Monday, February 1, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Circling
(I offer Circling to the unknown reader who once underlined sentences in my book, Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest and posed a haunting question in the margin of the essay Compromise: Ghost Dance of the New West? Should chance bring you to this blog, please get in touch with me. My gmail is bstarr67@gmail.com)
We circle around
We circle around
We circle around
The boundaries of the earth.
Wearing our long wing feathers
As we fly
Wearing our long wing feathers
As we fly
We circle around…
---1986, a song from sacred land work
There is a full Blue Moon and partial eclipse tonight. Today is the last day of a year that, for some, has been akin to being extruded through a basalt tube that is only 2 inches wider than the body. If you read this, you have made it through. Perhaps unscathed, perhaps not. It’s a good bet that you’ve learned more than a little about how some things circle out and return---and some circle out and are gone.
Winter Solstice I surrendered to that which has left in these last twelve moons. I had imagined that I would make my good-bye on the wooden bridge over the Deschutes River. I envisioned a somber ceremony, a quiet sadness that accompanies releasing beloveds become ghosts. No-one had died. No town had been bombed into molecules. And yet there is no possibility of reclamation of that which is gone: three once-dearest friends; my story of the one I had believed to be the One; a town I believed would be my real home forever; the last shreds of not being old.
The ceremony was not what I had in mind. A mallard had other plans.
That morning, I wrote messages to my beloved dead on scraps of yellow notebook paper. Fifteen minutes before a pale sun dropped below the horizon, I stuffed the notes in my jacket pocket and left the house.
I walked down Broadway past little houses catching last light in their windows; took the narrow dirt path to Idaho Street and saw the river gleaming a few blocks ahead. I picked up my pace. You gotta move when you’re racing the sun.
I reached the bridge with a few minutes to spare. Mallards and Canada geese huddled on the shoreline. I turned to the west and thanked the sun for the day. I thanked the 12 moons for a year filled with healing and grace. “And damn hard work,” I muttered.
I turned again to the east side of the bridge and looked down at the black and frosted water. A flock of mallards moved toward me from the northern shore.
I took the first note from my pocket: Dear X, I am deeply sad our friendship ended. I wadded the paper into a ball and dropped it into the river. The lead mallard sped up and gobbled the note. Before I could say, “Sorry pal, it’s not food,” he shook his head and spit it out. And waited for something tastier.
I took the last five notes one by one – their contents are unremarkable and perhaps the most bone-bare words I’ve written – wadded them up and dropped them in the river. The mallard snatched each one, shook his head and spit it out. I was laughing by the time I read: “Flagstaff, every day, I miss who you were.” I had no tears. Clear-eyed, I watched the notes drift down-river. The mallards hung around for a few minutes, then swam back to shore.
We circle around…
I often buy used copies of my books to give away. When I opened the old Bonelight a few days ago, I found that the reader had circled and starred a few sentences in the essays I'd written between 1994 and 2001 - and asked a hard question. I was startled by what the reader had unwitting sent forward to me. The words were what I need now:
* Here is, perhaps, the only question that counts: how do we love?
* ”I love you,” he had shouted. “I love you, Mary!”
So what? I think. All of it, so what?
* I knew that the inheritance we are squandering in casinos is not just money.
Those of us hunkered in front of our machines, bent over the craps table, hunched over a losing hand are giving away our time, our knowledge and our stories. What we might once have passed on to our children, our children’s children remains locked in our hearts and minds. We gather in casinos, in gated communities, in exclusive golf clubs and leave the younger generations to piece together what they can.
* The Buddhists tell us that joy lies in limitations. We Americans are taught the opposite. More is better. Go for it all.
* I prayed in the only way I know. Talking to a Great Friend, then listening. In silence, I understood that vengeance can never be a moral act.
The reader wrote one question:
11/13/02: So with kids, how can we show them a better way, the Way, once they become addicted to stuff, to over-indulgence and greed?
Dear reader, I wonder if in seven years you have found answers to your question. And, do you look back on that mid-November in 2002 and long for what now seems like a simpler world? Do you look at your children, now seven years older, and see in their eyes at least a few answers to your questions? I would love to hear from you. Mary Now
We circle around
We circle around
We circle around
The boundaries of the earth.
