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Thursday, September 26, 2002
Tahoe & Marin
I have just returned from one of the loveliest adventures of my life.
For eight and a half days, I've walked the 165 mountainous miles of the Tahoe Rim Trail, alone and brimming with joy. In perfect fall weather.
I walked south, starting at noon on September 15th from Echo Lake at the edge of Desolation Wilderness, then east and into Nevada. After that, I went north up the mostly volcanic Carson Range, then west on the high ridges north of the lake, then (after a stolen breakfast of blueberry pancakes where the trail comes down to cross the outlet of the Truckee River in Tahoe City), south again through Granite Chief Wilderness and Desolation, returning to my car at 8:30 in the morning on the 24th.
The trail is one of the most beautiful I've walked anywhere in the world. I'd scheduled what I thought was, for someone my age, a pretty demanding 11-day trip, but driven -- literally -- by the beauty of the place, I did it in "jock time," as someone in the TRT office told me this morning, but without feeling like I rushed or neglected in any way to "be" there. I strolled 18-20 miles a day, thinking, looking, writing.
I journaled, and wrote more than 20 poems (maybe you can assess my mental state from this random three of the titles: "Osama bin Laden Pancakes," "Early-Burly" (a bear poem), and "Why Coopers Hawks Don't Eat Nutcrackers." I sketched several essays and short stories besides. Truth is, I was constantly throwing off my pack and grabbing journal, glasses and pen in order to scribble for a few minutes.
The trail has a low point, at the river, of 6300 feet, and a high point, at Relay Peak, of 10,338. I climbed a very conservative cumulative total of more than 25,000 vertical feet of passes along the way. I lost ten pounds in those eight and a half days; I'm the fittest I've been in many years, down to my ideal 'mountain' weight. Lord save me from my children's ice cream!
The first three days were hard on my old body, and I went to sleep each night in a stupor. After that, I felt better and better, with the last three days verging on ecstasy.
I've spent long times rambling in wilderness, of course, but never before had an extremely focused purpose like this. Days quickly developed their own pattern. I'd rise and pack somewhere between first light and sunrise, then walk two hours or so to a pleasant sunny perch for breakfast. Often I'd write a bit. Then I'd walk for three to five hours (usually with one relaxed water break), and have a foot-dangling, scenic lunch. Then another four hours, with a water break, or so to a supper stop. Then another few hours to drink and lay down my sleeping bag for the night, at or near dusk.
I went light, leaving home with a 23-pound pack (that includes the clothes and shoes I stood up in, a bear canister, and four days of no-cook food). About half the TRT has no water at this time of year, so the logistics of water needed good attention. I put down two food caches and four water caches before I started.
That's a first report. I may try to write up more later. Go walk the TRT!
(See poems from Bill )
-Bill Noble 9/26/2002
Sunday, September 22, 2002
We start off this beautiful fall season with some wonderful news --
a story from our Winter 2001 issue, Anne Tourney's
"Pink Oleander," has been selected for the first volume of
the "E2Ink" anthology, guest-edited by Pam Houston, celebrating
the "best of the Web." This is to be an annual series, published by
Mild Horse Press, and as they say, "The e-2-ink project seeks to
recognize online publications in the same way that the Best American
Short Stories, O. Henry Awards, and the Pushcart Prizes recognize
print publications."
Further information on this book and the magazines submitting stories
can be found here.
...with information about Pam Houston here
We are so proud of all of our writers at Slow Trains, and we're
delighted to see Anne's excellent story honored in this way.
In other book news, "Slow Trains Volume I" is out in print,
available through Amazon and also through our site at a discount.
Now on to the fall issue!
Sixteen poets grace our pages with their lyrical words, from India to
South Africa to every corner of the U..S.. A cricket, a street of
flags, a watch that may or may not be better than nakedness -- these
are only a few topics addressed by our poets, who include John
Sweet, Janet Buck, P.J. Nights, Alex Stolis, John Eivaz, Robert
Gibbons, Joseph Carcel, Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal , Candy Gourlay,
Michael A. Hoerman, Daniel Sumrall, William Sovern, Ward Kelley,
Merlin Greaves, J. Marcus Weekley, and Prasenjit Maiti .
Cecilia Tan joins us in our "On Baseball" section, with an
interesting and fun tale of scalpers, fans, subterfuge, and the
riskiness of being a Yankees' fan in the bleachers at Fenway Park
Jeff Beresford-Howe writes about "Lewis in the Bush League,"
and this bush league is the one found somewhere between Texas and the
White House...
Why is it that sperm don't have to go through the agony that
prospective adoptive parents do to qualify? Consider this in J.D.
Munro's touching and funny essay, "Not Suitable for
Children".
Other essays in the fall issue include Brian Peters considering any
possible moment of hope in the history of slavery; Richard
Ammon's fascinating tale of what it's like to be gay in
Switzerland, and Jeff Beresford-Howe's soaring (and sometimes
crashing!) music reviews.
