--Ellen Meloy, November 2004
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Paying Attention
"...in the desert there is everything and there is nothing. Stay curious. Know where you are--your biological address. Get to know your neighbors--plants, creatures, who lives there, who died there, who is blessed, cursed, what is absent or in danger or in need of your help. Pay attention to the weather, to what breaks your heart, to what lifts your heart. Write it down."
Monday, December 1, 2008
Immersion
Must be all the fog in the valley today, but in thinking back to the 'best of the books,' hands down, one of the most pivotal books in my life was/is "Landscape With Figures: The Nonfiction of Place," an anthology of sensitive writers, naturalists, keen observers immersed with the topics of our place in relation to/with landscape, memory, and the self.
Book To Read
Just stummbled across this book...fiction, but so many themes relating to creative nonfiction (but, isn't falling the best way to get a new perspective?) Here's the description on the book, copy/pasted below:
The Theory of Light and Matter, by Andrew Porter
In the tradition of John Cheever, ten stories that explore the loss and sacrifice in American suburbia
In the tradition of John Cheever, ten stories that explore the loss and sacrifice in American suburbia
"These ten short stories explore loss and sacrifice in American suburbia. In idyllic suburbs across the country, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, narrators struggle to find meaning or value in their lives because of (or in spite of) something that has happened in their pasts. In "Hole," a young man reconstructs the memory of his childhood friend's deadly fall. In "The Theory of Light and Matter," a woman second-guesses her choice between a soul mate and a comfortable one. Memories erode as Porter's characters struggle to determine what has happened to their loved ones and whether or not they are responsible. Children and teenagers carry heavy burdens in these stories: in "River Dog," the narrator cannot fully remember a drunken party where he suspects his older brother assaulted a classmate; in "Azul," a childless couple, craving the affection of an exchange student, fails to set the boundaries that would keep him safe; and in "Departure," a suburban teenage boy fascinated with the Amish makes a futile attempt to date a girl he can never be close to.
Memory often replaces absence in these stories as characters reconstruct the events of their pasts in an attempt to understand what they have chosen to keep. These struggles lead to an array of secretive and escapist behavior as the characters, united by middle-class social pressures, try to maintain a sense of order in their lives. Drawing on the tradition of John Cheever, these stories recall and revisit the landscape of American suburbia through the lens of a new generation.
Andrew Porter is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has received a variety of fellowships including the 2004 W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts, a Helene Wurlitzer Fellowship, and a James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener/Copernicus Society of America. His award-winning fiction has appeared in One Story, Epoch, The Pushcart Prize Anthology and on NPR's Selected Shorts. "
October 2008
ISBN 0820332097 cloth • $24.95
ISBN 0820332097 cloth • $24.95
Just Beneath Me
(excerpt from unpublished memoir, "Land on Water."
)
1.
Winona, Minnesota was first home to a band of Eastern Dakota (Sioux) Native Americans, led by the great Wapasha dynasty. Native Americans first came to settle in Winona, formerly named Montezuma, around 1500-1700 A.D. and resided along the Mississippi River, living in bark-covered lodges in the summer and buffalo hide teepees in the winter.
1976.
Glen Echo Road is the shape of a horseshoe. Our house sits on the upper part of the curve. We live in a typical Midwest neighborhood, securely nailed with tradition, which resides at the base of Sugar Loaf Mountain. My relatives, on my mother’s side, consisting of four generations on my mother’s side, live west of us on the other side of the mountain.
Sugar Loaf is my back yard—the shiny centerpiece of my childhood. I am no more than seven years old and in total awe of the mountain’s presence. Its balding head looms over the neighborhood and the city of Winona, leaving an indelible mark on the memories to come. From any one of the front windows of our house—only a few hundred yards away—the mountain is always present. I will never get the mountain out of me. It will brand me as one of its own; it leaves a subtle beauty mark, often unrecognizable, even to those who think they know me well. I never forget that the mark is there.
The position of the sun guides and fosters my natural instincts on the mountain. I make sundials using sticks and robin egg sized stones, which to me are more valuable than numbers. I am fascinated how each hour in the day possesses two numerological faces: light and dark. Numbers feel distant in the order of things, not as flexible as the shape of letters: You chose Pilar, cursive or print. I wrap my fingers around the fat pencil. Should I slant to the left or right? Decades later I will still ask, today, who are you? I feel defined by my chosen writing style. The teachers place their hand over mine and let me feel the freedom in cursive. I build sentences, then paragraphs, and eventually stories using words. I feel comfortable with words, while numbers are float in their abstract worlds, and limited to their definite straight-faced values. To me, cataloging the world requires words. The explanations I seek can only be built from words. And I know there is a poetic logic in all things, though I don’t know what poetry is, and it’s my role to find it. No time to be tired. Too much to do. Catalog. Document. File. The process repeats itself. I am my greatest resource…this is what I hear growing up. You’re never too young to build a library. I want to be a specialist, though I am too young to really understand the weight of the word: expert.
Sugar Loaf invites me down a portal. I am free to explore the natural world, this secret garden. I carry a three-inch jack knife with a wood inlay and brass trim, not because I am cautious, but because the knife used to belong to my father. I accept his gift. I know there will be a story and a set of circumstances in accepting it. He is giving me responsibility. I am the boy he will never have. Instead, I am the first born of two girls—the only children he’d have from all three of his marriages. I listen to the rules of owning a jackknife: beware of the pointed tip; where to position my fingers to safely snap the blade shut; how to keep it protected and out of the rain. My father makes a full circle; he repeats his earlier warnings and precautions of jackknife ownership. There is a responsibility in owning a jack knife: Your own weapon can be sharply turned against you. I carry my dolls and the jack knife up the mountain, entering the world armed. I am the exception.
You’re never alone on a mountain. I am alive from the moment I enter the trail and climb towards a wooded canopy, my belly sharply puffing in and out, alert blue jay, my senses quick from excitement, survival. The goal is to reach the top of the mountain and locate the sandstone caves. I live by the light. Once I reach the top I breathe in the panoramic views of Winona. My father warns me of snakes, rattlesnakes to be exact, and tells me if one crosses my path to be very still. Neither the rattler, nor myself, may see each other coming if we’re both in a dark cave, so I am to stay out of caves too. I stand at the entrance to a cave as if it were a house where there’s no permission to enter. If I had to, would I kill a snake with my jackknife?
When has relying on our instinct become so unnatural, I wonder. Has the world grown too impatient to wait for their geological, gut-driven navigation to lead them? There are no state or county historical markers serving as direction on Sugar Loaf. The worn trails are wide enough for one person, while other parts of the trail are wider where hikers can walk side by side as they climb the mountain. I come to know the trails on the mountain well and commonly use the short cuts: small openings, like brief sighs between the brush that can take off hours in returning to the base of the mountain. Regardless of the path I take, I stop to identify wildflowers and pick up rocks, especially flat-shaped ones resembling discs, while keeping an eye out for my favorite rocks…the ones that resemble bird eggs. I look to the mountain for clues as to the direction I should take to reach the top, and so, a rock collection spawns after years of my eyes sifting through the caramel colored sand. Stone by stone, the landscape surrenders itself to me, inviting me to survey her private collections. Even with my jackknife, she trusts me and knows I am harmless.
I am always looking for something. When you walk with your eyes fixed to the ground your point of view becomes narrowed. In order to keep great focus a majority of things will be missed, even compromised. And yet, I am no different from the generations of children who have preceded me by climbing the mountain’s bumpy back, season after season, looking for Native American remnants: arrowheads, shards of pottery, beads the color of the deep blue sea, and traces of faded pigment revealing it might be a painting before you near the entrance to one of the caves.
Time softens, becomes nonexistent when you travel on land. I don’t have memories of losing my way on the mountain, only the fear to obey my mother’s single rule: Reach the base of the mountain before dark—regardless of where the shadows fall on my sundial. I race against the sky, my sandals picking up sand as I dart between the trees.
There is an ancestry of ghosts embedded in the layers in Sugar Loaf. Its history runs along the mountain like brail, serving as my instinctual direction, my sparkling motivation. A Native American ghost from the mountain followed my uncle Bruce from Minnesota to Michigan, where I am born, and where we lived for less than a year before we came back to Winona. The ghost, a female Native American Indian, is spotted several times at the historical house next to the lake in Michigan. Family stories say the Indian woman ghost saved my life, saved me from suffocating to death, what they believe was from the hands of a ghost indigenous to the area. A struggle between good and evil with two ghosts occurred. The unhappy, native Michigan male ghost dragged chains across the second floor of the houses, would pause, and then continued to drag the chains. He repeated the chain-dragging process until the day we moved back to Winona.
