CONRAD REEDER ON THE BEACH

MOVED MY BLOG

2009-03-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

My blog has moved.

Lift the Travel Ban To Cuba

2009-02-16T09:24:00.000-08:00

MY QUORUM WITH WAR

2008-11-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Before there were blogs, there were journals. People actually wrote words on paper. I'm not a pundit on camera, so I rely on my friends' memory to back up my own sometimes, and I was shocked when one didn't remember me speaking out against the Iraq war. I have a vivid memory of singing war protest songs against The Iraq War: Number One with my band, Fugitive Blonde, at the China Club in Los Angeles, and I have a fixed memory of loathing the current decision to bomb Iraq from day one, but where is the proof?

Things have been fuzzy since 9-11 around my house, what with the business crashing, and the downsizing, and the graduate writing courses, and one crisis after another. Since I've had no public platform to speak from of late, the only documentation of what I've said is from reliable witnesses and my journal.

These may just be words swirling around in the blog-o-sphere and who cares anyway. But at least I can read my typing. And as long as the internet keeps going, and I can hang on to my computer memory sticks, my computer, printer, and ink, everything will be swell.

My handwriting is not much above scribble these days, but I did scratch out a few thoughts about The Iraq War: Number Two to myself, and luckily the journal survived a move and my I-Love-Lucy filing system. There is no search button to find things in my closet.

As I recall, if one spoke out against either Iraq war, one was labeled a traitor or aiding terrorism. Obama's stance on the war in Iraq was one of the big reasons I voted for him. Yes, even the appearance of change feels good.

Exhibit A:

The funny thing is I did go to Mérida four years later--Mérida, Spain. Life gets weird sometimes.

THE LINES OF THAT ONE

2008-11-04T09:39:00.000-08:00

The ghost line flickers in the new dawn.
The blue-tipped flame melts
the wax edge, and the goo of myself
oozes into a pool of a dream
that one, like me can

dream of that one cooling the heat
of blood boiling in my veins of cooked sorrow,
healing seared love burned by arteries of hate.
The lines are long. The lines snake
around the y + x. The spiral crow
flies through airwaves of primordial mud,
spitting, sputtering, spewing, birthing
lines and lines of descent, ions in the making.

I dream of genes flowing from body to body;
nights of kisses, nights of release,
nights of smelly, smouldering sex.
The apple in the eye of
millions of fathers and millions of mothers
survives eyes of storms, shifting
sands, whirlwind seas, epic ghost stories

that one after another all suffer, bleed, orgasm,
die one after another. The lines do not
end. The lines eat and grow and
travel across seas, over mountains
dodging bullets, and germs and rabid
ideas that consume energy, resources,
and good news. That one ghostly
sense of lively purpose lingers, thrives.

Myself, I live in the snake-eee line of descent.
Righteous Mumbo and Holy Jumbo
now back where they belong, next to
that one singular thought: We,
and the ghosts who live

are that one, the one
and the same,
and only one.

Amen.*

* In Homage to Barack H. Obama & His Family. Pictured with Barack is his maternal Grandparents, Stanley & Madelyn Dunham.

IT'S A FAMILY AFFAIR

2008-10-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

BARACK OBAMA IS MY COUSIN. Granted there may be millions of us here in the U.S. and that many more in Africa, but for me, it’s a staggering moment—the idea that the cousins who are voting for the first African American to be the 44th President of the United States are mostly white Caucasian.

Hailing from large agricultural families, my ancestry lines and Barack’s go way back in U.S history from idealogue-minded Quaker and Puritan folks in nascent New England to profit-seeking adventurers in Jamestown, Virginia. Their numbers flowered into family reunions many years later that were like a day at the fair with hundreds of people bringing sugar pies, pecan pies, ham, home-baked bread, and mystery casseroles to spend a joyful day in each others' company. While the adults caught up on recent births, or the latest triumph or tragedy, my cousins and I played tag or hide-and-seek in the park setting. As organizers of these affairs died off, the numbers dwindled. People moved away, and connections were lost. Here is one of the last ones I remember from 1959. I’m front row, fourth from the left.

