Joy Harjo (Women's Focus, KUNM, Sat. 7.21 noon 89.9) Carol Cellucci, & me

A guy just tightrope walked over Niagara Falls.  They made him use a safety line cause they didn't want him to plunge to his death on a major TV network, not even cable. Poets usually work without a net, and we don't even need one cause we're usually sitting down.  But these two women definitely have saved the day.

I once went to Aspen since I had won, against all odds, a National Endowment.  The wonderful and cranky poet who happens to share my hometown, Jerry Stern, taught me a lot.  But we had also sent manuscripts and I sent him my messed up poems to help me sort them out.  Little did I know that everyone else brings the cream, it's Aspen after all.  He hemmed and hawed, asked me what I was willing to sacrifice, and told me I had "sort of a voice."  I was devastated, after all I had just won an NEA and the next stop was a Pulitzer for sure.  So I wandered the streets of Aspen, bought nail polish,  weeping.  I happened to run into Joy Harjo in the grocery store, she was teaching also, and I told her my tale.  She offered to meet for dinner, and we did, hours later, she toting her saxophone which she was learning to play.  Her kindness was the safety net for that two week event.

Listen to her on KUNM radio on Saturday, Women's Focus, July 21, 2012 at noon with the ever wonderful Carol Boss.  If you miss it on Saturday it is streamed for two weeks. Joy is also reading at Collected Works at 6:00 on Sunday July 22. She reads from her memoir, Crazy Brave and what a perfect title.  It makes me feel a little braver, as she did in Aspen.

Then, as if life isn't good enough, today I had cheese enchiladas with Carol Cellucci, my amazing writing teacher from the 1980's.  In her class I met so many dear friends, Judyth Hill, Katherine Shelton, Jonelle Maison, Janet Holmes, Sarah Kuth, and David Treeson to name a few. And we all learned so much about poetry.

 We had a near three hour lunch event, poetry history being made as we ate. This is another sweet example of weaving the loose threads back in, not quite the safety net at Niagara Falls, but a necessary delicate net of connection. I wrote two poems for her and gave her the PoemHolders.   We shot poetry ideas back and caught up on everybody we knew and some we didn't remember.

So, the moral of this story is, Listen to KUNM and Joy Harjo, write your memoir and don't forget me, get in touch with the old dears from you past and make them a non-funcional pot-holder.

The only thing I can download is this, from my Poets Laureate Mixer with Hakim Bellamy, the new ABQ PL and very urban hip. He will shine the poetry stars even shinier is what I said.

I wish I could show you how great Carol Cellucci looks after all these lapsed  years.  Trust me,
she's beautiful.

Blog of my heart

I am two weeks behind.   I am not cut out for this pressure.
Speaking of pressure, Mike seemed to fix the water which was turned off at the source, our well and pump.

I am not convinced it is fixed, something about red roots.  But I digress.

The red roots I meant to talk about two weeks ago was the second annual Valentine's Drive-By-Love-In.
Poeple met at Marguerites two Saturdays, made 300 amazing Valentines, ate soup, and read love poems from India aloud. The second Saturday I had a no-drive day when my friend Tobie, famously here on sabbatical, came out to La Puebla with high end Whole Foods soup and we made Valentines all afternoon.

Marguerite set the stage by contacting four area retirement/care/elder facilities.  Whenever I don't know the correct term I throw a lot of words at it.  Marguerite and her  friend Katrina came  up with this idea and I am but a humble servant of its genius and love. Marguerite called each place and we had times on V- Day at Rosemont, Sierra Vista, El Castillo, and Ponce de Leon in that order.  I obsessed about how many Hershey's kisses was the correct amount.  This is in honor of my mother, who didn't obsess, but who handed out kisses at the Jewish Home for the Aged where she went to flirt, dance, and generally cheer up old folks who were younger that she.  At her memorial my niece brought kisses. Love always reminds me of my mother, also aging women, also beauty.  She would be so into this project.

My friend Tobie is on the far end looking festive

                                                

We met at Dulce, my latest cupcake nook, and began handing out Valentines on the spot, especially to the woman whose peaceful morning we infringed on by meeting at her table.  Our first visit was  Rosemont. Tobie drove, which I knew meant for adventure.  Marguerite navigated and whenever she said turn right, my back seat GPS navigator Garmin mind was yelling, "Left left," but not out loud.  This is the difference between friendship and marriage.

