The Death of Dr. Manuel Arroyo Galvan

“Truth is the first casualty in a war.”

Aeschylus (525 BC - 456 BC), that old Greek bastard who wrote plays, said something like that 2500 years ago. Nothing has changed much since then. Especially in Ciudad Juárez a few minutes across the river from where I live . The Juarez Cartel is battling the Sinaloa Cartel for the right to use that city as its place of business. Since January 2008 more that 2200 people have been assassinated mob-style in La Ciudad Juárez. Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, has sent 10,000 federal troops to the city. His rationale was that the city police are dirty. They’re at the trough slopping up the mordida. For a while, the murders abated, but now they have returned with heart-numbing regularity. All the rich people, the powerful people, have fled the city. They live in El Paso or elsewhere. Even the mayor lives on this side of the river. The poor, the working class and the lower middle-class are bearing the brunt of the carnage. On the streets the people don’t trust the troops. They don’t trust the police. They worry that the authorities, whatever badge they are wearing, are working for either Juárez Cartel (the city police) or the Sinaloa Cartel (the army). These are the rumors. And rumors are as good as place as any for news. The newspapers aren’t trusted either. Juárez is not a safe place to write real news, hard news. Nosey journalists are killed with impunity. And now it seems the cartels and their collaborators are stepping into the academic and intellectual communities.

Listen here.

It’s May 29th, just a few weeks ago. A 44-year-old man is driving back to work on a hot afternoon. He lives in a desert city on the U.S./Mexico border, so he has the AC humming away at full blast and his window is open. Why? Because he likes the AC and he likes the smell of the air in his city, even if it is dirty. This man loves his car. It’s a 1992 Chrysler New Yorker, a huge boat of a car, una ranfla grande, with deep leather seats and lots of bells and whistles. A big roomy space good for all sorts of things—talk and laughter and kids and love-making. It’s the kind of car he dreamed about when he was kid. His parents were migrants from the state of Durango. They worked in the maquilas. They never crossed over to the United States, aka Gringolandia, so he grew up south of that little bit of a river that separates us from them. Back then his mother was an advocate of the Catholic Church’s Theology of Liberation, so at an early age he sat in living rooms listening to workers talking about organizing and creating better lives for their families and their people. He had listened to the anger, he had listened to the sorrow, he had seen how the poverty can grind into a family’s heart and he had hoped that something could be done. He too had gone to work in a maquiladora. $30 to $35 a week was probably the high end of his wage scale. But somehow—through a combination of happy karma and good luck, his and his city’s—he had entered the university and studied and worked himself up the ladder from a bachelor’s degree to a master’s and finally a PhD. He became a professor of social studies and education. So this man, this driver of the Chrysler New Yorker, is an academic, a well-respected leader in the local intellectual community. He is not afraid to butt heads with the jefes at the university, and he is working on a book about social movements in his city and the problems they confronted. He didn’t make much money, but that was not what his life was about. His life reflected who he was.

What I want to say is this: if I lived in this man’s city, then I would know him. He would be an acquaintance, a guy I'd talk to at parties or at a coffee shop, maybe at a poetry reading or an art gallery. He’s the kind of guy who I cross paths with all the time. He has the same intellectual, civic and emotional interests that I have. His world is like my world, his life is not unlike my life.

So he is driving his car and daydreaming. Like any of us on a sunny afternoon he’s distracted by this or that. Who knows what he is thinking about? He has both hands on the steering wheel, he has his seat belt on, he’s approaching an intersection, the light is turning yellow and a white panel van pulls up next to him on the driver’s side. The van comes too close, so much so the man looks over to see who it is. He’s pissed. Why doesn’t that vato look out where he’s going? The window of the van rolls down and a man he does not know points a gun at him. This unknown man shoots six times and the Chrysler New Yorker swerves into a telephone pole.

The driver is dead.

The dead man was Dr. Manuel Arroyo Galvan, a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez just 10 or 15 minutes across the river from where I live. He was 44 years old, an intellectual who cared about the community from which he came. He was a sociology and education professor and researcher for the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ). He was a social activist, a divorced father of a son whom he loved and cared for. His murder will not be solved, and even if it is “solved,” no one will believe what the authorities say. There are lots of theories-—he was the victim of a revenge attack for a legal complaint he reportedly filed over a stolen truck, the victim’s stumbling across sensitive information in the course of his research, maybe it was a simple case of mistaken identity, or maybe Manny was dirty. That’s the first idea that pops up into people’s minds when someone is killed--what was he doing wrong? A good friend of mine, a juarense, told me that in Juárez, everybody is an expert. It’s like being at a soccer game. One opinion is as valid as the next. We are, he said, scared for our own lives but at the same time we must explain what is happening. We don’t trust the news, we don’t trust the cops so we must explain it ourselves.

The day after I heard about Manuel Arroyo’s death I got the email below from my friend. Excuse the awkward translation. It is mine. Also, I want to say I will no longer give the names of any of my friends in Juarez. The shadow crosses the river. I have inserted the video inside his email which documents the march—

Comp@as,

The death of Manuel Arroyo is lamentable, not only for the insidious way he was assassinated, but also because he was a generous man and a active participant in our community, besides being a controversial and brave academic who on various occasions had to assume the political costs of his beliefs.

This past Friday, soon after we learned of his death, that congregated at la Megabandera [a park near the university over which is hoisted a giant flag of Mexico] and spontaneously marched to the Prosecutor General’s Office where we vigorously protested. It wasn't for nothing. Every one of us that joined this procession had shared with Manuel, in some moment or another, practices, spaces, discussions, arguments, desires and words, many words. Above all, we shared with him the determinations to transform the city.



With his death we have died a little, but this is the moment when we must walk into the street. We cannot stay in our homes waiting to see who will be the next victim nor can we permit that our first suspicion about the assassination rest with the victim.

It seems that the university has finally taken a position that is clear, definitive and articulate about the assassinations of Manuel, of professor Gerardo González and student Alejandro Irigoyen Flores y the disappearances of students Lidia Ramos Mancha and Mónica Janeth Alanís. This is an encouraging signal that things can change. We will gather today at six in the after at the Megabandera and march together.

In this way we can send a clear message that prevails in our city and in our country is untenable and that we demand a secure city, with respect to the human rights and individual guaranties for all. This is something very basic and elemental--that condition these rights prevail.

This is a critical moment and an extraordinary opportunity. We must make the effort and we must take to the streets.

A few days after that first spontaneous march, friends and comrades from the university held a larger, with speeches and reminiscences, sharing the life of Manuel Arroyo Galvan and his intellectual legacy in the city. It was a larger and more organized event, and it was covered in media in Juárez and El Paso. The two photos above, and also the photograph of the soldier in the Humvee at the top, were taken by border photographer Bruce Berman. Bruce, who has a daily blog documenting the border cities of El Paso and Juárez, attended the second march, his camera in his hand. At the event they organizers played the classic Mexican rock song by El Tri, “Rolling Stones,”—“Las Piedras rodantes.” Below is a video from youtube of Alex Lora of El Tri singing that song. Listen to it and learn the lyrics, which you can google and translate. It's a simple little way to mourn for Manuel Arroyo Galvan, to weep for him and to stand in solidarity with him and the citizens of La Ciudad Juarez.

Even if you are like me: You never knew him.

INCANTATIONS: Maya Earth Mother Book & el Taller Leñateros

We are the woodlanders who walk in the hills gathering dry branches and deadwood from fallen trees, collecting firewood without chopping down the forest. We come down from the mountains, carrying bundles of wood, of pitchpine and split encino, for the hearths of the Royal City of San Cristobal de Las Casas. We walk through the mist, leading our burros, selling firewood from house to house. We knock on people’s doors, offering pine needles as well, to spread on the floor, moss, flowers of bromeliads and orchids for manger scenes.

—from the website for Taller Leñateros

NOTE: I wrote this piece for the Cinco Puntos Press Blogspot but inadvertently put it up here on my personal blogspot. I went to delete it, but thought, hell, this belongs here as well. INCANTATIONS: Songs, Spells and Images by Mayan Women collected by the remarkable woman and poet Ambar Past is an important contribution to my work as a poet. That's how Lee and I got to be publishers in the first place--she is a novelist and I am a poet. Our first work of writing is the inspiration for our publishing. I'll put more up about Ambar and Incantations in the future. Enjoy.)

In 2002 Lee and I were lucky enough to visit San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. San Cristobal is one of the spiritual capitals of the original people, los indigenas, the Tzotzil Maya and those who came before, the People the color of our Mother Earth. This is where in 1994 the Zapatistas came out of the hills and forests and made war against the Mexican government. Their war was in defense of their ancient homeland, their culture, their language, their vision. Ever since we published La Historia de las colores / The Story of Colors by Subcomandante Marcos and illustrated by Domitila Dominguez we have wanted to make this trip. It was a wonderful, haunting journey. Like a pilgrimage almost. So much of that old city on the southern edge of Mexico made us feel like we had found some sort of home. We were happy simply walking around the streets and visiting the outlying Mayan communities of San Juan Chamula and Zinacatan, listening to Tzotzil and Spanish rub up against one another not quite at ease, sitting in ancient churches and the plazas and feeling the cool highland breezes. Finally we were there, hesitant and awkward at first, but soon we felt at peace and happy.

