--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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
