea of his jaundiced skin, his punishment for burning a mole with a cigarette. Later I learned to wrap my mouth around the music of “melanoma” and to watch my skin for messages from the dead.

Standing at the front door with suitcase in hand, my grandfather rasped—his soft Irish brogue interrupted by the throat cancer—that he was going “to the hospital.” I demanded, “When will you be back?” Startled by the answer of “heaven,” I asked where else it was located beside in the vast painted dome of the Star of the Sea church where I was baptized. He pointed up to the clouds grazing the brilliant blue sky and mentioned something about angels. Of course I wanted to come; he’d need someone to blow out his cigar matches there too, I reasoned. They laughed uncomfortably and shuffled their feet. Born on his birthday, a month before Christmas Eve, we were twins separated at birth by 60 years. Incorrigible equals in temperament, I was Grandpa’s little monster: at a tender age, I’d learned some nasty habits from him—to cuss, smoke cigars and drink beer—to the horror of my family. Between tantrums, I wasn’t above snacking on stale cigarette butts or licking salty match heads.

Uneasily I stood amid a forest of legs watching the stained glass window spill its crimson and green tide onto the black and white tile floor, the known world unraveling at the seams. If I went with my grandfather, would I see my family again? Why would anyone choose heaven over this blue sky? I was relieved when he didn’t ask me along. I wrapped my arms around my grandmother’s leg. I don’t remember my grandfather returning home from the hospital, but they say he did—only to die New Year’s Eve. They say the family members all returned home from their New Years’ parties early. No one could say exactly why: a premonition. Our last year together as an extended family. Little did we know the loan of myself to my grandmother was to last twenty Christmases until I moved away from home.

* * * * * * *

Our first Christmas season on our own, I was miffed that my grandmother managed to sneak out of the house undetected on the morning of St. Nicholas’ Day without me. She hiked up the hill with saw in hand, bundled in sweaters, longjohns, and baggy homemade black pants; she returned home the hunter dragging a bare madrone tree, a nest of leaves and twigs in her hair—smelling faintly of Wildroot—she swore by the men’s restorative hair tonic. Not that she was in any danger of going bald with a thick white thatch of hair she trimmed herself in front of the bureau mirror, to an audience of Jesus and Mary behind their gilt frames and a crucifix overlooking the unused bureau brush set where a small harbor of bottles—decades of unopened Christmas gifts patiently waited liberation. She preferred the heady scent of Black Label Bushmills. Uisge beatha, she’d say, giggling, water of life, dabbing it behind her ears.

At a loss, I wasn’t prepared to let go of the Christmas Tree symbol too, ever the curmudgeon, I trudged up the ridge in a drizzle and dragged home my own tree: a spindly Douglas fir that was more sprout than tree. We made another cross for the base and the two trees stood side by side, my green tree was far too weak to hold ornaments or lights, the one angel we owned kept doing swan-dives off the top. But the red-skinned madrone tree, aglow with its lights, silver glass balls and songbirds, was strong enough to hold up the Christmas angel. Begrudgingly, I climbed up the ladder, placed her at the crown of Grandma’s tree, and a tinfoil star on mine. Her madrone tree was beautiful, but at the time it just didn’t feel right. Old habits die hard—even for young children. Only now does the metaphor shine through the branches of that tree, ten years after her death. Resurrecting pieces of the story of Rhiannon’s Birds, we were building a new life, starting with the bones of the tree, the grief shining through the skeletal branches, the red-skinned flesh of madrone, peeling from the heat, revealed the green heartwood beneath, with the promise of the life to come in spring.

© 1997  rev 2000 Maureen Hurley  for Dan Langton class

Journal entry, 10/7/97 Micheal O Siadhail & Robert Tracy reading

Last night we went to hear Irish poet, Micheal O Siadhail with Robert Tracy at UC Berkeley, and a reception followed. Bob Tracy read some of his translations from Mendestahm, which were quite good (as far as I can tell).

We'd just had a marathon afternoon reconstructing Neil's paper on Brian Freel's The Artistocrats and Castle Rackrent. For some odd reason he didn't save the final draft, and in Preview, Word crashed, leaving us with an old draft. We worked furiously until 8 PM, and went to the reading late, arguing over punctuation and grammar. He laughs, I wonder if we'll be friends after this semester is over.

At the reading, we got Frank McGuinness's address in Kildare from Micheal. Gary Mullan called form LA asking for my cousin Barney O'Reilly's address. I thought of my cousin Sinead, who must be in Dublin right about now, with the baby Sean, my aunt Toddy, and Kate, none of them ever having been out of North America. I'm sorry I missed Sinead's goodbye call yesterday.

Neil's on the phone with Larry Spears who just came back from ?  Today they'll scatter Kevin Sullivan's ashes. Poor man never made it to opening night for Frank's Behold the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. A death, a near death, an extended run, a Goldie (now Sons will go to Broadway and all the guys want to fly to NY to audition and scoring Frank McGuinness's number and address was a real coup.

Huckleberries

MY cousin Sineád and I went huckleberrying on the Autumn Equinox at our secret spot on Inverness Ridge near Tomales Bay, where we used to go berrying with our grandmother. Hard to believe so much time has passed since I hiked the highlands of the other Inverness, Scotland. I once thought that 20 years was a widening gulf—impossible to retrace extant memories of childhood. Here, at Tomales, it really is like Loch Ness; in the pine forest we’ve strange white deer from China instead of the red deer. Instead of Nessie sightings, the San Andreas Fault stretches its monstrous length northward and great white sharks relentlessly patrol the mouth of the bay. My grandmother said Nessie was a coelacanth—Gaelic ceili, for “singing” fish. As a child she remembered the fishermen catching the rare singing fish in the North Sea. From the isthmus, we could see Point Reyes in the distance, a mountainous corona against the shimmering sea, separating Drake’s Bay from the raging Pacific—a misnamed ocean!

The weather at the Point is capricious. Once my aunts and uncles went out to the headlands to gather abalone. Caught in a whiteout of tule fog, they nearly drove off the cliffs. Only the urgent whispering surf on the rocks saved them. Offshore fog rising like a vast wall against a sky where tiny fishing boats disappear into its maws, makes me think of a Chinese silk scroll, or a painting I once saw in the Tate Gallery by Turner. The wind-ravaged bishop pines, draped in the pale traces of Spanish mosses we once used as green tresses, took a severe beating from last year’s storms. So many uprooted trees met an abrupt end—we used them as aerial pathways up the steep hillsides. This part, primordial as the beginnings of time, unscathed by the devastating Inverness Ridge inferno that blackened the hills for miles. But the resilient land is again clothed in the succulent grasses the deer favor at sunset.

Neruda wrote Death is an admiral on a ship. . . Many shipwrecks along this treacherous coast. We found hand-forged square nails, slow crawling moonsnails, and pottery shards in the lagoons and on the beaches of Limantour Spit. The natives of Point Reyes and Bodega Bay thought the sailing ships arose like white birds from the belly of the sea, and the white-skinned explorers—ghosts. They tried to sing away the apparitions of the otherworld. They had no words for this, other than the arrival of death.

Because this peninsula is now public land, Point Reyes National Seashore, we’re not supposed to gather anything: huckleberries, or moss-covered antlers. Short, thick branch: a fallow deer’s. Non-native, like us. We lugged our 2-year-old nephew, Seán, through the undergrowth. He plucked each berry like a little king appraising jewels in sunlight, then greedily fisted them into his mouth until he was tattooed with violet juice. Returning the memory of those who came before us, we re-enacted an age-old ritual, gathering berries before the fall—no matter that our skin is white, not red.

My aunt will make pies and ice cream, our teeth will be indigo-stained for days (like my fingers). How Pictish! The berries, so labor-intensive (cleaning takes longer than picking), we make jokes, compare them to caviar, as we drop them from silver spoons, polishing them, black pearls on purpling terrycloth towels. But it gives us an excuse to be together, like in the old days. We’ll eat pie and have tea from the Blue Willow teapot with a cracked spout. Later, we’ll go to a party at the Straus farm across Tomales Bay on the barren, grassy Marshall hillsides and make gallons of huckleberry ice cream with their cream fresh from the dairy. Jungle-lush Inverness Ridge is part of what’s left of the granitic Pacific Plate, while Marshall with its thin red soil of Franciscan strata, is part of the North American Plate. Two continents divided by a thin bay, different as night and day.