MY MOTHER'S FAMILY connects me to Barack. Barack and I share the same gr-grandparents: Col. James Lewis Hickman (1724-1816) and Hannah Lewis (1722-1822), both born in Virginia. Hickman served in the military during the War of the American Revolution and was given a land grant in Kentucky for his service. He settled in Paris, Clark County, Kentucky. Hannah was the daughter of Maj. Davis Lewis (1695-1779), of St. Peter’s Parish, New Kent County, Virginia, another veteran of the American Revolution.

HANNAH LEWIS AND COL. HICKMAN had a number of distinguished children, who are great grand uncles of mine and Barack’s. Capt. Davis Lewis Hickman served in the AR, as did his brothers, Capt. Joel Hickman (1761-1852), and Capt. James Lewis Hickman Jr. (1759-1828). Another brother, Gen. Richard Hickman (1757-1832), an AR veteran, moved to Kentucky with his parents. Gen. Hickman was a member of Kentucky’s Second Constitutional Convention at Frankfort in 1799. He served in the Lower House for five years, and then sixteen years in the State Senate—elected in 1812. This Hickman was the 4th Lt. Governor of Kentucky under Gov. Isaac Shelby, and acted as Governor when Shelby went to war in the War of 1812.

Our common 8th great grandfather, Edwin Hickman, sired this distinguished family of American patriots. Edwin was Lord High Sheriff of Spotsylvania County in 1729, and Lord High Sheriff in Thomas Jefferson’s Albemarle County in 1740. In 1744, Edwin Hickman became Chief Justice for the Virginia Colony that stretched from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River. WE ALSO SHARE SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Caesar Rodney, and George Wythe.

SO, BARACK AND I HAVE A FAMILY TREE with deep roots in this experiment called the United States of America. But not all of Barack’s white cousins are voting for him, at least the ones in my extended family of which about 20 are of voting age. In my unscientific survey, I found the main reason for NOT voting for our cousin is the abortion issue. My family heard Barack say he is “for abortion.” WHAT BARACK REALLY SAID ABOUT ABORTION.

Since my family comes from a proud tradition of anti-slavery with several grandfathers and uncles on the Union side, (One Quaker grandfather carried a flag for his Ohio unit in Sherman’s army--not exactly war-monger racist types.) I didn’t particularly grow up thinking my family was racist. I had “colored” friends at school, and close friends intermarried without condemnation from my parents.

BUT, SOMETIMES I WONDER IF THIS ABORTION ISSUE IS AN EXCUSE for some closet racists to hide behind. It can't be about HIS HEALTH CARE PLAN, which will give me and millions like me insurance that can never be canceled. Any informed person would want a leader to get our country out of Iraq, a war draining our resources and men. His TAX-PLAN ET AL IS ENDORSED by top economists who believe Barack's leadership will get us out of the ditch Bush/McCainers have driven our country into. So, for my family anyway, it seems to be all about abortion. Yet, the Bible is silent about this abortion issue.

AND JESUS DOESN'T MENTION what to do about an unwanted pregnancy, so I just don’t get this war over abortion. It's philosophically easy to argue a fetus is not a person, but how can anyone argue the fact that innocent women, children, and men blown up in a war deserve to die? Jesus does say, "Suffer little children...to come unto me" (Matt 19:14). How can anyone be so righteously concerned about a collection of cells, when 26,000 CHILDREN SUFFER AND DIE EVERYDAY! Why are the born less important than the unborn? What would Jesus do?

Does anyone thinking clearly really believe in the 21st century that Jesus would force a woman to have a child whether or not she was capable, physically or mentally, of mothering this child? What about rape victims? Don’t we already have enough misery on this planet from issues we have no control over?

