clarahsu – Page 37

A Friend In Need

Who is Gaya Jenkins? I know her and I don’t. Gaya was one of my first poetry friends at Sacred Grounds. We went out to dinner one time. I gave her rides back to her Chinatown residence after the reading. We got close, once, when I didn’t want to go home and she needed to make a delivery in Petaluma. We drove up, half crazed in our respective mood, both needed to take a time out from reality. And then Gaya was gone. She moved around the country while I faithfully remain at Sacred Grounds.

I heard from her at times, through emails. She was not well. Always struggling, always fighting her own body, the mortal combat between good and evil. Yet she was concerned with my son Lawrence—all the surgeries that he had had to go through. In her dark times she put out good thoughts for him. Lawrence survived, but Gaya is still battling, this time more than ever, when her cancer is becoming vicious and out of control.

Death may be imminent, but her spirit is strong. Gaya needs prayers, blessings, thoughts, words or whatever healing energy each of us can impart. Because she is a poet. Because she believes in the collective energy. Because she is love.

How to Make Menemen

Feasting in Murat's dress shop with Menemen in the foreground

It’s tomato season. The farmers market down at Alemany has stall after stall of ravishing beauties. They have been ripened in the sun (not machine) and their sweetness naturally flavor whatever dish that I cook.

This is the time for Menemen, the Turkish scrambled eggs. When I was in Istanbul I befriended two shop keepers—Murat and Mehmet— and hung out with them whenever I could. We sat on the sidewalk of the narrow street in front of their shops and drank Turkish tea with lots of sugar. They boiled water using a propane stove. Upon hearing that I like Menemen, Murat brought his frying pan out and Mehmet made it for me.

The trick, is ripe tomatoes. The secret ingredient is paprika. Combine with a little cumin, salt and pepper, cook the chopped tomatoes down to a medium thick sauce and pour beaten eggs over it. Since then, scrambled egg has a new meaning in my life and I hope it will to yours too.

North Beach, At Night

Bill Mercer’s Question Project opened its fourth installment at the Live Worms Gallery yesterday. Five poets—Stephanie Manning, Buford Buntin, Mark Johnson, Jack Hirschman, George Marchi—and artist Edward Millet, gave poetic responses to Bill’s black ink, brush stroke artworks. Chuck Bernstein played the berimbau. North Beach wine hostess Lonnie set up a table serving wine and juice, and the beat was on.

San Francisco’s poetic luminaries made their appearances. Bill’s project has pulled the community together by involving artists and poets to express themselves around a theme. The place began to thin out around nine o’clock. A man walked in with his own bottle of wine was asked to put it down. “A new face,” Lonnie said. She knew everyone. Another man came in, not so steady on his feet. Soon there were three of them. They were not there for the artworks. It took a while before Bill could politely usher the men out the door and lock it.

Just after Lonnie left, a small woman knocked. She wanted to use the toilet. OK. Bill said. When she came out she eyed the opened bottle that was left on the table.

“May I have a cup?” She asked to no one in particular, and began helping herself.

Bill came over. “No.” He said. His big body hovered over her.

Instead of leaving, the woman sat down on Bill’s chair and whined. “Why you bein’ mean ta me? Ah jus whon a cup with ice, that all.”

Bill did better than that. He filled the cup with ice and poured a full cup of wine. The woman followed him to the door. He handed her the cup when she walked out.

“They said over at the Trieste, if Live Worms doesn’t have wine at a show it’s not worth going.” Someone chuckled.

The alcohol level was becoming more and more saturated as the night wore on. When I walked into the street the bars were filled with people. Someone behind me was rushing. I could hear her high-heels stomping on the ground. I moved away. She stumbled and plastered herself on a restaurant window. Young, blond, well dressed, stoned.

Sanmao & The Crying Camels

Stories are seeds that get planted in my mind when I read them. Stories fade in time, but certain images take root.

I dream of a white, round adobe hut surrounded by night. I dream of camels crying with their lips pulled back and their huge ocher-colored teeth showing. I dream of a long train platform with the sound of a whistle trailing behind a departed train. I dream of a young woman with long black hair in a multi-color dress painting the letters on her husband’s grave. These and others have become part of my narrative and indeed I have set out to seek them.

The author Sanmao (1943-1991) left Taiwan and lived in the Western Sahara with her Spanish husband. She wrote short stories, all of them fictionalized autobiographies. Their ending was tragic: he drowned in a diving accident. She went back to Taiwan and later committed suicide by hanging herself.

I thought of Sanmao and her story, The Crying Camels, when tears rolled down the eyes of the camel who took me into the Sahara. But unlike her account of brutality, rape and murder, mine was just the sand and wind.

Portals

It was 2005, after I moved to San Francisco from the East Bay, that Dore took me to hear Lhasa De Sela at the Great American Music Hall. The band consisted of a cellist, a drummer and I think, a keyboardist and guitarist. I was instantly captured by Lhasa’s voice and the haunting melodies. Each piece was unique in the instrumentation and her persona changed with the music. Toward the end of the concert, Lhasa decided to tell a story. The stage was very dark as I observed her from the crowd. The musicians were quiet. The house was quieter still. She told the story of life, how we come to be and how we move on, from one portal to another. At the end of the story the music resumed and she sang her last song.

Lhasa’s voice, her music and her story stayed with me. I later wrote a poem based on her story. The next year when Lhasa came to town, I went to hear her alone.

The music was the same. She was as captivating as I had remembered. But when it came toward the end of the show, when I eagerly waited to hear her story again, she didn’t mention it. There was no story. I left disappointed.

