Tuesday, December 18, 2007

in quietness, & time

ashberries, hanging in the river valley (taken a few weeks ago)
(ice lilies freezing up on the north saskatchewan, taken a few weeks ago)

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is those moments where everything seems to fall into place & you know that what you are doing right then is exactly what you are supposed to be doing... those moments when everything is flowing, & you don't even really understand why, or how, it all got this way, because maybe there were a lot of tumultous or troublesome things, or even just the most subtle, unnoticable things... but somehow, you got here & you know you are exactly where you are supposed to be, doing exactly what it is you know you should do.

It's about feeling synchronous & connected, because so many things had to come together, an infinite number of things, really, for this to all fall into place. & I suppose this is really how I understand fate, or destiny -- it's not predestination, not a predetermination, as such, but just an understanding of how everything is unified, and connected. & those moments where you know, you feel a sense of visceral connection, are like little enlightenments (as in Buddhism -- being able to see the entire intricate infinitesimal web of things, all at once).

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet:

'Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakably tender hand, placed beside another thread, and held and carried by a hundred others'

I don't think that tender hand comes from anything outside of ourselves -- we are the ones who guide ourselves (as much as we are ever ourselves, as part of something greater than us) & weave ourselves in alongside so many other threads... & I just find myself constantly comforted when I experience those clear moments where I realize where I am right now amidst those nets of connections, & those inexpressible little pulls & tugs on the web that ground me, reassure me that I am doing exactly what I should, right here, right now.

Palaces and stormclouds
The rough straggly sage and the smoke
And the way it will all come together
In quietness, and in time...

-- Joanna Newsom, 'En Galop'

Thursday, December 13, 2007

you do not have to be good.


(top: geese flying south over the sturgeon river, mid-november. bottom: sturgeon river half-frozen, sunset)
* * *

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~Mary Oliver

* * *

This is really very lovely... I can't believe I didn't know much of Mary Oliver's poetry before. It is so honest & comforting... I especially like: You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

chickadees and cars






this kind of light is sustenance.



walking in the cold a few days ago, i recorded some of the soundscapes i moved through --



chickadees & cars



the delicious muffled creaking of the snow, squirrels



as i walked by the river, singing to myself



i tried to get the ice lilies crunching on the river, & the sound of a magpie flying over ahead (wings flapping like the soft shake of a pillowcase) but they were too subtle, too ephemeral, too far away...



Tuesday, November 27, 2007

grandmother-salmon

(at tthe yanlin -- canyon creek -- off the alaska hwy, southern tutchone country, yukon, sept.07)


When I was doing my fieldwork, I would often start to feel completely overwhelmed -- drowning in so much rich and substantial information that I wasn't even sure what I was submersed in anymore -- there was just so much to take in. Something that always reassured me, though, something would always appear to remind me that yes, in the midst of all of this, there is sense, and unity...

Slowly I am piecing everything together, of course, and coming up with more and more fine-tuned questions. & it never fails to inspire me, hearten me, when I hear these stories, these little things that remind me I am on the right track:

the tightlywoven sense of community, the love for the language, & the bonds, experiences with language shared between children and their grandparents, especially their grandmothers --

(little themes that are mirrored in my own experiences, these resonant threads that keep surfacing boldly throughout my own life with such cohesion...)

& i marvel so gratefully at all of this! what i have been able to experience, what has been shared with me... so many people taught me so much, & i just want to give back, and give back.

mostly i just know she's there, with me, watching me.

(щиро дякую)

* * *

grandmother salmon (notes for a poem, not yet done, etc)

"They say when the fish go up the river their great-great grandmother is at the head of the creek. And that's why they go up to visit the great-great grandmother, that fish. They come back to the same place."

-- Elder Kitty Smith.

(i hear my teachers saying i hope
my grandchildren come speaking to me
dän k’e)

& i am listening to äsua annie ned
in my headphones, & wishing
she was alive so I could meet her
but she’s that salmon grandmother
now, waiting at the head

of the river, maybe she’s sitting there,
beading slippers while she talks to
my own knitting grandmother, who’s
singing 'kazalo divchatko'
while annie whispers her fish-sounds

conversing with silt, slipping into
a dream, waiting for the summer
when her children’s children's children
will leave school, come swimming upstream
she’ll hear their th’ tl’ ch’! & the bubbling ɬ

they’ll say dännch’e, äsua? &
she’ll smile through the swells,
strengthening, äshea! nigha shäw nithan!
for finally her words have returned
to her, finally all of them will speak –

Monday, November 26, 2007

oh, don't bend the branches, i am grieving...

