The Tears of Things

La Pionera and The New Mango, Part Two, Section 8: Guillermo's Sojourn To Santa Clara

Without music, life would be a mistake.
--Nietszche

By Jerome du Bois and Catherine King.

[The Legend of the Seed Man would be helpful background reading for all readers here, if you haven't read it yet.

[From Guillermo Gorgojo's Journal, entries from late night on the bus from Santa Clara to Havana, May 29, 2005, and at his apartment in Havana, early- to mid-morning, May 30, 2005.]

My dialectical materialism is disintegrating before my eyes. The chambers of the nautilus have all been broken down, and a new wind blows through them. These last couple of days especially, with the mystery of The New Mango, the new Kiku urgency, and the Abakua Derivations, and then yesterday, my uncanny visit with Hocabed Hatuey out in Santa Clara, who could not be called a santera, but something else, something more . . . Yes, I had witnessed uncanniness before, things that Kiku did, but that was long ago, and I had almost made myself forget all about those times. Then came those hallucinatory prints from Flash No More. Then Abuela Hocabed, and yesterday's revelations. It was just yesterday! Now I know that something no one anticipated may be unleashed; more than one thing, actually. And, oddly enough, I am a New Man --but not the kind either He or Che anticipated. A Man of Hope.

Yesterday, in the very early morning, I left my written, incriminatory challenge to Jeronimo Reyes on top of the Abakua Derivations. I oiled up my bicycle and took it off the balcony. I packed a jaba vinyl of crude snacks, my journal and pens, and a cache of dollars --forty dollars, three years' scrimpings-- and headed out East of town on the National Road just as the sun was rising. I wasn't just going to sit around and wait for his move. I didn't plan on pedaling all the way, of course. I knew rides would be readily available on such a well-travelled road --that's what the dollars were for, the island-wide taxi flagdown sign which no passing car refused-- but I wanted to get a good long bicycle run going anyway, twenty or thirty miles at least, just pumping my legs mindlessly and feeling my heart surge, and leaving the crumbling city and everything else behind me for a while --especially my suddenly resurgent ghosts.

How could I know I was riding right into a reckoning with them all?

I was on my way to Santa Clara because that was Kiku's hometown, and I knew nowhere else to look. I doubted that, Party member or not, any prison supervisor would simply answer my knock and my questions. (And I certainly didn't have enough of a bribe for that kind of information.) And a similar opacity would hold in Santa Clara as well. I couldn't just blurt out to anyone, "Do you know what prison Kiku Ybarra is in?" I'd be swept away ten minutes after one of the old ladies could get to her always-reliable telephone.

But I had a cover story to open up the locals: Flash No More's hardwoods. I would tell them I wanted to buy some for the ISA printmaking shop. I planned on getting to the Oliva farm (I was curious about Yasmani, too, but that was secondary) and getting Flash No More alone to ask him about who was who out there. He had already told me he didn't betray confidences, but that wasn't what I was after. I wasn't about to go barging in on anybody. I wanted to get a message to Kiku, or to whoever was closest to information about her, that I was now part of the solution, not the problem, and that I was actively exploring ways to free her. I was content to work through intermediaries, and, as insurance, I would put myself out there as a sacrifice. It would be worth a lot to anybody to report a fairly prominent Party member as a betrayer of the Revolution.

That was my plan. I headed East, into the warm rising wind; more caressing than resisting now, the tickling wind still reminded me, with its steadiness, of the forces coming: hurricanes. For twenty or thirty miles I had to concentrate, as the road and its denizens in both directions became the typical Cuban moving museum of transportation, spliced from different times as I wove among them. There were the old American gas-guzzling cars that the tourists marvel at, of course (and usually full of tourists); but I also saw the three- and four-wheeled bicycles, and the afiladores, steadily rolling along like me, and like me being threatened by the brand-new BMW and Mercedes coupes honking and weaving and slowing for no one. One sees wagons drawn by burros, donkeys, horses; horse-drawn buggies with bright yellow wheels (another tourist luxury); farmer's lorries struggling along even though only half-full; old motorcycles driven by bent-over stick figures; motorcycles adapted into moving ice-cream parlors with front-mounted coolers; Russian tractors lumbering along, belching smoke and blocking the way; everyone having to dodge the ever-proliferating potholes makes the whole parade look like a drunken dragon; and all along, government buses and, of course, military jeeps and armored vehicles dotting the roadsides at irregular intervals, the glint of their binoculars obvious to all.

Traffic thinned after San Jose de Las Lajas and the turnoff to Matazanas, and I was free to look around. It had been years since I had ventured out this far on my bicycle, and I was saddened to see that Cuba's greenery had receded on both sides of the highway, in brown and blasted hillocks and plains, before recovering some shrubbery, coconut palms, banana trees, and mango and citrus groves, at least a mile from the highway and behind stiff steel fences. It was as if invisible teeth had chewed up a huge swath of everything that grew on both sides of the road, for miles and miles as I pumped my legs.

After awhile I descended into the semi-conscious rhythm of bicycling, easily avoiding the occasional interruption of a passing car or bus or motorcycle. I didn't want to think, but I began to review in my mind how quickly my life had changed.

Not four days ago I was drifting along in a kind of automatic depression, a silently loyal Party member, a lot less ambitious than I used to be, full of guilt about Kiku but feeling helpless to change things. No longer riding the New Inventado wave, I had become systematically remote from my students, completely disillusioned with the Revolution, and, had anyone asked, I was worse than bored to death. I felt . . . futureless. So I did my best to reduce myself to a bureaucrat, a time-server, a cipher. I wanted out of history's way. But it wasn't history I was hiding from.

I had once been Kiku Ybarra's lover; someone-- the only one-- she had chosen. And Kiku Ybarra wasn't just anybody. It had been over a year since Jeronimo the Mantis had delivered one of the ugly things and, coinciding with the scary prints by Flash No More, and some emotional loosening supplied by Rosa's mota, my psyche had been both overloaded and refreshed --with hope, with the vague shape of some kind of future.

So I was pedalling there.

Not all the way, of course. I stopped twice and held up some money. (I kept the rest in six separate secret places in my clothes.) In two long rides --both with farmers, who were inordinately grateful for the American money-- I found myself at a crossroad.

I was let off just a few miles north of Aguada de Pasajeros. It was a beautiful warm day, with a soft but steady breeze moving around some giant high clouds, and there were a few fruit and vegetable "stands" dotting the four corners --cleared places on the ground protected with burlap scraps and covered with colorful produce. I stood facing North by the side of the National East-West Road and watched the traffic heading South to Cienfuegos on the National North-South Road. Crossroads.

I let down the kickstand on my bicycle and leaned on the seat. I got a banana out of my jaba vinyl and ate it slowly, enjoying every bite so much I closed my eyes toward the end. (You forget how hungry you are sometimes.) I replaced the peel in the bag --good for shining leather shoes-- and let my gaze roam idly back and forth. I followed a line of trees at my left and soon saw the lacy black outlined box of a railroad bridge about a mile North by Northwest.

The bridge crossed a river. That's why the line of trees. Suddenly I saw in my mind exactly where I was, geographically. It seemed to me to be full of crossroads and ironies. Least importantly, I was near the border of two provinces, Matanzas and Cienfuegos; as if those political divisions really meant anything these corrupt days. And most obviously, I was at the intersection of two major highway systems, one corner of which boasted a big billboard with a giant color portrait of Him, and the words Vamos Bien. But that bridge spanned the Hanabana River, which ran South, where it emptied into Bahia de Cochinos, where Cuban communism defeated Yankee imperialism. And that railroad track followed the highways North to the international playground known as Varadero, where Yankee capitalism defeated Cuban communism, and repeats it every day. These two landmarks were nearly on the same longitudinal line, an island's width apart. Cuba and the Americans, still linked after all these years. And the billboard faced toward Varadero.

Which way did I face? Right now I was looking West toward Havana and my past, waiting for a ride to my future, which was in Kiku's past in Santa Clara, East. Very little traffic going my way now, for some reason. In that quiet I recalled what I had written to Jeronimo just that morning:

Who meets who at the crossroad? And how many roads meet there, anyway?

It's enough to make a man believe in all kinds of magic.

I turned full around and faced the billboard, and Him. He was so big, I was so small. He seemed so certain, and I felt like a human derrumbe. He was everywhere, I was just here. If He wanted to, he could reach out a big Hand from that billboard and scoop me up like a toy. He probably would. Jeronimo was probably neatly placing my confessional challenge on Lage's desk right now . . .

An approaching car brought me out of my thoughts. It was taking its time, thanks to potholes and a puttering motorcylist in front of it. Again, a big old American car, but this one in beautiful shape, and that worried me at first. Farmers I trust, in their beat-up pickups and lorries, but this could be some gangster or, worse, tourists. It was a chocolate-colored Plymouth station wagon, late Forties, but what made it special was that it was a "woody," with warm golden paneling --real wood-- on the outside of the car. I held up my money anyway. The motorcyclist went sputtering by, and as his noise faded and the big smooth car slowed quietly toward my side of the road, I thought I heard music drifting toward me as well, a female voice singing in American English a song I knew well:

. . . crazy . . .
. . . crazy for feelin' so blue . . .

And then the car was settling beside me, big tires crunching the gravel. Inside was a grey-haired woman in a brown dress. She leaned over and smiled at me. "Where are you going, compañero?" she said in a strong, clear voice, though she must have been in her seventies.

Compañero? I thought. Hmmm. "I'm on my way to Santa Clara, abuela," I answered.

"Oh. Good. So am I." She waved her hand. "Keep the money. I need the company." Keep the money? She jerked her thumb upward. "You can put the bike on the roof; it won't go anywhere."

That's when I noticed the roof of the car had a kind of shallow box or rectangular rim of metal all the way around, about a foot high, painted the same dark brown. Adapted for transport, but still elegant. It was excellent metalwork. I opened the front door to put one foot on the running board, then bent over and swung the bike up and over my shoulders. The original roof was protected by a thick blanket of burlap fastened to the interior of the box frame with grommets. Very nicely done. The bike fit neatly, almost cushioned, and would be fine if she didn't drive too fast. She seemed capable enough.

I got in the car. She smiled at me again, and then looked past me and said, "The rest of you can get in the back."

I whipped my head around. Of course there was nobody there. I turned back around and gaped at her.

She ignored my look and asked, "What's your name? Mine is Hocabed Hatuey."

I told her my name and she nodded several times, her head tilting this way and that, like a cardplayer rearranging cards. "I know who you are, Professor," she said when she was done. "What's in Santa Clara?"

