“Consider how the great architect of Cnidos acted. After constructing the tower on Pharos, the mightiest and most beautiful building ever, so that he could send a beacon-signal from it to sailors far and wide on the seas, to stop them being carried on to Paraetonia, a cruel spot they say, with no escape for anyone running on the reefs – well, after completing the building he inscribed it with his own name inside on the stones, plastered over it with gypsum till it was hidden, and inscribed over that the name of the king of the day, knowing that, as actually happened, the letters would very soon fall away with the plaster to reveal “Sostratus of Cnidus, son of Dexiphanes, in dedication to the Saviour Gods on behalf of seafarers’. So too he kept his eyes not on those times or his own brief life, but on today and eternity, as long as the tower stands and his craftsmanship survives.
Well, history too should be written in the same way, with truthfulness and hopes for the future rather than flattery to please today’s recipients of praise.
Lucian, How to Write History, 63.
January 26, 2011
Words of the Lagoon
Early morning fishing
Kulhudhuffushi, Maldives
My sister Laurie and I have been talking a lot about folk knowledge recently - how easily it is dismissed within the academic world and yet how powerful it is in understanding nature. She's interested in how it can be applied within the field of marine biology. My friend Ann lent this book to me while I was in Palau last year. Words of the Lagoon by Robert E. Johannes is an incredible example of utilizing folklore to understand an ecosystem and a way of life.Kulhudhuffushi, Maldives
January 20, 2011
letra
Yo no canto por cantar
ni por tener buena voz,
canto porque la guitarra
tiene sentido y razón.
Tiene corazón de tierra
y alas de palomita,
es como el agua bendita
santigua glorias y penas.
Aquí se encajó mi canto
como dijera Violeta
guitarra trabajadora
con olor a primavera.
Que no es guitarra de ricos
ni cosa que se parezca
mi canto es de los andamios
para alcanzar las estrellas,
que el canto tiene sentido
cuando palpita en las venas
del que morirá cantando
las verdades verdaderas,
no las lisonjas fugaces
ni las famas extranjeras
sino el canto de una lonja
hasta el fondo de la tierra.
Ahí donde llega todo
y donde todo comienza
canto que ha sido valiente
siempre será canción nueva.
Victor Jara
Dolphin Bellies
I started to write this a year ago when I was in Calen, Chiloé. I had a chance to go back and visit this past week, this time with my younger sister, Laurie. It was wonderful to catch up with old friends and also to somehow gain perspective on an experience past. My good friend Jeanette gave birth to her daughter Rossana while I was there, and last Sunday we attended a festival on Caguach, island of devotion, off the western coast of Chiloé with new and old friends.
This post is about my dear friend Ruthie.
Ruthie sits by the window and waits for rain. Her eyebrows are two horizons. Her arms are crossed as she sits. Listening.
The kitchen is quiet, but not an empty quiet. This is a silence that hums. Water hisses from the pot, a motor growls from the beach below, and somewhere in the bay giant seals argue on a styrofoam platform. Doña Nena arrives through a backdoor in the kitchen, bearing a giant repollo, silvery green. She’s bent forward at an angle and her thin hands are dirty in the creases between her veins.
“Va a llover,” Ruthie says, glancing over and back to the glass without changing her expression. A cold wind from the cordillera parts the two pines that stand outside, licking the half moon slice through the center pane. The sky is bright white. It presses on the house.
In the mornings when we walk to town she tells me her dreams. She’s dressed in her vestido de novia, and her mama has made her a tremenda torta. She stretches out her hands to show me the size of her cake and flicks her fingers to taste the cream icing. Other days she dreams of races, on the Diá de Calen. La Abuelita. Or of great long knives. She can’t remember how they finish.
Some nights when the sky is licked clean by the cold, the water is glass and the wind gathers and pulls at our throats, we think about the stars. Nena has sent us for a kilo of flour at la Marisol. Lights from the village blink ahead of us as our whispering feet carry us over the beach.
They come from above and below, the stars. We are walking a sandbar, suspended in the great orb. Not one wave disturbs our peace. Together we think about them. We let them wash over us in name and legend (me Orion, Ruthie las Tres Marias), sinking into the great highway of constellations that send hushing ripples to our shores. We hold them in our hands until the inky blackness in between draws sleep to our eyes and blood from our fingers. Up there’s Dioscito and los angeles. Come, she says, let’s go to the cemetery and remember the dead.
Ruthie cannot write her name. She cannot read or dress alone or leave Calen by herself. But she recites recipes as she walks and peels potatoes until they glow like moons. She has a laugh that seeps through cold mornings and rouses the trees. She taught me to build fires, to chop wood. She also taught me:
When Ruthie sits by the window, she waits for rain.
This post is about my dear friend Ruthie.
Ruthie sits by the window and waits for rain. Her eyebrows are two horizons. Her arms are crossed as she sits. Listening.
