Truth teller

The komo is thirsty; the power grid could go at any moment. Where can we get more juice?

Ah, go ask the dawn’s griot, that rooster. If he didn’t crow, the sky would never redden. He flaps up to the roof and looks all around. He waits. Feels the eyes of the night spirits greedy on the teeth of his comb.

Who among men could be so unafraid? The four-legged stool in the courtyard is silent; it hoards its stories. The granary guard dog’s nose twitches with fear, though the faintest rustle of his chain makes the nighttime walker soil his pants.

Without the right words, no action can bear fruit. We shrink into thin shadows, moonlit things. Who gave this scrawny bird such power?

Ringed in gardens, shaded by kapok trees, the village seems a cozy place. But secret jealousies crouch in the rafters of a dozen huts. Buried hatreds come alive at night, grow fur and fangs – no joke. Even the Christians know better than to leave nail clippings or the hair from their combs lying around where someone might pick them up.

But ah, the rooster! If he cares, he doesn’t show it. His eyes at midnight still sparkle with the light of noon.

Call then, bring the dawn! Sing, and I will say namu for you. Tell the truth.

He stretches out his neck, flapping his wings like a blacksmith’s helper pumping at the bellows. Kambu kaaru, kambu kambu kaaru! Wanjuburung, wanjabarang!*

Friend rooster, even if you knew this dawn would be your last, would you do anything differently? Let the first line of white streak the sky. Let feet feel for sandals, let pestles grope about for mortars. Let no one hear how, hidden in the rafters of the komo house, buried in jars under the floor, the secret generators are sputtering, thirsty for fuel.

Nothing is free in this world. For order and reason to prevail, everyone must give up some cherished thing: a flap of skin, perhaps. A favorite food. A fortnight’s worth of company with women. To every being, God has given the power of some gift.

The white band grows. A splash of red. The rooster crows as if his life depended on it.
__________

* Mandinka onomatopoeia, lifted from Hunters and Crocodiles: Narratives of a Hunter’s Bard, by Bakari Kamara (edited and translated by Gordon Innes with Bakari Sibide, Paul Norbury Publications, 1990).

Komo is the pre-eminent secret society among the Mande people. Here, I have applied the term to its power objects as well.

This is my contribution to Ecotone wiki’s July 15 topic, Secret Places. Be sure to check out the others. At the end of her own entry, Pica notes that “the wiki has recently been vandalized by spammers; we’re trying to keep it up and running but it’s a bit of a battle.” So, see it while it lasts.

Poems about movies

I’ve never understood why summer is officially Dumb Movie Season. In fact, given that most of us do suffer a decline in creativity due to heat, humidity, beer drinking and babes (or guys) in form-revealing outfits, I should think that would make intellectually challenging movies all the more essential. The brain is like a muscle, folks; trite but true.

But then here comes this summer, with the unprecedented box-office success of a nonfiction film, Fahrenheit 9/11, and with others in the offing (I’m especially eager to see The Corporation). The Day After Tomorrow, silly as it seemed from the reviews, evidently got audiences thinking about serious issues (global climate change, corruption in the government). I gather even Spiderman II was unexpectedly engaging. Whatever happened to movies about alien invaders and giant meteors?

So anyway, since Friday is movie night for a lot of folks, and since I don’t have time this morning for an original post, I thought I’d reproduce a couple of old poems relating to the movies. The first describes three shots from an imaginary film noir. This is one of my oldest successful poems; the germ of it is at least twenty years old. Despite the reference to a corrido (Sonoran folk ballad), the piece I have in mind for the soundtrack is modern classical: a tone-poem called Song of Love and Death (Canto de Amor e de Mort) by the Portuguese composer Fernando Lopes-Graca.

The second poem combines two real, public school experiences, so I guess it would fit in the category of “almost nonfiction.” Off-hand, I can’t think of any other movie poems I might’ve written. Does anyone else have any?

I apologize to anyone who has already read these poems (both are included in the manuscript Capturing the Hive, available in PDF form at my personal website). I promise some original content tomorrow, even if it’s just that doggerel I mentioned yesterday. Until then, TGIF y’all.

TRIPTYCH IN NOIR

her jailed lover’s image in the mirror
slowly loses color
like tea poured again & again
from the same leaves
or a cloud of cigarette smoke mixing with the air

*

beneath the mirror’s mercury lies
the captain lost at sea in some
interminable corrido
his waterproof watch still ticks inside his slicker

*

it’s past 3:00
light from the street lamp
filters through the slats of the blind
outshines the moon:
two sets of stripes that cross at
an oblique angle on the walls & the bed
where she lies staring into the one dark corner
__________