On the morning of our last day in San Cristobal a friend told us that we needed without fail to visit el Taller Leñateros (“the Woodlanders Workshop), a paper-making collective owned and operated by Tzotzil women. So we followed directions and turned down a narrow cobble-stoned street and knocked on a door. A man opened the door for us. He didn’t speak English, and his Spanish was as bad as mine. He motioned us to come inside. We found ourselves in a quiet, magically real room filled with paper art--hand-made papers, cards, large images, small images, books, all made with indigenous hands and perspective. Their remarkable story of the Leñateros is best followed on their website and facebook pages, but here I want to speak of their mother Maya earth book, the creation of their minds and hearts and hands.

We were enthralled by all that we saw and so happy to be there. Then AMBAR PAST burst into the room full of energy and joy. Yes, she knew about Cinco Puntos Press; yes, she knew this person and that person; and yes, she especially knew about The Story of Colors. She was so happy to meet us. And she wanted to show us the jewel that the Taller had produced--INCANTATIONS. The book she showed us was truly a work of art. The original is such a wonderful book, such an important book. The thick cover is hand-sculpted--the brown face of a woman, the brown face of a mother-god, the brown face of Mother Earth. And inside on thick papers were stunning poems from the Tzotzil women. Chants and prophecy and incantations and curses--words to keep the spirit alive, words to keep evil at bay, words to ward off sickness and death, words to protect children and the sacred corn, words to protect women from drunken crazy men, words of love and love-making. Magic words. Sacred words. Ancient words. And dovetailed within the book are images from these women that speak to the same place in the heart.

Over the years of living and working with the Tzotzil women, Ambar had collected these poems, transcribing them first into Tzotzil which by then she had learned. Next she translated them into Spanish and finally into English. And she contributed two important essays--one that tells the history of the book and the other that discusses the poetics of the poets and their Tzotzil culture. The New York Times, recognizing the importance of Incantations as a work of language and as a work of art, published an extensive piece on the original Incantations and Ambar. The Taller was selling the books for $200 U.S. Still is, in fact. And they are available through Garcia Street Books in Santa Fe and probably elsewhere. (Again, please visit the website and facebook pages for Taller Leñateros for more information about the women, their goals and the various paper art they are selling.)

I am a poet, and since the 1960s I have been a rabid fan of the pioneering work of Jerome Rothenberg in developing his understanding of ethno-poetics (in particular, his anthologies Shaking the Pumkin, Technicians of the Sacred and America a Prophecy). Reading the poems and Ambar’s essay, I knew immediately the importance of the book, and I yearned for Cinco Puntos to be able of produce a trade edition of the collection. Lee was as excited about the project as I was. We wanted a book that would retain a taste of the original but would make the work accessible to poets and scholars and students and readers. It would require compromises to the original book, but Lee and Ambar worked together over several years to bring about a book that we are all proud of.

Ambar Past is a remarkable woman. She grew up, ironically enough for us, in our hometown of El Paso and even went to the same high school as our three kids. But in 1968, when she graduated from high school, she left El Paso, never to return. First she went to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. It was time for the Summer of Love. But she wasn’t happy there either. She went to Mexico and eventually she found her home-place in the highlands of San Cristobal. She lived among the Tzotzil and studied their ways and their language and their medicines. It was not easy, but she has survived and has been honored by the Tzotzil. She became a naturalized Mexican citizen and has become an important Mexican poet. We, like the Tzotzil, are honored to have Ambar as a friend.

Lost (and Found) in the Rain of Juárez

Yesterday Joe Hayes and I went over to Juárez to walk around and to have dinner. It’s been a long-time ritual for us when he comes visiting from Santa Fe. It was just regular trip to the other side, so it feels odd writing about a three hour journey that has long been a habit of mine. But people keep asking me: Do you go to Juárez anymore? These people have been reading the news, hearing the continuing grisly murders along the border and especially in Juárez. I hadn’t been for a month or so, and everybody in El Paso knows that Juárez is suffering because so few people are crossing over the bridges and spending money in Mexico. People are on this side are scared. I don’t blame them. Last year over 2000 people, most of them involved in some way in the drug trade, were murdered. Among that number have been a few U.S. citizens, some the result of stray gunfire. It’s still going on but it’s not so bad now. El Presidente Felipe Calderón has sent 7,000 federal troops. Their job supposedly is to combat the two narco-traficante cartels who are doing battle to control the Juárez trade route. The Juárez Cartel is headed by Vicente Carrillo-Fuentes (the brother of the infamous and allegedly dead “Lord of the Skies” Amado Carillo Fuentes) which is battling to the death the Sinaloa Cartel and el Chapo Guzmán. If you listen to the gossip on the street you’ll discover that few people believe “the news” that the army or the local police are non-partisan protectors of the people. The street rumor has it that Calderón and the federales are on the side of el Chapo and the Juárez police are on the side of Vicente Carillo-Fuentes and the local cartel.

“Whatever,” as the kids say. It's just sad, sad stuff.

We crossed the Stanton Street Bridge. We were happy to be going to Juárez again. A quiet rain had begun to fall as soon as we topped the bridge. It came and went, sometime heavily, during our walk. It’s a month too early for the monsoons to begin saturating this part of the Chihuahua Desert, so the rain felt delicious and comforting. The desert, even in its cities, has a beautiful smell when it rains. It’s the smell of wet greasewood and sage bushes. Such dreamy cool weather for the end of May when in most years the thermometer is already climbing over 100. Now wonder Joe and I enjoyed walking in the rain and dancing among the puddles in the greasy streets. It was a great unexpected pleasure.

Just on the other side of the bridge we saw a covey of the Mexican army, seven men dressed in desert brown helmets and fatigues, packing automatic rifles and pistols. I wanted to take a photo but I didn’t dare. These seven unsmiling soldiers were dressed up to play Mexican Army but they didn’t inspire any confidence. Mostly 18 and 19 years old kids, they were loitering out of the rain under a big tree like malingering taxi drivers. Except these guys were carrying big guns.

We walked south down Avenida Lerdo—or as we call it, la Avendia de las Novias—where dress shops populate both sides of the street. The shops specialize in quinceañas and weddings, and the big windows are decorated with manikin dreams. The shops were empty of customers. Their incomes depend on the Mexican-Americans coming across and spending money. Nobody was crossing anymore. As far as they were concerned, nobody was getting married, nobody was celebrating a young girl’s 15th birthday. Maybe their world was drying up like an empty seed pod. The clerks peered at us through the drizzle, wondering where the two old gringos were going.

We walked down to Avenida Septiembre de la Diez y Seis and then west to the plaza and the cathedral and the mercados. At least people were wandering in the streets there. Except it didn’t feel like the border. The rain had changed the ambience. That and the absence of gringos and Mexican-Americans, folks with money in their pockets, folks to do business with. It could have been Veracruz or Hermosillo. Any place else further south. But the Mexicans were there at least. Juárez, like New York City, is a street city. It's vitality is out on the streets to watch and feet. A little band of of cristianos were singing corridos to Jesus in the gazebo of the plaza, women and children and men scurried back and forth, buying food for dinner, trying to make a peso somehow, laughing and screaming and chatting and singing. Music blared from loudspeakers. Behind the new mercados is Calle de Paz, a street of unbridaled laissez-faire capitalism. A few years ago Calle de Paz was packed with illegal vendors selling everything from song birds to rattlesnake rattles and herbs to ripped off DVDs (you can buy first run movies for $5) and any kind of dope if you knew who to ask, but after the city built the two new mercados the police ran all the street vendors away at gunpoint. One man, a leader of protesting vendors, was killed. Now, with the recession debilitating the street economies of Juárez, the puestos (stands) are creeping back into the streets. And of course the sad whores are still there. Calle de Paz is the last territory of the old whores, women in their 30s and 40s, fat and worn out, long past the hungry dreams of their late teens and 20s. They stood in the doorways of cheap bars, their eyes empty and lonely, watching the rain come down.

We went to the Villa del Mar for dinner. It’s long been one of my favorites but it’s been a year or so since I was there. A few of the tables had patrons, so that made us happy. At least it was still open. We sat at a booth and a young mesero brought us fresh made chips and two salsas and a bunch of limes. Joe doesn’t drink anymore, I don’t drink much, so we both had agua minerals con limon. I had the Sopa Marinera Grande and Joe had the filete de pescado mojo de ajo. It was very good. We watched the rain fall outside and we talked about all the many times we have crossed back and forth. When the rain slacked up some, we asked for the bill. It was $12.76 (1560 pesos). A little more that 8 pesos for a dollar. Like it was when we were kids. But now I’m 67 and Joe will be 64. Joe laughed. It was his time to pay, but how can it be so cheap? He gave the waiter $20 in ones, the young man smiled a very large smile and we walked back home to the other side.

■■

This morning I woke up at 5am. I had stomach cramps. I had the runs on and off during the day. Oh well. A little memory from our journey. That happens on this side or that side. It happens everywhere. That’s how the Buddha died. He didn’t complain. People have a bad day, they make a mistake. That’s what my friend Art Lewis the famous sax player told me once. I'm still trying to learn.