We made it there and unloaded our Kisses and card laden car and noticed on our way in that a priest with a guitar strode in quickly to get ahead of us.  Also, there was a school bus in the parking lot.  These were not good signs for our red clad, eight deep, Valentine toting crew.  I'll cut to the chase.  Last year we had a perfectly fine cast to sing our songs, read our poem, and dispense our holiday cheer to, and this year we had two and a half if you count the woman in the elevator. But of course it was made up in quality.  I fell totally for Virginia Stowall who is 102.  She lived in Los Alamos for 60 years.  So much for my fears of radioactivity. Downwind isn't enough. I should move there.  She was showing me how to make a necklace of buttons and had many more marbles than I do on most days.  There was a man in a wheelchair and said elevator lady who said she never had received a Valentine in her life and bestowed many deeply religious blessings on us. We also got to mix it up with the students from the charter school for the Arts and Technology and hear a song from Pippin, a musical I've never seen or heard.

Our next stop was Sierra Vista where my friend Gary Mex Glazner does many an Alzheimer Poetry Project visit and they are primed for poetry.  We got to sing a little, and "A Bushel and a Peck" was another homage to my mom, the famous Beti with an "i."  It was one of their songs too, a client about twenty years younger than I pointed out. Alzheimer's is that way.  There was also a new resident who was active in poetry in San Francisco, a real soul mate.  So, it went very well there and we met for lunch at Real Food Nation, which is just like it sounds, I mean you can order Buffalo or Portobello.
The best part was that Sabrina Pratt and Julie Bystrom from Santa Fe Arts Commission who were my Poet Laureate pals showed up for a real Valentine's surprise.   Plus my daughter, Hope, who joined us last year as well.  We spread Kisses and Valentines to all and hit the road, two facilities to go.

I know you probably have a life so let me just say we turned left and should have turned right.  They were at nap-time at El Castillo, so Tobie zoomed us over to Ponce de Leon with a promise to return to El Castillo aprés-nap.  Tobie liked the looks of El Castillo and was contemplating signing up for a room, but she hadn't met her Valentine yet.  At Ponce de Leon there were three women at the piano doing sing along.  We had a time slot, but we just had to wait it out, baskets of hot throbbing Valentines in hand and Hershey's Kisses, both dark and light and Hugs, melting in out pockets.  Tobie tried to give a man a card and he wanted to throw away what he called this piece of paper.  She explained it was for him and he couldn't quite get it in his pocket, so she helped him.  At which point he asked for her phone number and assured us his wife was dead, either a few months or years.  After we sang along with the three women who had matching Valentine's scarves, each tied in a different style, it was my turn to go.  I read them poems, we sang our hit, A Bushel and a Peck, and distributed cards.  I give my performance 2 and 1/2 chiles (that's out of four chiles as anyone who reads our local papers knows). One sweet moment was Helga speaking Portuguese to one of the residents she knew.

Meanwhile, back at El Castillo, they were awake and gathered and singing along with a karaoke duo.
We had lost all but Tobie, Marguerite, Maureen, and me by this time and who could blame the deserters, not I.  We are glad we hung in though, because it was the piece de resistance, which is French for four chiles. I read my love poems and then Gertrude Stein's "A Very Valentine," which I was reading everywhere. Gertrude lived in Paris and died in 1946 so I missed her by one year:
Very fine is my valentine.
Very fine and very mine.
Very mine is my valentine very mine and very fine.
Very fine is my valentine and mine, very fine very mine and
mine is my valentine.

Joan and Woman I danced with on the Plaza

Marguerite and Joan

Marguerite asked me to read Stein again, and I did and I swear it had so much more feeling and depth.

I always got Gertrude, but I super got Gertrude by the end of this adventurous and love filled day.

There were four outstanding people at El Castillo. One was the wife of a man who'd had a stroke. Again, young looking, and she just stood by her man radiating love.  She told me he liked to write.