Wearing our long wing feathers
As we fly
Wearing our long wing feathers
As we fly
We circle around…
---1986, a song from sacred land work
There is a full Blue Moon and partial eclipse tonight. Today is the last day of a year that, for some, has been akin to being extruded through a basalt tube that is only 2 inches wider than the body. If you read this, you have made it through. Perhaps unscathed, perhaps not. It’s a good bet that you’ve learned more than a little about how some things circle out and return---and some circle out and are gone.
Winter Solstice I surrendered to that which has left in these last twelve moons. I had imagined that I would make my good-bye on the wooden bridge over the Deschutes River. I envisioned a somber ceremony, a quiet sadness that accompanies releasing beloveds become ghosts. No-one had died. No town had been bombed into molecules. And yet there is no possibility of reclamation of that which is gone: three once-dearest friends; my story of the one I had believed to be the One; a town I believed would be my real home forever; the last shreds of not being old.
The ceremony was not what I had in mind. A mallard had other plans.
That morning, I wrote messages to my beloved dead on scraps of yellow notebook paper. Fifteen minutes before a pale sun dropped below the horizon, I stuffed the notes in my jacket pocket and left the house.
I walked down Broadway past little houses catching last light in their windows; took the narrow dirt path to Idaho Street and saw the river gleaming a few blocks ahead. I picked up my pace. You gotta move when you’re racing the sun.
I reached the bridge with a few minutes to spare. Mallards and Canada geese huddled on the shoreline. I turned to the west and thanked the sun for the day. I thanked the 12 moons for a year filled with healing and grace. “And damn hard work,” I muttered.
I turned again to the east side of the bridge and looked down at the black and frosted water. A flock of mallards moved toward me from the northern shore.
I took the first note from my pocket: Dear X, I am deeply sad our friendship ended. I wadded the paper into a ball and dropped it into the river. The lead mallard sped up and gobbled the note. Before I could say, “Sorry pal, it’s not food,” he shook his head and spit it out. And waited for something tastier.
I took the last five notes one by one – their contents are unremarkable and perhaps the most bone-bare words I’ve written – wadded them up and dropped them in the river. The mallard snatched each one, shook his head and spit it out. I was laughing by the time I read: “Flagstaff, every day, I miss who you were.” I had no tears. Clear-eyed, I watched the notes drift down-river. The mallards hung around for a few minutes, then swam back to shore.
We circle around…
I often buy used copies of my books to give away. When I opened the old Bonelight a few days ago, I found that the reader had circled and starred a few sentences in the essays I'd written between 1994 and 2001 - and asked a hard question. I was startled by what the reader had unwitting sent forward to me. The words were what I need now:
* Here is, perhaps, the only question that counts: how do we love?
* ”I love you,” he had shouted. “I love you, Mary!”
So what? I think. All of it, so what?
* I knew that the inheritance we are squandering in casinos is not just money.
Those of us hunkered in front of our machines, bent over the craps table, hunched over a losing hand are giving away our time, our knowledge and our stories. What we might once have passed on to our children, our children’s children remains locked in our hearts and minds. We gather in casinos, in gated communities, in exclusive golf clubs and leave the younger generations to piece together what they can.
* The Buddhists tell us that joy lies in limitations. We Americans are taught the opposite. More is better. Go for it all.
* I prayed in the only way I know. Talking to a Great Friend, then listening. In silence, I understood that vengeance can never be a moral act.
The reader wrote one question:
11/13/02: So with kids, how can we show them a better way, the Way, once they become addicted to stuff, to over-indulgence and greed?
Dear reader, I wonder if in seven years you have found answers to your question. And, do you look back on that mid-November in 2002 and long for what now seems like a simpler world? Do you look at your children, now seven years older, and see in their eyes at least a few answers to your questions? I would love to hear from you. Mary Now
Sunday, November 1, 2009
What Now?
“What kinds of things do you write?” asked Martha...
”I’m not exactly a writer,” Sam corrected her. “I’m a listener. I’m listening for clues about day-to-day life on the planet.”
“But do you write things down?” asked Jessie.
“Of course,” said Sam.
“Are you writing a book?” demanded Martha
“No,” said Sam. “I’m saving stories. So a hundred years from now people will know how it was with us…”
---Nancy Willard
Sister Water
I have finished writing She Bets Her Life, the book on women and compulsive gambling. Seal Press accepted it last Tuesday to be published April 2010. In some ways, I put a year of research and nine months of writing into it; in other ways, fourteen years of my thoroughly enjoyable gambling addiction carried the book more than any of my discipline or effort.
