A Morality Question

At times I go looking through old journals and on occasions I find some entry I wrote (and maybe all of them are this way) after I thought I had reached some special sort of understanding about myself or my situation in the world. In looking back on these entries I know this is foolish, however understanding is a tricky thing. What is the thing I am talking about and is it really that particular thing I think I have come to understand. Here is an example:

{no date...this is unusual because I usually date everything}
"? re: Voice. I feel I am gaining an understanding of good vocal technique but losing my sense of music somehow. i am also gaining insights into my own psychology which seem to have nothing to do with vocal technique per se, e.g., "nigger lips". I had not even thought of that for twenty years. Is this a kind of hidden handicap? I was talking to N... yesterday (10 July 2005) and it occured (sic) to me what Balachine {(sic) this is a reference to the great choreographer George Balanchine} meant when he told a woman in response to a question about whether her daughter would dance; "C'est une quéstion morale." A morality question? That means that her daughter could not become a dancer unless she (the daughter) committed herself to the morality of the dance. Is not morality a commitment of faith to the rule of an order? One then marries oneself to one's order, like a priest to his church, or a monarch to his country."

There is a "back story" to this. I take voice lessons. I took voice lessons for a very long time and then I stopped for a number of years, then took them up again. I take voice lessons because I like to sing. I am not sure I am a very good singer, but I have received compliments and I enjoy it. More importantly, and no one seems to believe me when I tell them this, it is a form of discipline to me, self-discipline, which I think I need. I have also taken and taught dance. Dance is another form of self-discipline for me, including teaching. I like the 'morality' of the disciplines. In July of 2005, exactly one year ago, I was having a voice lesson and my teacher told me to do something and I tried to do it but didn't succeed because, and he noticed this, that I seemed to have a lot of muscle tension in my lips.

I have had a lot of voice teachers but this is the only teacher I have ever had who can tell what I am doing without being able to see my face. I tested this one day by turning my back on him and doing whatever exercise he was asking me to do and he told me exactly what I was doing wrong. He knew without seeing my face where the tension was, how my tongue was placed, whether I was relaxed in the way that he requires, etc. When I asked him how he could do this, he said, "I can feel it." Needless to say, I was very impressed.

On the particular day in question, I seemed to have a lot of muscle tension in my lips, and he noticed. He said, "you seem to be trying to pull your lips in, or hide them or something." Oh dear!

What came flooding back into my mind almost made me cry, so I tried to laugh instead, jumped around for a few moments in what must have looked like a bit of a seizure or what we used to call a "spaz dance". My voice teacher is used to seeing such things, so he just waited until I came to rest and asked me what had just happened. I was embarrassed and had a very hard time telling him what had come creeping back into my mind.

It is even difficult to write about it now. So this is like a confession but I do not know to whom the sin belongs. Here is the history.

When I first went to school, I knew how to read. No one else in my class seemed to know how to read, and I thought it may have upset my kindergarten teacher. I now think a lot of things about me upset my kindergarten teacher. On one January day shortly after Christmas break, I brought some of my Christmas presents to school; one present was a book and the book was a rather complicated story with rabbits as the main characters. Just a book with a story about rabbits. It wasn't a Beatrix Potter book, nor was it a book about the Easter Bunny. It was just a story that had rabbits instead of humans as the heros and villians. And it was something I could bring for show and tell and, I thought, maybe have the teacher read, or allow me to read, to the class.

So when I came to class with my book, I asked the teacher if she would read it to the class. I told her I had already read it at home and that I thought it was quite good. She looked at it rather absent-mindedly and told me to bring it back and maybe we could read it at Easter. But, I protested, it wasn't an Easter book, it was just a book about rabbits. No, she was very firm, bring it back at Easter. But she didn't give it back to me to bring it back at Easter. She took it and put it on a shelf which no kindergartner could reach and started the regular class. This last action really puzzled me as you might imagine because she had told me to bring it back at Easter and then she didn't give it back so I could bring it back.

As a back-up share and tell item, I had also brought some toy cars to school. There were about twenty of them and they were all made in the same scale and underneath were labeled with whatever sort of automobile they were supposed to represent, and they were very accurate representations. During one of our recesses I took the cars out to the play area with a girl named Paula with blond braids who always seemed to wear plaid dresses with white collars. Sometimes a red plaid and sometimes a green or blue plaid, but always with a white collar. She and I were very good friends; she seemed to get into more trouble than any of the other girls for some reason. Maybe the teacher didn't like her either. Maybe the teacher didn't like Paula because Paula and I were friends. I do not know.