There was another guy who, when I asked if anyone had memorized a poem, recited a bit of Kubla Kahn to us and said he had memorized the entire poem.  There was the woman who I danced with Fourth of July on the Plaza and who sent me her family history. And, there was Marvin, who kept telling me he was very old and when I flatter-guessed 83 said, "No, 104!"  

When I was incredulous he showed me his tee-shirt.  It was made by students from Santa Fe Prep for him.  But here's the kicker.  Where was he from?  Los Alamos.   I am definitely moving.

Locked out at the Lake

Margo and I took a few hours from my last day teaching a course at Ghost Ranch called An Unedited Heart:Poetry Alchemy to get a dip in Abiquiu Lake. We had dunked two days earlier and it was heaven, chilly but a layer of sun-warmed water on top. I had a little inkling on the way over that it might not be a good idea, my last afternoon at class, but I am always a pessimist and was trying to be more fun loving and carefree. The lake was only about 15 minutes from The Ranch.

We both returned cell phone calls because we had reception, got out of the car at the old dock, and I was walking around to get my keys off the front seat when I heard a click. The door lock. We were outside in only swims suits and flip flops, and the keys and cellphones were in a tightly closed up car. I checked and rechecked, and then I just started laughing.A bathing suit and towel are scant security against the elements.


There was one couple by the shore and Margo said to them,"Hello. We are just about to ruin your afternoon." Rick and Lisa were sweet about it and Rick would find us a security guard. Last time we were there they were down in a minute on a woman in our class with a Sarsaparilla in case it was beer which is not okay. This time there was nary a park ranger in sight, so I asked Rock for his cell. He'd never own a cell, he proudly informed us. I was still pretty gone with laughter.

I saw some people off in the distance at the new dock, a distance I would not have wanted to trek in flip flops, not to mention my bathing suit. It looked like two couples, I was sure they'd have a phone. When I got out of the car i heard, "Joan, is that you?" That's what I like about New Mexico, It was Fatima and Taslim, the daughters of Rabia and Benyamin, another young woman named Nada, and a fourth with a bad cold. Three of them knew my daughter, Hope, from high school. They had a cell, they offed us cupcakes, and we sent RIck off with thanks. To complete the scene you have to know that Taslim and Fatima are Muslim and wear hijab. I am Jewish and 64 are wear not much. Margo close enough. We called the Ranch to get my husband and his blacksmith teacher, Renée Zamora. I am still pretty gone with laughter and we sit on the dock, a bit awkward. I had the sense that the young women were ready to go, but they were very kind and said they'd drive us back if need be. I asked them if they knew I was POet Laureate, and they said yes. I thought maybe it would help. I rarely play the Poet Laureate card, and here at the lake in almost nothing, it was a wasted card to play. Margo said, "Would you take our picture?" I said, "We don't mean to impose on you." The tone here was all laughter and water, and here is the snapshot, e-mailed to us right there.

Now here comes the park rangers, we say goodbye and hug. They drive us to my car, tell us it happens a lot, and the two of them can't get into it, i's so tightly closed. I hear the familiar honking of a noisy guy over the steep hill and I know it's Michael and Renée.
The four of them take their time, give up, and then get in. We whoop and thank, and as soon as we can jump into the lake. It's much colder than before, the foot of warm water on the surface from the sun is not present today. I am glad we didn't submerge before our adventure. I have laughed so hard I have a hoarse throat and when we get back to my class who are all milling around, I have to tell them I am too far gone to do a thing.

I tell the story over and over. I am the one who thinks it is the funniest. Margo and I, already friends, are even more bonded by laughter. Does this mean I have become more fun loving and carefree? I don't think so. It took ten people to rescue us, thanks to all you angels. I thought Nada, who had the cell would scorn my silliness, but she asked to be my Facebook Friend.
I friended Nada, the least I could do for all the kindness we received.

Too Beautiful

I never left the six acres last weekend, but to be honest, I never left the house for three days.
I was hoping to get a grip, but after the weekend I still didn't have lesson plans, my office was still awry to put it mildly, and I didn't have much fun. This weekend I started the day right, with a phone call, and another phone call, and then I wrote a poem.



