Protecting Wirikuta: A Petition to the President of Mexico

GRUPO DE LOS CIEN INTERNACIONAL / GROUP OF 100

December 1, 2011

WRITERS AND ARTISTS ASK MEXICO’S PRESIDENT TO CANCEL MINING CONCESSIONS IN THE SACRED TERRITORY OF THE HUICHOL PEOPLE

     Mexico may be the world’s largest silver producing country, but not all that shines is silver. Countries also shine in their myths and rites, their traditions and culture, and the Huichol (or Wixáritari, in their own language) have shone in Mexico and the world by preserving their unique spiritual identity over time.  The annual pilgrimage made by the Wixáritari across the sacred desert landscape of Wirikuta to Cerro Quemado, the mountain where they believe the sun was born, is internationally famous.

     In November 2009 the Canadian mining company First Majestic Silver bought 22 mining concessions in the Real de Catorce area, in the state of San Luis Potosi.  These concessions will allow First Majestic Silver to carry out what the company describes as “an aggressive drilling and exploration program” on 6,327 hectares of land.

     The problem is that this part of San Luis Potosi lies in the middle of the Wirikuta Natural Reserve. For centuries Huichol men, women and children have made their way here from communities in the western Sierra Madre mountains in the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango and Zacatecas to carry out their religious ceremonies, accompanied and guided by the mara’akate, their shaman-priests.

     Handing over the sacred territory of the Huichols to First Majestic Silver to be mined for its own financial gain not only betrays the colonial mentality of the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for selling silver, Mexico’s most emblematic mineral resource, to foreign companies but, far worse, will entail the desecration of the ancestral lands of the Wixáritari.

     First Majestic Silver operates exclusively in Mexico, at its La Parrilla, San Martin and La Encantada mines, and expects to produce seven and a half million ounces of silver in Mexico during 2011.

     Minera Golodrina, a Mexican subsidiary of the Canadian-based multinational Lake Shore Gold Corp, plans to dig an open-pit gold mine in the sacrosanct core zone of the Wirikuta Reserve, extracting gold using the highly toxic cyanide process. Both mining operations would endanger the scarce local water supply.

     When many people speak of a Mexico that is greater and more enduring than the current climate of violence, they are thinking of its history and culture, and mention of Wirikuta brings to mind an ethnic group which is profoundly Mexican and respected the world over for its authenticity and creativity, whereas mention of First Majestic Silver and Lake Shore Gold Corp brings to mind rapacity and colonialism.

     We ask President Felipe Calderón --- who witnessed the signing of the Huaxa Manaka Pact three years ago by the governors of five states who vowed to preserve the sacred territory of the Wixárika people --- to cancel the mining concessions granted to both Canadian companies.  We hope that President Calderón will not go down in history as the man who authorized the destruction of Wirikuta and its holy ceremonial sites.

SIGNED BY:

MExico: Homero Aridjis, Elena Poniatowska, Francisco Toledo, Gabriel Orozco, Jean Meyer, Nicolás Echevarría, Juan Villoro, Rubén Gallo, Manuel Felguérez, Gilberto Aceves Navarro, Lydia Cacho, Jorge Zepeda Patterson, Coral Bracho, Bárbara Jacobs, Vicente Rojo, Gabriel Weisz, Ana Pellicer, Roger von Gunten, Chloe Aridjis, Eva Aridjis, Laureana Toledo, Miguel Calderón, Rogelio Cuéllar, Javier Aranda, Guillermo Fadanelli,  Tedi López Mills, Elsa Cross, Beatriz Rojas, Pablo Meyer, Marina Meyer, Matías Meyer, Jerónimo López/ Dr. Lakra, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Damián Ortega, Rosa Velasco, Gabriel Kuri, Ximena Cuevas, Eduardo Hurtado, Yoshua Okón, José Luis Paredes Pacho, Monica Manzutto, José Kuri, Isadora Hastings García, Natalia Toledo, Federico Campbell

FRANCE:  Yves Bonnefoy, J. M. G. Le Clézio, Jean-Clarence Lambert, Gérard Titus-Carmel, Georgiana Colville, Pascale Montandon

SWEDEN: Tomas Tranströmer, Kjell Espmark, Per Wästberg, Lasse Söderberg

TurKEY:  Orhan Pamuk

UNITED STATES:  Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Paul Auster, Peter Matthiessen, Rita Dove, Junot Díaz (& Dominican Republic), Siri Hustvedt, Nicole Krauss,  Jonathan Safran Foer,  Robert Darnton, Michael Scammell, Edward Hirsch,  Pete Hamill, Tom Hayden, Jerome Rothenberg, Terry Tempest Williams,  Francisco Goldman, Bill McKibben, Deirdre Bair, Francine Prose, Molly Moore, Eliot Weinberger, Robert Hass, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ross Gelbspan, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Dr. Lincoln Brower, Betty Aridjis, Michael Palmer, Clayton Eshleman, Askold Melnyczuk, Amory Lovins, Charles Bernstein, Alan Weisman,  Amy Evans McClure, Michael McClure, Anthony DePalma, Grace Schulman, Scott Slovic,  Serge Dedina,  Dick Russell, Eric Lax, Edmund Keeley, Mimi Gross, A. E.  Stallings, James Metcalf (& Mexico), Ilan Stavans (& USA), Janet Brody Esser, Elizabeth Ferber

