Flashback to 2017: El Paso: The Tumblewords Project: Introduction and Smeltertown

My Saturday habit while I lived in El Paso. The original post here.

Saturday, July 1, 2017

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 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.

Flashback to 2019: El Paso 2019: The Tumblewords Project: A Brief Love

This makes me smile. Original post here.

Monday, February 11, 2019

El Paso 2019: The Tumblewords Project: A Brief Love

James Drake, Falling Birds, El Paso Art Museum, Texas. November 2016.

Born in 1995, founded by Donna Snyder, the Tumblewords Project is a writing workshop that occurs every Saturday at the Memorial Park branch of the El Paso Library. Each week, a workshop leader suggests writing prompts to the participants; the prompts usually follow a theme the leader chooses for the session. Everyone is enthusiastically welcomed. If you're just passing through El Paso and happen to be in town on a Saturday afternoon, go! 

My related posts here.


One of my workshop efforts below. Writer and artist, Sandra Torrez, led the day's work, offering Edgar Allen Poe as our inspiration.


A Brief Love

I'll look at you
While you sleep.

I'll touch your sternum, press
Down with the pad of a finger

Like a push of life.

I'll find your pulse, rest
My finger there, and linger,
To absorb your beat.

I'll leave you then.
Push out into
The cold and
Not look back

Because I gotta go.

El Paso: The Tumblewords Project: Be Silent

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico. March 2010.

The rule at the Tumblewords Project is that if you write something, you've got to read it. No explanations, histories, excuses, or any other blablablahs before reading, with one exception. You can preface your reading with "this is shit." I always chuckle at this.

Here's a piece I wrote after a reading prompt on one Tumblewords day (with some editing):

Be Silent

As we dance, be silent please.
I don't know you,
I just dance with you.

If you talk, you may reveal things
I don't want to know and
Your unwelcome noise will
Scatter the waves between the music,
The singers' songs, and
The sway of our bodies,
The vibration in the air above us, and our
Touch, and yea, even the occasional
Lock of eyes between us.

Because you may say something
I don't want to hear about
Your neighbors or your exes or
"Those people,"
Whomever those people are to you,
Who you denigrate with your
Moral superiority.

I want to dance and
I want you to just keep your
Mouth shut (please) and
Let me fold into the silence of
Your reality to better imagine
Myself in the dream of
Dance and the union of
Souls and the sound of rhythms,
Like our ancient ancestors did before us,
As they swirled around the large
Fire
Beneath an inky sky freckled with the Milky Way.

El Paso: The Tumblewords Project: In Which I Am Introduced to Outlaw Poetry

Graffiti, mural, Tbilisi, Caucasus Georgia. May 2012.

Born in 1995, founded by Donna Snyder, the Tumblewords Project is a writing workshop that occurs every Saturday at the Memorial Park branch of the El Paso Library. Each week, a workshop leader suggests writing prompts to the participants; the prompts usually follow a theme the leader chooses for the session. Everyone is enthusiastically welcomed. If you're just passing through El Paso and happen to be in town on a Saturday afternoon, go! 

My related posts here.

Chauncey Low, a wildly talented writer in the Tumblewords Project, led the workshop one Saturday.

I can't speak for the others in our group, but for me, he cracked open a smudgy window to let me peer into a hidden room.

The Underground Art Scene

First up was a tiny treatise by poet and performer, Penny Arcade, from the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry:

The underground is inviolate. It is not a street, a neighborhood or a certain city. It is a metaphysical space located where bohemia intersects with the demi-monde. Not everyone from bohemia can descend into the underground just as not everyone in the demi-monde can find their way to either bohemia or the underground.

If you do not have a functioning criminal class in your art scene you have academia and while academia is a reflection of the art world it can never be the art world.

The Lower East Side of New York used to be filled with poets, writers, actors, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, junkies, whores and weirdos. Now it's filled with college students pretending to be poets, writers, musicians, actors, photographers, filmmakers, junkies, whores and weirdos, in other words the ten most popular kids from every high school in the world are now living in downtown New York. Those are the people who most of us who ran away to New York came here to get away from! Nobody who was popular in high school can ever be hip. It's not possible. If you were popular in high school, that was your peak. Be satisfied.