■■

Here are a couple of poems of mine from my book The Price of Doing Business in Mexico (1998). They are both poems about Juárez and how I feel about that city that’s five minutes from where I write this. Both poems are the same poem differently, but that’s okay. (By the way, I've still not taken the time to figure how to put indents in the blogger, so if you want to see the poems the way they supposed to look on the page, buy the book.) And, oh yeah, the photograph of Lee and me is a favorite of mine, and I’ve used it numerous other places. It was taken in 1977 in Martino’s Restaurant on Avenida Juárez a few blocks from the bridge. Pedro Ruelas Alvarez, a street photographer, took the photograph. We were sitting in the corner booth by the front window. We were living in Las Cruces at the time, and we had no idea that we would ever move to El Paso. Ruelas, who charged us three dollars for the photograph, is now dead, but many of the waiters are still there. Martino’s is having a difficult time. If you have a chance, go by and eat there too.

■■


The Gavachos in the Photograph

They’ll tell you when you’re growing up
that water goes under the bridge,
but they don’t tell you about the bridge
that goes over to Avenida Juárez
where Martino’s Restaurant is
two doors down from the Kentucky Club.
The imagination opens those doors,
and there I am,
the big bearded gavacho in the straw hat,
the coral necklace,
drinking Dos XX Oscura
and thinking I will have enough riches in my pocket
to nourish my heart in case of love.
It’s Lee’s 32nd birthday, 1977,
a year before we moved to El Paso.
Isn’t she beautiful?
I am 35.
We sit in the corner booth by the windows
where the tiny Tarahumara children stand forever
with their outstretched hands
reaching into the emptiness of the 20th Century,
and a kaleidoscope of people walk
back and forth
looking for ways to lose themselves
in the dwindling twilight.
Glittering mirrors.
Hard-crusted bolillo rolls.
French onion soup.
Chateaubriand for two fried in butter French-style.
We become stuffed and drunk and happy.
We wander the streets holding hands,
we climb a rickety staircase
to a small $10 room with clean sheets,
we make love like resplendent wild beasts
in search of something Jesus said,
and then we walk back into
the jingle-jangle of Avenida Juárez.

That was twenty-one years ago now.
Nothing has really changed except us.
Pedro Ruelas Alvarez,
the street photographer who took this picture
is dead now.
Like my mother is dead.
My sister Patsy.
My brother Bill.
Like Lee’s mother and father.

“Water under the bridge, ¿verdad?”

Another gavacho couple is sitting in that booth tonight.
They are looking out the window
at the Indian children with the large black eyes,
and they are afraid
of what they see in that confusion.
Give them a quarter, mister,
give them a dollar,
give them back the secret places
in the mountains where their spirit thrives.
That’s what I always want to do,
to give away something to make myself whole,
but it seems so impossible,
even to give something to myself.
At least I feel like I am at home now,
here in El Paso,
walking back and forth across the bridge,
and I’m hoping to find enough riches in my pocket
to cure some of the ache in my heart.
This is my prayer—
May God grant us all love
and a little bit of peace on Avenida Juárez.
Amen.

■■

How to Eat Stuffed Fish in Juárez

Jesus died for the sins of us all.
So I walked across the bridge to Mexico
with my friend Rus the basketball coach,
and we ate fish at the Villa del Mar
which seemed like
the natural thing to do.
It was Lent in a Catholic country.
The waiter was a pro, thank God.
Two Bohemias apiece,
chips and fresh pico de gallo,
bolillos (on the soft side)
a good and simple caldo,
the pescado was rellenado
con tiny shrimp and crabmeat—

the bill was 16 bucks and we added a four dollar tip,
becoming heroes because we had money in our pockets.
Outside the afternoon had become night.
The glass doors opened,
and like always
there was the river
of dark fleshy people
who walked up and down
like they knew where they were going.
Hallowed be their names.
Hallowed be all of our names.
We went and said Hello to Benito Juárez,
stern el Presidente Indigeno
gloriously astride a marble and bronze pedestal
in the exact center of a plaza
that carried his name like secret ammunition.
Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata
were somewhere in the shadows of the flimsy trees,
happy to be the guardians of a pair of lovers
who were snuggled up on a green park bench.
The man had his hand inside the woman’s white blouse.
We turned back into the clutter of human beings,
the clanging traffic,
and a little Tarahumara brother and sister who found us
like lost pieces of a puzzle, blessed us
with their sad hunger, their black watery eyes
blinking with the memory of

the Sierra Madre,
hunger,
narcotraficantes,
dead babies,
lost Gods.

All that we had to give was money.
50¢ for each of them.
Enough so that they fled back to their mother,
a tiny woman who sat on the curb with another baby
wrapped in a rebozo that was becoming the color of night.

It would have been nice
to have had my wife along beside me,
friend and lover, a woman
to touch my hand crossing the confused streets.
But Rus was okay—
he listened to the disturbances in my sentences
like a friend is supposed to do,
at least until he ran into a British travel-writer-novelist-acquaintance
who towed along a wife and a blonde couple from Baltimore,
all of them younger than me, all of them
delighted with who they were and who
they were going to be.
I should have told them about my brother Bill,
59-years-old,
whose heart burst open one morning
two months before
after he had bagged his limit one last time
of beautiful mallard ducks
from the cold Mississippi sky.
The Holy Trinity—

God the Holy Blood,
God the Holy Dead,
God the Holy Food.

I didn’t because
this was Mexico and Mississippi is Mississippi
and my brother was dead now
forever.
So there we all were
five gavachos on the other side
with nothing to talk about
except ourselves.
We avoided the subject for the most part.
At least we didn’t talk about basketball.
Thank you, Jesus.
I bought a bottle of Tequila and went home.

Zen Priest BRAD WARNER in El Paso

ZENSTER BRAD WARNER is coming to El Paso. He'll be speaking at the Unitarian Universalist Church (4425 Byron Street near Copia and Fort Blvd) at 7pm Friday night the 22nd. He'll also be speaking at the Las Cruces Unitarian Church on Saturday night, the 23rd, at 7pm. For those of you who like to sit cross-legged and stare at the wall, he'll sit with the Both Sides / No Sides Zen Community in El Paso (711 Robinson in Kern Place) at 10am Saturday morning, the 23rd, and Sunday morning, 10am, he'll be sitting with the Sangha at the Zen Center of Las Cruces (708 Mesquite).

Brad is s a Zen priest (for a number of connotative reasons, he doesn't like to use the word "roshi"), punk rock bassist, and Japanese monster-movie marketeer living in Los Angeles. When living and working in Japan he studied with, and received Dharma Transmission from Gudo Nishijima Roshi of the Soto lineage of Zen. Brad is the author of Hardcore Zen, Sit Down & Shut Up, and most recently, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He teaches Zen in Santa Monica and writes a monthly column for Suicidegirls.com. Hardly your typical Zen master.

If you want more information, call me on my cell at 915-241-3140. The events are sponsored by the Both Sides / No Sides Zen Community of which I am the organizer, and the Zen Center of Las Cruces.

Brad is touring the country to promote his Zen Wrapped in Karma book, and in support of that tour his publisher has been kind enough to send us two excerpts. The one below is "Goal / No Goal." On Sunday the 17th Newspapertree.com will be publishing the excerpt "Does Real Buddhism Exist in the West?"


# # # #

GOAL / NO GOAL
An Excerpt from Zen Wrapped in Karma and Dipped in Chocolate

For part of my visit to Tokyo to straighten things out with Nakano Productions I arranged to stay at Nishijima Sensei’s itty-bitty apartment in a gigantic government-subsidized apartment complex called Takashimadaira. That’s way too long a word to pronounce, so I’ll use the name as infrequently as possible.

It’s one of the largest housing projects in the world, with endless identical buildings stretching on as far as the eye can see. The project has three train stations pretty much to itself, plus its own supermarkets, restaurants, retail shops, and bars. These places aren’t particularly spiffy, but they’re not bad. In fact, the project itself is a fairly pleasant place, except for the fact that all the buildings look exactly alike. It’s nicely kept up, there’s very little litter and almost no graffiti, and the playgrounds between the buildings are actually safe for kids to play in.

When I first met Nishijima he was living in a reconverted company dorm belonging to the cosmetics company he worked for. The president of the company was a big fan of Zen and required all employees to attend Nishijima’s three-day zazen retreats at least once every two years. He had lent Nishijima the building to use as a Zen dojo some years before. Until his wife’s death Nishijima spent three days a week at his home in a Tokyo suburb and the rest at his dojo. After his wife died he moved into the Zen center full-time.

Nishijima’s family viewed his fascination with Zen as something of an eccentricity, one they tolerated but did not much care for. He tried not to burden his wife and daughter with his Zen-related work too much. But he was not about to stop it either.

When the president of the cosmetics company died, his heirs decided they were wasting too much money on useless extravagances like Zen dojos and Zen retreats, and Nishijima found himself abruptly cast out of his longtime home. He took the move in stride, though, and never complained, seeing it as a natural progression in his life and work. From now on, he said, he would devote himself to teaching Buddhism to the whole world “through the method of blog.” One of his students had set one up for him, and he was amazed at his new ability to communicate instantly to the entire planet just by typing on his computer keyboard. For someone born in 1919, it must have seemed unimaginable.