In fiction, new contributors Benjamin Reed, Christine Hamm, Tim
Wenzell, Ptim Callan, Chris Duncan, and Marc Estrin bring us six
tales of family, sex, sadness, childhood, and humor -- and we always
consider every one of them "the best."
We're adding to the September 11 section as new poems come in.
Come visit and stay a while, and once you've read everything else, I've even
offered up my own "vices" this issue in "The Slow Trains Ten"
section, featuring writers on creativity. These questions are harder
than our previous writers have made them look(!), and fortunately
I've passed "The Ten" challenge on to two more writers for the
next issue, who will surely make it look as simple as a winter breeze.
-Susannah Indigo 9/22/2002
Friday, September 13, 2002
Boston
I took the 5:30 boat home on Wednesday -- huge dark
cloud over the city with the late afternoon sun bringing the now autumn green water alive with the wind topping the waves off in white foam. The rollers we get from the northwest are rare, but one of the few open fetches that allow them to build
in Boston Harbor -- it was so beautiful that I left my seat to observe and enjoy.
Especially so given the day - September 11th.
With all the human tragedy a year ago, the thing that hurt me most emotionally was how a beautiful fall day was ruined. I love the Fall -- September is the favorite month bar none. Last year it was absolutely gorgeous. Then the news. Like how an old Steely Dan tune will bring back the college years, or a smell that transports you to another time and place, one of my favorite things in life -- a beautiful fall day -- has had this scar on it. Until yesterday. Just as Wednesday's NY Lottery number came up 911, I am convinced that God from above howled and blew the evil of last year away and left us today with, what is once again, my favorite thing in life -- a beautiful fall day.
-Charles Clapp 9/13/2002
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Let there be peace on earth,
and let it begin with me.
See Slow Trains' September 11 section
Sunday, September 1, 2002
Scituate, Massachusetts
Kathleen's Mask
I wanted her in the dream when she was making two loaves of bread. Red seeds from the coast of Africa studding the mud of the Dogon mask used for dancing in a good harvest, then turned to pomegranate seeds. Good thing, too! Abrus, or prayer pea, is poison. One seed can kill. Back in the dream state I used our small monocular to focus in on the soul of a young boy, but before he came into view a row of clotheslines spun dungarees & white shirts around in the wind. Kathleen danced with all the spirit figures, exclaiming, "Ecstasy of the heat!"
(See Ode to New York City )
-Robert Gibbons 9/01/2002
Monday, August 26, 2002
Tibet and beyond
"At 6 pm I have my evening tea -- as a Buddhist monk, no dinner, sometimes just a few biscuits or some bread. At that time I always watch BBC television (always, I am addicted -- the BBC is always very good and, I really feel, unbiased). Then evening meditation for about one hour and at 8:30, sleep. Most important meditation! Sleep is the common meditation for everyone -- even for birds. The most important meditation. Not for nirvana, but for survival!"
--the Dalai Lama
from A Day in the Life of the Dalai Lama, in Utne Reader
Thursday, August 15, 2002
Easter, Rogue River Valley
And the rapids of Ashland Creek roar like dream beasts
and the taste of chocolate and coconut is on my tongue
and the snow-decorated mountain
is operatic in the noonday sun. Iguana green,
ponderosa green, pale green of spiders,
hummingbird breast green, Spring-drenched grass green,
the green of moss-covered rocks reflected in the
fishing egret's eye.
Friday, August 9, 2002
Jerry Garcia
8/1/42 -- 8/9/95
I find it cumbersome that there's going to be a "me" here after I'm gone.
-- Jerry Garcia, 1989
He was a lot of different things. Yin and yang doesn't even begin to
cover it. He had a smile that could fill your heart with joy and love
and he could play the guitar just like that smile. You hear that he
was addicted at one time or another, or even all at the same time, to
heroin, coke, alcohol, sugar and junk food.
He was a musician who believed fervently in music and played it like
he meant it his whole life, kissing off commercial pressures to do
otherwise, sticking with a band that didn't make serious money for
over twenty years. He was a workingman in the tradition of his father,
who played in swing bands, and his grandmother, a union maid. He was
also a rock star with a multi-million dollar home in the richest
county in the country and he made a lot of money designing neckties he
freely admitted he would never wear.
He lived through tragedies. He was in an auto accident in which he
lost his closest friend -- "the guy in our circle who really had
talent" -- and he lost Pigpen -- "the Grateful Dead was his band" --
to alcoholism. He watched his father drown in a river on a fishing
trip. Despite -- or perhaps because of this -- he was unsurpassingly
reckless with his own life and at the same time affirmed life on an
almost religious level.
He was the leader of a band of people derided as flower-power,
see-no-evil hippies, but anyone paying any attention to him figured
out pretty quickly that he wrote and sang with intense personal
knowledge of the darkest recesses of the human spirit. He was a man
who took his sweetness and light carefully, cautiously and
suspiciously. "Every silver lining's got a touch of grey," a line from
his writing partner Robert Hunter, couldn't be a more perfect way of
describing the way he seemed to live.
