Walk & Don t Look Back - Peter Tosh & Mick Jagger

I have a pink gingham apron, autographed on the pocket with a sharpie marker by exene cervenka

Fucking hell, there are so many disappointments in life. That bonfire that never caught on. Your mother never loved me. My torn fishenets right before you seduced me.. The John Prine eight track that melted in a heat wave traveling I5 on our acid trip in 73. The broken glass. That evening camping in Clear Lake when we laughed so hard we spilled the honey jar filled with peyote. Why I did not have your baby back then when I was in college. The time I sliced open a just line caught jack mackerel in the middle of the Bermuda triangle and had no wasabi.

The Fields of Humboldt

Woke to the tallest trees bathed in different particles of light. Meadow and field benevolent among silent elvin anarchists. A trickster pulled me  out  into  the moonlight , then you know as things go , eclipse and shatter find treasure under the heap of tears and stars. Fifteen girls in matching red stitched up leather cowboy boots ride up the riverbed   gravel    crackling    under hoofs   emolliated    by rain&honey .
              Are all of our meanderings in vain?
  All the beauty of the world is encased in diamonds  gone to waste by the hands of reckless  and    careless men  all our passions dashed by the cloister of moss    by sepulcher    by chalice&two step.

Val Del Omar - Variaciones sobre una Granada

Three Dances Paul Bowles 1929

Ahoy from the Roy Fox

While eating hot dogs with louie out at noyo harbor yesterday

speaking of the ebbing and flowing of tides how the moon can turn you inside out

make iconic and meaningless our meanderings our tenacity our failings louie quotes an old zen koan that goes something like this

one must stay awake while falling down the well

perhaps you’d find a handle in there to grab as you fall or land on the proverbial donkey’s back there may be a spike of jagged metal at the bottom waiting to impale

your already beatotshit heart and there may just be a pool of calm water bathed in light you just really don’t know do you but I suppose if you are awake you’ll remember what inspired you to become human the next time around.

The Sylphs arrival

closing the gate

How does one watch this world end

You just do

The wind will tell you stories but birds will never lie.

The sky will speak in tomes of lavender and Swahili 

 tired    filled    with    remorse.

Yesterday, me and the dogs saw angels flying. I swear.

No one I know is sleeping.

The moss in the watershed is curled up and fetal……….. no birds nests

Raven killed their offspring. No one is telling.

a tale from long ago

A litany of sharp words flow in a berating river of cuts. My spirit tries

to soar above the pain. I draw swords. I cut the little rabbit open. no

blood. Hack! goes the cleaver as I seperate the hind legs from the

spine...She says, "I don't fucking care what you feel!" 

these words spoken by my best

friend.

Each breath or gasp is a genuflection to the diminishing sureness of all

things held permanant and dear.

The skin is pale pink with marbeling of white, Delicate. The kidneys rest

inside an envelope of fat, they're round and red like the lips of children,

I pop them out and slice them into perfectly sliced bits for the kitties,

the texture of thick silk, no emotion, they lie in a perfect pile, neatly in

a White porcelain bowl, the Black cats pounce! purrs and whistles" you make

me Sick" I can't stand being in the same room with you!" Lauren, my sous

chef cries as I sit stunned..  If I don't cook the Yellow potatoes right

away they begin to turn Brown, I layer them carefully in the Black iron pan,

staggering the shapes larger to smaller, brushing each layer with clarified

butter and a drizzle of heavy cream, the white melts into the pale Yellow ,

bits of cracked Black pepper a scattering of Bronze fennel leaves.. the hot

hot oven collides with the butter and edges Blacken, silhouettes of herb

look like the forest after a fire, stark contrasting shapes, delicate and

vulnerable.

"Honey, the shop is my new baby, I don't have time for you anymore, you're a

big girl now. " I am 11 years old.

The steak sears on the grill. The duck fat sizzles in the pan. I flip the

leeks over in the hot olive oil. They burn Black if you don't flip them

right away.

