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June, 2024

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Memoirs

Maia speaks – 1998

My mother and father both loved me dearly, both wanted children dearly, were both goodly folk, kind and supportive of me. They also both abandoned me. The scar tissues that have formed over the gaping wounds of their abandonment are thick, stiff, and inflexible. I don’t want them seen, don’t want others touching or noticing them, think of them as my personal scars, protect them as well as wish them gone. I have taken of late to kneading them in the privacy of my study, to giving them a bit more attention, to tentatively rubbing warm sweet waters into the tissues in an effort to get them to soften and yield.

After my mother and father left the commune they lived on in the early seventies, after they separated, after my father left me in his effort to find a place to live and a way to make a living, after my mother’s breakdown, after I pushed the chair over to the wall phone and climbed up on it to call my father, to whisper into the mouth piece softly enough so my mother would not hear me that he must come and take me away, that my mother was feeding me cat food because she thought the government was poisoning us with surplus foods, that I felt unsafe, that I was unsafe, that I was scared, so scared, after that, I went to live with my father.

He lived at the time with a very gentle woman who had also lived on the commune and her two daughters. I wanted to be part of their family, of his family, I wasn’t sure I could be. They all held me and loved me, but the damage had been done. I was frightened by my mother and by the demons she shared so openly with me. I was frightened my father would leave me. I showed none of this. Knew none of this then. That summer my mother went to live with her father in another state, where she bore another daughter, sent me pictures of her new baby, gave that child up for adoption. I was five years old.

Soon afterwards my father separated from the woman he lived with and her daughters. He went to court, fought for, and was awarded custody of me. He had always wanted children of his own and there I was.

My father thought being a single parent was a gift not a burden. And, inasmuch as there was nothing more important or more exciting in his life, I derived the bulk of the benefits, and of the hardships, of his intense and focused caring and love. This is not a conceit of mine; it is historical fact. My father wanted nothing more desperately than to make a good home for me and raise me healthily and happily. My father adored me. He still does.

He had a series of jobs back then, mostly as an administrator of programs for troubled teenagers. He was also unemployed for periods of time. From the end of my third year of public school though the eighth grade, when my soon to become step-mother moved in with us, we lived on the third floor of a triple decker house he owned and maintained amidst the lovely trees, on the hill top, in our multiracial corner of the city. He was always puttering around that house, painting, hammering, sweeping the hallways, taking down walls, caulking windows, checking the boilers. He built my bed and my shelves. He cooked. He loved to cook. I think he thought if he could put good food on the table and maintain a roof over our heads he was doing well as a person. He ran or jogged everyday, tried to get me to accompany him on my bicycle or on roller skates, had a few friends he prized, and always a girlfriend or two, being a man who did not much like being alone.

Even his girlfriends were mostly pluses in my life. They knew my father was deeply committed to me, that anything they might have thought possible with my father in a long-term relationship quite naturally included me. They also seemed genuinely to like me, and I knew that. I was a cute, open, gregarious, friendly child. I was an interesting person capable of sustained thoughtful conversation. I liked their company. They liked mine. They talked to me. They admired me. I admired them, their clothes, their height, their easy way in the kitchen. They brushed my hair. They brought me costume jewelry. And except for the fact I usually had to sit in the back seat of my father’s old car whenever one of them was riding with us, I enjoyed their companionship, our shared conversations, their guidance in matters of womanly style.

It was, of course, my father who did the shopping, did the laundry, cleaned the house, painted my fingernails. The original Mister Mom. “Amazing,” he would say, his eyes genuinely beaming with wonder, “what beautiful hands you have. I can’t believe I’m actually painting my little girl’s fingernails. Unbelievable. I never painted anyone’s fingernails. Hold still will you? Do you like this color? You know this is just like miniature wall painting? Do you know about Michelangelo? Look how the polish goes on so smoothly. Oops, I smeared it. How do you like this color anyway?” He became quite proficient at doing my nails. It was just his way.

My father would also always drive me to school, engage me in conversation concerning my thoughts, his thoughts, our lives, our plans for the day, the week, future travel, the news. He would take me to the movies and athletic events, go roller skating with me, go to parent teacher conferences, encourage me to have my friends over after school or for weekend sleep over parties with the inevitable dance contests that were part of the routine. Then he’d get up in the morning and make pancakes for six or seven, clean the house, clean the kitchen, do the laundry. Write in his journal. Go for a jog. Life was good. On special occasions we would go on “dates,” usually early in the evening, to a rotating bar on the top floor of a hotel overlooking the city and the river. There would be few other patrons out early enough to be sharing the floating rotunda with us. I would order a sophisticated non-alcoholic drink. He would order and nurse a beer. The waitress would bring us cocktail snacks and think we were a cute couple. The chairs were soft and upholstered. The bar spun so slowly you almost forgot you were moving. We talked and talked, the night rode by, and we never bored of things to say.