He probably performed more big-time rock shows -- along with the other
30-year members of the Dead, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann
-- than any other human being on the planet, yet he was a man
afflicted with stage fright.
He led a family unsurpassed in the rock "industry" for it's loyalty
and commitment to it's workers and fans, but he had four children by
three different women; the first of those children basically didn't
even know him until he was an adult.
Here's what I remember. I remember being a twenty-year-old kid from a
fucked-up suburban family and deciding to go check out the Grateful
Dead one day.
I showed up at the Oakland Auditorium and ended up, by virtue of
ignorance and luck, hanging out on the rail in front of Jerry. For
most of it, I just didn't get it. All I could see and hear was a
maelstrom of electricity and screaming and energy and power. Until
"Wharf Rat," a song, of course, that I had never heard before. But it
turned out to be what I'd been looking for my whole life -- a frank
confession of otherness and loss, a mixed-up and confusing story with
no easy answers, but shot through with redemption and hope. The fact
that hope was of dubious value made it even better, even truer.
Jerry Garcia changed my life. He helped me find spirituality and
sexuality and joy and hope and at the same time made cynicism and
despair seem like rational choices. I'll never be able to thank him
enough. I'll never forget him. I'll never forgive him, either. And I
will spend the rest of my life finding ways to celebrate him, because
honest celebrations are what he lived for, and he deserves no less.
Saturday, August 3, 2002
from the Other Coast
Took a chance on tulips in Central Park
but they were gone, just a few pink too-far-open
petals left in an otherwise empty bed.
There are no bird songs to wake to,
just car brakes and buses revving up.
Mother's Day bouquets are cheaper than
at home, though, and the Staten Island ferry ride
is free. How pretty my only daughter is
as she lifts her hand to hail a cab.
(See Make Love Not War, Jennie Orvino's spoken word CD)
Monday, July 29, 2002
Downtown Pittsburgh
In These Crowds
Fragments of people pass by, a flash of red, black heels, triangle of a t-shirt, swatch of blue, briefcase, multiplied, simulacrum, repeated, all I can get, catch it while you can. Too quick, on these cement sidewalks where parti-colored stones glint undifferentiated, too many to see faces and their expressions. It's like my reading list for the week, stacks of books and essays on my desk that I'll never finish, and be more than lucky to brand a single fortunate sentence in my memory.
His relaxed saunter catches my attention, close-cropped head bobbing up at each black pause between the crosswalk's white lines at Grant and 6th. His shirt's striped like that too, and faded gray, thumbs in pockets, but it's this jerky bounce in his body which must be eternal, a buoy floating up and down in streamlined stressed nerves of water running in the direction of streets, that earmarks where it's too shallow and too deep. Enough to let me know I wouldn't be lost in these crowds.
(See Day 7 in Slow Trains September 11 section)
-Claire Barbetti 7/29/2002
Thursday, July 18, 2002
Scituate, Massachusetts
How To Get It Out!
Take Euripides down to the sea. Horde of Bakkhai, wind swirling around waves & stones like a wild animal, choric utterance welling up with what it finds down there under the surface below the rational. That's just it: getting the words down. Down to where the blood is, the viscera, one must follow in the footsteps of the Maenads, follow Dionysos down to the temenos, where Karoly Kerenyi got it right, saying the god of the irrational will always do the one thing required of him when he sets foot on sacred ground: commit sacrilege! The only greater desire for her is desire to praise her.
(See Ode to New York City )
Friday, July 12, 2002
Mendocino County, California
House-Sitting in Gualala, #3
As I swept the hearth with a wisk broom and filled the galvanized bucket, I felt old, crone-ish, or maybe just humble -- like Cinderella -- as I added the remains of my three fires to the neat pile of wet ashes
behind the house. Human remains, I'm told, are a mixture of fine parts and tiny chunks of bone. My ashes will be made of crumpled, unfinished poems -- all the times a lump in my throat kept the voice down. The kids won't hear of funeral rites, my notions of a wake at home, coffin decorated by my friends, a rock 'n' roll band so everyone can dance. Burn the diaries with me.
(See Make Love Not War, Jennie Orvino's spoken word CD)
Monday, July 8, 2002
Richmond
In Richmond this weekend, I saw a musician named Danny Beirne at a surprise
birthday party thrown by my childhood friend Rufus (father from Virgina/
mother from Chile), for Holly (his wife and mother of Cole, my godson).
Danny plays the electric keyboard, has about a
thousand tunes in his head, can turn from the comic to the tragic on a dime
(but for the nickel). He was out in the backyard in the dead of the night,
ostensibly playing for a few lost souls, but really for himself, carefully
placing the little lamp on his piano two feet away and shining
directly on his face, so he could sweat and radiate in the tried and true
tradition of the beatific performer in the spotlight with his total
sixties' freak wiry long rasta red hair (with a bozo bald spot in the
middle) flowing back and forth like the leaf-laden branches of a tree in a
summer thunderstorm.
