Loose End from El Paso: Tumblewords Project: Erasure

Returning to El Paso from Juarez. November 2016.

One year ago today, February 2019, I attended the Tumblewords Project led by Gustavo Enriquez. I remembered him from a previous workshop, on corporeal poetry, I believe, in which his poem about a part of his body blew me away with its fresh creativity.

So on this day, Gustavo walked us through erasure poetry, which was new to me. It also goes by blackout poetry.

Gustavo distributed several stacks of magazines and old books around the horseshoe of workshop writers, inviting each of us to select a few pages from this or that, and then to black out what we didn't want from a text, leaving visible a poem. 

I mined two pieces from the ore.


It's Not Personal

The birds,
They see the wind.
That wind means no harm.

The earth turns.

Life intends to not cause pain.

The storm come and it pass.

The sun shines.


After the Storm

Up early.

The sun, drink.

Ready for

Recovering

Recovering

From failure.

We,

We,

We,

In the rainbow, sat quiet in the brightness

Purring to

Sleep.





P.S. Talking about erasure reminds me of a witty, biting, sometimes hilarious book by the same name, written by Percival Everett.

El Paso: The Tumblewords Project: Introduction and Smeltertown

The Tumblewords Project didn't hit my radar until June. A pity.  Because with my very first mid-day Saturday attendance at the weekly writing group, I lamented silently, "Why didn't I discover this before?!"

It only got my attention the first time because of the magic words Smeltertown. Where did I even see the phrase in connection with Tumblewords? The library? Social media? An upcoming-events email? No idea.

I first learned about Smeltertown when I took the guided hike up Mt Cristo Rey. Then I saw an announcement about a photographer with an exhibit of her photos at Smeltertown, but because of a scheduling conflict, I couldn't go. So when I saw the third reference to Smeltertown, I had to check it out.

This article isn't about Smeltertown; it's about the Tumblewords Project. But the leader for this particular Saturday's meeting - Carolyn Rhea Drapes - took us, in our imagination, to the Smeltertown of her youth. Like: 

• "La Smelta."
• "Every morning abuela would hang her canary cages on the branches of the cottonwood tree." 
• Tiny houses as big as an efficiency apartment. 
• Some people had electric, water and gas. 
• For a long time, had communal toilets. 
• "Everything felt caked in sulfur." 
•  "Those yellow smells had no chance of entering [abuela's] kitchen."

###

Tumblewords describes its process thus:

The format involves preliminary announcements, the presenter speaking for maybe ten minutes, writing on the spot, and then going around the room and each participant reading aloud. We like to have three rounds of writing and reading aloud, but depending on the number of participants who show up any one workshop, there may only be time for two rounds or even one. Presenters are given free range to present however or whatever they want, as long as the primary amount of time is allocated to writing and reading aloud. Some presenters read the works of writers they revere, show slides of their art work or the art of others, bring in visual art, play or perform music, or read their own work. The participants are free to write in whatever form or on whatever topic they choose, notwithstanding the topic of presentation.

Some rules:

• You write and you share what you write. 
• No whining about the quality of your work; at most you can say: "This is shit." But then you gotta read it aloud anyway. 
• No critiques.

The goal is to write. Simple as that. 

Donna Snyder is the founder and matriarch of the group - it's a remarkable feat to have nurtured a writing group since its birth in 1995. A succinct synopsis about Donna: " ... a lawyer by profession, an activist by inclination and a poet by compulsion, has an extensive list of published work to her credit ... "

I always feel welcomed and supported at the workshops.

And holy moly, there is huge talent in that library room every Saturday!

###

Getting back to this day's work, as led by Carolyn Rhea Drapes: 

From Carolyn's sharing about Smeltertown, the canaries in the cottonwood tree pricked my senses.

In two writing sprints, I created the following (since edited): 

First sprint:

In the time of the killing in the lushness, the richness of Rwanda, did the birds continue to sing? 

Is it true that the foreign tamarisks crowd and kill the native cottonwoods, usurping their space and water like they say they do? 

Of what use is this man-made border over which the giant Christ looks with his arms outstretched, which separates sisters, but which birds and tamarisks and cottonwoods flaunt with impunity?
 

Mt. Cristo Rey, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Of what use is this wall that hems El Paso, choked like the Rio Grande, cobbled and parched? 

Does the big Christ not shake his head in bemusement when he looks at the rusty wall that separates the sisters he made? 

US border between El Paso and Juarez. November 2016.

Some of abuela's canaries died and they were not replaced. 

####

Portal, Arizona. March 2013.

Second sprint: 

Outside the red library in Portal, New Mexico, bird feeders hang from leafy cottonwoods. Books in a cart enjoy the air outside. It is fine to sit in the shade of the cottonwoods and listen to the birds sing.

El Paso: The Life Force of Mare Advertencia Lirika

Mare Advertencia Lirika, Cafe Mayapan, El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

South Louisiana introduced me to spoken word in a splashy way, via poets with a gift for visceral writing and performance talents.

Being an introverted sort, it knocked me out to see and hear how these artists put their naked selves out there with their creativity.

Mare Advertencia Lirika, Cafe Mayapan, El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

When I saw an upcoming event for a free poetry workshop in El Paso, it was a must-go for me. The workshop title: Poetry and Resistance.

The workshop introduced to me Mare Advertencia Lirika, the workshop leader.

Because the workshop was mostly in Spanish, I didn't follow all of Mare's words - maybe most, even - but I followed enough to know I was in a room with a woman whose life force is galvanic.

Mare Advertencia Lirika, Cafe Mayapan, El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

Mare lives in the city of Oaxaca in Oaxaca state, Mexico. Her family is Zapotec, an indigenous Mexican ethnic group. 

Below is a half-hour documentary about Mare, "When a Woman Comes Forward" (with English subtitles). Mare shares her philosophy about how hip hop gives a voice, not just to individuals, but to the community.

Mare is for speaking out. Her 2013 video (with English subtitles), "What Are You Waiting For (To Tell Your Truth)?"  is a call to action to all women:

"We are the majority only when it comes to statistics."