I loved playing slot machines. I wouldn’t have quit except that my body told me, “Stop. Now.” After seven months of being clean---it would have been a year and a half except for an anger-driven episode in a Yakima casino, an episode marked by rapidly escalating boredom and rapidly de-escalating numbers in my savings account---I know a little more about the chimera of the thoroughly enjoyable.
I look back now and see that while my casino time was mostly childlike bliss, the days between my binges were not. That is the nature of addiction. A real addict only feels normal when they are using. In between my casino runs, I was a deeply irritable, mean and ungrateful woman – a woman terrified of her aging, a woman longing for the childhood she barely had.
So last week I finished the book, the press accepted it and I waited to feel the rush. There was nothing. Then I remembered the nineteenth of the twenty questions Gamblers Anonymous asks its members: “Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of gambling?”
Yes. Always. For fourteen years.
Not this year. Instead of grabbing my slot cards, twenty $5 bills and driving to Reno, I ate as though I’d just lived through a famine and played video games till my fingers ached. It didn’t do the trick. I turned off the computer, walked out to the front stoop, looked up at the cloud-veiled stars and said, “What now?”
“What now?” and “What the fuck.” are the addict’s mantras. But, this time I asked the question not of my addiction, but of toothy Mahakala, the ogre deity who eats everything and gives much. I knew it was time to do nothing.
The next day I felt bleak. I haven’t felt depressed in years. Panic is my m.o. I moved slowly through the day, planted poppy seeds for the Spring, re-potted an avocado, opened the freezer door at least five times to contemplate the Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and closed the door firmly – it was what my pal, Michael and I call a yuppie crisis.
I waited till late afternoon to walk downtown. Bend’s hub of local shops and restaurants lies adjacent to Drake Park, a beautifully designed haven of grass, flowers and pine trees along the Deschutes River. I mailed my letters, stopped at Dudley’s Bookstore to talk with my friend Terri, the owner and took the side alley to the park. I hoped sitting by the river would remind me of what matters – and if it didn’t, there would be the silvery water and ducks laughing at the setting sun.
I walked across the grass toward the steps that go down to the river bank. A woman was on the path ahead of me. She walked slowly, not with the stroll of a desperately laid-back tourist, but with the careful steps of a person whose joints were stiff with arthritis. She had pure white hair. She wore a black sweater, gray slacks and beige walking shoes. Her back was straight as a young dancer’s---and she carried a long-stemmed orange carnation carefully in front of her.
She came to the steps and started down. I held back. I am a woman who walks alone at twilight and midnight. I know what I feel when someone comes up behind me. She reached the dirt path at the bottom of the steps. I started down.
The woman stopped and stood at a railing between the path and the river. She looked out over the water. The white hair. The black sweater. The perfect orange carnation. I walked toward her. She turned. We smiled.
“What now?” came into my mind.
“May I tell you something?” I said to her.
“Of course.”
“I saw you up above. I wondered why a woman would be walking the path this time of day carrying a carnation. I thought to myself, ‘There is a story there.’”
“My son died here.” Her face and voice were gentle.
“I’m so sorry.” I touched her arm. She didn’t pull away.
“He was on an outing with his church group,” she said. “He came down here to be alone. He loved it here. ‘It is so quiet,’ he always said. There were three young men. They wanted money for drugs. When he wouldn’t give them any, they beat him to death.”
She paused. “I don’t live here in Bend, but my daughters do. We always come here each year. They were both busy so I told them I would go to the park by myself. They were worried, but I told them I wasn’t afraid.”
I didn’t ask her the logical questions. There didn’t seem to be any. “How old was he?” I say. I imagine a boy in his teens or twenties.
“Forty,” she said. “He left behind a wife and a teen-age daughter.
“At the trial, my grand-daughter stood up and faced the killers. ‘You took my father from me,’ she said and she read a piece she’d written about her dad – about how they would go camping together and how much he loved the quiet places. I was so proud of her.”
We looked out over the water in silence for a few minutes. I said, “You are going to put the carnation in the river, aren’t you?”
She smiled again. “I am. It’s for him. You see, we never know how long we have – with another.”
We embraced. She turned back to the water. I walked along the dirt path. The light had gone silver, the water dark. I listened to the rowdy ducks. I wanted the light and cold air and the ducks’ laughter to last forever. I thought of how I cling to everything, how I would capture every sweetness if I could.