Just as it seemed like he was winding down, he'd get
a totally antic, manic expression, look me straight in the eye, and belt out
another tune. Could have played all night long if he was anywhere but
American suburbia surrounded by a motley crew of exhausted forty
somethings -- could still be playing for all I know. Actually, there is no
doubt he is, right now, for sure. Who would dare stop him? (Answer: his
own singer/ photographer wife in Charlottesville who wanted him home at a
reasonable hour.)
Monday, July 1, 2002
Italy
We're here in Florence (Firenze) after four days in
Rome. Rome was pretty hectic. The Forum and
Coliseum are much more excavated than 25 years ago,
and it felt like a different place. It was a lot
more crowded. The last time I went to the Coliseum,
only about 20 people were there. This time, it felt
like we were assembling to go watch the lions. With
everyone on every street corner watching or listening
to the World Cup, it felt like the mother of all
stadiums, complete with tax breaks from the populace.
The Sistine Chapel felt different this time, too. The
line was incredible, and you felt like a herd being
pressed through the sightseeing mill, but I stayed for
about an hour and looked through my glasses. I am not
sure that I like the colorization that it went
through. It still is a prodigious job, but then I
knew a lot more about it, even watched Charlton Heston
paint it one morning not long ago (Rex Harrison does
not look like Guilio II, because I saw a painting of
him at the Uffizi in Florence yesterday. I prefer
Harrison.) Anyway, colorization has brightened it up,
but it feels something like Ted Turner's colorization
of Gone With the Wind. Something, Im not quite sure
what, went out of the picture.
A good meal in Trastevere in a wonderful little
trattoria brought me to the end of our journey there,
but the next day when I went to get a car, the one-way
streets, the motorcycles and Vespas, drove me nuts,
and it took three hours to clear Rome, only to find
myself in the same situation in Florence.
Here, we really enjoyed the Uffizi. I'm slowly
acquiring a taste for Italian Renaissance, and I
always have loved the Lippo Lippi and Boticelli, so
they made the day in the Uffizi. Then in the heat of
the day, after three hours at the office (uffizi means
office), we went to the Pitti Palace and climbed the
hill to look out over the city.
We have a great roof at the place we are staying near
the San Lorenzo church, and we ate on it and watched
the sun go down over the city, in particular the
Duomo. This morning, we opened the Accademia where
the Michelangelo David is, and I stayed about 30
minutes, just tracing all the angles from all the
perspectives. He s got great buns, and you can see
how they are attached to his hips. What I thought was
a rock in his hands turns out to be an attachment for
his arm, to give it more stability. The whole thing
speaks of what the Renaissance means -- the triumph of
man over adversity and this docile place in the
universe.
(See The Lawn Poems in Slow Trains Issue 1)
Friday, June 21, 2002
The longest day, full of light (though here in Colorado we're full of smoky skies on too many days this June!) brings in the new summer issue of Slow Trains, proudly starting our second year of publication.
The Slow Trains Ten feature continues with poet Scott Poole in the hot seat, and we have also introduced audio poetry with Jennie Orvino's sexy Main Squeeze Blues. This issue is full of fantastic fiction; essays ranging from Bangladesh to Virginia; Jeff Beresford-Howe's column on the ethics of drugs in baseball; and glorious poetry on colors, champagne, New York City, and characters who walk off their wedding cake into the cool green garden of the world.
Monday, June 17, 2002
Mendocino County, California
House-Sitting in Gualala, #2
I picked a second wild iris
and put it in the gray ceramic vase
with yesterday's (still perky and putting out
a second bud). I'll write something about the iris,
I said, something about the color, how white
the white, how purple the purple -- or is it
a kind of blue? I apologized to the trees and
roadside grasses before I looked both ways
and snatched it, remembering my daughter
bringing bouquets of dandelions
or an occasional neighbor's rose
as a gift to momma. Girls do this.
Girls pick flowers.
(See Make Love Not War, Jennie Orvino's spoken word CD)
Monday, June 10, 2002
Paris of the Dream
This Part of the Story
Moon through bedroom window blinds, unable to reach the depths of dream. I strike up a conversation with the young street urchin on the bridge, (greeting anyone other than those knowing everything,) who points out where she lives. Circular tower, Seine running under it, I call the greatest place in Paris. Inside, a woman arranges a large bowl of bird wings, asking me to censor this part of the story. I'm leaving out a number of minor details, just in case.
(See The Slow Trains Ten in Issue 4)
Tuesday, June 4, 2002
Gualala Point Beach
Mendocino County, California
House-Sitting in Gualala, #1
Caterpillars
noticed on the asphalt path
to Gualala Point Beach. No
breaching whales, even with calm seas,
just crawling orange and black fuzz
a stage of moth or butterfly
I don't know the name of.
The first one rears its head
at my finger obstacle
moves toward the dark creases slowly,
seems lazy, or depressed; the other
undaunted as I put hand after hand
in its way, races up and over
with pinpoint feet --
my first out-of-town caress.
