The Earth Is Dying and Im Making Art Just to Prove That I Have a Heart
More.
I desire to accept photos of the Mexican nutrient aisle at Moorhead CashWise. Crinkly packs of multi-colored candy and trinkets. Fruit drinks and cola in bottles. Big ii-pound cans of the densely green, sometimes nearly black, poblano republic of chile pepper. Miracles, hither in
.
I want to make a retablo of alternative, peacenik "soldiers": las soldaderas of the Revolution.
The Ojai Mail service Function. Something. I don't know what. Considering its noontime bells were requiem to joy for any kid on a x-speed in July, circa 1973.
And I desire to do something with middle-course white american kitsch. The beautiful, moving, ugly and rustic, religio-commercial folk art STUFF of america. The easter bill of fare; halloween and thanksgiving window and table art; the secular figurine; the empty obsessive icon: owl, cow, frog, mushroom, affections; the new age obsessive moon and sun, crystal, angel, yin-yang sign, katrina figure. And recent simulated land style: fabrics, figurines, handicrafts both purely decorative and semi-functional. I'd like to practice something with christmas cards, also. Something I send out to people routinely every bit a manner to say how-do-you-do, stay in touch on, though I have reservations about coercive, expensive, and sometimes exhausting cultural rituals. Brand my poems and graphics experiments mesh with the rituals I do choose to notice. How would I make some of the weird stuff I want to write or otherwise create accessible and enjoyable to my family and old friends? Exist dainty, be very very nice if one could MERGE energies that way.
A Nicho Defended to California Wellness Food: tiny vials of wheat grass juice. Thumb-sized baggies of sprouts. Miniature bin after bin of beans, seeds, and trail mix, assorted course-ground flours and legumes. Tiny replicas of fresh rotting organic carrots, lettuce, and apples that nobody buys. Candles and incense, loofa sponges on strings, salts and sandy milks for the bath. Lavander, to calm us all down.
I'm agape.
Retablos depicting el corazon. A series of retablos on el corazon.
The middle in theory. Theorizing the heart.
The skull itself grins at the very idea.
Oh, corazon.
The bereaved have something like cotton in their ears and their ears in their stomachs and their hearts overwhelming their bodies. They can hear zilch but the small, high-pitched sounds coming from the mouths of the living and the droning, low-pitched sounds coming from the mouths of the dead.
During Dias de Muertos, in some places, musicians get door to door, singing parodic epitaphs for the living members of each household. Odd custom—i of many I tin can't perchance begin to imagine in
(In
Everyone in
For Pan de Muerto recipes, click here.
*
Piffling candy skull,
my petty bread of the dead,
I wish I could stop time…
— Traditional
Kids in schools make give-and-take puzzles, bawl paintings, sand paintings, socks and shoes of expiry. They make skeletons out of styrofoam, wheat paste, newspaper sacks and colored yarn, colored tinfoil and astonishing meringue.
Everyone makes skeletons and the skeletons are Everyone: drawn or crudely sculpted figurines, they stand for cooks, dentists, bicyclists, barbers, partiers, shoppers, sleepers, double-decker drivers, writers. Skeletons become to the movies, make tamales, become drunkard, go laid, get married. They wearing apparel up. They seem very much to enjoy dressing upwards. "Female parent with Baby in Stroller." "Veterinarian with Pig."
Some of the calaveras are pretty serious, depicted at times with worms coming out of the mouths, with beetles and even lizards crawling all over. I mean, damn. I'll say it again: people swallow sugar skulls labeled with the names of their dead.
I am too white for this.
information technology is widely known that the Dead love sugar
I'm peering through a crack in a cultural wall. Is that ok? I'g a bookish voyeur of a people long subjected to my country'southward heinous imperialist shit. One more imperialist indignity, right? that from my relatively cozy white quarters where I guzzle coffee all morning and surf the cyberspace, I raid their country for literary boodle.
In my defense, however, I estimate I'll say, as and then many imperialists and tyrants do, that I really don't have it all that great myself. I don't exactly know what my ain culture is. My eye'south in pieces. Mini Marts, Christmas, sitcoms, super malls even weddings sometimes depress me. I'one thousand in academia, but not really, a permanently temporary integrated adjunct. Marginal amid the marginal, but of course information technology's all relative and I'grand hardly starving, either. Information technology's confusing.
(On the internet, y'all tin buy a retablo of Saint Rita of Desperation:
10" x vii" plus additional nicho. $975.)
It truly is disruptive. Merely again in my defence I will venture: bones are the property of none.
The skull itself grins at the very idea.