A few hours later, I made my supper. I read while I ate. Nancy Willard. Sister Water. I found the words I hadn’t known I was looking for and understood that capturing is what a writer does, for as long as it takes to witness, remember and record. After that, there is only this:
“…look over there,” said Sam. “A turtle.”
The turtle was making its way slowly toward the water like a man exercising for his health.
“Oh let’s catch him!”
But Sam made no move to catch the turtle. He kept on paddling in dreamy circles around Stevie. “I wonder if he’s carrying a message,” he said at last. “He’s headed straight for us.”
“Let’s catch him,” said Stevie. “Come on, Sam. Let’s catch him.”
“If you catch him, he can’t do his work.”
Sister Water
”I’m not exactly a writer,” Sam corrected her. “I’m a listener. I’m listening for clues about day-to-day life on the planet.”
“But do you write things down?” asked Jessie.
“Of course,” said Sam.
“Are you writing a book?” demanded Martha
“No,” said Sam. “I’m saving stories. So a hundred years from now people will know how it was with us…”
---Nancy Willard
Sister Water
I have finished writing She Bets Her Life, the book on women and compulsive gambling. Seal Press accepted it last Tuesday to be published April 2010. In some ways, I put a year of research and nine months of writing into it; in other ways, fourteen years of my thoroughly enjoyable gambling addiction carried the book more than any of my discipline or effort.
I loved playing slot machines. I wouldn’t have quit except that my body told me, “Stop. Now.” After seven months of being clean---it would have been a year and a half except for an anger-driven episode in a Yakima casino, an episode marked by rapidly escalating boredom and rapidly de-escalating numbers in my savings account---I know a little more about the chimera of the thoroughly enjoyable.
I look back now and see that while my casino time was mostly childlike bliss, the days between my binges were not. That is the nature of addiction. A real addict only feels normal when they are using. In between my casino runs, I was a deeply irritable, mean and ungrateful woman – a woman terrified of her aging, a woman longing for the childhood she barely had.
So last week I finished the book, the press accepted it and I waited to feel the rush. There was nothing. Then I remembered the nineteenth of the twenty questions Gamblers Anonymous asks its members: “Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of gambling?”
Yes. Always. For fourteen years.
Not this year. Instead of grabbing my slot cards, twenty $5 bills and driving to Reno, I ate as though I’d just lived through a famine and played video games till my fingers ached. It didn’t do the trick. I turned off the computer, walked out to the front stoop, looked up at the cloud-veiled stars and said, “What now?”
“What now?” and “What the fuck.” are the addict’s mantras. But, this time I asked the question not of my addiction, but of toothy Mahakala, the ogre deity who eats everything and gives much. I knew it was time to do nothing.
The next day I felt bleak. I haven’t felt depressed in years. Panic is my m.o. I moved slowly through the day, planted poppy seeds for the Spring, re-potted an avocado, opened the freezer door at least five times to contemplate the Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and closed the door firmly – it was what my pal, Michael and I call a yuppie crisis.
I waited till late afternoon to walk downtown. Bend’s hub of local shops and restaurants lies adjacent to Drake Park, a beautifully designed haven of grass, flowers and pine trees along the Deschutes River. I mailed my letters, stopped at Dudley’s Bookstore to talk with my friend Terri, the owner and took the side alley to the park. I hoped sitting by the river would remind me of what matters – and if it didn’t, there would be the silvery water and ducks laughing at the setting sun.
I walked across the grass toward the steps that go down to the river bank. A woman was on the path ahead of me. She walked slowly, not with the stroll of a desperately laid-back tourist, but with the careful steps of a person whose joints were stiff with arthritis. She had pure white hair. She wore a black sweater, gray slacks and beige walking shoes. Her back was straight as a young dancer’s---and she carried a long-stemmed orange carnation carefully in front of her.
She came to the steps and started down. I held back. I am a woman who walks alone at twilight and midnight. I know what I feel when someone comes up behind me. She reached the dirt path at the bottom of the steps. I started down.
The woman stopped and stood at a railing between the path and the river. She looked out over the water. The white hair. The black sweater. The perfect orange carnation. I walked toward her. She turned. We smiled.
“What now?” came into my mind.
“May I tell you something?” I said to her.
“Of course.”