(See Make Love Not War, Jennie Orvino's spoken word CD)
Monday, May 27, 2002
Denver
Editor's moment: My baby graduated high school last Thursday, and the only grin bigger
than his was mine. We are in full celebration mode, sunglasses, flip-flops, and
all ("but Mom, they said we only have to wear some kind of shoes, and some kind of
clothes under our gowns!") He will be off to the University of Colorado in Boulder this
fall, but before then we will celebrate his younger brother's finishing middle school
next week, and then enjoy the most magical summer of futures imagined here.
Sunday, May 19, 2002
New Zealand
A lonely royal albatross hangs in the 50 mph gusts near the rocky coast of Dunedin. His 10 foot wingspan barely moves, the feathers at the tips seem to slightly adjust to the changes. He looks like he is flying with his fingers. It is more than 1000 miles toward Antarctica, nearly two thousand to the coasts of Chile, but he moves from place to place and finds his way back to this shore where the chicks hatch in February.
New Zealanders believe that possums are an Australian plot. They have no predators, and they destroy the balance of the delicate order of nature. Kiwis (as New Zealanders they call themselves) make their extremely warm fur into gloves and hats, but they admit they are losing the battle, and worry about it incessantly.
From our B&B at Nelson, "The Honest Lawyer", we headed for the Marlborough Sound. You ride along the sides of mountains, where the sea has torn great inlets, dotted by small towns with ferry boats and fishing vessels from one place to the other along the rugged coastline that winds in and out until it reaches Picton. They seem to believe that a major highway constitutes two lanes narrowing into a one lane bridge, with enough room on either side so that two compact cars can pass comfortably without one falling 1000 feet into the sea. Of course we met only trucks. In Picton, we found the last convict ship left that populated Australia and New Zealand, the Edwin Fox. It is rotting away, and the local one-room museum sells postcards to restore it.
All along the south island we saw sights that reminded me of nothing so much as Ansel Adams discovering the pristine Yosemite in the ‘30s. Around turn after turn, we had another “ooh” or “aahh.” Searching for whales at Kaikoura, we found one sleeping on the surface. People eat a fish that changes sexes, called barramundi. I wondered if that was their version of the midlife crisis.
In Christchurch, numbed by the experience of everything from glaciers located a quarter mile from rainforests to wild barren coastlines with great surfer waves and no surfers, we decided it was time to see The Lord of the Rings at the local theater. Instead of seeing what we had experienced, we saw how much we missed.
(See The Lawn Poems in Slow Trains Issue 1)
Monday, May 13, 2002
I was just up in Spokane at the Get Lit festival,
freezing my ass off -- I seriously need a personal
assistant to tell me that capri pants and sandals do
not cut it in the far Northwest -- and got a copy of a
book of interviews with writers (one of them being
me) -- it's called Range of the Possible: Conversations
With Contemporary Poets, from Eastern Washington
University Press. The interviewer, Tod Marshall, asked
us all a series of somewhat similar questions; each
interview takes off in unique directions, but it's
fascinating to see how the various poets respond to
questions about influences, the line, poetry and
culture, poetry and religion, and more. I read several
on the plane ride, and they're
all illuminating in terms of poetic practice. There's
a nice range, from considering iambics to considering
the field of the page, from the material to the
unabashedly spiritual, from issues of communication
and difficulty and the exploration of consciousness
to...everything else. Some of the writers: Gillian
Conoley, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Yusef
Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, Li-Young Lee, Robert
Wrigley. I love books like these and would like to see
more -- I'd love to get inside the heads of a lot more
fellow writers & see what they're thinking & what is
animating & informing their work.
(See more at Kim Addonizio's Web site)
Saturday, May 4, 2002
Ancestral Guardian
Drumming on a paper cup, he said he couldn’t stay still without moving, & that he inherited his mother’s propensity to smile no matter what. When her father, leader in the village, family protector & disciplinarian, lost his sponge, she laughed. Back then the sponge was filled with spirits, & to misplace it or have it stolen was a very serious thing. As the patriarch gathered the family & neighbors to hunt for this dry marine animal, she laughed. Her father got a cane, beat her publicly while she could only crawl away from the old beliefs, laughing. Turns out the sponge merely fell off the window to the ground outside.
Osayi, of the Edo tribe, the Benin people, said his grandfather died a peaceful death. His uncles often told the story of working on the satellite dish in Benin City, & that their father sat in his chair waiting for the signal to commence. Raucously they came into the living room to say they fixed it. They thought he must have been sleeping, but found him dead. On their way to the hospital thieves stopped their car, took the keys, ordered everyone out. The bandits tried to wake the old man lying supine in the back. Startled by the corpse, they handed over the keys, & vanished.