WANT ANOTHER REASON TO VOTE FOR BARACK? Trickle-down economics looked good on paper, but it has failed miserably, just like Communism or Socialism, or CORPORATE WELFARE; just like the BUSH DOCTRINE. Based on the results of the last 7 years, this so-called Bush Doctrine is a recipe for continuous war. Thank God neither Bush nor Cheney are my cousins. Sorry for you Barack!

Even if some of Barack's cousins miss this opportunity to vote for one of their own, this cousin won't. In fact, my daughters and I have already voted. It’s a family affair, at least for Barack's cousins under my roof.

MARIANNE MOORE'S ROMANCE WITH THE DAO PART 2

2008-10-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

IN A CALIFORNIA SPEECH titled, “Tedium and Integrity,” Moore discusses Sze’s two books, The Tao of Painting and The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting.

One of her major points is that “painting is not a profession, but an extension of the art of living” (qtd. in Qian 226). For Moore, who viewed her poetry as her canvas, the word “painting” and “poetry” are interchangeable. Moore reverently extols Mai-Mai Sze, the artist/translator of the two ancient texts, as being “an angel to me and friend of the dragon-symbol” (Qian 181). For Moore, “the manual is to me a world of romance – the romance of words” (qtd. in Stamy 157).

Moore embarked on a lifelong love affair with words that “cluster like chromosomes” (Stamy 44). The Dao infused Chinese art was a catalyst for Moore’s inquisitive imagination, and in investigating the nature of this art she found, “A Chinese ‘understands/ the spirit of the wilderness’/and the nectarine-loving kylin” (CP 30). Being an inquisitive person with the formal training of a biologist, her investigation into why this art seemed to “breathe” life led her straight to it’s source, the philosophy of the Dao, the spiritual resource that fuels much of Chinese and Japanese art, especially that which portrays Nature-related themes.

Chan Buddhist or Zen painting technique is relentless in detail. “Each detail has its reason” (Sze 536). In Dao teaching, the student-artist is taught not only that “birds with long tails should be drawn with short beaks,” but also equally important is for the artist to know, “they sing beautifully and fly high” (ibid). Only if the details are drawn in this way (a communion with Nature from direct observation) will the results be lasting.

Modernist leaning writers like Moore, who searched for meaning, not only to survive, but to live a life of inspired imagination, found passion and joy in this thinking. Knowledge of the material sort is the direct result of a science that utilizes close observation, but Western science does not even try to answer that forever question; why are we here? Dao gave artists then and now a path to experience peace and explore that question in a useful, productive way, a way that creates breathable art, a pictorial representation of this invisible relationship between consciousness and flesh.

Moore found the Chinese recognition of how the individual should function in perfect harmony with landscape and animals defensible and “illuminating” (Qian 174). Moore treated Nature with respect in her poems about the jerboa, the basilisk, the jelly-fish, the elephant, and so forth. She does not embrace the Judeo-Christian idea of “man’s dominion over Nature” found canonized in the book of Genesis. As anyone knows who has lived in an urban environment, the city has toxic affects on the human body. Moore lived most of her life in urban New York. This parallel reality she lived in through her study of Chinese Nature artifacts, and in her poetry by analyzing it, kept Nature near and alive in her thoughts. Her relative good health and longevity is a testament to the healing power of this approach.

Moore, like everyone, needed help in dealing with her own struggles, and she found acceptance in society from her wit of words at an early age. “So I smile, (as if I had found a penny) when people tell me how they like them (poems) and talk about writing poetry and so on as if it were gymnastics or piano practice” (SL 63). Her invisible Father’s shadow and her station in life was ever present. Moore worked hard lest anyone doubt she was a woman of integrity. She would never lose her balance, such as her Father had.

In fact, she had dismissed her Father’s chromosome that made her female, and consistently referred to herself as male, and gave herself (and was given) a male pronoun in correspondence with her brother and mother (SL 4). Moore maintained her internal consistency. At a discussion at a Bryn Mawr Friends Meeting, Friend being the other name for Quaker, the discussion turned to “Progress and Women.” Moore made a point of saying, and then writing it down to her mother and brother, “we (women) are provoked with people for calling us unprogressive when often we fall short ourselves and fail in realizing our individual (her italics) ideals and just stop - comfortable – inventing all manner of excuses for our faint-heartedness and laziness” (SL 30).

