worth watching

“This [genocide] is how we came to own these United States. This is the legacy of manifest destiny. Prisoners are still born into prisoner of war camps, long after the guards are gone.” 
-Aaron Huey

bury my heart at wounded knee

i don't want to sound like a broken record 

maybe i need a more creative way to tell this story

but from wind river canyon (shoshone land) and tensleep

rocks from the cambrian, precambrian, triassic periods

from thermopolis, the famous hot springs sold to congress in 1897 by chief washakie,

with the one caveat that 1/4 of the springs be always reserved for public use

(congress had been pressuring the tribes to sell for years, you know)

from the black hills carved with those four leaders (but whose leaders?  who?) 

to that towering deviled rock, rising 1280 feet off the high plains

from the bighorns to buffalo

and keyhole to custer (are we really still naming things for this man?)

i hear faint voices in the breeze, and i join in, bewildered, ashamed

this land is my land, this land is your land

well i don't know much about forced migration, gentrification, 

measles and casinos and drug cartels 

the manifold ways in which debt is atoned for, or forgotten

after all, who owns the colorado river?

but my heart aches for the blood in the soil,

the scarlet that stains my feet seeping up from our given, good earth

Waiilatpu

Place of the Rye Grass

Six feet tall in every direction--can you imagine?

So this is how the West was ''settled,'' as it were.  The Whitmans, Marcus and Narcissa, were killed, along with ten others, by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians.  Another 54 were taken captive.  It took a few years, but Congress created Oregon Territory in attempts to catch and hang those responsible for the deaths.

I'm uncomfortable with the word Massacre, as it seems to negate everything leading up to the incident...  the Presbyterian missionary doctor who repeatedly administered medicine for measles to Indian children who still died, while the same medicine worked for the whites.  How must that have looked?  The Cayuse doctrine that a medicine man pays for repeated deaths with his own life.

Or the way Whitman tried to convince the tribes, seasonally nomadic, to settle down on patches of land and farm, for the sake of the mission.  Couldn't have the local population moving on to salmon grounds every fall when you're trying to start a church.

There was the fake newspaper story in East Coast papers talking about tribal men asking for holy teaching, getting white missionaries excited to go West in the first place.

And the words words written by Whitman's wife, Narcissa, the first white woman to make the trek on the Oregon Trail west and a pioneer if there ever was one, in her diary and letters, that betray a certain racism in her missionary efforts.  Oh, the motives that lie within!

Because of the bickering and quarreling among missionaries, the Presbyterian leadership back East voted to close the Mission, but in an astonishing journey, Marcus Whitman left in October 1942 for New York City and Washington, DC, riding through the winter Rockies and down through Taos, New Mexico, to plead his case.  He arrived in March, and the board agreed to let Whitman Mission remain open.

Anyway, a few years after the Massacre, with the tribe on the lam and in the hills, five Cayuse men consented to turn themselves in.  They were tried and hanged in Oregon City.  It's not clear whether these men were guilty; two of them were tribal leaders; perhaps they were just trying to protect their people.

But the entire Cayuse paid.  The Cayuse War that followed the Whitmans' murders left most of the tribe wiped out by settlers, remaining members joined with the Nez Perce.

Now I believe there is never an excuse for murder, though there may be a story found in spilled blood.  I know the hearts of Marcus and Narcissa were probably as troubled and pained and grey as those of Tiloukaikt and Tomahas.  But I stand on these grounds, rye grass hills, wheat grass lining the Oregon Trail, and I wonder if things might have gone differently...

If the Black Hills and Cayuse, Appalacia and so many other parts of this land might not have come to their current government through dislocation.  Through genocide.

Most days I push it down deep, don't want to sound extremist, don't want to offend, am more white myself than Cherokee, but this isn't about racial allegiance:

the truth is, it hurts to live on stolen land.

walk well the banks

Five dead crows, black stick legs splayed in the air,

lying on their backs in shallow snow

I found them walking at Pioneer Park two weeks ago,

Navigating ice sheets carefully as I talked with K,

holding my heart to hers 250 miles away.

I don't want to only tell hard stories,

but I can't purge my mind of the image of that kindergartner who killed a cat

(is it possible that a five-year-old could do that?)

and later, when he told me of his dad who kicked down doors

I felt only the sick familiarity seeping into the pit of my stomach

Brother, I know it well

The warm Chinooks blew last weekend,

melting the ice that had coated the streets for days

treacherous roadmap in a city that doesn't plow.