(See The Slow Trains Ten in Issue 4)
Friday, April 26, 2002
Down the rabbit hole
About ten years ago I fell down my own personal rabbit hole. It has been dark more often than not, but also sometimes wondrous and other-worldly. It started slowly, with a certain inability to do the things I meant to do, and progressed to living out my days in a giant bowl of molasses, always working on plans and ideas, but moving toward them slowly if at all. I raised a child, mostly by benign love and filling in the blanks; I wrote sad and desperate poems that people seem to love; and I grew older, lost in the maze of depression and slow wonder. I grew bigger, I grew smaller, not by magical potions, but by the sensual satisfaction of Krispy Kremes and Oreos alternated with sheer determination to rise above the soup and dance. Life got curiouser and curiouser, until I knew not who I was and had to write everything down to remember. Instead of speaking to caterpillars, I talked to myself, which was often comforting, except when I lost track and did it in public places. Nobody woke me up, friends just drifted away, but the climb out of the depths began with a jolt when I wrote in a poem that I wished I could trade places with a woman I knew who was terminally ill with cancer, because of the love and understanding she received. I gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and began to follow Alice in chasing away the demons, through meds and love and talk. Now I'm late, so very late, for where I thought I'd be, but I am fully alive to consider picking daisies, and finally, finally free.
Friday, April 19, 2002
3 a.m.
In the dream there are playing cards featuring the works of Picasso, reminding me with every hand that to paint to imagine to write is the only antidote to despair and spiraling loss. There are players at the table who sing out their bids; there are players at the table who trump with a prayer. The room is dense with a hanging garden of anthuriums and orchids, filled with ruby-throated hummingbirds returned from their winter in Mexico, an annual symbol of hope. The man in the long black coat offers me the cut, and I shuffle Femme a la montre with Femme assise a la montre, smiling, avoiding, not answering the question on the table of what was it I wanted when I first came to play.
(See Better Angels in the September 11 section)
Friday, April 12, 2002
Washington D.C.
Fierce April winds are creating whirlpools and eddies of blossoms on the
road that sweeps around the tidal basin; the same road I'm driving on
almost every day of the year at around 8:45 A.M.. Thomas Jefferson (bronze
version, nineteen feet tall) doesn't move. Or speak. Doesn't have to. His
thoughts are inscribed:
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of
tyranny over the mind of man."
Just a po' body in a car, I'm moving way too fast to catch his drift...
Monday, April 05, 2002
the bookstore
April is National Poetry Month, of course, and here's a little leap
of imagination on how poetry books might perhaps move to the front of
the bookstore, including "Dieting with Emily Dickinson" --
Read Who Moved My Iambic Pentameter?
Monday, April 01, 2002
Middle Earth/Iowa
I should first explain that I live in the Shire. And that Tolkien is
a guilty pleasure. Sure, I know that old J.R.R. was modelling his tale
on
rural England and not the American midwest, but I knew those hobbits,
every exasperating, provicial, sturdy, and lovable-despite-all-that
one
of them. Besides, I grew up not far from where folks had once lived
in
sod houses -- a lot closer to a hobbit hole than anything ever seen
in
merry England. That's the genius of Tolkien's books -- they're a
tale
well told, more about the tale and the telling than about the fantasy
elements that still embarass me.
I saw the movie in December with great trepedation. I have to admit
they did practically everything as well as a movie could have done.
Gandolf faired exceedingly well. The story line was intact. They
did
everything that imagination, money, and digital special effects could
have done on screen. Still, it was like watching video Cliff notes.
The telling, the meandering, the asides that delighted me, had all
vanished into the sweep of the central story line. I'm not entirely
unappreciative, but I wanted my book back.
I'm happy to report that they preserved my single favorite lines from
the first book. Frodo berates Gandolf about not dispatching the
duplicitous and coldly focused Gollum, and says, "He deserves death."
To which Gandolf replies, "Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that
live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it
to
them? Then don't be too quick to deal out death in judgement. Even
the
wise cannot see all ends." No one has said it better.
Sadly, they left out my single favorite character from the book --
Tom
Bombadil. Tom, who I suppose must represent nature, is one of the
better meanders of the book. In most ways he's a silly character,
and I
can understand the omission. But he has a single characteristic that
I've always cherished -- over him the ring has no power. Not so for
wizards, and kings, and elves, and the greatest evil, and the
greatest
good, not even for the sturdiest, unimaginative hobbit. So my
greatest
hope for the movie is that it will inspire yet another generation to
read Tolkien's crooked, meandering tale, and fall in love with the
telling.
Meanwhile, I'm back to Middle Earth.
(See The Fritz Chapel in Issue 3)
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
The $185,000 Rabbit
We are the family that psychologists like to direct your attention to, the casualty of modern day divorce, the classic textbook case. Single, working mother, two kids. The bad man left and decided that playing the role of an emotionally and financially supportive father was not really his cup of tea. Doesn't matter what he signed, swore to, said he'd do, he’s not doing it. When the non-payment of support papers arrive on his doorstep (and they will), all the crows in Mount Albert will soar into the sky, fly backwards, and the flapping of their wings will reverberate across the atmosphere, eventually creating a sand storm deep in the Sahara. Things like that happen when the natural balance of his world is upset.
Seven years ago the natural balance of my world was upset.