© 1997 revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Cafe International reading Maureen Hurley & Eugene Ruggles, Sept. 19, 1997

NB: I read with Gene Ruggles, but it was too soon after the car accident. I had PTSD, was still breathless from having had a punctured lung, and I couldn't control my breath, so necessary for reading poetry aloud to a large audience. I felt so ill, I thought I was going to black out, or throw up. Stars on the edges of my eyes, and that hot tingly feeling in the blood when adrenaline kicks in and you don't know whether to pass out or run for the hills. I don't think I ever saw Gene again after hat reading. I quit attending poetry readings, and rarely read in public after that. Too much stress.

Modern Celtic Literature; Prof. Robert Tracy

FALL 1997  Celtic Studies 139? (4 units), Modern Celtic Literature; Prof. Robert Tracy;  (audited, no papers)                        

This course is structured around a chronological survey of Irish writing in Irish and English spanning the period from the 18th to the 20th c. It aims to give students a sense of the breadth of writing which emerged from Ireland during this period, as well as an exposure to the cultural and political debates which were explored through this writing.

                                                                       

TEXTS:

Penguin Anthology of Irish Poets

Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent

Elizabeth Bowden, The Last September

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Sean O’Casey, Three Dublin Plays: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars

Lady Augusta Gregory, Cuchulainn of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster (See also Gods & Fighting Men).

John M. Synge, Complete Plays of John M. Synge (Riders to the Sea)

William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, Editor: Richard J. Finneran

William Butler Yeats, Three Plays

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce, The Dubliners

Brian Freel, Collected Plays

Plus xeroxed readings. Roger Casement, etc.

Neil is signed up for this class at UC Berkeley but we are too weak to do much, so I'm to be la lecctrice, the shadow reader,  to help him through class. We both have PTSD and everything is stressful.

The Sky is Falling

A WELSH poet in living in Amsterdam’s benign exile, deep in his cups, lamented how we Celts suffer from a racial lack of confidence: A nation without a language; a nation without a heart. I dreamed I had to memorize 5 lines in Welsh—just sounds, no images. Each new line forced out the old one. Though I speak no Welsh, I awoke holding the cadence of a sister tongue in my mouth. I told him we’re archaic sentinels from a culture (and languages) stubbornly hovering on the brink of extinction for centuries on end.

In Louven, I found an arch, deciphered the Old Irish: another university founded by Irish monks in the so-called Dark Ages. Hibernius ipsis Hiberniores. Johannes Scottus Eriugena (Seán, the Irishman b. 810), a founder of the continental universities, taught at Laon and at the Paris Court School (when he wasn’t being accused of heresy. His doctrines championed free will long before Luther’s). He wrote: Nothing is more laborious than to fight against stupidity for it won’t bend to any authority and it won’t be convinced by reason. Punning in Latin, the king made a playful swipe at Eriugena, asked him the difference between a fool and a Scot (Irishman). The hot-blooded Eriugena replied, “Only the table.” (Quid distat inter sottum et scottum). Seated across from the scholar, the king was flabbergasted by the turned tables! But it is said satire was the first art form in Ireland. Or was it war?

One of Alexander of Macedonia’s generals, during negotiation of a peace treaty, queried a Celtic chieftain: What do you Celts fear most? The Gaul contemptuously replied: That the sky should fall upon our heads. How does one come to terms with Cenedl heb raith; cenedl heb galon: A nation without a language; a nation without a heart. I prefer phrases like Tá grá agam ort or Yr wyf yn du garu to the names of war. Words from the Irish: slogan: sluagh garim, a Celtic battle cry, and furor is to blood-summon. Glamour, corrupted grammar, this fierce love of words is in the blood. The dark, threatening sky again. Tantrum. I write in the enemy tongue, my own asleep.

©1997 revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Anim Chara

The cats formed semi-colons at the foot of my bed: intensity overwhelms those who don’t understand the Celtic temperament. As if it were my fault, I dream of people before I meet them. A good Cartesian response to the unmeasurable.

I know craziness second-hand, my mother’s indulgements—influenced by the drug-induced ’60s & ’70s. Then, my grandmother also spent her free time wandered about the house muttering curses to Cromwell, the Anglo Saxons & Jutes. The sassanach, she spat.

When I was a child, I thought they were swear words. I knew they were bad, very bad, that I mustn’t forget my history. Who we are, where we came from. And when I recognize “kin” so far from home, I am overwhelmed. It’s a rare and pleasurable thing to meet like-minded souls.

At 20, I knew I was different than others. . . I‘ve learned that the doors of perception don’t open for everyone: if so, forgive my trespass. There’s an Irish word for it: anim chara (soul/heart friend).

To sleep, to dream. . . Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine: people live in one another’s shadows. I dreamed I had to memorize 5 lines in Welsh—it was all a jumble of sounds, with no images to hang onto. I no sooner got one line down, when it forced out the one preceding it, and so on through the night. I can’t even begin to pronounce Welsh, I barely know the rules of Irish. I awoke with the cadence of another language in my head. Perhaps this is the Welsh poet Paul Evan’s parting gift to me. Pay attention to the rhythms. Teachers come in the most surprising forms.

Once Vins van Neervan and I went to Leuven in Belgium where he went to University to study philosophy. Wandering Marika's city, we stumbled upon an arch with Old Irish enscribed on the lintel.

To my surprise, I was able to decipher it. . . perhaps one of the few visitors able to do so in the past several hundred years. We found the gates to a college founded by Irish monks in the so-called Dark Ages. And here we are, archaic sentinels from a culture (and languages) on the verge of extinction for nearly as many centuries. And we’ve so rudely taken a long time dyin’ at that.

The Celts are going, the Celts are going at last. Hurrah! Soon a Celt on the streets of Dublin will be as rare as seeing an Indian on the streets of Manhattan.—British Government, ca. 1847.

In my family, we eat sodabread with tea, croon Irish songs when the uisge beatha gets the better of us: Oh the praties they grow small. . .

My grandmother, Jennie (Sínead) Walsh Reilly, never let us forget our history: 1 to 4.5 million dead from the Famine Years. We managed to hold onto our farms: the Walshes, and Sullivans of Bantry—at Coomb an n-Or; Gort na Sgrena; the Reillys and Duffys of Long Kesh, Fioragh and Drogheda on my grandfather’s side.

They came to America in 1919 and 1904, respectively. They were active in the Gaelic League, my grandfather was one of the movers and shakers of the Knights of the Red Branch in San Francisco, the IRA gunrunning story I’ve told before.

When Lord Russell said: the famine is good, teach ’em a lesson, the Choctaw Indian nation collected something to the tune of $212 for food; they sent us maize. Too late. Coffin ships to America. Slavers to the Barbados. From the Celtic Fringe to the Celtic diaspora. All those children sold in slavery: this is why so many Blacks have Irish surnames, blue eyes and freckles.

They say there was enough food in Ireland to feed 20 million. Instead we fed the British with our bones. Their sheep replaced us. But we survived. Sínn Fein: Ourselves, alone, she said, Never forget. Use their language against them, she said.

This, my inheritance. Slainte Gael macushla mo chroidhe. During the famine years, ships filled with Irish cattle and grain sailed for Britain while we died with grass stains on our teeth. Béal na blát: from the mouth of flowers. I am allergic to both corn and potatoes (as well as hazelnuts—the kernel of knowledge).

My father’s history I know very little of: Joseph Hurley from County Cork. There’s a Rebel Cork connection, but my paternal grandmother, Viola Heaney was born in San Francisco. Something about Lace Curtain Irish, that may be a rumor, but I have a sideboard of heavy Irish crystal.

Odd that I might be distantly related to Séamus Heaney. . . At Poetry International in 1993, I told him of this connection, he laughed, called me coozin, giving me a big smacker. We sang Irish songs, lifted our glasses high.

I told him of my grandfather’s IRA connections, I was surprised to learn he knew of my grandfather’s friend Liam Mellows. And of course, Parnell. All this fragmented history, my grandmother literally cursing Cromwell till her dying day.

Something struck me about our having a racial lack of confidence—rang a bell: my grandmother said similar words to that effect. The fighting underdog. I wish I knew more about our Welsh connections, other than Strongbow, and the Norman Invasion: Hibernius ipsis Hiberniores.

My grandmother maintained we got the name Walsh because we came from Wales—what, 1000 years ago? A bit distant. My great-grandfather Michael Walsh raised fast horses, drove cattle between bonfires at Lúgnasadh to ensure fertility. Ironically Walsh/Welsh means foreigner in the Germanic, wealas. An Anglo Saxon appellation?