"Our voice has been taken by other mouths."


Mare is a hip hop artist, a poet, a singer, a human rights activist. In her work, she flashes an unblinking, brilliant light on inconsistencies between the so-called "respect" for women and oppressing them. One graphic illustration is how she notes the societal furtiveness with which girls and women experience menstruation and menstrual blood, but the cavalier display of the blood of murdered women.

Below is a video in which Mare shares the evolution of her creative and social activist evolution in Oaxaca:

Mare is a woman of power. I feel so lucky to have been able to attend her workshop.

With thanks to the folks who contributed to her presence, which included Fronterizas en Resistencia (Border Women in Resistence) and Café Mayapan.

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala: La Iguana Perdida: Some Louisiana and Missouri

Books. La Iguana Perdida, Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

I mentioned here that La Iguana Perdida seems to attract readers and that it has a library off of the dining room/bar.

How sweet it was to run into good friends here!

To wit:

Books. La Iguana Perdida, Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

Missouri writer, Daniel Woodrell, is an author I consider to be an Ozarkian Shakespeare because of the eloquence of his language and the universality of his themes. He wrote Winter's Bone, which, of course, became an Oscar-nominated movie, starring Jennifer Lawrence. And Woe to Live On, related to the domestic terror in Missouri and Kansas circa Civil War. (This was also made into a movie, but it did zero justice to the novel.)

Sidebar: Although Anthony Bourdain has fallen out of favor with me, I share this for those who are still charmed --> Mr. Bourdain is a big fan of Mr. Woodrell's, and even wrapped one of his No Reservations episodes around Mr. Woodrell and his Ozark culinary roots. Unfortunately, this episode, which could have been so rich, was just plain dull. And I wasn't alone in this opinion. 

Books. La Iguana Perdida, Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

Anyhoo. Moving on. I also met Mr. James Lee Burke in the library, my cultural guide for my first year in South Louisiana, through his very-flawed protagonist, Dave Robicheaux.

Daniel Woodrell and James Lee Burke both write about our American underclass. They do so with compassion but without romanticism. They shine a harsh light on those among us who profit from the poor and systemically-disenfranchised, whether it be politically, financially, or socially.

Well. This is leading me into a dark place, and I don't want to go there today.

What I want to express is how pleasing it was to see my Louisiana and Missouri friends at La Iguana Perdida in Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. So I'll leave it at that.

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 3: "You Don't See What I Don't See"

 

Four o'clocks, Rustavi, Georgia.

"You don't see what I don't see."

The quote is from Ernest J. Gaines' book, A Gathering of Old Men, based in 1970s Louisiana.

From the chapter narrated by one of the "old men," Joseph Seaberry (aka "Rufe"):

[Sheriff] Mapes looked at Clatoo the way white folks know how to look at a nigger when they think he's being smart.

"Isn't it a little late for you to be getting militant around here?" Mapes asked Clatoo.

"I always been militant," Clatoo said. "My intrance gone sour, keeping my militance down." ....

"I kilt him," Ding said, thumping his chest. "Me, me - not them, not my brother. Me. What they did to my sister's little girl - Michelle Gigi." 

"I see," Mapes said, looking at Ding and Bing at the same time. "I see."

Johnny Paul grunted out loud. "No, you don't see."

He wasn't looking at Mapes, he was looking toward the tractor and the trailers of cane out there in the road. But I could tell he wasn't seeing any of that. I couldn't tell what he was thinking until I saw his eyes shifting up the quarters where his mama and papa used to stay. But the old house wasn't there now. It had gone like all the others had gone. Now weeds covered the place where the house used to be. "Y'all look," he said. "Look now. Y'all see anything? What y'all see?"

"I see nothing but weeds, Johnny Paul," Mapes said ....

"Yes, sir," Johnny Paul said. ... "Yes sir, I figured that's all you would see. But what do the rest don't see? What y'all don't see, Rufe?" he asked me. ... "What y'all don't see, Clatoo? What y'all don't see, Glo? What y'all don't see, Corrine, Rooster, Beulah? What y'all don't see, all the rest of y'all?" 

"I don't have time for people telling me what they can't or don't see, Johnny Paul," Mapes said. ....

Johnny Paul turned on him. He was tall as Mapes, but thin, thin. He was the color of Brown Mule chewing tobacco. His eyes gray, gray like Mapes' eyes, but not hard like Mapes' eyes. He looked dead at Mapes.

"You ain't got nothing but time, Sheriff. .... you still don't see. Yes, sir, what you see is the weeds, but you don't see what we don't see." 

"Do you see it, Johnny Paul?" Mapes asked him.

"No, I don't see it," Johnny Paul said. "That's why I kilt him." 

"I see," Mapes said.

"No, you don't," Johnny Paul said. "No, you don't. You had to be here to don't see it now. You just can't come down here every now and then. You had to live here seventy-seven years to don't see it now. No, Sheriff, you don't see. You don't even know what I don't see."  

... "... Do you hear that church bell ringing?" [Johnny Paul asked]

"Are you all right?" Mapes asked him. ... "Church bells, Johnny Paul?"

"Y'all remember how it used to be?" Johnny Paul said. ... "Remember?" he said. "When they wasn't no weeds - remember? Remember how they used to sit out there on the garry - Mama, Papa, Aunt Clara, Aunt Sarah, Unc Moon, Aunt Spoodle, Aunt Thread. Remember? Everybody had flowers in the yard. But nobody had four-o'clocks like Jack Toussaint. ... "

... "That's why I kilt him, that's why," Johnny Paul said. "To protect them little flowers. But they ain't here no more. And how come? 'Cause Jack ain't here no more. He's back under them trees with all the rest. With Mama and Papa, Aunt Thread, Aunt Spoodle, Aunt Clara, Unc Moon, Unc Jerry - all the rest of them. ... Remember the palm-of-Christians in Thread's yard, Glo? ... Remember Jack and Red Rider hitting that field every morning with them two mules, Diamond and Job?" ...

