Whose Words These Are?

I know this looks a lot like the last post, but it is on the west side of the renga, note the sunlight on SITE Santa Fe and how I am dressed for warmer weather.  It also features stanzas of all three Tres Chicas, a happy accident which Axle Contemporary Gallery (of recent PBS Colores fame) was kind enough to document.  My verse, having served six weeks, will retire to be seen no more, until the book comes out this spring. Can't wait.  Each entry illustrated by original art.  I made a farewell cameo appearance to visit my stanza.  It's still happening, the world's shortest poetry event, every Friday at 4:45.

Besides that I have been busy with ArtWorks, taking poetry into public schools and then taking students to live poetry.  This year we decided on classic poetry, a reading called "Whose Words These Are I think I know."   It was challenging to find poems that were fun but not cute or smarmy, deep but not incomprehensible. We settled on a baker's dozen from A.A. Milne to e e cummings, Dickinson to Lorca, poems the three of us readers, Jonathan Richards, Oliver Prezant, and myself could agree on and enjoy performing.  I am really  looking forward to this.  I already worked with four classes, call and response to "all in green went my love riding" and I dressed all in very bright green. I also found out, since this is a poem of the hunt, that the students of Eldorado Community School are hunters. Many hail from Pecos. They loved echoing my dramatic words, "The swift sweet deer, the red rare deer." Everything you ever wanted to know about alliteration.  And "A narrow fellow in the grass" led to me discover that every single student had seen a snake.  I am sure I didn't see a snake till I was much older. New Mexican kids.

There is often a story when you visit a class.   This time I ate lunch with the wonderful fourth grade teacher.  I asked if any of the students' writing was a surprise and she mentioned that one person read at a much lower level and yet wrote a true poem.  That person was the first to stand up and read and when we broke for lunch, stayed to read more of the poem as the others marched off to lunch.  I keep this person anonymous,  except inside me it is yet another example of how the arts break us open, turn us into our best selves, not always but often enough.  As Yeats said, that we "are blessed and can bless."

I am so grateful for ArtWorks, for Axle, for Emily Dickinson, and for my chartreuse pants I spotted in a St. Vincent's de Paul's thrift store. I didn't know I was purchasing e e cummingswear.  I suggest you try call and response, reading a poem and having it echoed by the kids.  It is the most fun I had all week. Delicate.  Not even the rain has such soft hands.

I also send admiration for the amazing teacher who gives the third grade kids "Vitamin Words"each week, the likes of "ubiquitous" and "diligent."  These teachers I meet are the finest humans on earth.
So, I am praying for snow in all the right places, but not enough to keep me from poetry.

A Density of Synchronicity

I promised you, dear blog readers, that I would post my renga post. I like to keep my word.

Thanks to Axle Contemporary for this wonderful project.  I think my post is still up for one more week, if you want to catch the poetic linked excitement of it. And there are still weeks and weeks of renga, until summer.

I know you have been wondering, what sun-kissed synchronicities have befallen me. So many I almost have to skip a clutch of them, as they do come in groups.  I will begin. 

My son-in-law is applying to grad school, a PHD program in psychology at Duquesne University.  The program has a depth psychology and a specific professor with a Jungian bent. It is in my home town of Pittsburgh.  We all feel my mother is getting back at me for moving west and raising the grand kids in the wilds.

My own youngest, the delicious nine month old Kaleia, was on a holiday journey to her dad's family in sub-zero Indiana. Her other grandpa, Charlie, who has just come back from Peace Corp in Rwanda, had a hankering for a VW camper van, you know the type. He found one which had lived in Santa Fe (!) and was now in Pittsburgh (!!).   Charlie told the VW seller that his son was applying to grad school, and guess what? One of the seller's best friends is head of the Psychology department and the aforementioned professor (!!!).

Kaleia, Hope, Charlie, and Leland drove from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh and got to buy the van and meet the professor, who respects synchronicity.  I am taking a deep breath, and saying "Roots and wings, we give them roots and wings" at the distinct possibility that our enviable all-in-one place family becomes like most of American, only FaceTime and two air flights away.