One of Alexander of Macedonia’s generals during negotiation of a peace treaty, queried a Celtic chieftain: What do Celts fear most? The Gaul replied in formal address: That the sky should fall upon our heads.

Slogan: sluagh garim, a Celtic battle cry, furor is to blood-summon. How does one come to terms with: Cenedl heb raith; cenedl heb galon (a nation without a language; a nation without a heart). I prefer phrases like Tá grá agam ort or Yr wyf yn du garu to the names of war. Glamour, corrupted from grammar, this rough magic by which we strike. It’s in the blood. The dark, threatening sky. Again.

My anim is Maureen/Little Mairi/Mara/Maura (bitter herbs or small rebellion) not the more common Muire (mother of God). I prefer my crib-Irish: she of the sea.

Mor could be translated as great, or muir/ sea, depending on the fada. The Mórríghan is great goddess of the sea. Rí is royalty. The shapechanger war goddess Morrigu isn’t exactly milquetoast, there are others I’d prefer to emulate. At least she doesn’t lie.

© 1997? Maureen Hurley (Originally a letter poem to the Chilean poet Waldo Rojas Serreno)

An Inarticulate Hunger

HUNGRY for words, Sineád has read some 5000 books in her 30-odd years of life—a book a day. Final chapters of bodice rippers orchestrated in the wee hours by the heavy breathing of real birdsong. Aunt Toddy used to bring us huge red onion sacks full of books. A consummate literary escape-artist, I struggled through my grandmother’s bookshelf: Sir Walter Scott, Burns and Poe, hating poetry, but hungry for the stories gleaned from opaque lines and songs. During dry periods, I puzzled over Finnegan’s Wake, the banned Ulysses, The Dead. Even in her 90s, my grandmother could recite passages from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I couldn’t recall the right facts at school though friends called me a walking encyclopedia. A diagnosis of dyslexia would have to wait decades to dispel the myth that I was dumb.

A poet wrote I am uneasy with this love of books. And at 40, I vowed to buy no more books or to take more lovers. All this love of books, I never heard the word love pass between my grandmother’s Victorian lips. Unmentionable as sex, though she had eight babies; the last in the procession was Sineád’s mother, Canice, who hated porting the armloads of books to her father each week. He devoured the meatier stuff: anthropology, archaeology, history. Some habits seem to skip a generation. After Canice left Sineád’s father, she met a man who couldn’t read; the sons took after the father.

“During the Cromwellian,” my grandmother said, “we kept the tongue alive, sent tykes to the priests in the hedgerow schools.” This hunger for learning distilled for generations. Sometimes I’d sneak off to read in the tall grass as if to keep memory alive. An inarticulate hunger raged unchecked, devouring me from the inside, pre-verbal desire and gnawing in my mind as I teased the dark veins from chicken thighs at Sunday dinners. I sucked pomegranate seeds in the dark and counted the tide of seasons with new lovers while Canice gathered her stories from a long line of bar stools. My tally of lovers, longer than her reading list.

© 1997, revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

THIRST, take 2

THIRST, take 2

Last full moon of summer, a tide of ants journeys

to the evening’s dishes stacked in the sink.

Colonies­—eons before we paved these headlands—

why do they ring the bathtub like flotsamic ink?

Counter our battle with traces of formalic acid on bread?

They’ve no need for time or history or maps,

breaching bungalo walls to win the font.

Neil brings me some sweet tea in the bath,

removes the sugar to a stove island where at night

a pilot light guides lost craft and keeps ants at bay.

By the soapdish, ants emerge from riddled plaster,

they pool by fallen brethren, staining the tub.

Perhaps seeking the end of religion they eat their dead.

The communion of phagos: no sweetness wasted.

No tyranny of soul or tragedy of self to proclaim.

Unmade dreams slip from the thicket of thighs

where I caress the cloak to see if I’m alive,

having dreamt of women chadored and circumcised,

hemmorhaging on the white tiled floors. No words come.

I cannot help them nor staunch the red tide.

Who else sat in this tub watching the ants’ progress?

What clothing was shed on the honeycomed floor,

what seminal dreams were flushed down the drain

with little to survive them except the salt-

sweetness of laborer’s sweat at the close of day?

Sequestered on the parched bed, he sleeps with

hands wedded to thighs drowning in moonlight.

Moans in the night, dreaming blank futures,

returning to the womb with tonsured ardor,

leaving a river of ants to circumscribe my thirst.

8/26/97

Oakland

THIRST, 1

THIRST, 1

When the moon is full, an artery of thirsty ants rings the tub.
Over the years, they’ve burrowed from the patio 

through the bungalow walls to gain entrance to water. 

They pool around their fallen brethren as if in mourning.

Perhaps they’ve found religion 

in this microscopic city-state of insects. Resurrection. 

They eat their fallen dead, leaving no trace behind. 

Such is the frugal intelligence of protein when food is scarce. 

The colony of ants, probably here before the house was built, 

is a persistence of memory. I think of the ancestors of those ants 

tunneling through walls for how many generations 

before they breached the final wall in search of water. 

Sometime during the Great Depression, who bathed in this tub? 

What clothes did they divest? What unmade dreams 

washed down the drain with little else to show for, 

like laborers’ sweat at the end of the day?

The unmade August moon dreams at the vee of my legs, 

where I touch to see if I’m still alive, 

having dreampt of circumcised Muslim women, 

and I cannot help them, nor stop the march of the red tide, 

the countdown, while he sleeps alone in his isolation, 

dreaming of a future which never comes.

8/26 1997
Oakland

Blue Willow

Book of Knowledge, Children’s Encyclopedia, 1917,  PD Wiki

WHEN I was a child playing at the seashore, I imagined the Coast Miwoks wrapped in bright silk brocades, supping from celadon bowls, dining from blue and white plates painted with rural scenes of China. When Sir Francis Drake the Pirate landed here in Nova Albion in the summer of 1579, claiming Point Reyes for the Crown, he left behind a legacy of coins, glass beads, and his cargo of exotic silks and porcelain from China. Later shipwrecks offered up inlaid rosewood tables, ornate carved chairs waiting for an audience to gather on the beaches. Tabula Rasa. Feathered cloaks for the wind.

Perhaps I became a writer because I ate morning cereal from a story painted inside a Chinese Blue Willow bowl: two birds on the wing. It’s spring: fruit trees bloom beneath a surreal tree near a temple. Though a path of light invites us to the temple, a fence stops us because we are not Chinese. Though I am four, I know this, for my grandmother takes me to Chinatown to buy new pieces for the set. Old men in black robes with thin grey plaits down their backs, kow-tow to her, offer me sweets. I stare, round-eyed at the rows of pale celadon melons glowing with a mysterious verdant resilience beneath a grotesque curtain of plucked fowl hanging by the neck. Gateway to another world. Here, we are all immigrants.

When no one’s looking, I climb over the temple fence. (Later I will find a gate, learn the story of the lovebirds—changelings: to escape her father’s wrath, the forbidden lovers find each other on the wing. A story that includes European colonialism and the Far East—a Chinese story from an English design by way of the Dutch, or was it the Portuguese? Evolving into Blue Willow pottery, ideas shipped back and forth across the oceans.)

I am in love with the blue language of the teapot offered up each evening, and the insistence of silver spoons against teacups calling us to vespers. My grandmother says the designs on the edges of the bowl are like hieroglyphic Greek keys—a symbol for clouds, or, the Almighty. (She knows that I will search for celestial dragons in the mountains of the world, for I was born a wanderer during the tail end of the Year of the Dragon.) Every morning I’d wait for the two lovebirds to meet mid-air. Messengers from the otherworld. If they emerge through the thin layer of milk, upside-down, did it change the story? They say birds are the kisses of Aengus Óg, the Love God. My grandmother urges me to finish the last two swallows of milk—because babies are starving in China. My eating habits will become inexorably linked with the welfare of those poor babies.

I gaze deep into the milky scene: A fisherman in a junk casts his line into calm waters. Distant islands. I’m trapped within the white heart-shaped void between island, trees and slender birdwings. No children. I hardly notice three men dressed in robes on the bridge, who, after morning prayers, leave the temple, carrying the tools of my profession: walking stick, scroll and lantern. As they approach the archway, so like a Japanese torii gate, the ancient willow, roots bared by time, weeps and leans into the east wind, small hands of branches claw the air as if to follow them. Every day they’ll begin the journey but never reach the portal, the birds will never quite meet mid-air. Soon my grandfather will die, the dinnerware and our family will scatter when we move north to the Point Reyes Peninsula. Only a platter and a teapot will survive the uprooting. My grandmother and I will drink tea from it for decades. And the platter will bear the holiday bird at family gatherings.

