DRIVING OUT OF TOWN IN THE MOTHERSHIP
6 OCTOBER 2018, CRAZY CLOUD AND MOTHER QUILT
ON ASSIGNMENT WITH AN ADDED TASK TO GET LOST
AND GETTING THERE, HEADING SOUTH:
The Storypath/Cuentocamino
I'm Your Man Soundtrack, Marsha Wainwright
singing The Traitor, over and over--
and one
more time:
The dreamers ride against
the men of action,
Oh see the men of action
falling back. Like that,
just like that. The muse
will give way later,
along with the angel,
for the Duende to show--
Klickitat Valley,
Goldendale Hay.
35,000 acres of alfalfa.
25,000 acres of sheep and cattle.
Mt. Rainier,
Mt. Adams, Pahto, Old One
Standing There.
St. Helens, Loowit,
Hood.
Duende.
As Lorca says,
The only struggle.
It
always
shows.
Jim Bodeen
6 March--12 March 2018
DAILY DEVOTIONS
"Lord, you have brought us to this new day."
Not if it's old or new
Not that
Only,
Is it real
Bring me
Mother Maria, the Russian nun,
says,
I am your message, throw me
No-Gate opens for the quiet one
navigating the way
I piss and moan, Lord,
I piss and moan
A way not our own
doesn't require understanding
My granddaughters tell me
over and over,
Grandpa
if we have to explain
it's not funny
Jim Bodeen
8 March 2018
I PISS AND MOAN, LORD, I PISS AND MOAN
Like it's my duty.
My burden to show, not preach.
Karen's eyes--this close!
Jim Bodeen
6 March--12 March 2018
CREEDENCE, AND FORTUNATE SON,
BEN E. KING, MERLE, PERCY SLEDGE
We didn't put money in slots
We didn't get any free drinks
Smoke did get in our eyes
Fish and chips at Mel's Diner
and played the juke box.
Jim Bodeen
Boomtown, Nevada
8 March 2018
OLY AND THE MAMMOTH
--for Karen
Bodeen
Oly and the mammoth and the quilt.
A match-up, but not a safe one.
Oly, the chocolate lab.
The soccer playing ball dog.
Dog gone and delivering.
Dog gone and deliverance.
Deliverance in the artist's quilt.
Dog crossing between worlds
with the ball in his mouth.
Quilt artist naming the conflict.
Oly and the Mammoth.
What chance for the dog?
Mother Quilt's collage.
Mother quilt naming the dog.
Naming the mountain.
Mother Quilt bringing her threads.
Mountains from the ages.
Mountains for this age.
Time colliding in cloth.
Laying it out in the material
world.
Tule is black netting,
from silk or
polyester.
When you lay it on
fabric images
it disappears. Black
doesn't reflect
the light and you
can't see it.
The colors come
through.
Tule holds all my
pieces in place.
Flowers and weeds of
cloth.
Snow and stones and
rock.
Big clouds. From the
other side
it looks like fire
crackers going off.
Technical. Wizardry of Technicians.
Mother-quilt-artist looking.
Mother Quilt looks into the window
of the Shaniko Hotel. Down 97.
Majesty in the ghost town,
not looking for gone-ghosts,
ghosts visible by color and thread.
This is Karen. Karen's way.
Karen's quiet high way.
Mother of the Mother-ship.
Mother of the Valley.
Mother out of bounds.
A retriever herself.
Look at Oly crossing
worlds.
Clearly returning.
Check his head.
Mother crossing both ways.
Mother of us all.
Mother Quilt in the Sierra's.
In the many ways of going.
Tracking us in many threads.
Jim Bodeen
24 March 2018
KAREN AND THE MANY VISIONS
OF THE MATTERS OF FACT
Of course, It’s Tule Lake, she says,
echoing No-Gate that was her name
before she was named. Of course.
The one driving away drives toward,
arriving somewhere new.
Navigating quilt woman, threading
her way. Weavers and quilters,
always working, dreaming at work.
Look at my fingers.
Working on the dream.
Bringing it back in pieces.
Bringing it back in thread.
You think she would be easy to live with.
She is only pleasure.