Am I Mad At You?

Then there was an outrageously wicked, terrible-licious, no-boundaries poem by Vampyre Mike Kassel:

Am I mad at you?
Of course I’m not mad, whatever gave you that idea?
Just because I’m sitting here pushing pins
Into a little wax doll
With a lock of your hair in it?
Just because I burned the panties you left here
And buried the ashes
At the crossroads at midnight?
Just because I sent the nude pictures we took of you
To Cattle Breeders Digest?
Just because I welded the doors of your car shut?

I’m not mad, whatever gave you that idea?
Just because I wrote your name and address
On the men’s room wall
Of every biker’s bar from here to Bakersfield?
Just because I made three hundred copies
Of your apartment key
And handed them out
To every junkie and wino in the Tenderloin?
Just because I switched your birth-control pills for Ex-Lax,
Spiked your shampoo with Nair,
And hid an electric cattle prod inside your favorite dildo?
Just because I pitchforked your mother,
Got your kid sister ten-dollar tricks,
And strung out your cat on speed?

No, I’m not mad.
And, by the way,
Have you got a dollar?


.... which Chauncey followed with his own, equally wicked version.


Note: The book, New American Underground Poetry, Volume 1, includes several of Mr. Kassel's poems.

Then we workshop acolytes took a turn at dysfunction. Here's mine, taking a more passive-aggressive tack:

Pistachio Ice Cream

Did I remember to bring you your pistachio ice cream? 

Of course, I did. 
Why are you using that accusatory tone? 

I bought it and I paid for it and I personally witnessed the cashier putting it into my reusable bag, 
You know the one, that lavender and green one?
Oh, you've never seen that bag? 
Well, it's my favorite. 
You never notice anything I like. 

I put it on the passenger seat right next to me. 

It was such a fine day and I rolled the windows down. 
And so I was driving home and I stopped at a red light.
I had my favorite song on, 
You know the one.
Oh you don't? 
Well that figures.

All of a sudden,
A hand from nowhere
Reached in and took the bag!

With your pistachio ice cream in it.


The Real Me

Chauncey presented us with a poem by another contributor to the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Kathi Georges (now using Kat Georges). Title: The Real Me.

I am laughing at myself because The Real Me is so in-your-face (ahem) that I feel sheepish about posting it here. It startles, but then one - "one" being a woman, specifically - gets it, and says, "Yeah." At least metaphorically.

But you can read it over here, where Chicano Poet has shared it without any bashfulness.

In addition to being a poet, Kat Georges is the co-founder of an independent publishing business called Three Rooms Press.


Art or Commitment? 

Chauncey also re-introduced me to Bob Flanagan, the artist who nailed his penis to a board.

Bob Flanagan, who died in 1996 from cystic fibrosis, used intentional pain to master the involuntary pain associated with his physical disease.

Here is Mr. Flanagan singing an explanatory song that he put to the melody of Mary Poppins' Supercalifragilistic:

He frequently pauses to clear phlegm while singing the song.

So the unoriginal question: Is public self-harming, such as when Mr. Flanagan nailed his penis to a board, art? Or is it self-harm that is a function of a mental illness, like cutting, and which calls for an intervention?

Maybe it's the intention that pertains? I have proclaimed this as art, therefore it is art. Versus I am hurting myself because I am in pain and I don't know what else to do.

Or maybe it isn't the performance of the act that is questionable, but the decision to make it public and call it art that presents the puzzle. Can one defecate in public and call it art?

Damned if I know.

El Paso: Tumblewords Project: Salt

Salt Flat, Texas. March 2010.

Born in 1995, founded by Donna Snyder, the Tumblewords Project is a writing workshop that occurs every Saturday at the Memorial Park branch of the El Paso Library. Each week, a workshop leader suggests writing prompts to the participants; the prompts usually follow a theme the leader chooses for the session. Everyone is enthusiastically welcomed. If you're just passing through El Paso and happen to be in town on a Saturday afternoon, go! 