This was going too fast, and the car wasn't even moving yet. She seemed harmless, but very quick for a country person, and you never know anyway. "Oh, just getting out of the city," I said, "and maybe a little business. Nothing important."

She nodded again and let the car start rolling. As she was busying herself getting back on the highway, I looked around the front seat of this well-preserved cocoon of leftover America. (I didn't look in the back. The whole ride.) The generous bench seats were well-worn but not torn, with a black and brown herringbone pattern. There was a cassette recorder and a small stack of cassettes on the seat near her hip. A battery cord ran to the cigarette lighter in the dashboard. The dashboard did not look standard; it had been replaced with a beautiful dark-brown, simply carved wooden shell, highly lacquered, with the gauges inset at just the right angle. Along with the working lighter, it even had a glovebox. The gearshift knob was made of the same wood. There was no other ornamentation in the car, curiously: no saints' cards, no portraits of Him or Che, no yellow stone necklaces for Oshun hanging from the rear-view mirror.

"How do you know who I am, abuela, if I may ask?" I asked. "I'm not exactly famous."

"My granddaughter is in the Prodigy Program, and she'll probably end up at ISA. She's a writer, and she has some new ideas for the drama department there, she says."

I studied her openly now. My guide had an abundance of very long silver-grey hair, to her waist and longer, held in place in the back with a simple leather thong, but otherwise unadorned, undecorated, and loose. Most of it was pressed flat between her back and the seat. Her face was thin but strong. She didn't appear haggard or hungry or desperate. Her hands were steady and her eyes were bright. Her brown dress was a Fifties-style shirtwaist --like my mother used to wear-- but with a very long full skirt. Most of the bottom half of the skirt was colorfully painted --and well-painted-- with what appeared to be scenes of Cuban abundance: mangoes, plantains, coffee beans, bananas, papayas, sugar cane, coconuts, tobacco --and rivers and fish and cattle and mountains, too, and much else besides, and also the various techniques began to draw me in--

I shook my head to clear it. "Where does she go to school?"

"At the Art and Music School in Santa Clara."

I sat up straight. "Santa Clara seems to be raising some smart kids. Does she know a student named Yasmani Oliva?"

She looked over and gave me a brilliant smile, and winked, as if I had finally arrived where she had been waiting. "Of course," she said, "they're practically brother and sister. Everybody knows the Olivas. They've been in Santa Clara as long as we Hatueys have."

I took a deep breath and looked through the windshield for a long moment. Then: "So you know Erasmo Oliva, too, then."

"Flash No More," she declared, "who makes deep night look like twilight."

I chuckled. "That's for sure. Well, he's at ISA, another Prodigy student, though from an earlier selection. He showed me some woodcuts he made, and I was interested in the wood. He said he got them from a friend out in Santa Clara."

"That would be Beny. There are three young people from Santa Clara currently enrolled in the Prodigy Program. You know of the other two. Beny Manach Roa is the third. He makes all kinds of things. Beny and Yasmani and Erasmo and Marta have been friends forever."

"Marta?"

"My granddaughter, Marta O'Gorman."

I nodded. "I see. The musketeers." We both smiled. "That's good. Good to have friends. And Beny makes Flash No More's woodcutting boards? Erasmo said it was a special wood. Do you know anything about that?"

Abuela Hocabed Hatuey gave me an odd look, as if she was suppressing more than laughter. And apparently I had overlooked a thick braid of grey hair which fell past her right cheek, down onto her bodice and almost to her waist. Where did that come from? How had I missed that? Was something the matter with my eyes? She reached out her right hand to caress the dashboard shell. "You're looking at it."

"This?" I leaned forward and examined the whole facade closely. Through the shiny clear lacquer I could see very fine long threads of black in the chocolate-colored wood. Nature's patient work. I opened the glovebox and peered at the interior lid. The wood was carved, not soaked and heat-treated and bent. That meant fairly mature trees, and good machines, too.

"Excellent workmanship," I said. "He must have some good lathes."

"His father, really. He used to be Colonel Roa."

Oh. From the aborted nuclear program.

I took a guess. "Did they customize your car's roof, too?"

She nodded. "It's perfect for hauling my produce."

I changed the subject. Ex-Colonel Roa could still be political dynamite. "Anyway, I was thinking of trying to requisition some of those boards for ISA, for the printmaking shop. Do you think Beny would be interested? I mean, do you think that would be permissible?"

She smiled, keeping her eyes on the road. "Well, he's an agreeable fellow."

"Good."

She looked over briefly. "And that was your business in Santa Clara?"

"That's it. So you could show me where to find Beny?"

"Of course."

"That's very helpful of you, abuela."

We rode in silence for a minute. I thought about these bright new kids, and their Cuban inventado, for a minute, and then about the New Inventado artists, and their worldly cynicism. And Kiku, stuck in a living coffin out there somewhere, with so many others, too crazy to be cynical. Living coffins covered Cuba. I slumped over to the window, suddenly feeling bleak. These Santa Clarans seemed pretty close-ranked. They're not going to tell this Communist Party Member anything. They'll just dance me around and then out of town. This is stupid. I'll never find her.

Then Hocabed Hatuey asked, "Would you like to hear some music?"

I blinked and sat up again. "Sure. I like all kinds of music."

She smiled. She had a prominent nose and big grey eyes. She would be tall when she stood up. She asked in English:

"American music?"

"The stuff from the Fifties and early Sixties I like a lot," I answered in kind.

"So do I. In fact, I got . . . introduced to it in the late Fifties."

"It was about ten years later for me. My brother Ernesto--" I stopped suddenly. I looked out the window.

"Claro," she said, and reached down and rewound the cassette in the recorder. Click. Patsy Cline's voice rose up between us like a live, blue, wavering wire:

Crazy . . .
I'm crazy for feelin' so lonely,
I'm crazy, crazy for feelin' so blue . . .
I knew, you'd love me as long as you wanted,
And then someday, you'd leave me for somebody new.

Worry . . .
Why do I let myself worry?
Wonderin', what in the world did I do?
Oh, crazy, for thinkin' that my love could hold you . . .
I'm crazy for tryin' and crazy for cryin'
And I'm crazy for lovin' you.

I was looking blindly out the passenger window as the song faded away; everything out there was a blur of green and brown.

"In the glovebox," said Abuela Hocated Hatuey. I fumbled it open and took out a roll of toilet paper. I carefully tore off about six inches and dabbed at my eyes.

"This is a beautiful automobile," I croaked in embarrassment.

"Thank you," she said. "I've been told that it's an American surfer car." She snapped her fingers sharply. "That reminds me," and she shuffled among the cassettes without taking her eyes off the road. "Just to change the mood for a moment." I noticed that, oddly, another thick braid had appeared over her left bodice to match the one on the right, though I hadn't seen her hands move off the steering wheel, and she still had abundant hair held simply by a leather thong behind her head.

Click went the cassette. Whirrr. Click. She seemed to know where the songs were without looking. The Beach Boys purred and soared:

Well it’s been building up inside of me
For oh I don’t know how long
I don’t know why
But I keep thinking
Something’s bound to go wrong

But she looks in my eyes
And makes me realize
And she says don’t worry baby
Don’t worry baby
Don’t worry baby
Everything will turn out alright

The sweet strong exuberant voices, soaring over the cymbals, washed over us like fountains of sunlight. Americans, who I was raised to hate, and their boundless and endlessly refreshed optimism. Your love keeps lifting me higher, than I've ever been lifted before. Just keep it up, quench my desire, and I'll be at your side, forevermore. I wish I could have joined Kiku in the air back then. This magic moment, so different and so new, unlike any other . . .

And that's how it went for the next two hours, with Abuela Hocabed Hatuey playing American disc jockey for us as we two veterans of the Revolution swooned across Cuba in her big American car, as in a time capsule headed to the future, expertly dodging potholes and serenely swaying around other, slower vehicles, switching cassettes without looking, flipping, rewinding, and fast-forwarding with uncanny precision. We spoke little. I cried sometimes, but she never did. I don't remember all the songs, but I remember that every one was about love and pain --and Kiku. It might as well have been a dream . . . have you seen her? I was twelve years old for awhile --Oh, I see her face everywhere I go; on the street, and even at the picture show. Have you seen her? Tell me, have you seen her?-- and then thirty. Our dreams have magic because we'll always stay in love this way . . . Our day will come. And every time I looked over at my guide, she had more braids in her hair, long languid silver-grey snakes winding themselves together here, then there, lazily draping her shoulders. Well, why not? I was heading toward Kiku and things were getting stranger by the mile. Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no river wide enough. I must be on the right track. Love hurts --love scars --love wounds --and mars --any heart --not tough --or strong --enough --to take a lot of pain . . . The painting on the dress ended up acting strangely, too, the fruit swelling, leaves swaying, and then Kiku kept peeking out from behind trees and bushes and rocks. Once she held up a mango. Once she turned into una colibri azul. Once she sang to me:

I don't have plans and schemes,
And I don't have hopes and dreams.
I don't have anything since I don't have you.
I don't have fond desires,
And I don't have happy hours.
I don't have anything since I don't have you.

I wanted to shout out I'm coming, Kiku! at the dress, but I was already crying and feeling crazy enough as it was.

It was only after the last song she played, as we entered the suburbs of Santa Clara, that I saw tears on Abuela Hocabed Hatuey's face. It was an American song, by Elvis Presley, but with his throaty, throbbing voice, it always evoked that headlong romanticism Cubans still carry within them, despite everything:

It's now or never,
Please hold me tight,
Kiss me, my darling,
Be mine, tonight.

Tomorrow . . . may be . . . too late.
It's now or never,
My love won't wait.

At the end of the song Elvis desperately flung the heart of his voice into the hungry mouth of Fate like a gorgeous red cape swallowed up into a hurricane. After a few moments, I said, "Thank you for the music, abuela."

"El Yuma has its uses," Hocabed Hatuey almost growled, and let the tears dry by themselves as she made her way around the outskirts of Santa Clara. North of town she pulled up outside a modest, very old two-story estancia with plenty of mature coconut trees surrounding it, a small pen for animals, and a well that still seemed usable. Behind it, dense greenery and what looked like mango groves.

As the engine ticked in the silence, Abuela Hocabed Hatuey turned to me and rested her left arm on the steering wheel. Her hair was now a giant tangled mass of thick braids and dreadlocks, a medusan mantle overflowing her shoulders and arms. Despite this fierce outline, her smile was warm.

"Come in and get something to eat, Guillermo. I'll tell you where you can find Beny, and Erasmo. And then you can decide if you're going to tell me the real reason you're here."