Gold? Liver and stomach upside down.
Holding absolute gold in her hands,
she asks, What flames? Where?
Something like deliverance.
A man and a dog.
A man and a dog and his mother.
Mother Quilt!
La vida continua/ La vida continua.
Like music on the radio.
What a station! What a station!
I would have missed this but for you, Karen.
There is also a man in the moon, she says.
And in this quilt.
The quilt with the mammoth and the dog,
that one, there is also a man.
Jim Bodeen
24 March 2018
MAVERICK
No trade, no tenure
Sought for adhering to road
Over Chuckle Pass
Jim Bodeen
7 March 2018
SEVERING COMPLICITY IN THE LIMINAL SPACE
MY SON WHO GAVE
HIMSELF FOR ME
TAKES ME ALL OVER HIS MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN
BY DEGREES TAKING ME TO THE STEEPS
for Tim
Oxygen-thin air
at eleven thousand
Son Father descend
Jim Bodeen
10 March 2018
RIDING THE GONDOLA WITH CANADIAN SKI PATROL
ON RETREAT ASSIGNMENT ON MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN
Your Home Mountain? Lake Louise, Banff.
Gob-smacked, man.
Yours?
White Pass, Washington State.
What are you doing here?
Skiing with my son.
Runs ski shop. Tunes. Rebuilds skis.
Sharpens what you didn't know was dull.
(Translates. Interprets.)
How'd he get way down here?
I put him on skis when he was 3.
Jim Bodeen
9 March 2018
ASKING TIM BODEEN ABOUT THE SPEED OF HIS SKIS
OK--how fast?
Maybe 20. Maybe 20 mph.
How fast, now. The truth.
Truth out.
Maybe 30.
You're understated, aren't you.
You're not hyper bole.
My motto in the shop:
Under promise. Over deliver.
Jim Bodeen
9 March 2018
STUCK ON A CHAIR LIFT
WITH MY SON
AT JUNE MOUNTAIN
A man riding the lift behind us,
shouts,
Cavalry's coming!
Let's get the fuck
out of here,
We don't want
to be close
when the Blue Coats arrive.
Jim Bodeen
9 March 2018
MOTHER QUILT AND CRAZY CLOUD
Finding a song for a friend
I shake my Umqua Oats rattle
while water boils.
Karen sings with the women
singing Cohen songs.
The Mothership goes large
waking in mountains.
Mother Quilt brings snow fields
into cotton and thread. She hands
her love to her son, making
mountain beauty in his one
life given for peak beauty.
She shows a story
of a boundary crossing
dog-eyeing the ancestral
mammoth. She walks
with a man bearing the name
of a Japanese monk
raised by servants, one
fond of odd clouds,
winsome, where he took his name,
Crazy Cloud, 14th Century monk
folk hero to children, vagabond.
One Pause, slow
talking
dharma, walking with a blind
seamstress in multi-colored thread.
Karen and Jim. Karen went along.
Storypath/Cuentocamino, a given
word, with unnamed conditions,
confirmed by a Peruvian native,
guide from Macchu Picchu, who spoke
impeccable Castillian. Decades past
carrying the word, following
with limited knowledge, always
on probation. Years before
the arrival of the Mothership.
"Cover your path with fallen needles,"
he was told. "This fake dream is yours,
if you follow," and he did the best
he could, odd in the world, growing
old with his wife saying, "You piss
and moan, yes you do, you piss and moan,"
navigating external pathways he never
understood. His hyphenated life
dreaming, listening for music, deaf
to neighbors and priests.
"You can find what you're looking for
right here," his mother said.
This is when the word arrived.
The two agree. Agreeing to listen
to all of it, he would leave
to understand how, ever-apprenticed.
Camera and notebook. Parker pens.
She would accompany him,
Mother Quilt, herself a god.
Jim Bodeen
6 March--14 March 2018
UMQUA OATS RATTLE
Shaking his Umqua oats in his hand like a rattle, the man
listens as his wife sings with the women singing songs of Leonard Cohen: Don't
ask for so much--Why not ask for a little bit more. No-Gate spreads his arms
making a fence stopping snow, snow stopping wind. Thin mountain air, great mountain
beauty, eye-altering, changes the settings on the camera. Every thing as
vision-food.