But from my coffee mug made during the height of the Cold War, modern Blue Willow—not from the English copper engravings of the 18th century—tells another story. Memory reemerges with a different historical slant. The two birds meet mid-air, but have grown into fat, complacent pigeons, the fisherman still fishes, but the boat is farther from shore and the fish don’t bite. Our eyes are no longer drawn to what lies beyond the uneasy sea. The islands are gone. Three men still cross the bridge, they’ve lost more than priestly robes: the first one carries on his walking stick a bundle of rags, the second man still carries a scroll—what is written on it we cannot decipher—the third has lost his lantern. They are centuries from home. The shining path to the temple is dark, the celestial gate is gone—bringing us that much closer to the land. And so I am alone on the edge of the continent, dancing on the brink of I know not what.

© 1997 revised 2000

White Deer

My grandmother and I used to traipse along Inverness Ridge each fall to pick huckleberries, and for a glimpse of Old Man Ottenger’s exotic white deer and the spotted fallow deer; but the National Park Service took the land from them, parcel by parcel—destroying most of the dairy ranches in the process.

The NPS gave the land to the public, tore down historic farm buildings, killed off the exotic deer: non-native species. If the alternative was a future of tract-housing, then they did a good thing, taking the land, but what they destroyed in the process was a thriving community of farmers and ranchers—for the greater good of tourists and their easy dollars.

But most of this land commuting northward at 2 inches a year along the Fault, is so far from civilization that its isolation is its salvation and its reward.

Trigger-points of memory: a certain angle of light reposes on the blood-red roses splayed against the limed wall of an abandoned farm. A bleached redwood wine vat holds the music of spring water plashing into the mossy trough where cattle and deer come to slake their thirst at sunset. Generations of barn swallows sip and weave the air into arabesques. No one wants to look at the moral dilemma: ranchers—treated like the Coast Miwoks their forefathers displaced—offered land treaties in the form of 25-year leases. Polyester tourists, also a non-native species. Rarer now to see the white deer.

Once while rough camping, I saw a big white buck in the night mist—an otherworld apparition of white on white—his antlers tining the haloed moon. But another kind of darkness hid in the pale Albion moonlight.

A sudden chill, a premonition drove me deep into the arms of pine boughs as truck lights severed the darkness. The silhouettes of two men illumined by red tail lights filled me with unseasonable fear. . I heard shots. Saw them leave. I was so afraid, I curled into the arms of the old pine and shook with fear.

At Limantour Spit death’s admiral was waiting in the staccato report of poachers’ guns—like Chinese firecrackers—the night they shot Ranger Kenneth Patrick for the rare white deer hides. Like the dried penises of white tigers, the deerskins were destined to be sold as aphrodisiacs and for healing magic to the highest bidder in the black markets of China.

© 1997 revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Celtic Fringe

The Celts are going, the Celts are going at last. Hurrah! Soon a Celt on the streets of Dublin will be as rare as seeing an Indian on the streets of Manhattan.—British Government, ca. 1847.

IN my family we eat soda bread with tea, croon Irish songs when the uisge beatha whets our pipes: it helps us reach that 2nd octave in Danny Boy. My grandmother never let us forget our history: the millions dead from the Famine Years. A dirge for the dying: Oh the praties they grow small. . . My great-grand-father raised fast horses, drove them with the cattle between bonfires at Lugnasadh. My family is of the earth, they survived because they held onto the land, the farms: at Coomb an-nOir, the Hill-of-Gold Walshes, and the one-eyed Sullivans of Bantry; the Reillys and Duffys of Long Kesh, Fihora. My ancestors survived by eating the blackened potatoes, cow fodder, and wild grasses. Then, when that was gone, they sucked stones, swallowed dirt, buried their dead and dreamed of another country to the west: Tír na-nÓg.

Lord Russell said the famine is good, teach the Irish a lesson. Ships laden with Irish cattle and grain sailed for Britain while we died with grass stains on our teeth. Béal na blát: from the mouth of flowers I came. In America, the Cherokee Nation collected $200; they sent us cargoes of maize and beans. Too late. “Coffin ships to the Americas. Slavers to the cane fields and estates of the Barbados,” she said. From the Celtic Fringe to the Celtic Diaspora; countless children sold in the West Indies, destined to enter the bloodlines of Africa. A Black woman asks why she never learned this in school. I tell her we share the same Anglo roots of history. She said, “I had an Irish grandmother,” we joke about being black Irish.

I’m allergic to the new world foods: beans, corn and potatoes. They say there was enough food in Ireland to feed 20 million. Instead we fed the enemy with our bones. Their sheep replaced us. But we survived. Sínn Fein: Ourselves, alone, she said, Never forget. Use their language against them, she said. This, my inheritance. Sláinte Gael macushla mo chroidhe. I’ve kissed the Blarney Stone, though there was little need. The cats form semi-colons at the foot of the bed: what was the lesson were we supposed to have learned? The Irish nation scattered to the winds. Full glottal stop.

© 1997 , rev 2000 Maureen Hurley

VIENNA, 1939

VIENNA, 1939

An old woman contemplates 

a passage in her black book.
She sits alone in a park.

It could be it be Vienna, 1939.

She sits in a metal chair, 

her purse sits on the wall 

like a well behaved cat. 

An umbrella bridges the arms of the chair.

She is dressed in black and white.
Her earrings are of gold, 

she wears a worn wedding ring.

On the other side of the park 

three people sit lost in thought,
as blurred as daydreams they once held.

Her hat and glasses, are from another era.

She primly crosses her ankles, 

maybe it's earlier than I thought. 

The dress is too long and her gloves dangle 

helplessly, and swoon from the arms of her chair, 

a white shawl, in case there's a chill.

Her hands are thick with age. 

The young moon of gold on her ring finger 

remembers her wedding day.

She is, like Proust, stirred by remembrances 

of things past. Perhaps it is Paris. 

Will she go go into a café at teatime, 

order madelines and think of her well spent youth?

She's dressed in widow's weeds.

The dark mourning after the war. 

Was it the first one? Or the second one? 

Did she lose a son, or a lover? Or both?

But that's all in the past. 

She's sitting in the park, lost in a book 

and the city waits for her to reinvent it.

8/15/1997

10/15/2015

COLLAGE

COLLAGE 

The beach rises from the swamp, 

rise and fall by the edge of the sea.
Bring out the lions. 

Little remains of the next frontier.

How lovely, this green made of spring.
Deep in the heart, the earth will translate your arrival
Calling out the names of cattle 

on this last handful of dying earth.

You better find another way out 

of this country by the execution of desire.

A Celtic lion, the flowered word.
Writing jails a tropical sunset 

with its Venetian blind approach to image.
Line after line in pewter script, 

it relentlessly marches across a trinity of palms. 

The ubiquitous cliché of paradise.
But below that crepuscular sea, 

lines and words become like strata 

and break into symbols. 

Like schools of fish in the sun.

At the bottom of the ocean 

the lion is awake 

spewing forth the flowered word 

into the depths of the abyss. 

He is awake, not rampant.

The artist practices her name 

over and over again
Design elements and fluid writing 

like the ripples on the pond 

breaks the surface. Hold her sanity in check.

Sometimes if you sit still enough,

you can see where the fish come to feed, 

breaking the mirror with their small o's

of their mouths as they breach the air. 

8/15/1997

10/15/2015

CORIOLIS EFFECT

South of  the equator

water doesn't swirl in the opposite direction. 

The Coriolis effect in the bathroom sink, 

is as confused as my current relationship.

Postcards from Fiji and the Southern Cross

arrive. Images of Islanders, Polynesia, 

cave writing, the hieroglyphs of a lost culture.

Red lateen sails at sunset. An Egyptian dhow.

Island pals shimmer and dance and sway.

Coconuts are like money in the bank. 

Copra currency in the tropics.

Meanwhile back at home, 

snow falls in the coastal valleys.

Mount St. Helena is like a white lion 

stretched against the empty winter sky.

The equator divided us, 

it did not make us equal, or whole. 

It divided the distance of seasons, days.

Enough to say that I still miss you, 

Especially at sunset in a strange land.

The fish knows no boundaries

other than infinite variations of blue.
The sky fills up its vault with careless stars

and the Southern Cross is crucifying me.

I know of the infinite variations of blue 

in the sky, I know they named the darkness too.
But I no longer know the real word for balance. 

Already the nights are growing colder. 

We've had our first unseasonable snow. 