Gospel of the Redwoods

Gospel of the Redwoods – A Song
V1.

When the poet asked the redwoods

About their long past lives

They laughed so hard their seed cones

Came afallin’ from the skie

We never die, said the mothers,

To the representatives of youth

Our roots they keep on propagating

New generations of same old me

And when we fall tall over

We’re still standing don’t you see.

Chorus:

We told this to the Yurok

And they quickly understood

No beginnings and no endings

Ever conscious, ever wood.


V2.

And what I asked of happiness

Are you only old and wide

Or is there something more to know 

Of what goes on inside

And again the mighty redwoods laughed

From their roots up to their roof

You humans are such dizzy folk

We’re not quite sure you’d know the truth

Our branches are in love with light

We’re earthly bound and heaven sent

Surrounded by our friends and kin

We see and feel without lament

Chorus


V3.
You know of height, you know of light
In each of which you take delight
You feel some things I’ll never know
You know the grounds on which you grow
You know of weight and health and kin
You never stop nor quite begin
You’re a continuum of life and pleasure 
A gift for which there is no measure
Not in weeks, not days or nights
You are the mighty redwoods, 
Lovely objects of delight

Chorus

V4.
Our talk then turned to consciousness
And I’d much more to as
As I tried to wrap my mind ‘round them 
and failed in this task.
“I weigh 500 tons.” one said, 
“Yet feel quite light and thin
I’m tall and straight and happy
When I play with the north wind
I stand erect on one tap root
And dance with moons and stars
And point the compass of my passions
Toward Venus and toward Mars

Chorus

Behold this view of “The Four Noble Truths” – Jake Agnew

Life is suffering:
The first of the teachings explains
a world of hurt, beleaguered with pain.
It says that life is suffering
and full of strife and struggling.
From birth until death, in human form –
we can certainly expect to be consumed by the forlorn.
Within this incarnation which we reside
there will be sin and tarnation held inside.

Suffering has a reason:
The second of these meaningful teachings
expresses why there is pain and its reasons.
From the days before, until tomorrow and after
this dismay is important, with its sorrowful disaster.
The tragedy which we must endure and feel
with sadness and grief are from something sure and real.
The chaos of life has cause and effect,
where dismay, loss and strife have obvious connections.

The reason for suffering is attachement:
The third of these truths states the following:
the absurdity and abuse are related to wallowing
in desire, needs and attachments of want,
with a fire that feeds, combats our senses and taunts.
The vexing hate and confusion we sustain
are connected, related to the delusions entertained.
When we long for an outcome to be consistently granted,
we feel wronged with doubt – succumbing to differences from what was demanded.

Disconnecting from attachment brings the cessation of suffering:
The fourth jewel of wisdom that is taught and shared
is an important tool of precision in thought and cares.
Liberation from suffering can be truthfully attained,
with a situation of less struggling, and fewer pains.
By practicing detachment and ceasing desire –
with these tactics we can combat the grief, and fire.
Enlightenment is within our reach and potential
when using this insight intense, of these teachings so influential.

Written by Jake Onami Agnew, 2009

Poems by Others

Tryst with Death – Gina Puorro

death asked me to join him for dinner

so I slipped into my favorite black dress

that I had been saving for a special occasion

and let him walk me to our candlelit tryst.

He ordered a ribeye, extra rare

I ordered two desserts and red wine

and then I sipped

and wondered

why he looked so familiar

and smelled like earth and memory.

He felt like a place both faraway

and deep within my body

A place that whispers to me

on the crisp autumn breeze

along the liminal edges of dusk and dawn

somewhere between dancing

and stillness.

He looked at me

with the endless night sky in his eyes

and asked

‘Did you live your life, my love?’

As I swirled my wine in its glass

I wondered If I understood the thread I wove into the greater fabric

If I loved in a way that was deep and freeing

If I let pain and grief carve me into something more grateful

If I made enough space to be in awe that flowers exist

and take the time to watch the honeybees

drink their sweet nectar

I wondered what the riddles of regret and longing

had taught me

and if I realized just how

beautiful and insignificant and monstrous and small we are

for the brief moment that we are here

before we all melt back down

into ancestors of the land.

Death watched me lick buttercream from my fingers

As he leaned in close and said

‘My darling, it’s time.’

So I slipped my hand into his

as he slowly walked me home.

I took a deep breath as he leaned in close

for the long kiss goodnight

and I felt a soft laugh leave my lips

as his mouth met mine

because I never could resist a man

with the lust for my soul in his eyes

and a kiss that makes my heart stop.