My related posts here.


One week the writing prompt was about something mundane. Like salt. ... Salt?! Did someone say salt?


Salt

Crystalline, cut,
Diamond crunch.

Salt, you
So maligned, so falsely accused as an
Agent of death
When you are of life, real.

"The little bite," or maybe the French would call you
"The little death" - oh, wait -
That's something else.


Deer, cows, horses, and I
Lick you up
From brown blocks or
Red tomatoes or sweaty hands or
Rims of cups.


If I were on the Atlantic, sailing,
Slapped by saltine spray,
Wouldn't I lick
My upper lip and then my lower to
Collect the salty residue,
That which
Jumps with life, absorbing your
Biting salinivity* and the
Sloughed DNA of the sea life you saturate?

The salt of the Earth,
Come to me.



*I made this word up. Creative license.

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: Sounds

Flashing clouds, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. August 2017.

August 2017

Born in 1995, founded by Donna Snyder, the Tumblewords Project is a writing workshop that occurs every Saturday at the Memorial Park branch of the El Paso Library. Each week, a workshop leader suggests writing prompts to the participants; the prompts usually follow a theme the leader chooses for the session. Everyone is enthusiastically welcomed. If you're just passing through El Paso and happen to be in town on a Saturday afternoon, go! 

My related posts here.


Below are two of my poetic attempts in response to the writing prompts that one week's leader gave us. Gosh, I wish I were more meticulous about writing dates and workshop leaders in my notes. I am embarrassed at the oversight. 


Outside My Window at Night

Train. Two blasts.
Mockingbird. Sweet syrup song.
Dogs. Bark Bark Bark Bark.


I Am the Center of the Universe

I moan in the pain.
A rosebush leaps from the ground to see what is happening.
Which is as it should be.
When I am in pain, it is about me and me and me. 

Clouds gather and darken and
Shed angry tears and
Shout epithets and shoot spears of
Shocking lasers.
All in alliance with me, my pain.

The wind, my El Paso sister,
Calls at my windows and door,
Swirling and screaming and
Sissing at my sorrow.
The unfairness of it all!
She agrees. 

The soil of the earth
Arcs up and around in 
Twists of infantile fury to 
Show its 
Fealty to my woes. 

The stars refuse to come out at night.
The moon grants only a slice of light.
The sun pulls his cover over.
All eclipse to
Signify their
Loyalty to me and my
Moan. 



Flashing clouds and barking dogs here:

El Paso: The Tumblewords Project: On Poetry

Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. May 2012

Born in 1995, founded by Donna Snyder, the Tumblewords Project is a writing workshop that occurs every Saturday at the Memorial Park branch of the El Paso Library. Each week, a workshop leader suggests writing prompts to the participants; the prompts usually follow a theme the leader chooses for the session. Everyone is enthusiastically welcomed. If you're just passing through El Paso and happen to be in town on a Saturday afternoon, go! 

My related posts here.


One week, the writing prompt was to write about thoughts on poetry.

Here's what I wrote (edited a bit for this post).

Poetry

A bore a snore. Often
Crashing.
Slumbering.
Numbing.

Saccharine, sing song.
So wannabe
PROFOUND.

I nod my head and
Mutter mmm, yeah, so good. And
Look erudite. Look creative. Look linked in.

Sometimes, though.

What's that?

That twist of idea? That flutter
of feather tickling my cheek
Making me turn my head
To listen, look more.

That cascade knocking me
Down with gut pain
Gushing out of the
Poet's mouth, taking my
Breath away.

That flash flood of warm brown water
Pushing past, exposing

Bleached bone
Salted and sanded, scooped out from
Where it had been buried before the surge swept through.

Poetry.

Mostly harmless.



In Between


In between the spaces of words
White space for aesthetes?

Or things unsaid?

Or things shouted, but into a
White hole that swallows sounds.

Or to be heard, but
Only
If the reader can see what's
Not there.