Moore would later find solace in Sze’s canon regarding Chinese art to allay any “faint-heartedness,” a canon replete with tangible artifacts created by artists who displayed what Moore called “integrity,” a display of internal consistency, or a quality of being honest and using strong moral principals. In this Way of Daoism, she found a corroboration for dismissing the ego. In her “Tedium and Integrity” speech, Moore feels “very strongly what Juan Ramon Jiménez said in referring to something else – to what is not poetry – ‘there is a profounder profundity’ than obsession with the self” (qtd. in Qian 226). To give up egotism, which Moore renamed, “tedium,” what the “Buddhists call ignorance” (Qian 173), was not a problem for Moore, especially if it kept her from coming near the “ragged brink” (SL 63). She had consistently removed her self, her narrative, from her poems, a hallmark of Modernism. Skipping past her immediate heritage, Moore aligned herself with a sturdier, more reliable anchor, the “tao of the ancients” (Qian 177).

Born several generations before the confessional poetry of Plath, Hughes, Lowell, and others came into vogue, (Pictured Moore & Plath 1955) Moore didn’t indulge her readers with any details of her sexual relationships, nor did any potential partner of hers come forward (I doubt she had any, unless her niece, the executor of her estate, has information she’s not sharing). Linda Leavell has put forward a theory of an early crush on Peggy James (William James’ daughter), but without proof of a consummated relationship, it is mere speculation. Human nature being what it is, rumors swirl, and theories abound. Was she molested? Did she have an encounter that horrified her to celibacy? Moore’s mother wrote of her daughter’s “grim ‘sternness” and “Monk-like severity” (SL 118) Was she a lesbian? Moore supported the Woman’s Suffrage movement, but deferred to her brother’s wishes not to march in public and avoid “such public display” (SL 77). However much Moore wished to step out of her skin, the social and emotional restraints remained boundaries.

Not being Chinese, she didn’t carry the emotional baggage of Eastern misogyny. Was it only a coincidence that an intellectual like Mai-mai Sze, the Chinese artist who Moore described as an “angel,” had chosen her own alternative lifestyle, by choosing a lesbian relationship? Many of Moore’s intimates were homosexuals, such as Bryher and fellow imagist, H.D.; two of her biggest champions and editors of her first book, Poems.

(Bryher in Picture circa 1938)

There is some evidence that her mother, who never remarried after her separation from her husband before Moore was born, had an affair with the family friend, Mary Norcross. Yet, Moore gave no clues regarding her love life, and resisted the entire “homo/heterosexual binary itself” (Leavell). Moore seems to have found romance in the act of writing her poetry, a poetry infused with romance: romance with the Dao.

Next Week: Marianne Moore's Romance with the Dao Part 3

See Part 1 for Works Cited Page.

Winnifred Bryher in Picture circa 1938

CONNIE THE UNEMPLOYED & UNINSURED

2008-10-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

AT LEAST JOE THE PLUMBER, the current darling of the GOP spin, has a job and ONLY a $1000 tax lien. My husband and I have worked and had health insurance our entire lives, but we lost the insurance last month. When facing foreclosure and other bills, like food, we just couldn’t pay the premium. The “Health Plan” really should have been called a “Some Hospital Plan,” because the deductible was huge and it covered no prescriptions, and only theoretically would have paid for “some hospital.”

As independent contractors and small business owners, my husband and I lost our business, our savings, our 401K, and his contractual retirement royalty for a thirty-year job with a famous band (Steely Dan) after the events that followed the tragedy of 9-11. Not all the crooks are CEOs and banks.