NEVER FORGET INYOWEN SHELTON:
WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE HE BECAME
A BUMPER STICKER ABOVE MONO LAKE
Steel curbing curved around Highway 395
above Mono Lake, entering Sierra Nevadas,
the lookout, curb plastered with bumper stickers--
everything from Micro Beers, to exotic mountains,
one standing out for me: Inyowen Shelton,
Never forget. Some only with his name,
Inyowen Shelton. Karen and Tim
telling me we're in Inyo County--that it,
but it isn't. It isn't even what's posted
on the Net. Let's say the friends got to some truth,
but didn't get to the music of Inyowen's
arcing spirit. The next thing about Inyowen
always belongs. An old teacher said that,
not me. Inyowen had
some enemies,
and so did his friends. Let's start there.
What I can tell you about Inyowen
I know from his killer, the one
who found him behind the hospital.
A bumper sticker on the curb, a barrier
to forgetting. Inyowen Shelton, dead
June 20, 2016, internet eulogy. Steward
of the earth, a Tahoe baby, part
Hidatsa, part Chipewa,
young sage
scholar of all things natural. Peak bagger.
Hugger of trees in clouds, called Yo
by his friends. The murderers had seen
enough. They bagged him and left him
under leaves. Odd in the world, a monk's
koan. How would his son
become anything other than One Pause?
Good question. I knew
Inyowen from the Krishna parade
in Eugene. He looked at me
until our eyes met, and smiled.
He had me denying his love, looking away.
He entered through my eyes.
Jim Bodeen
Mono Lake, Mammoth, Manzanar, Joshua Tree
6 March 2018--14 March 2018
POST CARDS FROM MANZINAR
South 395
Gold Star Highway history
Tumbleweeds in wind
Ball court paint rocks white
Three tumbleweeds circle ball
New nets on steel hoops
Play finds survival
Outside barracks children skate
Yes, Yes, No, No, Hey!
Stones from Sierra
Hand polished patina shine
Artist signed rock art
Stay with family
Segregated by an oath
Not for us, GI!
Hey, I'm a GI
I am you and you are me
What is goin' on
Jim Bodeen
10 March--15 March 2018
STOPPING AT MANZANAR
I.
Folded paper cranes, Origami,
at the front entrance, and before that
the road sign, Blue Star Highway,
and one more, Manzanar,
dropping down from the Sierras,
Sierra Nevada's. Covered in snow,
snow-covered. Beauty of cover,
nieve. Sierra, first the name--
jagged mountain chain, code word
representing the letter S,
used in radio communication,
más profundo: teeth of a saw
in Spanish. Dark feminine
of ciaran. On the
street,
Sierra's the type of girl
who brings out the best
in you--the best thing
that ever happened.
II.
Dropping down
from the Sierra Nevada's
to Manzanar. And me?
What just got hit?
My connections?
My grand daughter
folds Origami cranes.
I was born 9 August 1945.
That day. Between the times,
that time. I belong here,
Manzanar. I taught
that book, Farewell to Manzanar
with my friend and colleague
in a course we called
Braided Lives on Turtle Island.
Shigataganai, we taught our students
to say. Shigataganai. Automatically,
It can't be helped. My daughters
went to Yamate High School
in Yokohama, and lived with the girls
who came here to live in our home,
exchanging intimate slang,
remaining friends. I was born
9 August 1945. While serving
in the Evacuation Hospital
in Vietnam in 1968, I skied
in Zao, nearby where Basho
slept on his journey
to the far north--Basho
neither priest nor ordinary
man, writing poems.
My granddaughter folds paper cranes.
Lonnie Kaneko, poet and friend
(who died two years ago) wrote
Coming Home from Camp.
Kaneko and his parents
were sent to Minidoka, Idaho.
Innocent yet pronounced
guilty,
he is invisible.
Kaneko, too,
writes in his mother's voice.
