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.