Writing

Not the Porcupine

It was not the porcupine’s skeleton. The ribs were much too large, and from one angle, I was able to see that it was a deer who was almost entirely stripped clean save for the head.

I ended up turning around in the cemetery, where I met three cows: Curly, Friday, and Jet. I stopped to say hi. They all came over to say hi back. Jet is the only one who urinated while walking toward me. It was surprising how much Jet could urinate. Jet and Friday appear to be very close. They nuzzle their heads and lie side by side in their grassy pasture. They live with a chicken. The chicken wasn’t interested in interacting with me. I don’t even know their name.

I don’t think this is the real cemetery for Toquerville. There must be another one for the pioneers, like the one over in Silver Reef. This is a more modern cemetery. The dead in it are barely dead.

Last year, a neighbor was upset that land near the cemetery is being developed. I don’t want people in their houses looking at me when I’m dead, she said. She went door to door asking folks to sign a petition to stop the development. Now, the bypass road will be back that way, too, not just houses. Things like that are going to happen, either now or after we’re dead.

If I planned on being buried, I wouldn’t really care who was looking at me from their homes or cars. I suspect something else was going on for that neighbor: something about safety, the fear of being watched without consent, something about trauma.

My husband was great this morning when I told him I needed to drive over and see if the skeleton belonged to the porcupine. He told me to watch for cars and be safe. If it’s the porcupine’s, we’ll have to go back and retrieve it after you get off work so we can relocate it, I said. I know, he said. I’ll clean out the car.

I’m glad he understands me and wildlife and the dead and bones and burials and honor and how it all somehow relates to healing.

Living Through Destruction

I just woke up from a dream that I was driving through Canyonlands while Harold Budd and Brian Eno’s “Not Yet Remembered” played in the background.

The wind has stopped. It’s raining. It’s dark. I’m here in the dark-sky Toquerville blackness, in the no-wind dribbling rain, crying about yet another place I love.

May we all remember a place we love today, even if it’s gone, even if it’s been destroyed, even if we’re living through its destruction. May we all survive and help our places survive, too.

Soon

I want to write, but my dog, Lexi, is on my lap. Her head is where I rest my right arm when I type. She had a hard night. Wind-driven rain pelted the windows on the north side of our house, things were blowing all over the place outside, a roof vent was squeaking, and something was making a sound like water hitting an empty metal bucket one drop at a time. Lexi started shaking and licking my face in the middle of the night, even though this type of storm isn’t new to her. I finally got her calmed down. She’s tired today and still somewhat concerned about all this wind, which makes our home howl periodically as if it’s haunted. I don’t have the heart to move her, but as long as I’m pinned in, I can’t write. My body is too restricted.

I will say this: The laccolith is beautiful today dusted in fresh snow and capped by clouds.

Soon, I’ll move Lexi. Soon.

A Poem

A poem you sit on. A poem you lie down in and call home. A poem that has pockets. A poem that’s toasty on a cool night.

A poem that’s a place that’s a poem about a place.

A poem with protests and threats and gun shows and flags. No, not that poem. This one: a poem with barometric pressure and wind in the scrub and common ravens cawing in the air, talons curled beneath their abdomens.

A poem that’s a pencil sharpener because things can be both things and places. I heard that yesterday and I believe it. Poems believe it, too.

A poem you show to all your other poems. A poem you dress up and take to a parade. A poem with a tiara.

A poem with a behavioral problem. A poem with a hypertrophic scar. A poem with a past.

A poem that launders money through your account. A poem that has a second home it somehow paid for in cash. A poem with a boat at the marina and a state record for largest fish caught in a manmade lake. A poem that’s the grand master of its masonic lodge.

A poem that makes you feel what it wants you to feel. A poem that holds you. A poem that negs, that tucks you in at night, that says I’m sorry, that makes sure your feet are covered the way you like before it rocks you to sleep but always against its stomach, always a little too tight, and it’s rocking, too, against you, and another poem is yelling stop at the first poem but the second poem’s been drinking and the first one says don’t listen to that poem so you sleep in the first poem’s arms the way it wants you to, whatever sleep is, whatever that feels like, floating maybe. Maybe floating. Maybe darkness. You can’t ask the poem, not that poem. So you make another poem you can talk to. And another.

Like a poem you can stand on. Like a poem you can kick. Like a poem you kneel to. Like a poem you run from.

Like a poem for the dead. Like a poem for you when you’re dead. Because you’re already dead even though you’re living. You’re deadly alive. We all are. The poems say so. Because a poem is a body and also a place because poems can be both bodies and places. Because this means the poem is already dead, as dead as a body, as dead as this place will be someday long after poems are gone and the last raven has flown over what would have been our heads if we were still here.