I stood in a parking lot telling a young man this story, as he was a Duquesne University graduate.

"I was born on Jung's birthday. July 26th," the guy said. (!!!!) Of course he'd love to meet them if they come to Pittsburgh where he still lives. Thanks Luke.  I am keeping a file of Pittsburgh connections.

Telling our pals Pat & Melinda this story, Pat kept saying "Tracks, tracks."  What she explained she meant was a teaching of Carlos Castaneda who they had studies with.   The tracks of your destiny, when life lines up like this.  You gotta respect it. You gotta wonder why I am so resistant and attached.  Dense, is all I can say.

Word Fads

The latest excuse for not writing is the holidays.  So when a little poem snuck out on New Year's morning, I felt like it was an excellent omen for the year.  In the spirit of my brief poems:
       
      New Year’s Day

Substitute the words “far-out” and “mellow”

for every adjective. Then cool.

That’s how it was in 1973, forty years ago

and we were just a sparkle

in New Mexico’s eyes.

Then the years of “awesome,”

a persistent moniker

and lately “Really?”

in a sweet surprised voice

that lilts upwards, especially

near my grandchild.

The words may change, 2003,

the year bling hit the Oxford English.

But today itself is mellow and far out,

awesome and full of bling,

bling, and bling.

I knew this was a mere skeletal approach to my topic.  How I react to word fads.

I am sure Shakespeare and I have this one thing in common.  He did not resist the

new words of his faire tongue, and I do not either.  I sometimes can't stand them, and react like a person with a rash.  But I do hear them, take note, and sometimes slip them into

writing.

I took my little note pad out at Sue Farrington's famous  Chimayo New Year's Day Party, I'd guess I have attended over 30 times. Thanks Sue. I asked the youngest folks in the room if they had anything to say about word fads.  They said I'd asked the right people, Willa and Jerry, two musicians back form New York, late thirties.   When I told them my love/hate reaction to words we became instant "besties" and here are some we added.

"Groovy" would go in with the Seventies and is one I love.

"Totally," "radical" or "rad," and "whatever" may slide into the Awesome generation.

Meanwhile, Johnny is alongside and suggests "Bitchin'."  I tell him I will not accept that,

for it is very Beach Boys, too west coast (though I lived there a year)  and not in my language surfing experience.  

I think of "righteous" and Jerry suggests "wicked" which I feel is mostly Massachusetts where I did live for four years.  So I accept it reluctantly.  Johnny again said, "bitchin'" and I again say I never used that word and do not intend to, the female dog and negativity about women aside, it isn't something I have crossed paths with verbally.  Now that the word "Bitch" is used both humorously, lovingly I guess, and in rap music non-stop, I am especially sensitive.  Poison oak of language.

But I digress, I am still jotting like crazy, Robin says "neat " was up in the Fifties, in Los Alamos, and of course "Cool."  I know people and a particular summer camp my kids went to where the only adjective on stock is "cool."  Cool this and cool that. I liked what the camp had to offer except this one stop adjective.  

"Epic," "Gnarly, " and "No way... Way" cropped up in the discussion, and I added "No doubt." It even became the name of a band.  "Obtuse" was suggested and then Dave Best chimed in with "colloquial familiarism" as what I was looking for.  The man looked like he could coin words like a slot machine could spin.  

"Not"  and "Word" occupy a ring of Dante' Hell. The "F Bomb" cropped up at my Ghost Ranch Class since the conference center is owned by Presbyterians and the college students respected my request for appropriate language. Not to censor but to attune.

Again Johnny insists, "Bitchin', bitchin.'"  He gets his wife in on the act and says, "It we saw something we liked in a store, we'd say 'bitchin' right?" 

"In high school," she didn't seem to like the word any more than I did.  "I"ll put it in my writing"

I told Johnny to make him happy.  He is a rad, gnarly sort of guy, a great skier and only missed surfing by a quirk of geography, being an Albuquerque kid.  He does water ski.  