The kitchen is quiet, but not an empty quiet. This is a silence that hums. Water hisses from the pot, a motor growls from the beach below, and somewhere in the bay giant seals argue on a styrofoam platform. Doña Nena arrives through a backdoor in the kitchen, bearing a giant repollo, silvery green. She’s bent forward at an angle and her thin hands are dirty in the creases between her veins.
“Va a llover,” Ruthie says, glancing over and back to the glass without changing her expression. A cold wind from the cordillera parts the two pines that stand outside, licking the half moon slice through the center pane. The sky is bright white. It presses on the house.
In the mornings when we walk to town she tells me her dreams. She’s dressed in her vestido de novia, and her mama has made her a tremenda torta. She stretches out her hands to show me the size of her cake and flicks her fingers to taste the cream icing. Other days she dreams of races, on the Diá de Calen. La Abuelita. Or of great long knives. She can’t remember how they finish.
Some nights when the sky is licked clean by the cold, the water is glass and the wind gathers and pulls at our throats, we think about the stars. Nena has sent us for a kilo of flour at la Marisol. Lights from the village blink ahead of us as our whispering feet carry us over the beach.
They come from above and below, the stars. We are walking a sandbar, suspended in the great orb. Not one wave disturbs our peace. Together we think about them. We let them wash over us in name and legend (me Orion, Ruthie las Tres Marias), sinking into the great highway of constellations that send hushing ripples to our shores. We hold them in our hands until the inky blackness in between draws sleep to our eyes and blood from our fingers. Up there’s Dioscito and los angeles. Come, she says, let’s go to the cemetery and remember the dead.
Ruthie cannot write her name. She cannot read or dress alone or leave Calen by herself. But she recites recipes as she walks and peels potatoes until they glow like moons. She has a laugh that seeps through cold mornings and rouses the trees. She taught me to build fires, to chop wood. She also taught me:
When the rock shaped like a seal emerges clean from the water, the tide is good to cross over.
There are 2 roscas for every 1 egg
When dolphins parade along the shoreline, bellies white like the snow of the cordillera, the weather will shift.
If the fire cracks, someone who gossips or tells tall tales is due to visit.
After the rain, tiny white flies swarm the camino like dust unsettled.
If you squish a horsefly slow and easylike between your fingers, his brothers won't come back.
Serpents carved the islands.
A bird enters, and someone who has never visited will arrive in the house.
Needles in a cross tacked to the door frame ward off witches.
Seals were humans once, we must treat them like we treat our fathers.
If it rains on the night of the festival of San Juan, the apple crop will be plentiful the coming year.
Romero, rosemary, is to drown the pain of first loves.
Many a man dies of the drink.
Balsamo stops bleeding and soothes dog bites
There are 2 roscas for every 1 egg
When dolphins parade along the shoreline, bellies white like the snow of the cordillera, the weather will shift.
If the fire cracks, someone who gossips or tells tall tales is due to visit.
After the rain, tiny white flies swarm the camino like dust unsettled.
If you squish a horsefly slow and easylike between your fingers, his brothers won't come back.
Serpents carved the islands.
A bird enters, and someone who has never visited will arrive in the house.
Needles in a cross tacked to the door frame ward off witches.
Seals were humans once, we must treat them like we treat our fathers.
If it rains on the night of the festival of San Juan, the apple crop will be plentiful the coming year.
Romero, rosemary, is to drown the pain of first loves.
Many a man dies of the drink.
Balsamo stops bleeding and soothes dog bites
When Ruthie sits by the window, she waits for rain.
January 4, 2011
Pull down
Made courage, or made order, or made grace
Pull down the vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be they place…”
Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI
January 2, 2011
the sky is falling
the sky is falling
burning and tumbling,
tangling the shrouds of schooners
and streaming ragged suns
whistling up from the deep
they sang phosphorescence on our retinas
hollowed green booms
glancing off bowed horizons
to kiss the spangled rooftops
the sky is falling and
the stars skitter beneath a thousand dancing feet
their hearts are made of
paper, tinsel, glass, metal
what are they singing?
before the fall
the fishermen moored their ships
and cast their gilded nets over hills
to pull the darkness down
first there was hungry blue stillness
and the harbor was a pail of milk
while Valparaiso held her breath
for the sky to open
loca
loca
loca
te volviste
twelve strokes and the steel-roofed houses
are strung up on telephone wires
marionettes dangling from wrists of smoke
shouts scurry up their walls
and the streets inflate as
the lonely accordeon gasps for air
the statues have stepped down from their pedestals
they lope about the plaza
through crawling men and walking dogs
and from his post in an alley near Anibal Pinto
Salvador Allende
waggles an approving toe on the stair
loca
loca
loca
te volviste
love, army, revolución, mob
there is a chorus
ten thousand strong
stacatto fists
balled or clasped or slung over shoulders
pounding the day into being
the morning moon curtsies before the dawn
he is a shard of bone
red women in lais hoist him up on flagpoles
the cords are cut
the streets fall flat
the statues congelan
and houses shiver into file
but on a stair by el cementerio
a few stars remain
apricot embers
winking under blood-stained toes.