Postcards floating like rafts 

on the edges of memory.

8/15/1997

10/15/2015

VALLEY FEVER

VALLEY FEVER

It's the way the ivory keys line up 

at the ready, like so many tombstones.

Lives were lost dragstripping along backroads 

where dangerous curves and soft shoulders 

collided at the speed of thought.

It's the way the tree held me, 

as we crawled out of the wreckage, 

all missiles, silos and combines.

Fingernails in columns in varying shades 

of red and gold, and the silk tassel 

of pomp and circumstance.

We were among those who 

almost didn't make it back, like James Dean.

I remember my mother's voice, 

disembodied, and she told me how 

Brenda Fullick's mother crawled out 

of the burning car, her face rippled like water.

My aunt can't abide the dirge, Danny Boy 

because of a boy she once loved.

She would never tell me his name.

My uncle loaned Danny his car 

with a jerryrigged battery 

and a milk carton for a seat.

When the headlights went out
they didn't see the parked truck.

Before the accident, I dreamed 

of images of wheels spinning in dry earth, 

I dreamed of the fragile beauty of flowers

harvesting the dead.

I saw seven keys for the days of the week 

opening the memory of destruction. 

I think of cars and locks that once held keys—

they are no longer whole, or complete.

They are separated from their source. 

Time reels me in, in increments of weeks.

I still dream of those wheels spinning 

out of control as they bit into the soft shoulder 

and screamed at dangerous curves. 

Eucalyptus trees that loomed in the sky. 

The odor of fresh grated earth. 

At least this time it wasn't a grave. 

A John Deere tractor awaits a writer 

to plow and scribe the fields beyond.

8/15/1997
SRJC Workshop with Terry Ehret
10/15/2015

AN ALPHABET OF WAR

AN ALPHABET OF WAR

She purses her red lips beneath the archway

waiting to be kissed under a storm-laden sky,

a vulture's wingspan completes the doorway. 

Once I tacked vulture wings over the barn door

not expecting their enormous span to engulf me.

Or the stench. The cats lunged skyward like birds.

Over the dead cities of the Fertile Crescent, 

palm trees from an earlier era, pray in the wind.

Mirage water mountaineers the horizon.

Did I gather apples in the Gardens of Babylon 

by the canals, where wild strawberries grew?

This valley cradled a swamp, teaming with life,

where blackbirds whistled drills in the reeds.
Lions guarded the gate as alphabets 

began their ascent from the mud 

and the cuneiform of clay tablets.

Imagine a culture where the aurochs, 

the ox used to plow the field, 

becomes the sound of a baby,

or the barrier of the lips.

The walls of the house, 

the temple in the beginning, 

was the alphabet of lips. 

Mountains on end.

But in the temple. God breathed, 

the sacred ladder of the sky rose up, 

became smoke in the hollow of the hand, 

Became a hook, then an arm, an eye for an eye, 

became a mouth seeking revenge,
a tooth biting off more than it could chew.

It became the head in profile, resh,

pulled back in introspection, or in sorrow.
And see how the monkey turned its back 

to look one more time at Gomorrah?

And that final mark, the tau, 

that X marks the crosses of the dead, 

and the illiterate mark of the unlettered,

has fresh fodder for its hunger.

A stone angel stands in repose, 

lost in thought, head turned down, 

arm to mouth, in that lovers stance, 

his shields and arrows at rest.

Frozen moment in time. 

Whose lips were waiting for a kiss?
Did a woman come to the city, 

wait beneath the lintel of death?

A woman's lips waiting for the man.
As the red letter a escapes: an ahhh!

merging with God's aspirants.
But the old men objected to this lip service.

Fearing contamination,

they closed the doors to the temple 

of the heart. Slammed shut. The letters of war.

This is what's written in stone. 

8//15/1997
10/15/2015

Journal notes: Dear Neil letters 8/7 to 8/31

8/7 The other night I dreamt I was standing by a lake, it was too cold. But there was an underground hot spring. I dipped my toe in, ah! a goner, I slid in fully clothed, I love water so much. I swam out beyond the cove, Neil yelled from shore to be careful of the current—It’ll be hard to get back to shore. So I swam across the current towards the cove to where he stood. The evening water was like a mirror, so beautiful and calm. I treaded water as we talked, my clothing gone. It seems I am always naked before him.

8/8 Thurs. I dreamt we were wandering in Mendocino, staying in familiar beds. A memory of my mother, perhaps my grandmother as well. I introduced Neil to Pat Wall, wishing him a happy 85th birthday. His thin face had become platter-shaped like Henry VIII, he loomed over me smiling, how many years? I was glad Neil and Pat met. Where was Micaela?

Scene change: I dreamt we were in a grove of oak trees, a herd of black horses like shadows among the trees. Niall was a black stallion who bit my neck and mounted me. Was I the white mare? I thought I was black like him. He slid off; I was bred in a circle of oaks. Were the druids gathering mistletoe with golden sickles. Was it Lughnasadh? Was it an archetypal dream, or a dream of the now?

I awoke thinking how the kings of Ireland were initiated into sovereignty by making love to a white mare. (Was I Epona?) Niall Glundubh, of the dark knees, was a dark horse, all right. This dream is more about mating than initiation of royalty. Elements: oak grove/druids: sacred wisdom. Horses: creativity. Stallion/mare: completion/fertility. Black? Neil was reading to me about the four bodies of the individual soul. Black is the casual body: sleep, pranja, heart. Black is sacred anomg Native American tribes.

8/11 Awoke grumpy and frustrated. My rib hurt something terrible yesterday. I carried water, my back’s unstable. Cause and effect. I’m mad at the doctors for misdiagnosing me, mad at Verona for the accident, even at Neil for the ambiguity of our relationship. Feeling forlorn and abandoned and it’s all foolishness for I’m to go home, get my mail and tax stuff, and return. I’m loath to leave, loath to stay.

Neil put me on the phone with his sister May. She said. “The accident makes you appreciate life, puts it in a different perspective. I work in a hospital: In one room you have the terminally ill, in another, the euthanasia patients, in one room they are laughing, in another, babies are being born…” She said to meditate, she hopes to meet me soon. I can understand why Neil thinks his sisters are so great. The concept of family continually expanding as we uncover the links (the ties that bind).

I am out of sorts today, the muscle relaxant didn’t help—foggy-minded—in the foggy, foggy dew? As we continue to forge links, strengthen bonds, I usually don’t resist, but today it’s the taking of three steps backwards only to find myself at the edge of the abyss that keeps following me.—as if I were a cartoon character, the eroding cliff compensating for my forward movement, leaving no place for retreat. The edge of that cliff is time. The option is to remain standing still and let the cliff erode around me. Tow options: willing or unwilling. On days like this I tend to hang out in the latter camp. Neil is the same person he was yesterday, or last year—only my perceptions have changed.

8/ 13 This journal of dailiness, the practice—even if the words don’t come, it’s better than the void. Healing takes its own time coming in. We made a mad overnight jaunt to Forestville, my cabin filled with the archaeology of a past life I can never go back to. Neil loves my cabin, the artifacts, the books. We gather up all my tax stuff. Neil said he would help me tackle the Big One—whatever it takes—his gift to me. I need all the help I can get. We continue to help each other, reordering our lives. I don’t seem to want for, or miss much from my old life. I have all that I need here—save for an occasional scurry into the archives.

I’m feeling breathless an dizzy; Neil wants me to go to Kaiser, if it’s a spider bite, they can do nothing for me—I’ve taken antihistamines. I think I was nailed by a black widow while digging out my old tax stuff from the shed. A bull’s eye bruise and two fang marks. Neil helps me hang an art show on Mon. in the library at the Petaluma campus of SRJC for a workshop on Friday with Terry Ehret and Marsha Connell.

Yesterday Neil spent the entire day tracking the best way to send money to Scotland to buy his mother’s council house, getting few definitive answers and no good rates. At the end of the day I called an 800 number on my checks, got a financial currency broker who gave us a fantastic rate (saving him nearly 300) so we went down and made the transaction from my account—I was a money launderer? We celebrated with a latte at the Coffee Mill, home for soup, and out to a movie, “Mrs Brown” with Billy Connolly—our first “date” since the accident which has disrupted us to the bone. we’re still sleeping in till 10 AM; we can’t seem to help ourselves, needing 9+ hours of sleep in order to heal, most of our waking hours in the house of “Tír-na-n-Óg,” the tiny patio I’ve converted into a dining room. After Amsterdam it seems quite spacious, I bought a couple of plastic chairs, some plants… He laughs at my nesting instincts, loves the results. Loves having me here.