###

Yeah, well. I'm not in love with it.


 

El Paso: The Tumblewords Project: Illusions, Delusions, and Acceptance

Highway 371, Navajo Nation, New Mexico. May 2013.

Born in 1995, founded by Donna Snyder, the Tumblewords Project is a writing workshop that occurs every Saturday at the Memorial Park branch of the El Paso Library. Each week, a workshop leader suggests writing prompts to the participants; the prompts usually follow a theme the leader chooses for the session. Everyone is enthusiastically welcomed. If you're just passing through El Paso and happen to be in town on a Saturday afternoon, go! 

My related posts here.



Below is my output (since edited) from one Saturday. The binding threads are illusion, delusion, and acceptance.

Highway 371, Navajo Nation, New Mexico. May 2013.

Loess

We were pretty smug
In our specialness,
Our quick wit,
Our close-knittedness,
Our uniqueness among the rest.

Handsome and pretty, they said.
Smart as whips, they said.
Ready, always, to advise, solicited or no.
Analytically confident about others' lives.

Such good mothers, good fathers,
Good siblings, good children,
Good wives, good husbands.

Shimmering heads atop a grassy hill,
Breeze ruffling through thick hair.
Eyes alert, clear, penetrating the valley
Below.

We stood atop a grassy hill
Of loess.
We thought our foundation firm.
But it was just windblown dust.

Fresh and faded, Carencro, Louisiana. February 2015.

Evidence

I look in the mirror.

The evidence is there,
Undeniable.
I'm a woman of a certain age.

Not always fair, how it turns out. But
Inevitable.
No use to rage.

Radical acceptance? .. to flaunt the
Inevitable!
The silver bespeaks a sage?

I see the not-so-beautiful parts,
Undeniable.
But I am here, so smile, girl.

Accept.


Not untrue

I won't not tell you
If you don't ask me

But if you ask me
I'll not not misinform you
Of how it might be if
I were like this and
You were like that

Or maybe I mean
If I weren't who I am and
You weren't who you are

Can we agree not to talk at all
And
Just dance?

El Paso 2019: The Tumblewords Project: A Brief Love

James Drake, Falling Birds, El Paso Art Museum, Texas. November 2016.

Born in 1995, founded by Donna Snyder, the Tumblewords Project is a writing workshop that occurs every Saturday at the Memorial Park branch of the El Paso Library. Each week, a workshop leader suggests writing prompts to the participants; the prompts usually follow a theme the leader chooses for the session. Everyone is enthusiastically welcomed. If you're just passing through El Paso and happen to be in town on a Saturday afternoon, go! 

My related posts here.


One of my workshop efforts below. Writer and artist, Sandra Torrez, led the day's work, offering Edgar Allen Poe as our inspiration.



A Brief Love

I'll look at you
While you sleep.

I'll touch your sternum, press
Down with the pad of a finger

Like a push of life.

I'll find your pulse, rest
My finger there, and linger,
To absorb your beat.

I'll leave you then.
Push out into
The cold and
Not look back

Because I gotta go.

In Memorium

 

The end of the year seems a good time to remember the dead. Some who were very close to me, whether family or friends. Some who were not so close, but who were in one of my circles, and impactful. Some whose connection to me was ephemeral, but whose life touched me in some way. Some who died after this blog debuted. Some who died years before.

My mother, Carol: The Last Monday Letter and posts that featured her here.

Carol on the Delta Queen. October 2013. Credit: Mzuriana.

My father, Ron: I hold complicated feelings about my father, but as they relate to challenges and opportunities I encountered as an adult, he delivered support in both tangible and intangible ways. With eight children, and, at times, a dog and a duck, not to mention my mom - he was definitely rooted. Except. He had a life-long dream of learning to fly. My dad sustained that dream through a stint with the Air Force, marriage, college, various household relocations, raising and supporting the eight kids, until, finally, he made it happen in his 60s.