“I saw you up above. I wondered why a woman would be walking the path this time of day carrying a carnation. I thought to myself, ‘There is a story there.’”
“My son died here.” Her face and voice were gentle.
“I’m so sorry.” I touched her arm. She didn’t pull away.
“He was on an outing with his church group,” she said. “He came down here to be alone. He loved it here. ‘It is so quiet,’ he always said. There were three young men. They wanted money for drugs. When he wouldn’t give them any, they beat him to death.”
She paused. “I don’t live here in Bend, but my daughters do. We always come here each year. They were both busy so I told them I would go to the park by myself. They were worried, but I told them I wasn’t afraid.”
I didn’t ask her the logical questions. There didn’t seem to be any. “How old was he?” I say. I imagine a boy in his teens or twenties.
“Forty,” she said. “He left behind a wife and a teen-age daughter.
“At the trial, my grand-daughter stood up and faced the killers. ‘You took my father from me,’ she said and she read a piece she’d written about her dad – about how they would go camping together and how much he loved the quiet places. I was so proud of her.”
We looked out over the water in silence for a few minutes. I said, “You are going to put the carnation in the river, aren’t you?”
She smiled again. “I am. It’s for him. You see, we never know how long we have – with another.”
We embraced. She turned back to the water. I walked along the dirt path. The light had gone silver, the water dark. I listened to the rowdy ducks. I wanted the light and cold air and the ducks’ laughter to last forever. I thought of how I cling to everything, how I would capture every sweetness if I could.
A few hours later, I made my supper. I read while I ate. Nancy Willard. Sister Water. I found the words I hadn’t known I was looking for and understood that capturing is what a writer does, for as long as it takes to witness, remember and record. After that, there is only this:
“…look over there,” said Sam. “A turtle.”
The turtle was making its way slowly toward the water like a man exercising for his health.
“Oh let’s catch him!”
But Sam made no move to catch the turtle. He kept on paddling in dreamy circles around Stevie. “I wonder if he’s carrying a message,” he said at last. “He’s headed straight for us.”
“Let’s catch him,” said Stevie. “Come on, Sam. Let’s catch him.”
“If you catch him, he can’t do his work.”
Sister Water
Monday, October 19, 2009
Grape Popsicle
This is her story. I barely know her. We met at a gem and mineral show in the Little America hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona at least fifteen years ago. I bought a raw opal from her. She gave me two more for free. She had dug them from her little claim in Australia.
The sun fire opal was a rough blue cylinder no bigger than the first joint of my little finger. The surface was matte. She had chipped off a sliver so the gleaming interior was visible. “Put it in water,” she said. “That way you’ll see the fire.”
The second opal was the size of the nail on my fourth finger. It was a puddle of glint and pale blue against rough brown. I can’t remember the nature of the third opal. I think I gave it to some one – a gift beyond measure.
The brown opal is also gone---stolen, I suspect, by an unfortunate visitor to my cabin in the Mojave. The sun fire opal is here with me. It is time to put it in a vial of water. It is time to see how it holds and gives back the Central Oregon sun. The delicate flicker will bring her to mind.
Two days ago I received an email from her:
Mary, thank you for sharing your beautiful dispatches with me.
I am sad to tell you of what is the speeding up of the beginning of the final journey we all must take. I was rushed from Australia in direstraits...inoperable pancreatic cancer stage iv so am here in texas with my two sons and all my grandkids. We are in a large 3500 square foot house...rents are cheap in texas. and am laughing with them daily and resting some from chemo...a light chemo...hoping to give me a few more months.
I ate a magnificent grape popcycle the other night in the dark hospital room, with curtain drawn wide open so as to catch the thunder lightning show and the sheets of poring rain cascading over the glass as the grape jusce cascaded over my sore throat instantly soothed by the wonder of it all. I am wishing you well in your new start. I am so glad you own the black opal nobbies that I mined so many years ago. May it be your companion on many new adventures ole gypsy girl you.
Love, BVM a aka Eskimo Nell
I wrote her back and asked her if I could use her words in a new Dispatch. “It is gorgeous and others need to read it.” She wrote back:
Yes, dear Mary, Feel free to use it. I write and all writers want to be read. I treasure our brief meetings too Mary. Regards, Barbara
Here, Barbara, are your words. And, you can know that you are being read. You are on my mind. And today, the sky is gray and the Oregon light is opal.