After the recess I packed up all my cars and put them into the special box they had come in and took them into the classroom and put them carefully under my table. Because Paula sat next to me she could tell me how much she really enjoyed playing with the cars during recess. The kindergarten teacher heard her telling me this and told her she had to stand in the corner until she was sorry she had spoken during class. Then the girl who sat across from me said something to me about Paula standing in the corner and the teacher heard her too but for some reason did not make her stand in the corner. The teacher then told me that I had to put my cars in a different place than under my table and showed me where they had to go which wasn't in the same place as my book. In fact, the book couldn't be reached or seen by any of the kindergarteners, but the cars I was told to put on a shelf where all the educational toys, puzzles, blocks and regular kindergarten books were, as if they were to be put there so the entire class could share them. Honestly, I didn't mind putting them there, I brought them for sharing. But then, after class was over, a strange thing happened.

After the bell rang and all the students were gathering their share and tell things and their coats and bags, a student named Douggy picked up all my tiny cars except for one miniature Ford pick-up truck which he took out of the special box, and started out the door with them. I immediately intercepted him and angrily asked him what he thought he was doing with my cars. He told me he "wanted them" and that was all there was to it. I wasn't going to allow him to proceed so I yelled for the teacher and told her that "Douggy was taking my cars!" And then another odd thing happened. The teacher came over and told me to let Douggy have the cars. Why? I asked angrily, should I let Douggy have my favorite Christmas present?

I honestly cannot remember what the teacher told me except something about Douggy not having anything to share and tell about. And she restrained me until Douggy had left the school. I alternated crying and screaming all the way home, but the closer I got to my house the angrier I got and when I reached the safety of our living room, I was probably red in the face with anger and my mother asked me what was wrong. When I told her what had happened and could she do anything, she just seemed to get very calm and perhaps a little sadly said, never mind, just don't take anything else you like to school.

I was astounded, to say the least. My mother was tough. And I am not talking about a kindergartner's point of view. She was tough and quite capable of battle. When my older sister had gotten in trouble for calling one of the other girls in her class a bitch, my sister had been sent home in tears and my mother got a call from the principal telling her exactly what had transpired. "Did you know your daughter called (let's call her Jane) a bitch?!" "Yes," my mother replied reasonably, "my daughter told me what happened." "Well," demanded the principal, "don't you think she should apologize to (Jane)?" Without a pause, my mother replied, "I don't know. Is she a bitch?" I know my sister returned to school without any further incident other than she and the other girl were kept well apart. My mother was tough.

There was something I did not know about the world.

My parents made no effort to recover my little cars and it was clear from the moment it happened that the teacher was not going to make any effort to recover them either. What had actually transpired here? I even asked my brother if he understood what was going on but he also could shed no light on the situation. But I did have the one little toy to remind me of the incident. Whenever I looked at that little truck, I recalled with full force, the complete injustice of the situation and even today I am not sure what exactly transpired. But here is my guess.

My family is mixed ethnically and over the years, I have heard comments at different times from different people that alluded to that facet of my heritage. Because my appearance and the appearance of my family is in no way unusual, there is no way to tell from the surface that we are anything but anglo-saxon. But if the subject comes up, and I am surprised how often it does come up, the mention of the latin side has sometimes brought out a side of people I am not sure I would have believed existed if I had not had the experience.

There are actually several examples; my favorite story about this sort of thing happened to me at a friend's house. I had spent many hours over time enjoying these people's company. One afternoon my friend's mother started talking about people belonging to my ethnic group sometimes rather disparagingly and she got more disparaging as she warmed up. My friend made several attempts to slow her down and only succeeded in stopping her when he finally shouted at her that I was indeed a member of that group. There was a rather long silence which was finally broken by his grandmother who said rather dryly, "you are not." When I replied in the affirmative she said, not without humor, "well!.....I let one in my house!" She also told me that being part anglo "saved me". The disturbing part of this to me, happened when I asked his mother what kind of bad experiences she had had with members of "those people". She told me she had never had any bad experiences because she never knew any. That is true prejudice. No direct knowledge, only rumor and some kind of strange floating reputation inform a person's attitude. Another like incident happened one day while members of my college world religions class were waiting for the professor to arrive.

