Calaveras 2020 (“No Country for Codgers” edition)

Some hoped it would be the ballot.
Others feared it could be the bullet.
But, one morning, they found him there
Midst-Twittling: “Witch hunt! Very unfai…”
Donald John, dead on the toilet.

Cheshire Joe, always the gent.
Did it surprise you how he went?
Two scoops of vanilla
But the cone was the killer
So, choking, to the hereafter, he was sent.

So little depends on Pale Mike:
Apologist for whateveryoulike.
Never actually alive, can he die?
This manure-wheelbarrow bedecked by a fly,
So closed the lid on them both, buried alike.
(Nevermore.)

The calavera (skull) is a typical Mexican satirical poetic mode. It may have originated as early as the 1500s, but grew in popularity in the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The calavera poem is traditionally associated with Day of the Dead, but it became a journalistic genre during the regime of Portfirio Diaz. (Fliers that circulated during those times included angry verses against the dictator Diaz and his cabinet members.) Throughout Mexico, calaveras were also dedicated to working class people, always with a tone sarcasm and humor at the inevitability of death. (Time to write a calavera or two about some folks you know!)

related: camote, calacas, calabazas

otros: medium, universal

Mitla 2016

“Mitla is the second-most important archeological site in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, and the most important of the Zapotec culture.

“The name Mitla is derived from the Nahuatl name Mictlán, meaning the ‘place of the dead’ or ‘underworld.’ Its Zapotec name is Lyobaa, which means ‘place of rest.’ The name Mictlán was Hispanicized or transliterated to Mitla by the Spanish colonists. It was established as a sacred burial site by the Zapotec, but the architecture and designs also show the influence of the Mixtec, who had become prominent in the area during the peak of Mitla settlement.

“Mitla is one of the pre-Columbian sites that express the Mesoamerican belief that death was the most consequential part of life after birth. It was built as a gateway between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Nobles buried at Mitla were believed to be destined to become ‘cloud people,’ who would intercede on behalf of the population below.”

(Wikipedia)

 

mascarillas

 "They were days fording that cauterized terrain. The boy had found some crayons and painted his facemask with fangs and he trudged on uncomplaining."

Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006)

(nostalgia for 2008, mascaras del Mueso Rafael Coronel)

Azacuanes

“There were days of thousands of Broad-winged Hawks (Buteo platypterus), great ‘kettles’ made up of hundreds. But these hawk flights were insignificant compared with the azacuanes—enormous flights of great streams of birds at mountaintop height in El Salvador. The azacuanes are an amalgam of several species—Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura), Swainson’s Hawks (Buteo swainsonii), Broad-winged Hawks, and a few other species tagging along. The flights of azacuanes are fairly predictable. For generations, rural Salvadorans governed their activities by the azacuanes; northbound azacuanes heralded the onset of rains and the time to plant, while southbound azacuanes meant that the dry season and harvest time were at hand.

“Autumn flights of azacuanes are spectacular. For hour after hour, day after day, flocks of these birds pass along the peaks and ridges of El Salvador. In 1971 I saw azacuanes daily at Cerro Verde between October 10 and 24. They came in flocks of 100-1,000 birds, with stragglers from one group almost overtaken by the next. Between 8 am and 4 pm there was almost never a moment when at least one flock was not visible.

“Between October 12 and November 4, 1925, A. J. Van Rossem saw flocks of 200 to 1,000 birds at Divisadero. He identified Turkey Vultures, Broad-winged Hawks, Swainson’s Hawks, and some Red-tailed and a few Marsh hawks (Buteo jamaicensis and Circus cyaneus). ‘The hawk migration reached its peak on October 21 in an enormous flight, or rather series of flights, which occupied the greater part of the day. It was not possible to make any estimate of the number that passed, but it must have been in the tens of thousands,’ he wrote.”

“Birds in El Salvador, 1966-1980,” Walter Thurber

Luis Sepúlveda, 1949-2020

 Luis Sepúlveda;

October 4, 1949 (Ovalle, Chile)—

April 16, 2020 (Oviedo, Spain)

“That was why he had to go away from time to time: as they [the Shuar] explained to him, it was good for him not to be one of them. They wanted to see him, have him with them, but also wanted to feel his absence, the sadness of being unable to talk to him, and the joy in their hearts when they saw him again.”

“Por esa razón debía marcharse cada cierto tiempo, porque--le explicaban--era bueno que no fuera uno de ellos. Deseaban verlo, tenerlo, y también deseaban sentir su ausencia, la tristeza de no poder hablarle, y el vuelco jubiloso en el corazón al verle aparecer de nuevo.”

The Old Man who Read Love Stories / 

Un viejo que leía novelas de amor (1989)

Dickinsonday 4: (591)

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -


also: "A lesson in self-isolation from 'the queen of quarantine'"

The Plague Ravages the City / La peste azota a los mexicas

“While the Spaniards were in Tlaxcala, a great plague broke out here in Tenochtitlan. It began to spread during the thirteenth month and lasted for seventy days, striking every where in the city and killing a vast number of our people. Sores erupted on our faces, our breasts, our bellies; we were covered with agonizing sores from head to foot.

“The illness was so dreadful that no one could walk or move. The sick were so utterly helpless that they could only lie on their beds like corpses, unable to move their limbs or even their heads. They could not lie face down or roll from one side to the other. If they did move their bodies, they screamed with pain.

“A great many died from this plague, and many others died of hunger. They could not get up to search for food, and everyone else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their beds.