Unpunctuated
for WS Merwin

So beautiful today
I don’t know what to do with it
I can’t be outside it’s too perfect
the morning glories are too too without
even ingesting their known iota of trip
The Maximillian sunflowers are poised
to bloom and even that potential is wildly
enticing into too beautiful The dues we paid
After the fires after the wind and smoke the terrible
canyon fires of Santa Clara watershed tears shed
I could cry again today for the world we earned
paid its dues to too beautiful too beautiful
beautiful datura beautiful the Jewish New Year
I am already lamenting I stand naked for an hour
in my greenhouse watching the cereus flower
prepare for night blooming I stand naked before
my shower and after my shower another phone call
from the too beautiful I talk naked on the phone
because I don’t know how to manage today
with how I love too beautiful the note in the mail
from you how I love poets and painters who make
the world shine me I never want to set foot
inside a classroom with no windows
I want to speak poetry to those finches
and to the kale I will tell the kale I forgive the aphids
you are so greenly beautiful I love my body today
because it is the vessel that carries too beautiful
soon departing for other beauty don’t mention
it you say but in the too beautiful death
is already sharpening the scythe its harvest
of the too beautiful a basil scent a mint too many
tomatoes and a glut of cucumbers and I forget
that I know how to preserve I am doing it now

9.17.11

Graduation: Santa Fe High

I didn't faint, my hat only blew off once, I made a friend (Thanks Tammy!), and I got to shake 302 graduates' hands. I read too fast, but I forgive myself since every single person told me it was too long and the fear of more beach balls flying around the field was upon me, and nary a beach ball flew during my talk. The highlight was shaking every graduate's hand, looking at so many smiles, and half of them even made eye contact. Their faces, youth, the great variety of lives touched me. I thought of Amachi the Indian Saint who hugs everyone and I tried to be a virtual Amma and send love to every person. The 302 people passed in an instant, and I wan't even tired. Tammy, my new friend who will teach the poetry class next year, videoed me but my battery ran out half way, so if anybody has a record I've love it. Here is the text:

Graduation at Santa Fe High, May 28, 2011,
A DOZEN WISDOM SECRETS AND A POEM:

I have come to Santa Fe High as a Poet in the Schools with New Mexico CultureNet, visited some classes, and way back I also know some of you from Santa Fe Girls’ School.

When asked what a Poet Laureate means someone in Julie Hasted’s poetry class said, “Poet Warrior” and I liked that more than explaining what I do is function as the city’s poet for two years. In some classes I had you calculate how many days they have been alive. I have been alive 23,000 days and you already have 6,000.

I spent a week and probably six to eight hours writing a talk for today. When I read it to my husband it was so boring that both of us practically fell asleep or got divorced, so I ripped it up. It came to me that it was my chance to give some of the wisdom moments, the secrets of success, and plain old advice that people have given me that I have found useful.

1. When I said I would do this talk I had a houseguest from California we call Six Foot Tall Girl, because she is six feet tall and it’s her e-mail. She has taught school for many years. She said that I have continued doing what I love all these years. She talked about fame and that in our culture people think that fame is the measure of success. She said not many can be famous, it’s what makes fame fame.

Naomi Shihab Nye who is an Arab American poet says in her poem “Famous” “The river is famous to the fish….The boot is famous to the earth,/more famous than the dress shoe,/which is famous only to floors,…I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,/or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,/but because it never forgot what it could do.”
So, thanks to Six Foot Tall Girl I want to tell you, you are famous if you remember what you can do, maybe what you loved as a kid. Today you are famous to your family, your friends, and your teachers.

2. My friend Cecile was also visiting, and she gave me advice once, which I found very helpful: Every Day do three things for the good. Whatever impossible thing you want to happen, career as an artist, saving the world, renting an apartment, enlightenment, do three things a day towards that end. That’s all. Very small steps that accumulate.

3. My oldest daughter. Whenever she comes up against some challenges in life, she says it is her soul’s path, that she has chosen it, and following it she learns what she needs to. In that way she takes responsibility for her own life, which is exactly what Oprah would have said on her final show, if I had been watching it instead of trying to write this talk.