—

The idea that a pencil sharpener is a place is something someone said in the poetry workshop last night, along with the observation that things can be both things and places, not just one or the other.

Morning Prayer October 17, 2024

Whenever I realize the heat’s kicked on for the first time in the fall, as it has today here in the cool desert, I immediately hear Glen Frey’s “The Heat Is On” in my head, including the full, ridiculously square, opening saxophone solo. And I start dancing. I dance all around the house leading with my elbows and knees, even if it’s not light out yet, even if I should be at my light therapy station soaking up my fake sun, even if I’m holding the contents of a 137-microgram bolus of liquid levothyroxine in my mouth as I have to do for ten minutes right when I wake up, even if I’m in my enormous floor-length hoodie sweatshirt pullover thing that has a pouch, even if my dog has gone back to bed after waking me twenty minutes early by ecstatically rolling all over me, even if joy seems to be a thing on a high shelf that I can’t quite reach, even if my poems are smearing into a future I can’t predict and who knows if they’ll even be there then, even if it was hard to sit in a room full of poets last night because this is a place that has always kept me out rather than letting me in, even if I don’t know where I’ll be let in if anywhere, even if I know I’ll later sit down and write yet another breathless run-on sentence that nobody asked for or particularly wants, even if I know my fingers and heart will grow heavy as I type, even if the birds aren’t yet singing because they get up late here for some reason, even if I can’t hear water moving in the creek, even if I saw a dead racoon yesterday on the side of highway 17 with a stomach swollen like an overly inflated four-square ball, even if the neighbor’s ash-gray cat is sitting in the driveway staring in this direction like she always does with her little red collar on like a tiny spiffy choker necklace as if she’s about to leave for some formal event and is judging me for being in a thing with a pouch, even if I can’t hear or see anything yet in this dark world, even if NextDoor is already sending me notifications about those damned immigrants and inumanely bred puppies with docked tails and MAGA!!! and why is my hate speech being censored, and even if I’m not in Tucson, which may or may not let me in or keep me out.

It’s unnatural. “The Heat Is On” has been embedded in my mind and body for forty years and can’t wait to come out every fall when I clearly have better things to be doing than dancing to Glen Frey. The fullish-looking moon, for example. It’s still hanging there to the west. I could be looking at it. The cool breeze. I could be out in it rather than in this artificially heated home. The one house sparrow that’s started singing. I could be wondering why that’s all I hear when we back up to wildlands. Where are the native sparrows? The verdins? The canyon wrens and rock wrens and roadrunners and lesser goldfinches and Anna’s hummingbirds? I bet they’re all over in Cholla with its shade trees and sprawling lawns. I could be thinking about that. Or the traffic that’s picking up on 17. Or the dead in the cemetery I can almost see from my house. Or the white bulls my neighbors clone. Or that dark cloud hanging above Pine Valley, which is one of the largest laccoliths in the world. Or that old gothic farmhouse. Or why anybody decided white vinyl fencing was OK. Or the rooster who’s just started to crow. He lives with the chickens I love over in Cholla. I could be thinking about him. I could be wondering if he’d dance to Glen Frey. AI says he would. I could be thinking about that.

Thanks, Glen. Thanks, 80s. I’m pulling up the music video for the song now on YouTube. Thanks, YouTube. Oh no, I’m about to dance again. The heat is on. Feel it.

Great. Now I’m thinking about “Some Like It Hot” by The Powerstation. I feel a super-duper double-song dance coming on. I didn’t know John Taylor was in that band. He was so hot. I wanted to date him and be him. I wonder if he would dance to Glen Frey.

May we all dance today, to whatever moves us, even if it’s music that’s 40 years old, which means we are something plus 40 years old.

Litophagy

Mitophagy removes and reuses the components of damaged mitochondria while regulating the biogenesis of new, undamaged mitochondria, which in turn preserves healthy mitochondrial functions and activities throughout the human body.

I think language needs to function in a similar way. We need to continually break it down, look at it in novel ways, question it, lay bare the strangeness of words both as sensory experiences and as signifiers, recycle it, make it new, and in turn preserve the flexibility and wholeness of language with the larger system of embodied communication.

This is why I like ascemic writing and erasures and blackouts and transliterations and poems with parts that are or appear to be missing and leaps in thought and elliptical writing and words that bleed into art and back into words again and writing that replaces what’s expected with what’s not expected — maybe with a similar-sounding word or something that creates the effect of reading a book that has several sets of pages stuck together.