Kara Kondo, from Wapato,
in Yakima Valley where
we live, was interred at
Heart Mountain, Wyoming,
worked four decades at
Women's League of Voters,
dying at 89 in 2005. My friend
Louis Fiset, philatelist and printer,
wrote Imprisoned Apart:
World War II Correspondence
of an Issei couple, and Camp
Harmony:
Seattle's Japanese Americans
and the Puyallup Assembly Center.
He is also caretaker of cancelled
envelopes carrying censored mail.
My granddaughter folds paper
into cranes. I was born 9 August
1945.
On the way into the Sierra Nevadas
to visit our son, we stopped at
Tule Lake Segregation Center.
Look that one up on your own.
Bonsai became known in America
when GIs returned from WWII
bringing Trees in a Pot, along
with Zen and Buddhism. An
apprentice
to the trees myself, what fires
my imagination are Scholar's Rocks,
or Suiseki stones. Suiseki being
Japanese Art of Miniature Landscape
stones. Louis Fiset first told me
this practice was widespread at
Fort Missoula Detention Camp,
as Japanese hand-polished stones
rubbing them with Army issue
blankets. That's probably enough,
eh. Don't rub it in. No, No, Yes,
Yes.
Clouds that day, crazy wild,
like the monk, Ikkyu. We
stopped at Manzanar. Spent
ourselves. I found the rock garden
walking out alone. I video-taped
three tumbleweeds circling
the basketball on the outdoor
court. Two balls waiting
for a game. White painted
rocks marking boundary lines.
Jim Bodeen
10 March 2018--14 March 2019
Manzanar National Historical
Site/Gila Bend, Az
WAITING FOR KAREN TO REGISTER AT 29 PALMS RV PARK
OUTSIDE OF JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK,
I READ A POEM ABOUT JAMES WRIGHT COUNTRY,
BEYOND EVEN THIS,
BY MAGGIE ANDERSON
"There must be a back country of the beyond..."
Maggie
Anderson
Más allá que allá
Beyond needle prick blood let
Jumping Jolla Cactus!
Jim Bodeen
12 March 2018
29 Palms,CA
POST CARD FROM WHITE
PASS
Shelling left-over peanuts
in bottom of my pack at High Camp,
chased inside by snow, rain, poor
visibility caused by things
having nothing to do with weather--
coffee and orange.
Shells piling up on a napkin.
Mammoth had 3-feet of snow
in 36 hours? Is that possible?
Did I ski with you a week ago?
Your song loud sunshine.
You're red beans and rice of the mountain.
Got soul. Peek at the Minarets.
You're about to take me down
Dave's Run, that much
confidence in your Dad
following his son into snow.
Dad
22 March 2018
THE YOUNG CLIMBERS AT JOSHUA TREE HALL OF HORRORS
At the roadside pullout,
a group of them,
young men and women
among old stones,
across the road from Saddle Rocks,
arranged in parallel fashion.
A series of halls.
Faces forming as natural buffers.
On the northwest side of Sheep Pass Loop Road.
The list of classic climbs: Jaws, Lickety Splits, Lazy
Day, Nurn's Romp, Buckets to Burbank, It, Ledges to Lawndale, Garden Angel, Dog
Day Afternoon, Grit Roof, Cactus Flower, Jane's Addiction.
Highest rating: Exorcist--on the East inner wall. Three
and a half-stars out of four. 10.5. Traditional.
At the table in the Mothership with Karen, eating
crackers and cheese, watching the young men across from us put on their gear.
Their van hatchback open before us, full entry into their wilderness lives.
Joshua Tree. The national park where two deserts meet: Colorado and Mojave.
Rangers explain it at the Visitor's Center. Young climbers sleep in tents or
cars outside the park on BLM lands. Which desert am I? Which desert is Karen?
Colorado and Mohave. The Exorcist in the desert. Camera on the table. Sun block
and water is what we carry. Light backpack and trekking poles. The National Park
established in 1994. Coming out of the Sierra Nevadas on Highway 395, we cut
across deserts. The park straddles the cactus-dotted Colorado Desert and the
Mojave Desert, higher and cooler. The Deserts distinguish themselves as you
drive around the 1,235 miles. We ask the Rangers about the two, Karen and I,
completing fifty years of marriage, what are the differences here? We ask each
other: Are you California? Are you Mojave?