THE HISTORY OF ANIMATION

Twelve hundred kids packed the auditorium
for a high school assembly: a road show
on the history of animation, brought to us
by Pepsi. The punishment for skipping
such mandatory fun was an extra hour
of school. But some wise-ass
Spoiled It For Everybody with
a little
laughing box.
In the middle of the presenter’s
introductory talk, a sudden
outburst of demented giggles
followed by rapid-fire hos & haws,
squeals & peals, belly laughs
going off like depth charges.
The thing about
a laughing box is, once
you get one started, you can’t
shut it up. Propelled
by apprehensive kicks,
it ricocheted from row
to row beneath the seats,
its laugh track whipping around
like a sperm cell’s flagellum
in a Sex Ed film. As the shock
wore off we watched the three
or four minor führers on stage
shrinking into their scowls.
Finally it flew
out–a bright blue
plastic cube–struck the baseboard
with considerable force & died
in mid-guffaw.
A long moment of silence.
Then the clapping started, spreading
throughout the hall. Cheers,
whistles. The assistant principal
on his feet, waving his arms
as the applause went on & on.

Blogging on violence

Awake around four with an idea for a blog post, I drift back to sleep a while later and sleep in until the disgracefully late hour of 7:30. Too late to write much of anything, I fiddle around, doctor up some old doggerel, then think better of it. Then I start remembering all the good stuff I’ve been finding on other blogs lately. It’s been a long time since I last did a digest like this, so why not? I love making collages . . .

For me, the pathos that certain aspects of Fahrenheit 9-11 conveyed spoke of something fundamental to the human condition, and the value was great because these are narratives that are only ever presented to us in fictional (and thereby dulled) form. Films are so often antiseptic, with their clinical and balletic depictions of violence, and their inconsequential battle-ground “action”. But here, somehow, in between the rollicking soundtrack and George W. acting like a prat on camera, something filtered through of the heart-seizing reality of what it means to live always with the possibility of death in mind.
– the vernacular body

Some with a soft dignity. Some without. Some
rattling and moaning. I go to the body. I go out
to this body when I see it coming. The traffic,
for a moment, ceases. The soft wick of moon. Boy

that I made, go out there. Go out to the seat
of judgment. Enter into me and hear it, whirr
of energy. The veins popping, exploding. Listen
to yourself cry out, go slack, stop.

– from “The Mercy Seat,” Awake at Dawn — Writing Journal

Does “Raytheon” really mean “the light of God” ?

For the ladies, they produce a swell line of ornithologicaly themed missiles — lark, sparrow, hawk, shrike, falcon, phoenix. For the gents, there are several phallically themed devices — javelin, stinger, excalibur — in addition to the ever-macho cruise, sidewinder, maverick and tomahawk missiles, the brilliant anti-armor tank submunition (BAT), the exoatmospheric kill vehicle, the aptly named HARM (High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile) and RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile). Why, they even produce a groundbreaking, post-modern, gender-inclusive device, the LGB, aka the Paveway Laser Guided Bomb.

Paula’s House of Toast

Two nights ago: Many events, though I distinctly recall holding a cooked rabbit with my fingers, in an attempt to stuff it. I had pulled the skin up and there were bowls of nuts and stuffing, and a broth.
fragments: dream a little dream of me

It didn’t take long to shut him up. When we finished beating the hell out of him, we thought it [would] be funny to shave his head. Much to our surprise, we found that underneath all that smelly grey hair was a tattooed scalp baring an elaborate anarchy symbol and a slogan that read, “Punx Not Dead”.
A ‘Coon Named Legba

I told Tsuga to “sit” and “drop it!” while I fished around in his mouth for the bone. That’s odd. Whatever it is he’s mouthing is soft, squishy, almost flesh-like. To my horror, as the object came saliva-soaked from the dog’s mouth, I held in my hand a shrunken human calf and foot, complete with tiny toes. There for an instant, it weirded me out pretty seriously. My initial response was “Ooh me god! He’s ate Mr. Frodo!”
Fragments From Floyd

I watched thought cells gently floating in the ‘bloodstream’, inactive, harmless little things with delicate, empty structures. I was taken inside a cell. It was completely empty, just a pregnant void. I was shocked. “Thoughts are empty!”

Suddenly larger cells invaded the picture and threw this quiet scene into chaos. These cells, two or three times the size of thoughts, hurtled through the bloodstream at a furious pace. Their multiple ‘arms’ splayed out in a star pattern. Hair triggers at the end of each arm guided the cells against the current as they actively hunted out thoughts. A small dark nucleus active in the centre of each cell fuelled this mission. “Emotions!” It occurred to me. These cells were emotions! Hungrily they pursued and attached to thoughts. Within a split second of capturing its quarry, the emotion would envelop the thought cell with its ‘arms’, and suck it into its own structure. (The thought remained completely passive in this process.) The instant the membrane closed around the newly merged cells the whole structure would ignite in ‘electrical’ sparks. The thought was now alive!

– A penny for your thoughts

I was underwhelmed at the time of the talk. Is it really this straight-forward? My mother said, “All she said was common sense. Love without attachment? I got it.”