*
I love that Posada sketch where the calaveras themselves are grooving to Dias de Muertos, hanging out all night in the cemetery, looking a lot like the living in their cowboy hats and guitars. That's what made this guy Posada then good: the way he kept mixing them upwardly. Crying and laughing and singing and eating and wringing their bony easily over the dead. That gets me. Obvious message to mourners: Already. Anybody.
*
October. 28 is for those who died violently.
Oct. 29 is for the unholy, the uncleansed.
October. thirty for the solitary soul, soul with no one.
October. 31 for the children (thus, Halloween in America).
And Nov.1 and ii are for the adults. It is on these days that families hang out in the cemeteries, at the decorated gravesites, all through the night in candle-lit vigils.
mexconnect.com: "In contrast to urban graveyards, no ane laughs or drinks. While the graves are decorated, the temper is industrious, and then settles into a reverie, equally candles flicker and locals settle into their blankets for a long, common cold night. Information technology is not recognizably mournful, nor intensely meditative—more a sort of limbo enhanced by the aroma of copal incense, mixed with the odour of hot candle wax, fading damp flowers and weeds from the lake."
flowers, for their light
salt, to purify
sugar, considering they love information technology
and glasses and glasses of h2o,
because the expressionless are very thirsty
*
All of those European traditions where the expressionless render in the autumn—information technology isn't about the dead, I call up, so much as the living. They have finished the hard work of the harvest and are set up. They have stopped.
So death has an opening, see. It comes in like a large, slow fog. Much of it's prepare, after all, according to the needs and grieving cycles of the living. It's a infinite nosotros clear with intent to recognize the infinite that was cleared for united states whether we like it or not. We take to make special preparations, we have to sanctify information technology, we have to communally concord, considering otherwise it would swarm us all year. It would come up annoyingly in-between acts, at increasingly frequent intervals. Information technology would gradually grow louder than other sounds. It would sneak itself in to ballgames and movies and schoolbooks. It would turn holidays like Christmas into celebrations of money and death. It would spill black liquid filth into the oceans, it would ransack pocket-size countries and make state of war for the sake of a flammable liquor that makes us more and more thirsty. Without Dias de Muertos, basically, death would become a real asshole, a rough fauna, stepping over man beings who sleep on grates, making expediency virtuous, admitting to nix, unable to look its own children in the center, hypocrisy the alien the blob the godzilla the witch that recycles, the endless sequel, it won't go away, as well sad and fucked upwardly to admit that it's sad and fucked up, expiry would become America.
*
Dias de Muertos modify for my female parent. For this I would leave certain gaps. Can't give when nothing was given to requite back again, eh, mom? Un esqueleto en cada ropero.
Only of course I'd leave lots of good things too, at that place on the table. Color. I'd get out color, because she hated "hippy rags." I'd exit some books, even the trashy historical romances she was reading in her loneliness well-nigh the terminate.
Of form I'd have to get out some things to tempt her at that place to begin with. What would tempt my mom to come dorsum? The primary thing she had was her kids, whom she did not accept enough near the finish, only had too much well-nigh the offset. Said I was always following her around, picking on her arm or sweater. Needing. I don't think I was really all that much to handle, but together with four other kids I no doubt was. 2nd to last. An utterly forgettable, slow position.
And so judge I'd make myself, just myself, among other things, available at the change, not looking also needy or anything. Only there if she needs me or wants me. This is for her, after all, and it'south the least I can do. It's easy for me to be generous, since I am, afterwards all, alive. I'thousand the one who's live. Likewise it's certainly easy for her in this example to be the Virgin of Guadeloupe herself, it'due south no problem at all for her now. The very Mother Mary herself, for me, for god's sake, it's the very least she can do, being expressionless.
I'd endeavour somehow to leave I'one thousand sad.
I'd exit the milkoflovingkindness, or try to. Giving it, or trying to, somehow keeps the willies from getting the better of me.
I'd fix out the staff of life of finally healing and the ringing stones of go.
I'd show indifference to the million, minor inanities.
(Kellie: I'd show indifference to the million, modest inanities.)
And I'd evidence thank you—not to my female parent the saint, not to the Dandy Holy Womb, but to my mother Martha of Oklahoma Metropolis, maiden proper name McGee, the woman who gave me my centre.