Maybe it's a jock word, not a poet word.  Now "jock," there's a visual word for you.

I have been trying to add a new word and see if it takes off.  Today was really "dense."

That is so totally "dense."  I see it as a positive like "ill" and "sick" have come to be.

Dave again, "That has mass."  I swear he is a word factory.

My dear poet, Gerald Stern, when I took his class, spoke of his verbal prejudices, or maybe I made up that terms, anyhow, words he could not stand in a poem.  "Compel" and "ponder," that kind of thing.  In my verboten list I have "unique" which sometimes leads to "very unique." You probably could add your own word allergies.

But for today.  May your New Year be sunny and dense.

Blame Allen Ginsberg, Solstice Solar Blog and First Thoughts

I am blaming everything today on Allen Ginsberg.  I tend to honor his "First thought, best thought" credo and then spend hours agonizing about something stupid I said or wrote because I've taken that pledge. So, take that world, it's all Allen Ginsberg's fault.

On the other hand, Feliz Navidad is on the radio, and my greenhouse getting ready for the big moment.
At 10:11 it is the solstice.  We have a wonderful solar greenhouse my husband planned into this house, full of geraniums which he hates and San Pedro cacti which he loves. The yin and yang of it aside, it is a beautiful greenhouse and heats us all day if the sun is out. Today it is and so I can find that line which shows how far up the wall the sun crawls every year as the angle of the sun swoops down and we have a line there,  Last night at my reading of the solstice renga verse, Jerry Wellman or maybe Matthew Chace Daniel called it our Sun Dagger a la Chaco Canyon.  It does pierce the center of us when we shower (there's a shower there I forgot to tell you), water plants, or just heat up a bit.   I want us to have a full solstice experience, and though I was unable to take a flattering selfie we have eleven minutes till the days begin getting longer, and what with my night blindness which restricts my wild social life, I am happy for this solar turn of events. James Taylor is covering "Here Comes the Sun" on the radio.  The song is perfect.   Little darling.  I wonder if that is the darling I have to slay?

Yesterday life in Santa Fe touched back into the "Here Comes the Sun " life that I love.  I got to have my photo taken and there were four other poets being interviewed for a New New Mexican article of poets in Santa Fe. See Pasatiempo January10th. Then I zipped over to Sanbusco, that great space that used to house Borders, RIP, and the students from New Mexico School for the Arts got a piano donated, painted in, and it is now a "Play Me Piano."  I hear it as a statement as in "Now I gonna play me piano."  But I believe it means, play-me,  piano.  Or play, me piano--the piano speaking.  See how important punctuation or line break can be.

Anyhow they got it permitted and insured and held a big musical fundraiser with singers, musicians, and I got to mix some poems in with Mohit Dubey on violin and piano.  It was absolutely so much fun.  Three people from my mailing list came, that was epic. Thanks to Mohit's dad for these photos and to
Mohit and his inspired friends for the all day event, I was just one voice in the mix.

Then We skittered on over to The Renga Project.  Three people from my list came there, and that was the biggest audience they have had in weeks for what amounts to a 5-10 second poetry reading in the cold.  Mercifully short.  When the photos come, you'll be the first to see them here in blog world.

Are you listening, Allen Ginsberg?   Now it's solstice night, my old friend Jim Oberlander just started talking to me about Allen Ginsberg and I said, oh no.  It must be Allen Ginsberg Day! All these holidays cropping up.  He told me his Ginsberg stories and about where he was on the day Ginsberg died. Jim was on his way to Disneyland. I told him I have a poem "My Day the Day Allen Ginsberg Died" in my book, The Singing Bowl.  I was in Albuquerque humming Ginsberg's songs, no kidding.

Happy Allen Ginsberg Day to all.  I think First Thoughts may be a lot better than obsessive thoughts.
Writing is a cure for that, and being asked to be involved in very cool and genius community poetry .
Also, the solstice helps. It's the soltice!   Now I can exhale and get more optimistic.