But I don’t “got it.” I don’t have it so much that I go looking for Bodhisattva Goddesses where mortal women tread. I make holy and unholy out of gesture. What did I expect, really? That Kwan Seum Bosal would manifest right in front of me? That my mind would explode open?

– Ditch the raft

At the Sina pig farm, a man sits motionless out in the middle of his yard. In the morning sun, his skin is bronzed; he could be a statue.

Those pea fields that were harvested have been tilled again. What will come up next?

I am contemplating the division of lands: farm-land, wilderness, waste-land.

Once again, the monster-beast goes to work, like the good German he is.

The Middlewesterner

Engagement

Orion Online has just posted Engagement, the third part of Terry Tempest Williams’ series on the Open Space of Democracy:

In our increasingly fundamentalist country, we have to remember what is fundamental: gravity — what draws us to a place and keeps us there, like love, like kinship. When we commit to a particular place, a certain element of choice is removed. We begin to see the world whole instead of fractured. Long-term strategies replace short-term gains. We inform one another and become an educated public that responds.

Here in the redrock desert, which now carries the weight of more leases for oil and gas than its fragile red skin can support, due to the aggressive energy policy of the Bush administration, the open space of democracy appears to be closing. The Rocky Mountain states are feeling this same press of energy extraction with scant thought being given to energy alternatives. A domestic imperialism has crept into our country with the same assured arrogance and ideology-of-might that seem evident in Iraq.

It is easy to believe we the people have no say; that the powers in Washington will roll over our local concerns with their corporate energy ties and thumper trucks. It is easy to believe that the American will is only focused on how to get rich, how to be entertained, and how to distract itself from the hard choices we have before us as a nation.

I refuse to believe this. The only space I see truly capable of being closed is not the land or our civil liberties but our own hearts.

The letter killeth

“Here’s the thing,” he said, and proceeded to outline an abstract situation. The vernacular always insists upon concreteness.

***

As my grandfather aged, his memory for the names of things and of people grew poorer and poorer. “Take the, the thingyou know – and give it to that woman!” would be a typical communication. His speech grew as cryptic and open to interpretation as the utterances of an oracle. The thing, that woman: though the particulars escaped him, he held tight to the facticity of life. He clung to life, too, because the whole notion of an afterlife always seemed suspiciously mystical to him, religious (and otherwise orthodox) as he was.

***

“It’s raining cats and dogs!” It’s interesting how a purely formal “it” that doesn’t even rise to the level of an abstraction can be presumed responsible for such outrageous acts of violence against household pets.

***

“Literally”: figuratively, as in “The stream was literally alive with fish,” or “His eloquence literally swept the audience from its feet.” These examples are courtesy of Ambrose Bierce,Write it Right. It’s easy to understand why a linguistic prescriptivist like Bierce would be so outraged by this all-too-common subversion of the meaning of literal meaning. “Write it right”: there’s only one way to do things. But vernacular speech will readily abandon semantic precision in favor of maximal playfulness and color.

***

“Biblical inerrancy”: a doctrine that imputes to the Christian Bible the unique property of lending itself only to one kind of interpretation – my own. These interpretations are said to be literal, operating on the assumption that whatever words and phrases mean to me is exactly the same as what they have meant to all people throughout history. For this to be possible despite the vagaries of linguistic change and the necessity of translation, the device of divine inspiration is trotted out. But if such inspiration is available to all sincere believers, why do we need to insist on doctrinal rigidity in the first place? Biblical inerrancy thus constitutes a hermeneutics of suspicion, even paranoia, predicated on a complete lack of trust in one’s fellow human beings. Can anyone so lacking in trust really be considered a person of faith? I can’t help thinking that the advocates of Biblical inerrancy and other forms of fundamentalism are the enemies of true religion. For such people, belief is a simple matter of unthinking obedience. Revelation is confused with the unfolding of power, a making so rather than a making whole.* They love Big Brother.

***

To the authors of the Bible, believing in superficialities and placing one’s trust in mere words are the primary attributes of the fool:

Lying lips cover over hatred, and a fool utters slander.
Proverbs 10:18

The heart of the righteous meditates on its answer, and the mouth of fools babbles forth evil.
Proverbs 15:28

The heart of the wise seeks out knowledge, the mouth of fools pursues foolishness.
Proverbs 15:14

(Translations by James Kugel, from The Great Poems of the Bible, The Free Press, 1999.)

But though believers have an obligation to seek out wisdom, the inner meanings of some things are inaccessible.

There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not:
The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.

Proverbs 30:18-19 (KJV)

***

I can’t help wondering what a Biblical literalist would make of the preceding passage. Three or four, which is it? Are we to presume that only the first three of the four “things” listed are “too wonderful”? And if so, are we meant to suppose that “the way of a man with a maid” is just wonderful enough?

(Well, it’s enough for me!)
__________

*This is a slight modification of something I wrote here in a recent comments thread.