CANADA:  Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, John Ralston Saul,  Linda Spalding, Graeme Gibson, Terence Gower, George McWhirter  (& Northern Ireland)

UNITED KINGDOM: Simon Schama, Jonathon Porritt, Ali Smith, Simon Winchester, Alan Riding, Anne Stevenson,  Darian Leader, Lisa Appignanesi,  Cornelia Parker, Rosie Boycott,  Michael Schmidt, Mary Horlock, James Lasdun, Ruth Fainlight, Anthony Rudolf, Devorah Baum, Josh Appignanesi

BELGIUM:  Pierre Alechinsky, Ivan Alechine, Wim Delvoye

NIGERIA: Chinua Achebe

CHILE: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Ariel Dorfman, José María Memet 

RUMANIA: Norman Manea  (& USA)

SPAIN: Carlos Garcia Gual, Frederic Amat

CUBA: Zoé Valdés (& France)

INDIA: Kiran Desai, Meena Alexander

SOUTH AFRICA: Breyten Breytenbach

COLOMBIA: Fernando Rendón, Cecilia Balcazar, Angela García

NORWAY: Eugene Schoulgin

THE NETHERLANDS: Laurens van Krevelen

CYPRUS: Lily Michaelides, Niki Marangou, Christos Hadjipapas

ITALY: Giuseppe Bellini, Sebastiano Grasso, Patrizia Spinato, Franca Tiberto

NICARAGUA:  Sergio Ramírez, Francisco de Asís Fernández

PanamA: Gloria Guardia (& Nicaragua)

Japan: Satoko Tamura

MAURITIUS: Ananda Devi

 

BRAZIL: Ledo Ivo

URUGUAY: Carlos Fazio (& Mexico)

GREECE: Vassilis Vassilikos, Anastassis Vistonitis, Ersi Sotiropoulos, Dino Siotis, Yorgos Rouvalis

AUSTRIA: Peter Stephan Jungk (& USA)

GERMANY: Helga von Kügelgen, Kropfinger, Fred Viebahn, Tobías Burghardt, Jona Burghardt

Bangladesh: Hasna Jasimuddin Moudud

ARGENTINA: Octavio Prenz 

SLOVENIA: Tomas Salamun, Gregor Podlogar

Susan Suntree: from “Sacred Sites, The Secret History of Southern California” with a foreword by Gary Snyder

Book Two: The Origins of Southern California: Indigenous Myths and Songs

Part 1: Universe, World, People

First

                       

                        there is

quiet.

           

            Only solitude

                                   

                                       like an empty house          (no house)

                                               

                                                                                               

Only

Kvish Atakvish

                        Kvish: Vacant

                        Atakvish: Empty

                       

                                    These two are man and woman, brother and sister.

Then Kvish Atakvish

becomes

Omai Yamai

                        Omai: Not Alive

                        Yamai: Not in Existence

When these two discover themselves,

they talk with one another:

                                                                         

           

            Brother, who are you?

           

            Sister, who are you?

                                                            (Desire stirs the man,

                                                            so he never again calls her sister.)

            She asks again: Who are you?

            He says:

           

                        Kvish

                        Kvish

                        Kvish

                                                            I am     Empty

                                                             

                                                                        Empty

                                                                        Empty

           

            He blows out his spirit breath:    Hannnn!

            She answers:

                        Atakvish

                        Atakvish

                        Atakvish

                                                            I am     Vacant

                                                                        Vacant

                                                                        Vacant

           

            She blows out her spirit breath:   Hannnn!

            She asks again: Who are you?

            He answers:

                       

                        Omai

                        Omai

                        Omai

                                                            I am     Not Alive

                                                                        Not Alive

                                                                        Not Alive

            He blows out his spirit breath:     Hannnn!

            He asks again: Who are you?

            She answers:

                       

                        Yamai

                        Yamai

                        Yamai

                       

                                                             I am    Not in Existence

                                                                        Not in Existence

                                                                        Not in Existence

           

            She blows out her spirit breath:    Hannnn!

                                     Not Alive-Not in Existence

                                                  

                                                   becomes

                                    Whaikut Piwkut  Harurai Chatuta

                        Whaikut Piwkut: Pale Gray   The Milky Way    

                        Harurai Chatutai: Changing   Descending Deep into the Heart     

                                                These two become

                        Tukmit: Dark Sky                       Tomaiyowit: Earth.

                                   

(Clearly it is not

            male and female                       

            sky and earth,

                        but of another nature.)

These two:

Tukmit   Tomaiyowit    Dark Sky  Earth

                                                come forth from what came before

not as children

but as themselves:

                        a Continuing Being.

                        It is very dark

                                                without stars, sun, moon.

The woman lies with her feet to the north.

