clarahsu – Page 43

At The Dinner Table

Conversations around the dining table reveal personalities. The cautious, the skilled, the frank, the bored, the easy to please and the hard to please. It is a tug of dynamics engaged in the most civilized way, with food and drinks and everyone sitting down. Most people try to get through dinner without causing too much of a stir and conversation usually falls on the mundane side. But why should we spar? Why get into agitating topics like politics and judgements on the most recent catastrophic relationship? To maintain an outward peace means we’ll never get to know each other.

But my family does not have to be my community. I think they represent the greater world, a sampling of characters with different views that will never understand each other. We come together by the bond of marriage and blood, and like the greater world, learn to coexist side by side.

Jobs, If Trained

After living in San Francisco for a year, my friend Bari from the Sahara Desert finally found a full time job in a Moroccan restaurant. Before this he had various part-time jobs. The most challenging one was working in a pastry assembly line, where in the wee hours he ran back and forth in the factory pouring large buckets of dough and constantly monitoring the machinery. He told me only the Mongolians survive there because they are physically superior. Bari (being a nomad, no less) lasted only a month in that job and had to admit defeat. I can’t imagine a little innocent croissant bearing such human costs.

My daughter, being a waitress, always tips heavy (20%) when she goes out to eat. She understands the underbelly of a restaurant, where many invisible, underprivileged people work to bring about a pleasurable dining experience. I think about these things now, when I go out, and eat my banana-chocolate muffin with a certain degree of reverence.

To Love An Artist

Brent Benaway, painter, my daughter Julia’s boyfriend, left a stack of his paintings in my garage. The one in the front is a girl in a hooded sweatshirt sitting on the floor holding her knees with her hands. Her sneakered feet crossed at the ankles, jeans has a small torn in one area. Her face is pale, mask-like, and her eyes are two black holes without pupils. “Is it Julia?” I asked Brent. “No, she was my ex. I painted her as a birthday present but she didn’t appreciate it so I took it back.”

To be indifferent or uncaring to an artist’s work is to say goodbye to the relationship. I don’t think one needs to understand the art or to like it, but there needs to be an intense interest in the artist’s expression. The soul of the artist resides in his/her work. If the soul is not nurtured the body rejects the closeness.

The Australians Got It

1206Australian_Cave — An Australian cave illustration

Imagine applying for a job and don’t have to fill out a form stating your sex, age, ethnicity and/or sexual orientation. Your eligibility for hire is based solely on qualification. Imagine the dynamics this liberation brings. Will prejudice and injustice of various kinds be erased more quickly than imposing a quota for equal opportunity? My sister who is visiting from Australia is surprised at all the “junk” we have to include as information. I am equally stunned that they do not in Australia.

A couple of years ago I went to see Sins Invalid, an eye-opening show on disability, sexuality and gender variant. I came away with the knowledge that between black and white (male and female) there are shades and shades of gray in between. Our bodies in all forms and shapes are lovely in their creation. To classify is to exclude and divide. The Australians got it, or at least they are moving in the right direction.

Poetria Inception

With the moon eclipsing, the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano in Chile erupting, and the earth still tremulous under Japan’s soil, three women sat in the warmth of a kitchen in San Francisco divining a new beginning. Jeanne Lupton, Kellyann Conway and I met each other at the fateful Sacred Grounds Cafe. I love Jeanne’s revealing tankas and Kellyann’s intuitive verse and they in turn like my penetrating style. Coming together to co-create seems natural and timely.

In Patti Smith’s memoir “Just Kids”, she talked about an unrealized vision of Jimi Hendrix, of musicians from all disciplines and cultures playing in a circle until there is harmony. Poetria will realize this vision with words.

My Liang Mountain

One of my favorite classical Chinese novels is Tales of the Water Margin. It describes the release of 108 spirits that had been trapped by an enormous tortoise. The spirits took human forms and became outlaws. They gathered in the Liang Mountain and fought government corruption and injustice.