Story has it my father was at work, and my uncle Bruce was living with us. I was supposed to be upstairs in my bedroom sleeping in my crib where my mother left me. My mother and uncle Bruce were downstairs. Somebody went to check on me and found me sitting on the floor in the center of my bedroom with a thick plastic shopping bag over my head. The corners of the bag had been perfectly cut off. The scissors were in the top drawer of my dresser, where my mother always kept them, so everyone is certain the Sugar Loaf Indian ghost had done the cutting so I could breathe.
Before the bag snipping, life-saving event, Uncle Bruce said the Indian woman was a “good” ghost. She returned with us to Minnesota and lived in my aunt Gloria’s house, upstairs in the crawl space that joined the two bedrooms—the house where my mother, Gloria, and Bruce grew up. It was uncle Bruce who felt connected Sugar Loaf, passed it down to me. It would take thirty years before I’d realized this. I only knew a ghost had saved my life. A struggle between good and evil happened in my baby bedroom. If I had died, what would the ghost with chains gain? This ghost, possibly a prisoner, was no challenge for the Indian ghost woman. This was the topography of my first year alive.
* * *
It isn’t long before I hear the songs of the Native Americans ghosts call from Sugar Loaf. Chants echo, their cries fade in and out. The tips of their feathers brightly paint the turquoise sky. Words climb after falling from their mouths, deep but brief pauses follow when their lips part to take a breath. I breathe in the smoke from the fire; gray ribbons rise from the heart of their camps. They wave at me, inviting me to step inside their circle. They change my name and paint my face. My hands feel the single braid of hair, still like a river dividing the two lands of my back. I know I will never return to the bottom of the mountain; they own a part of me, gave me life. Instead I will remain part of their band, travel the paths by rawhide feet, and spend my afternoons asleep inside buffalo teepees, my fingers and tongue stained from berries. I am caught in a dream—dream their dream, so I am free from where memory ends or where it begins. And when I wake, I am alone. I spend my years next to the mountain wishing at least one member from the tribe would appear.
Back at home I ask my mother why the Indians don’t live on Sugar Loaf anymore. I can’t remember what her response was; instead, I remember climbing the mountain with an inherited faith. I know no other way to climb a mountain. Each time I begin to travel up the mountain I believe I might see one, maybe two of them, stubborn inhabitants who had refused to leave. At the top of the mountain I call out, is anyone there? The high winds whistle into my ear. I can’t decode the answer. I know many, other than myself, have stood in this same desolate spot.
* * *
My mother tells one of the first stories of Sugar Loaf to me. She says a young Indian maiden, Princess Wenonah, had jumped off Sugar Loaf to her death because she couldn’t be with the man she loved. I think of the young maiden when I’m on the mountain. I spend countless times looking down at jagged slopes and imagine her falling, perhaps even flying for a good minute, right before her eyes closed forever. I will believe this story well into adulthood; until I learn the actual bluff the princess jumped off wasn’t Sugar Loaf, but Maiden Rock, north of Winona, up the Mississippi River and in the state of Wisconsin. I share my new findings about the young maiden with my mother, who calls her sister, Gloria, who still lives in Winona. The legend of the maiden’s death has no truth in the city of Winona, and neither my mother nor aunt can remember who told them the story or how it originated. I break the family folklore almost thirty years later.
Throughout childhood I begin to hear stories about how “white men” drove away the Native American Indians. I ask my mother if we descend from the same line of white men? Why do they call them white? I sense shame and a feather-like sensitivity amongst them surfaces when I bring the subject matter up. I can’t follow their conversations, where sighs turn themselves into whispers, and somewhere, the story breaks up and disappears. I bottle up an unfiltered love I have for these native Winona residents. On the mountain I bang a smaller rock on a stone slab by raising my small fist into the air and smashing it down with all my force. Eventually I split the rock down the middle, creating two equal halves. I place them back together; the fit is perfect, seamless. I break more and more rocks open.
I spend unaccounted afternoons traveling the dense, resin-soaked woods that skirted out from the limestone dome of the mountain. Dark outlines of the spirits of who’ve lived and died here have fallen between the trees. Preservation has never looked more beautiful: Their sap-frozen bodies are poised, their fragility illuminating. Crystal, thread-like legs sparkle and stick out from their little black capes. Timeless are the insects.
In the years to follow I hear Sugar Loaf call my name trying to lure me back—even after we move four states away. In the seven years we lived next to the mountain I never found an arrowhead.
* * *
I drop my Baby Alive doll on my front lawn and run to greet my best friend, Kirstin. She’s waving her arms above her head trying to get my attention. Two hairless snakes rise towards the swollen, metallic clouds. Kirstin has captured a frog.
We squat like savages around an empty, turned upside down tuna can. Holding a twig in our small hands, we admire our dominance over nature and tap the top of the can with our twigs: A drum thunders over the frog; the death taps begin to wind up. A hysterical, unsteady rain inside the can begins to fall. The frog’s eardrums and lungs vibrate to the sounds of the child-sick ceremony. Warm specks from the frog’s breath shoot at the darkness. Space never planned to be this way, confined by tin and cement. The nightmare continues to shake and overwhelm. The purpose of any prison is to contain, making the inhabitant face its own humidity-harbored darkness. The body will do anything in efforts to survive, even sting itself in order to feel less alive.
The afternoon drags on and we continue to poke at the edge of the frog’s life using the points of our sticks. No squeaks come from the frog. I lift the edge of the can and peek at the soft blackness it holds in its eyes. What does it see in mine?
I am part of the natural world. My white face will be the last thing the frog will see. And then, all life for the frog will no longer exist. And the frog—indigenous to Sugar Loaf—unknowingly, will tumble into a frog infinity, pushed by the hands of a species that prides themselves on possessing reason and restraint in the animal kingdom.
The details of life arrest me.
My attention is held captive. I move only between mountain and sky. A baby blue ceiling hangs above the green mesh. These two worlds keep me detained as I wait for the winds to arrive. In the late afternoons I know the wind in my neighborhood can be in two places at once. The wind I feel on the mountain will be stronger than what is at the front door of my house. I learn to gauge the distance of an approaching storm by the temperament of the wind. If there is no wind, I know Winona could be under a tornado watch or warning. I also look to the leaves and note the smallest of a stir. With tremendous wind it can also mean a tornado is already approaching, so I check the blackness of the sky in all directions. Sometimes a black sky only means rain. I need no other evidence to support this instinct. Everything appears warranted; this is life on the mountain. I watch it unfold and become three-dimensional. I never carry a raincoat or umbrella up the mountain. Instead I open my mouth and taste the rain, extending out my arms like wings, letting the patchy sun dry my clothes and warm my bones before I return home. I find the accuracy of weather nests high on a mountain, where Fahrenheit was named after a man.
There is no permanence in things. Eventually, everything softens and crumbles back to its most basic components: ashes, dirt, air. An organic, visceral platform then has room to preside, budding with new growth. Hope’s most overlooked characteristic is to be subtle; I watch it leave its impression on the powdery face of rock walls. I hear about the hikers, who’ve come before me and have carved their names into the sandstone walls at the top of the mountain, digging their tools into its bulging and scalped limestone head. I, too, search for something sharp enough to recognize myself and document my presence. I gather pointed, strong rocks and narrowed sticks to carve my initials P.G. where other hikers like myself are limited in reach—into the neck of the mountain. I know my name, like the rest, will soften and be rain-rinsed away. I am briefly captured. I want to remember, be remembered as an inhabitant of the mountain. I know the mountain has a way to shed its skin, shaking the visitors out from its mane.
It won’t be until we move from Minnesota to Florida, the following year after the divorce and forced to leave Sugar Loaf that I begin to look at the world using a slide and a microscope. Introduced to a new set of colors, I look at everything, and for a while, I learn to touch the world using my eyes. No one will notice the transition, except for my mother, who gave it to me as a Christmas present. Frequently, I request samples of my mother’s hair to put on a slide: I see hairs no one knows are split.
2.
Local legend says the eighty-five foot dome on top of Sugar Loaf Mountain was the hat left behind by Chief Wapahsha (Wabasha), which had been transformed into stone. The other explanation is that the early quarrymen carved away at Sugar Loaf and stripped the top of the mountain in the process, leaving behind a limestone dome. The highest point of the mountain overlooks the city of Winona, and historically served as a river’s pilot landmark on the Mississippi River, now Lake Winona.