She smiled, jerked her thumb at the back seat, and got out of the car. As she closed the door, I finally looked in the back seat, and saw nothing, and then, as I was turning back, the light glinted like a stilletto, a vertical crack opening, and I nearly had a heart attack. I saw myself sitting in the back seat of the woody looking at myself in the front seat, only the me in the back seat was leaning back easy, wearing a snow-white double-breasted tuxedo and spectator shoes on his stretched-out legs, and he sported a silver toothpick in a face-splitting grin that I never wore but recognized only too well.

"Ernesto," I whispered. His grin turned rueful as spreading red blossoms stained his white tuxedo. He winked and faded in a gleam of red light, taking two other shades with him. I jerked the door open and jumped backwards out of the car.

"Let me get this for you," I heard, and watched as my bicycle got lifted out of the roof box as if it was light as a stick of bamboo. As I rounded the front of the car, Abuela Hocabed Hatuey stood next to my bicycle, holding the handlebars. She was as tall as I was. Her huge colorful skirt seemed to support her by sheer volume. Her hair was now completely unbraided and loose again, held by the simple leather thong. I just shook my head and grinned.

"Thanks, abuela." I took the bike and parked it near the porch stairs. I took a deep breath, and felt inordinately thankful for a simple, ordinary stimulus: my mouth watered. "Something smells good."

"¡Abuela!" came a sharp voice from the top of the stairs.

My guide looked up at the landing, then back at me, and shrugged.

I looked up to see a girl in t-shirt and jeans with short spiky hair and her hands on her hips. She was giving her grandmother a severe look. When she transferred her glare to me, she suddenly became confused.

"He was on the road, looking for a ride, waving money," Abuela Hocabed Hatuey said. "I didn't know who he was until after I picked him up. I didn't even take his money! After I found out who he was, he was too charming to kick out the door." She chuckled. "And he likes old American music, too. Come on, we're hungry and thirsty, and I'm the first for the bathroom!"

And she climbed those stairs as steadily as I did, just behind her. Inside, Marta gave me a glass of ice water. She had been cooking, and I could smell five or six savory smells I had not inhaled for a long time. I couldn't quite identify . . . I put the glass down and took another long breath as if it was another long drink. It almost brought more tears to my eyes. Marta busied herself at the stove, lifting lids and stirring pots, releasing . . .

"Olives," I identified. "Raisins . . . Garlic . . .

"Picadillo," she answered. "All local ingredients," she added proudly, nodding out the window at the dense gardens I hadn't seen before. Then she turned from the stove. "Sit down, Professor," she said, and refilled my water glass.

I sat at the long rough wooden table, which had six chairs around it and a big bowl of mangoes in the middle. I stared at the fat mangoes, and then at the wire baskets of fruits and vegetables hanging in several corners of the kitchen.

"You know," I said, "in the city people stand in lines for hours for these tomatoes."

"We sell a lot of what we grow to city markets," Marta said. "It's just that parts of Santa Clara have been very productive. Even during the Special Period--"

"Which is ancient history now," interrupted Hocabed Hatuey, coming back into the kitchen. "I'm starving." She busied herself at drawers and cupboards until she had set four places with bowls and plates and utensils. I sat still and quiet, watching a domestic scene I hadn't witnessed since . . .

When the table was set, Marta directed me through the sparse living room and showed me the bathroom so I could freshen up. On the way back I noticed the line of female portraits marching up the stairway wall, and the lack of santeria-type paraphernalia. Just a bookcase, and a simple record player and radio and television.

I sat back down. Hocabed Hatuey took a large ceramic pitcher out of the refrigerator and set it down at one end of the table, with four glasses. Then she sat down at the head of the table, with myself at her right and Marta at her left. She poured four glasses of mango juice, and Marta took one to the other end of the table, where the fourth place was set.

I looked over there. "Are we waiting for someone?"

Hocabed Hatuey regarded the empty chair with a mild sad smile. "There's always someone there, or will be soon."

I opened my mouth, but instead she lifted her glass of mango juice. "To our new friend, Guillermo Gorgojo. Welcome to the Hatuey-O'Gorman estancia."

We drank. I drank deeply. It was delicious mango juice, thick and sweet and ropy, as if infused with extra nectar. I put my glass down. Marta handed me a plate and bowl of steaming food. I looked down, and wondered if I was going to fall apart completely. Such abundance . . .

We dug in. Not only fresh fluffy rice, white upon white, and fat little black beans, but brown hunks of chili-flavored ground beef, and sweet little onion squares and tangy green pitted olives, and fragrant raisins, and discs of green onion, and tiny whole tomatoes which exploded in your mouth. Garlic! Oh, my . . .

I had two servings, of course. Except for my compliments, which probably got irritating, we said little. At the beginning, Marta and Hocabed Hatuey exchanged some small talk about the goats, and the generator, and some neighborhood messages. I paid most of my attention to the food, and the mango juice.

I finally sat up, wiped my mouth with a paper towel, and sat back, sweat beading my forehead.

I was about to say the inevitable again, but instead I raised my glass. "This juice reminds me. . . I don't know why I'm asking this question way out here in Santa Clara, but the last few days, in Havana, there's been some street talk about something called The New Mango. Nobody knows what it refers to. Does that phrase sound familiar to either of you?"

Hocabed Hatuey and Marta exchanged blank looks, then both tilted their heads at once, almost in mirror parody, and Marta said, "What about that new cosmetic line Ermalinda the beauty lady was talking about? She was working on a shampoo, skin stuff --didn't she call it The New Mango?"

"I think you're right," said her grandmother, who turned to me. "What?" she said.

"Well . . . why would she advertise in Havana? On little white cards?"

"Little white cards?"

"Like business cards, with THE NEW MANGO on the front, but they have WE ARE NEXT on the back. That doesn't sound like shampoo to you, does it?"

It came out more sharply than I had intended. My anxiety breaking through. Again the two blank looks. I held up my hands. "You know, I don't want to spoil this. Please, let us drop it. It's not important. That was the best meal I have eaten in years. I mean it. I'm very grateful for your hospitality, Hocabed, Marta."

"You're welcome," Hocabed Hatuey said, and Marta nodded her spiky head and handed me another paper towel. I mopped my forehead.

After Marta cleared the table and wiped the surface clean, she returned with two real shot glasses and another, smaller ceramic jug, corked. Then she said:

"It was great to meet you, Professor. I'm glad you liked the meal. I hope we'll meet again."

I inclined my head. "I hope you'll apply to ISA."

"Thank you" She turned to Hocabed Hatuey. "I'm going over to Suki's for awhile."

After she left, Hocabed Hatuey stood up. "Please wait here, Guillermo."

I sat in the kitchen, redolent of growth and the earth, and clean work, with the old white refrigerator still shivering quietly after fifty years, until Hocabed Hatuey returned.

She had a burlap bag under her arm, a rectangular package she set by her right elbow as she sat down. Then she drew the ceramic jug toward her and unstoppered it, and the unmistakeable aroma of mango tinged the air. It was like a distant orange sunset that you could smell.

"We have a lot of creative farmers up in the hills," said Hocabed Hatuey. "As Marta said, this part of Santa Clara has been very productive, for at least a hundred and fifty years. There's something in the soil, and the government stays away for various reasons --like the goose and the golden egg parable, maybe. I know you're worried about corruption, because we're not starving, but you're just going to have to take my word that we are simply farmers, and sometimes spiritual advisers."

She brought the shot glasses close.

"Anyway, I have a source not far away who started refining aguardiente fifty years ago. That's just about all he does up there, and by now his stuff is far from crude. He began adding mango extract to one barrel last year. This is from that batch."

And she poured a thick golden liquid into the shot glasses and slid one toward me across the plank table. I bent over slightly and inhaled. Only gods were supposed to smell ambrosia, but here I was . . .

"It doesn't have a name," Hocabed Hatuey said, holding her glass up and peering at it closely. A quick smile: "Maybe he'll call it The New Mango."

We laughed and touched glasses. "To The New Mango!" And we drank. It was indeed ambrosial, spreading a golden-orange warmth in my stomach, and in my aching soul, unkinking psychic muscles.

She poured again, and we sipped this time. After we sat listening to the birds and the goats for a few moments, she put her right hand on the burlap package and looked at me with tears standing trembling in her eyes.

"You're a haunted man, Guillermo Gorgojo," she said softly.

"I know," I admitted, my head sinking, thinking of Kiku.

"No, my friend, you don't." That brought my head up. "Guillermo, you brought three people with you today."

Three people?

She took two things out of the burlap bag: a big black Bible, and an untidy stack of what looked like rectangular playing cards or paper squares, of various sizes and colors. She set this aside and put her hand on the Bible.

"Do you know the Bible?" she asked.

I chuckled almost contemptuously. "Of course not. I'm a Communist, abuela. I don't believe in such--"

She lifted her left hand. "No lying. Not here." She kept her right hand on the Bible and bent her head, then slowly pushed the book to her left. "Tell you what. We need to get to that later."

She picked up the untidy deck of cards and straightened them as best she could and set them down between us. She corralled the deck from all sides with her long bony fingers, as if the cards were restless. I studied it, swaying slightly from side to side.

It was the strangest stack of paper and cardboard, plastic, metal and fabric. It was not a standard deck of cards, identical on their backs, regulation on their faces. No. It was a mélange, all almost square or rectangular, of roughly the same size, but it seemed as if each had been secretly slipped from the pocket of some sorcerer, some mantis, some wizard, or some witch; snatched from a power place, still redolent of a laurel or oak or mesquite fire. I swear the deck rustled.

"I call it The Heap," said my guide. "Most of these I inherited, some I made myself, some were gifts, and some arrived by other means. This collection goes back almost two hundred years." She didn't elaborate, just gave me a level, sober look --better than I could return, in my condition. She cupped The Heap and looked at me expectantly.

After a few seconds, I got it: "What did you mean by three people, abuela?

"Well, I'm a little confused," she said conversationally, poking her temple with a stiff forefinger --"somethng about 'double twins,' but that doesn't make sense. Tell you what" --and she placed both hands on top of that disheveled deck-- "let's let the spirits decide."

Speaking to The Heap, she said simply, "Who's first?" She took her hands away and placed them on both sides of the deck, palms down on the table.

And The Heap rustled and shifted, like a man scratching his head and shrugging his shoulders, and out shot one of the cards, landing between us and spinning slowly. When it stopped, we stared. I was astounded.

It was a rectangular card of playing card stock, but twice as big. It was an age-yellowed white, with a thin red outline. And in the middle, a symbol I hadn't seen in a long time: a bold red Hammer and Sickle. Under it, in Cyrillic, USSR.