While I was at Nishijima’s place, I told him about what had been going on with Nakano Productions. I said that they had absolutely no goal for their international business. “In Zen it’s important to have no goal,” he said. “But in business a goal is absolutely necessary.”

When I tell this story people often have difficulty accepting its apparent dichotomy. How can a Zen teacher, dedicated to a goalless practice, function in the business world where goals are essential? But this is only a problem if you’re too caught up in words and images and too insistent on maintaining the fiction that all aspects of life must be consistent.

Of course it’s important not to be a hypocrite. But there’s nothing hypocritical about practicing goallessness in Zen and making specific, goal-oriented plans when you’re in a business meeting. Here’s how it works. In terms of the Zen view of the true nature of time, the idea of having a goal breaks down into absurdity. There is only the eternal now, so when would you realize your goal?

But human business affairs take place in a different realm. This realm is essentially an artificial construct of the human mind. As human beings we need to interact with other humans. We provide ourselves with means of support from the wider human community by engaging in such useful fictions together.

Even though, in Buddhist terms, there is no real future, I still have a retirement fund. When I go out for public appearances I plan ahead — not very well, mind you — but I do. I need to know where I’m going, how long it will take to get there, how long I’m supposed to speak, and what Thai restaurants in the area will be open when I’m done. You can’t function in society if you don’t involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you’re playing a game.

A lot of people imagine it’d be wonderful to escape from their everyday lives and run off to some kind of spiritual world where everything is okeydokey and they never have to worry about jobs and all the attendant hassles. This is how cults work, by promising a life free from trouble in exchange for believing stupid stuff and blindly obeying the master. But the truth is that there’s no cult, no church, no monastery in the world that is any less susceptible to politics and basic human bull crap than any company or other organization. The dreams we all have of there being some ideal place where we could escape from all such troubles are all just empty fantasies. I dreamed this dream myself for a very long time and still find myself lapsing into it. But it ain’t gonna happen. Not to me. Not to you. Not to anyone anywhere in the world at any time.

In Los Angeles people are always hopping from job to job trying to find something better. The culture in SoCal gives the message that as soon as things get rough you run away. And, of course, there are times when you have to split an uncool scene* — battering husbands, Bobbitting wives, and that sort of thing are good examples. But if you do split, just make sure you don’t do it with the expectation that everything’s gonna get solved once and for all.

Our day-to-day real human struggles are important. I hate ’em just as much as anyone else. I especially hated them on this trip since I was going to have to spend the rest of the week trying to explain what I wanted to people who didn’t seem to be very interested in understanding. But it’s what I had to do. And even if I ran away from this particular struggle now, it would come back and bite me in the ass in another form later on. I wish it wasn’t this way as much as you do. But facts are facts. Watch your own life closely, and you’ll see it’s just the same. You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away. The brilliant thing is that doing what you do is how you realize your life and realize the universe. Your struggles are your true self. Weird, huh?

In any case, Nishijima’s take on my troubles at Nakano Productions was that they probably hoped I would take the kind of decisive action they were unable to take themselves. He said they placed those barriers in front of me expecting me to break them. This was so that they could absolve themselves of responsibility, should whatever I do turn out badly. Naturally, should my actions turn out well they would be all too eager to take credit.

He also said that he thought I probably didn’t really need them anymore. He believed my own creative works would be able to see me through financially. If he believed that, he obviously hadn’t seen the pitiful advances I’d been receiving for my books! A book that took me a year and a half to write would pay my rent in Los Angeles for about six months, maybe eight, if I could forgo eating.

“Make your own job,” he said. “And if it is successful, that is good. If it is not, you can resign.”

With that advice in mind I steeled myself to have it out with my bosses.

■

Excerpted with permission from Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate © 2009 by Brad Warner. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. http://www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.

Poetry, Life and Barf—the Poetics of Eileen Myles

April 30th Eileen Myles was in town, and she gave a reading at the Percolator Coffee House on Stanton Street downtown El Paso. I read with her. It was a great event. To promote the reading I wrote the essay below about her poetics, riffing off her own essay "Everyday Barf" that concluded her recent book of poems SORRY, TREE (Wave Books, 2007). If you don't know Eileen's work work, you should. She wears many hats--poet, novelist, librettist, and former Presidential candidate. The New Mexico State Writing Program in Las Cruces sponsored her visit to the area, and The Dishonest Mailman Series (The UTEP Writing Program) hosted El Paso event. Thanks again to Connie Voisine (poet, NMSU) and Rosa Alcala (poet, UTEP) for their collaboration to make all this possible.

Life, Poetry and Barf--the Poetics of Eileen Myles

I bought a refrigerator the other day, the first refrigerator I have ever bought in my life and the man in the store, Gringer’s on First Avenue, asked me what I do and I said I’m a poet. Let’s hear one he said. I balked, maybe feeling a little cheesy, you know like I should entertain him while I’m buying a refrigerator, like those cab drivers or waiters who flirt with women while they work, so that you’re reminded that you’re never really a customer, you’re always just a women, or a poet. I recited one--not well--I kind of stuttered. It was short. He looked at me blankly. Do you want to hear it again, I asked. No. I think that one went over my head he said, and turned his attention to the next customer.

Her poems wander. They like to wander because her mind wanders. Her poems pay attention to her mind wandering. She gets up in the morning and goes outside. Just like the rest of us. Our bodies are working. We know because we are breathing the air. What kind of news is this? In one essay presumably about poetics but probably more about life Eileen insinuates that every day is like barf because it just happens. Like barf happens. We are not in control when we barf. That includes you, dear reader. You just sit back and suffer and watch or you enjoy and watch or you just don’t pay attention. Eileen pays attention. And she writes poems. She wants her poetics to reflect how her day happens. She wants her poetics to reflect how she pays attention. It’s a subversive message. How a day in her life, like every day in her life, can be like barf. She gets distracted. A poem can follow along. That’s its job, that’s the poet’s job. She is an open door. It shuts and closes. She is outside, she goes back inside. She is awake, she goes to sleep. She is a function of the universe. She breathes, she eats, she shits, she makes love, she writes poems, she gets happy, she gets sad, she lives in New York City, sometimes she lives elsewhere. We are all a piece of the universe. We are all a piece of the same cloth. It’s empty, it’s not empty. Yes, yes, I know she is a lesbian. Let me tell you--she was a lesbian before everybody else was a lesbian. Do you know what I mean? In 1992 she came to El Paso. She was running for President of the United States. She thought it was important that a lesbian poet who looked and talked like a Kennedy should run for President of the United States. It was the thing to do. It was the moment to do it. It just happened. Part of her platform was to celebrate her dog Rosie, a pit bull. Very un-PC, even in 1992. Rosie is dead now, but she was a wonderful happy dog, and Eileen loved her dearly. Eileen believed that a lesbian poet in the White House required a well-adjusted and contented pit bull. The world would be set straight. In a poetics sort of way. But I digress. Like Eileen digresses. So she and Debbie Nathan went across the river and walked down to the concrete ditch that people still call the Rio Grande. They carried with them a bucket of red paint and big brushes and they wrote in big red letters: WRITE IN MYLES FOR PRESIDENT. She was running against Bill Clinton, the first George Bush and Ross Perot. It was not even close.

See a poem is a tiny institution. I just write lots and lots of them, and it gives me a way to be in the world. It’s actually a very worldly job, there really isn’t a wrong place to be, a poet kind of goes with anything, any kind of decor, indoor, out. Presidents like to have poets next to them, we’re sort of like a speaking wreath, the kind of poet you pick tells the kind of president you are, the hell of dating or marrying a poet is that certainly we will write about you, so if you don’t want to be seen, don’t date a poet, anyone should know that. Because really a poet has nothing better to do than look at you. A poet’s best friend is her dog, because instantly the dog will take the poet on walks, the poet is like the earth’s shadow. The sun moves and the poet writes something down.