I can’t believe we’re living together so well (though the dreams already warned me this was to be); but though we sleep in the same bed, we are celibate—by his choosing. I dream of making love nearly every night, I wonder if he does the same—sometimes he grabs my hips or rubs my back, strokes my hair. He’s had some restless nights: sweats, thrashing, scratching—I try and soothe him, stroking his hair or back, but it does little to calm him. He seems to find comfort in snuggling up to my back, spoon-style, holding onto my hips: which seems sexual, but he seems a bit afraid. He talks about the rock inside him, how it never allows him to be content with life, with women… he’s tried the addictions, to break free (including women) but says the only thing that works on that rock (there since he was a child) is the meditation, the yoga—it opens doors for him and he hopes it will do likewise for me. It’s more about right mindfulness, being aware in the present. Not to let the distractions of dailiness immobilize us. Though he sees doubt on my face, he tells me this anyway, for he feels I’m on the verge of opening up—shaktipat, he calls it. Is my spiritual path caught up in the karma of a man? Sounds scary.

I’m not sure what our future is or what it may bring—I know our lives are inexorably linked at this moment in time: if only the present exists, then this relationship exists in the now (whether or not we have sex is immaterial), transcends ordinary friendship. To know another person so deeply, to put their welfare before yours, is that not love? I keep house—not because I feel I have to, but because I want to. Creatures comforts tied up with our psychic well being. He plays the mantra over and over until it resonates inside my own head when I’m facing the world—a necessary state for my fragile state of being.

Nearly two months since the accident and we’re still weak-kneed, fragile beings who thrive on ibuprofen and foot massage. We nurture each other, what could be better? I keep thinking I’ll go home next week, but next week never comes, I’m still here, after all this time. I was go home last Saturday but I didn’t feel up to it—estranged and out of sorts, I even slept on the couch for the first time in weeks. The end result is that we both began to feel withdrawn and isolated. Over breakfast he said, “Let’s talk about it…” We read the runes. He got Karma, as did I—the rune of destiny comes up again and again between us. It is not yet time.

8/14 I dreamed I found my dead mother’s broken necklaces and jewels (in front of Mary Bianchi’s in Forest Knolls). She was so attached to those things yet made no move to get them herself. I gathered amethyst and citrine, and garnet. Simple stones set in silver. Was I gathering them in my shirt for my dead mother or for myself?. There were so many they fell into the ditch. There I was, bottom up, searching for lost treasure when I realized I was wearing a short skirt and no knickers, my snatch on view for the world to see! Only the windows looking on.

8/15 Say the mantra… I was bitten by a black widow on Monday. Thursday Neil took me to the hospital. we are Pavlovian in our response. Time unreels in increments of weeks. I still dream of car wheels spinning out of control, of soft shoulders, and dangerous curves. eucalyptus trees pointing accusingly to the sky as if we’d tricked fate out of its just due.

8/16 Sat. 1st time home in FV in over a week, Still feels wrong to be here alone. Called Paul just to hear his lovely Welsh accent. He restored my sense of being. He read me Dylan Thomas’s Do not go gentle into that good night… in that lovely lilt that’s neither Irish nor Scottish. Neil clips and glottalizes words—yet I can hear the Irish overtones. I told Paul about the accident and how that poem resurfaced in my memory as a warning? And so we raged against the dying of the light…

A long chat with Neil—neither of us sleeps well apart from the other. He said he felt confused and afraid, slept facing the wrong way. Our sleep cycles altered by the accident. I took creature comfort snuggling up against the wall seeking Neil’s body. He said the play won the Bay Guardian Goldie award and tomorrow is closing night. Ken Larsen called from Oakland, here I’d planned to stay home for a while and I’m already going back down. Neil’s to see Ingred today—one reason why I went away was to give Neil space do what he needed to do—and most of them canceled.

8/22 Fri. Over breakfast we rehearse lines from O’Neill’s play “Long day’s Journey” for a screen test. Neil’s the Earl Flynn of wasps, beating back a yellowjacket, swashbuckling with a bread knife, the wasp dancing a minute fandango or making a benediction over his head—I can’t decide which.

Came to find him later sitting on the couch listening to “The Dead” Snow is general all over Ireland…it falls upon the living and the dead… He was in tears grieving for his father. At last the dam has broken…I’ve been waiting for him to cry, wondering when it would happen, knowing he hadn’t let go. I put my arms around him the way he’s done for me so many times when I’ve been devastated. We’ve seen each other at our worst possible moments and still we love. His love of me (filial, or so he says), mine, full-blown—will the two never reconcile? I awkwardly held him on the couch, he grabbed me fiercely, crying a few brief moments—then put it away, saying, “I’m fine, I’m OK,” as if it were true or even necessary) still grieving for the lost years. “Twenty years here in America, and for what?” he asks pessimistically, feeling guilty for all the “wasted years,” for having to leave home in order to grow, for being so angry with his oldman—when the went to Ireland, seeing his tiredness and frailty. I stroked his hair, letting him ramble on, hoping the slate would come clean, he would push through the wall of grief to the other side: acceptance and healing. For I remembered, ages ago, when he said he hadn’t yet wept for his father, alarm bells went off. Sometimes it just takes its own time coming in.

Niall went north to Maxwell for a murder mystery play. (It’s uncomfortably hot today.) Like a good wife (or mother) I laundered and ironed his shirts, coached him on his lines, packed his lunch…and the irony is I actually don’t mind all the housewify stuff… me, the arrogant one who refused to be anyone’s wife. But I’ve now spent so much of my life living alone that it’s a novel experience. At first, I was so awkward, not used to the role. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll soon tire of each other, that he’ll want his space—but so far we seem to be in balance. Or so it seems. I made a vow to get him back on his feet…surely I’ve completed my task. Isn’t it time to go? Why do I linger on? Why does he hold me so?

8/26 Wrote my first real poem since the accident (wrote some stuff at the SRJC workshop) “Thirst” after a strange dream and full moon left me discombobulated. I won’t show it to him for it’s rather a brutal portrait. This unease within me is building.

8/28 Thurs. Thoroughly wigged (and pre-menstrual) I fled Neil’s place while he was at UCB, I was feeling unwanted and insecure for he slept out on the couch. (Indigestion, he said). Neither of us slept much. When he leaves in the middle of the night I immediately sense the loss of his presence… I was feeling funky on Mon. and so the past two nights he slept the other direction—head to toe—this further increased my sense of isolation. I don’t know if what I’m feeling is really from him or if I’m just oversensitive.

When I finally slept, I had nightmares of the stove coming loose from the wall as I was cooking. I tried to move it back before the flame spread to the gas lines. I yelled to Neil for help but I had no voice. He couldn’t hear me. I let go of the stove, ran down the hall to get him. He went outside to shut off the main valve while I tried to staunch the flow of gas. I let go as the flames leaped to the wall and traveled down the pipes to where Neil was trying to shut off the main valve. Only I knew the valve didn’t have a handle—time was running out. The pliers were inside, somehow he managed to save us.

I awoke apprehensive and uneasy as Neil was leaving for school. He said something about closing my eyes while Niall Glundubh snuck off into the sunlight. I don’t know why it struck some aching place inside of me—as if it were true and I’d experienced it before. And I was struck with an overwhelming sense of loss. tears welled up. H handed me a hanky, stroked my face and arm, saying I’d be OK, played the meditation mantra to comfort me. Already he was late and couldn’t stay. But I didn’t realize I was feeling so sad, such grief welling up. Is it because I’ve opened up my life for the past five years? Is it because I’m doing my taxes? are all the deaths and sorrows resurrecting, resurfacing? It felt as if the shadow of a djunn had alighted in the corner of the room during the night engulfing me in its darkness. All this depression taking over.

He said he’d be back at noon, I cleaned the house, but my feeling of unease increased, I fled, leaving a note on his door, feeling I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t face him. Feeling too insecure about our relationship, wondering why he keeps me outside of himself, why no physical relationship, or at least talk about it—why doesn’t he want me? Let’s get it on the table, so to speak, but by living with him I’m too vulnerable. what if he says he’s simply not interested? Then what do I do? Die of humiliation? Was fleeing the right thing?

 Also, I said I’d stay for the summer, which is technically over this weekend. Maybe my work’s done. he’s back in school, his grants came through. He’s on his feet and running. It seems as if there’s little time for me–with the play and school. Time to leave him be unless he wants me to come and live with him formally—as his girlfriend (which everyone thinks I already am—if they only knew that we sleep in the same bed but never touch, except for massages, or the occasional hug—esp. in public, leaving me confused. Am I the fool involved with a man unclear about having a relationship? How did he feel, knowing I’d flown the coop?