... "Thirty, forty of us going out in the field with cane knives, hoes, plows - name it. Sunup to sundown, hard, miserable work, but we managed to get it done. We stuck together, shared what little we had, and loved and respected each other. 

"But just look at things today. Where the people? Where the roses? Where the four-o'clocks? The palm-of-Christians? Where the people used to sing and pray in the church? I'll tell you. Under them trees back there, that's where. And where they used to stay, the weeds got it now, just waiting for the tractor to come plow it up." 

... I [killed him] for them back there under them trees. I did it 'cause that tractor is getting closer and closer to that graveyard, and I was scared if I didn't do it, one day that tractor was go'n come in there and plow up them graves, getting rid of all proof that we ever was. Like now they trying to get rid of all proof that black people ever farmed this land with plows and mules - like if they had nothing from the starten but motor machines. Sure, one day they will get rid of the proof that we ever was, but they ain't go'n do it while I'm still here. Mama and Papa worked too hard in these fields ..."

[Mapes] was getting tired; he was getting tired fast. Tired listening, tired standing, tired of niggers. But he didn't know what to do about it ... He had already used his only knowledge he knowed how to deal with black folks - knocking them around. When that didn't change a thing, when people started getting in line to be knocked around, he didn't know what else to do. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have read the above passage many times. Each reading brings a fresh, sharp exhale of emotion.

At our cores, don't we all want to feel that we mattered? That we were seen, our history acknowledged? 

When I entered Mr. Gaines' excerpt into this post, I remembered quotes from a woman and a fictional little girl:

June Carter Cash: "I'm just trying to matter."

Six-year-old Hushpuppy, in Beasts of the Southern Wild: "In a million years, when kids go to school, they gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy and she lived with her daddy in The Bathtub [in Louisiana]."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In many of the Dave Robicheaux books by James Lee Burke, protagonist Dave describes levees and fields and the banks of bayous that, just under the soil's surface, hold the bones and teeth and scraps of decomposing clothing of forgotten men, women, and children who worked the land as slaves or sharecroppers, and who died on that soil.

When I first stumbled on the Opelousas Massacre, and read of the dozens? hundred? hundreds? of fathers, brothers, and sons killed in the space of a couple of weeks, I wondered, where are they buried? How does a community bury so many people in such a short time? Almost a hundred fifty years later, are some of the dead still out there, laying in the woods, with families knowing they were likely dead, but not knowing the location of the remains?

What's not here that we don't see?



Related posts

The Peculiar Blindness, Part 1: Introduction
The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask

Louisiana Lit: Katrina in a Nutshell

Titling a post "Katrina in a Nutshell" may sound grandiose.

But when I read the first chapter in James Lee Burke's book, Tin Roof Blowdown, I thought it might be one of the most powerful pieces of literature I'd ever read. When I say "powerful," I mean that in the sense of receiving a punch full in the face.

An excerpt from that chapter:

In the dream I [Dave Robicheaux] lie on a poncho liner [in Vietnam], dehydrated with blood expander, my upper thigh and side torn by wounds that could have been put there by wolves. I am convinced I will die .... Next to me lies a Negro corporal, wearing only his trousers and boots, .... his torso split open like a gaping red zipper from his armpit down to his groin, the damage to his body so grievous, traumatic, and terrible to see or touch he doesn't understand what has happened to him. 

"I got the spins, Loot. How I look?" he says. 

"We've got the million-dollar ticket, Doo-doo. We're Freedom Bird bound," I reply.  ... 

The Jolly Green [helicopter] loads up and lifts off, with Doo-doo and twelve other wounded on board. I stare upward at its strange rectangular shape, its blades whirling against a lavender sky, and secretly I resent the fact that I and others are left behind to wait on the slick and the chance that serious numbers of NVA are coming through the grass. Then I witness the most bizarre and cruel and seemingly unfair event of my entire life. 

As the Jolly Green climbs above the river and turns toward the China Sea, a solitary RPG streaks at a forty-five-degree angle from the canopy below and explodes inside the bay. The ship shudders once and cracks in half, its fuel tanks blooming into an enormous orange fireball. The wounded on board are coated with flame as they plummet downward toward the water. 

Their lives are taken incrementally - by flying shrapnel and bullets, by liquid flame on their skin, and by drowning in a river. In effect, they are forced to die three times. A medieval torturer could not have devised a more diabolic fate. 

..... When I wake from the dream, ...assure myself that the dream is only a dream, that if it were real I would have heard sounds and not simply seen images that are the stuff of history now and are not considered of interest by those who are determined to re-create them. 

... When I go back to sleep, I once again tell myself I will never again have to witness the wide-scale suffering of innocent civilians, nor the betrayal and abandonment of our countrymen when they need us most.  

But that was before Katrina. That was before a storm with greater impact than the bomb blast that struck Hiroshima peeled the face off southern Louisiana. That was before one of the most beautiful cities in the Western Hemisphere was killed three times, and not just by the forces of nature. 

 There's nothing I can add to that.

And Now for a Word From Dave

Yesterday, it was the devil's horses. Tomorrow it will be eerie bleatings from the swamp. In the meantime:

"South Louisiana is a giant sponge. That's why we keep in constant motion. If you stand still, you'll either sink or be eaten alive by giant insects." 

Dave Robicheaux, Pegasus Descending, by James Lee Burke

Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux, Police Violence, and our Complicity in Same

Who is Dave Robicheaux? 

He's the protagonist in 20 books written by James Lee Burke, a New Iberia, Louisiana, writer.

Dave is a homicide detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. Cajun. Recovering alcoholic. Vietnam war veteran. A man who marries. A father.

You can read more about Dave here. And what he thinks about north Louisianans here. And alcohol here. And some music here. On human exploitation here. On Angola here. On Louisiana's shadow self here. Ack. I just realized that my selections might give the impression that Dave Robicheaux (channeling James Lee  Burke) is a real downer about southern Louisiana. Of course, Dave Robicheaux is a homicide detective, so that has an effect on the topics he talks about, but even so, Dave's love of Louisiana, the people, and culture do shine through.