 

My father, Ron, and my mother, Carol

Dan Offret in Tucson: A Toast to Dan

Jessica Terrell in Missouri (then New Mexico): Voluntary Simplicity

Judy Ackerman in El Paso, whose orbit I circled through her varied avocations and activist work: hiking, land preservation, voter engagement, women's rights, and pro-choice rights.

Donna Snyder in El Paso, founder of the Tumblewords Project, a weekly writers' workshop - still going strong 28 years later, even beyond her death in 2022. This interview, A Conversation with Donna Snyder: An Advocate and Speaker for the Unseen, published in April 2022, serves as a memorial to some parts to her whole of a life.

Creative Life: A Love Note For a Waning Moon

My mom in the arms of her mom. 1930.

I'm thinking of my mom today. Her baby sister died last week. Due to COVID, a memorial service will not occur until an as-yet-undetermined date.

My mom's closest brother - her confidant - died a couple of years ago, maybe less. She and her brother could talk about things my mom didn't want to talk about with her adult kids. My mom misses him terribly.

My mom isn't one to express her fears too much. She doesn't like to show her soft underbelly to others. From her mother, she learned the gruff family motto: "Never show the white feather."

The first time my mom faced cancer, which resulted in surgery and chemo, I pointed out, so helpfully, that there were cancer support groups at the hospital. She could talk with other people who walked in the same shoes as she, deriving strength and solace from each other. "Pfft," she sniffed in some disdain. "Why would I want to do that?"

A couple of years ago, my mom had no choice but to enter a hospital and then a rehab facility for a time. Which she loathed.

Sometimes I spent the night with her at the hospital or, later, at the rehab center. On several occasions, my mom said to me, "Come lay down beside me on the bed."  I did so, and I wrapped my arm around her torso, and I laid my head near her shoulder, knowing this was a rare privilege, indeed. Mostly, we just lay quietly, maybe while watching a TV show. I cherish those times.

Her light wanes.

I think of a poem I wrote at a past Tumblewords Project workshop. The leader that day, a poet named Rios de La Luz, walked us through a writing model called "corporeal writing," in which we focus on a part of our body, and how our bodies hold memories. One of the poems I wrote that day arose from childhood body-memories of how my mom would comfort me when I was ill.


As I Die

When I die.
No. As I die,
I want this:

The hand of a lover
On my brow,
Lightly.

Skimming slowly up my forehead,
Across the border of my hair
Atop the remnant of my infantile fontanel.

Pausing there, then
Sliding down the
Silkiness of my hair.

And again.
And again.

Like my mother did
When I was a toddler,
Maybe feverish or maybe
Just settling into a warm sleep.

Like I did for my daughter
As she leaned into me,
Pressed against my belly and my breast,
The rhythmic smoothing of her brow

Up and over,
Up and over.

Like past lovers did for me
As we lay in bed, under covers,
Quiet, thinking of nothing.
Sensing only, that tender instructive
Smoothing of my brow.

Up and over,
Up and over.

"This," I always thought,
"Is how I want it to be as I die."




I hope it's like this for my mom, when that time comes.




Related posts: Travels With Carol

El Paso: A Hawk Swooped In

Hawk, Memorial Park, El Paso, Texas. August 2017.

August 2017


I was on my way to the Tumblewords Project at the library in Memorial Park. Beau Jocque was playing to me.

Through the top of my windshield, a dark shape swooped down and across the road and up to a tree on the left side of the road. I pulled over. Got my camera out.

It was a very large hawk. It landed on an outer branch toward the tree top, and peered down into the greenery.

Hawk, Memorial Park, El Paso, Texas. August 2017.

It hulked there. Like a member of local royalty who barged into the home of a subject, seeing what he might take for himself, because he could.

-- Or was that the story at all? The photo below suggests that .... maybe .... that was actually its home? I saw a small bird fly out from the tree, following the hawk. But in the photo above, I see an extended wing inside the branches and another bird flying away.

Hawk, Memorial Park, El Paso, Texas. August 2017.

I snatched a bit of video, which I unfortunately ended before he made his move and was subsequently chased out of by one of the diminutive owners of that small home.

So the mystery remains.