So when Eileen ran for President, I didn’t vote for her. I did feel guilty about not voting for her. I even wrote a poem about it ("November 18, 1992" which is in The Price of Doing Business in Mexico). Debbie voted for her, which surprised me, because I didn't think Debbie was a voter (either I heard something wrongly or my internal stereotyping system was wacko). I’m sure Eileen voted for herself. She’s solid and real that way. She’s a very substantial person. My growing up poet friend Harvey Goldner would have voted for her except I don’t think the Eileen Myles for President campaign knocked on many doors in Seattle. Like Rosie the dog, Harvey is dead now. He voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. He liked him because Bill was from the south like us. Harvey laughed when he thought about Bill’s white chubby thighs chugging down Pennsylvania Avenue in search of manhood or a MacDonald’s. Whatever came first. Back then Harvey was driving a cab and working some in the psych ward of the public hospital. He was busy becoming a legendary underground and unknown street poet. Ten years before that he turned himself into a detox unit and dried out. He had been an alcoholic since probably both of us were 15 together in 1957 listening to James Brown and Bobby Blue Bland and Jimmy Reed in Memphis, Tennessee. I told this to Eileen once. She said 1982 was the year she went on the wagon. She too had been an alcoholic. 1982 must have been a good year for poets, she said. Harvey told me about his terrible DTs that he suffered through. He was curled up in a corner of his room. He was afraid. The door was locked. It was really a cell. Every time he looked up and peered into the darkness he saw way out in the distance a giant wheel of light coming toward him. It was pure light, it was pure energy, it was terrifying. It chewed up everything--men, women, babies, high school basketball players, lovers, houses, automobiles, trees, mountains, even the sun. It mangled them up and swallowed them whole. It horrified him. He wanted to get drunk and forget all about the wheel of light. But Harvey knew it was over, his drinking, because he had been privileged to see the wheel of light churning toward him. He had been blessed. I thought about this story when I decided to write this piece about Eileen’s poetics. She doesn’t let us forget the wheel of light rumbling down the road toward us. Her poetics are subversive that way. I know I said that already but I don’t want you to forget. She does this in an off-hand fashion, a conversational way. You’re being had. Especially if you think you’re cool. Take me for instance. I think I’m cool. I read Eileen’s poem and her prose all the time and at first they taste like candy I’m enjoying them so much. I want to call up my friends. And then she pushes me into different places I’ve never been before, places I don’t want to be, thinking about things I’ve never thought about before. Places where maybe I don’t belong. She’s a woman, she’s a lesbian, I’m a man, I have a family, grandkids even. How can I understand? I am uncomfortable. Unsure of myself. But there I am listening and watching. It’s like she’s talking to me. That’s okay, she says. Sit there and watch and listen. You’ll be happy you did. And then she’ll say something offhand like that little story about buying the refrigerator. It seems so inconsequential, so silly even, but thinking about it I realize the story is very serious, very real and substantial, like she is, like her poetics (how could it be otherwise) and I understand perfectly. Like...like...

...like this:

Once my girlfriend moved to Paris, like 1986, and I took her to the airport. Then I got on the train and went home. It was a big deal but I wasn’t upset. I walked into the bathroom and began shitting and puking at once. I felt like a worm. Like there was no difference between me—and anything. It was just this force flowing through me. Loss. I must be feeling bad I thought, sitting on the can leaning into the sink.

▲▲▲

The excerpts in this piece are from a commencement address that Eileen gave at Hamshire College, 1998, which you can find on her website here. Billy Sullivan did the portrait of Eileen. You can learn more about Eileen and her work and listen to her read poems at her two websites at www.eileenmyles.com and www.eileenmyles.net

By the way, I wrote this essay and posted it quickly (4/27) to make sure something was up here and Facebook and Newspaper Tree to promote the reading, and so since the reading I found out that I had gotten a number of things wrong. I heard from Debbie Nathan (see comments). I had wrongly assumed that she hadn't voted in the 1992 presidential election, so I've edited the piece here a bit (5/15/09). But doing this reminds me of back in the day, 1992, when Debbie and Morton Naess and their kids Sophy and Willie in the Sunset Heights neighborhood overlooking the Rio Grande and Juarez. Debbie was an important part of the intellectual and political landscape of the city and a good friend. The first non-fiction book that Cinco Puntos Press published was hers--Women and Other Aliens, which is now out of print. It was an important book, and it opened doors for us in so many ways. Someday soon I will write about all of that on our Cinco Puntos Press Blog. But for now I simply want to say that we miss Debbie--her writing, her intellect and especially her friendship--here in El Paso. She and Morton now live in New York City and you can follow her writing on her blog DEBBIE NATHAN: Sex pol, borders, Mexico, Yiddish, my camera. It's good stuff.

May Day! May Day! Poet Eileen Myles in El Paso and Las Cruces

May Day! May Day! Poet Eileen Myles will be in El Paso and Las Cruces next week. She will be reading with me on Thursday, night April 30, 7pm, at the Percolator downtown. and in Las Cruces the next night at 730 pm. I'm honored to reading with Eileen. She's truly one of the most interesting ("savviest" is a word I read) poets writing. I get all her books. And I read them too. The El Paso event is hosted by the Dishonest Mailman Series of the UTEP Writing Department, and the Las Cruces event is hosted by the NMSU writing program. It's so nice that the two writing departments are collaborating these days. It means good things for the writing community along the border. Kudos to Connie Voisine (NMSU) and Rosa Alcala (UTEP) for greasing the wheels so this can happen.




EL PASO: Thursday, April 30th, 7pm
The Percolator Cafe, Stanton Street downtown

LAS CRUCES: Friday, May 1, 730pm
Corbett Center, NMSU, Las Cruces, NM
2pm a talk about writing in the NMSU English Bldg
For more information, call Connie Voisine, (575) 646-2027

Connie Voisine Book of Poems a Finalist for LA Times Book Award

Congratulations to poet and good friend Connie Voisine. Her book book of poems Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream (University of Chicago Press) has been chosen as a finalist for the very prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Award. Connie lives 40 miles up the road from us in Las Cruces, NM, and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at NMSU.

She's a wonderful colleague and citizen in our world of letters in piece of the desert along the border. She's full of curiosity about language and poetry and diverse poetics. Her poetry, of course, is remarkable. But for me as a poet her friendship has been invaluable. She's always there to listen to my distracted riffs of whatever oddball idea I have about poetics. She lets me wander. When I was putting together White Panties, Dead Friends & Other Bits and Pieces of Love I was unsure of a number of the poems. I hadn't yet read them many of them aloud to an audience. I asked her to look at the manuscript. Instead, she invited me to join her on Friday afternoons when she and two other poets--Sheila Black and Carmen Geminez-Rosello Smith--got together and shared and critically discussed their work. It was a great time for me. I'm not a workshopper, I've didn't do Creative Writing School, so I was a bit nervous. Especially the old man poet among three women poets. But they, especially Connie, welcomed me and helped greatly to improve the book. I wouldn't have had that experience without Connie's presence, so I thank her and wish her good luck on Friday night. That's when the winners are announced with lots of pomp and ceremony. My fingers are crossed. Good luck, Connie.

(By the way, son John Byrd will be in LA for the book fair representing Cinco Puntos Press. He's in booth #347 in the lawn on top of the staircase this time. Primo real estate we hope. Go by and visit with him. He'll be delighted to see you.)

Below is a poem is cut and pasted off the University of Chicago Press website. Being technically inept, I can't figure out how to put in all the line indents via blogger. Forgive me, Connie. To see the poem properly scattered across the screen, go here.

The Bird is Her Reason

There are some bodies that emerge
into desire as a god
rises from the sea, emotion and
memory hang like dripping clothes—this
want is like
entering that heated red

on the mouth of a Delacroix lion,
stalwart, always that red
which makes
my teeth ache and my skin feel
a hand that has never touched me,
the tree groaning outside becomes
a man who knocks on my bedroom window,
edge of red on gold fur,
the horse, the wild
flip of its head, the rake of claws
across its back, the unfocussed,
swallowed eye.

Edward Hopper & the Nighthawks visit El Paso

Cesar Ivan sent me this image of Edward Hopper's THE NIGHTHAWKS after I mentioned in my last post that his photo of his cutouts in the window of the Bridge Center for Contemporary Arts reminded me of Hopper's work. I wasn't thinking in particular about NIGHTHAWKS, but, my gosh, this painting and Cesar's photograph of the cutouts in the posting below sure reverberate against each other, huh? Art (visual art, music, poetry--the whole ball of wax) does peculiar things to the psyche and to memory. It lives there like a virus, a good virus, and feeds and protects the imagination and understanding.

By the way, when I first posted the March 9 blog I originally used another photograph of Art Lewis. I was in a rush to get out of town and I wanted to get the thing up before I left. I used the first photograph I found on my PC, a wonderfully dignified image of Art Lewis by Richard Baron. You can see that photograph here along with a profile of Art. The photo now used is by Cesar, and it's taken in front of the Cincinnati Bar. I think this is the photograph that Cesar used to create the cutout of Art. It's also right near the alley where Art played to the homeless man documented in the essay “Sort of Lost Sad Empty Useless Old Man EP Blues.” And besides, the photograph gives off the aura of Art Lewis that I was trying to describe.

Sort of Lost Sad Empty Useless Old Man El Paso Blues

I love this photograph and have wanted an excuse to put it on this blog. My excuse is I re-discovered this piece of mine that I am pasting below--“Sort of Lost Sad Empty Useless Old Man EP Blues” that originally appeared five years ago at newspapertree.com. The photograph and the cutouts in the window are by my friend Cesar Ivan. The display window decorated the now-dead Bridge Center of Contemporary Arts on San Antonio Avenue in downtown El Paso. My essay, with all its dreamy imaginary wanderings, is a eulogy for the Bridge. May it rest in Peace. It was a vibrant although very fragile organization, like so many non-profit arts organizations, and it died a slow and tortured death. Cesar Ivan must have taken the photograph in 2001, perhaps just before 9/11/01. His cutouts are meant to give form to the El Paso arts scene back then. David Romo, who was at that time the director of the Bridge, hired Cesar to do the work and probably collaborated with him in the design. For me, because I was involved with the Bridge Center for much of its history (and honored to be included in the window), it’s an eerie and sad photograph, creating a surreal kind of sadness that you get when you look at an Edward Hopper painting for too long. Things are lost in the constant flux—institutions, people, ideas—but the ghosts hang around and make you remember.