I was never attached to my name, it has always felt like an anomoly, a

spaceship, a crucifix. I have always felt the my given name had nothing to

do with me, when I hear it spoken I am astonished, my name to me is like

margerine or polyester, it has kept me from the actualization of my soul's

desire, my spirit's ease, if i changed it tho, I might remove my history, I

might remove those faded Sepia last breath images of my parents and family,

even though they now feel like a myth, as if they never happened, as if I

was born of coyotes, raised by cabbages and abandoned to the nest of a

cynical yet comedic band of feral ravens. I can't seen to find a place in

this world that feels comfortable, no matter how much I cook, no matter how

many layers of down I sleep in, no matter how many worn pairs of jeans I

own, no matter how many pairs of shoes I have this insatiable need to feed

people, even if they don't want me too. I have people who want me to feed

them, even if I don't want to. I feel like I carry alot on me and I don't

want it.

Yet I did this, this restaurant, this husband who is rarely home, this

barren womb,this tired voice, this kneeling acolyte, this resentful child,

this battered princess, this parched artist.

I ride a tightrope between acomplishment and submission (failure), though

never in the history of my women has there been submission in over 100

years. I find in my matriarchy, the deep green Tree Arm Pit, the place where

I hide all my stress under the limbs of her great strong arms, present.

Silent. Resilant. Alone, not lonely, oppressed yet not victim, clear of

karma, leeway to fuck up, Merrily..

If I put ground Sumac berries in lemon juice the color is Magenta.

If I put saffron in white wine , the color is Yellow.

If I macerate chives, just cut from the garden, with olive oil, the color is

Green.

I know the Cornucopia mushroom will turn Zinfandel Black.

Jasmine blooms in a profusion of sweet scent at my door. I carry in me the

myth of my hands washed in Cobalt, I carry in me an ability to heal.

Within the Red rose or the White calla, A Lilac's elusive sweetness,

thrashing of manzanita blossoms, scratches the skin, airborne acacia lemon

Yellow covers me in fine dust, Here, I feel I can wander about unoticed. I

feel as if I am at the other end of a funnel, life pouring in bigger than it

can come out. I feel in me the light , changing, pouring, diffusing.. I feel

the universe finally colliding with all my pain and I finally feel alright.

"You know, you are commiting a mortal sin! My father says, driving me down

Pico Blvd, to my Confirmation. What?, "Yes, your mother was married before

me and she divorced him, we were married in a civil court, and our marriage

is not recognized by the Catholic Church, so , your birth is not

acknowledged by the Catholic Church, which makes you a liar and a bastard!

"Daddy, what is a bastard?"  I am 12 years old.

You look down at the cutting board and there are substances, some llike

blood... beets.

Some like shit...duck sauce with Figs and Balsamic... Some like tears. The

Ice Water Glass Spilled.

Emotions fill up and flow over , rushed by an impatient tide.

A Moon Thwarted.      The phosporesence postponed by a convoluted tourist.

Mike brings me Blue and pale Turquoise eggs this morning, his Arcana hens

must be especially fertile. Each egg I crack open on the edge of a maple

board is a deep Yellow. Yolk spills from the egg, almost Orange it is round

and supple, glistening in the halo of clear fluid, often a marbeling of

Crimson blood lingers, chips of Blue shells floating. Suspended.. Amniotic.

In Paris last fall leaves brushing along the Boulevard St . Michel were the

color of these yolks, dry now they are souveniers of the street, taped to my

window, with a ocean behind them. I have an ocean behind parts of me. I

languish in  Emotion, like unpredictible tides, or moons given proxy of

orbit to comets. I lanquish in emotion arriving as estranged relatives,

skeletons and,or even apparitions. Exhaustion sets in.

Wounds appear and disappear like old fruit, once ripe and perhaps even

luscious, now somehow vanished into A Perplexed Universe.

