Writing Spaces

 

I got this lovely tiny journal from Bibliographica in New Zealand, and made it into an autobiographette or libro di memorie minuscolissima, with words and a few collaged images, to wear next to my heart.  This is the text—

 

Belles/Belle's Paroles

 

lele = flight, to fly

 

alo, 1. sharing 2. in the present
oha, joyous affection, joy
ha, life energy, life, breath

 

Santa Fe—kachinas and tribes, 

like strings of turquoise beads 

(Morenci, Smoky Mountain, Candelaria),

dried chile pods the color of old garnets

with the rasp of rattlesnakes,

heishi, strung out against the terracotta earth

like once, below Phaestos, the rivulets of sheep, 

the monks singing or chanting as evening came on

 

the school in the canyon 

with waterbirch and red clay gods

 

the journeys out in search of those essential things . . .

basset horns and hounds, and limestone sages, saints

 

the Hawaiians' twenty-seven kinds of prayer

and Rilke's "slow descent of aqueducts"

 

ras al hanout, saffron, turmeric

coloring my hands

 

and then oregano—

joy of the mountain, my joy

 

Prayer flags, temples on the Kohala coast.

The ancient stadium above Delphi, 

and ladders climbing thunderclouds

to the kiva at Alcove House.

 

the hoary old apple tree I came across

at the heart of the gardens at Green Gulch

 

The rings of Saturn through a borrowed telescope,

the shop of pigments and green chalk in Bloomsbury.

Za'atar.  The spotted Guatemalan cat.

 

Hoopoe feather, kestrel—

the hawk that hangs stilled in midair.

A hillside of windmills, Aleppo pines, goat bells.

 

mercados, Chapultapec, and Teotihuacan;

chilaquiles, the River Song

 

discovering the Basque tximitxurri, green as delight,

 

happening on sacks of dried beans for Luccan bean soup,

and the Luccan composers of masses—Missa di Gloria

 

Approaching the Ponte Vecchio at dusk, 

the beautiful bridge of old gold. 

 

Glastonbury Tor, Tor House.

 

Glass beads stolen away by the Etruscan shades,

taken as offerings like the dictionary words,

sea-polished, secreted away.  (ankh, annul, anole)

 

the pine-hushed lane named for 

a meeting place of the Algonquin Indians

 

dogwalkers on the Heath

 

A Venetian lion, a straw hat,

dried figs from a friend's trees.

My sanguine artist's pen

writing about pupusas, pelicans.

Home.  Here.

 

Andiamo sempre in gioia!

 

—Santa Cruz

May 2021

 

 

images:  Christie B. Cochrell

 

The Persian Warrior

 

I'm delighted that my good friend Jeanne Althouse and I have once again had stories published in the same journal—this time, in the wonderfully-named The Plentitudes, which did me the additional honor of naming this Spring issue Warrior, after my story.

 

"The Persian Warrior" is part of a set of pieces inspired by masks that I began last year.  My concept with this string of stories was to explore masks as a physical embodiment of (or facade for) identity—how they can equally disguise identity and create it, conceal and reveal, in different contexts or with different personalities.  How they alter reality physically, mentally, and emotionally.  How important they are in various cultures.

 

This quote from a Billy Collins poem, "In the Evening," seems to introduce the series well, as it follows related characters back and forth in time, at different points of their lives.

       "And the past and the future?

         Nothing but an only child with two different masks."

image:  The Persian Immortals, Berlin Museum