I divide life into four seasons, the same year I learn to cut out hearts. The mountain reveals a different personality with each cycle. Nothing remains the same for long. I am part of the seasonal pattern, following the beginning, middle, and end. This is what it means to assimilate, not just simply exist. I am learning to navigate on my own. An evolution is occurring: birth, love, and death.
It’s easier to start at the bottom of a heart. I fold a piece of red construction paper in half and snip my scissors upwards until I have cut one entire side of the heart. The paper scraps will be turned into smaller hearts; everything must be saved for the sake of making more hearts. Hearts turn best out when there is no pencil outline for my scissors to follow when I cut. I freehand cut hundreds of folded hearts: the shape is simple. We are the ones who complicate things: Beauty relies on any artist being patient. And after I finish cutting, I open my heart and smooth out the seam that runs down the center. I offer handfuls of hearts to my mother and father, some end up in drawers or become lost in the daily shuffle, while some make it to the refrigerator—fanning starlets, pinned with a letter from my alphabet magnet set.
The beauty of the mountain evolves with each season and impregnates my mind. It becomes an ever-growing presence, dovetailing its mild and mystic manner with life on Glen Echo Road. Shades of green, amber, and sunflower yellow sporadically slip off the mountain. There is always something for me to see, I just need to look for it. And I find, regardless of the seasons that love and loss is simultaneously cradled. There is no way to separate them from one another. The scribble the day’s event in each other’s diaries, and only love knows the right words. A golden globe for a sun sinks in the backdrop. The moonbeams come out early in the summer. We try to catch them outside our house. We stand there with empty jars and lids. You must be quick to trap. Our arms swing together, crashing like cymbals. How long will the light live?
Each autumn I watch the mountain loose its hair. Leaves pile around the army of wooden ankles until the winds begin to sharpen and the light surrenders and slips behind the clouds, sometimes for months. Every year, when I am fast asleep, the will mountain transforms itself into a white sanctuary. I make angels using my body in the snow on my front yard and stare at the thick hat of snow covering the mountain’s limestone head. I think about the caves that pit the side of the mountain, providing shelter for the squirrels, snakes, and deer from the icy winds. The only animal I don’t care for is the earthworm. Perhaps if I could make eye contact with one I’d feel differently. About this time of year the maple, elm, and white birch trees, which go on for miles, have now draped themselves in a forgiving white. Even their colorful, festive fall performance wasn’t as stunning as this; their beauty is staggering as they make their way towards an icy gray sky. With their snowflake glitter, they tremble as they try to adjust to the seasonal change. Their branches remain fixed, absolutely fearless to a frozen ground. Icicles as long as my arm hang from the rooftop of our house. My father tells me over and over never to look straight up at one or try and knock one out of the air and says I can loose an eye. So I avoid the crystal daggers. I turn desire into danger of what winter can bear. The voice of winter still speaks, and under such demands, both the beautiful and weak are required to play by its rules or be subject to die.
Kirstin and I meet the next morning in the same spot where we held the frog captive from the day before. I stare at the rock that’s holding the tuna can in place. I am curious to see if death has changed the form of the frog. Perhaps there is a chance that the frog is still alive. Maybe last night his squeaky songs had penetrated the thin tin walls and he had, indeed, reached the other frogs for help, who when they finally heard him, paused, after days of their frog lovemaking. And so, they stretched their bellies to belch back their brotherhood songs—their helpless chirps wavering towards the dark side of the mountain.
3.
With its location on the Mississippi River, and the arrival of the railroads in the 1860’s, Winona became the wheat and lumber-shipping center of the world. Winona became the USA's fourth largest grain market and one of the nation's richest cities by 1900. A city ordinance was passed in late 1890 specifying stone would only be used in the construction of the sidewalks of Winona. With this request, the name of the mountain was changed from Wapasha’s Cap to Sugar Loaf Mountain. And by the turn of the 20th century, developers were using the precious limestone from Sugar Loaf in the construction of buildings downtown.
“I think we should set it free on the mountain,” I announce. I take the rock off the top of the tuna can and toss it aside. I slowly lift the can. It’s too late. The frog had been burnt alive. Its body is crinkled black. My eyes become fixed on the dried stain encircling its body on the sidewalk. Its right front foot is outstretched, its tiny frog fingers reaching for something—for what? I look at the mountain. Would a lack of oxygen leave a mask of panic on its face? I pick up the frog and examine it in the air, showing it to Kirstin.
The afterthought of freeing the frog travels through me like a slow moving electrical current. Death slinks back from our two-person circle, its bony fingers point at us before they disappear back into its sackcloth sleeve. What’s the role with an afterthought? It could the fetus of reason, which never fully developed, becoming detached from our consciousness—the beginning of becoming ethically frayed.
I sit cross-legged on the sidewalk with my hands folded on my soft cotton dress. I feel chill of the winter’s day through my underwear. My eyes travel between the dead frog and the faded yellow daisies on my dress. I gently pull at a piece of thread at the hem of my dress, unwinding more and more of the stitches. The hem of my dress begins to come undone.
4.
Henry D. Huff bought an interest in the town site in 1853. With the consent of Capt. Smith, Huff erased the name of Montezuma and inserted the name of Winona on the plot, a name derived from the Dakota Indian word We-No-Nah, which means "first-born daughter.” It was around this time the process to relocate the Dakota tribe from their home along the Mississippi River to reservations. It was said that their late night traditions began to bother the European Americans who had settled in the area. By the end of the 1850’s the Dakota’s were entirely removed from what was better known as the Wapasha’s Prairie.
I watch my mother in the kitchen mix tuna in a large glass bowl. I confess to her about my murderous act with the frog. “I don’t know what made me kill,” I tell her. My first detail forces me to derail; all the actions I had carried out begin to spill from my mouth, thick like wet paint. She slams the fork on the kitchen counter. This is it. I begin to shrink. Shame grabs my throat; no words will have the chance to escape now. My eyes are merely sand dunes, soft and secondary to the sea they live by. I am sinking. This is where my mother will scold me, terrified that I have no respect for nature. Will I be forced to spend years in therapy working through my murderous fetishes? No, it will never happen, instead, my mother will strike me with the fear of God.
“You’re the oldest! You should know better and be setting an example for your little sister!”
I say nothing, as to avoid having my mouth washed out with bar of Ivory soap.
My mother and I stand facing each other in same spot, where three weeks prior, I had asked if I could have a glass of vinegar to drink. When she asked why, I told her that I learned in school that vinegar was given to Jesus Christ at the cross when he was thirsty. My mother had given me a half a glass of vinegar, but I could barely get a sip down. The intoxicating fumes blinded my eyes and choked out my experiment on suffering.
The three current generations have been passing their sins through Father Joseph. A few days later, mother took me to confession. On the other side of Sugar Loaf, I sat in a confession booth with my head down, waiting for the tiny wood door to slide open, for the breathe holes to appear—alleviating the stuffy darkness. When the door finally slides open I try not to make eye contact through the fuzzy dots on the screen. My hands fumble for my rosary. This time, I skip the Hail Mary and begin at cross and say the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t know if God can hear me, so I continue to repeat the prayer until I put myself into stupor.
Confession booths battle between sight and sound. First I hear Father Joseph—a slight rumbling of footsteps, then his door being securely shut. He’s reaching for something at his feet, perhaps his Bible. I hear him taking in a deep breath.
Is he whispering something? Will he recognize my voice?
Did he see me enter the booth? My head begins to spin. Just focus on the cross.
I sit on the red, oversized chair and know even the smallest of holes can fracture the light.
)1.
Winona, Minnesota was first home to a band of Eastern Dakota (Sioux) Native Americans, led by the great Wapasha dynasty. Native Americans first came to settle in Winona, formerly named Montezuma, around 1500-1700 A.D. and resided along the Mississippi River, living in bark-covered lodges in the summer and buffalo hide teepees in the winter.
1976.
Glen Echo Road is the shape of a horseshoe. Our house sits on the upper part of the curve. We live in a typical Midwest neighborhood, securely nailed with tradition, which resides at the base of Sugar Loaf Mountain. My relatives, on my mother’s side, consisting of four generations on my mother’s side, live west of us on the other side of the mountain.
Sugar Loaf is my back yard—the shiny centerpiece of my childhood. I am no more than seven years old and in total awe of the mountain’s presence. Its balding head looms over the neighborhood and the city of Winona, leaving an indelible mark on the memories to come. From any one of the front windows of our house—only a few hundred yards away—the mountain is always present. I will never get the mountain out of me. It will brand me as one of its own; it leaves a subtle beauty mark, often unrecognizable, even to those who think they know me well. I never forget that the mark is there.