The man sits by her right side.

In the darkness

                        they talk with one another again,

                        and what they name

                        they become:

                                                            The First World.

[NOTE & FOREWORD.  The full range of Suntree’s work (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), not shown here, is in fact an epic including both indigenous & scientific/geological views of myth & history in an unprecedented way.  This is no small accomplishment – in fact a really great one – to which attention is called here.  

            Of her book’s major status, unless we miss it, Gary Snyder writes by way of Foreword:

            ”A work of great spirit accomplished with patience and vision, Susan Suntree’s epic poem is a lovely weaving of science and myth. It is a work that sings. Like all good stories it reads like the storyteller is right there, speaking to the reader, shaping the universe one song at a time.

           “Suntree’s book is about impermanence. From the very beginning, the landscape known as Southern California has reshaped itself dramatically and often. Learning how a place comes into being acquaints us with forces of life that are large and intimately interconnected. For the indigenous people, the creation and transformation of the world is an account of the First People. In this way of looking at it, the land is alive and working out its own story. 

           “Conditions are always changing. Something always upsets the balance. Suntree recounts a pivotal moment in one of the creation myths when Frog Woman and her cronies curse the great leader Wiyot, bringing death into the world. The First People respond by sitting together and talking things over until they find ways to accommodate changed conditions and rebalance the world. The common good is at stake. Everybody participates: trees, animals, weather, and eventually the human beings.  So this is a book about maintaining balance. We can only do this by carefully listening to our non-human neighbors and relatives.

           “But people resist letting the world in. We tend to think of the natural, the sacred, the wild as happening outside our neighborhoods and far away. Suntree brings us home. Every day in Los Angeles, tectonic plates, weather blown in from thousands of miles away, and the work of Raven and Coyote are always at play. Don’t miss it!

           “Suntree’s many years of writing, performing, and activism inform her work. So it is in part her cumulative wisdom and insight that makes this book so strong. Here we have a model for a much larger project: indigenous and Western poets and scientists swapping stories, singing their best songs around the same fire, working hard to keep the world in balance. That is going to take every song we’ve got.”]

David-Baptiste Chirot: Cinema of Catharsis (I-III)

for Rex Chirot & Jerome Rothenberg

PREFACE:

El Colonel is smiling, writing with his cigarette’s smoke in that great page, the sky . . . that great page, ever open to all, in which all eyes may read---and there, their readings being writings . . . find also the writings of others . . . moving, living, in skies of their own among these sometimes shared skies, these skies sometimes encountering each other . . . these writings, readings readers & writers . . . meeting among these skies . . . so that—

So that—El Colonel has often wondered, often written his own “versions”—of his readings which are writings—of these phrases he found underlined in red among the black letterings of a fire-singed Bible in the basement of a bombed-out bookstore in a small provincial town high in the mountains . . . and which are: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”—for, had not El Colonel wondered—what, if, indeed, come face to face, that ‘I’ which became known as also it was known—what if indeed, that ’I’—were an Other . . . for had not he also read, among other books found elsewhere, among other demolished sites . . . had he not read that ‘I is an other’ . . . in which case, El Colonel writes with his cigarette in the sky’s pages . . . in which case might not the “I” be also known as an other . . . an other found continuously in this other that is his writing in the sky . . . a writing read by others . . . who in reading in their turn write . . .

I.

El Colonel is smoking. Writing in the skies, on the varying hues of blue that shift with their proximities to the horizon . . . writing on the clouds scattered carelessly about . . . his eyes like fingers move, inscribing texts often in no known languages, at times in ones he barely knows from tattered texts come across—languages foreign to him—and, at times, even in the two languages he knows well . . . writing in the skies essaying to convey the dream states that float among memories---involuntary memories called out by the random touching of a shadow at the foot of a tree on the ground next to him—events long forgotten vividly alive—

El Colonel is smoking. These memories & dreams he is inscribing in the sky are not of large events at all. Thank God! No!—No, these are all the small events, happenings, that one is unaware for the most part that one is even noticing as they are passing—

II.

In a room, in some other place, a city—somewhere—she is sitting, smoking, writing in her journal . . . some time ago she had begun to interpret her life in terms of events, of writings, of images, documents—come across in her continual perusal and construction of her own “Kennedy Collection”—comprised primarily of books and old magazines, but including also stacks of Xeroxes of fotos of the JFK Assassination, which she keeps for cutting up and rearranging—into collages—and these slowly through time finding their ways into various scrapbooks she keeps—

This “Kennedy Collection” she periodically pours through, finding each time a differing sequence, a differing set of clues as to the “meanings” she is to interpret from them regarding her own existence.

Increasingly, her own days are intercut, shot through, with those “Days in Dallas”—especially as Autumn advances, inexorably—to the annual return of That Day—among “Those Days”—yet not only “those Days”—but all the Days surrounding them through time—the entire lifetime especially of Lee Harvey Oswald dominates certain areas of her consciousness, including the continually growing storehouse of memories which she associates directly with the Life of Oswald.