(I know I've posted this picture before, but it is one of my very favourites of my grandma, Anne Pechanec / моя баба Анна М. Пехник.
February 22, 1915 - November 26, 2005 / 22ого Лютого 1915 - 26ого Листопада 2005)

* * *

It's been two years; still understanding how someone can be here & not here all at once, how I can still feel wholly suffused with their presence & their being (in thoughts & dreams & birds & trees & my mother & my heart, myself) & yet still miss them, still ache.



Ta j vylitala halka, oy, z hliboko yarka

oy, vylitala druha z zelenoho luha...



Ta j sila-vpala halka, oy na zelenij sosni

ta j na zelenij sosni, na hiltsi rozkishnij...



Oy, ne khylijsja hilko, oy, bo tak meni hirko

ne khylijs' na more, oy, bo tak meni hore...
-- ukraïns'ka narodna pisnya.

* * *

and the jackdaw flew off, from the deep little ravine
& another flew away from the meadow

and the jackdaw alit and tumbled from the top of the green pine-tree,
on the top of the pine, luxurious branches of a wedding-tree,

oh, don't bend the branches, i am grieving...
oh, don't bend towards the sea, i am too full of sorrow...

-- ukrainian folk song

'dark bird' performed here (click to get mp3 from yousendit) by alexis kochan & paris to kyiv

* * *


Thursday, November 01, 2007

comfort language part two

rosehip & sagewort, on the rocks at tthe yanlin ('water flowing through the rocks'), southern tutchone country, yukon, sept. 29/07

last autumn flower, tthe yanlin, s.t. country, yukon, sept.29/07
comfort language, part two (draft)


three days before her death
my baba spoke her last;

she sang after me,
repeating the words of a
folk song i was coaxing out
of her, trying to see if she
remembered, if she still
flickered beneath the slow
breathing & candle-ash sighs –

the erosion of english
had left her old tongue
emerging on the surface, like
the colours on a pysanka
after the wax slowly melts
away –

o kazalo divchatko
moje holubiatko!


her head on the pillow,
& she was smiling.

how the softest needles
embroidered those words,
the timbre of her voice
cross-stitched across a pillowcase
into my head –

scho virno kokhaje mene!

how she is still singing
those words now, over and over
& maybe

this can finally let us all
rest.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

in support of linguistic diversity, & multilingualism.

Naalen ('water flowing around') mountain, Southern Tutchone country, Yukon. September 29, 2007.

So a long time ago, almost a year ago, I wrote some little counterpoints to this essay that... annoyed me. & mystified me... as I really couldn't quite believe the linguist who was writing it was actually saying the things he was saying (a lot of respect I had for him disappeared rather swiftly). But anyway... & I suppose I was in an argumentative mood, so I felt compelled to write responses. Then I put it away, because really I only did it for myself, to make it stop irking me, but now I just found it whilst going through some older files and I decided to post it now, because the topic of 'dying languages' has been popping up a lot lately... It is a little snarky, perhaps, but it's how I feel. & I really do think it was an irresponsible article -- there is SO much that he is overlooking! So much...

Here I have italicized quotes from him that I am addressing... Again, the full piece of his writing is here.

* * *

“Surely easier communication, while no cure-all, would be a good thing worldwide. There's a reason the Tower of Babel story is one of havoc rather than creation.”

Yes, the Babel story is one of chaos – but seeing multiplicity & diversity as chaos is but ONE of the many myths and folktales dealing with the creation of different languages. Many are quite neutral about multiple languages, or even see it as a positive solution that arose from too much fighting when everyone spoke the same language. (I personally like the image from the Gunwinggu language of Northern Australia, who speak of a Dreamtime goddess giving each of her children a language as a toy to play with, leading to their descendants speaking these diverse tongues) Regardless – it’s really narrow to look at diversity as only chaotic. Really unfortunate. I’ll return to this.

“Languages are hard to learn for adults, especially ones as different from English as Native American ones. In Pomo, the verb goes at the end of the sentence. There are sounds it's hard to make when you're not born to them. For busy people with jobs and families, how far were they ever going to be able to get mastering a language whose word for eye is ‘uyqh abe?”