In the park. Out of the park. Lots going on. Young
climbers. Student walkouts. One minute for each of the 17 murdered from Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. Students in Arizona march to Governor
Doug Ducey's office. He doesn't appear. The papers? "Yes, kids can fix
this. Keep up pressure. Hone advocacy skills. Become informed voters." Notes
in the Mothership log quote Phoenix journalists from the Arizona Republic. I
break quotations into lines.
Our young people
grew up watching adults
eviscerate public education
and genuflect to the NRA.
So-called adults
failed to provide resources
for mental health,
promoted policies that turned
the middle class
into an endangered species.
--Abe Kwok
They are wide-eyed and savvy,
I can't imagine
how that won't upend everything.
--Joanna Allhands
It's silly to argue that these kids
don't know
what they're doing...
they're powerful
because they have
no ties to the powerful.
--Elvia Diaz
Righteous anger
is a powerful thing
and these kids have it.
--Phil Boaz
These kids preparing to go up this rock aren't those kids
and they are. They're part of this. They know what they've been given. What's
here. Rock, piton, rappels, amp. Awareness of who they are still low in the
adult world. Their language turns up in crossword puzzle clues. Savvy. Locking
carabiner, chalk bag, chalk ball, climbing harness. Tape and hexes. The harness
secures a person to a rope, or anchor point. What I come to learn: Carabiners,
a specialized shackle, metal loop with a spring-loaded gate, quickly and
reversible, connecting components in safety-critical systems. Knife. Sun block.
Water.
Joshua Tree. Jumping Chollas.
The rock along the cracks weathers into soil. Over years,
rain and wind erode the soil leaving a boulder pile. Look for lines in the
rocks called veins. A vein forms when molten rock is pushed into cracks in
older rock. As the molten rock cools it forms crystals of quartz and potassium minerals.
If the crust pulls away from both sides of a rock, or if the rock shrinks while
cooling, vertical cracks form. When pressure on top of a rock releases, like
when soil and rock erode away, horizontal cracks form. And when the rock is
squeezed from the top and the bottom, x-shaped cracks form. Underground dams
force water to the surface and form oases. Early Mormons thought these plants
looked like the biblical prophet Joshua guiding travelers westward. Don’t
confuse the Mojave yucca with the Joshua tree. Yucca has longer, wider leaves
and fibrous threads.
Knife, sun block, water.
How did these young people get here? By what word of
mouth?
I love the yucca. My friend plants a yucca garden on the
parking strip outside his house in the city. It's a forest. He gives me the
stalks. I make gates with them. Chinese gates. Gates with no fences.
Rock Climbers at Joshua Tree
I see them from the Mothership, walk to them.
Small talk. Where are you from? Inland Empire. Ontario.
.
I was looking for a job in Wenatchee.
Wild fire. I didn’t get the job. Rod. Conner. Jared.
Exoccist. A crack that goes up this rock.
A slight overhang. If you fall. I’ve seen pictures.
Expand. Adds pressure this way. Our protection.
Heavy Pedal Bicycles t shirt.
Brian walks over, ready to climb..
Solo hiker, climber. Do you know these guys?
I just met them right now.
Walk behind them with the camera.
Jangle of the gear, walking.
Listening in. Brian. Steel Structural Framer.
Storage company.
Climbing between jobs.
Between the times.
During the times.
Living the times.
What do I see? And hear?
What does the camera tell me?
What am I to make of the young men in the parking lot,
putting on their climbing gear?
Where might they take me?
If I can't go where they're going, I can walk with them a
ways.
Their vision. It is not the vision their parents picked
out for them.
Immersion is a way into wonder. Immersion is one way.
Immersion is my practice.
I have a pass into the park, but the young live outside
it.
A way out of abstract beauty walks here.
A walk into cactus.
Walking into stone.
There’s the Exorcist. There’s the crack.
Are we doing a crack line? I love crack lines.
Haul the pack up on a rope.
How to cross to the big rock?
Approach climb from different direction.
Are you guys safe? I’ll put up an anchor.
This is fucking scary. How are we going to get down?
I think it’s one wrap all the way down.