Thus, one October, during visits to her sister’s, she became aware that certain patterns in the linoleum were directly related with constellations which must have been embedded in the kitchen, say, of the houses where Marina Oswald had been living with, say, Ruth Paine—and others, perhaps also—where the Oswalds had lived after their New Life in America had begun--and these intersecting patterns and constellations found in linoleums were in fact reconstructions of some other events in consciousness, a consciousness greater than her own—indeed, one comprising, as it were, chunks of the Twentieth Century itself . . . even though now well into the Twenty-first century, she felt that these secrets exuded from expiring linoleums scattered through time and across the “interior landscapes of the late Twentieth Century” . . . yes—she distinctly, most definitely felt!—that these secrets being exuded had traversed the “line between Centuries,” as though transgressing a forbidden, or, at least—forbidding-- border—not unlike, say the border that Oswald crossed from Finland into the Soviet Union during his “defection”---yes!-- she felt, she distinctly felt-- these “secrets” had been, were continually—seeping, invading surreptitiously, as though entering in as soldiers do in moving through ground brush, on their bellies . . . that these secrets were arriving, day by day, night by night, at the very entrance to the battered small house she lived in on a battered small side street in a battered small section of the battered small city which she envisioned always as the one sacred place where these rites could take place, observed and participated in only by herself, their one initiate . . .

One October Sunday . . . as the late afternoon golden glow began to fade from the hallucinatory reds, oranges, dark greens and near-blacks of the heavy leaves—as the first shadows of the suddenly much cooler twilight began to etch their ways across the small battered lawn . . . one October Sunday, she indeed felt more strongly than ever the presence of the seeping secrets exuded by the linoleums of those kitchens Lee Harvey Oswald had entered in, in visiting with his estranged wife and children . . . she felt that these secrets were unfolding before her very eyes there on the shadow etched small battered lawn . . . sounds were reaching her from a neighbor’s TV—set to the NFL football games . . . Oswald she remembered had watched football during his last visits with his family . . . (more likely college football, on Saturdays? . . . some part of her mind registered the question—hanging there in the air—have to look it up, some part of her mind muttered, making a mental note of it—almost certain of it—were after all the pro games on then, before there was more than just the one then much smaller pro league . . . ? an important detail to come back to--)—yes—Oswald had watched football games . . . her eyes moved among the patterns etched by the twilight shadows on the small battered lawn, seeing in them the slow emergence of patterns seeping in from those long ago linoleums . . . as though the “action” of the plans gathering in Oswald’s mind—whether his own or those being planned and planted there by others---as though the action now was moving outdoors . . . from out of those rooms in the cheaply furnished homes, those flimsily constructed rooming houses he moved among . . . was moving outdoors and there, in the gathering twilight, taking form, gathering its thoughts as it were, in the patterns emerging—the very same patterns that had been observed in the linoleum—she now saw quite distinctly etched there, there in the backyard, on the small battered lawn . . .

III.

El Colonel is smoking . . . from the stream of involuntary memories which he is writing in the sky with his eyes . . . begin to emerge, at first in clusters, closely clumped, tightly gathered—begin to emerge small constellations of images, images each so sharp, so clearly distinct, that its facets, diamond-like, begin to etch into, cut open, the adjacent images in the constellation---releasing sudden erupting streams—like those lone spraying spumes suddenly sliced open and squirting forth from the sun---those long trails of raging, burning, appallingly beautiful reds and oranges . . . blasting into space---pure Heraclitean fires . . . of being---Being released into the infinite of Space---traveling with such incredible storm-powered speeds that they seem to scream into the eyes . . . and out of these searing images . . . as though they are cooling in an acceleration of “the evolution of Time” —out of these released images emerge suddenly, in single file, as though a slide show being shown in the skies—images, images long forgotten—no longer singular images, but ones which open up—as the mouths of caves are said to open—and reveal within them depths . . .

El Colonel is smoking . . . leaning, leaning into the slight breezes which are now coming up over the edges of the hill . . . leaning the better to see—to see within this opening now so vividly before him—

It is a cinema, its entrance like a cave mouth—embedded in a seeming cliff, which is in actuality as its image becomes more distinct to the hard-peering eyes of El Colonel—which is in actuality the tightly spaced wall of a series of buildings on a street he had once found in a bombed out small city . . . it came to him now in a howling rush of clarity—the entrance to this Cinema of Catharsis as he had thought of it, even before entering into it and finding himself, first, in a lobby entrance, a very long, extended hallway—at the end of which was the glass enclosed small booth where a ticket taker would be standing when a show was in progress—at the start of shows, also—and at all times in between—time now heaving and buckling, in time with the heaving and buckling of the parquet floor of the long hallway leading to the interior entrance where the ticket taker’s booth was standing . . .a heaving and buckling which, nonetheless, did nothing to disturb the immense lobby card images hanging on the roughly painted walls of the long hall of the lobby . . . these images, each one of them belonging apparently to completely different films—gave evidence of the long history of this particular Cinema—as some of them dated back to the era of Silent Films—while others showed more recent productions—most of them cheap B jobs . . . El Colonel finds himself, via the intensity of his gaze, “entering into” the area beyond the ticket taker’s booth—

El Colonel’s figure, leaning into the breezes, leaning into the sky—looks for all the world to those eyes outside himself which he often finds looking at himself—from himself—his own eyes, detached, as it were—and located at some distance—find his leaning figure for all the world to look like some shadow figure, a silhouetted shadow puppet on a wall of infinite space---a wall of pale depths . . .