The sun fire opal was a rough blue cylinder no bigger than the first joint of my little finger. The surface was matte. She had chipped off a sliver so the gleaming interior was visible. “Put it in water,” she said. “That way you’ll see the fire.”
The second opal was the size of the nail on my fourth finger. It was a puddle of glint and pale blue against rough brown. I can’t remember the nature of the third opal. I think I gave it to some one – a gift beyond measure.
The brown opal is also gone---stolen, I suspect, by an unfortunate visitor to my cabin in the Mojave. The sun fire opal is here with me. It is time to put it in a vial of water. It is time to see how it holds and gives back the Central Oregon sun. The delicate flicker will bring her to mind.
Two days ago I received an email from her:
Mary, thank you for sharing your beautiful dispatches with me.
I am sad to tell you of what is the speeding up of the beginning of the final journey we all must take. I was rushed from Australia in direstraits...inoperable pancreatic cancer stage iv so am here in texas with my two sons and all my grandkids. We are in a large 3500 square foot house...rents are cheap in texas. and am laughing with them daily and resting some from chemo...a light chemo...hoping to give me a few more months.
I ate a magnificent grape popcycle the other night in the dark hospital room, with curtain drawn wide open so as to catch the thunder lightning show and the sheets of poring rain cascading over the glass as the grape jusce cascaded over my sore throat instantly soothed by the wonder of it all. I am wishing you well in your new start. I am so glad you own the black opal nobbies that I mined so many years ago. May it be your companion on many new adventures ole gypsy girl you.
Love, BVM a aka Eskimo Nell
I wrote her back and asked her if I could use her words in a new Dispatch. “It is gorgeous and others need to read it.” She wrote back:
Yes, dear Mary, Feel free to use it. I write and all writers want to be read. I treasure our brief meetings too Mary. Regards, Barbara
Here, Barbara, are your words. And, you can know that you are being read. You are on my mind. And today, the sky is gray and the Oregon light is opal.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Tendrils
We know who we are. We are those who are willing to not know much of anything else. And still we let tendrils from within us coil out. Sometimes they take hold of another. Sometimes they tremble on the air.
I am most interested these strange and tawdry days in what comes my way. My friend Tony Norris, a bone-deep Flagstaff writer, musician and story-teller, sent me the following words this morning. They are written by Tom Russell, a man who knows and is willing to not know. He makes music.
The Locusts Sang
"It was not a luxury for me to write, it was a necessity. These times are very difficult to write in because the slogans are really jamming the airwaves - it's something that goes beyond what has been called political correctness. It's a kind of tyranny of posture. Those ideas are swarming through the air like locusts. And it's difficult for a writer to determine what he really thinks about things. " Leonard Cohen
The novel appears to be dead. Dissolving like a rotting cadaver in the quick-lime of post modernist droning. Authors are boring. Thus their characters. The radio air waves are filled with posturing; swarming with locusts full of the poison and "the tyranny of posture." New folk. Bad folk. Weak folk. Poetry's coming back, after Bob Dylan virtually killed and overpowered it as a relevant genre in the 60's. Every hack college lit professor knew it was doomed back then. Poetry is coming back because of the huge gap out there; for anything resembling literature or lyrics or scribed emotion. The yen for something which imbues lyrical passion. We are a nation of old junkies going cold turkey on very bad drugs. Word drugs cut with borax, false bravado, and insincerity. Tattoed babble. Watered down love and greeting card rhymes. At least Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison and Merle Haggard are playing to full houses and selling records. As the maestros should. People are hungry for anything vaguely real….but there are few new songs. No "new generation" of folk writers. As Kerouac said: "There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity. Pass me the chalice, wifey, and there better be wine in it….."