I was still sobbing when I got to Novato, so I went to Verona’s, hanging out trying on clothes she was getting rid of. Doing woman things which helped alleviate the depression that was threatening to make me numb. So, ironically, one of the events that set off my rash of insecurity was whether or not I should go to the opening of “Sons of Ulster” tonight at the Phoenix tonight? I asked him if he wanted me there for moral support several times, and he never ansnwered me. I’ll be going to the opening after all with Verona and Herman. A closure of sorts

Sebastopol Summer Music Festival

Car accident journal, July heat 7/2 to 7/29

7/2 To awaken each morning aching like this—it’s been two weeks, will the pain never end? Ibuprofen isn’t working. Or it is… and I’m really in a lot of pain… Laughter is painful, sneezing is torture, but coughing is worse. Sinéad came over yesterday. Alison was stressed/torn between wanting me gone and being too terribly overworked to look after Neil. I refuse to leave. My role, besides dispenser of pills, tea hostess and greeter, is to keep the household in order: picking up stuff, feeding Neil. Chatelaine of the castle. Not hard tasks. I have fits of weeping every few days, the trauma working its way out. Neil just holds and holds me until it passes.

Last night I fell asleep on the couch and he began talking to me, subliminally feeding me. I was conscious enough to remember the gist of what he said. He wished me grace and help on my spiritual journey, for my writing to blossom—why he wanted me to read to him the article on abundance, so that I would have abundance in my own life… I’m sure he said more, for I was aware of him sitting silently, watching me sleep for quite some time before he put the lights out. (Just like in the dream.) I was out of sorts and exhausted from doing too much. Even a bath didn’t help to settle me, my knee and rib ached. He played the guitar for me, serenaded me, attempted to play the tin penny whistle with his poor broken mouth, and the piano. And I thought how lucky I am to have this musical massage. Fresh out of the bath, I sank down into the couch and slept and he tenderly covered me with a blanket.

7/3 Thurs. Novato. Alison took Neil to the hospital to get his nose splint off, he looked so much like himself (instead of a deranged mummy escaped from the crypt) I didn’t realize he had it off! One eye is still bigger and his bite’s off, swollen cheeks but he looks damned good. I’d gotten used to his deranged face, I hardly know what to think; a miracle! She takes us to Marin, to house-sit, and to drop me in Novato. The day is blustery and beautiful. I watch one of my long hairs reach over from Neil’s vest like a snake to tickle and irritate her. She keeps brushing her arm, but my errant hair is persistent. We eat grapes and watch the boats from the Richmond Bridge. With Alison I begin to understand why the Chinese use the ideogram of two women under one roof = trouble. We’re alpha females with well developed territorial urges. (And type A to boot!) At Verona’s, we have our first reunion outside the hospital, each of us glad that the other is alive.

Fourth of July Sunny and cool with promise of heat. It’s a good thing it’s summer. I can only wear baggy shorts and sleeveless tops or a bathing suit. I have trouble dressing, I still can’t use my left arm. Have to put it in first, then get my shirt across my back, and my right arm in the hole. Hike it up, then button it with one hand. A real chore. I can’t wear anything tight around my ribs either. No bra. No tee shirts. I can’t get them on alone. I got stuck in a tank top and my rib began to hurt, I panicked and Sinéad had to peel it off me—quick.

It feels so strange not to look in on Neil, to see if he’s awake, time for meds, make tea, and orange juice, bring him a hot wash cloth to unglue his poor eye, crawl into bed with him and wile the morning away with stories and foot massages. A late breakfast. Perhaps move to another room. More meds. Talk some more, Maybe this time on the couch. Listen to music. Screen a few calls. Receive visitors in the afternoon. Make more tea. Smoothie time—fortified with vitamins and minerals blessed at the ashram. Think about dinner, then a movie, or a serenade from Neil. 

Late night talks, me falling asleep on the futon mid-sentence. More meds. Him wishing me well in my sleep, telling me he loves me, that mine is the face of grace. Today, the probe lands on Mars and I am missing Neil. (Dust storms, 95% CO2. We are waiting for signals of the probes’s modem to send the first pictures from Mars.) I’m too weak to care about fireworks. My left hand is nearly useless, and I can’t use my right pectoral. Opening bottles is torture. I couldn’t get my Snapple open, and in tears, I resorted to stabbing the plastic bottle and sucking it out the hole.

Yesterday I was still disconvobulated from the night before—Sinéad came down and we went of a drive in the Oakland hills. Too much excitement. I’m shaky. An arsonist setting fire to the Oakland hills right in front of us, reenacting the 1991 inferno. Helicopters and fire trucks converging. At Yoshi’s, Neil and I were so tired we wanted to slide under the table. We were doing Monty Python imitations in the car—old ladies petting the pussy… Neil squares off with his minced sushi admirably well. We still look pretty strange—especially Neil with his bandages, black eyes, cap, frumpy vest and wrinkles shorts—he looked like a boxer on a losing streak.

I managed to swim the length of the pool four times, sans arms. Exhausted I, ate a sandwich only to discover the bread had hazelnuts in it. I washed out my mouth, took my allergy drugs, drank lots of cold water. A benedryl-induced sleep took me through the afternoon (my throat didn’t constrict). I slept three hours. Neil called while I was asleep, and again later. He sounds so tired, he’s in Tiburon with Alison who’s house-sitting. He says, “I’ll see you this weekend.”

7/6 Sunday. Sinéad, Séan and I visit Neil in Tiburon. This seeing him, this attachment, where will it lead? Sinéad noted, “He’s reserved around you. He’s holding back.” He seems so different around Alison, more dependent, less vibrant. I like him less that way. Today I awoke thinking just as soon as he’s out of the clear, I’ll tell him, I’ll make it easy for him—if he doesn’t love me, I’ll remove myself from his orbit. But this accident has bonded us together in such a way that few are ever bonded. Do you go through a life and death experience with someone and then just walk out of their life? We’ve got more living together to do, but I’m afraid for my heart. Am I already in too deep? It’s absurd, you really can’t protect your heart. If he doesn’t love me, then what? The honorable thing would be to let me go, for I now know I can’t be just a friend after all that we’ve been through. I have dreams of removing myself from him—no letter, no calls—but he visits me and I run off into the orchard. Then the erotic dreams take over. There must be another way to deal with this. Should I show up with a man on my arm, play on his jealousy—if there is any—for twice now he’s remarked on how much the landlord fancied me. To what end? Is he playing matchmaker, foisting me off, or is he testing the emotional waters? I hate these stupid games. Such a waste of time and emotion.

(In Novato, I swim at least once a day, rebuilding stamina. The bruise hasn’t gone away even with arnica. I still can’t touch it, not even in the shower.)

7/14 I awoke at Wendy’s. Neil’s house-sitting. Sinéad brought me down on his request. Fixed us dinner. An incredible moment: Séan and Neil at the piano. Séan’s hips are slowly healing, he has to keep still. He was at Stanford quite some time. Neil’s asleep in Alison’s bed so I draw a rune Othelia reversed. Separation, retreat, inheritance. The rune of radical severance from the old life. And it makes me cry for I know I cannot go back to who I was: she died in the crash. Wunjo, joy, the light. You have come to yourself. The shift has occurred. Renounce existing plans, goals. Submit to the rune of restoration of the self properly aligned to the Self. An absence of suffering and sorrow. Hagalaz: Disruption. The psyche need to break free from material reality to experience the archetypal mind. Events out of your control. Expect disruption from the Great Awakener. Radical discontinuity and growth. The universe & your soul demand that you do, indeed, grow!

7/16 Highland Hospital, waiting for Neil’s doctor since 7:30 AM. Fragmented dreams of missed alarms (3 times!) Arthur awakening me in a strange house. Something about mismatched cups for coffee in an odd place. A white room, a touch of blue, as if living inside the china. We awoke to heavy fog. Neil asks, “Is it raining? Is there rain on the roof?’ Deep summer, we don sweaters, thinking of other countries, other states of mind. Why am I here, in this room, in Oakland, reaffirming my vows to stand by this man—at least for the duration. But every time I make a move to leave, to go away, it becomes eminently clear this is where I belong. It’s a deep gut feeling, I feel all wrong elsewhere.