El Colonel is smiling to himself, smiling as he enters into the area beyond the ticket taker’s booth—an area where the once red plush rug is now worn thread bare—literally thread bare, El Colonel finds himself smiling to himself, smiling to find the time worn phrase, itself not a bit “threadbare”—to be in actuality, there before him, the most vivid illustration he has ever found of that thread bare phrase—and, on this thread bare surface, are scattered the kernels of long ago pop corn, the ashes of ancient cigarettes, the air still redolent with the scents of both—the heavy clinging haze of the popcorn smells intermingled with the ashy tastes, acrid and acrimonious, of the cigarette ashes held in suspension among the interstices of the threadbare rug . . .

El Colonel smiles, and, pushing on, as he smilingly puts it to himself: “as his actions, reversing Aristotelian Poetics, imitate the words—push on”—pushing through the heavily covered door that opens somewhat unwillingly into the Cinema itself . . . before entering, El Colonel’s eyes take in this dim lit arena—picking out the shadowy tops of the lines of the seats—here and there, like rows of broken teeth—betraying the presence of seats which, due to the excited or angry gestures of some patron, dim, jerky, faraway—some patron’s having pounded on them, beaten them, into a kind of slouching submission—so that the rows of seats are broken up by these gaps, these craggy monuments of remaining teeth-like chairs—jagged and raw—their blank spaces staring at the Cinema screen—gaping from their gaps into the as yet dim presence looming there in the shadows at some distance from El Colonel, who remains for some moments standing at the entrance . . .

[To Be Continued]

NOTE. David-Baptiste Chirot –born Lafayette, Indiana, grew up in Vermont, lived also Gottingen, Germany, Arles & Paris, France, Wroclaw, Poland, Hastveda, Sweden, Boston and Milwaukee. Since 1997 essays, Visual & sound poetry, Performance Scores, prose poetry, poetry and book reviews in 70+ different print and online journals in USA, Brazil, England, Spain, France, Germany, Russia, Chile, Australia, Yugoslavia, Italy, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Turkey, Japan, Holland, Belgium, Uruguay. David-Baptiste Chirot's own blog can be found at http://www.davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com/, & previous works have appeared on Poems & Poetics with more to come in the future.

David-Baptiste Chirot: Cinema of Catharsis (I-III) Redux

for Rex Chirot & Jerome Rothenberg 

Preface: 

El Colonel is smiling, writing with his cigarette’s smoke in that great page, the sky . . . that great page, ever open to all, in which all eyes may read---and there, their readings being writings . . . find also the writings of others . . . moving, living, in skies of their own among these sometimes shared skies, these skies sometimes encountering each other . . . these writings, readings readers & writers . . . meeting among these skies . . . so that—

 So that—El Colonel has often wondered, often written his own “versions”—of his readings which are writings—of these phrases he found underlined in red among the black letterings of a fire-singed Bible in the basement of a bombed-out bookstore in a small provincial town high in the mountains . . . and which are:  “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:  now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”—for, had not El Colonel wondered—what, if, indeed, come face to face, that ‘I’ which became known as also it was known—what if indeed, that ’I’—were an Other . . . for had not he also read, among other books found elsewhere, among other demolished sites . . . had he not read that ‘I is an other’ . . . in which case, El Colonel writes with his cigarette in the sky’s pages . . . in which case might not the “I” be also known as an other . . . an other found continuously in this other that is his writing in the sky . . . a writing read by others . . . who in reading in their turn write . . .

I. 

El Colonel is smoking.  Writing in the skies, on the varying hues of blue that shift with their proximities to the horizon . . . writing on the clouds scattered carelessly about . . . his eyes like fingers move, inscribing texts often in no known languages, at times in ones he barely knows from tattered texts come across—languages foreign to him—and, at times, even in the two languages he knows well . . . writing in the skies essaying to convey the dream states that float among memories---involuntary memories called out by the random touching of a shadow at the foot of a tree on the ground next to him—events long forgotten vividly alive—

El Colonel is smoking.  These memories & dreams he is inscribing in the sky are not of large events at all. Thank God! No!—No, these are all the small events, happenings, that one is unaware for the most part that one is even noticing as they are passing—

II. 

In a room, in some other place, a city—somewhere—she is sitting, smoking, writing in her journal . . . some time ago she had begun to interpret her life in terms of events, of writings, of images, documents—come across in her continual perusal and construction of her own “Kennedy Collection”—comprised primarily of books and old magazines, but including also stacks of Xeroxes of fotos of the JFK Assassination, which she keeps for cutting up and rearranging—into collages—and these slowly through time finding their ways into various scrapbooks she keeps— 

This “Kennedy Collection” she periodically pours through, finding each time a differing sequence, a differing set of clues as to the “meanings” she is to interpret from them regarding her own existence. 