"Do you know what this is?" Hocabed Hatuey asked me.

I nodded, then recovered my voice. "Yes. I remember them from school. The Russians used to come around, once a year or so, and take kids out of class and test them for telepathic abilities. I think they did it randomly. Most scientific!" I chuckled. "They would hold these cards up --just the backs, like that one there-- and you were supposed to guess the symbol on the other side. I always did badly, I remember . . ."

"When you say you 'remember' . . . Guillermo, how long have you been keeping journals?"

I wasn't even surprised that she knew I kept journals. I already felt broken open, the doors guarding the locked chambers of my heart blown off their hinges. "Since I learned how to write. If I don't write down my life, I forget. So my real early years are gone. I have--"

"--a terrible memory," she finished for me. Her eyes were dark and sad.

"Yes." I looked back at the card, which had bolted right out of the past. I stared hard at it, then closed my eyes, and tried to visualize the symbol on the other side.

"Any luck?" asked Hocabed Hatuey.

I chuckled, and shook my head. "No, nothing."

"Me neither," she said, smiling, and flipped over the card. There was a big red five-pointed star right in the middle of the white field. A shiver rolled down my spine like a cold drop of mercury.

"Who is this?" asked Hocabed Hatuey quietly.

I took my time answering, and not before I looked around obviously and elaborately for Ears.

"I don't think you have to worry about MININT out here," Hocabed Hatuey protested. "Why would They bother us?"

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter anyway." I pointed at the card. "I mean, look what just happened, what I'm looking at, and how it got before my eyes. The old unreliable ways are cracking . . . Still, these are dangerous times." I shivered again.

"Who is this?" Hocabed Hatuey insisted quietly again, placing a long index finger on a corner of the card.

"Chindi," I answered.

She just tilted her head at me.

"Last year," I explained, "one of the American artists who visited during the Lisa Zeitgeist Lecture Series was part Navajo. We got to talking once. We were joking about The Beard Gesture --you know, for Him. He said that in the traditional Navajo culture, they never spoke the names of the dead, for fear of drawing the attention and the presence of the chindi --the restless spirit-- of the dead person. Anyway, he said we Cubans had it inside out: we had no problem saying the names of dead people --hell, we made t-shirts with their faces on them!-- it was the living whose names we couldn't say!"

We both burst out laughing, and she poured more of The New Mango elixir. I drank half a shot glass, then continued more soberly, considering:

"You said 'double twins,' abuela. Besides my twin brother Ernesto, who's dead ten years, I have a living shadow, I guess you'd call him. An official one, okay, abuela? He wears a big red star and reports to a bigger one. I don't know anything about psychic things, but this man and I have the same body type, tall and thin, and he's bald, too, or maybe he shaves his head, I don't know. I know his name, but I won't say it. It really could be dangerous for you. I call him The Mantis, and I suppose you could say he haunts me. He's been reading my journals and creeping around my apartment and my office for years. Kind of a living ghost, but he's all too real."

She began again with the head-tilting nodding, as if organizing mental file cards, then settled back in her chair.

"That clears up a lot for me," she said. After a deep breath, she leaned forward, slipped the card back into The Heap, straightened it, took another sip, then placed her hands over The Heap again. "Who is second?" she asked, and settled her palms on either side as before. And as before, The Heap shrugged, and out shot another card, a tin one this time, skidding to a stop before me.

It was a kind of retablo or ex-voto, very old. Parts of the picture were pitted with rust, some of the colors were faded, but it was still easy to make out the classical scene of Adam and Eve under the Tree, with the Snake above and between them. There were two variations: first, it was a mango tree; the man and woman, each a faded shade of brown, held a single bright orange mango between them, with outstretched fingers, at chest height.

Second, there was a handwritten inscription below the scene, in a rounded, almost childish hand, which had obviously been added much later; the ink lines seemed blacker and fresher than the scene above them.

And so did the words:

Look at them! They have no clothes, they have no shoes, they have no shelter, they have one mango between them, and still they think they're in Paradise. They must be Cubans!

It was a punch line from a fairly recent joke. Hocabed Hatuey leaned forward, chuckling. "I haven't seen that writing before," she said calmly, as if observing a naturally occuring anomaly.

"I have," I answered. I felt cold. I used to correct his essays in school; he would bully me to do it. And he never went to college, so his handwriting stayed juvenile.

Hocabed Hatuey took the comment in stride; she just paused to see how I was taking everything, and then nodded.

"And that didn't used to be a mango tree," she added casually. But then she jerked back, and pointed at the card with her hand up against her chest.

The snake in the tree was moving its head back and forth, tongue slipping in and out. Hocabed Hatuey studied it closely, as if listening, until it went still.

"I want to ask who this is about, but the snake is in the way," she said.

"I know who it's about," I blurted out. "Kiku Ybarra. It's about Kiku Ybarra, abuela. That's the real--"

But she held up her hand. "Not yet, Guillermo. I mean it: the snake is in the way." And she calmly reached out and set the tin card aside, on top of the Bible.

She raised her shot glass to me, we clinked, and swallowed the contents. She cupped The Heap. "Who is the third?" she asked.

Instead of shuffling, The Heap seemed to compress downward, squeezing itself under enormous pressure, until it was only half its original height. It seemed to tremble there, then sprang up like an accordion, and another card shot out between us.

It was most amazing to me. Laminated between clear plastic, laid out neat under that sheen, still glowing with the gold of authority, was a yellowback --a $10 US gold certificate from the beginning of the 20th Century, the reverse side. I carefully reached out and turned it over. The front was green. It was dated 1907. America had been in Cuba a long, long time.

"Who is this?" Hocabed Hatuey asked me.

I was about to answer when it hit me: a red star, a mango, and a dollar sign. The same three symbols Kiku stuck to the wall that night so long ago. She never told me why those three symbols. I wish she had, because here they were again.

"Guillermo?"

"Ernesto," I said loudly.

"Yes," she said emphatically, and pushed the drinks aside. She slipped the tin card and the laminated money back into The Heap, and put The Heap away in the burlap bag. Then she reached behind her neck and unclasped something on a leather thong. She lifted it out of her bodice and stretched her palm out between us. In her hand was a thin cross-section of a nautilus, about three inches in diameter and one-eighth inch thick. Someone --Colonel Roa? His son Beny?-- had sliced it nice and neat. It was like a latticed mathematical diagram of perfect spiral growth made out of crushed pearls, blue-green and liquid silver. The chambers shrunk toward the center of their spiral as they had to. She lay it on the table between us so that the spiral spun counterclockwise. Then she reached down and rotated her finger in a spiral from the outside to the center. She tapped her finger there.

"We have to go back to the beginning, and even before the beginning," she said.

She waited. I swayed. I felt blank. She pulled the Bible to her. Without opening it, she said:

"He was a murderer from the beginning."

"Ernesto? No, he was a crook, but he never--"

"Tell me about the red rope dream."

I felt a chill. The one thing I always remembered, the one thing I never had to write down, never would write down, and never did write down. But she knew it. My lifelong terror. One reason I don't sleep much.

"There's--" I croaked, swallowed, and started over: "There's not much to it. I'm floating in water, like floating down a river, except I'm underwater. In the dream, I can breathe underwater, and I also feel relieved for some reason, because I'm alone, I can stretch, I'm not being crowded and prodded and jabbed and kicked and poked and scratched . . . This part of the dream is wonderful and relaxing, and I want it to go on forever. And then suddenly a red rope comes out of nowhere, loops over my head, and starts strangling me. It goes on and on until I black out --I mean, wake up."

I looked over at her. She had tears in her eyes. "Guillermo, do you ever wonder why you have a terrible memory?"

I went blank. "No, not really . . ."

She leaned closer. "The snake is still in the way. He was a murderer from the beginning. He was evil, and he saw your good. You got all the good, he got all the evil, and he saw that truth while you both were still inside your mother. And so Ernesto tried to strangle you in the womb with your own umbilical cord."

I just stared at her open mouthed. I was trembling, sheathed in cold sweat. She pressed:

"What was your birth like?"

". . . The way it was told to me, Ernesto went first, easy as you please; but they say I was both breech and blue --the cord was around my neck. . . . But I never imagined . . .We weren't even born yet . . ."

"Evil is ageless. He hobbled you from the beginning, from before the beginning. He was evil, Guillermo, evil through and through. You got all the good, but Ernesto clouded your brain. You could have been more --more you." She covered my hands with hers. They were warm. "Because of him, you're a lesser man than you should have been. You could have been more confident, you could have been--"

"--stronger for Kiku!" I shouted in sudden realization, the thought sending me to my feet in anger and shame. I wanted to pound the table, but I gripped the edge of it instead with both hands and squeezed until my knuckles went white, saying over and over, "Weak, weak, weak . . ."

The old warm hands covered mine again. I relaxed my grip. "Sit down, Guillermo." She patted the Bible. "There's more."

I sank back down into the chair. I felt the burden of my dead brother heavier than ever. That bastard. He mangled me and bent my life. And made me feel dull, and stupid, and weak, while he made a flashy mess of his own life.

Hocabed Hatuey opened the Bible and released a smell of sage. She turned the crisp pages until she found the passage she was looking for, running a long index finger down the page, though of course she must have known it by heart. She took a deep breath, then recited the words of San Paolo with drama and passion:

"O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

She caressed the pages, chuckling. "When I was young, the Catholic sisters used to try to scare us into sanctity with every lesson. I remember one nun in particular expounding on that phrase, the body of this death. She told us this gruesome story, which seems unlikely, but we believed it at the time. She said that in San Paolo's time, if you murdered somebody, the Roman authorities would bind his dead body to your back, winding leather straps around both you and locking the whole device with padlocks. The murderer would then be released, to wander where he would, until the dead body rotted into his and killed him."

She closed the Bible and set it aside. "You've been letting him hurt and degrade you your whole life, even after he's long dead. There's no reason for you to feel shame about his choices--"

". . . my brother's keeper . . . " I murmured.

"No!" she growled, banging the table once with her fist. I shut up. "You're not, never were, his keeper, and he tried to kill you because he knew you would outshine and shame him. It's long past time to get rid of him. You'll never have much of a life left if you don't. Because now you know, no?"

"The red rope," I said dully. I felt numb, and then a sickening sense of betrayal that stretched out for years, a crazy spiral, and that made me dizzy with vertigo: my whole life . . .

"You're free of him, Guillermo. It just doesn't feel like it right now." She put the Bible back in the burlap bag and rewrapped the package. "And now, these old bones need a siesta, and so do you." She stood up. "You can sleep on the sofa in the living room, and I'll wake you up when it's time to go to the bus stop. It's actually been close to schedule lately."