I find this especially ignorant coming from a linguist who apparently speaks other languages, & should also not be forgetting the immense capacity we possess to adapt, & to learn and maintain multiple languages. Yes, it’s certainly easier when you’re under 10, perhaps, but it’s far from impossible even when you’re much older. Easier communication is certainly a goal, but it can be attained by everyone becoming multilingual, not reducing human speech to ONE language. Just because McWhorter believes that learning a language is difficult, doesn’t mean that people who do strongly value learning a certain language for whatever reason, is going to let a pharyngeal consonant or some different verb placement rules stop them? Clearly McWhorter has never been in the situation of learning a language much different from English. He severely underestimates the cultural value of language and is just repeating popular beliefs about the ‘difficulty’ of language learning. If you want to learn a language – especially if you are, for example, of a minority group like the Pomo speaking an indigenous language – you may have any number of reasons for motivation that could be sacred, ancestral, etc, that transcend the busyness of daily life. From my own recent research in the Southern Yukon, I have witnessed a number of different strategies that busy people incorporate into their daily lives to make practice a part of their routines and this too helps motivate them. (I must be sure write about this as a bigger part of my thesis!)

...Supposedly one's language determines one's cultural outlook. But a simple question shows how implausible that notion is. To wit, precisely what "cultural outlook" does English lend its speakers? Thinking about the broad heterogeneity of people using this language, it is obvious that the answer is none, and the academic literature on the topic yields little but queer little shards of faint support for the "language is culture" idea. Which brings us back to languages as, simply, languages.

This, frankly, is pretty flippant. I can't believe it, really. Is he just trying to play devil's advocate here? Firstly, it seems he hasn’t been reading much anthropological linguistics lately, as there is plenty support for the ‘language is culture’ idea (I can make a reference list quite easily!). I am no extreme linguistic determinist – I don’t think that language itself is the sole determiner of what you can think about, or how you think – but I can cite both literature & anecdotes aplenty that show how language can certain shape our thought. Anyone fully bilingual, or even having seriously studied another language, been immersed in it & conversation could tell you how they speak or write or even structure thoughts differently in their various tongues. Different vocabularies, structures do affect us. Yes, if we try, if we invent new words, coin new phrases, we can talk about anything in any language. But some languages (in both their structure and content) are designed better for talking about certain things that are culturally relevant, and that makes it very difficult to deny the reciprocal relationship between language and culture.

Maybe Inuktitut doesn't have as many words for snow as we used to think, but if you'd like to talk about seal hunting -- or caribou hunting, if you're a Northern Athapaskan, I promise its not hard to find specialized vocabulary for this. In many cases, language and traditional environmental knowledge are deeply interlinked, and many conservationists are looking to not only cultural practices but to the languages spoken by those cultural groups to better understand ecological systems -- place names are a perfect example of this -- names often encode meanings of the practices performed at a particular place. To learn these places is to better understand how to preserve the balance in that system.

(A new book has just come out, by K. David Harrison, and it discusses much of what I just alluded to --

& then his query as to what cultural outlook does English lend its speakers? Yes, it’s a vast & heterogeneous popit's called 'When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge'. I highly recommend it) ulation that speaks this language, & thus McWhorter shuts it down all straw-person-like. Really, maybe he should be asking: what cultural outlooks (PLURAL!) do the different varieties of English (PLURAL!) lend their speakers? East Indian Englishes, First Nations Englishes, all are diverse ways (PLURAL!) of speaking.

Also, if we want to look at English as a global language – for many it is a language of commerce, of business, etc. That’s definitely going to be a reciprocal force in affecting one’s cultural outlook. Languages are not simply languages. Just because most contemporary Englishes (as opposed to the power of the word in say, Old English, e.g. see Beowulf) do not lend a spiritual value and power to the act of speaking, as say, the contemporary Sakha language does, does not mean we can impress our beliefs about language on others. Languages are vessels for beliefs. To allow them to be eliminated for the sake of thinking that we’ll all communicate better is simply colonial. Thus I squirm when he says things like:

Yet the extinctions cannot be stopped, for the most part.