I was leafing through two great books of letters: those of Martha Gellhorn, and another collection from William S. Burroughs. I realized there's not gonna BE anymore of these collections, because no one WRITES letters now. Just cryptic emails and cell phone messages. Slogans again. A nation of housewives in SUV's ranting on the cell phones as their drive toward nail appointments. The word "love" has become a slogan. The last good song I heard was probably: "I Don't Want To Go To Rehab," by Amy Winehouse. Dig it. Or maybe it was a John Trudell recitation called "Happy Fell Down." ("Love is blind; when it opens it's eyes it can disappear.") Or maybe it was Gretchen Peters' "This Used to Be My Town," inspired by a young girl who was abducted and raped. Jesus. And Nanci Griffith's new record is pretty damn good. Simple truths. Well told. With passion. Rolling Stone dismissed it with two stars. We don’t expect anything anymore. Running scared. My friend; London Observer journalist Peter Culshaw, stated, regarding journalism: …"the age of the drunken hack with a heart of gold buried under a cynical exterior is gone and the papers are run by terrified bureaucrats and guys who never leave their non-smoking, non-drinking offices where if you flirt with the secretary they haul you up for harassment..." Joseph Mitchell, A.J. Leibling and Hunter Thompson are rolling over in their graves. Little Stephen addressed the masses at South By Southwest music conference this year; told the audience that young musicians are not doing their homework, paying dues; not learning to write good songs. (My friend Alec asked me if I wrote the speech.) I'm sure 10,000 thumb-sucking networkers from around the world stood there and smiled; nervously fingering their access badges; twittering like parakeets at the Place of Dead Roads.
What's left, to cite Flannery O'Conner, is to "push hard against the age that pushes against you." And so, under the guise of taking out the trash at night, I sneak into my painting studio and blast out old Dylan and Ian and Sylvia records (like Fritz Scholder and T.C. Cannon before me.) I need that fix. Bad. And I paint Indians and plot new lyrical ways to push against this culture.
Well, hell, into all this great void; this fear driven mess; I toss my record. Blood and the Candle Smoke. 12 songs. Missives from this agave-choked wilderness. And I stand behind it. And you, dear reader? What can you do? Listen. Or not. Maybe buy two or three for your friends and get on the internet and invade a dozen chat sites and let 'em know. Call radio. Toss one off the Empire State building. Go out and create that internet tsunami…or don't. But I'll stand behind it. If you don’t think the record is 100% there for you or honest or "good," or if there's any false passion or bad lines, then bring it to a gig and I'll trade you two different cds back for it. Or give you 20 bucks. That's what I can guarantee you within the so-called music culture of today. It's all I have at present. I believe in this record, and I don't believe in much else.
And now it's time to shut up and tour. I hope the carnival is coming to your town…all the dates are up, and the ponies are being saddled. Amen.
"Words lead to deeds…they prepare the soul,
Make it ready, and move it to tenderness."
St Theresa
I am most interested these strange and tawdry days in what comes my way. My friend Tony Norris, a bone-deep Flagstaff writer, musician and story-teller, sent me the following words this morning. They are written by Tom Russell, a man who knows and is willing to not know. He makes music.
The Locusts Sang
"It was not a luxury for me to write, it was a necessity. These times are very difficult to write in because the slogans are really jamming the airwaves - it's something that goes beyond what has been called political correctness. It's a kind of tyranny of posture. Those ideas are swarming through the air like locusts. And it's difficult for a writer to determine what he really thinks about things. " Leonard Cohen
The novel appears to be dead. Dissolving like a rotting cadaver in the quick-lime of post modernist droning. Authors are boring. Thus their characters. The radio air waves are filled with posturing; swarming with locusts full of the poison and "the tyranny of posture." New folk. Bad folk. Weak folk. Poetry's coming back, after Bob Dylan virtually killed and overpowered it as a relevant genre in the 60's. Every hack college lit professor knew it was doomed back then. Poetry is coming back because of the huge gap out there; for anything resembling literature or lyrics or scribed emotion. The yen for something which imbues lyrical passion. We are a nation of old junkies going cold turkey on very bad drugs. Word drugs cut with borax, false bravado, and insincerity. Tattoed babble. Watered down love and greeting card rhymes. At least Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison and Merle Haggard are playing to full houses and selling records. As the maestros should. People are hungry for anything vaguely real….but there are few new songs. No "new generation" of folk writers. As Kerouac said: "There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity. Pass me the chalice, wifey, and there better be wine in it….."