But we didn’t give up. We downsized our house, our lifestyle, and our expectations. After all, unlike many poor people in New York and later Iraq, we were still alive. My husband continues to find his place in the restructured entertainment world. (He has seven Grammys, so he has skills.) I returned to school with student loans, and earned my MFA in Creative Writing with a GPA of 3.9 last May from the University of New Orleans, taking the English Literature classes required to teach English. I’ve been substitute teaching and applying for jobs ever since—forty plus. So my degree means nothing? Does that mean I don’t have to pay back my student loans? At least, Joe the Plumber, who lives in Ohio, has a job.

AS A NATIVE OF OHIO, born and raised in Columbus, I was part of the first group of eighteen-year-olds to vote in the National Election of 1972. I voted the way of my staunch Republican household--I voted for Nixon. After Nixon resigned, I lost faith in most Republicans and politicians in general. No small choice for someone who was the President of the American Youth for God and Country group at my High School, (middle front row) a not-so-popular club during a period of Vietnam War protest riots that filtered into my West High School from the OSU campus.

THIS YEAR I AM VOTING FOR OBAMA. You betcha! Why? Because he has a health plan and he will end the war. Because I feel better after hearing Barack Obama or Joe Biden speak. Because the Republican Party left me, long before I left it. I was just too blinded by the rhetoric to see it. My one little vote may not be enough, but it’s about all I have left. With Obama’s positive spin in my head, I will forge ahead and continue to look for a job, and maybe get lucky, like John McCain’s friend, Joe the Plumber.

C. Reeder

© All Rights Reserved

MARIANNE MOORE'S ROMANCE WITH THE DAO

2008-10-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

I'VE ALWAYS ADMIRED THE TENACITY and word-skills of the poet Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972). Grouped into the Modernist Movement with Pound, Williams, Stein, Stevens, T.S. Eliot and others, Moore carefully sculpted a life by nurturing a razor sharp wit. She also found a balance for her sensibilities about relationships, and crafted ideas of how she wanted to present and even propagate her “insight and sympathetic ways” (Moore, SL 35) to the world at large. She worked hard at her writing, producing over 30,000 letters, which doesn’t include her articles and poems extant. At the age of twenty she came to the conclusion, “I want to write,” and “shortly I will have something to say” (SL 40). In part, Moore found sustenance for her balanced wit, and much of her “insight” in the aesthetic of The Dao.

The Dao, also called The Tao, The Way, The Path, or Zen (in Japan), encourages the artist to develop a “wide and keen observation, eventually to find in enrichment of the spirit, the secret of the rhythm of nature” (Sze 18). This was a perfect marriage for Moore’s burgeoning sensitivities that grew out of her early desire to “scrape sparks from the ground, from the mere excess of animal spirits” (SL 39). The Dao offered another framework, not necessarily to replace, but to enhance her American/Western tradition.

Born into a society where women didn’t vote, or legally own their own bodies, Moore reached out to the Eastern tradition to feed her meditative spirit. Like the virgin Queen, Moore remained single, yet celibate—married to her art.
Moore & Mother: Zorach Painting 1919

Her mother was her mate for life (Leavell).

Moore sensed in China, “a cultural superiority to Europe itself,” and justified this as many Westerners did, and still do, “because of China’s historical longevity” (Stamy 5). Like her predecessor, Emerson, Moore moved the “struggle for American definition to another and, for her, a superior site” (Stamy 5). At Bryn Mawr, a Quaker school, Moore was encouraged to meditate on her inner light and the beauty of God’s creation: Nature. These sensibilities did not discourage Moore from investigating likewise philosophies.

Some of her early successes as a writer were a direct result of her investigations into Chinese artifacts. One of her early poems published in her book, Poems (The Egoist Press 1921), was about a Chinese scroll or screen (Willis). As Professor Zhaoming Qian explained in a graduate lecture for a Modernist Workshop at the University of New Orleans, early Moore used “Chinese motifs on the surface level,” and later Moore treated “Western motifs with Chinese perspectives.”

In “He Made This Screen,” Moore experimented with her imagist ekphrasis. In lieu of a narrative, she described a piece of art. It’s as if she were circling the dragon, trying to free her style of writing. Her Modernist leanings were apparent—the image is the thing, but she fell back on meter and rhyme.