Sources
I'm having, as they say, a brush, at to the lowest degree a castor, with cancer. I have information technology. It'southward minor, they say. Grade 1. Funny that cancer gets graded. Even cancer gets graded. 1,2,iii,4. iv is bad. And so I guess I have A cancer. I have "the best" of cancer. I won't know if it's worse until the surgery and more tests, a week abroad. Spent two very dismal days trying to believe, lying down at nighttime was the killer, realizing that I'd probably waited besides long to see a doctor, regret's piddling white teeth coming out…merely non fifty-fifty knowing whether I had to believe, because information technology yet could be nothing given handling, though it'southward definitely something. Grade 1. I don't know whether the surgery will get information technology all, they don't know whether it's actually lodged in, and then on. Oh my god, I've heard all this earlier. Am I embarking on the "long fight with cancer" matter? Oh my god.
Just I'm merely now feeling all of a sudden lite light. Considering I can write about it. Does this make me a existent writer. Fuck you, I guess information technology does. I think of Frank O'Hara's sweet poem, here I am the heart of all beauty writing these poems imagine! And that other poem of his it is even in prose I am a real poet.
"In Place of Future Gone By." In light of cancer, how grim is the subtitle I've used in other pieces I've written. Now it doesn't refer to accelerating technological change, but to myself, already gone. My hereafter. I'm.
At present I fifty-fifty wonder: when we talk about the whole Hereafter Shock affair, are we really talking near some heightened terror of death, some heightened sense of its immanence, and non anything to practice with technological change? Technology as ruse. Does living amidst vast, vastly complex, all-pervasive and fifty-fifty omniscient engineering science merely give us the sense of death animate down our necks? Nosotros build technology to shield ourselves from death, but technology but speeds the feeling of death'due south arroyo…
I actually feel, at this moment, that I'k somewhat protected from death—considering I tin can write near information technology. I can write about being sick all the way upwardly to the very moment of death's possible immanent arrival and so I am safe. I'm condom, I'thousand ok. I just realized that I can write about it all the fashion to the end. I experience amend.
Writing as sterilization of bad cells.
Wonder if I'll still feel this way if it really does get worse. I wonder if writing will matter a damn, and then.
Very, very strange…am I actually worried about whether any of my stuff will exist published later on I'm gone? Am I actually writing in hopes still again of publication, fifty-fifty when I'm gone? I never knew that the alleged desire for immortality in writers could be this idiotically real.
Oh yeah, and I wonder if years of loneliness and years of writing out of various stages of desperation has prepared me to arroyo writing as a goddamn life jacket. Any time I've always thought of information technology that fashion in the past, however, I've nigh immediately censured myself for being melodramatic. But I have to say, right at this moment, it feels like a life jacket.
Precancerous. I've heard this word before and it was very alarming. Just today it'southward a discussion that would be downright soothing if just my doctor would say it. He won't. Four pathologists concurred.
This is this.
02/17/03
Had surgery ten days agone. The works. Went updown andeverywhichway emotionally during my few days in the hospital, kept awake at dark past a gonzo nurse named Sheldon. Sheldon is nearly fanatical about John Wayne, John Wayne and that poly peptide intensive Atkins diet and he just actually, actually eats meat. The guy eats meat. A hunter large-time. Loves Sandhill Crane. I didn't know everyone ate any kind of crane. He grills Sandhill Crane for his kids and they honey information technology. He kept me laughing and talking until, by my 2nd and third nights, I was feeling increasingly awful, tired and rundown. Not exactly what a hospital nurse should be doing. (John said the guy was two cans of peas and some detest literature short of existence a survivalist.) But I shouldn't arraign Sheldon. I was initially looped and energetic on morphine, then downwardly and weepy, so abode for a day before Bro (doc) called with the results of the surgery tests. The C (at present rated Grade one-2) had in fact invaded the wall (from the lining), and a fair distance in, though lymph organisation etc. checked out ok. Now I'll take radiation. No they site percentages which slide around like soap on a shower floor—80-ninety%, seventy-90%, 50-lxx%. After 5 years you'll exist considered cured. —But then I did have ane patient who got to six and plant the C had recurred. .
The days are going by. I get-go crying at nothing. Violent movies scare me. I seem to need John effectually all the time. Tin can't stand up for him to be out of my sight. Worried nigh what I have and oasis't accomplished, what volition I practice with my things, my stuff, my dress and kites, given that my life is both here and in California. . .
Where should I send my heart for burial? Perhaps I'll go in pieces. Listen in Fargo, centre in Ojai. But part of my center has to be here with John, of course. Maybe I should ask to be cut up into dozens of pieces and spread all over the county. My trunk a slow-motion continental explosion, it does and doesn't belong, exactly, anywhere.
How does i request burial in No Identify? "Place" perhaps volition have to be whatever is easiest on the living.