Recycled time

My daughter, Corina, and I just spent a weekend in the Convention Center selling our wares for Recycle Santa Fe sponsored by Keep Santa Fe Beautiful.  You know I have been keeping it by writing down the beauty when it crosses my path.  The weekend was beautiful and it kept me hopping.

Corina made leather items from scrap leather and I had my PoemHolders.

We had fun, visited with dozens if not a hundred friends, and sold some goods. We have  lived here 40 plus years and Corina there for all but one of them, so life is a party.

  It was pretty cool to have people stand and read my poems for long periods of time. Some people got what I was doing, others just came away smiling but perplexed.  I recycled perplexity.

I also recycled, repurposed, retyped poetry.  I had mostly my own poems, a few Emily Dickinson and William Blake crept in and a Stafford and Sherman Alexie.  They couldn't help themselves.  I recycled public domain and copyright infringement.  

And family.  At one point  Corina and I, the baby, Kaleia, big girl Kaylee and Tammy, my wonderful daughter-in-law, and Leland and Hope were clogging the flow.  Nobody could get near the booth and I totally didn't care. For about an hour the glorious recycled genes of family and Lineage, which is what Corina calls her business. We recycled like the joke : What is the only thing Unitarians agree on???  Recycling.

I also recycled  joy.

The PoemHolders hold the poems with the breath of inspiration, as Allen Ginsberg would have said, and the joy of sewing together colors and recycled fabric, every piece with a back-story only I know.  I left with many scraps from my late friend, Leslie Pierpont, gone many years but her family are movers and shakers behind Recycle Santa Fe, and now her fabric scraps live in my house and we Recycle. She baby sat Hope when Hope was the exact age of Kaleia and Corina and I even made a pre-Hope doll in her doll making workshop at the Waldorf School in 1985.  What goes around comes back to grab me. We gave her grandkids a hug and they are amazing. They love Corina.  They look like they own the place.  Thanks to Keep Santa Fe Beautiful.....Recycle Santa Fe is another holiday in our religion.

National Hippie Day

11.7.2013

I was flipping the waffle iron with its gluten free non-dairy waffles, and my daughter had the baby in tow since her husband was hunting elk, and then there was the houseguest my husband found and brought home.  This was also the week of the fourth storm, washing out the arroyo and the truckloads of gravel he had shoveled onto the road.  It all felt very tenuous and not like we were 66 and 68, but like the old days.  I didn't even mention that a bear got 17 of the chickens my daughter and their housemates were raising, carefully and on organic grain from Dixon.  I hope the bear appreciated their organic status. And the good news, the kids sold the yurt.

About halfway through the waffle flipping, the iron itself 100 years old and cast iron, I felt it.
"I feel just like a hippie."  My daughter laughed but no one else saw anything vaguely humorous.
We made the theme for the day National Hippie Day and kept ourselves amused and our minds off the snow up north that the elk hunters were certainly braving.

We made granola. Now, I used to make bread, yogurt, and granola on a weekly basis, but I hadn't made any since probably 1978.  I don't have the documentation, though I still have the recipes.  I can tell you how to make carob brownies, Ellen's apple cake, Angel's Chow Mein, and Kahlua. I can let you know all the names we considered for our first child in 1974, from Anna to Sophia Claire to Zachary. I have the guitar chords to "He's got the whole world in his hands' and "Michael Finnegan."
I have miniature patterns for ethic fashion and directions for corn husk dolls all in a tiny red notebook.

The funny thing is, my life has not changed all that much. We live in the house we designed and began building in 1976.  I cook less, but I still heat with wood, recycle, drive a bad road, have babies showing up unexpectedly, not to mention stray houseguests and dogs.  I live in New Mexico, not back east and these occurrences are normal. I wrote a poem this week  called "Things I didn't tell my brother" when he calls and asks how we are.  It depends if you are asking according to Back East standards and Eastern Standard Time or New Mexico, where the mountains and time zones are Rocky.