Birds watching.
Fuck. I’ve got to piss.
This one’s got chicken wings.
Toss me a spare beaner.
Oh I hate hauling. Fuck it. Son of a bitch.
We want that backpack.
Getting the four up to the crack.
I wish the start wasn’t so bad.
You’re getting me killed.
Yeah, this is a good day, too.
I felt so bad.
It wasn’t the climbing up part.
No, it was the descent.
Attaching a second rope
to kick the pack out.
Now pull.
Jarrod first.
There you go. Come on. Just breathe.
You’re in there. Just breathe.
Great feet. Relax. You’re fine.
There you go. One more.
Make your way up right here. Oooh, hello.
Fucking champion.
The young man who didn’t get the wild fire job summits
first.
Oh yeah, And then you got that bolt.
The whistle. Yabba dabba doo
Son of a bitch
from below.
A burp.
Finger locks and hand jams are perfect. you could hang
there all day.
Frivolous. No heightened senses, heightened awareness.
Life is different.
Energy. Live changing.
Chalk up.
Run the rope through the chains and rappel back to desert
floor.
*
Behind the camera. Behind the stone.
Permission to watch and walk.
Their way.
Not able to do much. Steady the camera. Wonder.
Neither enthralled nor enamored with me, or the camera.
My walk with the kids climbing on stones.
Jesus doesn't stay in the parking lot.
Remain subversive.
A subversive feeling, this reaching,
this bag of chalk
hitched to my belt
at the back pocket.
Jim Bodeen
13 March--30 March 2018
Joshua Tree National Park--Yakima, WA
CODA: LINES FOR THE YOUNG ROCK CLIMBERS
So sick So sick
Beautiful
climbing
like jazz
climbing
Talking black
climbing
Living outside
the empire
climbing
Jim Bodeen
30 March 2018
30 March 2018
DAD, TELL MOM,
Karen and I went to Spring Training!
Tell Mom. We saw two games.
Saw the kids, her boys,
ones trying to make it
to the bigs. Now we know--
something what Mom and Phyllis
felt, being there. More fun watching
kids with no names on jerseys
than stars playing two innings.
Dad, this, first time
we've been back since Mom
left Seattle to come be with us.
20 years? Just about. When
Mom came to Yakima, ushers
talked to the suits, they took
out her seats, mounted them--
Chuck has them now. The kids
have started the talk, who gets
the seats when we go. Dad,
she's with you now. Eternity
good for you both. Seven years
for Mom on her birthday. Can't
imagine that makes sense; see
Mom calm with you, your quiet smile.
Jim
31 March 2018
CRAZY CLOUD AND IKKYU AT SPRING TRAINING
One monk walks around the ball park
looking at young women in baseball hats
while the other one hangs out
with old timer's autographing balls.
Not so different, these two.
Back in their seats
one monk tells the other one
about the baby blue Cadillac
Charley Finley bought Vida Blue
in 1971. Blue was 21.
That's what he told Finley,
Get me a Camaro.
No dice on the Chevy.
Finley gives Blue
the Cadillac
and a credit card for gas.
Every time he fills up
at the station, Vida filled
two tanks--his own,
and the guy's behind him.
Which monk told the story
and which one listened?
Crazy Cloud has the picture
of Blue holding the signed baseball.
Ikkyu has the ball in his pocket
for his grandson.
No-Gate Gateway wants
nothing to do with this game.
No, no, no, No-Gate says.
Don't start with who raised the blinds,
who didn't. None of that.
Enough of knowing, No-Gate says,
Be done with it!
Read any gatha and you won't be ruined.
Jim Bodeen
31 March 2018
OUTSIDE OF BOOMTOWN, BOOK SHORT,
STEINBECK AND CHARLEY, OLD COMPANIONS
SINCE HIGH SCHOOL, CHARMS IN THE MOTHERSHIP,
WITH LITERARY ROOTS, FURTHER
With me since I was 16, a decade with Crazy Cloud,
slow it to breath and breathing.
Quixote's horse, Rocinante, dressed in Dodge Ram
silver, old leather. Steinbeck more of a father
than the others, more difficult for this. Unrecognized
but not unknown. We do
not take a trip,
a trip takes us.