I have a tendency to dwell on things. I say" I'm sorry" first, "Oh, it's ok,

it dosen't really matter

"Are you alright?".

The water is boiling now, and steam rises infusing the scents of bay leaves

and lemon and Lampang peppercorns in to the air. I am wrestling with a 25

pound octopus alone in my kitchen and it is longer than me, the long grey

tentacles protruding from a head, a head bigger than mine and a strange bird

like beak. Wise old eyes. Shaman Eyes. I grapple, clumsy and burdened and

ackward and flop the creature into the pot, it turns the most magnificant

colors of Pink and Mauve and Purple and Blue Black and I know this octopus

must not know what an enchanting color it has become, or even seen the

metamorpohsis of shape and texture and essence, upon the aftermath of it's

earthly transition.

We don't think we can take this anymore, this service.. we women who hold

our forts between our legs.. we women who buck and buck and the horse still

rides US we women who long for the soft golden meadow......... a whisper of

wind.

The place where feet don't ache, where the lower back don't ache, where the

fort cuts into our inner thigh, a dent mark

          a red line

          a bruise mark

          a wince in the darkness

The sum of my existance is bathed in olive oil and lemon, perhaps a small

crush of garlic added in the final toss...

The long sleepy ride home, Yellow line buzzing hard on the Black snake road

dead deer drunk rednecks that last table that sent the fish back the tears

shed in the kitchen before anyone got there, the deep breath that sent one

into the arena. Hungry lions, mean like Romans, capitalists, ungrateful.. We

manifested this, we Goddesses so we could feel what it is like to be human.

11/17/99

You can’t ride your pony through the pearly gates

Core.

Emptied out humans taking out all their shit

And dumping it into to the ocean .   

Deva.

“No turning back now       your prayer     won’t  buy  you

   a ticket to paradise   we    know   things   about

 the stars things that you will never know unless you

 move Devotion from journey to the               tidepool

                                                                                sea cave

                                                                               urchin shell “

constellation bathed in fate.

for kevin opstedal

 splayed out at the foot of mt tam

 i mucked about in the mud of the minus tide.

 i spun about
 swirled and danced as if

 i was free

 as if

 i

 was 

 faery

i know things. type. letterpress. alchemy. witchcraft.

Some people say the world is coming to an end. That the vein burst and we are bleeding to death. I think we are. There is no triage for this. Stuff the leak with poems kevin

That what I say.   neruda    cummings    sze     plath   di prima    corso   ferlinghetti

rimbaud

             blake

whitman    kerouac    ginsberg     bukowski   snyder   patchen   mcclure

             yea that’ll stop it.

6. 6.

just lately, right around 2am, i can hear jets flying back and forth along the coastline
this goes on for hours so i finally rise as the dawn cracks at 5 as the ravens arrive with one big
coo as rosie's paw and wimper nudge for attention by then i am exhausted by my dreaming often
apocalyptic often quagmired in some kinda gestalt that i know i got to work this shit out by now
by ebb and flow and often that the dreamtime is more soothing especially these days that the waking time

is


and i know i know i know deep down inside that all my longings and all my hopes all things dashed and driven out by the angry and vengeful fates now make sense now have a clear voice now become
my pony to ride into the mystery.

Looking at the earth from the inside out

Was my collapse a precedent for this one Would I Consider Myself noteworthy enough to Track Every Natural Catastrophe including my own the memo of

Personal sinkhole tornado flash flood oilspill earthquake hurricane volcanic eruption wings broken by crude oil sticking  to every cell in my body were I to write down the tale the devas told me last week of something more terrible  than we can imagine coming at us how they burrowed unseasonably and gathered all the dry wood they could carry built dams carted off acorn killed their offspring denied life to the new generation hunkered down for the fall of man the forest got real quite bat&owl just watching not singing how about this they cried.. how about this.

a wonderful memory long since passed but still yummy and alive

Theresa Whitehill, her husband, Paulo Ferreira, and I came to Stags’ Leap in July with the 

intention of extrapolating the sensory memory of this place into spoken word and cuisine. 