Gloria Osuna Perez is the beautiful woman in the window on the right, her hair gone from radiation treatments in her battle against ovarian cancer. Long an important artist in El Paso and the Southwest, she died in 1999. Gloria was known especially for her soulful portraits of Chicanas and Mexicanas who were important to her personal history. She concocted a special palate of colors to create the signature cinnamon skin tones that radiate warmth and sensuality and beauty. Cinco Puntos had contracted with her to illustrate Joe Hayes’s book Little Gold Star / Estrellita de Oro, and she had completed five of the paintings when her cancer recurred. As she lay dying, she collaborated with her daughter Lucia Angela Perez to complete the work. Because she died in 1999, a few years before the internet became omnipresent in our consciousness, very little of her work is available on the internet. Hopefully, in the next few months we can collect some images and post them on our Cinco Puntos blogspot. In the meantime, I’m posting this lovely photograph of Gloria and Lucia.

The two chess players are, of course, Teresa Urrea, aka la Santa de Caborca, squared off against Pancho Villa. Both wandered the streets of downtown El Paso in the very early 1900s when El Paso was the political and intellectual center of the Mexican Revolution. If you want to know more about Teresita and Pancho Villa in El Paso, read David Romo’s The Ringside Seat to the Revolution. For a great biographical novel about la Teresita read Hummingbird’s Daughter by our good friend Luis Urrea (a blood descendent of the Caborca Urreas). The novel follows her magical life from her birth until her entry into El Paso. Luis is working on the sequel that will complete her life story. I guess Pancho Villa is still playing la Teresita chess somewhere in our communal psyche. I’m hoping she wins.

The sax player is the legendary Art Lewis, long a fixture in the El Paso culture scene. A truly wonderful musician and a very wise man. My notebooks are filled with things he’s said to me or friends. He stars in the piece below. And of course the dude reading book of poems is me. My friend Steve Yellen bought the cutout in an fund-raising auction a few years back and it now haunts the Yellen home where the food and wine are very good.

By the way, I wrote this essay while I was working on my book of poems White Panties, Dead Friends & Other Bits and Pieces of Love, so many of the ideas and themes here you will find in the poems and vice versa. I’ve edited it just a little bit. Re-reading the piece after these five years, I'm so glad George Bush is no longer president. His was a most dangerous presidency. Maggie Herrera, by the way, has disappeared into the dream which is Los Angeles. She's fine, I hear. So is Art Lewis. He comes back to El Paso for his famous birthday parties where the musicians all line up to jam with him. He blows his heart out and leaves us in peace.

Sort of Lost Sad Empty Useless Old Man EP Blues
April 2003

It’s been a very sad and sorrowful year, and I got the blues bad. Very bad. Sort of lost sad empty useless old man El Paso blues. A friend, the godfather of my children, is up in Albuquerque dying a slow death inside a coma. Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, the ship has sunk, Ahab that bastard is dead and Ishmael is riding his handmade coffin on the wide green sea. But, unlike Ishmael, my friend cannot tell his story; nor can he let go and simply sink deep into the ocean. He lies in the hospital bed, breathing and sweating and gasping for breath, and his wife and the rest of us rub his body and wonder if he’s inside.

Then George Bush’s war came along and sucked buckets of hope out of my heart. Like a martinet with a tin badge, George strutted out naked onto the stage everyday thinking he was wearing a brand new wardrobe. He had to do his strutting. So every evening I get down on my knees like Marlon Brando in the Godfather and I whisper into my grandchildren’s ears that the President is really wearing nothing. He is wearing no clothes at all. I tell them to ignore the flag he has draped around his nakedness, I tell them to be careful of the heavy Bible that the President carries like a loaded gun, and I tell them that one day they will come to understand that he is not wearing any clothes. He is naked. He is a fool. But he is extremely well-armed and should be considered very dangerous.

This is the stuff that lies at the heart of my lost sad empty useless old man El Paso blues.

Used to be when I got to feeling depressed like this I could go hang out at the Café at the Bridge Center for Contemporary Arts and watch the people walking back and forth outside the door. The Mexicans and the abuelitos and the penguins and the high-heeled ladies and the Mennonites and the niños. Inside I’d always find weird and interesting people from all over the world. I could read books and look at the art on the walls.

And the best part was that red-headed Maggie Herrera would console me. She’d smile her wonderful freckle-face smile and say, Hi, Mr. Byrd, the silver post punched into her lower lip bobbing up and down like a cork. She never called me Bobby. She’d fix me a double café breve. She’d give me a big glass of water with ice.

Maggie always wore her jeans so lowdown that I could watch her bellybutton riding the magic of her thin and beautiful body. Her bellybutton was a cave that opened up into the beginning and into the end. When I was in college, the allegory of Plato’s cave bored and confused me with its shadows and darkness and absence of meaning, but the cave of Maggie’s belly button has real meaning about the sacred world in which we live. A few minutes of drinking my coffee and contemplating the metaphysical implications of Maggie’s bellybutton always refreshed me. I would be ready to return to the world. But the Bridge Café is closed. So I got no place to drain myself of these old man El Paso blues.

Art Lewis said a white man can’t know the blues like a black man knows the blues. I don’t know if Art is right or wrong, but I wish I could talk to Art and tell him about these goddamn blues I got right now. Art is a wise man and he would know how to give me some relief. But Art took his sax and went back to Houston. He’s sick. He got diabetes and a double-hernia, the hernia from blowing on that horn without a mike all these years. Besides, Art’s momma is fragile and old. Rumor says she has Alzheimer’s. So Art needs to be taking care of his mother, but I bet he wishes he could blow his horn because he’s got some real bad troubling blues.

Once over a year ago, a few months after 9/11 and I was feeling just like I am right now, I walked over to the Bridge Café to drink coffee and to talk to Maggie. But Maggie was busy with paperwork and she was sad because her boyfriend had left her. Every one of us had some kind of lousy blues back then after 9/11. Remember? Maggie quickly concocted me my double-shot café breve, gave me a glass of water with no ice and told me straight out that she didn’t have time to talk. She told me to go downstairs in the basement. Art Lewis was preaching to an assembly about the gospel of music. I went downstairs. Art was sermonizing and playing at the same time. He tooted his horn and said, “Bobby, sit down. Take a load off.” He had poured his lanky black body into a black suit and a black shirt and shiny black shoes and a very nice black porkpie hat. The man was black. Always black. Maybe he was 60, maybe 70. I didn’t care.

Every day Art Lewis stepped into the river of his life and prayed into his saxophone. He prayed jazz. Improvisation was his devout way of life. His sacred horn was always blowing away the stifling air of fundamentalism. As far as Art was concerned, right and wrong, innocence and guilt--they were all notes in the same piece of music. Playing the sax was Art Lewis’ religious practice, and he had become a wise teacherman by following the path the saxophone had shown him.

“Music,” he announced, “holds many of the answers to the riddles about life and death.”

“Why doesn’t it hold all the answers?” I asked.

Art got that big wide smile on his face and said, “Because we don’t know all the questions.” He played a riff and added. “Besides, there aint no answers in the boogie-woogie. No answers anywhere in the be-bop. The jingle-jangle is so empty of answers you’d go hungry if you got lost inside. The only answer we got is just us doing what we are doing. Like the dogs and the fishes. Like the homeless blowing down San Antonio Street like afternoon trash. That’s why I play my horn. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Art was wearing a long necklace of wide golden links. A cheap necklace really, not real gold, but it was handsome hanging around Art’s black neck.

“Art,” I asked, “where did you get that handsome necklace?”

“Oh,” he said, “a wino in the alley outside the Cincinnati Street Bar gave it to me. He wanted me to play him some blues. So I played him some wino alley blues. He liked those wino alley blues. Said those blue made him feel sad and happy at the same time. Said he didn’t have any money, so he gave me this golden necklace. It’s fake gold, you understand. But it sure makes me feel good.”

Art smiled again. He didn’t have many teeth.

That night I had this strange dream.

National Public Radio announced that Osama Bin Laden’s soul, tainted and crippled by fundamentalism, had escaped her master’s body. The soul of Osama Bin Laden had witnessed airplanes disappearing into glass buildings. And dead souls floating off toward the moon. In despair she had fled the body of Osama Bin Laden. Art Lewis was in the alley next to the Cincinnati Club playing saxophone to the wino, and the soul of Osama Bin Laden appeared like a moth attracted to a candle’s flame. She hid behind garbage cans and listened to Art play his horn. She realized that she had never known such generosity and compassion. She began to weep while Art played the many riffs from his golden horn.

And she fell asleep.

In her sleep, the soul of Osama Bin Laden dreamed. Like I was dreaming the soul of Bin Laden. A dream within a dream. And in her dream the soul of Bin Laden was giving birth to a child. When she opened her legs, she found a dead baby boy. Art Lewis sighed and with his horn he collected up the grief and blood and afterbirth like a priest who is preparing to give the holy sacrament. While Art Lewis blew this sorrow into his horn, the soul of Osama Bin Laden and the wino buried the dead baby in a dumpster behind Geo Geske’s. The lid clanged shut. The alleyway smelled like urine.