Silver earring glinting in the dark,

I thought of that metallic band of water flowing from the Rockies,

no longer reaching the Sea of Cortez,

of Phoenix's air conditioning and golf courses,

Mexico's dried-up womb farmlands, y todos los inmigrantes hambrientos,

But who really owns a river?

I read Mark 5 and had a hard time believing a father could be that desperate

I guess I missed the point.

Y esos fotos me molestaron, tu explorando cuevas en mi ropa, mi luz de cabeza. !Es tan impropio! Luego yo recordé mi caja de pino, de tu mano, de la que yo tomo anillos y horquillas cada mañana. Yo pienso que usaré eso hasta que me muera, contigo o sin ti.

So I will also learn to bend.

you may or may not recognize the sound of two owls calling
to each other, like the ones i heard in the pine woods this evening.
it was not far from my house, and i tread the ice carefully,
waiting to hear them sing.

and then there was the deer, running on hard snow
that unmistakable thumping

the yeast bread is rising in my kitchen,
made from freshly ground wheat
(by a motor, not stone and hand).

and i still don't know how to explain things
why some would kill a swan, senselessly, for pleasure
why a dearest friend's father would stand (deservedly?) accused

these are grave times, and hope in ourselves turns bitter
betrayal on the tongue
(so we are practicing not to hope in ourselves, anymore).

50 loves, 50 woes, our buddha has said
(a mantra we will not soon unlearn)
but you, in your backwards, insane way
choose all fifty.

to cry for the forgotten, suppressed things
to be tender in the midst of ice,
to look for the robins in the middle of winter.

these are your ways (to hurt again and again and again, as a child)
to trust and hope and believe.
well, nonsensical though they may be,
to follow them is the way to Peace.

r.d.b., 7 november 1929 - 31 july 2009.

My grandfather, my Cherokee patriarch, entered the next doorway, crossed the river far from here.
We are left in a dusky wake, a hole felt not acutely, but endlessly.

I do not know how to speak of these things--
of death, of the 60 years he and my Gramma shared,
of my Dad's restrained and tearless face.

"This is the first person I've loved who's died," my kid sister sobbed,
and she knew him eleven years less than I.

And oh, the stories. I do not want to forget the stories.
His knowledge of seemingly every road & river West of the Mississippi,
Our Mennonite grandfathers marrying our Indian grandmothers,
Walking the Trail of Tears, tarred & feathered & ran out of town.

His California, far-West roots, need for adventure, for space.
His curiosity, small-business schemes, invention-dreams,
smoky ambition and sorrow.
He invested in gold mining, read an astonishing number of books, traveled the world,
had a biker beard and ponytail, called my Dad every Sunday.

An orchard friend stumbled across paths with a black bear today, not 15 feet away,
and I wonder if maybe that is him,
still roaming our sweet earth.

The Great Game: Afghanistan; Tricycle Theatre, London

song for the taliban

[laws]:
stab out the eye (that reads)
cut off the fingers (that take)
slice off the ankles (that are seen)
beat the woman (who is raped)

but never, never, leave your old ones alone
never leave those without homes hungry
never leave widows ignored
(there are lessons to learn from you, in these things)

on blood-soaked poppy fields,
in immigrant districts like this kilburn
all i can think is, this
(this war, this exploitation, this history, this bastard child)
is so, so fucked up
and, come holy ghost

i don't mean to be offensive,
but these words lay down together on my lips
and that's all i got.

[raise high the roofbeams. the catcher's in the rye]

Okay, okay. Now, I don't want to pretend to know The Way of Things. Or to say that the hard gets easier, when it doesn't. Where are Rod Caufield, or Franny and Zooey Glass, when we need them? Salinger's agents of the unpretentious, calling out the phony to disown it.

On East Mountain today, we walked the road along which the Tea Fire (has it been over three months already?) swept. The cloud-strewn ocean and Santa Cruz islands, the very ones where once the dolphin-girl made her way, shone blue in the distance. Walking, Stacey turned toward me. It's too short, she says. Words falling out of the blueness. It, this, is too short.

And I, I who would even dare to turn away from the ocean, glittery and captivating as it is: I know what she means.

i never thought i'd say this,

but somehow fires catch my eye more, now. pray for australia.

[again, my trans-atlantic heart]

For that sweet southern one, telling meaningful stories that always make me cry

For the bright-hearted one from the mountains who is so loyal and brave

For she who studies theology and sexuality, who doesn't see the world in dichotomy, who laughs and writes well

For that most faithful(l) pen-pal

For that married red-head dancer, always up for a hike, bike ride, or poetry reading

For that island child, a running partner with an open mind and heart

For that sister you gave back who reminds me that You matter so much, even when it feels foolish

For the one who sat with me in cold hospital rooms and who held my hand on the streets of San Francisco (how I miss her!)