Yes, it can be difficult to reverse language shift, but it can be done, & will continue to be done. I don’t disagree with McWhorter when he implies that language death is natural and part of diversity. This is true. Languages do die out. No one speaks Gothic or Sogdian or Anasazi anymore. However, if people wish to stop their language (& their culture) from being wiped out but colonialism and dominant cultures and languages, they need to be supported. It is not too late, & it is not a worthless task. There will always be many people who believe that it’s natural to let even their own native tongue disappear, & many others who will devote their lives to keeping that language alive. Ideologies differ cross-culturally and within any given group from one culture. However, I feel it’s my responsibility not to contribute to another’s language death; as a linguistic anthropology student I want to ally myself with people who are working to revitalize their languages and cultures.

Maybe despite many people best efforts, 90% of our 6000-ish languages will disappear and we’ll only speak one or two someday. But it’s also a natural part of language growth that the cycle of language creation would begin again, groups splitting off creating dialects turning into languages. That wouldn’t stop. Diversity would recreate itself, in the grand scheme of things. (He should know this! He studies creoles!)

For those still uncomfortable given that this single language would be big bad English, then notice how that discomfort eases when you imagine the language being, say, Lenape.

Um, no I am not less comfortable imagining the world language being Lenape, or Edo or Kirghiz or Maori or Ukrainian. Any one of these languages being the sole human method of communication means that we lose the other nearly-6000. Simply, that disturbs me. There are different insights to be gained from different languages, different ways of speaking and communicating, & you don’t have to subscribe to some extreme version of linguistic relativity to comprehend that.

If people truly come together, then they speak a common language.

You need only look to places where people apparently speak the same language (Serbo-Croatian in Yugoslavia, English in Northern Ireland, Kinyarwanda in Rwanda) & have certainly not been creating togetherness. Truly coming together, in my mind, is learning to respect and understand diversity, not eliminating it, and this certainly includes becoming functionally multilingual.

* * *

Saturday, September 15, 2007

our home on Native land.

rivery bog

leafy dew

Sometimes the governing bodies of this country disappoint me into speechlessness. (This happens more than I like to really think about.) Being up here in the Yukon right now, I am especially realizing the repercussions of the refusal of Canada's representatives to support the U.N. declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. Our Indian and Northern Affairs minister is making feeble excuses, stating 'oh, it doesn't really specify what the country is responsible for doing, blah blah blah, we don't know how to balance it with the rights of others, the Canadian constitution is good enough already, blah', which seems to me to really translate as 'we're grasping at any excuse not to give indigenous peoples any more self-determination and rights to their own decision-making processes'.

Reading this article, I agree very much with Beverley Jacobs -- the Canadian government is afraid. And since it passed in the world anyway, hopefully it will indeed aid in burgeoning self-government development in many parts of Canada anyway, and might force our backward, Bush-worshipping conservative government into facing their fears of indigenous self-determining government.


Tuesday, September 11, 2007

berry-picking on the may (grey mtn)

here i am, picking berries (itl'ät = low-bush cranberry) on the may (grey mountain)
lower slopes of the may, down to the tagà shäw

looking east to cantlie lake, from the may

itl'ät, on the may -- tasty goodness. we also picked crowberries.

looking south from the may to marsh lake, widening of tagà shäw
* * *
Berry Compote
2 parts berries (here, a mix of itl'ät and crowberries)
1 part sugar
1 part water
spices (e.g. cinnamon, nutmeg, if you like)
Heat water and sugar until sugar is dissolved and the syrup is at a low boil. Add berries and bring to a full boil (so that there is happy pink bubbly froth) -- turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 7 minutes, or until the berries are bursting open. Add spices now, if you like. Turn off the heat and let cool slowly, and thicken. Pour over cake, ice cream, pancakes, toast, etc. & enjoy.

Monday, September 10, 2007

along the river, after the rain

rapids and sunset light, along the yukon river (tagà shäw)

wild poppies along tagà shäw

Monday, September 03, 2007

i'm odd & full of love.

(Upper Kananaskis Lake, looking to Ubithka Mabi (Nesting of the Eagle - Stoney name), a beautiful cradle-like mountain... )

(driftwood and pebbles, shore of Upper Kananaskis Lake)

Words for the Wind -- part 3 -- Theodore Roethke

Under a southern wind,
The birds and fishes move
North, in a single stream;
The sharp stars swing around;
I get a step beyond
The wind, and there I am,
I'm odd and full of love.