Dave and violence 


Dave Robicheaux is a violent son of a bitch. So violent, it can be difficult at times to rationalize that Dave is a good guy, and not one of the bad guys. It doesn't help that Dave has tremendous admiration for sometimes-partner Clete, who's got to be a psychopath. (Lucky for Dave, he's not Clete's enemy.) 

Dave does have some insight into his violence, which he attempts to explain in Dixie City Jam below.

Police violence - or abuse of power


From Dixie City Jam (1994)

I always wanted to believe that those moments of rage, which affected me almost like an alcoholic black-out, were due to a legitimate cause, that I or someone close to me had been seriously wronged, that the object of my anger and adrenaline had not swum coincidentally into my ken.

But I had known too many cops who thought the same way. Somehow there was always an available justification for the Taser dart, the jet of Mace straight into the eyes, the steel baton whipped across the shinbones or the backs of the thighs.

The temptation is to blame the job, the stressed-out adversarial daily routine that can begin like a rupturing peptic ulcer, the judges and parole boards who cycle psychopaths back on the street faster than you can shut their files. But sometimes in an honest moment, an unpleasant conclusion works its way through all the rhetoric of the self-apologist, namely, that you are drawn to this world in the same way that some people are fascinated by the protean shape and texture of fire, to the extent that they need to slide their hands through its caress. 

A Stained White Radiance (1992) 

Policemen often have many personal problems. TV films go to great lengths to depict cops' struggles with alcoholism, bad marriages, mistreatment at the hands of liberals, racial minorities, and bumbling administrators.

But my experience has been that the real enemy is the temptation to misuse power. The weaponry we possess is awesome - leaded batons, slapjacks, Mace, stun guns, M-16s, scoped sniper rifles, 12-gauge assault shotguns, high-powered pistols and steel-jacketed ammunition that can blow the cylinders out of an automobile's engine block.

But the real rush is in the discretionary power we sometimes exercise over individuals. I'm talking about the kind of people no one likes - the lowlifes, the aberrant, the obscene and ugly - about whom no one will complain if you leave them in lockdown the rest of their lives with a good-humored wink at the Constitution, or if you're really in earnest, you create a situation where you simply saw loose their fastenings and throw down a toy gun for someone to find when the smoke clears.

It happens, with some regularity.

People like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona, are real-life examples of what Dave Robicheaux is talking about above. Including how we are complicit in such activities. Since my September 2013 post referencing Sheriff Arpaio, Maricopa County has spent even more millions of dollars to settle lawsuits that have arisen during Sheriff Arpaio's watch. .... And the people of Maricopa County keep him in office, re-electing him as recently as 2012. He won't be up for re-election until 2016. Reminds me of the perhaps-apocryphal statement made by a past president about one of our murderous allies in Central America: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

The New Orleans Police Department has a woeful reputation for corruption and brutality.What does it signify that "everybody" knows this, and has known it for a long time, and yet ... it continues?
  

Louisiana Lit: Twelve Years a Slave

First, an excerpt from Burning Angel (1995), by James Lee Burke, as narrated by fictional homicide detective Dave Robicheaux of New Iberia, Louisiana:

The moon was down, and in the darkness the waving cane looked like a sea of grass on the ocean's floor. In my mind's eye I saw the stubble burning in the late fall, the smoke roiling out of the fire in sulphurous yellow plumes, and I wanted to believe that all those nameless people who may have lain buried in the field - African and West Indian slaves, convicts leased from the penitentiary, Negro laborers whose lives were used up for someone else's profit - would rise with the smoke and force us to acknowledge their humanity and its inextricable involvement and kinship with our own.

But they were dead, their teeth scattered by plowshares, their bones ground by harrow and dozer blade into detritus, and all the fury and mire that had constricted their hearts and tolled their days were now reduced to a chip of vertebrae tangled in the roots of a sugarcane stalk.

Twelve Years a Slave

Haven't seen the movie, but recently read the book, Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northrup, and published in 1853.

The book describes how Mr. Northrup was kidnapped, sold into slavery, ended up in Louisiana as a slave, survived life as a slave, and was rescued twelve years later.


You can download or listen to the audio book here. You can read online or download the written book here. (I downloaded the book onto my Kindle via a library loan.)

Sue Eakin, PhD, was a Louisianan librarian who devoted many years to checking the details of Mr. Solomon's story. Unbenownst to Dr. Eakin, Joseph Logsdon, a New Orleans history professor, was also engaged in scholastic detective work to authenticate Mr. Northrup's account.  Eventually, the two learned about each other and they joined forces, publishing an enhanced version of Twelve Years a Slave in 1968.


If you choose to read 12 Years a Slave, then I'd recommend that you next read The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson. It's about The Great Migration, circa 1910-1970, when millions of black Americans escaped from the South to the North in a social and economic diaspora.


The head versus the gut

There is probably an algorithm, as yet undiscovered, that defines the right balance between the intellectual/analytical response and the sensing/feeling response to the sustained subjugation of one human group by another human group.

By "right balance," I mean the ability to imagine oneself and one's family members in the place of those who were violated - to feel it - without getting lost in it and yet not be so removed that one can dismiss, discount, or overly-intellectualize it.

And by right balance, I mean for the purpose of .... hmm ... what?  Prevention of future outbreaks of mass human dysfunction? Effective intervention during? The reconciliation or restorative justice that might be possible after the fact? 

I don't know.

What I do know is that 12 Years a Slave (and The Warmth of Other Suns) help us imagine ourselves and our families in the place of those who lived the reality. These books helps us feel the reality, although we are removed from it.

I also know that the story of American slavery is part of our shared story as Americans, as is the historical, generational trauma (more on this in future) that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. The sustained, institutionalized inhumanity against man is what we did and what we had done to us.


Compendium of slave narratives 1700s-1900s

HBO presented readings of American slave narratives in a documentary called Unchained Memories. A link to this video is below:

The narratives were the result of interviews conducted between writers and former slaves, as part of the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938. You can find them here.

Documenting the American South is a clearinghouse for centuries of slave narratives from the mid-1700s through 1999.