"But what about--?"

"I haven't forgotten the other one who haunts you. We can talk about Kiku on the way to the bus station."

Once I was settled on the sofa I realized how weary I was, and must have fallen asleep right away.

Almost immediately one of the Abakua Derivation prints appeared before me, floating. But before it would work its magic I grabbed both ends of it and twisted it in different directions, making a double helix. My effort squeezed out a fat red drop of something which fell, and I fell with it, into more darkness.

I found myself in a black room with a red floor and a red door on the opposite wall. The room seemed to narrow toward that wall. The door opened and Ernesto stepped through. He looked as he had in the back seat of the car earlier that day. "El Yuma has its uses," he said mockingly, "and so does Cuba. Are you here to watch me die?" And he laughed as the red blossoms appeared again on his white tuxedo, one by one, him grunting with every knife thrust. And when he fell his body extended and grew until it was too big for the room, so we both rose in the air. As we were lifting up, I saw that the room was the largest chamber of a nautilus-like structure with black walls and a red floor, and doors connecting the narrowing chambers.

We rose, Ernesto morphing beyond his arms and legs and growing into something huge, long and narrow, a white-and-green lozenge. We were flying over Cuba now, from Havana heading East. I knew what he was doing. He was an island looking for a suitable place to land. And he found one on the north shore. As he settled down into his new home, he became a familiar peninsula: Varadero. Ernesto became Varadero, the yellowback who ripened into the pretty green snake, whose bite has made Cubans sleepwalkers.

I fell down and back toward the black-and-red room again, landing gently on my feet, facing the door. I didn't hesistate, but ran at that door and kicked it open. It flew back and I was through and into the next chamber, a little smaller and curving to the left, counterclockwise, with another door which I kicked open without breaking stride, and that's how I descended that spiral path, kicking open black doors into red chambers which continued to shrink, me shrinking with them, bounding down, always bearing left, down that blind red curve to my beginnings. I kicked open the last door. The last small room was circular, with no more doors anywhere, and a low ceiling, and Ernesto crouched there, looking sheepish and overdressed in his tuxedo. He said nothing, and for once he couldn't look me in the eye.

I gathered up all the anger and bitterness of forty years and shouted out, "This was mine! My time, my place! You didn't belong here! You came from hell! You should not have been!" Then other words came, roaring words I don't remember summoning in a voice too big for my own throat:

"BEGONE! YOU DON'T BELONG HERE!"

Ernesto began to crack up, literally, like a ceramic sculpture. I felt myself vibrating and almost lifting off my feet, and I yelled it again, and as I did so Ernesto was obliterated into smithereens as if by cannon shot:

"BEGONE! YOU DON'T BELONG HERE!"

I found myself, awake, on my hands and knees beside the sofa in Hocabed Hatuey's living room, my cheeks still shaking, my throat on fire.

Hocabed Hatuey stood still at the other end of the room, her mouth an O, her eyes bright, and holding up a small smoking branch of sage in her right hand.

I must have looked a question at her. I had blown myself right out of sleep and even off the couch with my shouted dream words. She said earnestly, leaning forward, right in the moment with me:

"You have to hear it yourself. Say it again!" she shouted.

From the floor, I shouted it again: "BEGONE! YOU DON'T BELONG HERE!" and it went out into the room and bounded back into my ears, completing a circle my unconscious had begun.

"Good," she answered, and moved the smoking branch around as she circled the living room. She gestured with the branch and smiled: "This is like silent yelling. But you needed to do what you did. I'm just helping you, and us, get rid of him."

I sat up on the couch, feeling more awake than ever, lighter than ever. I felt wrung out but not despairing. In fact, the opposite: hope. How, I didn't know; but I saw the gleam. But what about Kiku? Hocabed Hatuey passed my way and wafted some sage smoke in my direction. Then she lifted an old pocket watch out of her brown skirt. "We need to go soon, Guillermo. You can't miss the bus, or you'll be pedalling all the way back to Havana."

Back in the car, returning through the outskirts of town, I marvelled at how much better I felt than on my trip out to Santa Clara, even though my main mission was still unfulfilled.

I said: "You've helped me so much, Hocabed Hatuey. I really was hobbled. Ernesto--"

She interrupted: "Let's act like Navajos and not say his name. I'm not afraid, but he's not worth it."

"Yes," I said. "That's for sure. Still, what you did was worth so much to me. You wouldn't take my money before, so I guess you won't now. I don't have much" --I rooted through my jaba vinyl-- "except my journal, some pens, a wrinkled apple, and a banana peel. The only other thing I have is my bicycle. Why don't you take it? I can get around Havana without it."

She just shook her head and chuckled. "Thanks for the gesture, my friend, but I have a feeling you'll be needing that bicycle. You know, for changing directions?" And she chuckled dryly again. "How about some music?"

Click went the cassette. Black voices rose and interwove like velvet ribbons in the twilight.

Don’t look back,
If it’s love that you’re running from. . .
There’s no hiding place.
Love has problems, I know,
but they’re problems
We’ll just have to face.

So if you just put your hand in mine,
We’re gonna leave all our troubles behind.
Keep on walking; don’t look back.
And don’t look back (don’t look back),
The worst is behind you, let me remind you.

Love can be a beautiful thing . . .
Though your first love let you down.
‘Cause I know you can make love glow, babe,
The second time around.

We rode in silence for awhile --me reflecting that the song didn't seem so far beyond possibility as it used to --the worst is behind you, and the second time around-- which was crazy in Cuba: when was the last time I, or most Cubans, had thought in those terms? the worst is every day! the hundredth time around! -- but I was beginning to change directions, I guess-- then my guide pulled over to the side of the road a few blocks before the bus station, put the gearshift in Park, and turned to me.

"Kiku Ybarra," she said brusquely. "I don't know her or where she is, and I don't even know how to find out --but . . . if you had a message for her, or anyone who knows anything about her, what would it be?"

I made sure I was looking her in the eye. "Tell her I'm coming. Tell her I'm coming to get her out."

Hocabed Hatuey straightened up, raising her eyebrows. "I'll pass on what I can, but . . . How?"

I looked through the windshield. "You know, abuela." In my mind's eye, I saw The Mantis reading my morning missive to him. "Me and my shadow."

At the bus station, Hocabed Hatuey reached into the back seat and handed me a burlap bag, which contained several wrapped items. "I told Marta to put this together while you were asleep."

"Oh, no, look," I said, "after you wouldn't take the bicycle, now you're giving me more . . ."

But she pressed it into my hands. "You'll need it. Wait until you're on the bus to open it."

We got my bicycle off the car. I put down the kickstand and looked at my guide. I put down my two bags, plastic and burlap. She reached out formally and grasped both my hands. I felt the force of seventy-five years of wrestling with the unknown. "If I can help you," she said solemnly, "I will. You know where to find me now."

I thanked her and she got back in the car. I heard a click, even before she started the car, and music as she drove away, more bluesy black American voices:

Ooh, this old heart of mine been broke a thousand times.
Each time you break away I think you're gone to stay.
Lonely nights that come, memories that flow,
Bringing you back again, hurting me more and more . . .

As the twilight darkened, and I rolled my bike to a bench to write, I wondered how many nights Abuela Hocabed Hatuey had spent alone in her life. I remembered that ascending rank of female portraits in her house --no men . . . Still, she didn't seem bitter; she swallowed her sadness and kept moving, the source of her strength still a mystery to me. But we humans have different sources of strength.

I wrote until the bus arrived, and the usual crowd of humans and animals piled in. I managed to get my bicycle stored neatly, thanks to a couple of extra dollars, and settled down to write at the very back corner of the bus, mostly undisturbed.

After about an hour of writing I looked up to notice that the bus had settled down into the evening. In fact, besides the chugging and rattling and huffing of the bus, most passengers seemed asleep, or stuperous. The countryside went by as black and green blurs. There were very few stops, I realized, and very few lights. Cuba was contracting, its ribs showing more and more.

I put away my journal and, after looking around carefully, opened the burlap bag. It had three paper-wrapped packages inside. The first was a fat bunch of dried sage. I could guess what that was for, and I planned on using it. The superstitious Communist. The second was a styrofoam container. I carefully lifted the lid and snapped it down again before the aroma of the picadillo could spread. I held my breath. Nobody stirred in my direction. The third was another modest ceramic jug with a cork in it. I didn't even dare to uncork that vessel. I rewrapped them all and was replacing them in the burlap when I noticed that there was a folded piece of paper at the bottom of the bag.

Dear Professor,

Thank you so much for joining us for supper tonight. The food always tastes better with company. And I haven't seen my abuela smile so much in years, so thanks again, and maybe I'll see you at ISA next year.

Sincerely,
Marta H. O'Gorman

So I'd been a blessing to that old wise woman, as she had been to me. What a day. As I opened my journal again, I realized how blessed I really was, compared to all the compañeros jostling along with me. I had good food, good liquer, good magic, right here; and at home some good mota that Rosa had pressed on me. "It'll help you sleep." I had gone out on my own, for practically the first time in my life. I thumbed my nose at The Mantis. I put lines out for Kiku, and I had faced --and faced down-- the hellish burden of my horrible brother, and his sabotage of my life. It didn't crush me. It made me stronager. I felt like a rich man. Only one thing would make it perfect, of course: if Kiku was home waiting for me.

Not now, I knew. But I was determined to make it happen, and soon.

The Murder Pimps

[This is a grim subject, but they bandy it around downtown as light as a shuttlecock. I'll bring it back down to Earth.]

by Jerome du Bois

In The Concrete Blonde, Michael Connelly's 1994 Detective Harry Bosch novel, there's a scene where Bosch examines death photos in the kitchen of the woman he's involved with, Sylvia Moore, an eighth-grade English teacher. She is in the living room grading papers. They have just eaten dinner, he has a bottle of beer, and he's examining the victims of a serial killer called The Dollmaker.

He unsnapped the first binder and laid out the sections on each of the eleven victims across the table. He stood up with the bottle so he could look down and take them all in at once. Each section was fronted by a photograph of the victim's remains, as they were found. There were eleven of these photos in front of him. He did some thinking on the case and then went into the bedroom and checked the suit he had worn the day before. The Polaroid of the concrete blonde was still in the pocket.

He brought it back to the kitchen and laid it on the table with the others. Number twelve. It was a horrible gallery of broken, abused bodies, their garish makeup showing false smiles below dead eyes. Their bodies were naked, exposed to the harsh light of the police photographer.