The position of the sun guides and fosters my natural instincts on the mountain. I make sundials using sticks and robin egg sized stones, which to me are more valuable than numbers. I am fascinated how each hour in the day possesses two numerological faces: light and dark. Numbers feel distant in the order of things, not as flexible as the shape of letters: You chose Pilar, cursive or print. I wrap my fingers around the fat pencil. Should I slant to the left or right? Decades later I will still ask, today, who are you? I feel defined by my chosen writing style. The teachers place their hand over mine and let me feel the freedom in cursive. I build sentences, then paragraphs, and eventually stories using words. I feel comfortable with words, while numbers are float in their abstract worlds, and limited to their definite straight-faced values. To me, cataloging the world requires words. The explanations I seek can only be built from words. And I know there is a poetic logic in all things, though I don’t know what poetry is, and it’s my role to find it. No time to be tired. Too much to do. Catalog. Document. File. The process repeats itself. I am my greatest resource…this is what I hear growing up. You’re never too young to build a library. I want to be a specialist, though I am too young to really understand the weight of the word: expert.
Sugar Loaf invites me down a portal. I am free to explore the natural world, this secret garden. I carry a three-inch jack knife with a wood inlay and brass trim, not because I am cautious, but because the knife used to belong to my father. I accept his gift. I know there will be a story and a set of circumstances in accepting it. He is giving me responsibility. I am the boy he will never have. Instead, I am the first born of two girls—the only children he’d have from all three of his marriages. I listen to the rules of owning a jackknife: beware of the pointed tip; where to position my fingers to safely snap the blade shut; how to keep it protected and out of the rain. My father makes a full circle; he repeats his earlier warnings and precautions of jackknife ownership. There is a responsibility in owning a jack knife: Your own weapon can be sharply turned against you. I carry my dolls and the jack knife up the mountain, entering the world armed. I am the exception.
You’re never alone on a mountain. I am alive from the moment I enter the trail and climb towards a wooded canopy, my belly sharply puffing in and out, alert blue jay, my senses quick from excitement, survival. The goal is to reach the top of the mountain and locate the sandstone caves. I live by the light. Once I reach the top I breathe in the panoramic views of Winona. My father warns me of snakes, rattlesnakes to be exact, and tells me if one crosses my path to be very still. Neither the rattler, nor myself, may see each other coming if we’re both in a dark cave, so I am to stay out of caves too. I stand at the entrance to a cave as if it were a house where there’s no permission to enter. If I had to, would I kill a snake with my jackknife?
When has relying on our instinct become so unnatural, I wonder. Has the world grown too impatient to wait for their geological, gut-driven navigation to lead them? There are no state or county historical markers serving as direction on Sugar Loaf. The worn trails are wide enough for one person, while other parts of the trail are wider where hikers can walk side by side as they climb the mountain. I come to know the trails on the mountain well and commonly use the short cuts: small openings, like brief sighs between the brush that can take off hours in returning to the base of the mountain. Regardless of the path I take, I stop to identify wildflowers and pick up rocks, especially flat-shaped ones resembling discs, while keeping an eye out for my favorite rocks…the ones that resemble bird eggs. I look to the mountain for clues as to the direction I should take to reach the top, and so, a rock collection spawns after years of my eyes sifting through the caramel colored sand. Stone by stone, the landscape surrenders itself to me, inviting me to survey her private collections. Even with my jackknife, she trusts me and knows I am harmless.
I am always looking for something. When you walk with your eyes fixed to the ground your point of view becomes narrowed. In order to keep great focus a majority of things will be missed, even compromised. And yet, I am no different from the generations of children who have preceded me by climbing the mountain’s bumpy back, season after season, looking for Native American remnants: arrowheads, shards of pottery, beads the color of the deep blue sea, and traces of faded pigment revealing it might be a painting before you near the entrance to one of the caves.
Time softens, becomes nonexistent when you travel on land. I don’t have memories of losing my way on the mountain, only the fear to obey my mother’s single rule: Reach the base of the mountain before dark—regardless of where the shadows fall on my sundial. I race against the sky, my sandals picking up sand as I dart between the trees.
There is an ancestry of ghosts embedded in the layers in Sugar Loaf. Its history runs along the mountain like brail, serving as my instinctual direction, my sparkling motivation. A Native American ghost from the mountain followed my uncle Bruce from Minnesota to Michigan, where I am born, and where we lived for less than a year before we came back to Winona. The ghost, a female Native American Indian, is spotted several times at the historical house next to the lake in Michigan. Family stories say the Indian woman ghost saved my life, saved me from suffocating to death, what they believe was from the hands of a ghost indigenous to the area. A struggle between good and evil with two ghosts occurred. The unhappy, native Michigan male ghost dragged chains across the second floor of the houses, would pause, and then continued to drag the chains. He repeated the chain-dragging process until the day we moved back to Winona.
Story has it my father was at work, and my uncle Bruce was living with us. I was supposed to be upstairs in my bedroom sleeping in my crib where my mother left me. My mother and uncle Bruce were downstairs. Somebody went to check on me and found me sitting on the floor in the center of my bedroom with a thick plastic shopping bag over my head. The corners of the bag had been perfectly cut off. The scissors were in the top drawer of my dresser, where my mother always kept them, so everyone is certain the Sugar Loaf Indian ghost had done the cutting so I could breathe.
Before the bag snipping, life-saving event, Uncle Bruce said the Indian woman was a “good” ghost. She returned with us to Minnesota and lived in my aunt Gloria’s house, upstairs in the crawl space that joined the two bedrooms—the house where my mother, Gloria, and Bruce grew up. It was uncle Bruce who felt connected Sugar Loaf, passed it down to me. It would take thirty years before I’d realized this. I only knew a ghost had saved my life. A struggle between good and evil happened in my baby bedroom. If I had died, what would the ghost with chains gain? This ghost, possibly a prisoner, was no challenge for the Indian ghost woman. This was the topography of my first year alive.
* * *
It isn’t long before I hear the songs of the Native Americans ghosts call from Sugar Loaf. Chants echo, their cries fade in and out. The tips of their feathers brightly paint the turquoise sky. Words climb after falling from their mouths, deep but brief pauses follow when their lips part to take a breath. I breathe in the smoke from the fire; gray ribbons rise from the heart of their camps. They wave at me, inviting me to step inside their circle. They change my name and paint my face. My hands feel the single braid of hair, still like a river dividing the two lands of my back. I know I will never return to the bottom of the mountain; they own a part of me, gave me life. Instead I will remain part of their band, travel the paths by rawhide feet, and spend my afternoons asleep inside buffalo teepees, my fingers and tongue stained from berries. I am caught in a dream—dream their dream, so I am free from where memory ends or where it begins. And when I wake, I am alone. I spend my years next to the mountain wishing at least one member from the tribe would appear.
Back at home I ask my mother why the Indians don’t live on Sugar Loaf anymore. I can’t remember what her response was; instead, I remember climbing the mountain with an inherited faith. I know no other way to climb a mountain. Each time I begin to travel up the mountain I believe I might see one, maybe two of them, stubborn inhabitants who had refused to leave. At the top of the mountain I call out, is anyone there? The high winds whistle into my ear. I can’t decode the answer. I know many, other than myself, have stood in this same desolate spot.
* * *
My mother tells one of the first stories of Sugar Loaf to me. She says a young Indian maiden, Princess Wenonah, had jumped off Sugar Loaf to her death because she couldn’t be with the man she loved. I think of the young maiden when I’m on the mountain. I spend countless times looking down at jagged slopes and imagine her falling, perhaps even flying for a good minute, right before her eyes closed forever. I will believe this story well into adulthood; until I learn the actual bluff the princess jumped off wasn’t Sugar Loaf, but Maiden Rock, north of Winona, up the Mississippi River and in the state of Wisconsin. I share my new findings about the young maiden with my mother, who calls her sister, Gloria, who still lives in Winona. The legend of the maiden’s death has no truth in the city of Winona, and neither my mother nor aunt can remember who told them the story or how it originated. I break the family folklore almost thirty years later.
Throughout childhood I begin to hear stories about how “white men” drove away the Native American Indians. I ask my mother if we descend from the same line of white men? Why do they call them white? I sense shame and a feather-like sensitivity amongst them surfaces when I bring the subject matter up. I can’t follow their conversations, where sighs turn themselves into whispers, and somewhere, the story breaks up and disappears. I bottle up an unfiltered love I have for these native Winona residents. On the mountain I bang a smaller rock on a stone slab by raising my small fist into the air and smashing it down with all my force. Eventually I split the rock down the middle, creating two equal halves. I place them back together; the fit is perfect, seamless. I break more and more rocks open.