It was a beautiful spring morning and many people had arrived early to read or drink coffee or just chat. Somehow the subject of ethnic backgrounds came up and while I was a member of the conversation, it seemed to me that when people were describing their backgrounds there was a kind of sameness about them. One older woman, who had told us about her desire to change her life by re-entering college and the work world after her divorce, told everyone her anglo-teutonic background all the while smiling and saying "how cool", "how neat" when people said they came from Northern European backgrounds. She seemed genuinely intrigued by mixtures of English/French or German/French or Dutch/German/Czech. I was really just listening when she asked me in a kind of breathlessly happy voice, "and what are you?" When I told her, the smile faded and she literally took a step backward away from me saying, "did you know they married black people?" She didn't say being part anglo saved me.

Was my Oklahoma-born kindergarten teacher (oh yes, I remember) a bigot? A racist? I do not know. This only occurred to me much later as a possibility. Was this the reason my mother had been cowed so easily? I do not know. And that is the nature of this strange beast. The recipient is almost never sure. What I do know is this: after that day, I hated "poor little Douggy", and he was the first person I heard call me "nigger lips".

I am glad I had read my book before that day in kindergarten because that was also never returned.

The Story of a Path

This is a story about a path.

This path is the most marvelous of ways that lead along the far western edges of a great ocean. it is not a roadway where noisome automobiles and trucks with their noxious fumes buzz and roar by like monsters outside their nightmare origins. There are no motorcycles or bicycles nor very much indication of man's technology at all. It is a place where there is neither sound nor silence.

It is a wondrous path that winds its way along the sundown edge of a continent sharing conversation with the sea, frequently with great gusto, sometimes in quiet appreciation. The rolling breakers tell a tale of the many moods of wind and storm at the sea's far corners. The ocean is a mighty force and knows how to wear away the rocks and pound them into sand and the land knows that while the sea is mighty it is really the land which holds the sea like a favored jewel away from the consuming fires of the center of the planet. Not that this is any ordinary planet of course, because this path, this planet is the place where liveliness meets eternity and the circles of the world and the encircling sea are riven from the immortal and the linear indefinite.

This way does not hang orphan-like in the fundament of space.

This is the Path, the way of testing. Its frontiers and increments filled with the excitement of crisis and observation. It winds hither and thither on cliffs above the sea, raising and lowering its stretches from wide beaches and tide-pool strewn moraine to dizzying heights towering thousands of feet above the waves. Some of its borderlands are arid, empty of life and stretch seconds into days and fear is palpable, but the crossing reward is a cool drink at a crystalline fountain and the remembrance treasured experience.

There are other intervals of the way where the days and years flash as a strobe, where sun and moon and even the shape of the land itself can be seen to shift under the pressures of joy and beauty. These are the places where the green and growing things bloom and prosper by the roadside and never seem touched by time or disease. Multi-hued flowers and trees shaped exotically by the wind remembering once upon a time. The narrowing and widening path, sometimes paved and stepped from the memory of people gone before fades to stone and clay and dust and sand where that memory fails. Sun glistens brightly and rain strikes gently. Fog and mist are comforters for the seekers, but the Traveler winds his way alone in this remnant of Eden for this is where tranquility reigns and the only reward is a memory of longing.

For each seeker on the way a key is left. That key is remarkable for its placement, its presence in unexpected places and every key is shaped according to need. Every seeker is startled by the timing of the appearance of the key, but each seeker is left to decide its value. Not every traveler perceives the unusual timing and presence of the key, thinking perhaps it is merely detritus dropped by some other, its utility missing and long past, but for myself, I will retain this key even though I am shocked by its persistent voice and alien appearance, not for the human hand is this key for it is weightless and spaceless.

Sooner or later along the way most wayfinders encounter a great test. It frequently takes the shape of a tree although this shape is deceptive. In some ways this tree is the path because it is the path which inculcates its shape and nature when first encountered, and the response to the test generates futures and the coursing of the path. For those wayfarers who do not see it, it remains "alive" in a manner completely unsuspected and hidden. It motivates and drives the undisciplined and buffets the simple with a terrible urgency. Some will wish to strike it down, some find it ugly beyond bearing. Some find it difficult to leave, some with great ease. Many travelers see it as a great tree, some as a nightmarish thorned shrub. For some it blocks the path completely, but for those who learn an appreciation of its fierce beauty, a new test and an unexpected gift is found.