Bosch drained the bottle and kept staring. Reading the names and the dates of the deaths. Looking at the faces. All of them lost angels in the city of night. He didn't notice Sylvia come in until it was too late.

"My God," she said in a whisper as she saw the photos. She took a step backward. She was holding one of her students' papers in her hand. Her other hand had come up to her mouth.

"I'm sorry, Sylvia," Bosch said. "I should've warned you not to come in."

"Those are the women?"

He nodded.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not sure. Trying to make something happen, I guess. I thought if I looked at them all again I might get an idea, figure out what's happening."

"But how can you look at those? You were just standing there looking."

"Because I have to."

Hieronymus Bosch, LA Police, is no ghoul. But we're in the Rebarb now, so imagine that the woman in the doorway is Amy Young, who co-runs Perihelion, a Grand Avenue art gallery and bookstore. As soon as she saw the pictures she'd say, "Cool!" and elbow Bosch aside quicker than a CNN photographer, picking up this one and that one --"Wow! What happened to her? Huh? Tell me, Harry, come on, this is cool . . ."

But that wouldn't work, either, because Harry Bosch, police detective, wouldn't come within a mile of Amy Young, who is a murder pimp.

Amy Young and her partner, Doug Grant, have been dragging around the moldy, moribund corpse of Aleister Crowley for a couple of years now, with some success. They just won't let the poor bastard, and the occult in general, rest in peace. Goth persists, even though its very existence is parody: these black-clad fools are as stylized and effete as Devo, their roles as fixed and irrelevant as Kabuki, every one trying to be Crispin Glover with eyeballs in his pockets. Rich old golfer Vinny Fournier, who made his mark as Alice Cooper, now hosts the same kind of acts at his joint downtown. The Ghouls just played at Modified, undoubtedly wearing tattered Cannibal Corpse t-shirts and singing the same old songs about maggots and necrophilia.

Phoenix has long tolerated a certain dose of this miasmic fantasy. But now Amy Young and Doug Grant are celebrating and exploiting real murder, and the murder of women, and that makes us mad. If you examine the profiles of their bookstore offerings, a lot of soft-core p*rn misogyny and true crime --including photographs in both genres-- occupies their minds. Right now on their home page you see an image of a Zyklon B gas container by Gidget Gein (a male Marilyn Manson alumnus, who took psycho Ed Gein's last name). And just last night they hosted true crime ghoul writer John Gilmore, who writes lovingly of up-close and personal murder. He spoke it aloud last night, and he combines my two subjects, murder and misogyny, so let's look closer at this man.

According to the squib (written by the NT food writer [?] Stephen Lemons), of the eight subjects he has written about, six were about men murdering women, and two were about degraded and degrading women. He also read sections from his "sexually-charged" novel. He says:

"It can be very subtle --it's not all gore and shit like that. It's psychological, as well. That's what I'm drawn to, the psychological darkness. It's very rich territory for a writer. The dark side of the moon, as it were."

Horseshit. Serial killers and sexual murderers are not deep. They're not geniuses or subhuman. They offer no insights, bring no gifts but misery and murder. They are simply sadists and misanthropes; they hate life and people, especially women, and see everything and everyone as mere instruments for their explorations. FBI expert Roger Depue (more about him below) compiled a list of their "common operating principles," and one of them was, "People die too easily. It should be more painful, and take longer."

What John Gilmore likes is wallowing in the gore, and in writing about instilling fear, and then pain, into women. He likes to write about it and read about again and again. He makes money from resurrecting innocent murdered women's pain.

And Amy Young and Doug Grant --and Artlink and Mayor Phil Gordon, by extension and endorsement-- have no problem at all inviting all kinds of creeps to their bookstore, along with the clueless teenage goths. Nascent Ted Bundys from colleges and high schools, travelling predators from the nearby railroad tracks, fixated punks justing waiting for the trigger for the thrill kill, the man who makes copies of your keys . . .

In his memoir Between Good and Evil: A Master Profiler's Hunt For Society's Most Violent Predators, Roger L. Depue, the Man behind Behavioral Science at the FBI for years, writes this:

Evil is not a discrete entity that springs forth fully formed. It is born in the mind, takes root there as fantasy, and prospers when normal human restraint can no longer contain it. I have seen it devour the personalities of men like Richard Speck, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy, turning them into blank-faced sociopaths who clearly know right from wrong, but choose, time and again, to follow their own base urges, with complete disregard for the terrible human suffering they cause.

And this:

My work has given me a profound respect for what humans suffer at the hands of evil, and a particular sensitivity for what its victims endure. During every investigation that I participate in, there is always an invisible observer at my shoulder, whose presence I never forget. Regardless of the circumstances of a case, I am always giving voice to its silent victim.

John Gilmore gives voice to the murderers, over and over again. He is free, and alive, to do that.

The victims?

They're just women. Dead women. Safely dead and reduced, as in the Harry Bosch novel, to dolls. And now Amy Young and her crew pass them around as such.

I suppose there was a decent crowd at Perihelion last night. What kind of people are they, I wonder? I don't know, but I know it was the asafoetidic stink of real murders, not fantasy ones, that drew them. I hope at least one member of the sicko squad was there undercover, though.

Phoenix may call it The Burgeoning; we call it The Rebarb. And we condemn it.

UPDATE: A reader emails that Gidget Gein, on his website, brags about stealing things off of dead bodies.

While I'm here, let me add a prophecy from Leonard Cohen, a verse from "The Future," written fifteen years ago:

You'll see your woman hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets comin' 'round
Tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson.

Manson is a piece of human trash, and no poet, and anyone who vamps on his stinky aura, or Gacy's, or Gein's, is reprehensible, too.

Some Local Notes

by Jerome du Bois

1. Islam in Arizona Schools

As far as we know, the seventh-grade social-studies text Across the Centuries will still be taught in the Scottsdale Unified School District this year. This means that students will be subject to the "celebration" of Ramadan for a month, in school, later this school year, to attempt to immerse American youth in Islam. No other world religion enjoys this privilege. We'll see if any parents object, and follow the story as we did earlier this year. Please email us if you know anything new, and we'll post it.

2. You're Just Mad Because . . .

There's a persistent notion that we attack the downtown Phoenix art scene out of sour grapes, or bitterness at having that glorious door shut in our faces. It's easier for our targets to believe that than look at themselves and the things they need to change. Of course, now they're busy changing since the cops and the rest of the law came down on them, to remind them of their status as ordinary citizens like the rest of us who must obey the law, and not privileged twits who can walk between the raindrops.

By focusing on our anger, or the angry parts of certain posts, some of our readers conveniently ignore our large-scale projects and ambitious, positive notions. We have not received a single supportive or even inquisitive email about The Collective I, for example, or the Glorious Golden Grand Avenue Vision, or The Antidote, or The Liberty Pole. And pointed, substantive questions like "Where is the Arizona art blog?" and "Why didn't somebody cover the Arizona Biennial 2005?" get passed over in silence. Too busy accusing us of hating everybody and being negative.

3. The Wilting Correspondents

We closed comments ("The Blog You Love To Hate," as Catherine says), but we sometimes publish and respond to critical emails. This correspondence doesn't last long, usually. After one or two postings by us, they run off. Readers may draw their own conclusions, but mine is that once we dispose of the personal attacks on us, there's nothing much left to say. Mr. Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker is the latest one to learn that we don't take it, we do not tolerate one iota of disrespect, and we're not pliable supplicants impressed by some art bureaucrat or credentialed authority.

4. The Remorae

This shark has at least one remora, who goes by theklute. On his tiny blog, he links to something I've written, makes a one-line comment, and goes away to copy this micro-post at several other user-locations on livejournal. Meanwhile, I've done all the work. And the kind of hybrid-blog he operates from is swarming with other pseudonymous sucker-fish, plugging in their own inane comments. One said, dismissively, that The Collective I reminded them of Blade Runner. Wow. But that's about as deep as it gets with these people.

5. The Arizona Biennial 2005

Finally, back to that question about the lack of Biennial coverage. We think it's important. It ran from May 15 to August 15. Nobody from any newspaper in the state covered it. Every artist represented came from Arizona. No artist, as far as we know, lobbied for coverage. Nobody started a blog just for the Biennial, even though some of these artists have created a blog for a stupid local exhibition before, youstilldrawlikeagirl. Why didn't they create an online Biennial, so people could know what they were driving down, or up, or over to see? Some of these artists are web-savvy. I don't know what happened, but the lack of motivation and imagination yawns right in your face, doesn't it?

The Idiotic Dots Of The Whatnots

by Jerome du Bois

I love the very letterforms you read now, reader. The Greco-Roman-derived alphabet, from Avant-Garde to Vedana. When I make art, I often use words, cutting out letters or stamping them or printing them or writing them out or carving them. You may take these enduring forms, these 26 uniquely-grouped inhabitants of the Western World, and, as any teacher knows, you can distort them almost beyond recognition, and yet we recognize them --partly by context, yes, but often just because they're so strong in themselves. I respect them because they have remained fairly stable amid so much instability, and indeed have played their crucial parts in explaining that instability, and so much else besides. They are faithful stewards of meaning, even when the meanings of words change. I love the letters of my native alphabet.

Perhaps devotees of other alphabets --Cyrillic, Hindi, Chinese, Hebrew-- feel as I do, and so perhaps will share my anger at an artwork by Brazilian Rivane Neuenschwander now being exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennalle.

Its title: [. . . ]

Here is a photo, followed by a brief description and micro-gush by curator Elisabeth Sussman in Artforum:

At the Arsenale, everything "looks good" (in a late-'90s sort of way). The installation is austerely elegant, but there is often an element of entertainment. Take, for instance, [. . . ], 2004, an alluring installation of brightly colored walls and tables proffering old typewriters, outmoded technology made even more redundant by modification: No matter which letter is pressed, a period will be struck. This engaging work by Brazilian Rivane Neuenschwander, which invites viewers to type (meaningless) messages and pin them on the wall, playfully points to the ultimate emptiness of technology, its quick obsolescence, the hollowness at the core of the vast preponderance of communications it facilitates.

I will show the ultimate stupidity and hollowness at the core of Ms. Sussman's final sentence below. But first, let us consider this desecration in more detail.

Behold the damned thing itself, before the ideas surrounding it. Maybe you have to be a certain age to be outraged at how the artist has destroyed these old typewriters. It's well-known police lore that the physical signatures of unique typewriters are strong enough to convict criminals with their traces. Each typewriter, after a bit of use, develops its own profile --all because of those strong fingers, driven by those busy minds. When I was in high school I was the best typist in typing class, despite the fact that I'm missing a joint on one of my fingers. When I graduated, I also graduated from a stiff stately old Royal to a slick tomato-colored Selectric, with the bouncing typeballs. Catherine had a Hermes Rocket identical to the one in the picture above. She hauled it everywhere for years. Lots of writers still use old typewriters, even in the 21st Century. People collect them the way others collect record players and radios. From their platens writers coaxed, caressed, and hammered meaning into the world, from orders to love letters to spy codes to novels and poems.