Wisdom, where is it found? --
Those who embrace, believe.
Whatever was, still is,
Says a song tied to a tree.
Below, on the ferny ground,
In rivery air, at ease,
I walk with my true love.

What time's my heart? I care.
I cherish what I have
Had of the temporal:
I am no longer young
But the winds and waters are;
What falls away will fall;
All things bring me to love.

* * *

Lately I am very much absorbed in Mr. Roethke's poetry... it is very comforting for giddy/excited/melancholy/anxious/grateful/in-awe/full-of-love/important feelings (e.g. pretty much the state of my brain right now). It is also very much a kindred spirit to my own writings, in a very complimentary way -- I read little bits & often instantly think of something I wrote in a very different way, but still the same.

His writing is like Wordsworth's in its reverence for all things, but even more direct, connected to his subjects... & just so full of such love, love in the most vast yet intimate sense, it makes me weep. I like to think that Roethke reminds me a little of my father, sometimes -- my father is not at all friends with poetry, but he often says very poetic things very much unconsciously, & so sometimes I think this would be something like what my father would write if he was a poet -- he writes of land the way my father taught me to love it & know it, & so I think of him, & also my grandfather (mother's father) whom I never knew. But I've been told he loved everything like this too, the same gentleness in his soul.

Friday, August 31, 2007

comfort language part one

(little cairn, one of the campus 'waterfalls')

(rock in the midst of the same waterfall)

comfort language, part one (very drafty draft)

how maia told me about her dying
father, how he struggled for words
in his last moments, how he
was so restless, mouth a mask,
that silent o:

& how she couldn’t think
of any words he would understand,
(english a long forgotten shoreline)
she hunted for the yup’ik words to say to ease
his pain –

but words drowned in the mouth of the kuskokwim,
no sound in the stretch of mudflats, beaver-tail tongue
thudding in her throat –

he passed away, she said, &
there was nothing i could say to him.
he was so lonely,
like raven, when he was creating
the world –

all the other little mud-people, the strange creatures
like tigers & horses & palm trees
they spoke different language than him,
so raven scattered them all over the earth –

but i’ve got to find the yup’ik, he said
i need to gather up their words, dive
for them, swallow them singing,
the only ones i understand --

that’s when i knew i had to go
she said, to carry that yup’ik home
i need to find words again, breathe
life into their muddy hibernation,

then aata will hear me from heaven
& maybe he’ll be less alone

Thursday, August 30, 2007

green gentleness

(kalyny, high-bush cranberries like a chandelier, in the river valley)



(serene white dog sitting under a tree, along 76th ave)




I truly love Joanna Newsom's long rambling epic songs; every time I listen, a new little stanza catches in my ear & settles there. This is one for the end of summer:



While down in the lowlands,

the crops are all coming;

We have everything.

Life is thundering blissful towards death

In a stampede

Of his fumbling green gentleness.


-- Joanna Newsom, 'Only Skin'
(here you can download live harp or piano versions of this song...)

Sunday, August 26, 2007

reminiscing over københavn...

(oh, københavn, how i miss your fresh flowers, & the bicycles that tried to squish me as i crossed your streets...)

(how i miss hearing the guttural sounds of dansk, all those tasty swallowed vowels)

(& all your fantastical nordic architecture, including this shrieking valkyrie who looks like she coughed out a bus.

(Nothing much, just thinking about earlier this summer, & the seminar in Copenhagen.)

* * *

(poem-bits)

in copenhagen

"...that in this moment there is life and food /For future years." – William Wordsworth

in copenhagen, we talked.
talked all day during classes
over endless tea & wienerbrød

talked as we walked back
to the hostel, past cyclists
swooping over bridges,

their bells like swallows crying,
sudden & gone ringing over the canals
where we sat & talked,

swinging our legs, sipping tuborg &
eating soft-is, tour boats &
accordions moving on past --

til dinner, down strøget we tipped
over cobblestones, & feasted
on thoughts:

how everything brought us
together, our expressions &
stories & dissertations & lives

& we poured them out
like good wine, all sweet & difficult
& maddening in their complexity

you can’t describe but will
die trying all the same, because
it’s just so good to be talking,

talking with the honesty of
strangers, intensity of intimates
in an academic ecstasy, all night

our words exploding like fireworks,
we left smoke hanging over tivoli
like fields of phantom dandelions,

turning every ashy seed into a star

Thursday, August 23, 2007

black earth

(red currants near astotin lake, elk island)