4. Six Foot Tall Man which is what my husband now wants to be called, started leaving me notes with his advices. He says to think about treat people as if they were angels. Everybody has a message, and that is why you will never see him yelling at another driver. He also brought me a quote from our refrigerator,

“Marriage is the hardest yoga, be householder saints” and he should know after 40 years.

He reminded me of a musician friend of mine from college who said:
“Don’t make me uptight in my own house.”

He even quoted me from a poem of mine that said, “Worry is reverse prayer.” I need that line cause I have a black belt in worry.

5. I once heard the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet speak in this school’s gymnasium. One of his teachings is this:
Never give up
No matter what is going on.
Never give up.
Develop the heart.
Too much energy in your country is spent developing the mind instead of the heart. Develop the heart.
Be compassionate.
Not just to your friends, but to everyone.
Be compassionate.
Work for peace in your heart and in the world.
Work for peace, and I say again.
Never give up, no matter what is happening.
No matter what is going on around you.
Never give up!

6. I am terrible at making decisions, so I can’t help you too much, but baseball great Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” You do have choices, you will have choices, you have made choices. Poet, Robert Frost said, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/ and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler/ long I stood….I took the one last traveled on, and that has made all the difference.”

Carlos Casteneda wrote, “Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. if it doesn’t , it is of no use.”

In each of your ten next thousand days I wish you make the choices that serve you.


7. Imagination:::
These quotes are from W.S. Merwin Poet Laureate of America:
"It's impossible to conceive of a human being without the imagination....It's also what makes us able to share the distress of the homeless in Darfur, and the distress of the homeless in the next block.
It produced Albert Schweitzer and Mother Theresa. It also produced Mozart and Shakespeare, Blake and Vermeer.
That's the imagination. It's infinite. It's unpredictable. It's a wonder. It's a miracle. It's what we have to live by and if we live by something else, we're wronging ourselves."

C.K. Rowling, that miraculous writer of Harry Potter, said at Harvard’s graduation address:
"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not and therefore the font of all invention and innovation.…it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.……"We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better."

8. The three best things I know.
1. Allow extra time and write thank you notes.
The third one I forget.

9. Here’s a very tricky and interesting one, from a book by Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you.

10. I read this in a spy novel about when you are a houseguest: never force anything mechanical. We quote this our house.

11. My mother said over and over again, not to depend on anyone else. To always have something to fall back on. I fell back on poetry. She also believed in the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. She said, "I tried to tell the world, but they wouldn’t listen."

12. Kayle is my granddaughter. She was four when I became poet laureate and we celebrated on the Plaza downtown during the free band concert. Afterwards she looked me in the eyes and said, “I’m so proud of you. Don’t lose a bit of it.” This serious moment with a four year old seemed to be coming from my late Aunt Pearl or my mother. I am not saying she was channeling, but that children are tapped into the wisdom. I want to pass that along to you today,
“I AM SO PROUD OF YOU. DON’T LOSE A BIT OF IT.”

Intersection

Here I stand at the intersection of Yucca and Siringo,
between Zia and tomorrow,
With my too many words and my disguise as a gray haired poet.

Here you sit in your cap and gowns,
at the intersection of heart and mind,
at the corner of past and future, right now.

And here we are with the mystery of how things turn out
With the mornings all groggy with too late and too early
With the getting to high school anyway, with your homework

done or the pages still printing, with the many lessons learned
and the already forgotten stored inside you. With your success
and the blessing of Santa Fe all around us, its sky

which has been smiling for centuries, watching you,
its paved promises and it been-there-done-that. With its dreams,
graffiti tagged illegally onto your souls

With its history as complicated as any place.
Just yesterday I was driving south on Saint Francis at Cordova
and I heard drumming. Through my closed car window, drumming,

with its base note of Pueblo people, deep drumming
through the open window of a car shining silver,
feathers hung from its rear view mirror.

And the language spoken was English with a back story
of Tewa and a Spanish flamenco, just yesterday with its Conquistadors and the conquered and nobody giving up.

That’s what I love, a city where nobody gives up.
I am dreaming of red shoes, red with sunset, with blood,
with a taste of drama and never stop the dancing.