Let's ask the kids. Who has health insurance, raise your hand?  Who froze chile?  Who is secure in their housing arrangement and has mortgage in hand?  Who has enough firewood?  Who got an elk?

On National Hippie Day we not only made granola, my daughter made me ghee and printed out its benefits which I didn't want to tell her I used to know myself in 1970.  We took a walk during which, while carrying the baby in a front pack she took off shoes, thus leaving bare footprints on the La Puebla road.  We found out that the three weird dome shaped structures that came over-night are meant to be a meditation center.  I don't know if anyone mentioned to the owner that they are right next to the Rio Grande Sportsman's Club where the sounds of guns popping fills the air, and which may have targets aimed in their direction.

The houseguest didn't spend a second night, he was told in meditation to go back to Phoenix.  He left before dinner which is hard on a Jewish mother/hippie/poet.  He asked if he could shower before leaving. I said, of course.  Now our shower is in the greenhouse. It is very tropical and what many people enjoy about our house.  He emerged minutes later and I said, "That was a very quick shower."
He said is was just an "aura cleansing."

I have no imagination.  I couldn't make my life up. Does anybody need a very large dog?
Happy National Hippie Day.  Hope to see you next year.  Bring maple syrup.

A few days earlier. Halloween at the mall.  I am masquerading as a regular person.

Beti's yartzheit

Did I ever tell you about my mother?  She was a hairdresser, had a fancy beauty shop and I never could get it right by her. I went to the shop on Fridays in high-school, and every week emerged with a new do. One week a flip and the next a page boy, I was caught between Jackie Kennedy and Annette Funicello. She told me every girl would die for this opportunity. I remember tears at a haircut, fingers soaking for manicures, and meeting all the foil wrapped hair-colored ladies. 

As an adult, from college on, I never set foot in a beauty salon. I wore a long braid off to the left.  

After years in New Mexico, the dry wind and two kids didn't agree with my long hair.  Even though the cocktail waitress at Line Camp told me I had beautiful hair I was fed up with it.  So, I cut my long braid at about 35, got a perm and felt I was a perky mother of two. I looked at myself in shop windows and mirrors, toting a baby and dragging an exuberant toddler through the West Palm Beach airport. It was a sort of frizz, or what is now called a Jew-Fro, a term I dislike but it is descriptive.  But then I felt so au courant.

My mother met the plane and she said, "What happened to my Indian Princess?  Now you look like everyone else."  Her statement was a great gift, cultural inappropriateness aside.  I knew then I would never please her and it freed me.  I had to be my own person from that moment.

In her last days in 2001, I would fly in every two months, first Florida and then Pittsburgh. She was of good cheer and adorable. Her hair white, for the first time after a lifetime of prize-winning blond coloring, and fuzzy like an easter chick.  I even got Julian who used to work for her to come to the house for her last hair cut.  My mom looked ecstatic, and Julian was honored to do the honors.  I should add, that sometime in those final months she let slip that my brother was always her favorite, but that somehow I was winning some points now. I sat at her feet embroidering roses onto pillowcases.

A few months later was her last day.  The helper, part of her round the clock care, quoted my mom as I was not there.  "Pack your bags sweetie, we're going to Florida."  And she went.  That was 12 years ago today.

It's her yarzheit, the anniversary of a death.  I don't have the official candle but I have plenty of votives.  

Here's to Beti, queen of beauty and the first who taught me I had to go my own way and please myself.

She did and was also able to be generous and light up a room.  I have my hair in a braid once again, white hair at that. I don't know if she would like it. I do know I asked her how she could stand all her friends dying around her.  She said, "Every morning I thank God I am alive." She played golf when her sister Pearl died because she wasn't strong enough to go to California. She was a club champ into her eighties and died at 88, "ver ner 89" as my dad would have said for almost.  I think my hair would have ver ner pleased her.