In fact, nobody remembered that there was ever a story in the first show. Dore didn’t remember, nor the few friends that were there that night. Was I the only one who heard it? Had Lhasa transported me to another plane?

Lhasa passed away on January 1, 2010, age 37, of breast cancer. I was left holding my poem as she went on to another portal.

What’s In A Voice

hamed nikpay — Hamed Nikpay at a Tangents party, 2006

I grew up listening to European operas, oratorios and lieder. The classical way of singing, while glorious, eventually lost its attraction on me. I remember attending a spiritual “workshop” in college. The man closed his eyes and hummed a few notes. There was no discernible technique nor did the voice project. He said, “This is spiritual. It comes from the depth of suffering.” And I knew it was the rawness of the human voice that had moved me.

In our house, we receive two to five music CDs a day. Dore cannot audition them fast enough and many sit in boxes and eventually are forgotten. He has his favorites and I have mine. We don’t always agree, and Dore has a much wider taste in music than I do. But we can always agree on the very best, when the soul comes through the voice and moves us.

Our favorites: The Senegalese singer and guitarist Baba Maal, the American born Mexican-Lebanese-Jewish singer Lhasa de Sela, (now deceased), Ravid Kahalani of Yemen Blues and the Iranian singer Hamad Nikpay.

We live in a treasure trove, surrounded by yet to be discovered jewels. It is the luck of the draw when Dore picks out a CD to listen to. But that voice, that voice that possesses the power, that calls to us, remains rare.

Photo by Raymond Van Tassel

Mourny

Never have we heard a cat that mourns. The sound comes from the throat, dry and monotonous, like a little child is about to lose his voice after a long period of crying. In the beginning we suspected the stork might have accidentally dropped a baby in our backyard. But when we went outside to investigate and we couldn’t find anything. Then one morning we looked out the window and saw a big beige and white cat lounging in the bush. It had to be the source of that unusual voice.

Our three cats were protective of their territories. I heard the haunting voice mostly at night, heart-breaking sound of a lonely soul calling out to the universe. We call him back—Mourny, Mourny—.

After many months Mourny no longer ran away at the sight of us and sometimes our cats even shared the sun with him. Mourny came very close to the cat door but failed to have the courage to come inside the house. During the rainy months Dore put a blanket inside a little plastic shelter and we knew he stayed there quite often. The first time Dore put a dish of food outside for Mourny he forgot to take the bowl back. We got raccoons checking into our house instead of our desired guest.

Somehow I don’t hear Mourny’s lament so much anymore. Maybe the occasional feeding, our voices and cat friends are what he needs.

The Fourth Drum

Martin Kent, multi-instrumentalist, spent a summer visiting his famous brother, didjeridu master Stephen Kent, and came to Clarion Music regularly to practice on the piano. Martin made two little friends that year—my two children, Lawrence and Julia, who came to work with me and took swimming lessons at the YMCA across the street.

When the children became too rowdy around Martin we decided that he should give us (children, me and another lady who worked at the shop) drumming lessons. We began with the African djembe, then the Middle Eastern doumbek and even tried our hands on the Indian tablas. It was with great fondness that we said goodbye to Martin at the end of the summer, when he went back to the UK.

This brief exposure of drumming planted a seed in me, so that many years later I began playing the hand drum when reciting poetry. I collected drums that worked well with the voice. In a dusty music shop in Essaouira, Morocco, I fell in love with a goat skin bendir (frame drum with a snare). From the internet I found the Drum People and spoke with the maker, Keith Little Badger, and auditioned his Native American drums over the phone. At Clarion I picked out an 18 inch beauty that was full of resonance no matter the weather condition. I play these three drums alternately. Only the fourth one sits in silence. It is a log drum from Taos, New Mexico. I bought it before I knew how to play, when I could only appreciate drums aesthetically and use it as a side table.

Photo by Bob Hsiang.

Without A Camera

My birthday in the Sahara with two Berbers, hashish and sand cake

I surrendered my digital camera when I sold Clarion Music in 2005. The camera was a business purchase so it rightfully went to the new owners. Since then I have been without a camera.

It was a conscious decision not to buy another one, especially when I made my solo journey to Morocco in 2007. I knew it was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but as a poet I wanted to use my eyes and my pen to record the journey, and not through a lens.

It was a lofty goal. At times I regretted not being able to take a snapshot of this or that. But the universe provided. On the bus to the Sahara I met a Japanese tourist with a great camera. We ended up going into the desert together and I was gifted with six photos later through email.

Without a camera I became less of a target in the strange country. The hustlers didn’t care to spend their energy on people who didn’t look like they have much. After I returned home, two friends got infected by my journey and went to Morocco for vacation. They had a great time and took hundreds of photos. On their last day they went one last time to the souk (market) and the camera was robbed. What was left in their memory was bitterness.

Photo by Ken Aoki

The Planets in My Room

The planets are still, suspended in the dark as I sleep. And before waking I sense their odd shaped bodies. Not just rounded, but rectangular and pentagonal, lying in stillness, surrounding me. They are habitable. Some have a glint, like the reflection of water. Several moons have mysterious marking. Another holds human memories of youth. Father, mother, uncles and grandparents. Two have the first hint of life embedded in them. A water hole, primitive yet unmistakable. Behind my head is a little mud disc. It too, carries a pulse.

When I open my eyes I see my room as it has always been. The planets have flattened themselves on the walls and become two dimensional. The mirror, the three drums with animal hide, the aboriginal paintings, the family photos, and the little hummingbird nest with remains that I saved from a bush. Was it dream or imagination? Did the objects reveal themselves when I was receptive? I have no clue, only that I must write this down.