Increasingly, her own days are intercut, shot through, with those “Days in Dallas”—especially as Autumn advances, inexorably—to the annual return of That Day—among “Those Days”—yet not only “those Days”—but all the Days surrounding them through time—the entire lifetime especially of Lee Harvey Oswald dominates certain areas of her consciousness, including the continually growing storehouse of memories which she associates directly with the Life of Oswald. 

Thus, one October, during visits to her sister’s, she became aware that certain patterns in the linoleum were directly related with constellations which must have been embedded in the kitchen, say, of the houses where Marina Oswald had been living with, say, Ruth Paine—and others, perhaps also—where the Oswalds had lived after their New Life in America had begun--and these intersecting patterns and constellations found in linoleums were in fact reconstructions of some other events in consciousness, a consciousness greater than her own—indeed, one comprising, as it were, chunks of the Twentieth Century itself . . . even though now well into the Twenty-first century, she felt that these secrets exuded from expiring linoleums scattered through time and across the “interior landscapes of the late Twentieth Century” . . . yes—she distinctly, most definitely felt!—that these secrets being exuded had traversed the “line between Centuries,” as though transgressing a forbidden, or, at least—forbidding-- border—not unlike, say the border that Oswald crossed from Finland into the Soviet Union during his “defection”---yes!-- she felt, she distinctly felt-- these “secrets” had been, were continually—seeping, invading surreptitiously, as though entering in as soldiers do in moving through ground brush, on their bellies . . . that these secrets were arriving, day by day, night by night, at the very entrance to the battered small house she lived in on a battered small side street in a battered small section of the battered small city which she envisioned always as the one sacred place where these rites could take place, observed and participated in only by herself, their one initiate . . . 

One October Sunday . . . as the late afternoon golden glow began to fade from the hallucinatory reds, oranges, dark greens and near-blacks of the heavy leaves—as the first shadows of the suddenly much cooler twilight began to etch their ways across the small battered lawn . . . one October Sunday, she indeed felt more strongly than ever the presence of the seeping secrets exuded by the linoleums of those kitchens Lee Harvey Oswald had entered in, in visiting with his estranged wife and children . . . she felt that these secrets were unfolding before her very eyes there on the shadow etched small battered lawn . . . sounds were reaching her from a neighbor’s TV—set to the NFL football games . . . Oswald she remembered had watched football during his last visits with his family . . . (more likely college football, on Saturdays? . . . some part of her mind registered the question—hanging there in the air—have to look it up, some part of her mind muttered, making a mental note of it—almost certain of it—were after all the pro games on then, before there was more than just the one then much smaller pro league . . . ? an important detail to come back to--)—yes—Oswald had watched football games . . . her eyes moved among the patterns etched by the twilight shadows on the small battered lawn, seeing in them the slow emergence of patterns seeping in from those long ago linoleums . . . as though the “action” of the plans gathering in Oswald’s mind—whether his own or those being planned and planted there by others---as though the action now was moving outdoors . . . from out of those rooms in the cheaply furnished homes, those flimsily constructed rooming houses he moved among . . . was moving outdoors and there, in the gathering twilight, taking form, gathering its thoughts as it were, in the patterns emerging—the very same patterns that had been observed in the linoleum—she now saw quite distinctly etched there, there in the backyard, on the small battered lawn . . .  

 III. 

El Colonel is smoking . . . from the stream of involuntary memories which he is writing in the sky with his eyes . . . begin to emerge, at first in clusters, closely clumped, tightly gathered—begin to emerge small constellations of images, images each so sharp, so clearly distinct, that its facets, diamond-like, begin to etch into, cut open, the adjacent images in the constellation---releasing sudden erupting streams—like those lone spraying spumes suddenly sliced open and squirting forth from the sun---those long trails of raging, burning, appallingly beautiful reds and oranges . . . blasting into space---pure Heraclitean fires . . . of being---Being released into the infinite of Space---traveling with such incredible storm-powered speeds that they seem to scream into the eyes . . . and out of these searing images . . . as though they are cooling in an acceleration of “the evolution of Time” —out of these released images emerge suddenly, in single file, as though a slide show being shown in the skies—images, images long forgotten—no longer singular images, but ones which open up—as the mouths of caves are said to open—and reveal within them depths . . .  

