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.

Connect the Christmas Dots (fa-la-la-la): Menageries, Mangers, Revelation, Land’s End

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The other night we watched (for the first time in like 20 years) the Pee Wee’s Playhouse Christmas special—this time with the kids. PW’s is such a wonderfully bizarre, fearlessly absurd, and (of course) infinitely playful world. From that first intro scene of claymation forest (beaver, monkeys, rabbits, squirrels, birdsong, pterodactyl, etc.), to whatever final gag and maniacal group laugh a given episode ends with, this is a place abounding with the most varied and boisterous life: marionettes and other puppets, robots and other machines, cartoons, human beings (incl. the King of Cartoons!), animate furniture, toys, ants, plants, the food in Pee Wee’s fridge, his taking floor, and a menagerie of visiting monsters, animals, aliens, and neighbors.

If the silencing of the animate world through alphabetic literacy and its accompanying Western acculturation has happened to our species over thousands of years, it must also take place anew with each generation of children, as they first come to us as wild little animists, before being taught otherwise. These ersatz playhouse worlds try to reclaim us—momentarily—from this awful silence. And, like the Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood of Make-Believe (and even David Attenborough shows) we grew up with, PW’s world reassures and promises us that this immense loss, loneliness, alienation from the world, our neighbors, and other kin might be overcome. 

This time around, I also learned/was reminded: that the claymation dinosaur family is Jewish, that Magic Screen’s preferred pronouns are she/her, that Magic Johnson is her cousin, and that Pee Wee, although he once married Fruit Salad, does not care for fruit cake. (Who knew?!)

Anyway, in the spirit of Pee Wee’s Playhouse—and of Christmas—I thought this would be a fine time to try to (re)connect some dots (fa-la-la-la):

[Nativity/Nacimiento - St. Jude’s Catholic Center, Ephraim, UT]

“And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.

“And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.”
—   Revelation 4:6-8; 5:13

“My daughter’s world, like the world of most American four-year-olds, has overflowed with wild animals since it first came into focus: lionesses, puffins, hippos, bison, sparrows, rabbits, narwhals, and wolves. They are plush and whittled. Knitted, batik, and bean-stuffed. Appliquéd on onesies and embroidered into the ankles of her socks.

“I don’t remember buying most of them. It feels as if they just appeared Ark had docked outside our apartment and this wave of gaudy, grinning tourists came ashore. Before long, they were foraging on the pages of every bedtime story, and my daughter was sleeping in polar bear pajamas under a butterfly mobile with a downy snow owl clutched to her chin. Her comb handle was a fish. Her toothbrush handle was a whale. She cut her first tooth on a rubber giraffe.

“Our world is different, zoologically speaking—less straightforward and more grisly. We are living in the eye of a great storm of extinction, on a planet hemorrhaging living things so fast that half of its nine million species could be gone by the end of the century. At my place, the teddy bears and giggling penguins kept coming.

…

“But leaving your kids a world without wild animals feels like a special tragedy, even if it’s hard to rationalize why it should. The truth is that most of us will never experience the Earth’s endangered animals as anything more than beautiful ideas. They are figments of our shared imagination, recognizable from TV, but stalking places — places out there.

…

“It also occurred to me early on that [these endangered species] could be gone by the time Isla is my age. It’s possible that, thirty years from now, they’ll have receded into the realm of dinosaurs, or the realm of Pokémon, for that matter — fantastical creatures whose names and diets little kids memorize from books. And it’s possible, too, I realized, that it might not even make a difference, that there would still be polar bears on footsy pajamas and sea turtle-shaped gummy vitamins — that there could be so much actual destruction without ever meaningfully upsetting the ecosystems in our minds.

“That was the most disturbing part somehow—the disconnection.”

— Jon Mooalem, Wild Ones (2014)

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(infographics from the Guardian: “Humans just 0.01%of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals – study”)

“It is pretty staggering. In wildlife films, we see flocks of birds, of every kind, in vast amounts, and then when we did the analysis we found there are far more domesticated birds. It is definitely striking, our disproportionate place on Earth. When I do a puzzle with my daughters, there is usually an elephant next to a giraffe next to a rhino. But if I was trying to give them a more realistic sense of the world, it would be a cow next to a cow next to a cow and then a chicken.”

—   Ron Milo, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel (2018)

In addition to the 50% loss of wildlife we’ve seen globally in the past 40 years, earlier this year IPBES reported that extinction rates are currently accelerating to a thousand times higher than prehuman (“background”) levels, and that we’re now poised to lose a million more species in the coming decades. (In other words, we’re eliminating our fellow creatures, literally driving them out, over the threshold of creation.)

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For example, in North America, we’ve lost around three billion birds since 1970; that’s more than one out of every four, gone. The coauthors of this recent study describe this as “a staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America’s ecosystem is unraveling.”

“Steep declines among birds that people regularly see at bird feeders can be insidious. The flocks of birds are still there, so most people don’t detect a loss of abundance. ‘There’s a shifting baseline phenomenon,’ said Adam Smith, the study coauthor and biostatistician.

‘Because the declines are gradual, we lose track of just how abundant these birds used to be.’ But the research findings in this analysis are clear: Some of America’s most familiar and beloved backyard birds are rapidly disappearing.”

—   Gustave Axelson (September 2019)

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“When I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here—the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, dear, the beaver, the turkey and so forth and so forth, I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, emasculated country... Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature I am conversing with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all its warriors... I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.”

—   from the journals of Henry David Thoreau (March 23, 1856)

“As we grow more removed from personal contact with nature, awareness and appreciation retreat…. So it goes, on and on, the extinction of experience sucking the life from the land, the intimacy from our connections… People who don’t know don’t care. What is the extinction of the condor to a child who has never known a wren?”                 

—   Robert Michael Pyle (1975)

“The best argument is undoubtedly the one that impresses the fewest people and convinces hardly anyone at all: Species are worth saving because a world with less life is less of a world. The mosquito, Yaqui topminnow, great white shark, bedbug, and prickly pear cactus are all worth having around.

“Life is not about industrial economies at the end of the second millennium…. Imagine that the destiny of the planet is not increasing the Gross National Product or making life nicer for human beings or easier for Yaqui topminnows. Imagine that it is a mystery. Think of how puzzled the tens of millions of vanished species must feel about the purpose of life.

“The endangered and often useless species are messengers and what they report to us it that the world is not especially designed for people or progress or machines or civilization. That is why these organisms and plants are resented… They are hated because they suggest by their very existence that the planet is not solely a habitat put together to benefit human beings.

“Every time a great white shark glides past, people have to wonder just what in the hell life is really all about. A world empty of useless species will be a world with fewer tough questions. And so the planet is becoming a better place for people who hurt their heads when they think.”

—   Charles Bowden, Blue Desert (1986)

OK, last dot for this one. Fred Tomaselli’s collages mediate our relationship with nature through the color palettes of polar fleece and other synthetic outerwear (mostly made from petrochemicals) of Lands’ End, J. Crew, Patagonia, LL Bean, and Eddie Bauer mail order catalogs. (Notice: there are Peewees here too.)

related:
Christmas Freud I, II, III
ciphers in the snow
imagine the new world
eating and being animals
into the mystic
mineral spirits
witness
nochebuena
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