Art Lewis was weeping, the big tears dripping down his black face. He continued to blow on his horn about the sorrows in his heart. He said his piece was called “The Soul of Osama Bin Laden and her Dead Baby’s Blues,” a song so sad it made the wino weep too. The wino’s name was John, and John wandered away looking for some sort of God. He left behind the golden necklace as a gift for Art.

The necklace was stolen merchandise. Art didn’t care. He put it around his neck and played to the dark alleyway.

And the soul of Osama Bin Laden disappeared forever.

That was the end of my dream, and for what it’s worth, the Bridge Center and Art Lewis made that dream possible. Now the Bridge has locked up its doors, I haven’t seen Maggie Herrera in a couple of months, and I feel this deep emptiness in my imagination. George Bush, meanwhile, continues to strut around on the stage in his imaginary suit of clothes--the American flag draped around his nakedness, the Bible dangling from his manly hand like a smoking AK-47. My lost sad empty useless old man El Paso blues just won’t go away.

But this I have learned--Art Lewis has put his saxophone next to his bed in Houston where it generates a warm glow inside his room. His mother is with him. She is ancient. She has found memory to be of no further use. A hopeless tool. She does not know Art’s name but she knows that he resided in her belly. And that was a long time ago. Now she is waiting to unlock the door that opens into the void. She wants to step outside. Art watches her from his bed, learning some more about the questions that have no answers, and he meditates upon the meaning of music without any sound. “It’s a perfect music, exquisitely improvised,” he mumbles to anyone who will listen. “It’s a high pitched sound that resides inside the holiness of our brains. We all first heard that music inside our mother’s belly. Down in that magnificent slime where I first saw my father’s face. This is a strange secret.”

Keith Wilson: 1927-2009

Joe and Jill Somoza just called to tell us that our close friend poet Keith Wilson has died. Keith had been in a hospice in Las Cruces for almost two weeks. He passed quietly with Heloise, his daughters Kathy and Kerin and his son Kevin at his side. Keith’s been suffering from aphasia for a number of years and he had lost his ability to speak and to be a poet, so it was time for him to catch the boat to the other side. He will be missed. I will miss him.

Keith, as a friend and a mentor, was a very important influence in my life as a poet and as a householder. I first met him and Heloise in Tucson in 1963 where he was a lecturer. Through him and Barney Childs I became involved in the Ruth Stephan Poetry Center, along with my friend Paul Malanga, and was able to hang around poets and poetry. The Wilson household was always full of talking poetry and laughing. Creeley, Snyder, Duncan, Jerome Rothenberg, John Newlove and so many others were always coming through. It was a special time back then. I’ve always felt privileged to know poets and to be part of the special community of those who make poems. Keith was an entry way for me into this special world.

Last year poets in Las Cruces and Placitas/Albuquerque organized celebrations of Keith and his poetry. He was present at each event and enjoyed them immensely. You can read about each of those occasions on previous blog entries here and here where I've included introductions by Joe Somoza (Las Cruces) and me (Placitas) and poems. The picture above I took in December 2005. Keith was still writing, although I suppose the aphasia was probably creeping into his world.

This fall Clark City Press will be publishing his collected poems (1965-2001), Shaman of the Desert. 1100 pages in all, it will include 23 of his books, uncollected poems and his autobiography that he wrote in 1992 for the Gale Publishing Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series.

In my other postings you'll see other poems, but here is one of my favorite Keith Wilson poems, a poem I heard a long time ago back in the day. May Keith rest in peace.

The Gift
--for my daughter Kathleen

This is a song
about the gift of patience

of opening

the need to walk alone
ever, deeper, into

This is a poem
against light

a recommendation
to darkness

Bring a candle
the room is warm

This is a song

Airports & Horses: Jimenez & Hauser

Every time I drive to the El Paso airport I am startled by John Hauser's don Juan Oñate rearing up on an oversized Spanish mustang—“the world’s largest equestrian statue.” Hauser was into exact realism, so driving almost under the hooves of the thing, it’s impossible to ignore the mustang’s gargantuan package hanging like a wet dream gone terribly bad. What is that thing doing there? That’s a good question too. Public art, especially a piece of this enormity and expense, speaks about a city’s cultural vibes. El Paso has endured a 10-year-plus name-calling debate about this bronzed humongous conqueror. For a number of years the thing couldn’t find a home--nobody wanted it downtown, nobody wanted it on the river, nobody wanted it at City Hall--so the airport became the home of last resort. The debate teams had the usual suspects. On one side have been the conservatives (a buttoned-down assortment of Republicans, traditional Catholics, old-school and well-heeled Mexican-Americans, etcetera) and the other side is populated by the progressive community (a more vociferous hodgepodge that includes artists and intellectuals, the left side of Democratic Party, political activists, old-school Chicano activists, etcetera). This political and divisive history of Hauser’s statue has been documented in a number of places, including a long piece in the New York Times that as usual denigrates El Paso and a POV PBS documentary, The Last Conquistador. More important to the history of arts funding in El Paso and a critique of Hauser as an artist are Richard Baron’s articles, one of which is archived here at newspapertree.com (others are buried in archived pre-online fishwraps like The Bridge Review and Stanton Street).

And of course by now you can guess which side I’m on.

Sometimes when I see the Hauser I get angry. But when I’m lucky I laugh. El Paso got suckered again. Tom Diamond wiggled his finger and wagged his tongue and John Hauser patted the ricos on the back and smoothed their tail feathers and sweet green money slimed into their coffers by the millions. Why not? Oñate was a good Catholic boy, even if in 1599 he earned the nickname of “the Butcher at Acoma” for ordering the masacre at the pueblo, killing 800, enslaving 500 women and children, and cutting off the right foot of every remaining able-bodied man in the pueblo. Not to worry. He boasted pure Spanish blood.

Not like that Benito Juárez indio guy.

Not like that meztizo vato Pancho Villa.

I grew up in Memphis where huge statues of Confederate generals on horseback (Jefferson Davis, Nathan Bedford Forrest and others) dominated a number of public parks. Those pieces of public art left a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn’t have to be told what the underlying message of those statues of men on horseback meant—those guys were heroes because they fought to preserve slavery. So from the beginning I didn’t like the politics of the Oñate thing and I didn’t like how its funding was rammed through city council back in the 90s. Now that it’s done I don’t like it as a piece of art and I certainly don’t like the symbolism of having this huge statue of the Butcher at Acoma becoming part of our cultural landscape. I have a friend, poet Simon Ortiz of the Acoma Pueblo, who talks about how the dark shadow of Oñate and his butchery still reverberates through the oral history of his people’s language and stories.

In Denver a few weeks ago with Lee on business, I made sure I saw that city’s public art at their airport: the Blue Mustang by paseño Luis Jimenez (1940-2006) that has finally been installed. It had consumed much of the last years of Luis’ life and, with a final bit of irony, as he was working to finish the project the almost-finished head toppled over and killed him. As I approached the airport, I saw it from a half a mile away. Before the airport itself comes into view, the mustang rears up grandly on its hind legs out in the prairie, its mysterious red-orange eyes glowing in the cloudy dusk.

Luis grew up in El Paso in the 1940s and 50s. As a young man he left El Paso burdened with that rage that so many young Chicanos of his generation—especially the artists, the writers, the intellectuals—grew up with in their hearts and minds. El Paso is a Mexican city, a Mexican-American city, but the übercultur of his growing up was Anglo-American topped with a boring salsa of conservative Mexicano. The political structure, the banks, the big businesses—all were in the hands of the Anglo-Americans and a handful of rico Mexican-Americans. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the public school systems in the 40s and 50s. Spanish was not allowed. And kids in high school didn’t hear the Mexican history of El Paso, especially the stories of El Paso as the political and intellectual center for the early stages of the Mexican Revolution, they didn’t take field trips down to Monument Marker #1 to see where Francisco Madero crossed over the river to launch the historic revolution, and they didn’t learn about Pancho Villa living over in Sunset Heights, waiting for his return to Mexico. Instead, they learned about the Anglo-American history of the city and the state of Texas (the gun fighters, the Texas Rangers, the Alamo, etcetera). Artists and writers like Luis, Arturo Islas, John Rechy, Antonio Burciaga, Ricardo Sanchez and others realized early on that they had been deprived of their heritage and they learned to express their anger and resentment through their work.

Sometime in the early 80s I heard Luis speak at UTEP as a guest of the art department. Lee and I had moved to El Paso in 1978, but I knew Luis’ work from traveling from our home in Albuquerque to Santa Fe to see his cutouts, drawings and prints at the now defunct Hills Gallery. It was the first time since leaving El Paso (he was then over 40 and had received national acclaim) that he had been asked to speak in El Paso. His speech was hesitant at first, uncomfortable to be in El Paso, but, feeling the good reception of the standing-room only crowd, he warmed to the task as he showed slides of his work. Somewhere in the middle of the speech he started talking about his anger, and he spoke about how in the first part of the century the city government had outlawed the use of adobe as a building materials for homes. Adobe, of course, is the indigenous building material of the American Southwest. It’s a cheap material (you can make it yourself with the dirt in your backyard if you have the right dirt), and the result is buildings that, if properly maintained, can last forever. Indeed, the ambience of cultural boomtowns Taos and Santa Fe is rooted in adobe buildings. But the local power-brokers here made their anti-adobe law, and of course one of those helping to make the law was the local brick-maker. The story of bricks and adobe in El Paso was symbolic to Luis of his hometown, much like the stories of his and Hauser’s sculptures have become to me.