Source: Library of Congress

Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux and Louisiana's Shadow Self

Who is Dave Robicheaux? 

He's the protagonist in 20 books written by James Lee Burke, a New Iberia, Louisiana, writer.

Dave is a homicide detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. Cajun. Recovering alcoholic. Vietnam war veteran. A man who marries. A father.

You can read more about Dave here. And what he thinks about north Louisianans here. And alcohol here. And some music here.


Love of (southern) Louisiana

There is no doubt that Dave Robicheaux loves southern Louisiana - its scenery, people, music, food, traditions.

But he doesn't romanticize it.

From a Stained White Radiance (1992):

I sat on the railway tracks behind the French Market and watched the dawn touch the earth's rim and light the river and the docks and scows over in Algiers, turn the sky the color of bone, and finally fill the east with a hot red glow like the spokes in a wagon wheel. The river looked wide and yellow with silt, and I could see oil and occasionally dead fish floating belly up in the current.

From Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002):

Growing up during the 1940s in New Iberia, down on the Gulf Coast, I never doubted how the world worked. At dawn the antebellum homes along East Main loomed out of the mists, their columned porches and garden walkways and second-story verandas soaked with dew, the chimneys and slate roofs softly molded by the canopy of live oaks that arched over the entire street.

... on East Main, in the false dawn, the air was heavy with the smell of night-blooming flowers and lichen on damp stone and the fecund odor of Bayou Teche, and even though a gold service star may have hung in a window of a grand mansion, indicating the death of a serviceman in the family, the year could have been mistaken for 1861 rather than 1942.

Even when the sun broke above the horizon and the ice wagons and the milk delivery came down the street on iron-rimmed wheels and the Negro help began reporting for work at their employers' back doors, the light was never harsh, never superheated or smelling of tar roads and dust as it was in other neighborhoods. Instead it filtered through Spanish moss and bamboo and philodendron that dripped with beads of moisture as big as marbles, so that even in the midst of summer the morning came to those who lived here with a blue softness that daily told them the earth was a grand place, its design vouchsafed in heaven and not to be questioned. 

... Farther down Main were Hopkins and Railroad Avenues, like ancillary conduits into part of the town's history and geography that people did not talk about publicly. When I went to the ice house on Saturday afternoons with my father, I would look furtively down Railroad at the rows of paintless cribs on each side of the train tracks and at the blowzy women who sat on the stoops, hung over, their knees apart under their loose cotton dresses, perhaps dipping beer out of a bucket two Negro boys carried on a broom handle from Hattie Fontenot's bar. 

I came to learn early on that no venal or meretricious enterprise existed without a community's consent.

Louisiana's Shadow Self

From Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002):

"This is Louisiana, Dave. Guatemala North. Quit pretending it's the United States. Life will make a lot more sense," [Clete] said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A love affair with Louisiana is in some ways like falling in love with the biblical whore of Babylon. We try to smile at its carnival-like politics, its sweaty, whiskey-soaked demagogues, the ignorance bred by its poverty and the insularity of its Cajun and Afro-Caribbean culture. But our self-deprecating manner is a poor disguise for the realities that hover on the edges of one's vision like dirty smudges on a family portrait.

The state roadsides and parking lots of discount stores are strewn, if not actually layered, with mind-numbing amounts of litter, thrown there by the poor and the uneducated and the revelers for whom a self-congratulatory hedonism is a way of life. With regularity, land developers who are accountable to no one bulldoze our stands of virgin cypress and two-hundred year-old live oaks, often at night, so the irrevocable nature of their work cannot be seen until daylight, when it is too late to stop it.

The petrochemical industry poisons waterways with impunity and even trucks in waste from out of state and dumps it in open sludge pits, usually in rural black communities.

Rather than fight monied interests, most of the state's politicians give their constituency casinos and Power ball lotteries and drive-by daiquiri windows, along with low income taxes for the wealthy and an eight and one quarter percent sales tax on food for the poor.

From Burning Angel (1995):

.... Any honest cop will tell you that no form of vice exists without societal sanction of some kind. Also, the big players would still be with us - the mob and the gambling interests who feed on economic recession and greed in politicians and local businessmen, the oil industry, which fouls the oyster beds and trenches saltwater channels into a freshwater marsh, the chemical and waste management companies that treat Louisiana as an enormous outdoor toilet and transform lakes and even the aquifer into toxic soup. 

They all came here by consent, using the word jobs as though it were part of a votive vocabulary. But the deception wasn't even necessary. There was always somebody for sale, waiting to take it on his knees, right down the throat and into the viscera, as long as the money was right.

A Stained White Radiance (1992):

... Over the years I had seen all the dark players get to southern Louisiana in one form or another: the oil and chemical companies who drained and polluted the wetlands; the developers who could turn sugarcane acreage and pecan orchards into miles of tract homes and shopping malls that had the aesthetic qualities of a sewer works; and the Mafia, who operated out of New Orleans and brought us prostitution, slot machines, control of at least two big labor unions, and finally narcotics.

They hunted on the game reserve. They came into an area where large numbers of the people were poor and illiterate, where many were unable to speak English and the politicians were terminally inept or corrupt, and they took everything that was best from the Cajun world in which I had grown up, treated it cynically and with contempt, and left us with oil sludge in the oyster beds, Levittown, and the ... knowledge that we had done virtually nothing to stop them.

Dave's words require no elaboration on my part.

Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux and Alcohol

Drinking in Dmanisi, Caucasus Georgia

Who is Dave Robicheaux? 

He's the protagonist in 20 books written by James Lee Burke, a New Iberia, Louisiana, writer.

Dave is a homicide detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. Cajun. Recovering alcoholic. Viet Nam war veteran. A man who marries. A father.

You can read more about Dave here. And what he thinks about north Louisianans here.

Bar glasses, St. Louis, Missouri

Dave and alcohol

I said Dave was an alcoholic, right? In the series, he's been abstinent and he's been in relapse. He's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.