(farm near star, ab, south of homestead)
(nettles & wildflowers, star, ab.)
Something that I've always wondered about why there seems to be so little written in the history books (by this, meaning books & museums & cultural centres, etc) about Ukrainian and First Nations interaction in Canada. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places, but there really seems to be a lacuna in the literature, in the documentation of this. I know Dr. Klymasz (Ukrainian-Canadian folklorist) has mentioned the need for people to research it... I don't even know where they'd look, though, anyone who wants to find out about it. I've poked around on the internet, the libraries... no luck thus far. All I could find was an Alberta heritage project with a page documenting 'Aboriginal and Ethnic Minority Women' -- it mostly just comments on how both Ukrainian settlements and Aboriginal communities were targets of missionary and government policy which were attempting to 'Christianize/civilize/Canadianize' both groups, as women in both groups were not seen as 'ideals of womanhood'. And in booklets and informational materials from Kalyna Country, they talk about Ukrainian culture, French Culture, Aboriginal Culture... but never mention the links, the cross-over, or any shared influences...


I have family members who were part of the second wave of immigrants from Western Ukraine, as well as an ancestor who was first Ukrainian to ever end up in Canada, back in the 1890s -- the one who started the exodus... The end of serf-dom in Ukraine meant lots of agrarian people wanting land & wood & employment... & he heard that Canada was running around then advertising free land! free land! so he went on a scouting mission with his friend & to make a longer story much shorter, he returned to Ukraine telling everyone they should go: "We’re coming back and we’re selling everything that we have. This is Heaven compared to what we have, we’ve got to go." The Austro-Hungarian government imprisoned him for six months, charging him with 'inciting people to emigrate' but he came the following year, to the Edna-Star settlement... & hundreds followed him there to North-Central Alberta, & then to Saskatchewan, & Manitoba...


Of course, the motives of the Canadian government were to use these settlers as colonial pawns, to populate the Western part of the country, to demonstrate their sovereignty over that land, the land inhabited by the Cree & Siksika & Anishinaabe & Tsuu T'ina & Dene Suliné & Dene Tha & Métis...


Huge tracts of that first bloc settlement at Star border Saddle Lake, stretch up to the Dene community at Cold Lake... why isn't there more documentation of the links between the communities? Or did they interact much at all? I know the bloc settlements kept ethnic groups together, mostly... but surely the general proximity would have encouraged some kind of interaction, whether amicable or hostile...


No one from that first wave of immigrants is alive anymore. I know about my own extended family's links with their Métis and Cree (& French & German neighbours), links of work & marriage, but as a cultural whole, I'm curious about patterns of interaction -- the Ukrainians & the First Nations (whose land they were now farming...) I know they were both socio-politically marginalized groups at the turn of the last century... was there cooperation, alliances formed? Or did they remain separate, internally isolated?


* * *


(fragments.)


what did they think
of that strange man,
arriving somewhere north
of amiskwaciy waskahigan


standing barefoot
at the train station,
hidden in a shaggy coat,
stamping like a buffalo,
snorting in the cold --


his face, holding his daughter,
steep cheekbones like riverbanks,
his breath hanging in a foggy
ravine


that autumn they built
the burdei, buried themselves
within black earth, seeded themselves
in their new land, hoped to sprout
for a foreign spring --


*


bright kalyna, dog-star red
the trees heavy with currant earrings;
my great-grandmother weaving
the rushes into floor-mats,
singing with miss irene
in french & cree


elle est comme l'hirondelle
she's like the swallow
yes


we sing about swallows too!

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

bison are lovely creatures.



(bison on a hill above the road, elk island national park, last week)

(grazing mama bison with calf, by the roadside, elk island)

(milk time for the baby one, elk island)


Speaking of large land mammals, I just finished reading 'Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia', by the anthropologist Piers Vitebsky, and I adored it. It was such a gorgeous book, not only as anthropological writing, but as honest and poetic storytelling... and as a gift, a tribute to the Eveny people (and reindeer) who shared their lives & migrations with him, who taught him so much. It was tremendously compelling, and made me cry. (and also want to go to the Sakha Republic even more...)