I spend unaccounted afternoons traveling the dense, resin-soaked woods that skirted out from the limestone dome of the mountain. Dark outlines of the spirits of who’ve lived and died here have fallen between the trees. Preservation has never looked more beautiful: Their sap-frozen bodies are poised, their fragility illuminating. Crystal, thread-like legs sparkle and stick out from their little black capes. Timeless are the insects.
In the years to follow I hear Sugar Loaf call my name trying to lure me back—even after we move four states away. In the seven years we lived next to the mountain I never found an arrowhead.
* * *
I drop my Baby Alive doll on my front lawn and run to greet my best friend, Kirstin. She’s waving her arms above her head trying to get my attention. Two hairless snakes rise towards the swollen, metallic clouds. Kirstin has captured a frog.
We squat like savages around an empty, turned upside down tuna can. Holding a twig in our small hands, we admire our dominance over nature and tap the top of the can with our twigs: A drum thunders over the frog; the death taps begin to wind up. A hysterical, unsteady rain inside the can begins to fall. The frog’s eardrums and lungs vibrate to the sounds of the child-sick ceremony. Warm specks from the frog’s breath shoot at the darkness. Space never planned to be this way, confined by tin and cement. The nightmare continues to shake and overwhelm. The purpose of any prison is to contain, making the inhabitant face its own humidity-harbored darkness. The body will do anything in efforts to survive, even sting itself in order to feel less alive.
The afternoon drags on and we continue to poke at the edge of the frog’s life using the points of our sticks. No squeaks come from the frog. I lift the edge of the can and peek at the soft blackness it holds in its eyes. What does it see in mine?
I am part of the natural world. My white face will be the last thing the frog will see. And then, all life for the frog will no longer exist. And the frog—indigenous to Sugar Loaf—unknowingly, will tumble into a frog infinity, pushed by the hands of a species that prides themselves on possessing reason and restraint in the animal kingdom.
The details of life arrest me.
My attention is held captive. I move only between mountain and sky. A baby blue ceiling hangs above the green mesh. These two worlds keep me detained as I wait for the winds to arrive. In the late afternoons I know the wind in my neighborhood can be in two places at once. The wind I feel on the mountain will be stronger than what is at the front door of my house. I learn to gauge the distance of an approaching storm by the temperament of the wind. If there is no wind, I know Winona could be under a tornado watch or warning. I also look to the leaves and note the smallest of a stir. With tremendous wind it can also mean a tornado is already approaching, so I check the blackness of the sky in all directions. Sometimes a black sky only means rain. I need no other evidence to support this instinct. Everything appears warranted; this is life on the mountain. I watch it unfold and become three-dimensional. I never carry a raincoat or umbrella up the mountain. Instead I open my mouth and taste the rain, extending out my arms like wings, letting the patchy sun dry my clothes and warm my bones before I return home. I find the accuracy of weather nests high on a mountain, where Fahrenheit was named after a man.
There is no permanence in things. Eventually, everything softens and crumbles back to its most basic components: ashes, dirt, air. An organic, visceral platform then has room to preside, budding with new growth. Hope’s most overlooked characteristic is to be subtle; I watch it leave its impression on the powdery face of rock walls. I hear about the hikers, who’ve come before me and have carved their names into the sandstone walls at the top of the mountain, digging their tools into its bulging and scalped limestone head. I, too, search for something sharp enough to recognize myself and document my presence. I gather pointed, strong rocks and narrowed sticks to carve my initials P.G. where other hikers like myself are limited in reach—into the neck of the mountain. I know my name, like the rest, will soften and be rain-rinsed away. I am briefly captured. I want to remember, be remembered as an inhabitant of the mountain. I know the mountain has a way to shed its skin, shaking the visitors out from its mane.
It won’t be until we move from Minnesota to Florida, the following year after the divorce and forced to leave Sugar Loaf that I begin to look at the world using a slide and a microscope. Introduced to a new set of colors, I look at everything, and for a while, I learn to touch the world using my eyes. No one will notice the transition, except for my mother, who gave it to me as a Christmas present. Frequently, I request samples of my mother’s hair to put on a slide: I see hairs no one knows are split.
2.
Local legend says the eighty-five foot dome on top of Sugar Loaf Mountain was the hat left behind by Chief Wapahsha (Wabasha), which had been transformed into stone. The other explanation is that the early quarrymen carved away at Sugar Loaf and stripped the top of the mountain in the process, leaving behind a limestone dome. The highest point of the mountain overlooks the city of Winona, and historically served as a river’s pilot landmark on the Mississippi River, now Lake Winona.
I divide life into four seasons, the same year I learn to cut out hearts. The mountain reveals a different personality with each cycle. Nothing remains the same for long. I am part of the seasonal pattern, following the beginning, middle, and end. This is what it means to assimilate, not just simply exist. I am learning to navigate on my own. An evolution is occurring: birth, love, and death.
It’s easier to start at the bottom of a heart. I fold a piece of red construction paper in half and snip my scissors upwards until I have cut one entire side of the heart. The paper scraps will be turned into smaller hearts; everything must be saved for the sake of making more hearts. Hearts turn best out when there is no pencil outline for my scissors to follow when I cut. I freehand cut hundreds of folded hearts: the shape is simple. We are the ones who complicate things: Beauty relies on any artist being patient. And after I finish cutting, I open my heart and smooth out the seam that runs down the center. I offer handfuls of hearts to my mother and father, some end up in drawers or become lost in the daily shuffle, while some make it to the refrigerator—fanning starlets, pinned with a letter from my alphabet magnet set.
The beauty of the mountain evolves with each season and impregnates my mind. It becomes an ever-growing presence, dovetailing its mild and mystic manner with life on Glen Echo Road. Shades of green, amber, and sunflower yellow sporadically slip off the mountain. There is always something for me to see, I just need to look for it. And I find, regardless of the seasons that love and loss is simultaneously cradled. There is no way to separate them from one another. The scribble the day’s event in each other’s diaries, and only love knows the right words. A golden globe for a sun sinks in the backdrop. The moonbeams come out early in the summer. We try to catch them outside our house. We stand there with empty jars and lids. You must be quick to trap. Our arms swing together, crashing like cymbals. How long will the light live?
Each autumn I watch the mountain loose its hair. Leaves pile around the army of wooden ankles until the winds begin to sharpen and the light surrenders and slips behind the clouds, sometimes for months. Every year, when I am fast asleep, the will mountain transforms itself into a white sanctuary. I make angels using my body in the snow on my front yard and stare at the thick hat of snow covering the mountain’s limestone head. I think about the caves that pit the side of the mountain, providing shelter for the squirrels, snakes, and deer from the icy winds. The only animal I don’t care for is the earthworm. Perhaps if I could make eye contact with one I’d feel differently. About this time of year the maple, elm, and white birch trees, which go on for miles, have now draped themselves in a forgiving white. Even their colorful, festive fall performance wasn’t as stunning as this; their beauty is staggering as they make their way towards an icy gray sky. With their snowflake glitter, they tremble as they try to adjust to the seasonal change. Their branches remain fixed, absolutely fearless to a frozen ground. Icicles as long as my arm hang from the rooftop of our house. My father tells me over and over never to look straight up at one or try and knock one out of the air and says I can loose an eye. So I avoid the crystal daggers. I turn desire into danger of what winter can bear. The voice of winter still speaks, and under such demands, both the beautiful and weak are required to play by its rules or be subject to die.
Kirstin and I meet the next morning in the same spot where we held the frog captive from the day before. I stare at the rock that’s holding the tuna can in place. I am curious to see if death has changed the form of the frog. Perhaps there is a chance that the frog is still alive. Maybe last night his squeaky songs had penetrated the thin tin walls and he had, indeed, reached the other frogs for help, who when they finally heard him, paused, after days of their frog lovemaking. And so, they stretched their bellies to belch back their brotherhood songs—their helpless chirps wavering towards the dark side of the mountain.
3.
With its location on the Mississippi River, and the arrival of the railroads in the 1860’s, Winona became the wheat and lumber-shipping center of the world. Winona became the USA's fourth largest grain market and one of the nation's richest cities by 1900. A city ordinance was passed in late 1890 specifying stone would only be used in the construction of the sidewalks of Winona. With this request, the name of the mountain was changed from Wapasha’s Cap to Sugar Loaf Mountain. And by the turn of the 20th century, developers were using the precious limestone from Sugar Loaf in the construction of buildings downtown.