What the artist has done, or asked her interns to do, is lift up every key and --where the little letter looks up at you backwards, like a soldier at attention always happily ready for duty-- had them grind that stubborn shape down with a Dremel tool and fine file until only a dot is left. Every letter, number, and punctuation sign, except the period, of course. Grind them down into the stupid point, the simplest sign in the universe, which goes nowhere and is the merest mark.

To me, it's like pouring acid on fingers.

But Rivane Neuwenschwander wants to erase all distinctiveness, individuality, identity, hierarchy, and meaning from the world. Whatever anybody types doesn't matter a bit. Nobody matters. Nothing we say matters. Everything is ellipsis, the slack-jawed in-between --dot dot dot, fill it in with whatnot.

Why bother even writing about this mean and snickering thing, since it's already a fait accompli, signed off on by all the poobahs?

Because everybody counts. Because everybody counts or nobody counts.

Because communicating matters. Getting across to others gets us further into the future. To mock that standard, to mock that need, to mock that defining characteristic of humans, reveals the weakness that drives all these postmodern artists: they hate people, themselves most of all.

Postmodernism is dead. Meaning matters. I'll show the shrunken heart of this cruel and inhuman artwork, and the tired, jaded sensibility that surrounds and sanctions it.

Ms. Sussman wrote:

This engaging work by Brazilian Rivane Neuenschwander, which invites viewers to type (meaningless) messages and pin them on the wall, playfully points to the ultimate emptiness of technology, its quick obsolescence, the hollowness at the core of the vast preponderance of communications it facilitates.

Go on. Step up to the table. Sit down. Think of something to type. I don't know . . . anything. But why? Just rattle the keys a little. Cute, huh? Everything is . . . everything comes out . . . you're muted so far down you're just like that guy over there . . .

Cute. Engaging. Playful.

the ultimate emptiness of technology

I read on my computer monitor, which is connected to a processor which is connected to eighty jillion connections all over the Earth, a literal world of information, history, images, and conversations, jamming the broadband from end to end. Empty? No. Only Sussman's head is empty. The world brought to us by technology is growing in knowledge and wisdom by the nanosecond. She can stay behind, though.

its quick obsolescence

The manual typewriter served the United States and the world from 1867 up through two world wars and beyond. Like the Colt 1911 .45 pistol, it was an uncomplaining workhorse that saved thousands of hours of labor and movement, and saved lives due to its accuracy and clarity.

the hollowness at the core of the vast preponderance of communications it facilitates

This woman wrote and supervised the production of two books at least, from MIT Press no less; one about Keith Haring and one about Nan Goldin. Is this what she thinks of her work, and the work of all of her technical and editorial collaborators at MIT? If so, consider --with horror, I hope--the corrosive nihilism eating at this woman's soul.

Everything means. Everything matters. And that's why I stand up for battered old mutilated manual typewriters.

The Last Laugh

[When Catherine read Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker's last email to us, this part offended her:

I did ask Gregory Sale about you and he grinned. He said you wrote a fictional piece about different programs the Commission was supposedly doing. He thought it was funny.

This is her response, and why the piece is dedicated to Gregory Sale. --JdB]

By Catherine King

On June 21, our shortest night of the year, I stepped outside to capture the spiritual activity.

They were making hay while the full moon shone.

Before you know it, you'll be joining their Eternal Night.

Wherein We Grant An Incomplete To Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker [UPDATED]

[Updates at the end. Very revealing.]

[Here I proudly acknowledge that, though I'm responsible for all the vituperation below, before, and often, Catherine King, my beloved wife, is here, and often, a temperate ghostwriter and editor, toning me down, reining me in. Most of my postings should properly read "with Catherine King," or "and Catherine King." Just so you know.]

by Jerome du Bois

I sure went over the top in my last posting on this guy, didn't I? I'm hysterical and full of rage, I hear. Tough. I don't take back a word.

He sent me another long email. What offended me most was a superior bureaucratic tone and assumption that he was above me in some way; that he was grading my behavior, that I was in some sense accountable to him. "I had higher hopes for you," he frowns. "Please post my email in full on your blog," he demands. It was the same peremptory tone that bothered me in the first email. Mister, I am in no sense in any petitionary postion to you. I do not answer to you. We have no relationship. You might as well be a barking dog below the window. Some pretentious twit once demanded of Spenser the detective, "Who is your superior?" He answered, "I have no superior. I'm not even sure I have an equal."

Yes, I have a healthy ego, and I know its limitations: a lot of my soul, blood, and tears are spread out on this blog, in thousands of words. This guy doesn't put limits on his ego, or on his arrogance. He should have stopped while he was behind. I was going to answer his email privately, but after rereading it --especially the end, about Cuba-- I changed my mind.

Over the top is the place to begin.

And no, I'm not going to quote his email in full.

Mr. du Bois.

I think you have greatly exaggerated the nature of my last email to you and your wife. My only intent for emailing you was to enter into a discourse with you as you so often request in your blog. In the spirit of having open and honest discussions about art, I felt I would comment on two pieces I found to my liking and a piece which I did not like on your blog. Do you always react with such venom against people responding to your blog? Didn't you create your blog hoping people would read it, react to it, and talk to you about it?

We created the blog because I've always wanted to edit a magazine, we love to write --not just about art, but about whatever draws our interests-- and nobody can control us. It's that independence that pisses off bureaucrats like you.

We two decide when and if and how discourse takes place. Not anyone else. Comments are closed because of violent trolls and slanderers. Nice town, downtown.

And I don't know anything about your credentials, do I? Except that you managed a dorm in college, where you saw some collages. Well, hell, then . . . Yes, anybody can criticize anything, but-- who are you, man? that I should respect you?

And speaking of respect, she is Catherine King, her own strong self, not merely the nameless, dismissive, safe, "my wife," though I have the honor of being her husband.

I am sorry if you felt I was attacking you personally. I have only read snippets of your writing because I believed it was a work in progress and I was waiting to read it as a whole.

I haven't counted lately, but the New Mango must be up to over thirty thousand words by now --published, with plenty coming up soon. It was an insult and that wasn't an apology. And you asked a specific question about a complex political, moral, and behavioral issue, and called me to task, as if I was supposed to write a term paper for a class. You know by now how I'm going to respond to that --with an upraised middle finger.

If you are not interested in what I think, why do you expect me to be interested in what you think?

I wasn't. I didn't know you existed, and didn't care. Now I do, for reasons I will give below.

Why do you only focus on the negative and not the positive? As artists, don't we create art with the risk that some of it will be accepted and some of it will be rejected by different audiences? And, why did you choose to excoriate me publicly instead of keeping our discourse in the private realm?

I'll answer the second part first. It appears you're late to the blogosphere, pal. It isn't a tea party. And the default protocol is that all emails are subject to publication and editing. But even before that, you don't tell a blogger what to do. They are among the last unspun voices around. That you tried to intimidate a blogger is a psychological tell with people who think they have some access to handles, dials, and buttons. You are behind the times, man. Fair warning.

About the negative and positive. Patience. I'll answer it near the end of my reply.

I have never attacked you publicly or privately, nor have I ever written or expressed ill will toward you. Please post my email in full on your blog so people can read it for themselves instead of relying on the bits you choose to criticize and give erroneous contexts to.

You say you do not want people to criticize your wife, but then your resort to insulting my wife's fashion sense with no knowledge of her. At least I was responding to a piece of art that was placed on public view instead of taking cheap pot shots.

Yes, you're right, I don't know a damned thing about your wife, but again, my wife has a name well known to you, which you should use: Catherine King. She is herself. So I don't apologize.

What happened to the dignity and character your generation is supposed to espouse?

What happened to yours?

I do like your wife's recent work on the pink trend in fashion--now this is something new and exciting to me.

Glad you brought that up, actually. All over the Valley, in ten dozen homes by now at least --the dwellings of those who read The Tears of Things regularly-- someone watching the news will be calling their spouse to the television to say, "Hey, honey, come here! She's right: That Catherine King Pink Thing is really happening!" Because it is. And what she conjured will become a meme. This will continue for another couple of months, until the necessary dark funereal fall, when black eclispses pink. But no one will forget it.

Again, in the interest of research, thoroughness and accuracy, please update your blog to correct the misinformation you are spreading. My position with the Arizona Commission on the Arts is not paid from state tax money--my position is funded by the Wallace Foundation (private money) as part of a five year nationwide study of participation in the arts called: the START Initiative.

Mister, I'm glad you brought this up, too. I looked up UP, and here is where the negative and postive arise, and where I call your credentials into question. In my post on your first email, I drew your attention to a public art project Catherine King and I proposed, called The Collective I, and linked to it.

The Collective I.

You have not mentioned this $5 million, two-video-screen, public art project. Not a word. Too busy nitpicking.

From the UP website --though I'm only interested in one sentence, I'll quote the whole homepage blurb:

Thank you for your interest in the Arizona Commission on the Arts' UP/Understanding Participation program. The program is funded in part by the Wallace Foundation and is part of their national START (State Arts Partnerships for Cultural Participation) initiative supporting 13 state arts agencies to explore new strategies to build participation in the arts. The focus of UP is to explore and learn about arts participation in our own state, and using this understanding to assist our constituent artists, organizations and communities in their own efforts to build arts participation.

Project Description

The Arizona Commission on the Arts is involved in a national research project funded by the Wallace Foundation to explore new strategies to build public participation in the arts. Learning from this project has informed our agency's planning process and is integrated heavily in our new Mission and Strategic Plan.

Who is Involved?

The project is designed as a learning opportunity between the state arts agency, Arizona’s arts organizations, and consultants in the areas of arts participation, communities and artists.

From the bolded sentence above: "Public participation in the arts." The Collective I is all about that. But this is what I suspect: For you and your crew, "public participation in the arts" means publicity machinery and money --how to get more bodies turning turnstiles, and more butts in seats, more money handed over, in all your culture venues. No real participation, as we have envisioned, just the simplest way to make some money. In our vision, money-making happens, but in multifold and imaginative and elliptical and honorable and dignified and respectful and empowering ways. Not just selling the next blockbuster exhibition, opera, or musical, or merely piddling along "developing" sycophants who know how to write grants.