"Place" not every bit geography, but as compassionate status or weather condition.
Two weeks off work, I sit on the burrow
watching daytime movies and news,
surgery wound ineptly closed
with the tiny white "butterfly" bandages
and humongous soft pads of gauze,
trying to be the nurse of myself,
massive klutz, the soft, hardly sticky tape ends
crimper up limply and damply, my shape all wrong
as usual, the wounds won't close, won't "dress."
If I patch a spot just fine while sitting,
the ends tug off with a pop
when I stand.
Never my whole goddamn life
in whack, I'1000 the patchwork patient of myself.
You?
Late at dark in bed, "praying."
Belatedly at dark in bed, praying.
I want to take washed something that matters. I want to be without regret.
Being with John. Sitting there on the burrow, his head propped on a pillow while I lightly rub his brow, fiddle with his hair.
How to write didactic stuff, while still being "truthful" or attentive to the ambiguities of life? How write anything that genuinely helps anybody? How to write something that helps everyone live. It's all an unbelievable nightmare, practise we have to "write the nightmare" to alive it. Is proficient writing ever terrifying. I have thought at times that it is.
"Adept writing."
Any.
02/21/02
2 weeks since performance. Our administrative assistant recently asked, in an electronic mail, what I'd like her to tell people inquiring about my surgery.
"She'due south come downwards with a slight case of uterus removal."
A "white" morning. Not exactly gray. Heaven looks like skim milk. It's still.
No, information technology'due south snowing.
Weird suffering of the terminally sick or of the ambiguously terminally ill:
how to create a DYING self.
Weird suffering of all of us.
How to create a style of beingness in the meantime, in just this detail kind
of concurrently.
I should take told you this long ago .
Discover myself watching schlock on the tube—Dr. Quinn, jesus, and Capra-blazon flicks. I've never before then appreciated why people need this stuff.
Soothe. Lie. Press the self-administer button.
Certainly explains all those WWII and mail service-WWII musicals.
*
And flowers. They came into my room gradually till they nearly filled it upward. People I honey, good wishes, partially encircling me, on shelves near the door and near the private bathroom, growing denser, brilliant bouquets and little cards, bows, baskets, fragile $.25 of fern, carnations, candies, packets of plant food, small stuffed bears, irises and roses, rise and gathering around me, filling and pressing, clouds of dry and airy baby's breath, I'm almost already gone.
*
The reality and value of dream/poetic truths.
The reality and value of medical truths.
I usually question everything. I'yard absorbed by ideas, which are always tenuous. Realm of intuitive connections and the nonliteral. Consequently, I feel disbelieving and stunned when someone only says to me: this is this.
Part of my pleasure in ideas is the way they magnetically gather together their minor sharp distinctions, the way they are and then, brilliantly, clearly, themselves. But likewise I dearest how they consequently blur and soften and suffer when visited by competing ideas which too are true. By now, of course, like any good committed relativist, I know that any foundation of ideas is like the floor of an old bedraggled firm. So I forgo, I defy, "foundations." I live consciously and deliberately instead in a sea of ideas. I float on silly little rafts of social protocol in immense and terrifying and beautiful flux. I dear the flux. I take fabricated a solid flooring of flux. I am human.
This is this.
This is this—maybe.
*
02/27/03
The horrendous gloom I felt correct after visiting the radiation people for a showtime consultation has lightened incredibly. I don't know what to attribute this to—denial, credence, necessity, numbness—simply I've been sharply aware of information technology equally each day passes. I had been teetering on a fence and there was no fashion to exist annihilation like comfortable, counterbalanced, decisive. I couldn't assume life, but I couldn't presume end of life either. Things could go either manner. Future and no future at once, what is that?
Every bit of today, however, and the concluding several days, I seem to exist leaning, just, without trying, towards the assumption of time, life, and future. Denial, acceptance, necessity, numbness.
I've started to tinker again with long-term projects, and am even reading a novel (in verse, by Vikram Seth). Throughout the worst of this I have felt zero desire or need to read novels. Facing death, it has seemed utterly pointless and even somehow mildly obscene to lose myself in the particulars of some fictional graphic symbol's life. The particulars of my ain life are staring me down and grabbing me by the shoulders.
Theory & philosophy seemed likewise irrelevant.
Poetry—the only reading option, right now, that makes whatever sense to me.
Tomorrow I run into the radiation people. They have to accept measurements. They need to marshal their instruments.
They programme to requite me two tiny, precise tattoos.
is this.
Source: https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWork/Scrolls/Thinking%20Heart/ThinkingHeart.htm
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