Here's how Dave's brain processes alcohol:


From Neon Rain (1987):

The sudden raw taste of alcohol after four years of abstinence was like a black peal of thunder in my system. My stomach was empty and it licked through me like canned heat, settled heavily into my testicles and phallus, roared darkly into my brain, filled my heart with the rancid, primordial juices of a Viking reveling in his own mortal wound.

From A Stained White Radiance (1992): 

The bottles of bourbon, vodka, rum, gin, rye, and brandy rang with light along the mirror. The oak-handled beer spigots and frosted mugs in the coolers could have been a poem.....

Descanso, New Mexico

From Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002):

[At an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting] .. I told them all of it. How I had stolen and eaten my wife's diet pills for the amphetamine in them, then had kicked it up into high gear with white speed I had taken from an evidence locker. How I had bludgeoned Jimmy Dean Styles's face with my fists, breaking his nose and lips, knocking his bridge down his throat, grabbing his head and smashing it repeatedly on the bar, my hands slick with his blood and the sweat out of his hair, while an insatiable white worm ate a hole in the soft tissue of my brain and I ground my teeth together with a need that no amount of sex or violence or dope would relieve me of, that nothing other than whiskey and whiskey and whiskey would ever satisfy. 

Beer bottles, Shiprock, New Mexico

Dave's description reminds me of how Mary Karr, in her memoir, Lit, explained how she fell for the drug:

The bottle gleamed in the air between us. I took the whiskey, planning a courtesy sip. But the aroma stopped me just as my tongue touched the glass mouth. The warm silk flowered in my mouth and down my gullet, after which a little blue flame of pleasure roared back up my spine. A poof of sequins went sparkling through my middle.

Wine, Alamogordo, New Mexico

Louisiana Lit: Dave Robicheaux and Northern Louisianans

Acadian flag

A refresher on the three states of Louisiana

Back here, I talked about the three states of Louisiana (plus Baton Rouge).

In brief, there are: 

• southern Louisiana, of which Acadiana is a large part --> Cajun (by way of France and Canada), creole (by way of Mali and Senegal, perhaps Caribbean), French language, Catholic
• New Orleans - French, Afro-Caribbean, German, Italian, Catholic
• northern Louisiana - Arkansas/Mississippi/Texas orientation --> Baptist
• (Baton Rouge --> LSU and football)

Dave Robicheaux

Dave Robicheaux is the protagonist in 20 books by James Lee Burke. He's a homicide detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. Cajun. Recovering alcoholic. Viet Nam war veteran. A man who marries. A father.


Dave's views on northern Louisianans

I'll let Dave do his own talking on this issue.

From Neon Rain (1987):

 ... he had the flat green eyes and heavy facial bones of north Louisiana hill people. He smelled faintly of dried sweat, Red Man, and talcum powder.  ....

... They were big men, probably Cajuns like myself, but their powerful and sinewy bodies, their tight-fitting, powder-blue uniforms, polished gunbelts and holsters, glinting bullets and revolver butts made you think of backwoods Mississippi and north Louisiana, as though they'd had to go away to learn redneck cruelty.

From Burning Angel (1995):

... When the two guards, both of them narrow-eyed and cheerless piney woods crackers, brought him into the reception room and sat him down in front of a scarred wood table in front of us and slipped another chain around his belly and locked it behind the chair, which was bolted to the floor, I said it would be all right if they waited outside. ...


From A Stained White Radiance (1992):

Two men in suits stepped in front of me, and one of them stiff-armed me in the shoulder with the heel of his hand. ...

'Where you think you're going, buddy?' he said. His breath was rife with the smell of cigars.
'Yeah? Who's that with you? The African para-troopers?' he said.
'He's FBI, you peckerwood shithead,' I said. 'Now, you get the fuck out of my way.'
Mistake, mistake, I thought, even as the words came out of my mouth. Don't humiliate north Louisiana stump-jumpers in front of either their women or the boss man.



Heh, heh, heh, he said "peckerwood"

I'm not sure I ever heard the word peckerwood until I read a hilarious book by Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel. Dave Robicheaux' reference to peckerwoods reminds me of one of Not Sidney Poitier's misadventures.

Mr. Everett is ruthless in his lampooning of back-back-back-backwoods white folk in the same way some white folks like to characterize black folks. In the book, a black man named Not Sidney Poitier's life seems to roll out in vignettes of Sidney Poitier movies. In the example below, he was arrested for, more or less, driving while black in rural Georgia:

Once you leave Atlanta, you're in Georgia. 

... a flashing blue bubble atop a black and white county sheriff's patrol car. I watched as the nine-foot tall, large-headed, large-hatted, mirror-sunglassed manlike thing unfolded from his car, closed his door, and walked toward me - one hairy-knuckled suitcase of a hand resting on his insanely large and nasty-looking pistol, the knuckles of the other hand dragging on the ground.

.... Before I could whistle Dixie .... there were three more black and white patrol cars and similarly brown-shirt-clad miscreants swinging their long arms around me.* There was a lot of whooping and chattering and hoo-hahing and head-scratching about whether my license was phony, about whether my car was stolen, it was just too clean, ..... 

... I was taken to the town of Peckerwood, the county seat of the county of the same name .... We rolled through pine trees across spiderwebbed and cracked asphalt deeper into the county's colon. We stopped finally at the farm. Shacks and more shacks, rows of dusty nothing, with many trees that managed to provide no shade at all. 

"What do they grow here?" I asked no one in particular, but for some stupid reason said it aloud. 

"This here is a dirt farm, boy," a mirror-lensed set of eyes shouted at me. "Our dirt crop ain't what it used to be and it never was!" That's what I finally figured out he said. It sounded like: "Dis chere a dir farm, boi. Aw dir crop ain't wha eah yoost to be, but den tit neber wa." .... 

    

*If Dave's sidekick, Clete Purcel, had been there, he would have said they were swinging their dicks around.  

 

Getting back to Dave

I leave you to draw your own conclusions about what South Louisianan Dave Robicheaux thinks of North Louisianans.


Disclaimer: I do not endorse this message.