"Nine Dragons" Chen Rong 1244 Boston Museum of Modern Art

He Made This Screen

not of silver nor of coral,
but of weather beaten laurel.

Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;

here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
there, a dragon circling space --

designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower.

In her poem written almost forty years later, “O To Be A Dragon” (CP 177), Moore was still circling the space, but had switched gears. Moore wanted to not just circle, but become the Modernist Dao Dragon, which for her was the “symbol of the power of heaven.” She wanted to become one with the space now enlarged to the “totality of heaven and earth” (Qian 182).

The Dao invigorated Moore’s mind throughout her life. In her late 60s, after receiving her book set of The Tao of Painting and The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, ancient texts by Chieh Tzu Yuan Hua Chuan, and translated by Mai-Mai Sze, Moore wrote to the publisher, John Barrett, “You cannot imagine my excitement in possessing these books […] it “is pleasure enough for a lifetime” (qtd. in Qian 168).

(Sze 320) Her romance goes further into the realm of passion in describing how she “passionately admires […] – an insect-and-frog picture,” even suggesting that if she were in a mental decline, “Volume I of the Tao would, I think, help me to regain tone” (qtd. in Qian 169).

Not an idle statement for someone who never met her father because he was institutionalized for a “nervous breakdown” before she was born (SL 3). Moore identified a space in which she could live and create, but most importantly, feel good about life, as if the Dao kept her sane.

Always a good thing in troubled times: Sanity.

Next week. Marianne Moore’s Romance With The Dao Part 2

Works Cited

Leavell, Linda. Marianne Moore, the James Family and the Politics of Celibacy.
   Twentieth Century Literature. vol 49: 2. Hofstra U, 2003. 219.
   http://www.questia.com/ 10 Oct 2008

Moore, Marianne. Complete Poems. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.

---. Marianne Moore: Selected Letters. Bonnie Costello (ed) New York: Penguin Books, 1997.

Pollak, Vivian. Moore, Plath, Hughes, and “The Literary Life. American Literary
   History 17.1. USA: Oxford UP, 2005. http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.uno.edu/journals/american_literary_history/v017/17.1pollak.html 18 Nov 2006.

Qian, Zhaoming. The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stephens.
   USA, U of Virginia P, 2003.

Stamy, Cynthia. Marianne Moore and China. USA: Oxford UP, 1999.

Sze, Mai-mai. trans. The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. Chieh Tzu Yuan
   Hua Chuan, 1679-1701. New York: Princeton Univ. P, 1977.

White, Heather. Moral, Manners, and Marriage: Marianne’s Art of Conversation.
   Twentieth Century Literature. Hofstra U, 1999. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_4_45/ai_61297799 10 Oct 2008

Willis, Patricia C. (curator) Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University,
   1997 http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/orient/mod10.htm 10 Oct 2008.

Picture of Moore with Book: 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia

GODDESSES, WHORES, WIVES, & SLAVES: The Archetypal Roles Assigned to Women in Theatre. Part 2: Women Write Plays, Too!

2008-10-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

Euripides' Medea (431 B.C.E.) does not go gently into the night, and some of her lines are the first uttered on a public stage in the defense of women.

Then they also say that whilst we live quietly and without any danger at home, the men go off to war. Wrong! One birth alone is worse than three times in the battlefield behind a shield (lines, 248-49).

The only notorious female writer of this ancient time in any genre is Sappho born about 612 B.C.E. and all that remains of her work is a single poem and fragments of others. In antiquity, Sappho was commonly regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets. An epigram in the Anthologia Palatina (9,506) ascribed to Plato says, “Some say the Muses are nine: how careless! / Look, there's Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth” (Campbell, D.A.)

Sappho's alleged bi-sexuality alluded to in the few remaining fragments of her poetry offended people throughout history; her books burned by Christians in the year 380 C.E. at the instigation of Pope Gregory Nazianzen. Another book burning in the year 1073 C.E. by Pope Gregory VII may have wiped out any remaining trace of Sappho’s works (duBois).