“I think we should set it free on the mountain,” I announce. I take the rock off the top of the tuna can and toss it aside. I slowly lift the can. It’s too late. The frog had been burnt alive. Its body is crinkled black. My eyes become fixed on the dried stain encircling its body on the sidewalk. Its right front foot is outstretched, its tiny frog fingers reaching for something—for what? I look at the mountain. Would a lack of oxygen leave a mask of panic on its face? I pick up the frog and examine it in the air, showing it to Kirstin.
The afterthought of freeing the frog travels through me like a slow moving electrical current. Death slinks back from our two-person circle, its bony fingers point at us before they disappear back into its sackcloth sleeve. What’s the role with an afterthought? It could the fetus of reason, which never fully developed, becoming detached from our consciousness—the beginning of becoming ethically frayed.
I sit cross-legged on the sidewalk with my hands folded on my soft cotton dress. I feel chill of the winter’s day through my underwear. My eyes travel between the dead frog and the faded yellow daisies on my dress. I gently pull at a piece of thread at the hem of my dress, unwinding more and more of the stitches. The hem of my dress begins to come undone.
4.
Henry D. Huff bought an interest in the town site in 1853. With the consent of Capt. Smith, Huff erased the name of Montezuma and inserted the name of Winona on the plot, a name derived from the Dakota Indian word We-No-Nah, which means "first-born daughter.” It was around this time the process to relocate the Dakota tribe from their home along the Mississippi River to reservations. It was said that their late night traditions began to bother the European Americans who had settled in the area. By the end of the 1850’s the Dakota’s were entirely removed from what was better known as the Wapasha’s Prairie.
I watch my mother in the kitchen mix tuna in a large glass bowl. I confess to her about my murderous act with the frog. “I don’t know what made me kill,” I tell her. My first detail forces me to derail; all the actions I had carried out begin to spill from my mouth, thick like wet paint. She slams the fork on the kitchen counter. This is it. I begin to shrink. Shame grabs my throat; no words will have the chance to escape now. My eyes are merely sand dunes, soft and secondary to the sea they live by. I am sinking. This is where my mother will scold me, terrified that I have no respect for nature. Will I be forced to spend years in therapy working through my murderous fetishes? No, it will never happen, instead, my mother will strike me with the fear of God.
“You’re the oldest! You should know better and be setting an example for your little sister!”
I say nothing, as to avoid having my mouth washed out with bar of Ivory soap.
My mother and I stand facing each other in same spot, where three weeks prior, I had asked if I could have a glass of vinegar to drink. When she asked why, I told her that I learned in school that vinegar was given to Jesus Christ at the cross when he was thirsty. My mother had given me a half a glass of vinegar, but I could barely get a sip down. The intoxicating fumes blinded my eyes and choked out my experiment on suffering.
The three current generations have been passing their sins through Father Joseph. A few days later, mother took me to confession. On the other side of Sugar Loaf, I sat in a confession booth with my head down, waiting for the tiny wood door to slide open, for the breathe holes to appear—alleviating the stuffy darkness. When the door finally slides open I try not to make eye contact through the fuzzy dots on the screen. My hands fumble for my rosary. This time, I skip the Hail Mary and begin at cross and say the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t know if God can hear me, so I continue to repeat the prayer until I put myself into stupor.
Confession booths battle between sight and sound. First I hear Father Joseph—a slight rumbling of footsteps, then his door being securely shut. He’s reaching for something at his feet, perhaps his Bible. I hear him taking in a deep breath.
Is he whispering something? Will he recognize my voice?
Did he see me enter the booth? My head begins to spin. Just focus on the cross.
I sit on the red, oversized chair and know even the smallest of holes can fracture the light.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Plastic & Paper: Variations of Silence
I’m standing at Border’s Books. I can’t afford the five books that are in my arms. I wish they had lay-away. At the register, I quickly chose two books. One book is about love amongst the landscape (what does that mean?), true love, I guess and what it can endure. The other book is about "loving where you’re at" and in order to find happiness one must not disregard the questions of their heart, or as the author states, “Learn to live life with the questions. Learn to live them out.” People are making money of this...and I'm supporting it!
In line, a couple behind me makes small talk, but I get the feeling they actually want to be heard. From the genetics of their conversation, I know they’re dating, I’d say, probably somewhere in the first six-month stretch. He’s the dominant one in the relationship. She teases him about various things, trying to soften him, but he remains positioned. He tells her she carries too much plastic. I move my neck around, as if to stretch, smile, and see he’s referencing to her credit cards; they are both peering down into her over-stuffed, small Coach handbag. The city of Fresno keeps Coach in business. She tells him that he needs to recycle the magazine he has in his hand and not let it build up dust with all the magazines has bought.
Silence returns.
All of us wait for the line to inch us forward. I hear her say, “Not everyone is that fortunate,” then, back to whispering lovers. What are they talking about?
I stand self-conscious in shoes; my skirt feels suddenly too tight. I turn to look at them. Her boyfriend stares at my chest. It’s a rude stare—past the “1-second rule,” which places him in the “pig with no manners” category. Covering my chest with the books, I pin my eyes on the carpet. I stand frozen, only my eyes dare to move, ever so slightly, on the two colors of threaded on the carpet.
In line, a couple behind me makes small talk, but I get the feeling they actually want to be heard. From the genetics of their conversation, I know they’re dating, I’d say, probably somewhere in the first six-month stretch. He’s the dominant one in the relationship. She teases him about various things, trying to soften him, but he remains positioned. He tells her she carries too much plastic. I move my neck around, as if to stretch, smile, and see he’s referencing to her credit cards; they are both peering down into her over-stuffed, small Coach handbag. The city of Fresno keeps Coach in business. She tells him that he needs to recycle the magazine he has in his hand and not let it build up dust with all the magazines has bought.
Silence returns.
All of us wait for the line to inch us forward. I hear her say, “Not everyone is that fortunate,” then, back to whispering lovers. What are they talking about?
I stand self-conscious in shoes; my skirt feels suddenly too tight. I turn to look at them. Her boyfriend stares at my chest. It’s a rude stare—past the “1-second rule,” which places him in the “pig with no manners” category. Covering my chest with the books, I pin my eyes on the carpet. I stand frozen, only my eyes dare to move, ever so slightly, on the two colors of threaded on the carpet.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Essays
I'm emptying boxes from one, two, three moves ago, and finding essays over twenty years old. I sort through the pages--nothing is consistent--everything from ruled notebook paper to bound journals; their titles are young and trite and stuffed with cliches'; all the voices wild with raw hope. One day, I know someone has to sort through all of this. As I create 'shred' and 'file' stacks in the center of my dining room floor, I wonder what would be the advantage to keep them, even with the possibly of never returning to them again?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Preparing for the Song
Preparing for the Song: A Self Portrait
As the Tang Dynasty (618 AD – 907 AD) disintegrated, the concept of withdrawal into the natural world became a major thematic focus of poets and painters. Faced with the failure of the human order, learned men sought permanence within the natural world, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse. They were preparing for the Song Dynasty (960 AD – 1279 AD)
It was that year
when I had failed to love,
the mystery of my portrait
being washed over with ink,
the stone, becoming monochrome,
being watered down by fine hairs,
the sweeping across my face,
neck, shoulders, poems.
This won’t last a lifetime,
the stare into absence, the need for color:
we’ve become two bodies
in motion, moving apart,
then back together—trapped by the seconds
only landscape can frame.
I trace the long lines
and the indentations that define your hip;
here we are, again, naked, almost human,
inside the dream of white space.
As the Tang Dynasty (618 AD – 907 AD) disintegrated, the concept of withdrawal into the natural world became a major thematic focus of poets and painters. Faced with the failure of the human order, learned men sought permanence within the natural world, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse. They were preparing for the Song Dynasty (960 AD – 1279 AD)
It was that year
when I had failed to love,
the mystery of my portrait
being washed over with ink,
the stone, becoming monochrome,
being watered down by fine hairs,
the sweeping across my face,
neck, shoulders, poems.
This won’t last a lifetime,
the stare into absence, the need for color:
we’ve become two bodies
in motion, moving apart,
then back together—trapped by the seconds
only landscape can frame.
I trace the long lines
and the indentations that define your hip;
here we are, again, naked, almost human,
inside the dream of white space.