The gift is a vessel and for those who find the vessel in the perfection of their desire a kind of equilibrium is reached and the weighing and carriage of the vessel becomes another kind of converse along the way. It may appear as a simple cup, old or new, chipped or perfection itself. Some travelers experience it as a kylix, an amphora, some a great vase and some a simple mug. For the unwary it becomes an illusive siren appearing at many times in many forms at one time seducing the seeker with false promise and another time betraying him with a mask of the ideal only to later reveal its true nature. It may be that this is the greatest of all gifts and the test is to see and accept the vessel for its true nature and perhaps in the fullness of time the traveler will see the path strewn with vessels, each with its own beauty.

The finality of the path arrives when the seeker reaches what to many becomes the most terrifying of barriers, and the greatest test. This barrier is as infinite as the seeker understands. For all it is a known, a given, but many have pushed its presence from their minds or tried to condense it to an understandable form. For those, the barrier is insurmountable and impenetrable, they will curse and scratch at it and throw themselves time and time again at its surface. They will attempt a climb or an excavation but such efforts will be futile. The traveler will again be startled by when this barrier appears and where and each will ask himself how this came to be. The unprepared will find no answer.

For myself the barrier seems the greatest of opportunities and if I learn wisdom I can discover the permeable nature of its vastness. It is a possibility that my response to the gifts and tests of the path will prove this to be true.

An Ode To Terrorists

At times I go looking through old journals and stacks of paper for stories or poems I wrote and every once in a while I come across one I know I wrote because there it is, scribbled out on some spare piece of paper or in a notebook with changes made, words crossed out and the whole dated. Occasionally, there is a notation about why or where it was written, but usually these old pieces just float there on the page, artifacts of an earlier me that I read and then ask, who was he that wrote this? What was in his mind?

This short rather prophetic piece was written in April of 1988.

AN ODE TO TERRORISTS

An entertainment award
For decimating our innocent population
And carrying our lovely nation
Into adulthood.
Blow your horms
You have succeeded where
The four horsemen have failed.

Postcard From Spain

When I went looking for a story I had written a few years back, I found this piece from 2003. My wonderful friend Nancy and I had gone to Spain to participate in a volunteer project studying Mediterranean dolphins, but the project got canceled that year and we ended with a number of extra weeks to just be tourists. We had a blast driving the backroads of Portugal and Spain and amused ourselves taking pictures and visiting out of season and unforgettable out of the way places. The Costa del Sol was one of the off-season variety.

People walking
Astride the Costa del Sol
What does that mean?
I ask myself.
"Astride the Costa del Sol"
The (can you hear the guitars?)
Costa del Sol
the costa del sol
The coast of the sun
in the sun, by the sun
The Sunny Shore.
Sunny still in January
Swimming with a
few late unripe English
Trying to force
A winter blossom
To their cheeks.
Some Spaniards
at home?
The few, the Proud, the...
Horrified!
Staring at my naked
feet!
In winter!?
Naked feet!
Ay!
My naked tootsies
Having made a first
Very timid step
Into
The rather chilly,
Rather polluted
(at an invisible level, of course invisible
this is the
Costa del Sol)
My bare California
Feet,
Stepping their first step
into the "Wine Dark Sea"
just down from the
small stream
with the cans
and the odd bits of paper,
running rather slowly,
but surely into
The Costa del Sol.
Where it goes on to pick up
a few more
Plastic jugs and more bits of paper
thrown there by
no doubt,
The few, the Proud, a Loud
and a rather Grave
Tourist
and yes,
the odd Spaniard
who must live
and revel
at his
Costa del Sol.
So we walk,
My friends my feet and I
Along this famous line of surf,
Picking up shells
The odd stone
Here and here and here
Black, with pink and white
Pin-striping-when-wet.
From this marine delight
I raise my film star eyes
To lock gazes with
A Spanish Lady
and her consort on
The Costa Del Sol De España
and she stares
she stares
and she stares
at my naked...feet.
Then she stares and stares
and stares and stares and stares and
Then stares into my eyes and
she stares into my film star eyes and
she stares into my eyes
Then gathering her
Thoughts
Into a tight
Ball of lightening
¡Contempt!
Throws them at my
foolish delight
In the color, and the sand,
and the sea and the sound
and the smells of her
Beautiful
Costa del Sol.