It's been a slow crawl from a woman's pen to the page to the public stage. Virtually no female playwright appeared in the West until the 10th century C.E. German Benedictine nun known as Roswitha or Hrotsvit von Ganderwhelm (Case 533). Roswitha penned six plays that are extant, following the form of the lax moral comedic plays by the 2nd century C.E. Roman playwright, Terence, albeit framed with a stiff moral Catholic slant.

But the first woman to make a living as a popular dramatist in the West, and the first female playwright covered in this essay (and an undergraduate course I designed as part of my Masters Degree Thesis) is Aphra Behn (1640 – 1689), who wrote during the period of the English Restoration Theatre (1610-1710). Denounced by the American literary critic, Harold Bloom, as a fourth-rate playwright, Behn was nonetheless hailed by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own.

All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.

Woolf believed Behn’s total career to be more important than any particular work produced. However, Behn’s work still gets staged. At a recent performance (2003) of The Rover in Oakland, the reviewer called Behn’s role reversal scheme “spirited and saucy” (Jones).

Behn, a former spy for Charles II, might have settled the argument with the first line from the Prologue of The Rover:

Wits, like Physicians, never can agree, / When of a different Society.

From this point forward, women slowly made inroads into the male-dominated theatre. After the Puritan shut down of theatres in London for a decade, the atmosphere in London at the reopening of the theatres after the Restoration (1660) was festive, and women appearing on the legitimate stage for the first time was not (I believe) coincidental with Behn’s debut as the first professional English female dramatist.

Women seized the moment: Hannah Cowley, Susannah Rowson, Susan Glaspell (Pulitzer Winner), Sophie Treadwell, Lillian Hellman, Gertrude Stein, Wendy Wasserstein (Pulitzer Winner), Caryl Churchill, Ntozake Shange, Marsha Norman, Emily Mann, Margaret Edson, Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy, Megan Terry, Theresa Rebeck, Beth Henley(Pulitzer Winner), Sarah Kane, Caridad Svitch, Lorraine Hansberry, Maria Irene Fornés, Marsha Norman (Pulitzer Winner), Wakako Yamauchi, Spiderwoman Theatre (Native American), and many more have all contributed to the growth of Western theatre since Behn broke the all-male rule.

Another radical playwright vilified and adored in her own time was Mae West (1892-1980).

Middle and upper class white women generally dominated the women’s movement, one that would have certainly disapproved of Mae (Watts 106).

Exclusion of West's plays from Murphy’s Cambridge anthology about women playwrights has much to do with critical readings of her plays, but I would argue that who or what she represented to the general public—-an independent, sensual woman who maintained a Goddess Archetype in spite of her Whore behavior, seized the same sexual freedom for women as men had always enjoyed. This was an unconventional Archetype for mortal women, as ground-breaking in society at large as the right to vote was empowering.

These days the discussion of West's first hit play titled, Sex, (which has no sex in it) should be an enlightening experience for young people in the twenty-first century who have been sexually saturated by society and the media.

(West & Cast of her Broadway show, Sex (1926)

The Westian use of double and triple entendre to convey sexual images is a refreshing study in form and dialogue. No playwright before West had ever

“attacked respectable women from the stage... of being whore(s) in disguise” (Schlissel 9).

West also opened the closet for the gays of New York City with her play, The Drag, which earned her jail time for her effort. In 1927, gays were the victims of viscous beatings by the New York City police. West was a major force behind legitimizing the gay subculture (Schlissel 11). Examining why West’s female brand of Archetype dominated the British/American stage and Hollywood movies for decades and during a depression era has merit in any study of plays by and about women. By designing her own unique Whore/Goddess that rejected male domination, West, a working class woman, offered “an early feminist role model” (Watts 107) whether certain feminists like it or not.