For the artist who has poured so much wisdom & creativity into me, who continues to believe in me

For the one who sleeps next to me each night, makes coffee in the morning, & is so passionate about theatre

For the one in France who makes me laugh harder than anyone I know

For the one in England who cares, whose heart is large & receptive, who is just so smart

& for the one who is finally back, a new roommate, that beautiful guitar-player singing sweet melodies

For these dear, dear women in my life, I am overwhelmed & grateful.

r.d.b., my cherokee grampa

larger than life,
a roaring storyteller
over 6 feet tall, over 200 pounds
a long thick beard like saint nicholas
a ponytail like a biker
a mind sharp and sound
a knowledge of every highway west of the mississippi
a sense for business and trade

but you, my grandfather, are an old man now
you even told me yourself
and it hurts to say goodbye.

Levantanse, Africa

And then there is this.

Atrocities Beyond Words

[from The Economist, 3-9 May 2008 edition]

"A ceasefire signed in the town of Goma [Dem. Republic of Congo] in January between the government and more than a score of militias has so far done little to ease the plight of civilians in the east. All sides--government troops, says the United Nations, as well as the militias--continue to use rape as a weapon of war on the most barbarous scale.

"Most victims, as ever, are women and girls, some no more than toddlers, though men and boys have sometimes been targeted too. Local aid workers and UN reports tell of gang rapes, leaving victims with appalling physical and psychological injuries; rapes committed in front of families or whole communities; male relatives forced at gunpoint to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters; women used as sexed slaves forced to eat excrement or the flesh of murdered relatives. Some women victims have themselves been murdered by bullets fired from a gun barrel shoved into their vagina. Some men, says a worker for the UN Children's Fund (Unicef), have been forced to simulate having sex in holes dug in the ground, with razor blades stuck inside."

your eyes, they sting
this incense burns
this holy of holies is too much

& you can't draw the curtain,
can't enter the tabernacle

you shut your eyes,
you try not to breathe

you can't think of patients covered in feces
can't smell them soaked in piss
can't see this rotting flesh, these gaping wounds

keep the curtains closed! keeps the curtains closed!

you're covering your eyes, you're crying out
your mouth uttering gasps (of its own accord?!)

& how can you be grateful for something when every second of it hurts you-
when every moment is ripping you, is tearing out your heart?

i loathe walking into hospital rooms,
the feeling of invasion, of entering someone's private place,
someone's tiny sacred-space,
& what remains of dignity

keep the curtains closed!

but a whisper beckons us into the holiest of holies
a whisper leads us back again and again.

and now murder is real

From 185 to 120, but you were the first one to go since graduation almost 3 Junes ago. And oh, how my heart aches for our class, for 20 year-old you! Peace be you, Tanner. Rest in peace.

[the unspeaking center of her monologues]

There is too much to trust, these days. God can be so damn demanding. I just remembered I don't know anything ("Oh, right!"), and probably it is high time to move to Northern India and run from the scene that's so intense, that's weirding me out too much.

Does anyone know when 20 year-olds stop feeling like 12 year-olds? Or even 6 year-olds? Or do the feelings of being totally unprepared for and surprised by and overwhelmed with life never go away?

"When it's over, I want to say: All my life
I was a bride, married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."
-Mary Oliver

remember the mountain bed

Hello: San Francisco.
Goodbye: winter solstice, snowshoeing, skiing, snowflake walks, icy roads, & hot beverages shared with friends.

Hello again, World Wide Web. Your So-Cal surfer, Canadian hippie, and newly anointed urban gypsy is back, crossing her fingers and clenching her fists in preparation to "suffocate, boil, and bloom" in a most beloved city.

"I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears,
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here:
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again."
Woody Guthrie (Billy Bragg & Wilco)

[portland] sunsets say goodbye

In limbo at the Portland airport.

4 8th grade-ish looking boys playing me brass christmas carols on their trumpets and drums. I guess it's random to listen to a small quartet in an airport, but it's also fitting.

I'm trying to process everything--the 5 finals taken, 6 boxes packed and sent north, 1 room checked out of, 2 roommates bid goodbye, countless other friends hugged and kissed--home (and snow!) in a few hours and a new season ahead.

Heh, I am no good at processing.



"and i cry hello to the change, You've brought me this far..."