--Pilar
Thursday, October 30, 2008
As Land Would Have It
(An excerpt from unpublished manuscript, "Homesick")
It wouldn’t take seven years of living in suburbia to know this is the greatest distance, and time span, I’ve lived from the ocean and a four-lane bridge. I am positioned in the Central Valley, a good three-to-four hours by car—southeast of San Francisco—nestled against the southern Sierra foothills. Regardless of the season, a road trip out of the valley always seems the same.
I pass through dizzy strips of civilization bordered by fuzzy mounds of earth, hilly plateaus smoothed by time. Fast food chains and patriotic mega superstores have emerged from the landscape—clumps of a mirage that offer convenient replenishments that have risen like weeds towards the sky. Their steel tubular necks stretch above Interstate 5 advertising fast food, gasoline—refuge for the weary traveler.
I’m stuck inside a dream; somehow, I make progress through the wind tunnel where water and oil are sacred. What we really need is shade, a break from the ever watchful sun: squirrels sit on their hind legs and nibble next to the wheels of the passing cars; hesitant lizards hide in the waves of blonde grass, trusting no one; snakes I cannot see, watch from under piles of twig and bark. Everyone takes refuge from the deadpan heat. I envy the face of the desert, the solitude. I drive to try and keep my momentum. It’s not very often I get to use the cruise control feature.
It wouldn’t take seven years of living in suburbia to know this is the greatest distance, and time span, I’ve lived from the ocean and a four-lane bridge. I am positioned in the Central Valley, a good three-to-four hours by car—southeast of San Francisco—nestled against the southern Sierra foothills. Regardless of the season, a road trip out of the valley always seems the same.
I pass through dizzy strips of civilization bordered by fuzzy mounds of earth, hilly plateaus smoothed by time. Fast food chains and patriotic mega superstores have emerged from the landscape—clumps of a mirage that offer convenient replenishments that have risen like weeds towards the sky. Their steel tubular necks stretch above Interstate 5 advertising fast food, gasoline—refuge for the weary traveler.
I’m stuck inside a dream; somehow, I make progress through the wind tunnel where water and oil are sacred. What we really need is shade, a break from the ever watchful sun: squirrels sit on their hind legs and nibble next to the wheels of the passing cars; hesitant lizards hide in the waves of blonde grass, trusting no one; snakes I cannot see, watch from under piles of twig and bark. Everyone takes refuge from the deadpan heat. I envy the face of the desert, the solitude. I drive to try and keep my momentum. It’s not very often I get to use the cruise control feature.
Luna Park
Stumbled across a great blog today:
http://lunaparkreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/new-issue-review-creative-nonfiction-no.html
The picture of the "Lion Tamer," lithograph, by Gibson & Co., 1873, I find especially fascinating.
http://lunaparkreview.blogspot.com/2007/09/new-issue-review-creative-nonfiction-no.html
The picture of the "Lion Tamer," lithograph, by Gibson & Co., 1873, I find especially fascinating.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Apart From Nature
Sometimes, when we’re not looking, death has the ability to grow by the inch.
Outside my bedroom window, facing the backyard, a white oleander tree has littered hundreds of poisonous white flowers. The tree is positioned in the corner of the fence with a full head of hair that hangs into two of my neighbor’s backyards. An underground network of roots has pushed its way through another season, reaching for something underneath the earth, using its first instinct…to live.
At night, I become a silhouette and stand at the window. My gaze casts long shadows across the glow-white speckled dirt. With each flower that drops to the ground, more questions surface. I remind myself, beauty is often overlooked. From behind the glass, I engage like a curious ghost. Right now, I see the conflict, the conversation between good and bad—all induced by a caliber of self-inflicted questions about beauty and death. Like this tree, is it possible to be liked and disliked, all at the same time? Are we all just one of the same?
Living with such a large tree requires me to sweat. Sometimes I rake the flowers into organized circular piles, followed by weeks of waiting, as the pools of petals begin to wilt into one another, becoming a dry and crunchy mess. When clouds of dust rise it’s a sign I’m making progress. I think of the master gardener who gave me a complimentary consultation on my backyard and spent an hour and twenty minutes talking about “weed control.” It was a hundred and three degrees outside that day. The dead flowers mean nothing to me now as I place them in plastic bags and into the apartment complex’s dumpster. The apartment complex doesn’t have a green waste container, so my partial composting efforts are wasteful. And my calculations of a renter’s responsibility have shifted into knowing what I’m really doing is dirt management. Walking away from the dumpster, I think of the flowers being shipped to the landfill, and eventually spilling free from the inevitable snags to the Dollar Tree lawn and leaf bags.
Is it possible to co-exist with this tree? What are we here to teach each other? Drifting so far from the genetics of a tree can put us odds with ourselves, apart from nature. From the window, again, I see the fullness of the moon twist itself through the branches of the tree and onto the white sheer linen drapes of my bedroom. A liquid blue haze cascades down each of my arms. To the opossum taking a contemplative break from his wobbly journey along the top of the fence, I could be a threat. Neither of us move. I drift into remorse, loss, and of my own reflection. I watch the opossum move a few inches towards the direction of the tree. It will be a refuge, once he arrives…soft branches with chewy green leaves, and endless intersections will become available to him, something the fence will never provide.
This home is not forever, but it’s where I live now—a Fresno neighborhood with a mix of working class professionals and senior citizens. Our backyards live back-to-back to one another. The noises of the neighborhood, our work afterlives, become alive, and quietly become intertwined into the weekday evenings. All of us move in and out of the resistance, the deadpan heat, while some of us grow weary from the hum of our air conditioning units. Eventually, we’ll crave something finer, more than just fresh, cool air.
The more I see, the more I see who else is connected to the oleander tree. My dog carries the flowers into the house with ones that have collected between his toes and have become tucked within his long fur. His innocence in transporting the deadly flowers into the house breaks me from concentration of the crop circles—all the walking of back and forth across the carpet. I leave my thoughts about future careers in a confessional heap on the floor. My cat, the color of dirty snow, races past me, hysterical in her white happiness, and drops the poisonous petals from her teeth. A year ago, my mother gave her to me as a birthday gift. The first thing I learned was cats could smile. I retreat to the hall closet to retrieve the vacuum. I begin to suck up the silken floral bodies, while others slip away like refugees and hide beneath rugs, curling up in dark corners—a mix between disappearing and dying—under dressers and desks, borders I cannot reach.
This is the confetti of my era.
The twelve-foot oleander tree leans over the fence and into two of my neighbor’s properties, littering an equal amount of poisonous petals onto their patios. My mother tells me it’s only poisonous if someone were to eat the flowers; the poison is in the oil from the leaves and flowers.
My neighbor says one day to me, with the tops of our heads over our shared fence that she’d like to pour Round Up on my side of the fence. She’s talking to me in between the brisk movements of her broom that is scratching across her patio. I wait for her to stop sweeping the cement…scratch, scratch…and make eye contact with me after her last statement. She continues sweeping for a few more whisks and peeks back over the fence at me. I’m standing under the tree looking up. It’s blooming, again.
Later, I’ll stand behind the sliding glass door, the tree in view, and will feel a heavy remorse press its nails into my chest for having played along with her toxic suggestion. By not responding, I responded. I need to speak for the tree. I stare at the white oleander, and tonight, it has my full attention. I’m not capable of killing a tree, poisonous or not. It’s not that simple. Who are we to decide if a tree should die? Two months after renting the house, I learned the tree had been a discussion of death for some time. Some had proposed to chop it down, while others protested it would still grow back. The roots had to be pulled, other argued. If I agreed to the killing I would offend someone, someone like myself. Removing the tree may only be a temporary fix, and then, there will be something else, weeds, and another tree, something else for the community to focus on. How would I sleep at night with a big cavity at the corner of the fence, knowing the swollen moon no longer had something to detract its light?
My cat sits upright, frozen in her stare looking out from the sliding glass door, watching the doves eat the seed I’ve left in a large metal bowl in a plant stand. She must wonder what it’s like on the outside, what it would be like to climb up the tree and swing from one branch to the next, white flowers raining everywhere.