7/16 We’re going to sell satellite disks, I have no clothes. A mad shopping spree at Ross yields khaki pants, a silk top and shoes for under $30! Odd to have him dressing me. I model a basic black skirt slit up to the thigh. No. Too sexy. A maroon jacket. No. He surveys the crumpled kingdom of clothing with a critical eye. I am auditioning for a role in the corporate game and I resist the dress code, uncomfortable with the preppy image, Neil calls my number on it. The security woman wants to know if he’s my father. I say “No, my sugar daddy.” I’m scared about tomorrow. He says “I had dreams about this.” We go home and nap, exhausted from the excursion. Tears again. Will this crying never stop? Is it only the accident? What am I grieving for? The ego, the self, the witness? Neil holds me, resting his poor injured face against my back—he’s not supposed to lean down—the pressure. I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself.

7/17-18 After a shower I watch Neil transform into the role of sales rep, the odor of aftershave like a parade of adoring fans. The mantra repeats itself endlessly, a mobius strip, time collapsing in on itself, making its limits known. DDS Satellite training, a piece of cake—just like doing CPITS. The model’s the same, the patois is different. When making an ax handle with an ax, the model is always close at hand. Thought I was going to faint walking down the stairs. My lungs hurt. I meet an Irish guy I immediately like. Says he’s from Dublin. Turns out Neil knows Lofty. Who doesn’t he know?

I’m still in pain. Hours later, the aha! factor—I undo the bra during the seminar, the pain diminished. It hurts to wear a bra. I ban mine in the bathroom, my ribs too unstable for the subtle pressure. All those women with their hair and (bras) and make up … I feel the impostor. Neil says it’s time to change outmoded perceptions with the wardrobe in order to grow, check out those enclaves of resistance… He’s right but I’m still uncomfortable. He’s making me stretch—a new experience.

7/19-20 Selling DDS isn’t hard, it’s educational. I’m shocked to find I actually like it. What’s hard is the standing up for hours on end. I learn to tone down the presentation to conserve energy. I met a man from Dublin (Ireland-I was in Dublin, CA!) who said “You must be from Cork, judging by your name.” He bought another unit and I wished him well. “Beannacht loive.” Sending him off with a farewell in the ancestral tongue—so long banned it nearly became extinct. Blessings upon you. To Berkeley to pick up Neil, we’re so beat, we barely make it home. It takes days to recover from exhaustion.

7/22 Thurs. Dream Journal: We were selling DDS systems, a deluxe package that included the coastline… We were in a airport, between borders, Neil disappeared into the throngs. I found him in a hotel, which was an airport lounge. No chairs, just couch beds all in a row. He was curled up, asleep, no place for me on the narrow couchette. The family on the left had taken several extra spaces with luggage, parrots, a spider monkey—the animal odor was overwhelming. I was distressed having nearly lost Neil, and here he was, curled up on his bad side, with no one to watch over him. I removed the cordon ropes, and slept beside him on the floor. Elements: public/ in transit/ between countries, having to fight for space (he was suffering, injured, without protection), no place for me to sleep (no rest), some danger (I might get lost). Where are we going? He sleeps alone, isolate. What am I doing chasing after him if this is what he wants? Making space in his life. What about me? Where do I fit in?

Waiting for my cousin Barney O’Reilly to come. I’ve fixed up the back area into a little patio, I love to sit on an impromptu bench as he showers. You’d think that after a month we’d run out of things to say. We even talk in the shower. I’m feeling a bit rummy from yesterday. Too much work. I’m exhausted, nauseous. Strain also of living with someone who is not my lover, a situation where the rules are skewed. Define it? Stalemate. He obviously doesn’t want a relationship and I am torn by the schism between reality and the dream world. Yesterday I awoke repeating the dream’s advice, “We will be going through a very difficult time coming up where it seems everything is challenged, seems over, finished, but it’s OK, we’ll come out fine. Trust it.” Am I afraid to ask for what I want? Am I merely content to wait? Godot? I fell asleep on the couch, and awoke to him stroking my cheek, my hair, saying everything would come out all right.

7/29 An extraordinary experience while giving Niall a chair massage, I played with energy fields, pulling energy up from his head to see if it would alleviate his headache (2 vicodans did nothing). The magnetic pull was so strong I was able to direct the energy. I didn’t touch him for his head is too injured. The energy foiled grew stronger than anything I’ve experienced, enveloping me as well. He said it was as if a beam of light was shooting out of his head. I had the sensation of pulsing rings of blue light descending down my body until my feet fairly buzzed. (We give each other nightly foot massages, but this was different). He called it the shaktipat. And I realized many of the nameless things I’ve experienced have names in his world. Says my 3rd eye is about to open. Holding my hand in his, he puts his other hand on my head, thumb on my 3rd eye. The energy waves continue unabated. So this is what he means.

Yesterday was a day of real work: we were talking without addiction. Observing each other. Offering truths. No stories to interfere with the process of deepening. Something indeed has shifted. The connection is growing. Our Freudian slips are showing! I mumbled bed-breaking when I meant bread making—which drew a few sniggers. Yesterday, at UC Berkeley, a secretary offered us almond candy, He turned to me and said, “You know what these are good for?” Then blushed. “I’m wondering why I’m telling you this…” “What? Tell me what?” “Well, almonds are good for producing sperm and ovum…” backtracking, “Monks use the energy in their meditation. That’s why they’re celibate.” OK…

Helen Johnson zeroed in on me asking if I wanted to do a degree at Berkeley. I was flabbergasted, My jaw dropped. He said: “Think of it you and me at Berkeley working on our degrees.” Dial a fantasy? Yes! Doors seem to be flying open for us. He’s decided not to move to the dorms but to get a roommate (but he already has one—me.) Maybe if I help him through school, he’ll do the same for me?

Mindlessly shopping in Jack London Square with Neil singing “Heart of the Country.” I keep thinking I’m living inside the mirror that is Russia.

Journal entry, post-op

6/29 Sun. I’ve been in Oakland with Neil since Friday when he was released from Highland after his surgery. Funny, on an impulse, I’d packed my bag that morning, somehow knowing I was to leave, when the phone rang, Neil asking me to care for him—out of the blue. I was not consciously expecting it, but I was nearly frantic with a desire to be with him.

Driving down to Oakland in his car alone was one of the hardest things I’ve attempted since the accident. I couldn’t put the car in reverse nor crank the wheel. I had no upper body strength where they sliced my right pectoral to insert the valve. And my left side was still useless.

Ortho put my arm in a sling, a brace on my wrist. Highland is a trauma center where the addicts, the homeless and those suffering from the fallout of violent crime land to either recuperate, or die. So different from Kaiser. Neil was lucky, a whole cadre of doctors rebuilt his face from the jaw up. But recovery is akin to reliving the pain of the accident. How much more pain can he endure? Not enough Vicodan to last until Thursday. I enjoy caring for him but too many visitors wears us both out. Friends and old girlfriends call—I can tell by the tone of his voice!

Today I fed him mashed yams thinned with broth, introducing food for the first time in 10 days. Ten days into the nightmare… I told him our lives are irrevocably altered, We can’t go back to who we were. Ever. We are like Siamese twins, joined at the psyche. Where does one of us end and the other begin?

Last night he felt too frisky for his own good, serenading me with his broken mouth, jabbering up a storm till all hours. Tonight he’s paying dearly for that excess. Deep exhaustion and pain. I check for fever, worried we’ve introduced too many new foods today. Smoothies too. But I also worry about his nutrition. He needs to knit bones.

Alison wanted me to stay at her house tonight, she’d stay with Neil. But I didn’t want to go. She’s afraid I’ll get burnt out. I appreciate her concern, but I sense a darkness, an irritation—territorial? Something doesn’t quite ring true. Determined, I fight to stay. I’m almost irrational with fear of leaving him—as if my very presence was keeping him alive.

Adele Foley took me shopping for healthy foods—a grueling 2 hour excursion. Shopping at Lucky’s is almost more than I can bear. I slipped on a lettuce leaf, and it took all I could muster to keep from falling, but the pain was so intense I nearly fell anyway.

I now have trouble reading fine print on the labels.( Do I have a concussion too? I took a good bang on my right temple. Neil’s elbow, I think. Reading’s hard in general, I can’t seem to make sense of the words. They either float about, or collectively lose their meaning. My cognitive skills rearranged.) Adele is my eyes. I am determined to get the best nutritional food possible for Neil. B vitamins, connective tissue, healing—all my previous study of biology and nutrition comes into play.

Everything in the 20th century seems to exhaust me: lights, noise, color, chrome, a riot of details all demanding my attention until I’m reeling....