Louisiana Lit: James Lee Burke: Dave Robicheaux

James Lee Burke. Credit: Deep South Magazine

Introduction

I've seen Louisiana author James Lee Burke compared to the likes of James Patterson and Dean Koontz. A travesty - Messrs. Patterson and Koontz churn out the equivalent of Harlequin Romances for men. Mr. Burke writes.

Back here, I looked at Mr. Burke's very first book, which I wasn't madly in love with. Subsequent books are exponentially better.

Mr. Burke has written more than 30 books. Twenty of the books center around protagonist Dave Robicheaux.

Dave Robicheaux

A Cajun, Dave Robicheaux is a police detective and the owner of a recreational fishing enterprise outside New Iberia, Louisiana. He was a detective with the New Orleans Police Department til everything went to shit, and then he became an on-again, off-again detective for the New Iberia Sheriff's Department.

Most of the Dave Robicheaux books are based in New Iberia, where Dave lives, though he burns up a hell of a lot of gas and time on his forays to and from New Orleans, working on cases that may have started in New Iberia, but have tentacles elsewhere.


Dave's character

Dave Robicheaux is a man with cracks in his foundation. He was a low-bottom alcoholic while with the New Orleans Police Department, and he had a relapse or two after he joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

Ghosts from Viet Nam invade his dreams, though less so after he stopped drinking. 

Dave had a mother who loved him and whom he loved, but she had some demons, and he suffered collateral damage from those demons. He admired his father, who was known as a guy who enjoyed a good brawl.

At the point I am now in the series, Dave has had three wives. The first left him because of his drinking and other issues. The second, Annie, was murdered. The third, Bootsie, is alive and still married to Dave. She has lupus. 

Dave has a daughter he saved from a plane crash (murder), in which the plane plunged into the Gulf and drowned her mother and the other passengers. A Guatemalan girl, witness to atrocities in her village, Dave was able to adopt her through the magic of literary license. He named her Alafair. 

Time span

• The first Dave Robicheaux book was published in 1987; the most recent (as of this writing) in 2013. 
•  Dave was born in the 1940s and as noted above, served in Viet Nam. 
•  Mr. Burke was born in 1936, and spent most of his youth in the Texas-South Louisiana coast region.

I draw your attention to this because:

• Dave Robicheaux does grow older with the passage of time in the book series.
• Mr. Burke, as he channels through Dave, shares some particular worldviews on Louisiana and the people within and without. 
• There is a stream of time where you can see how embedded was~has been~is the culture of slavery, indentured servitude, oppression, and almost thoughtless dismissal of human life in our society

Themes

Certain threads wind through Dave Robicheaux' stories:

• Alcoholism, drug addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous
• Southern Louisiana geography and culture
• The underclass in particular and class in general
• Violence
• The insidious, institutionalized inhumanity against man that is part of southern Louisiana's history
• Environmental issues
• Living with lupus

I don't know if there are many authors who portray the underclass with... I don't know ... humanity. Mr. Burke does so, albeit without tenderness or sentimentality.

Missouri writer Daniel Woodrell does. In his case, he tells his stories through the eyes of the societal stratum we like to call trash.

About Clete

Clete Purcel, who I suppose one could call Dave's sidekick, is in my opinion, a psychopath. Damned if in every Dave Robicheaux novel, Dave doesn't say Clete was the best homicide detective he ever knew. He never gives a scrap of evidence of this, however, and there's nothing in Clete's actions that support Dave's statement. Unless you consider urinating in a man's car or demolishing a guy's house with a bulldozer good detective work.  

This dumb loyalty to Clete the psychopath is indicative of a chronic flaw, I believe, in Mr. Burke's books. In his very first book, Half of Paradise, one of the protagonists allies himself with a complete asshole, no matter how much this costs him in prison. In the Lost Get-Back Boogie, same thing - our hero will not let go of his loser, crazy-ass "friend" til the very end.

 ... but no one's perfect.


I'm still as engaged in the Dave Robicheaux series now as I was from the start. I thank my mother for pointing me in his direction. 




This is the first in a series on Louisiana as seen through the eyes of Dave Robicheaux as channeled by James Lee Burke.



Coming soon -->  Part 2: Dave Robicheaux and the Northern Louisianans

New Mexico Movies: Bless Me, Ultima

Bless Me, Ultima. From:wikipedia

The movie version of the classic New Mexico novel, Bless Me, Ultima, came out while I was in New Mexico, and I didn't see it then. Lo, the DVD was at the Lafayette Public Library.

Here, I reviewed the book.

Movie: Bless Me, Ultima

Provenance: Filmed in (or around) Abiquiu, New Mexico. 

The trailer below is roll-your-eyes hyperbolic about the so-called controversy of the book. Controversial. Banned. Forbidden. Burned. .... Forget about that part - look at it for the scenery! 

I liked the movie. It was pleasing. The scenery, especially, was magnificent - you can see why New Mexico is called the State of Enchantment. Amazingly, the film-makers were even able to do some justice to the marvelous New Mexico sky.

Something I liked about the trailer is that it reflects the feeling I got from this movie: "From the heart of the land, that is our land; from the heart of the culture that is our culture." Bless Me, Ultima - movie version - comes across as an American story. It is of all of us.

Decades ago, on Sunday mornings, there used to be a Christian ministry that produced half-hour morality stories set in modern times. The stories were fairly simple and the acting was serviceable. Wasn't great theater, but it wasn't bad. In fact, they were entertaining.

The movie, Bless Me, Ultima, reminded me of those half-hour episodes, where characters were presented with moral dilemmas and we saw how they handled them.

Recommended? Yes, for the scenery and for a story of Americana that many of us know little about.

Louisiana Movies: In the Electric Mist

In the Electric Mist. From: IMDb

Movie: In the Electric Mist

Provenance: Based and filmed in and around New Iberia and St. Martinville, Louisiana

Based on a book by James Lee Burke: In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

Synopsis: Series of murders in and around New Iberia investigated by former alcoholic sheriff Dave Robichoux, including a murder from the long-ago past.

Wow - where has this movie been? Sometimes I take a break from watching a movie because it's a little dull and I go off to do other things. With this movie, sometimes I took a break so it would delay the ending.