El Colonel is smoking . . . leaning, leaning into the slight breezes which are now coming up over the edges of the hill . . . leaning the better to see—to see within this opening now so vividly before him— 

It is a cinema, its entrance like a cave mouth—embedded in a seeming cliff, which is in actuality as its image becomes more distinct to the hard-peering eyes of El Colonel—which is in actuality the tightly spaced wall of a series of buildings on a street he had once found in a bombed out small city . . . it came to him now in a howling rush of clarity—the entrance to this Cinema of Catharsis as he had thought of it, even before entering into it and finding himself, first, in a lobby entrance, a very long, extended hallway—at the end of which was the glass enclosed small booth where a ticket taker would be standing when a show was in progress—at the start of shows, also—and at all times in between—time now heaving and buckling, in time with the heaving and buckling of the parquet floor of the long hallway leading to the interior entrance where the ticket taker’s booth was standing . . .a heaving and buckling which, nonetheless, did nothing to disturb the immense lobby card images hanging on the roughly painted walls of the long hall of the lobby . . . these images, each one of them belonging apparently to completely different films—gave evidence of the long history of this particular Cinema—as some of them dated back to the era of Silent Films—while others showed more recent productions—most of them cheap B jobs . . . El Colonel finds himself, via the intensity of his gaze, “entering into” the area beyond the ticket taker’s booth— 

El Colonel’s figure, leaning into the breezes, leaning into the sky—looks for all the world to those eyes outside himself which he often finds looking at himself—from himself—his own eyes, detached, as it were—and located at some distance—find his leaning figure for all the world to look like some shadow figure, a silhouetted shadow puppet on a wall of infinite space---a wall of pale depths . . .  

El Colonel is smiling to himself, smiling as he enters into the area beyond the ticket taker’s booth—an area where the once red plush rug is now worn thread bare—literally thread bare, El Colonel finds himself smiling to himself, smiling to find the time worn phrase, itself not a bit “threadbare”—to be in actuality, there before him, the most vivid illustration he has ever found of that thread bare phrase—and, on this thread bare surface, are scattered the kernels of long ago pop corn, the ashes of ancient cigarettes, the air still redolent with the scents of both—the heavy clinging haze of the popcorn smells intermingled with the ashy tastes, acrid and acrimonious, of the cigarette ashes held in suspension among the interstices of the threadbare rug . . . 

El Colonel smiles, and, pushing on, as he smilingly puts it to himself:  “as his actions, reversing Aristotelian Poetics, imitate the words—push on”—pushing through the heavily covered door that opens somewhat unwillingly into the Cinema itself . . . before entering, El Colonel’s eyes take in this dim lit arena—picking out the shadowy tops of the lines of the seats—here and there, like rows of broken teeth—betraying the presence of seats which, due to the excited or angry gestures of some patron, dim, jerky, faraway—some patron’s having pounded on them, beaten them, into a kind of slouching submission—so that the rows of seats are broken up by these gaps, these craggy monuments of remaining teeth-like chairs—jagged and raw—their blank spaces staring at the Cinema screen—gaping from their gaps into the as yet dim presence looming there in the shadows at some distance from El Colonel, who remains for some moments standing at the entrance . . .

[To Be Continued]

NOTE. Concerning the whole El Colonel series, an evolving “major” work, Chirot, whose work, both verbal &  visual, is a great too often hidden resource, has written elsewhere: “it should be noted that El Colonel is not a ‘static’ being—moves through & inbetween as ‘in-beat-we-in’—is rhizomatic—rhythmic—unfolding—in events among Time & ‘consciousnesses’—non-linear-and ‘occurs’ not so much as a ‘character’ ‘by an author’(including himself)---but exists in dimensions which begin to explore the zones which Stephane Mallarme created as ‘poèmes critiques’—& an obsession with El Colonel is a Writing which exists without ‘materializing’—a Journey with the Writing of the No—“there is thus no particular ‘order’ to the pieces, though the ‘first’ appearance as and in print of El Colonel is the Chapbook ‘El Colonel Smiles’—(also published as a prose poem text w/o images in Otoliths online & print Journal-)—the first presentation of El Colonel’s ‘thoughts, those improvised compositions’ which may serve as a kind of ‘Intro’ in re ‘composition’& re composition as an emergence out of ‘decomposition’--appears in ‘El Ojo de Dios Part the First: Insects & Letters,’ which can be linked to at the Sous Rature site.”

An extensive bibliography of Chirot’s published El Colonel pieces can be found on his blog at http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com/2010/11/chirot-el-colonel-emerges-bibliography.htmlhttp://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com/2010/11/chirot-el-colonel-emerges-bibliography.html

In Memoriam Jackson Mac Low

When the expiration hath ceased, the vital-force will have sunk into the nerve-centre of Wisdom & the Knower will be experiencing the Clear Light of the natural condition. Then the vital force, being thrown backwards & flying downwards through the right & left nerves the Intermediate State (Bardo) momentarily dawns.

A THIRD NIGHT POEM,
FOR JACKSON MAC LOW,
IN MEMORIAM


How will I take the final words of your Night Walk, now that you’re dead, & work them
into my poem?
I had promised it at your birthday, the last or the next to the last, so hard to tell the years
apart,
so leave myself no choice but to continue, get it down & try to speak your presence with
the words you give me.

Once again I think of you as someone wearing many coats or bundled up against the
night, my own delight to sit beside you,
to see your nose & eyebrows glowing in that light, revealing you to us,
revealing secret bodies from your night walks, meanings written on their foreheads,
two o’clock when happiness arrives to free our tongues,
when coats are shed & foreheads show what’s real inside us, feeling, hearing, walking
with delight,
a man at night whose being flows out from his teeth, who steps on twigs & breaks the
silence,
learning how to draw attention in that halflight, feigning sweetness.