I hope that someday I can write a book about my own future fieldwork & experiences that is so generous & well-crafted & eloquent. He lets the subjects of his book speak for themselves & weaves histories and personal narratives together in a way that is so refreshing.

My other inspiring book-writing anthropologists:

Julie Cruikshank -- Live Lived Like A Story-- Life Stories of Three Yukon Native Elders; Do Glaciers Listen? -- Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination
Andie Palmer -- Maps of Experience -- The Anchoring of Land to Story in Secwepemc Discourse
Keith Basso -- Wisdom Sits In Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache

The book is not my favourite, but I do give points for the title of 'Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers' by Edward Schiefflin.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

till we don't be.


(alaska, again: ballaine lake on the uaf campus, 11 pm, july 27)

We could stand for a century,

Staring,

With our heads cocked,

In the broad daylight, at this thing:

Joy.

Landlocked in bodies that don't keep,

Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being,

Till we don't be.

-- Joanna Newsom, 'Emily' (mp3 here)

Saturday, August 04, 2007

in alaxsxaq

billowy cloud, with aurora-like wispy edges... the skies in the tanana valley were beautiful.

smith lake, on the skarland trail on the university of alaska fairbanks campus. unknown mountain in the distance.

fringed grass-of-parnassus (such a good name), skarland trail, fairbanks.

The name 'Alaska' comes from the Aleut (Unangan) word alaxsxaq, meaning 'the mainland', or, more specifically 'the object towards which the action of the sea is directed'.

(Oh, the beauty of the specificity of deictic terms in the Inuit languages!)

In Fairbanks there was no sea, of course, but the sky was oceanic, with white-cap cloud waves and light past midnight. In summer you can't see the northern lights, but it's very comforting somehow to think of them still being there, just like Denali on the horizon, bluish and ghosty, hidden in the haze unseen but calm and there all the same.

Monday, July 23, 2007

time in the white light


{jasmine bush, just past 114th st... it sometimes takes me a long time to walk home when they're in bloom, as i am compelled to stop & bury my nose in each one i see}



{more jasmine blossoms... last week. sadly all the petals have fallen now}

This poem, one of the last Roethke ever wrote, is very very good, painfully so -- so acutely descriptive & epic, yet with such sweet little lines, like "What I love is near at hand, / Always, in earth and air." (see part III - my favourite)

The Far Field -- Theodore Roethke


I find parts of it just so (brutally, in places) lovely, it's both sensual and spiritual, certainly the most lovely & poignant poem of coming to terms with mortality. (I'm not one for all that raging against the dying of the light...) Sometimes when I am at my most serene, I can almost feel this kind of peace-making with finitude, with dying, being a little easier -- because of that flash of realization that nothing is really finite at all.

All finite things reveal infinitude:

The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree :
The pure serene of memory in one man, --
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.

(Roethke, The Far Field, Pt. IV)

I know this, exactly. & I think the poem haunts me ever more so, because this idea of union with trees & shadows & earth & air reminds me very much of things my father has said to me, on the rare occasions we have spoken about things we believe in.

& it came a heat wave...


{caragana pods, getting ready to spit their little black seeds in the heat}


{my dog, prancing, so happy that it's cool enough to finally go outside}


{not a particularily flattering picture, but i like the light, andsomehow it's exactly how i feel in the heat: dishevelled, sticky & glowing}

Songs for nights too warm to sleep:

Saw-Edged Grass -- Alina Simone (placelessness)
La Denigracion -- Bowerbirds (Danger at Sea)
Pickerel Lake -- Sufjan Stevens (Michigan Outtakes)

Friday, July 13, 2007

white asters


{maple leaf in the woods, london, on., june 2007}


{grasses & white asters, london, on., also june 2007}

Sometimes when I write poems I come up with such small little disjointed pieces it feels like I am some sort of archaeologist; I can imagine how whoever found tablets with the fragments of Sappho must have felt, trying to reassemble them. At the early stages of poem, all I have are tiny flashes, shards in the dirt that are clear yet disconnected, and I have to figure out how to re-unite them.