With your future all shiny like WET PAINT DON’T TOUCH,
with your unknown and your planned. With just today
spread out like a feast at a city that knows how to party,

at Fiesta Central at the corner of already and not yet, I want to say
Look into the faces of those who love you, those holy places
of I’m so proud of you, and take into your body memory,

your heart and belly, how this day feels.
Make the mornings count, today with its bright promise,
every day a slice of why not?, I mean why can’t you,

I know you can. It’s the dress rehearsal for everything, and it’s the show.
I want to send you safe and beaming into the next ten thousand mornings,
into the constant mountains and the meanings under the ravishing sky.

Into the arms of all who hold you and how you carry yourself.
Into the next and the best, not the last. Into the endless nows
with their hard work and small pleasures, into the mystery

with its good news/bad news days. Into your one saved life,
your sacred breath and breathing. Into the Santa Fe you love
and the places that come after,

into the bring-it-on-I-can-take-it, I-can-make-it
city of no indifference, the intersection of you and me, all of us
send you into the caring and daring new day.

PL Moments

I have my dry cleaning in my arms, and a man and child stand at the crossing of Hidden Chicken and Chow's Chinese restaurants.  Somehow(!?) we are talking and I ask the girl how old she is.  She is six, and so of course I have to recite A.A. Milne:

"Now I am six
as clever as clever.
I want to be six
forever and ever.

The man, is he her father or grandfather? One doesn't want to presume, tells me he used to live
near Robert Frost's house.  And that leads us to talking about all the poets at inaugurations, Frost at Kennedy, Maya Angelou at Clinton, and then we recite Frost together, "Whose woods these are, I think I know..."  Between us, line by line, we have it all.  At some point, of course, I have told them I am Santa Fe's Poet Laureate and I give them my card.  The little girl is looking up with awe or surprise on her face.
I walk away, all of us smiling, and think, how wonderful the invisible moments of these two years are.

I got to read at Boise High School, in the library, and then lead a Creative Writing class taught by my friend over the years, Sharon Hanson.  I ended up reading poems about death, many of them are, and one where a boy dies in a freak sledding accident.  I asked if any of them had lost peers and two hands went up, of the thirty brown bagging it for poetry. Afterwards the librarian said it was perfect that I read that poem.  They had lost a student two weeks before.  Earlier it would have been too raw, but talking about the poem as the container for grief and joy felt spot on.

Here is a poem sent to me by Merrit Salathe:

When I was born

the world curdled

and a film was skimmed off the top.

When I turned eight

my dad would make me cappuccinos

in small crackled cups.

He and I flew to New Orleans.

In the French Quarter

I wept at the loss of two perfect pearls-

hastened from shop to

shop,

only an image in my mind:

Easter, poisonous Ebony, white out

on the family tree.

He and I sat in a café

drinking café au lait

that saturated beignets

into an aphrodisiac meant for

ten years later.

We walked on ground

sick with dead water

and FEMA trailers.

Shimmering heat miraged my white tambourine

but all I wanted was to hear its negative

sung once live by my

favorite artist turned scientologist.

We drove through vacant spray painted suburbs,

the water lines

etched in like a filthy skin.

“There’s the house where I was born,” he said,

“The Catholic school where the talking

icebox man and I dropped a conch.”

I was born post-earthquake

But hurricane threats flow in my blood. 

 My third recent PL moment came after a rare Tres Chicas Books meeting.  We had been taped for a radio show to publicize our new book, Love & Death:Greatest Hits, and then met for dinner and planning.  Afterwards Renée Gregorio and I decided to hit Ross Dress for Less and check out the nighties.  We have shopped together a few times, always memorable, Pennys in Taos, The Cottonwood Mall in Burque, and now a Santa Fe jaunt.  You must realize there are about ten years between each shopping episode.  At the De Vargas Mall there was a man in Hastings Books and Music, just sitting there next to his stack of books.  He was my age, nicely dressed, and looked how I often felt at a lack-luster poetry event.  I talked to him, bought his book for good luck, and headed into Ross.  "Did you tell him you were Poet Laureate?" Renée teased?  Of course I did and that I had a reading tomorrow.  Then I engaged in some altruistic shopping where in the depressing Ross dressing rooms I gave the skirt I loved and lusted after to a woman older than myself, shopping alone who said She came in to cheer herself up and now she felt worse.  She loved the skirt, and found another the same style.  I realized that altruistic shopping is right up there with altruistic Scrabble as mentally questionable.  How will I get ahead?  Ayn Rand is turning over in her self-righteous and self-centered grave.