Clasping your coats around you, hairsmells heavy in the night, dark clouds & kisses
foremost,
when the evening’s dark & cold, I hold the clouds in memory, a dimness
black as three o’clock, so touching when the cold rests on your eyebrows, otherwise
revealing what we all try finding,
clothing darker than the sky, desiring & feeling, telling your old stories, standing rooted
like a tree.

Desiring what else I couldn’t say but know that when the light grows dark, as when our
fingers close around it,
a streamsound breaks the silence, that’s when wondering makes way for learning,
pointing out the stars at night, wrapped in your many sweaters, when our beings feel
delight,
you wait there, listening in that dimness, hearing little, knowing less, of what the night’s
revealing,
bodies black & cold are sliding past you, clasping you around as you might grasp at
meaning,
bundled in your clothing, looking outward where the night grows white & quiet.

There’s a halflight that survives you. Now we’re warming ourselves in it, resting,
hugging, hearing streamsounds,
loving peace as you did, finding that our eyes, turned to the sky, observe a man there,
hearing what we hear, whose kisses promise sweetness, being who he is, but turn to ice
before us,
talking through the night while wearing many coats against its dimness, friends together,
filming trees & raising eyebrows, hearing, hugging, kissing, melting ice against our
tongues,
out in the night air, trading coats.

A dimness with no resting, seeking warmth from kisses, needing what a man has always
needed,
touching lips to eyelids, talking to each other through the night, a memory of three
o’clock,
no longer a delight for eyes & tongues, with never warmth enough to suit your liking,
bodies poor & old, their pockets long since emptied, naked beings who still freeze
like naked beings,
some dispensing meanings, others begging for attention, listening while walking, slipping
backwards in the night,
its grey trees masking feeling.

Will trees still bring delight, the way old stories made our cheeks turn red or hairsmells
filled our noses?
Will we be clasping something, feeling it slide past us, eyes & teeth revealing what
the night can’t hide?
Where will our clothing be at three o’clock, our pockets empty, trees like fallen friends
around us,
& no telling if there’s starlight, if the night still brings us wonders, trees that once again
are only trees,
each one of us a fallen being, hairsmells heavy in the darkness, noses swollen,
clasping what we can & listening, for what?

Another nightwalk, half forgotten,
where the light turns black.

finished 17.i.05

* * *

A NOTE TO THE PRECEDING. I met Jackson Mac Low in 1960 or 1961, through the intervention, as I recall it, of Diane Wakoski. She had come to New York with LaMonte Young & there was clearly a connection between Jackson & LaMonte through an avant-garde that was centered on John Cage’s presence in New York & the international connections delineated by Fluxus. My first response to Jackson’s aleatory/chance experiments was a degree of puzzlement but a sense beneath that that something real & important was taking place. I fell for him first at a reading in which he introduced the first several of his Light Poems, impressed enough by those so that whatever else he did entered at once into the realm of my possibilities. And this was enhanced still more when he drew me into performing with him (as he did with many others) or, conversely, when he gave himself willingly to my own early attempts (circa 1969 or 70) at fusing poetry with performance. I often performed with him in his Gathas, & he was one of my performers (along with David Antin & Rochelle Owens) in a staged & recorded presentation of “primitive & archaic poetry” (circa 1967) that was the direct forerunner to Technicians of the Sacred.
Our friendship lasted from then until 2004, when he died at the age of 82. By then he was one of my essential compadres, & I like to think that I played the same role for him & that whatever it was between us, it worked to our mutual advantage as individuals & poets. After I left New York for good – in 1976 – there was hardly a return trip in which Jackson (& later Jackson &Anne Tardos) wasn’t there as a dear companion & confederate.
In 1997 Jackson celebrated his 75th birthday in New York, or rather it was celebrated for him by a number of friends & admirers. I was in Paris at the time but prepared a poem in three parts, a suite of “night poems” as a kind of rhyming response (in title & theme) to Jackson’s “light poems.” Five years later I added a fourth part, a series of variations off a lexicon of words provided by Jackson’s early Night Walk (1960). I read these for him at his 80th birthday celebration in St Mark’s Church, with the promise that I would continue to do these for every subsequent fifth-year celebration. After his death in 2004 I compacted the final variations on his Night Walk into a poem “in memoriam” – not an elegy so much as a poem in commemoration of his works & of our lives together.
A year or two after the writing Charlie Morrow & I brought the several poems for Jackson into a single musical work, In Memoriam Jackson Mac Low, & produced it privately as a commemorative CD. The performance can now be heard along with Charlie Morrow’s An Awakening for Jackson Mac Low on Penn Sound (http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Rothenberg.html), & copies of the CD are obtainable through New Wilderness Audiographics at inmemoriam@newwilderness.org. Mac Low’s own performances can be heard on many internet sites – an introduciton to the possibilities of performance & of poetry not to be missed.