The photography is beautiful and captures all that is entrancing about southern Louisiana. The misty bayous, the super-green, flat sugarcane fields, the alleés of live oaks. The low-brimmed Acadian houses with their deep porches, lawns that touch the water. You'd think it was a paradise, if you didn't remember the mosquitoes and the sopping humidity. 
 
Tommy Lee Jones and John Goodman are both a pleasure to watch, with TLJ determinedly lethal and Mr. Goodman Nero-like in his dissolution.

There are a few plot points that are a little off, but these are minor quibbles.   


Music from the movie

La Terre Tremblante:

Damn Right I've Got the Blues (in the movie performed by Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas), performed by Buddy Guy:

I'm a Hog For You, performed by Clifton Chenier:

Recommend? An enthusiastic yes! 

Louisiana Lit: Half of Paradise

Half of Paradise cover, Pocket Books. Found: Bill Crider

Book: Half of Paradise

Author: James Lee Burke

Author's provenance: (excerpted from his website)

James Lee Burke was born in Houston, Texas, in 1936 and grew up on the Texas-Louisiana gulf coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute and later received a B. A. Degree in English and an M. A. from the University of Missouri in 1958 and 1960 respectively. Over the years he worked as a landman for Sinclair Oil Company, pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the U. S. Job Corps.

A number of Mr. Burke's books have been set in Louisiana. His most famous series revolves around the character of Dave Robicheaux, of cajun heritage, a cop in Louisiana.

Half of Paradise blurb, Pocket Books. Found: Bill Crider

Written in 1965, Half of Paradise was Mr. Burke's first published novel. Has nothing to do with Robicheaux - it is about three other Louisianans: Toussaint, Broussard, and Winfield. In a nutshell, all end up in hell in various ways, pretty much by their own hands.  

I did get a sense of place in the book, which kept me somewhat engaged. Toussaint's actions made the most sense of the three, and I could see how he ended up the way he did (dead). I never saw quite how Winfield got enmeshed into the drug scene - it seemed a little too Reefer Madness to me - you know - take one little bit of a drug and you're a lunatic from that moment. Not to mention the woman who leads him to the fiery gates. (He also dies.) As for Broussard, yes, I got the alcoholic thing and that his aristocratic heritage shriveled up and died, but alcoholism doesn't explain the dipshit decisions/behaviors he engaged in from the beginning of his moonshine escapade all the way to the end. (He ends up back in the work camp.)

I'm pretty sure I've read at least one of Mr. Burke's books in the past, but I didn't remember the strong Louisiana connection until my mother pointed it out - she is in the process of churning through his work. So I'm giving them a go. Might be fun to visit some of the places in his books.

Recommend? No, not really.

New Mexico Lit: Jajedeh

Credit: Amazon

Jajadeh, written by Harry Hoge, is a work of fiction based on the facts of Apache interactions with the Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans who laid claim to the same lands as the Apache.

The story begins in the early 1600s with the Apache-Spanish era, and ends circa 1865 with the death of Mangas Coloradas in the Apache-Mexican-American era.

Overall, Jajadeh is successful as a means of delivering historical information in story form. It kept my interest throughout. It is also further evidence that the very things you would believe to be fabricated because they sound so outlandish, are the things that are true. Examples include the abominations delivered upon men, women, and children of all sides. 

I do have some quibbles, however.

For example, I felt a little exasperated with the stereotypical "hands on hips, feet apart" for at least two of the women in the story, like "spitfire" Maureen O'Hara in a movie with John Wayne. I also didn't get the sudden marital turn-off between one of the early protagonists and his wife. Where'd that come from?

I thought I would learn the story behind the crown dancers (one of which is featured prominently on the book jacket), but the dance was only barely alluded to. I also didn't understand why Mr. Hoge chose to use the (apparently archaic) term "jajadeh" instead of the modern-day term "ga'an" or "gan" or "ga he" to refer to the  Mountain Spirit.

But overall, again, Jajadeh is an educational, enlightening, and interesting read.

New Mexico Lit: Pie Town

Credit: Amazon

What was the name of that family show where the dad was a minister and he and his wife had a bunch of kids? Right, right, right - 7th Heaven.

So Pie Town is kind of like that show - people with life problems that get worked out in a heartwarming way - with the help of a Tiny Tim-like character who has a spirit guide in the form of his deceased great-grandmother. And where the real New Mexican village of Pie Town is a bit of a stunt location for the book. 

I skipped through part of the book to get to the wrap-up, but even so, I missed the priest's secret. Tried to find it, and discovered I wasn't engaged enough to persevere.

If I were to liken the book to a pie, then I'd characterize it as the meringue atop a pie - airy, sweet, and fluffy.

New Mexico Lit: Apache History

I've spent most of my year in New Mexico re-reading my cache of classic, paperback sci-fi novels. With that project complete (and the books now dispersed to the universe), I've turned my attention to New Mexico-centered literature.

Recently, I visited the Mescalero Apache Cultural Museum in Mescalero. The helpful curator there recommended a number of books on Apache history, some of which I include here: 

• Cochise, Edwin R. Sweeney
• From Cochise to Geronimo, Edwin R. Sweeney
• The Apache Indians, Frank C. Lockwood
• An Apache Life, Morris Edward Opler
• I Fought With Geronimo, Jason Betsinez
• Making Peace with Cochise [journals of the peace talks], J.A. Sladen
• Mangas Coloradas, Edwin R. Sweeney 
• Merejildo Grijalva : Apache Captive, Army Scout; Edwin R. Sweeney
• The People Called Apache, Thomas Mails
• Watch For Me on the Mountain, Forest Carter

There were many more on the curator's list, including some by well-known author on the Apaches, Eve Ball. Fortunately, the Alamogordo Library has a large collection of Southwestern materials, so I've created a to-read list.

Edwin R. Sweeney is from St. Charles, Missouri, by the way. I heard that when he was a young'n, he announced to his English teacher that some day he would write a book about Cochise, with whom he was fascinated. The teacher was a little skeptical, given the lackluster attention he gave to English in the classroom.