After wandering for over forty years, I walked into the Sacred Grounds Cafe one afternoon in 2001 and knew that I had arrived at my Liang Mountain. The outlaws were people from all walks of life but their spirits were unmistakable. They recognized me as I recognized them and we banded together ever since.

There are a few Liang Mountains in San Francisco. North Beach’s Cafe Trieste is presided over by Jack Hirschman, our former Poet Laureate. You don’t need a pass traveling from mountain to mountain but you may feel a little bit alienated without seeing a familiar face and the outlaws tend to huddle in groups. I was walking towards Trieste one day and saw such a group sitting in front of the cafe. Before I opened the door I heard my name. It was not a call out to me, but someone had written a poem with me in mind and was about to share it with the others. I turned around and saw Peter Sherburn-Zimmer’s angelic face, equally surprised to find me standing there. After he read he handed me the poem and I felt doubly initiated.

Going Places

It took many years before I had the vocabulary to define myself. Restless spirit is one of them. The term explains why I don’t focus well and get bored easily. Traveling suits my temperament, especially when I do it alone. Whether it is a long drive down to L.A. or wandering in the souqs in Morocco, life is most purposeful with the forward motion.

My daughter Julia and her boyfriend Brent are moving out of the Bay Area to Portland, Oregon. Last night they packed until 4 in the morning. Today is a new day for them as they move forward toward the greater truth. May their steps be light and graceful in their dance across the universe.

Ground Beef Vs. Filet Mignon

When poets talk about other poets we come up with the damnedest analogy. But who is comparing, except those who think they are better than others? The Almighty looks down on earth and separates the ground beef from the filet mignon. No more is needed to be said.

Words are a poet’s toy. We play as children in the same sand pit until some clever beings decide to divide and conquer, bait us with fame and riches and whatever egotistical massage. If we take them seriously we’ll ultimately surrender our soul as well as our toy.

My friend Don Brennan is quick to block the butcher’s knife and stop the chopping before we all get sick. “I’m the loser poet.” He said it without a flinch, and we go back to playing with words as children.

Music Orgy

I enjoy having the house by myself on Saturday nights while Dore does his show, Tangents, at the radio station. I hardly listen to his show. After a long day of teaching I find his selection usually too energetic. All I want is quiet.

We receive three to five CDs in the mail every day. When Dore auditions he puts the music on loud. The sound fills the kitchen and the living room. Escape is difficult, even when I keep my door closed, the pulse of drums and bass seep through.

Sometimes though, his music connected with me on a gut level and would change my state of being. One day I walked into the house to the music of cello and piano. The two instruments were in a most intense dialogue, drawing from each other’s breath, entwining, bemoaning, separating, coming back together, making love, urging the listener, stirring up an emotion that needed immediate fulfillment. I joined the orgy. Pen to paper, poetry flowed out like a third stream.

Photo credit: Raymond Van Tassel

Map of the World

Tuva map — map courtesy of Friends of Tuva

At Cafe Trieste I was introduced to Gunther, writer and map designer. Gunther knew all the cities and towns in the United States and pretty much everywhere in the world. My friend Steve and I tested him on a few and he was ready with an answer down to the proximity of the towns next to their major cities.

Every year around my birthday my partner Dore would renew the activity of finding me a map of the world. I had requested it as a birthday present many years ago. We had looked in map stores and travel stores a few years back. This year we looked on line but the world map that we are looking for still has not been born yet.

We are looking for a map that has Kyzyl, the capital city of the Tuva Republic, Russia. Kyzyl is important to us because of our friend Paul Pena, the blind bluesman in the film Genghis Blues, who learned overtone singing by listening to the short wave radio, traveled to Tuva and participated in their throat singing competition. So far, Kyzyl does not appear in any map of the world.

I was going to ask Gunther why Kyzyl is not included in the maps, but our conversation switched to Richard Feynman, the physicist and musician who had schemed to visit Kyzyl during the last years of his life. We went on to Oppenheimer and Einstein, the geniuses who were both scientists and artists, and didn’t look back.