“Some people came down with a milder form of the disease; they suffered less than the others and made a good recovery. But they could not escape entirely. Their looks were ravaged, for wherever a sore broke out, it gouged an ugly pockmark in the skin. And a few of the survivors were left completely blind.

“The first cases were reported in Cuatlan. By the time the danger was recognized, the plague was so well established that nothing could halt it, and eventually it spread all the way to Chalco. Then its virulence diminished considerably, though there were isolated cases for many months after. The first victims were stricken during the fiesta of Teotlecco and the faces of our warriors were not clean and free of sores until the fiesta of Panquetzaliztli.”

“Cuando se fueron los españoles de México y aún no se preparaban los españoles contra nosotros, primero se difundió entre nosotros una gran peste, una enfermedad general. Comenzó en Tepeílhuitl. Sobre nosotros se extendió: gran destruidora de gente. Algunos bien los cubrió, por todas partes de su cuerpo se extendió.

“En la cara, en la cabeza, en el pecho. Era muy destructora enfermedad. Muchas gentes murieron de ella. Ya nadie podía andar, no más estaban acostados, tendidos en su cama. No podía nadie moverse, no podía volver el cuello, no podía hacer movimientos de cuerpo; no podía acostarse cara abajo, ni acostarse sobre la espalda, ni moverse de un lado a otro. Y cuando se movían algo, daban de gritos. A muchos dio la muerte la pegajosa, apelmazada, dura enfermedad de granos.

“Muchos murieron de ella, pero muchos solamente de hambre murieron: hubo muertos por el hambre: ya nadie tenía cuidado de nadie, nadie de otros se preocupaba.

“A algunos les prendieron los granos de lejos: esos no mucho sufrieron, no murieron muchos de eso.

“Pero a muchos con esto se les echó a perder la cara, quedaron cacarañados, quedaron cacarizos. Unos quedaron ciegos, perdieron la vista.

“El tiempo que estuvo en fuerza esta peste duró sesenta días, sesenta días funestos. Comenzó en Cuatlan: cuando se dieron cuenta, estaba bien desarrollada. Hacia Chalco se fue la peste. Y con esto mucho amenguó, pero no cesó del todo.  Vino a establecerse en la fiesta de Teotleco y vino a tener su término en la fiesta de Panquetzaliztli. Fue cuando quedaron limpios de la cara los guerreros mexicanos.”

from The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico / Vision de los vencidos: Relaciones indígenas de la conquista

(Miguel León-Portilla)

related: the plague in Athens

Dickinsonday 3: (844)

Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.

Dickinsonday 2: (202)

“Faith” is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!

"God is a virus."

"God is everything, then. God is a virus. Believe that, when you get a cold. God is an ant. Believe that, too, for driver ants are possessed, collectively, of the size and influence of a Biblical plague.
. . .
"I was boggled by the array of creatures equipped to take root upon a human body. I'm boggled still, but with a finer appreciation for the partnership. Back then I was still a bit appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microbes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting for the dollies. We and our vermin all blossomed together.
. . .
"Five million years is a long partnership. If you could for a moment rise up out of your own beloved skin and appraise ant, human, and virus as equally resourceful beings, you might admire the accord they have all struck.
. . .
"Back in your skin, of course, you'll shriek for a cure. But remember: air travel, roads, cities, prostitution, the congregation of people for efficient commerce-these are gifts of godspeed to the virus."

--Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

Dickinsonday 1: (236)

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.


--Emily Dickinson, 1864

Virus (2000)

ciphers in the snirt

84662: transhumance and transcendence, Canal Canyon

84058: little boxes all the same

84627: salamander

84635, 84624: Topaz concentration camp, remains (1942-1945)


This moon colony
Patrolled by stars and armed guards
Ten thousand people

related: ciphers in the snow

Werner, Hanksville

Werner, Hanksville from Vimeo.

By now, we have forgotten what we thought we came for

But here, in the high desert, what we find is a boneyard, of sorts
A museum of curiosities. A wunderkammern, so to speak.

Articulated and frozen in arc-welded postures
Lovingly, painstakingly static.
Who has made all this?
Lo and behold, here, just as in our own, fleshy menagerie,
We find God, as it were, away on business
Having left us with the proverbial watch on the heath.

In her place, quasi-religious aphorisms
Ranging from word salads of self-actualization slogans, to scriptural runes, mystical cosmovisions
And laminated against the ravages of weather and time
They dangle, as though to say
“this is the thing, implacably silent
but this is what it would speak to you
were it on a cosmic book tour
or propped up in front of a cannabis dispensary.”

All these Devonian lizards, crocodilians, avian reptiles, coelacanths
Some of our first vertebrate ancestors.

Across the street, their descendants now, we congregate
Sunburned and squinting
At Stan’s Burger Shack
We unrack hoses and refill the tanks
Of extended-cab pickup trucks
Harnessed to these are the pleasure boats, glittering with pearlescent finishes
Like that of bowling balls, or flame decals in mother-of-toiletseat resin inlay.

Standing in the afternoon daylight, pump running
With the very essence of ancient forests and sea beds
Distilled and decanted over millions of years
We pause in these fumes of petroculture oblivion.

Hose still running, the dials counting up, and higher up
We order, for the road, a pistachio malted milkshake.

But, something whispers, not entirely forgotten:
These grimacing specters of primer and rust
Reclaimed wreckage and the detritus of our road-world.
This road that now calls us onward to some place
We don’t know, we have never seen.