Descending from fame,
its own anonymity, bumdom,
he calls it,
...the bum must relax.
He can't see
cities of homeless descending with him,
I had not heard the
speech of America--
you wouldn't know it now. So it was
I determined to look again, to rediscover
I determined to look again, to rediscover
this monster land...I
had to go alone
and I had to be
self-contained. That
thread, Charlie, the French poodle
from Paris, on his way to getting lost.
Saving water in the mothership.
Karen, my navigating companion
since before my birth. Steinbeck's
10,000 miles and 34 states, not recognized
once. Karen shows me images of an artist
who claims her images from dreams,
working in fabric, We
are wrapped
in cloth from birth to
death, can
we be any closer? Big
winds
out of Reno towards Carson City,
Mothership rocking, and my hands
weary from holding the wheel. Text
arriving from Mammoth, Big storm
coming in. Did you fix
the curtain?
Karen asks. Travels with Charley and Karen.
Mammoth Mountain is a series
of lava domes formed 60,000 years ago,
still producing hazardous gasses. Steinbeck
recreates 1961 in Charley, reads
William Shirer's Third Reich the same year
I do at 15. He reads Joseph Addison,
sentences like this: I
have found
many readers more
interested in what I wear
than what I think.
For every million
cell phones recycled, 772 pounds of silver,
75 pounds of gold recovered in our time.
False scarcity the mantra of politicians.
Steinbeck hangs a bucket on a rope
to wash his clothes in Rocinante.
No Manzanar visitor's center for Steinbeck.
Or Tule Segregation Camp terrorizing sensibility.
The map to rehabilitation a study in horror.
Washing dishes thinking of my carbon footprint.
Steinbeck is 58 with Charley. I'm 72.
He makes fun of hunters and guns.
You can do that, then. Best story
in the book, explores Spanish
verb, vacilar,
present participle,
vacilante--a false
cognate. He's
been listening, not vacillating at all.
"If one has been vacilando,
he is going somewhere but doesn't care
if he gets there." Tears of the moon,
teasing the young teacher.
Play now, play next,
let rhythm make us free.
Put your manos in the sky
Venimos a vacilar.
Steinbeck finishes in Texas, New Orleans.
Myth. Reality. Roots. Lost.
Bravado and humility. Who
are we?
Earlier in Sauk Center with Sinclair Lewis,
my first American hero. He knows Red,
drinks with him. My grandma and I
stop there in 1964, driving my red
Austin Healey Sprite with tears in my eyes.
Steinbeck's greatest wisdom, I did not know.--
I neglected my country
too long. Believe me,
his country didn't wait. He writes,
We know so little of
our own geography.
You got that right, John. You listened
everywhere, and myth wipes out the facts.
That's prophecy, and you're on it.
Jim Bodeen
6 March--28 March 2018
POST CARD TO DENI SEYMOUR, ARCHAEOLOGIST
AT THE HEARD MUSEUM, ON APACHE ANTLERS
Mobile people
and their stash.
Geronimo's wickiup.
Dateways and gateways.
A big wind brings down
your tipi. Cache
some food in a pot.
Cover your treasure
in yucca.
Rings and circles.
Don't look one way.
Earliest Apaches passed
through here, early 1300s.
Climb more mountains.
My mountain spirit headdress.
These antlers. These.
Know the way to water.
Co-occuring.
Not hard to find
See through answers
Rope to rope.
Llano estacado.
Knowing the way with no rope.
I heard someone else.
Protohistory.
One pen.
One spot of ink on paper.
Jim Bodeen
Heard Museum/Yakima
March, 2018
T.C. Cannon The Circle Is the Essence of Forever
Heard Museum, Phoenix, 2017-2018. Tommy Wayne Cannon
(September 27, 1946—May 8 1978) was born
in Lawton, Oklahoma, to a Kiowa father and a Caddo mother. He was given the
name Pai-doung-u-day, which translates into “One Who Stands in The Sun.” He was
a decorated Vietnam Veteran, and served with the 101st Airborne
during 1968-69. He died in an automobile accident in 1978.
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