The marriage was over, and all of our combined financial burden fell to me. I had to declare personal bankruptcy, I lost my home, the $14,000 deposit on it and the $39,000 in mortgage payments I'd already made. I lost my dignity and self-esteem. I lost my car. In that fateful summer 7 years ago, I crammed 3 major (so the experts say) life crises into a one week span. I moved, I started a new job, and said goodbye to my relationship. I got a new car -- new to me anyway -- the rear passenger door was secured with duct tape, the tailpipe with a coat hanger, and the driver’s seat was just a wee bit off kilter...you could always tell when I was coming, what with the noise, and the clouds of black smoke that spewed out the back. Work was close -- good thing. I rented the top half of a bungalow. The man that lives in the basement has a series of girlfriends. (This one, he says, likes to fight so they can have make-up sex. The make-up sex is just as loud and far less entertaining than the fighting.)
But you know, you just do what you have to do. I handled my nickels like they were man-hole covers, saving a bit here and a bit there, and now I'm looking at buying a house. Somewhere that I can call my own. I've got my deposit money and I'm ready. I looked at lots of houses and finally found one I liked -- the color scheme's a little odd, but nothing you can’t work with. I took my daughter to see it and she was uncharacteristically silent on the drive back to our apartment.
She got out of the car, all crossed arms and knitted brow. “I hate it.” she said.
I asked for specifics. She hated everything. The paint was “hideous,” the rooms “too small,” the kitchen cupboards were “ugly,” the carpeting “dull,” the staircase “boring.” “I kind of liked it,” I said. She rolled her eyes, sighed and wandered away. What do I know, I used to think her dad was good looking.
She emerged from her room about an hour later and sat down with me
on the couch. "I could like it," she said.
"Really?" Thinly veiled sarcasm pooling between us. "How's
that?"
"Well, that pen in the backyard. Could a rabbit go in there?"
“Maybe.”
“Or a pig?”
“No.”
“Chicken?”
“No chickens.”
“Then a rabbit. I could like it if a rabbit lived in the pen.”
So the deal was done. The offer’s gone in and everyone’s happy. I’m wondering though, if I’ve bought myself a house or a $185,000 rabbit.
Friday, March 22, 2002
Washington, D.C.
Visiting the small exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, "The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the Medici," I'd brought along a magnifying glass, the better to see the detail. It's an astonishing show, a cabinet of wonders lent by the Uffizi (mostly), that displays the Medici's prized collections of plant imagery rendered with exquisite precision in paint and, with nearly as much detail, in inlaid stone. The magnifying glass helped, and I didn't mind looking conspicuous (even enjoyed it). The glass must have given me an aura of expertise -- I should carry one always! -- that encouraged questions from strangers. We were looking at a painting of a crystal vase filled with scarlet tulips. "What's 'gouache'?" a man to my right asked. I explained, and was thanked. "What's 'vellum'?" his companion asked. "The skin of a very young calf," I replied. She looked appalled. Shocked at the spectacle of so much beauty supported (literally) by such a horror? Her reaction prompted several thoughts...
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Our Spring Issue is in full bloom! New features in Slow Trains include The Slow Trains Ten, wherein we begin to quiz interesting writers immersed in the creative life about the things that matter, and also our first online chapbook, the delightful Soup Sonnets, which is "the way a gasp of excitement sounds, when you take it easy..."" So dive in, and don't spend too much time on this bright spring day worrying about the question that arises in Scott Poole's jazzy encyclopedic poem -- how will they sum up your life in a thousand years in one paragraph?
Friday, March 15, 2002
Reading the most wonderful Slow Trains kind of book -- jazz in the bittersweet blues of life -- life on the road in the early nineties with Wynton Marsalis & his septet, beautifully written with/by Carl Vigeland. "And I'd be lying if I told you that beautiful women don't make you play better. Or try to play better. But not just the women. The presenter, who has worried for weeks about today's weather. The sweet grandmother who fixed you some cookies and asked if you could play some Harry James.....Parades and picnics, a stage, a summer's day, the cats. I loved them. I just loved them. You could take away all the glitter and just let us play. Hell! we're from New Orleans, we understand picnics and parades. And sweet things. And the blues. And making love......"
Sunday, March 10, 2002
Colorado Springs, ColoradoIn spite of all the anti-gay/backwards things I thought I knew about this area, I have to admit while I'm here visiting a sweet friend in Colorado that this might be the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen short of some Pacific beaches. The Broadmoor Hotel is reasonably-priced glam/deluxe digs, Pike's Peak is an inspiration ( I swear I looked out at that morning view and decided to be a better man), even the Air Force Academy is quite striking as military schools go. I am definitely coming back here for baseball season, to see the minor league Sky Sox field with the hot tub used by fans out in right field.
Friday, March 01, 2002
Denver Eight inches of fresh white powder roar in overnight to welcome the first day of March. School delays, big boots, brand new snowblower finally put to use by eager teenagers. Blow a path to the cars; to the street; to the hot tub; to the dog's water dish, which is really more of a (cold) tub, since Blizzard the wild Siberian Husky insists on staying outdoors in the snow and the cold to frolic and make mad paths around the yard. Listening to the Rockies exhibition baseball game, coming from warmer places, on the radio while making chili and cornbread to keep us safe and warm until our (almost) ominpresent Denver sun returns again.