[fragments]

1.

dwelling in the togetherness
of our (im)perfection:

2.

we found the secret of the
heartshape wood-knot, black acacia.
days of catlike wandering & russian fairytales,
lying in the grassy chaos of the ruins:

(you know
i could never be with someone
who didn’t understand the beauty
of burnt by the sun)

3.

we are prowling for something,
& our little truths are filled with light,
in every space between the leaves,
our breathing, wind in the long grasses,
cat-tails resonate with blackbird notes
& the parallel songs
of locusts humming in the dust.

4.

something about her
makes me dream
of waking up facedown in wet grass
tongue-ful of white asters.

5.

but every time i am shaken
from that languour
by my promise of protection

all tangled in the roots of this;
to take every ache &
sun on the pool
through the willow, weeping
thick with carpglint,

braid it into your hair
& hold you without thought
of myself, or possession,

remembering the ethic
of my love

6.

don't know how
to voice the truth that's
trapped me here,

struggling in the leghold,
tender snapping of my
bones like white flowers
snaring the stems leading
to the heart;

but i am not shadowy
nor vulpine i just don't know
how to speak the words

flying away like blackbirds flushed
from the rushes, red slashes on their
wings like startled blood --



Monday, July 09, 2007

on this high hill in a year's turning...




{three little post-solstice pictures, me in all three}

Though I generally like to refrain from writing anything too rambly & revealing here, I sometimes have the urge to write things that might be a little self-indulgent, & are more of a personal record than anything else -- things that are not likely very interesting to virtual passersby. However, it was my birthday recently (well, two weeks ago) & I am going to indulge myself by talking about that birthday. I mused to myself then that he numbers seemed to be getting rather high & important-sounding... though really, to me, the chronology is quite meaningless. Really: what is a 24-year-old in my society 'supposed' to be like? What 'should' I be doing? It's really quite absurd when I think about it. Sometimes I swear I'm six years old, chasing after rabbits in the yard, spinning around... (see above for photographic evidence) Or, this evening, I am already an old baba, curled up in my living room knitting a sock, the news on mute, listening to birds sing. I am not, as it seems so many of my peers are, engaged, pregnant, or buying a condominium in the suburbs. (It seems every time I log on to bloody Facebook, I find out that a friend of a friend is getting married)

It's just so strange because I am not at that place in my life at all. I am working on my M.A., I am about to go do fieldwork in two months, I have no idea where I'll do my PhD, but I'm willing to migrate. & this birthday, I think, has somehow made me feel a little more sturdy, despite my recurring spasms of a rather frightening self-doubt. Am I bit more capable, perhaps, somehow? I accomplished a lot this year, I think. & I feel a little more aware of this sense of potential for the next years... and I am constantly awed by the opportunities that are available to me. There is truly so much before me; I am a lucky little fish with dear friends & a wonderful family, who has a lot of freedom right now to learn & experience & do so much. & I don't have to worry about down payments on a house or what a partner might think of me wanting to go to school in Scotland or do doctoral research in the Sakha Republic for an indeterminate amount of time.

On my 14th birthday (10 years ago!) I decided to emulate Emily of New Moon -- I wrote myself birthday letter, telling my future self what I envisioned myself doing by this point in my life. (I was bad & actually opened it last year, actually, because I was moving houses & was in a purging fit...) but anyhow, I am pleased to report that I am fulfilling a lot of things I had hoped for myself back then (especially in terms of my education), and I daresay my 14-year-old self would be a little bit proud of me now. I am doing what I want (even if I don't always know what exactly it is what I want!) & despite the tumultousness and uncertainty that comes with it, I am deeply glad of this. I can say I wouldn't want it any other way. I am full of that cusp-feeling right now, & full of gratefulness, and I just hope I can do justice to the abilities I've been given & do things that are good & useful & fulfilling.


The loveliest
birthday poem: Poem in October by Dylan Thomas.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

prairie smoke


{three-flowered avens, above the red deer river}


{lonely tree, blackstone-chungo forest area}


{ram falls}

i wanted so much for the land to heal you this time, wanted to hear it say shhh i know every tree on the hill rock on the mountain ache in your body & it would all seep away, purple blossoms dissolving to prairie smoke, campfire ashes sparking out out out into the twilight that never comes, just a rolling blanket of echoes & storms. but it wouldn't leave you, it stayed all night as thunder leapt the arching curves of the foothills -- frozen like a deer's body mid-run over the rocky slope of the bank. in the morning your bones ached rapid-white, endless blind rushing, slowly eroding.