The Collective I is a flame we continue to nurture, and we gave it away to the world, and you didn't say a damned thing about it, Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker, though it is about as directly in the line of the UP mission as it could be --given one crucial condition, of course: your bureaucrats' definition of "participation."

We wonder what that definiton is . . . because as far as we're concerned, you have failed your job description and your mission. We don't know who you're carrying the water for --who sent you out to hassle us, in other words-- or if you came out on your own hook, but when you passed over The Collective I without a whisper, that was a tell, Mister.

Now, to end this thing.

Perhaps with a Professional Development Grant from the Commission you could go to Cuba and do research for your book, or attend a writers conference to talk about or promote your writing.

You really piss me off, you thickheaded man.

We will never go to Cuba until everyone is free, and this should be obvious had you done a couple of minutes googling us in conjunction with "Cuban Art." (Read especially the piece on Lisa Sette Gallery.) And you must really be out of the institutional art social loop, because it's well-known that the whole inspiration for the novel came out of our Cuban Art series, focusing on ASU and Lisa Sette Gallery. What, don't you know these people? Didn't Greg Sale introduce you to Marilyn Zeitlin and Ted Decker? No. I think you know what's going on. You're just needling me, and insulting every Cuban, too. Every dollar and every euro going to Cuba, every foreigner going to Cuba, keeps Cubans starving and sick. You're either ignorant or cruel, and you can't afford to be ignorant when you use the word "Cuba." Not around The Tears Of Things. Learn something!

attend a writers conference to talk about or promote your writing.

The blog promotes the writing, dingaling. And a writers' conference? You people --your "generation"-- really are thumbsuckers, aren't you? "Tell me my writing's good, George." I don't need any of you.

And I have no problem with private foundations as such. My late father Alan started the E. Blois du Bois Foundation, which has given away a lot of money to students at the three major Arizona Universities for many years. I shudder to think how much of that has been wasted on the liberal and fine arts.

[UPDATE BEGINS BELOW]

After I posted the above, I fairly promptly received two emails an hour apart from KV-B, the first of which said it would be the last one sent --but then, when lately has anyone been true to their word?

This time it's really for the record, so I'll copy and fisk his emails in full. Here is the first one, which arrived just before nine this morning:

Again, a good laugh. Your ability to misinterpret my words is incredible.

Which words exactly, Mister?

I am just trying to be helpful

where's my tiny violin?

and try to reach out to artists in this state and perhaps improve the state of the arts in Arizona. You blast me for not doing research while you clearly have not done the same. I am not late to the blogging world--I have my own--

But he does not give me the name of his blog, or link to it in any way. I don't know what it is, but I do know that we are now the #1 Google for this guy's name; no wonder he's pissed, but we have often warned people about the power of the blogs of the Long Tail, and the fact that somehow, our fate is to be the outsiders, the lepers and the tar baby of the Phoenix art scene. So be it.

and I realize that you are free to do whatever you want and say whatever you want. You asked for discourse on the arts, and I resopnded--with dignity and character, not with personal attacks.

No, you responded with personal attacks in the guise of harrumphing dismissal.

Obviously this was a waste of time and I am sorry I ever tried to make contact with you. You may stay behind your wall and throw insults as long as you wish.

What wall?

My offer to meet in person still stands.

I don't think you could handle meeting Catherine and I in person.

The second email (and I want some kickback$ for plugging UP):

Your assumptions about UP/Understanding Participation are wrong. We encourage organizations to think of participation in terms of providing deeper and diverse experiences. Most arts organizations are only concerned about butts in seats, but we are urging them to think about the quality of the experience they are providing. Often, arts organizations are so busy just maintaining themselves, they don't have the time to tackle issues of quality, depth, or diversity--so we see UP as a way to buy their time and allow them to ask a question they want answered. A main component of the UP research projects is having organizations challenge their assumptions about participation. Do they know who is in their audience? Do they know why they are coming? Do they know what experience their audience is having? How do they know these things? These are simple examples of the questions we encourage organizations to consider--a starting point. I have attached a PowerPoint presentation that we give in workshops around the state to organizations interested in doing this type of work. I hope it might clarify what UP is all about.

I've eliminated the PP presentation, of course; I am a man of mercy. But I've left in the marshmallow empty bureaucratic questions. Dude, I studied public policy, public administration, organizational behavior, and this is mere budget-justifying padding.

As far as your reference to Gregory Sale and staff at the ASU Art Museum. I have met the ASU Art Museum staff off and on in my four years at the Commission. I do not have a personal relationship with any of them, nor have I ever talked to them about you or your blog. I did ask Gregory Sale about you and he grinned. He said you wrote a fictional piece about different programs the Commission was supposedly doing. He thought it was funny. He also said you responded to his piece involving Yoko Ono. That's it--no mention of anything about Cuba or you--so I guess I am out of the loop in that respect. I do know from your blog that you do not like Heather Lineberry--makes no difference to me who you like and dislike. Whatever agendas you think I have are nonexistent. If you would have met me in person to have a real discussion, you might gain understanding and not have to rely on assumptions.

The last few people we've met in person, to have real discussions and gain understanding and even do art projects for them and not have to rely on assumptions, have SCREWED US ROYALLY, and left us hanging on the street corner, empty-handed, like suckers. So, Mister Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker, screw you, too!

Sorry, also, for offending you by suggesting you could go to Cuba. Once it is free, perhaps then you can apply for a grant and visit the country and revel in the freedom you are hoping to bring about through your writing and your blogging. I have never been to the Caribbean. My wife was born and raised in Hawai'i and is part Hawaiian--so our adventures have taken us to the Pacific. You might find the story of deposed Queen Liliu'okalani interesting. The history and politics of tropical islands and colonization is often sad and alarming.

I was born and raised on the beach in Lanikai, Oahu, Hawai'i, in 1949. My father (and Catherine's father, too, in the same Theater, the Pacific, and in the same Division, the Sixth), fought in the Marines to keep the Islands free, earning five great wounds and lifelong pain for his trouble so that my sister and brother and mother and I could grow up happy on the beach and not under fascist Japanese oppression. After the war he ran Honolulu Sporting Goods for twenty years. Are you going to tell me that my past, my very upbringing, is tainted by the blood of oppressed people of color?

My wife, Catherine King, comes from Seventeenth-Century Scots-Irish immigrants, who carved out a life with blood, sweat, and tears-mixed soil. Are you going to condemn their labors, and their hard-won advantages?

If so, let's bring out the scales, Mister.

Don't you dare try to guilt us with that reverse-racist crap.

The reason I did not mention the Collective I is because I tried to find it on your blog, but the searches never turned up a link to it.

You mean, a link like THIS ONE HERE?

I am not going to read it now because my attempts at having a rational conversation with you are obviously going nowhere. Here ends my interests in you and your world. Most of my friends advised me to ignore you, but I thought, "no, he's probably enough of a civilized man to have a conversation about what he's been writing and posting in his blog." That was a faulty assumption on my part. Sorry. Sayonara.

Iye. It may be over with you, but it isn't over with The Collective I. Some visionary city, somewhere, will pick it up. Just not Phil Gordon's city, nor Janet Napolitano's state.

And there you have it, Phoenix: A proud representative of the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Wallace Foundation, Mr. Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker.

UNHEALED, TOO

Flower Arrangement and Photography by Catherine King, September 11, 2005.

by Catherine King

The first UNHEALED was arranged and posted one year ago, to acknowledge the survivors of the 9/11 Islamist Terror Attacks. I designed the piece using the darkest red, driest, scabbiest looking flowers I could find. The arrangement is about having Post-Traumatic Stress. One is never healed, but life after trauma has beauty and meaningful moments.

I intend to make a commemorative arrangement for 9/11 every year for the rest of my life. I had this year's piece planned out when Hurricane Katrina struck. So I altered the arrangement to reflect our nation's latest, greatest tragedy. UNHEALED II became UNHEALED, TOO. And still, life after trauma has beauty and meaningful moments.

Not A Rose-Colored World: The Life-Sized Version

Jerome du Bois

I read recently that at least two local galleries will be highlighting Fashion this October. In the spirit of fanciful participation, let me offer a dramatic version of Catherine's recent online diptych about the color pink, It's Not A Rose-Colored World / And Wearing Pink Won't Make It So, which you can partially assemble below, on her posting, by moving your browser to the right and the popup to the left. I know, it won't fit most monitors, including ours, but it gives you a rough idea of its impact. (Women on the left, men on the right.)

Now. Take each one of those 154 rectangles in the diptych. Reproduce it actual size, about 12" x 18", as a transparency. Laminate it behind glass and back it, with the gap of an air buffer of 1/2", with an electroluminescent panel, for even illumination. Frame the whole thing in simple black metal frames.

Repeat 154 times.

Then hang the results on a large white wall in a darkened room, according to the pattern already laid out, neatly hiding wires and power sources. The diptych would be twelve+ feet high and twenty+ feet long overall, so one would need a big wall in a generous room.

Now let's stand back and admire this glowing matrix for a minute. All those talking heads, all that urgency around and behind them, pumping up the drama of already interesting times . . . and they're wearing pink, and that's not a minor point. It must be said.

And now let's move back and forth to see what we can see. Some panels are just downright funny at first, like this one, which I call "I Came Through The Dimension For You."

But look closer.

Marshall McLuhan called television the cool medium --distanced and ironic-- and film photography the hot medium, fine-grained, immediate and direct. Here Catherine interposes her digital camera to turn television inside out and make it hot, peeling its pretensions back, as if lifting a pixelated curtain.

That's cool. I mean, hot. I mean, new.

Long ago Bruce Nauman talked about his frustrated desire to present ideas directly, without any intermediary clutter, but he had a hard time with the notion until the Fat Chance John Cage piece. Andy Warhol had to shove his photos through a silkscreening process to make them interesting. Philip Lorca-Di Corcia? His secret street shots were great, but he made every decision. John Routson documenting his channel-changing moments? No, limp with the randomity. That guy who lays out every frame of a movie on a canvas? That's from hunger, a tour de farce. Nam June Paik makes nice sculptures, but the crazy accelerated images on the screens (often the identical loop on many of them) do nothing to help give one purchase on the world. Christian Marclay comes close, because of his thematic choices and his selections from movies --reality once removed. Hanne Darboven and Arakawa recording time? Very little to look at, yes? Impoverished. As David Bryne sang, "No information left of any kind." Fischl & Weiss's ten jillion snapshots on ten tables in a gallery? Was that some kind of joke, like the ultimate boring relative with the photo albums thinking the sun shines out their ass?

Life trumps art. Everything else is hand-waving.