We came to create a visceral interpretation of a place that evokes Saudades. 

I arrived at the estate, after a three hour drive from my home on the Mendocino coast. 

The heat of Napa Valley quickly penetrated my skin and I welcomed the warmth and dry 

crackled air. We walked together all over the property, through the winemaker’s apothecary 

garden, up along the slopes of the palisades, into the wine caves, and I began taking a 

mental inventory of the wealth of herbs, flowers, and food plants. I settled myself into 

Canary cottage and watched Theresa write, as she began her process of articulating all the 

images and sensations she was experiencing around her. 

How does one translate earth and rock and water and vineyard into poetic form, into 

flavor and texture and nourishment? For me it began within a landscape that is ancient 

and fertile and sacred. This landscape is where the muse resides. 

What Theresa expressed in word and verbal form, I translated into culinary and sensory 

form. We collaborated on the concept and structure of images, flavors, sensibility, and 

sensuality. Inspired by Robert’s gorgeous winemaking, we connected this landscape to 

language, language to food, food to wine. 

On the shelf of the cottage I found a curious book, Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs. 

Having an interest in herbal medicine for many years, I was instantly intrigued, and quickly 

found a shady lounge chair and immersed myself in the fascinating world of myth and lore 

and magic and medicine. 

There were so many wonderful and amusing concoctions and potions and many of them 

included ingredients I wanted to focus on and use in my menu—plants and herbs that were 

growing on the estate, fruits and flowers that conjured Saudades for me. I lay on the lounge and 

read these anecdotes out loud to Theresa as she mused and made notations, throwing to her 

bouquets of scent and flavors, mythological remedies for lovesickness, or homesickness, the 

place of Saudades, potions to fall in love by, or to free zombies from the half dead...(that recipe 

entails eating pistachio nuts, from the shell, preferably the red ones). 

We were entranced and transported by all this incredible information. My favorite being a 

recipe for Invisibility... Soak poppy seeds in wine for fifteen days; then drink the infused wine 

for five days while fasting... This will enable one to become invisible at will. Hence the Emulsion 

of Poppy Seeds and Champagne, Cooling the Braised Endives and Leeks, which we served as the salad course 

of our event… 

Our presentation of Saudades at Stags’ Leap, on the manor house porch at twilight, was a 

weaving together of the poetry and the food, with each poem followed by the course specifically 

designed for that poem. Theresa’s performance was in the true poetic spoken word vernacular; 

my expression accompanied her words with flavors, texture, a connection to her language, and 

the wine. 

My menu was inspired by many different things... recipes based upon ancient remedies, 

potions to conjure love and protection, abundance and creative fullness… all the things we 

want all beings to have. I imagined simple combinations to nourish the already rich and fertile 

spark of care, conviviality, and friendship. 

We will not talk of the long post lunch naps, Viognier-induced, nor the hike through 

rattlesnake territory above the vineyard, nor the valley at sunset, the twilight sky, the color of 

which I have only seen in Montpelier. We will not talk of the haunted croquet court or the 

moon garden resplendent in jasmine, phlox, and gardenia. 

I used many foods growing on the estate: eggplant, ollalieberry, cactus pear, rose geranium, all 

the culinary herbs... Sitting on the manor house porch, watching the rabbits running through 

the vineyard inspired the rabbit loins wrapped in pastry. I could smell the pungent herbs of 

rosemary, lavender, and thyme emanating off their backs as they ran wildly past, the heat of 

the sun charging the olfactory hit. 

All these elements were thrown into the pot of inspiration, fusing each sensation into the 

light above the promontory at dawn, the glint of water shimmering on vine leaves, the chirp 

of cicada at dusk, the musty smell of old stone steps, a pulled cork, a fragrant nose of Petite 

Syrah. Saudades... fate, longing, memory. 

—