Tucson, AZ: Music For Dying

Crepuscular 1. December 2006.

Intro

A couple of years ago, I came upon an NPR episode called What Music For the Dying Sounds Like. I said to myself: Fascinating.

And: What a good article on which to base a lesson plan for my English language learners. Which I did, and which I still use today.

As a side note (get it?), years ago, I created a mental playlist for my funeral, which, unfortunately, I won't hear, should it even be played. But for the record (get it?), here is that playlist:

• Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
• Amazing Grace (Judy Collins cover) AND (Blind Boys of Alabama cover - the combo of two greatest songs ever!)
• Will the Circle Be Unbroken
• This Little Light of Mine

Odd choices, perhaps, considering I'm not a Christian, but there you go. I like the songs.

But I've digressed, because the purpose of this article is to talk about music for the dying, not the already done dead.

Crepuscular 2. December 2006.

Liminality

But before I get to the music-while-dying part:

One Saturday afternoon in El Paso earlier this year, I participated in the Tumblewords Project writing workshop. Dr. David Romo led the day’s workshop, focusing on history and poetry. Dr. Romo brought his double bass with him; he played its rumbly, jazzy self to accompany some of our poetry readings. A very cool touch. He talked about “liminality” in his writing perspective.

Liminality, he explained, refers to being on a threshold, being between a past and a present. A rather poetic definition is here:

The word liminal comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold – any point or place of entering or beginning. A liminal space is the time between the ‘what was’ and the ‘next.’ It is a place of transition, waiting, and not knowing. Liminal space is where all transformation takes place, if we learn to wait and let it form us.

Dr. Romo self-identifies as a fronterizo who grew up in El Paso, someone who, as another author describes him, is a “borderlander, someone who embodies two languages and cultures and moves smoothly between them.”

Dr. Romo described the complication of answering mundane questions at Border Patrol checkpoints such as: Where are you from? Where are you going? Why are you going there?

This made me laugh. I had a similar experience when people asked me in the past six months: Where do you live? In the past six months, I flowed from Mexico City to Missouri to Louisiana to El Paso, and then to Las Cruces.  Thus my answer: Well, nowhere at the moment. Perhaps should have said: I live in Liminal. It’s a small border town.



Liminality also refers to " .... borderland between life and death."

Crepuscular 3. December 2006.

Songs for the dying

When I met Katie on that Monday morning in Tucson, she told me she was a member of Tucson's Threshold Choir, which (I read later in one of its cards):

"..... offers comfort through bedside song - for those in hospice care, those who are healing, those facing challenges, and their families and caregivers."

The Threshold Choir is "kindness made audible."

Katie's introduction of the Threshold Choir to me kind of took my breath away. Well.

Tucson. 

Crepuscular 4. December 2006.

Word of the Year 2020: Build 2: Fronterista

Clark Bridge over Mississippi River, between W. Alton, Missouri, and Alton, Illinois. May 2011.

Thus far

Word of the Year: Build 1


At a Tumblewords Project workshop I attended during my early-2019 revisit to El Paso, I wrote the poem, Family Fronterista, at the bottom of this page.

Dr. Yolanda Chávez Leyva (who writes the blog FierceFronteriza) led this February workshop.

She introduced the workshop by noting the anniversary of the February 2, 1848, signing of the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo.

Mexicans who lived in the territory lost by Mexico to the United States in the Mexican-American War had one year to choose whether or not to be US citizens (and stay or move) or Mexican citizens (and move).

With a writing prompt linked to the possession/loss of a national identity, or at least a cultural identity, and on the rigidity or fluidity of borders, the family story of one of my El Paso friends came to mind. In both cases, it was necessary to build a new family, to lay a new hearth.

My friend's story inspired my poem below.

 Family Fronterista

Six sisters
Drew a line
And said to Seventh Sister:
"You are not of us anymore.
"You are on the other side of this line - -
"Go."

Seventh Sister
She closed her eyes
She turned around
To survey her new land
A desert it seemed.