To take a picture of the Blue Mustang, I had to park the car illegally on the muddy shoulder of the road and run across the half-frozen ground to get close enough for a decent photo. I was happy to do it. Luis’ Blue Mustang is an incredibly potent piece of work, married perfectly into the landscape of the prairies to the east and the Rocky Mountains to the west. It represents the power of the Western mythos in our national psyche. Horses, of course, were introduced on this continent by the Spanish, but it wasn’t long before they became the symbol of the indigenous horse cultures of the prairie Indians. By staying away from historical particulars, the Blue Mustang synthesizes many disparate parts of our history to give us a symbol of the American West.

So I get back home and go to the El Paso airport. There is don Juan Oñate riding through the parking lot on his over-sized Spanish mustang. Even in its enormous presence it seems inconsequential. I can’t help it—I remember myself five-years-old playing with toys and realize this thing is like a blow-up of those little pot metal Indians and cowboys I used to play with. The Indians were on one side, the cowboys on the other. The cowboys were always rearing up and shooting their guns, the Indians were slinking down behind their little horses, they were running away. That hokey scene. Except that hokey scene speaks about one people’s conquering and domination of another people. It’s a complicated history that should contemplated and discussed, especially in classrooms, but it’s certainly not a history that should be romanticized with a monstrous and well-hung macho statue.

Oh well. Hauser’s Oñate has become a fact of life for us here in El Paso. It’s not going to come down. Still, I have a secret wish.

I wish we could cut off Oñate’s right foot. Not in the dead of night. No, I want to have a huge ceremony and invite the Governor of Acoma to El Paso. I want to invite Simon Ortiz to write and read a poem for the occasion. A poem that will honor the dead of Acoma, a poem that will honor the history of the pueblo peoples, a poem that will honor the land we live on, a poem that will honor our common future. After Simon has read his poem and we all have tears in our eyes, I want the mayor of El Paso to give the Governor of Acoma a large blowtorch and I want him to cut off the statue’s right foot. I want it to fall thud to the ground amid cheers and sadness and prayers. Then I want a powwow to begin. Maybe we can call it “Cutting Off the Butcher’s Foot Powwow.” Or maybe we can call it the “Asking for Forgiveness Powwow.” We’ll figure out something. The important thing is that we invite all the Fancy Dancers, the Traditional Dancers, the Grass Dancers, the drummers and the singers—the drums will pound and the songs will wail at the moon and the beating of feet will pound into the desert night. Vendors will be selling snow cones and churros and elotes, tacos and hamburgers and sodas and Oñate piñatas. No booze, no dope. Those are the rules. That’s because all of the Kachinas and the holy clowns will be there, watching us. Our Lady of Guadalupe too. She’ll be wearing cowboy boots and a big smile. We’ll invite Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed. They'll be hanging out in the shadows, mumbling about the uselessness of words. At midnight, holding hands and dancing around the circle, the big drums still pounding, we will melt the Spaniard’s foot. The molten bronze will seep steaming into a cauldron.

Hauser, like Sisyphus doing his existential but very sacred chore of pushing the rock up the hill, will recast and re-attach the foot so that the next year we can re-enact the ceremony. He will be well-paid and he will have a studio to work on other projects. The festival will become a huge annual fair. El Paso will become known as the City of Forgiveness. The federal government will tear down its ugly fence, the drug war will become history and peace will be declared in Juárez.

I wish.

Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugaration Poem: The Poetics of Declamation

I was very much impressed with Obama's speech--its style and eloquence and toughness and inclusiveness--(George Bush should have climbed under his chair during the new president's litanies of difficulties the country and world faces) but I'll let the talking heads do their thing. I do want to congratulate Elizabeth Alexander for her poem "Praise Song for the Day." It was the 4th occasion for a poem to be written for, and recited at, the inaugaration of a president. I didn't look forward to it at all. Sixteen years ago I had gritted my teeth when I heard Maya Angelou's poem (I like Maya Angelou, I just didn't like her poem), and I don't even remember Miller Williams' poem. All I remember about the Frost poem is that he didn't read the poem he wrote which, by all acounts, was a blessing. Angelou had overworked her poem, made it too sentimental, too (for lack of a better word) "poetic." It was praised at the time, I thought, because it filled the common and sentimental notion of what poetry is supposed to do. Elizabeth Alexander's poem was plain-spoken and local and ordinary (if I might use that word in a good sense), and as such, it fit in with the inclusive mood of the day and of Obama's speech (so much different from when Bush was inaugarated, sans even the hint of poetry). The poem felt very democratic, rooted in everyday experiences, and it made me feel good and it allowed me to feel American. And I like the understated way she read her poem. I was delighted and happy. Besides, how daunting a task to read a recently composed poem to millions of people and a humongous television audience, especially after such a speech from the new president celebrated for his eloquence. I thought she did very well. Bravo.

(Please note that I write this without reading the poem on the page. Somebody did send us a copy a person had written out quickly, listening to it over and over again, without appropriate line breaks, etcetera. I didn't pay any attention to that because I wanted to write something from having only heard the poem. I wanted my response to be to the spoken text.)

The poetics of public poetry is a different animal from our usual sense of poetry in this country. Public poetry, especially "declamation" (or, in Spanish, declamción) is a much more common form of poetic expression in Latin America. I remember a friend, who was in Nicaragua during the revolution, telling me that at dinners all sorts of people would stand up and declaim their feelings for the revolution, their land and country. Walt Whitman (Song of Myself) and Allen Ginsberg (Howl) were both wonderfully comfortable declaiming to us all, but of course neither of them would be allowed near a presidential podium. El chuco poet Ricardo Sanchez was also known for his declamatory poems, especially his improvisation riffs. Angelou tried, but fell short, but it certainly didn't hurt her in the marketplace. Meanwhile, Lee told me that teachers on a Young Adult literature listserv that she monitors were already sniping at Alexander's poem because of its plain-spokeness. They wanted something more "poetic." I'll be interested in reading what others say about Alexander's poem during the weeks that come. Ron Silliman's blog certainly will be jumping. I recommend all students of poetry to pay some attention to his blog, especially the comments, to follow the discussion.

At the Death House Door

"No man should die alone without a friend."
--Pastor Carroll Picket
Death House Chaplain (retired)
Walls Unit, Huntsville
State of Texas



(Note: If you happen to read this on my FACEBOOK page, you will not see the embedded video trailer. I compose my blogs for BLOGGER and the FACEBOOK page accepts the feed, but deletes the video. Why, I don't know.)

Wednesday night, at the urging of film-maker Caesar Alejandro, Lee and I went to see the documentary At the Death House Door. It's a remarkable documentary that focuses on the spiritual journey of Pastor Carroll Pickett, the chaplain (retired) at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, TX. Mr. Pickett had chosen prison ministry as his life's work, but he did not expect to be the presiding chaplain when the State of Texas began once again executing death row inmates in 1982. He presided over 95 deaths, and since his retirement he has become an advocate for abolishing the death penalty. It's a powerful movie. I can only hope that the movie will be viewed by the Supreme Court Justices and all persons in power, including our incoming president, who have the opportunity to change national policy. I would also hope that this movie, and movies like it, become a part of the on-going national and educational dialogue about capital punishment.

NOTE: NON-PROFITS can arrange to view a computer download of the film here.

Below is the ad-copy from the producer:

At the Death House Door is a personal and intimate look at the death penalty in the State of Texas through the eyes of Pastor Carroll Pickett, who served 15 years as the death house chaplain to the infamous "Walls" prison unit in Huntsville. During Pickett's remarkable career journey, he presided over 95 executions, including the world’s first lethal injection. After each execution, Pickett recorded an audiotape account of his trip to the death chamber.

The film also focuses on the story of Carlos De Luna, a convict Pickett counseled and whose execution troubled Pickett more than any other. He firmly believed De Luna was innocent, and the film tracks the investigative efforts of a team of Chicago Tribune reporters who have turned up evidence that strongly suggests he was.

The film was presented by the Binational Independent Film Festival, 2009, here in the sister cities of El Paso and Juárez. Ceasar Alejandro is the Executive Director and the driving force of the festival, and as such, he demands that the films are all independently produced, that Mexico and the US are well represented, that all fils are shown on both sides of the border, and that actors and directors who come as invited guests speak in both cities. Director John Sayles, truly a hero of the independent film-making, is on the board, is a fan of our fronterizo ambiente, and as a featured speaker last year made his presentation in English on this side and Spanish on the other. Very cool, huh?

The presence of BIFF in our community is exciting and emblematic of our intellectual and artistic communities. The Rorschach response to El Paso and Juárez these days is drug wars and the incessant killings, all of which are true and need to be understood, but at the same time there's an incredibly vibrant intellectual and cultural life here that is reflected most readily in the arts. The Binational Independent Film Festival is an important element of what's going on here on the border half-way between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.