December 21, 2010
Jurel y LuzI went to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words,
The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!
I came across the marks of the roe-deer's hooves in the snow.
Language, but no words.
Tomas Transtromer
Overlooking Isla Santa Clara from Isla Robinson CrusoeNovember 23, 2010
Atoll Way
Blue Waters, Pulo Ana
Birds, Helen's Reef
Itop Volleyball Team!
November 17, 2010
When I write paradise, I mean not apple trees and only golden women, but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattle snakes, bacteria, bear, cactus, yucca, bladder weed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes, disease and the rotting of flesh. Paradise is the here and now, the actual, tangible dogmatically real Earth on which we stand. Yes, God Bless America, the Earth on which we stand. Edward Abbey
November 16, 2010
Shoeboxes and Opportunity
I’m taking a break from transcribing to write a short update and share a little inspiration.
This last week I’ve been rushing about Valparaíso trying to organize a passage to the Juan Fernandez Islands. I’m here in Chile with a grant from Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism, writing about the recovery process on the islands after the tsunami last February (triggered by the earthquake in central Chile).
Well, with the help of some new and old friends, I secured passage with the Chilean Armada and will head out on November 25th for a month’s stay in my new tent, to return for the holidays and a visit from my sister, Laurie, from Scotland!
I’ve been conducting several interviews, or conversations, continent-side before I depart – speaking with politicians, environmental ministry, philosophers, and architects about development and reconstruction on the island of Robinson Crusoe (Defoe’s famous novel was based on the experience of one Alexander Selkirk on this island in the 1700s). When the wave hit in the early morning hours of February 27, the entire coastal infrastructure was destroyed, tombs were ripped from the ground, 16 people lost their lives. As the islanders (680) grapple to rebuild, transform and construct a sustainable future, there’s a common thread that’s running throughout the conversations I’ve had: In destruction, disaster, also lies opportunity.
I’ve spent a lot of time with a group of Swedish documentary film/radio/print students through my wonderful housemate Lova, taking a few dance classes, lots of hill walking -- and have been trying to take advantage of the International Forum being hosted through the month of November – lectures, exhibitions, film, arts. This last weekend I had some interviews in Santiago and spent a few days with some friends of my wonderful friend Danielle Koplinka-Loehr, Juan, Daniela, Nati and Dani's family. It just so happened that my visit coincided with a baptism (these are all-night, ponche-drinking, guitar playing affairs, just watch out for when they sing your año) and a birthday party. I also had a chance to attend one of Juan's orchestra rehearsals (he's a violinist and conductor) - not to be missed. Can't get Mack the Knife out of my head!
Last week I spent several hours in the metro station walking through “Laberinto de Miradas” an incredible exhibition of Ibero-American photographers – flooding the otherwise dram subway station with great washes of color and movement.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Raul Cañibano Ercilla:
André Cypriano:
And Alex Carvalho, “Caixa de Zapata,” or shoe box.
This last week I’ve been rushing about Valparaíso trying to organize a passage to the Juan Fernandez Islands. I’m here in Chile with a grant from Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism, writing about the recovery process on the islands after the tsunami last February (triggered by the earthquake in central Chile).
Well, with the help of some new and old friends, I secured passage with the Chilean Armada and will head out on November 25th for a month’s stay in my new tent, to return for the holidays and a visit from my sister, Laurie, from Scotland!
I’ve been conducting several interviews, or conversations, continent-side before I depart – speaking with politicians, environmental ministry, philosophers, and architects about development and reconstruction on the island of Robinson Crusoe (Defoe’s famous novel was based on the experience of one Alexander Selkirk on this island in the 1700s). When the wave hit in the early morning hours of February 27, the entire coastal infrastructure was destroyed, tombs were ripped from the ground, 16 people lost their lives. As the islanders (680) grapple to rebuild, transform and construct a sustainable future, there’s a common thread that’s running throughout the conversations I’ve had: In destruction, disaster, also lies opportunity.
I’ve spent a lot of time with a group of Swedish documentary film/radio/print students through my wonderful housemate Lova, taking a few dance classes, lots of hill walking -- and have been trying to take advantage of the International Forum being hosted through the month of November – lectures, exhibitions, film, arts. This last weekend I had some interviews in Santiago and spent a few days with some friends of my wonderful friend Danielle Koplinka-Loehr, Juan, Daniela, Nati and Dani's family. It just so happened that my visit coincided with a baptism (these are all-night, ponche-drinking, guitar playing affairs, just watch out for when they sing your año) and a birthday party. I also had a chance to attend one of Juan's orchestra rehearsals (he's a violinist and conductor) - not to be missed. Can't get Mack the Knife out of my head!