Somewhere Near Nijar

Photo: Ancama_99

It isn't any news to those who have traveled there, but for you who haven't, Spain is a land of strange extremes. Dignified and comic simultaneously, I could believe it is the place where the circus was invented. Driving through the southeast corner of Andalucía, a desert country, the driest in Europe, my friend Nancy and I were sharing thoughts about the landscape and the people when she suddenly screamed sending chills up my spine and nearly ending us in a ditch. Gathering my scattered wits from the odd corners of the car where they had fled, she pointed out what could have been the set for a Fellini film. Set solitary in the midst of a desert plain was what could only be called a cemetery for carnivals, filled with remnants of side-shows and floats and displays for the discriminating carney.

In a barren country
of small delight
where even thoughts
find little food or drink
and must lie dessicated
among abandoned
catechisms,
a desert way-station mirage
rests
plaintively calling
here, for a penny or two
a small price
a tiny coin
for this pittance
a carney, a gypsy
and the master of ceremonies will
tie your eyes to an old idea,
force feeding
your starving roots
slaking your thirsts
ending your hungers
at this desert well
and cry his delights
between the new and the newer
to the future of your futures.
Lady and Gentleman
Señora y Señor
¡Aquí esperamos con mágico!
On this dry desert road
there waits a simple
magic prestidigitory meal
with
mannikins and marvels
serving your deepest desires
"Check you strength!
Here are the actual barbells from he,
the strongest man alive
See the marvels and the marvelous
The Fat Lady or Her Beloved Bearded Sister!
Here, my beloved guests
reside the best,
that will shock and astound
the Freaks and their Friends
Animals Native and Animals Exotic
Fear not, we have marvels unending.
Though our reputation must a slight
tarnish bear
but though
each miracle may
need slight repair perhaps be slightly broken,
such minimal flaws cannot hide us,
we here,
the most,
the incomparable, astounding
universe
of the fun and the frightening
the finite and the infinite.
Here it is
where verse is reverse
and life is lived!
The Fulsome Funhouse of Fabulous Mirrors.
Step Right Up!
Step Right Up Here!
This is your last chance
Last chance to see
What you've forgotten all along...
The thrilling...
The marvelous...
The scintillating...
what you've never been shown
the fantastic
incredible
Place Between Places
Where the actual Unknown is most truly Known.

Today I Saw The Seine

Paris is a very inspirational city. In 2003, just before the war in Iraq, as I wandered this amazing place, I was besieged by questions from people who wanted to understand what America was doing. I couldn't answer. The Seine was almost at flood stage, roiling and muddy, a river you never see in postcards. I could hear Gertrude Stein speaking her "little sentences".

Today I saw the Seine
I looked and saw the
Seine and where I looked
there I saw the Seine. So
where the Seine was I saw
it. Between the quais and
around by next to churches,
I saw the muddy Seine, So
I saw it. And it has history.
And the mystery of its history
is we are glad so glad how
glad we are glad it will
not speak its history its
muddy history so with all
its remembrances it can
not speak and for us it
should not speak to remind
us of its muddy history
and tell what it knows
so today I saw the Seine.
Today I saw the silent
Seine and I saw the silent
Seine not speak. So not
speaking loudly the Seine
the river the river Seine
spoke so loud so loudly.
And it spoke. And that
was the way it was speak-
ing. So the Seine from
its depths spoke from all
the way from the river
bottom it spoke about not
speaking. From the bottom
from the muddy bottom
it didn't speak about
speaking.

Memoire

Another piece from the insomniac period. This particular piece had its beginnings in Paris, but went through many versions.

Paris, nous avons
But always?
That is a long time,
and already she
sells her history
to the tourist buses
and maybe she
always has, maybe
we all always
have sold our
pasts as presents
to future ourselves.
But what what
what do we do
Do we feed
our children
Ashes of perfect
re-pasts, pasts
That have passed
passed through knives,
the abbatoir where
artists abide
and men with pens
who cleverly sculpt
a future of futures
where no humans
can abide.
The political men
the power seekers
the politicians they
they ride all,
all the antiques
These monuments
we must carry
carry we must
Rider and horse
Horse and rider
Blindered, blinkered
bitted, battered
So why do I start
I begin I remand
Poor Paris pitiless
Paris, plentiful Paris
of cities not oldest
nor biggest, nor boldest
I am here
Here am I
Am I here
That is why.