I was leafing through two great books of letters: those of Martha Gellhorn, and another collection from William S. Burroughs. I realized there's not gonna BE anymore of these collections, because no one WRITES letters now. Just cryptic emails and cell phone messages. Slogans again. A nation of housewives in SUV's ranting on the cell phones as their drive toward nail appointments. The word "love" has become a slogan. The last good song I heard was probably: "I Don't Want To Go To Rehab," by Amy Winehouse. Dig it. Or maybe it was a John Trudell recitation called "Happy Fell Down." ("Love is blind; when it opens it's eyes it can disappear.") Or maybe it was Gretchen Peters' "This Used to Be My Town," inspired by a young girl who was abducted and raped. Jesus. And Nanci Griffith's new record is pretty damn good. Simple truths. Well told. With passion. Rolling Stone dismissed it with two stars. We don’t expect anything anymore. Running scared. My friend; London Observer journalist Peter Culshaw, stated, regarding journalism: …"the age of the drunken hack with a heart of gold buried under a cynical exterior is gone and the papers are run by terrified bureaucrats and guys who never leave their non-smoking, non-drinking offices where if you flirt with the secretary they haul you up for harassment..." Joseph Mitchell, A.J. Leibling and Hunter Thompson are rolling over in their graves. Little Stephen addressed the masses at South By Southwest music conference this year; told the audience that young musicians are not doing their homework, paying dues; not learning to write good songs. (My friend Alec asked me if I wrote the speech.) I'm sure 10,000 thumb-sucking networkers from around the world stood there and smiled; nervously fingering their access badges; twittering like parakeets at the Place of Dead Roads.
What's left, to cite Flannery O'Conner, is to "push hard against the age that pushes against you." And so, under the guise of taking out the trash at night, I sneak into my painting studio and blast out old Dylan and Ian and Sylvia records (like Fritz Scholder and T.C. Cannon before me.) I need that fix. Bad. And I paint Indians and plot new lyrical ways to push against this culture.
Well, hell, into all this great void; this fear driven mess; I toss my record. Blood and the Candle Smoke. 12 songs. Missives from this agave-choked wilderness. And I stand behind it. And you, dear reader? What can you do? Listen. Or not. Maybe buy two or three for your friends and get on the internet and invade a dozen chat sites and let 'em know. Call radio. Toss one off the Empire State building. Go out and create that internet tsunami…or don't. But I'll stand behind it. If you don’t think the record is 100% there for you or honest or "good," or if there's any false passion or bad lines, then bring it to a gig and I'll trade you two different cds back for it. Or give you 20 bucks. That's what I can guarantee you within the so-called music culture of today. It's all I have at present. I believe in this record, and I don't believe in much else.
And now it's time to shut up and tour. I hope the carnival is coming to your town…all the dates are up, and the ponies are being saddled. Amen.
"Words lead to deeds…they prepare the soul,
Make it ready, and move it to tenderness."
St Theresa
Friday, July 31, 2009
Geography
A moment of happiness
You and I sitting on the verandah,
Apparently two, but one in soul, you and I…
…The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
how it is to be the thinnest crescent moon.
You and I, unselfed, will be together,
Indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
As we laugh together, you and I.
And what is even more amazing
Is that while here together, you and I
Are at this very moment in Iraq and Khorasan.
In one form upon this earth
And in another form in a timeless sweet land.
---Rumi, 13th c. Persian poet
Last night, the moon a chunk of tarnished silver, gauze-pink clouds, the osprey perched next to her nest, guarding, watching, hunting. The air smelled of rain. Thunder rolled in the south. For a moment, I was not afraid of death.
This morning I opened up the NY Times on-line and found this, "Living in Tents, and by the Rules, Under a Bridge".
You and I sitting on the verandah,
Apparently two, but one in soul, you and I…
…The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
how it is to be the thinnest crescent moon.
You and I, unselfed, will be together,
Indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
As we laugh together, you and I.
And what is even more amazing
Is that while here together, you and I
Are at this very moment in Iraq and Khorasan.
In one form upon this earth
And in another form in a timeless sweet land.
---Rumi, 13th c. Persian poet
Last night, the moon a chunk of tarnished silver, gauze-pink clouds, the osprey perched next to her nest, guarding, watching, hunting. The air smelled of rain. Thunder rolled in the south. For a moment, I was not afraid of death.
This morning I opened up the NY Times on-line and found this, "Living in Tents, and by the Rules, Under a Bridge".
You will only understand what I write next if you read the story. Community is everywhere. Loneliness is everywhere. The campfire that glows on the faces of those without a home is not the same as what shines in our safe houses. And still, at this very moment, we breathe the same air.
In the same edition of the NY Times that The Story appeared there was another story about bailed-out banks in NY giving out huge bonuses. I call on an army of parrots to come to us and crack the bones of the insatiable in their powerful beaks. It is good to remember that the moon is sometimes a scimitar.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