She squared her shoulders
She made a life
A husband for awhile
Children forever
School
A business.

She climbed mountains, forded rivers
Crossed borders, except
That one -
Her visa revoked.

One day, a phone call.
A woman, unknown.
"My family name is Abrán .
"I am told yours is the same."
"Yes," said Seventh Sister.
"It is the name I was born into."
"Are we family"? the woman asked.

The women walked
Up and down and over the
Lines of grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles.
No connections.

Finally, the woman named Abrán said:
"No matter.
"Come to us. We lack a Seventh Sister."

And Seventh Sister smiled.
She said,
"Yes, I've been looking for you.
"I am coming home."

Word of the Year: Meditation: A Writing Meditation Practice

Terrace at Seven Olives. Lalibela. February 2011. Credit: Mzuriana.

 

Many years ago, I did a summer study in Ecuador. It was a collaborative program between Oregon State University and a university in Quito. The most memorable classroom experience from that six-week trip was this: 

The professor said to us - "us" being university students from the US - and I'm paraphrasing him from memory: 

Americans and Latin Americans have a different view on life. Americans take the view that as long as there are pressing problems in the world, we can't (shouldn't) fully enjoy life. Latin Americans, on the other hand, take the view that we appreciate and actively enjoy all the riches that life has to offer AND we work on the pressing problems. 

As a member of two 12-step groups, there's also the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, page 127: 

We have been speaking to you of serious, sometimes tragic things. ... But we aren't a glum lot. If newcomers could see no joy or fun in our existence, they wouldn't want it. We absolutely insist on enjoying life.

A reason that meditation is the word for 2025 is that there is just so much distress swirling about us. It is a struggle for me to attain and sustain a serenity, to be mindful of each moment, a string of moments, in which there is beauty for any one of my senses, and to know this moment will not recur, so I need to breathe it in, soak in it, while it's there. 

A writing meditation practice is a tool I'm employing to live in the moment I have now, to observe, for example, as I type on my laptop keyboard, the movement of my fingers, thumbs, the joints, my wrists, to acknowledge again how that 8th grade typing class I took so many years ago has stood me in such good stead for my life ever after that. I observe the muscle memory my fingers hold of the QWERTY topography, see a flashback of my mother, decades ago, on a black Underwood typewriter on the dining room table, tapping out The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog to check the health of every alpha key. 

In the midst of drafting this post, I conducted a writing meditation, noting the physical movement of my fingers, the tension in my forearm, then remembering a Tumblewords session in which the leader of the week prompted us with an example of corporeal writing. A writing meditation is all about our corporeal mindfulness, as our brains work in concert with our fingers and hands to spin thoughts, memories, insights, tears, fears, and the softening of our hearts perhaps. 

In my current, neonatal practice of writing meditation:

1. I set my timer for five minutes.
2. Using a pen on paper, I write whatever comes to mind. Perhaps better said: I write whatever comes out of my mind.
3. I notice how my physical body engages in the act of writing.
4. I don't censor anything that I'm writing.
5. When the timer goes off, I stop writing.
6. The end.
   

 

Maybe profound insights will result; maybe not. My focus is on the process, not on any outcomes. It's the process, the routine, the ritual itself that is the ... not-purpose.

 

Loose Ends: Creative Life: Dance and Clothespins

 An ad hoc poem I wrote in some time in some where? An exercise with the Tumblewords Project? No idea. But here it is, about a real-life experience at some dance function, in which I was trying to learn how to dance something. My guess is that it was a contra dance thing. 

Two clothespins in his hair. 

What am I to make of this? 

An eccentricity?

A clever hack?

A genius' forgivable befuddlement? 

I can't concentrate on the dance instructions

Which are befuddling enough, like a confounding algebraic word problem about orbiting, colliding bodies on a wooden floor. 

I burst into laughter ...

... at the clothespins in that man's hair ... or the Alice-in-Wonderland instructions for the dance? 

I don't know. 

I wonder ... Can I escape? 

Just leave the floor? 

Abandon my dance partner? (What's his name again?)

Those clothespins.