Last week I spent several hours in the metro station walking through “Laberinto de Miradas” an incredible exhibition of Ibero-American photographers – flooding the otherwise dram subway station with great washes of color and movement.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Raul Cañibano Ercilla:
André Cypriano:
And Alex Carvalho, “Caixa de Zapata,” or shoe box.
November 4, 2010
Tuesday morning I rolled into Valparaíso on the early bus from Santiago. When I left all was black, only a few lights twinkling. Slowly the darkness separated, first land from sky, and as strands of light began to leak in through the bus windows, land from mountain from sky.
I spent the first two nights with my cousin, Sofia, her husband Felipe and their young daughter Florencia in their apartment in Bella Vista - so wonderful to be received so kindly by family! Yesterday afternoon I moved into a pensión in Cerro Concepción. Cerro Concepción was once populated by German immigrants, and its fort served as the main defense for the city. Historically it's also been called Cerro Chivato, because of a mythical creature who was said to live at the base of the hill. Apparently in the midst of excavations on the cerro, a deep cave was discovered beneath the bedrock.
One window in my room looks out over a church, and there's a music school around the corner. Add to the chorus Julio, the house dog, and the groan of car engines skittering up the narrow, winding lanes, the conversations of passerby. You can just make out a sliver of sea through a passage splintered by telephone wires.
I forgot how long it takes to fly to South America. I was seated at a window on the eastern side, and watched the landscape ripple beneath gauzy clouds as we flew southwest over Georgia, before slipping into the sea to pass over Cuba and Jamaica before dark. From above in the failing light, the landscape is somehow softened, it seems greener, and the spiraling network of highways and city grids loose their edge.
As we flew, I came across a passage in The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, that seemed to resonate with the moment.
It's an address from Chief Seattle, of the Duwamish and Suquamish Native American tribes, in a letter to President Frankling Pierce in 1854. At this time the United States was angling to buy two million acres of land occupied by tribes in the Pacific Northwest, including the region in current Washington state, where Seattle's people lived. There are many versions of Seattle's address, which was said to have been dictated, and never recorded. Some doubt its authenticity, but I wonder if that even matters. The authenticity lies in the sentiment, and if it is the consummate work of several hands, whittled and woven overtime, it still holds great value, perhaps more in its journey through history.
It reads:
"The president of the United States sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every shady shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and the experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices of the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells us of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
The rivers are my brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
When the last Red man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the meaning of the land as it is when you rescue it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all."
This week I'm setting up my first interviews, and seeing if I can find a passage on a Naval or Merchant vessel to the Juan Fernández Islands!
I spent the first two nights with my cousin, Sofia, her husband Felipe and their young daughter Florencia in their apartment in Bella Vista - so wonderful to be received so kindly by family! Yesterday afternoon I moved into a pensión in Cerro Concepción. Cerro Concepción was once populated by German immigrants, and its fort served as the main defense for the city. Historically it's also been called Cerro Chivato, because of a mythical creature who was said to live at the base of the hill. Apparently in the midst of excavations on the cerro, a deep cave was discovered beneath the bedrock.
One window in my room looks out over a church, and there's a music school around the corner. Add to the chorus Julio, the house dog, and the groan of car engines skittering up the narrow, winding lanes, the conversations of passerby. You can just make out a sliver of sea through a passage splintered by telephone wires.
I forgot how long it takes to fly to South America. I was seated at a window on the eastern side, and watched the landscape ripple beneath gauzy clouds as we flew southwest over Georgia, before slipping into the sea to pass over Cuba and Jamaica before dark. From above in the failing light, the landscape is somehow softened, it seems greener, and the spiraling network of highways and city grids loose their edge.
As we flew, I came across a passage in The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, that seemed to resonate with the moment.
It's an address from Chief Seattle, of the Duwamish and Suquamish Native American tribes, in a letter to President Frankling Pierce in 1854. At this time the United States was angling to buy two million acres of land occupied by tribes in the Pacific Northwest, including the region in current Washington state, where Seattle's people lived. There are many versions of Seattle's address, which was said to have been dictated, and never recorded. Some doubt its authenticity, but I wonder if that even matters. The authenticity lies in the sentiment, and if it is the consummate work of several hands, whittled and woven overtime, it still holds great value, perhaps more in its journey through history.
It reads:
"The president of the United States sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every shady shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and the experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices of the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells us of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
The rivers are my brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
When the last Red man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the meaning of the land as it is when you rescue it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all."
This week I'm setting up my first interviews, and seeing if I can find a passage on a Naval or Merchant vessel to the Juan Fernández Islands!
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