And none of what I love is new, but it doesn’t have to be new to be important or to be discussed. Or to need a name, like mitophagy. Litophagy from the Latin lingua? That’s what I’m going to call it. Litophagy. Let’s clear out and clean up and heal what’s on our tongues.

Neighborly

Morning Prayer October 16, 2024

I’m listening to the chickens on the other side of La Verkin Creek over in the Cholla neighborhood where people have lawns and shade trees and gardens and orchards and side-by-sides and motorcycles and religion-themed Little Free Libraries and trampolines and waterfall-edge pools and corrupt former city council members and huge parties with DJs where all the dirty words in songs are replaced with nice words and big flags and banks of photovoltaic panels and gazebos and bermed landscapes and guns that they wear all the time and men who come out of their homes and surround you and ask what are you doin’ and accuse you of looking in their windows when you’re just out birding and saying you better not be a liberal and asking you what state you’re from ’cause if it’s California, you got no place here and telling you that you can’t be on city property and pointing to the No Trespassing sign they’ve posted on the city-owned bridge that connects your neighborhood to theirs and they pretty much do whatever else they darn well please, like having chickens.

I’m clearly not a fan of Cholla, but I do love those chickens. Listen to the way they greet the day. Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu bu-CAW. Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu bu-CAW. They don’t care about Cholla. Bu-CAW. They just want to chicken. Bu-CAW. So they chicken. They chicken hard, and I get to listen to it from the relative safety of my home because their vocalizations don’t stay in Cholla. They go where they want and are received by those who need to be reminded how to live above repression, above cultural toxicity, and on their own terms.

Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu bu-CAW.

Anyhoo. For the record, I’m not from California. I’m from Oklahoma. And I’m not a liberal. I’m an outsider American Leftist who’s not a tankie. And I really was surrounded by three of Cholla’s HOA members a week after we moved here when I decided to go out birding. The city almost took the bridge away when it found out what the Cholla folks were doing to intimidate folks in our neighborhood. I wrote a letter to the city saying it was all good. I made those men chocolate-chip cookies, and they brought me a passel of pomegranates, and we smoothed everything out on our own. So the bridge remains. You’re welcome, Cholla. (You can look all this up in the Toquerville City Council Meeting Minutes from 2020, which are online. I am not even exaggerating about the city threatening to take away the bridge if residents couldn’t play nice. The whole thing was ridiculous but not inconsistent with the rest of my experience in Southern Utah.)

I got distracted. Here’s the prayer part: May we all Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu bu-CAW today. Let’s chicken. Chicken like there’s no tomorrow. Chicken for those who need to hear you chicken—maybe across a creek, maybe on the other side of the world. Chicken because chickens rock and you rock, so you really should chicken.

Morning Prayer October 16, 2024

I’m listening to the chickens on the other side of La Verkin Creek over in the Cholla neighborhood where people have lawns and shade trees and gardens and orchards and side-by-sides and motorcycles and religion-themed Little Free Libraries and trampolines and waterfall-edge pools and corrupt former city council members and huge parties with DJs where all the dirty words in songs are replaced with nice words and big flags and banks of photovoltaic panels and gazebos and bermed landscapes and guns that they wear all the time and men who come out of their homes and surround you and ask what are you doin’ and accuse you of looking in their windows when you’re just out birding and saying you better not be a liberal and asking you what state you’re from ’cause if it’s California, you got no place here and telling you that you can’t be on city property and pointing to the No Trespassing sign they’ve posted on the city-owned bridge that connects your neighborhood to theirs and they pretty much do whatever else they darn well please, like having chickens.

I’m clearly not a fan of Cholla, but I do love those chickens. Listen to the way they greet the day. Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu bu-CAW. Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu bu-CAW. They don’t care about Cholla. Bu-CAW. They just want to chicken. Bu-CAW. So they chicken. They chicken hard, and I get to listen to it from the relative safety of my home because their vocalizations don’t stay in Cholla. They go where they want and are received by those who need to be reminded how to live above repression, above cultural toxicity, and on their own terms.

Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu bu-CAW.

Anyhoo. For the record, I’m not from California. I’m from Oklahoma. And I’m not a liberal. I’m an outsider American Leftist who’s not a tankie. And I really was surrounded by three of Cholla’s HOA members a week after we moved here when I decided to go out birding. The city almost took the bridge away when it found out what the Cholla folks were doing to intimidate folks in our neighborhood. I wrote a letter to the city saying it was all good. I made those men chocolate-chip cookies, and they brought me a passel of pomegranates, and we smoothed everything out on our own. So the bridge remains. You’re welcome, Cholla. (You can look all this up in the Toquerville City Council Meeting Minutes from 2020, which are online. I am not even exaggerating about the city threatening to take away the bridge if residents couldn’t play nice. The whole thing was ridiculous but not inconsistent with the rest of my experience in Southern Utah.)