* * *
My mother is coming down the hill to cheer me up; we’ve decided to paint my window-less bathroom, a long-awaited project in the short time I’ve lived here. The biggest wall in the bathroom, opposite of the mirror and sink, is wallpapered. The wallpaper consists of country kitchen blue ribbons with floating lotus flowers against a dirty beige background. My mother tells me whoever hung the wallpaper did such a great job that it will be impossible to remove without having to resurface the wall. I watch the flat of her hand move down the wall. After her evaluation, she tells me we can simply paint over it. She brought with her a gallon of taupe paint she had in her garage, leftover from her ‘paint phase’ when dad was homebound, dying of cancer. I am more then grateful for the paint, and at this point, any color will work. My mother also brought her two-foot pruning sheers. We discover my bathroom isn’t big enough for two people, so while my mother begins to paint, I go to find the pruning sheers and head to the backyard. I go to the four-foot shoots, better known as “suckers,” which are growing from the base of the oleander tree. Suckers slowly choke the life out from a tree, hence, how they got their name.
My mother says, in order to prune, I must position my hands as close to the edge of the handles as possible. I see life in everything, even in the lushness of green weeds that have the freedom to flower in my backyard. Snap! I’m a clumsy clipper, but one of the stalks slowly breaks away, and falls gently to the ground. And, again, snap! Another one falls to the ground, but this time, exposing a set of little black eyes. Looking straight up at me is a dove. We are locked in a gaze, shocked by each other’s invasion, coming within inches of the deadly error—seconds from snipping off her head. Paralyzed by fear, we both wait to see what the other will do. I make the first move. I squat, taking a closer look at her. She’s nestled between the stalks. I watch her fear move into sadness. I run inside, calling for my mother. In the distance between the backyard and the bathroom, where my mother is, I imagine saving the bird. I can see myself feeding it in the cage we’ve built for it along the fence. And eventually, the dove will come to trust me, sit on my finger, even shoulder, as we sit in the backyard. It will trust me to bathe it and nurture it back to health. Once I set her free, she’ll come and visit me. I will spot her amongst the other doves. She’ll help me fill in the blank spots in the book of love I’m writing.
My mother reaches for the dove with her bare hands. The dove slips out between my mothers’ grip and flies a few inches, bounces off the fence, until she makes a soft landing onto a bed of weeds. My mother instructs me to go get a bowl of water. Get a bowl of water. I know it’s in this extended moment—between life and death—that my mother is attempting to prepare me. Secretly, she knows the dove is dying. My mother will keep me busy, reducing my list of questions. I run into the kitchen and grab a large clay bowl—I use it for salads. I fill the bowl with cool water from the kitchen sink and carry it outside.
The moments between the sink and reaching my mother become blurry. I remember there was heat wave that day and I tried convincing myself the dove was probably dehydrated and that’s why she was stuck in the shoots. The mantra had repeated.
My mother holds the dove again and tips her beak into the bowl of water. I see her swallow, but my will mother later tells me that she was gasping. Maybe in death there is little difference between swallows and gasps. The dove and I never break eye contact while she’s being angled towards the water. I still have faith.
My mother dips the dove’s beak back into the water, but this time her neck just hangs there as my mother moves her beak up and out of the water. Later, my mother will tell me, this is when she knew the dove wasn’t going to make it. The dove died in my mother’s hands.
Once inside, my mother asked if I wanted her to bury the dove on her property.
I shook my head yes, and thanked her. We took a break from everything and went searching for new towel bars for my bathroom. In the car, my mother realized that last night a bird had died in her dreams. I knew it to be a sign, maybe that things were about to change.
Before my mother leaves to go back home, I find an Ann Taylor shoebox with some white tissue inside and give it to my mother to use to bury the dove. Not even an hour after she leaves my house, I imagine my mother driving home, close to two thousand feet in elevation. The dove belongs in the Sierra foothills and far from the oleander. Even in the small currents of our understanding, we pause to offer what the earth quietly takes back.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Fish Eggs
For me, many essays begin as a poem.
I'm somewhat working on a book-length poem, Here's the begining...
~~~
Fish Eggs
My mother, blonde and bent
Cleans the garage, not even a year
After your death, pulls on blue miles
Of dive equipment, cracked black hoses
Baked from the Sierra sun, the heat
That beats the bones, of what used to be
Years of being underwater, memories,
Soft as sandstone, fall between the piles,
Oxygen-starved heaps destined for the dump,
And be covered by the earth. She continues
Late past summer, learns to count
Three falling stars before she sleeps,
Dreams of metal songs, winds sweep
Over a half-empty house, a slowing starts
Towards the hours relucant to pass.
She finds his dive slate tucked in a crate,
His writing still legible, saying to her
That what she sees are fish eggs,
Little sacs of life, small sizes of hope,
Oceanic youth, tart as bourbon, legs
That kick in unison through thickness,
A diligent emergence, rising and falling,
Hand-in-hand, inside the salty earth.
Fish Eggs
My mother, blonde and bent
Cleans the garage, not even a year
After your death, pulls on blue miles
Of dive equipment, cracked black hoses
Baked from the Sierra sun, the heat
That beats the bones, of what used to be
Years of being underwater, memories,
Soft as sandstone, fall between the piles,
Oxygen-starved heaps destined for the dump,
And be covered by the earth. She continues
Late past summer, learns to count
Three falling stars before she sleeps,
Dreams of metal songs, winds sweep
Over a half-empty house, a slowing starts
Towards the hours relucant to pass.
She finds his dive slate tucked in a crate,
His writing still legible, saying to her
That what she sees are fish eggs,
Little sacs of life, small sizes of hope,
Oceanic youth, tart as bourbon, legs
That kick in unison through thickness,
A diligent emergence, rising and falling,
Hand-in-hand, inside the salty earth.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Roosters & Lipstick
I was up for a half an hour before I realized there's a rooster that lives near by. Four long hollers through the black air. Morning is here. Fall is here.
Every time I walk my dog in the morning darkness, I am reminded of Winona, Minnesota and my dolls, and how I shoved their stalky rubber legs into the snow to make them stand--most of the times, nude, with that blank stare, plum-stained lips, hair--a complete disarray. I would come to their rescue and pluck them from the snow bank and wrap them in a doll quilt, carrying them to my first real car: a red convertible, with just enough room for me to sit with one doll on the front seat. There was nowhere to put my grown up purse, so I'd leave it on the sidewalk--hand me down lipsticks already beginning to freeze.
Every time I walk my dog in the morning darkness, I am reminded of Winona, Minnesota and my dolls, and how I shoved their stalky rubber legs into the snow to make them stand--most of the times, nude, with that blank stare, plum-stained lips, hair--a complete disarray. I would come to their rescue and pluck them from the snow bank and wrap them in a doll quilt, carrying them to my first real car: a red convertible, with just enough room for me to sit with one doll on the front seat. There was nowhere to put my grown up purse, so I'd leave it on the sidewalk--hand me down lipsticks already beginning to freeze.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Body & Soul
I'm always open to suggestions. And when I saw that Sun Magazine (one my favorite places for great photography, poetry, and essays) was open to topics/themes, I didn't hesitate. I, of course, suggested: Relationship to Landscape.
I've asked this question a million times, "Are we shaped by landscape, or does it shape us?"
Having left the Central Valley for almost nine months, I felt a pit grow in the center of being. I stopped writing, slept, and spent a majority of my time commuting into San Francisco for work--up to three hours a day. On the bus, I had plenty of time "think" or simply stare. I worked out all these literary equations. But in the end, I realized, regardless of what hoards of money one might make, if you've become detached from your soulful landscape, the spirit will ultimately suffer.
Some of these things seem obvious. Other times, we have to live them to understand them. Cliches have a backhand that can burn--even when we see it coming in our direction.
I've asked this question a million times, "Are we shaped by landscape, or does it shape us?"
Having left the Central Valley for almost nine months, I felt a pit grow in the center of being. I stopped writing, slept, and spent a majority of my time commuting into San Francisco for work--up to three hours a day. On the bus, I had plenty of time "think" or simply stare. I worked out all these literary equations. But in the end, I realized, regardless of what hoards of money one might make, if you've become detached from your soulful landscape, the spirit will ultimately suffer.
Some of these things seem obvious. Other times, we have to live them to understand them. Cliches have a backhand that can burn--even when we see it coming in our direction.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
I've Joined the World
This is my first blog. I thought about it at lunch today and how there's this desire to reach out, and retract, all at the same time.
My attempt is to capture some of my studies, thoughts and explorations in the world of creative nonfiction in relations to self and the landscape, and how memory, is well, utlimately altered, preserved, or lost.
I hope you'll enjoy this journey as I share my observations, photos, projects, and studies.
My attempt is to capture some of my studies, thoughts and explorations in the world of creative nonfiction in relations to self and the landscape, and how memory, is well, utlimately altered, preserved, or lost.
I hope you'll enjoy this journey as I share my observations, photos, projects, and studies.
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