The guy with the books came by my reading, couldn't stay.  Turns out he lives in Mexico, passing through, and is tennis partners with our friend, and Tres Chicas author Tom Ireland.  "Nothing good is wasted" I learned from a folk tale from Gioia Timpanelli.  Michael and I err on the side of give away. When he does it I can get agitated, but when I choose to give, it seems just right.  At least with giving poetry it doesn't wreck the bank account.  Neither does altruistic shopping.

Matachine Dance- El Rancho 1.1.11

Living deeply in one place for a long time suits me.  For us, 37 years in northern New Mexico, always rural, always wood heat, always  mailboxes with a red flag, and always poetry.  We have gone to the same Christmas Eve Party for 34 years with a few off when the hosts grew busy and weary.  New Year's Day breakfast at Sue's in Chimayo, I don't know, at least 30 years.  I like seeing people who know me, all of us growing older and sweeter.

At the New Year's day party, Elaine said there are Matachine Dances in El Rancho, starting within the half hour. I have always wanted to see the El Rancho dances, a dance that came up from Mexico, mysterious, symbolic, and with violin, and guitars.  These are the only dances done by both the Indigineous people along the Rio Grande, and the Hispanos.

I jumped in my car and pulled into El Rancho at 2:05.  There were about ten masked dancers (danzantes) in ribbon, crowns, fringes, bandana masks, the Malinche in white, and the abuelos with the mask and the whip.   In the chair for a throne sat the monarch, representing Montezuma. A week before I had been at Turtle Dances at Okay Owingeh and the whip and mask were familiar. The one abuelo was both serious and in the role of the clown, by turns describing the history of matachine's 400 years in El Rancho, and thanking the elders who revived it, Pablo Roybal for one.  Then he would say, "Remember that night in El Rancho?" wagging his tongue at a woman.  Or he would hump a woman in a chair to the hilarity of the crowd who knew them both. Or after the dance of the toritio or little bull, when the Abuelo wrestled him to the ground and symbloically castrated him,  he offered the dangling pouch (one can only imagine what it is) to the women in the crowd.

I felt as if I were there, witnessing this 400 year deep dance, for my friend Nicole.  She is an informal scholar of Matachine, also a dance historian and critic. She now lives in New Jersey.   It's odd, but unless Nicole is around  I prefer going to dances alone.  I can get close, although almost ended up dancing with the more anonymous Abuelo, his hat bristling with straw.  I got the feeling that most people knew one another from church or neghborhood.  One woman reassured me, "Don't worry, he won't hurt you" when the outrageous Abuelo came close.

All the while the young Malinche, a regal girl about age 12, danced with dignity in her white communion dress and little heels. Her classical face could have come from a photograph hung inside of the neihboring adobes.  The hour passes and maybe seven dances were performed.  The dance of the cross celebrated that everyone was Christian now,  the Abuelo explained with what I almost feel is innocence. I am not a Christian,  a radical nd risky statement in America, I figure the only one in that crowd. But nobody is asking me to convert on the spot, or die.  That we are a mile or so from San Ildefonso pueblo is ever in my mind.

The Abuelo welcomes the newcomers to the Valley.  I know I am one.  He says that newcomers are part of the story or soul of the valley, something like that.  I am so in the relaxed moment, warm sun in the 23 degree air. The dances I can sink into without criticism.  That's not true.  As the Abuelo danced around, surprising gracefully for a white haired long haired man, he kept saying, A-OO-ha, like the marine maybe he is.  The crowd responded, A-OO-ha.  I wasn't wild about this ongoing call. But maybe the clash of cultures is what this dance brings home.

I leave and go visit my grandkids, driving down to the first place we arrived in that April, 1973.
My kids and grandkids are natives of this place.  Just driving down to see them, my riches. I feel that as I age here, the snow on the moutains which I have seen come and go 37 times, is mine. And these dances are not separate from me.