I got distracted. Here’s the prayer part: May we all Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu bu-CAW today. Let’s chicken. Chicken like there’s no tomorrow. Chicken for those who need to hear you chicken—maybe across a creek, maybe on the other side of the world. Chicken because chickens rock and you rock, so you really should chicken.

The Brain

When I was a senior in high school in Oklahoma, a local bank sent toys out to folks in the community as a promotion. The toys didn’t come with instructions. To get them, you had to visit the bank, where they would try to get your business.

The toy was called The Brain. It was a gorgeous thing with a black base, moveable black wedges attached to black pins and transparent layers of clear plastic stacked on top of each other. Each layer had different shapes cut into it. Together, they could either lock or unlock each pin. The goal was to figure out how to move all the pins out and then back in.

It wasn’t easy, but I cracked the code. That’s not what’s important, though. What matters about this toy is that it was the first time I was able to wire up my brain and my muscles and my whole being. I not only cracked the code, I learned how to solve the puzzle in record time. My fingers moved without conscious thought or, rather, so fast my thinking couldn’t get in the way of the movement.

There was a tactile component to the game that was central to the experience. The moving pins clanked like a computer keyboard. To this day, I still look for keyboards that sound like The Brain. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. It wasn’t just one sound, either. The components in each layer of the toy rattled slightly alongside the ticking of the main pins. In the right hands, that toy was a tiny, quivering percussion instrument that sounded like ice cubes rattling in a glass. Its real calling wasn’t being a toy sent out to promote banks. It was being an instrument in an avant orchestra that only performs graphic scores.

The Brain made such an impression on me that, the other day, I noticed I was re-creating its rhythm and sound while taking my vitamins. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. I have a complicated system for retrieving a vitamin bottle, tick, taking a vitamin while retrieving the next bottle, tick-tick, and so forth while also arranging the bottles, tick-tick-tick, in a particular way on the counter and then placing them back on the shelves, tick-tick, following another pattern once I’ve taken them all.

The Brain taught me how to be a better flutist, how to be a writer—how to live in language at all for that matter—and how to process and store information with exceptional efficiency. Runs of notes became compact units that could be compressed in my memory and expanded when I needed to retrieve them. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

Language became something I could enter into because I could type at least as fast as my thoughts. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

Memory in general became something I could store in chunks without taking the time to think the words I was thinking. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

Notice there are eight ticks, one for every pin. The Brain taught me to compress language, music, and thought in packets based in octals, like a computer. The Brain is actually billed as a computer. The side of the box reads, “Can you out-think the computer?” But that’s not what it was about for me. It was about streamlining my thoughts, perfecting my movements, bringing my whole self into unity, into the present, into being-ness, and not having to slow down or get mired in the difficulty of whatever I was performing or creating.

This was profound, and it was my way of making my dyslexia work for me rather than against me. It was an assistive technology that unlocked me as a person. It was an extension of me that led me back into me in ways that had been inaccessible before The Brain. It was a teacher. It was a sage. I will forever be grateful to the bank marketing team who mailed The Brain to my home and to the company that created and sold it.

Someone stole The Brain from me in college. I think it was my friend Terry Holsti. He played the trumpet and had a bag full of teeth and hair and giggled all the time and had a different moral compass from most people. He was fascinated by The Brain. He always asked me to give it to him. I hope it’s making him as happy as it made me. I really do.

O The Brain! It’s smart. It’s beautiful. It’s mysterious. It’s a see-hear-touch explosion waiting to happen with the patience of a lama. And it’s marked sold because it’s on the way to my house in Utah. I shall not navigate this place alone. I shall have The Brain by my side. Together, we will gleefully tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick who live in this area instead of allowing them to tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick run us out of here.

On Your Knees

When those who are abused, erased, denied, harassed, drugged, dragged, gaslit, badgered, beaten, silenced, shamed, blamed, sidelined, traumatized, threatened, dismissed, derided, and more fritter their time away fearing and fighting each other, who do you think benefits?

The powerful—who want everyone else wiped off the face of the earth unless they can be relegated to servitude with dampened, deadened bodies whose only sanctioned individual and collective purpose is generating more power for those with power.

This is how power works, how the powerful grow increasingly powerful while everyone else grows increasingly desiccated.

Power wants you dead. It wants you on your knees. It wants you when it wants you, and when it doesn’t want you, you’d better run like hell even if you don’t believe in hell.

That’s how powerful power is. Don’t do power’s work by harming others who have no power. That’s not your path to power. You have no path to power, nor do you want one.