March is the month of returning light, with sunrise moving a full 45 minutes earlier by the end of the month, and on the equinox (20th) the Spring Issue of Slow Trains will arrive, fully packed with literary delights. Stories and essays and poetry will include a report from Shanghai, poetic drum circles, a woman going to hell in a handbag, the truth about standing up against the Yankees, our first online chapbook of the "Soup Sonnets," a tale of the King Biscuit Blues, and much more.
Friday, February 22, 2002
My Small Wave
Sky hinged at horizon by fog, forcing me to recognize distinctions: my small wave of consciousness rolling, rolling slowly over dark, illuminated, depths of dream. A wailing in the distance. She says she has to go to answer it somewhere, like a phone. I stay put. A train in the station, ready; a plane on the tarmac, taxiing; a host waiting for company on the way with wine & flowers. Hello, welcome, I'm Robert, take a look around, make yourselves at home. She's just gone to change. A woman, a white dress there in the depths, the clarity of which puts this distant fog to shame.
Monday, February 11, 2002
from Denver to Salt LakeMy kids are avidly following the snowboarding at the Olympics, in spite of dismissing the idea in some ways, since "real" snowboarders do the same. Except for those ones winning medals, of course . . . I ask my sons, both expert snowboarders, if they can do any of those things in the halfpipe that I watched Kelly Clarke win her medal for yesterday. My oldest, who freely does back flips off of regular jumps and rides rails that are curved like snakes, says no, he can only do a 180 ( a basic go up, catch a little air, turn and come back down), and he says that what they're doing is the hardest thing there is to do in snowboarding. To get "big air," he says, is just hard, and is more than just speed, and he offered me a complex answer on just how one technically has to do it. I asked my youngest the same question later, and he is still of that wonderful honest age, with little machismo surrounding him. He says no, all he can do is go back and forth on the halfpipe, no "air," and when asked why, he explained that it scares the living daylights out of you to drop into the halfpipe just right, pick up speed, and then go straight up the wall, sure that you're going to flip backwards on your head.
Friday, February 08, 2002
Salt Lake CityChecking in from Salt Lake, when I'd much rather be on a slow train somewhere, or at least covering Mardi Gras -- this is like a bright, perky, all-white, super-clean, cold Disneyland, thank God for the state liquor store nearby. Security is over the top, the "patriotism" may get unbearable, and Nike had it right when they had that ad a few years back that got pulled for not being PC -- "You don't win the silver, you lose the gold." If I have to hang with super-competitive atheletes, I'd rather hang with the honest ones with the money and the lifestyle to go with. But in spite of the Feds and the dogs and metal detectors on every corner, everyone is just waiting for something to happen.
Monday, January 28, 2002
Then step out in desire, out of sleep, from desire. For her, the world, the word. Three herons on three stones won't ignore the sun, but aim as if they were compass needles pointing East. I track it too, for no other reason than winter's icy purple. Dream, memory, & present tense. In dream I board a tramp steamer docked in Veracruz, lone votive candle burning on deck. In memory, herons tucked under evergreens over which snow falls, an Oriental screen, leaving them untouched. This present tense attracts the entire expanse of the world with such desire, it disappears. While I continue in the next breath a future, grasped, & past. Read poetry in Slow Trains Issue 3
Monday, January 21, 2002
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. --Leonard Cohen
Friday, January 11, 2002
Denver, ColoradoI am putting together a small book of poetry to give to my oldest son when he graduates from high school this May, called "The Enchanted Child, Laughing," because he has always been just that, a joyous child, full of humor and heart, with a laugh that can remind you why people use phrases like "bright new day." I wrote some of the poems for him when he was young, but then there's this long time gap, not unlike the quantity of photos in albums that decrease as kids get older and parents get busy. So I am working on filling in those missing spots -- oh, the pleasure of watching him pitch at Little League games, for example, which I always meant to write about -- but! it is the hardest emotional writing task I have ever undertaken. I figure that by the time I get to the actual graduation ceremony I might not have a single sappy tear left, having done my sentimental work here in the late evenings curled up in my writing armchair while listening to Van Morrison and Miles Davis, remembering.
Saturday, January 05, 2002
Brownfield, MaineTheatre
I drew the circle, one foot in front of the other, then shoveled a wall, seating row, & dance floor well into snow's ground of inscription. A hole in the middle for fire. A last Dionysian act! Under the full moon, in & out of the clouds, the four of us tried to live the moment intensely enough to stand within memory, against Freud's caution that consciousness & memory are mutually exclusive. Before the mirror stage, blue is the first color recognized by the human eye. If that curved line suggested warmth of body, the circle intimated embrace of another, which then reached inward toward beginnings: the barely audible, choric rant.
Read poetry in Slow Trains Issue 3
Read the earlier postcards in the archives.
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