And then there is Suzan-Lori Parks.
Her play Venus exposed the vicious true story of the evil treatment of Saartjie Baartman, an African woman who was displayed in Europe (1789-1815) as a freak show because of her unusual buttocks.

This Hottentot Venus is a Goddess/Virgin defiled and reassigned the role of Slave, and then Whore. The slavic safety of domesticity is not an option for this woman. Parks satirizes the insanity of it all by using a Greek Chorus, a harkening back to a time when women were banned from theatre, just as Baartman is banned from life.

Parks is the Goddess Archetype in her own life drama--the story of the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2002) with her play, Topdog/Underdog; a play with only two characters—two male characters.

The boundaries of sex no longer apply. Women playwrights have joined their Archetypes center stage.

(Piccolo Spoleto theatre production of Topdog/Underdog, Charleston, S.C. 2006. Pic & article found here.

*Nancy Novak as Medea in Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Works Referred To: Go to Part 1 of this essay.

Note: This essay is the introduction to an undergraduate class in Theatre History.

GODDESSES, WHORES, WIVES, & SLAVES: The Archetypal Roles Assigned to Women in Theatre PART 1

2008-09-28T22:17:00.000-07:00

Plays by women and the roles for women in theatre represent a developing, dynamic field--historically, a much neglected field. If women wrote throughout recorded ancient history, most of it never saw the light of day, or was lost, if not systematically destroyed.

Based on the available evidence, the origins of Western theatre began in ancient Greece. Susan Pomeroy asks in her book, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, “What were women doing…” during this period (xiv)? Were the classical male playwrights accurate in their depiction of women (93)? There is no evidence showing that women were even allowed to attend the ancient dramatic festivals (80). Men portrayed women onstage until the seventeenth-century C.E.. What, if anything, did women actually write for theatre throughout recorded history?

Pomeroy also asks, “If respectable Athenian women were secluded and silent, how are we to account for the forceful heroines of tragedy and comedy”(93)? The simplest answer may be the best; men wrote these stories, promoting and perpetuating the most dramatic and entertaining archetypes from their cultural religion. Greek women may have been sequestered, but Greek Goddesses, like Athena, the Goddess of War and Wisdom were not.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), the renowned mythologist, defined archetype as follows:
They (archetypes) are elementary ideas, what could be called ground ideas.

These ideas Jung spoke of as archetypes of the unconscious. The Freudian unconscious is a personal unconscious, it is biographical. The Jungian archetypes of the unconscious are biological. The biographical is secondary to that.

All over the world and at different times of human history, these archetypes, or elementary ideas, have appeared in different costumes. The differences in the costumes are the results of environment and historical conditions (Campbell 61).

For this discussion the term "Virgin" signifies an Archetype with a valuable commodity traded in society, as well as a sexual state. Most of the Goddesses of myth enjoyed lusty sex, so in this context the title of Goddess signifies a woman who can decide her own fate. The only power earthbound women held until recent history resided in their “Virgin” state, and the brokering ability this virginity gave them through the men who manipulated them. The prostitute was the exception. Prostitutes were historically the only women who exercised control over their own money (Pomeroy 91), but this was a power only fit for a life in the shadows.

Throughout recorded history prostitution was one of the very few positions open to women. Playwrights, male and female, have used the role of “Whore” with dramatic effect. Art mixes with life, and dramatists have painted the Whore/Mistress as a hapless character in soap-opera stories played out in every village and town from ancient history up to now, as recent events surrounding New York Governor Spitzer will attest, but the Whore can also have power and influence history making events. The famous courtesan, Aspasia, was vilified by later writers for influencing the Greek General Pericles of Peloponnesian War fame in the 5th century B.C.E.. Madame Pompadour exchanged sex, then companionship with married King Louis XV (1710-1774) for titles and funding, but she was the one blamed for the disastrous Seven Year War, not the King or Queen. The Whore is always the convenient scapegoat.

Although being a prostitute meant a woman without other means could survive, it also generally meant being subjected to societal scorn and ridicule, after all, prostitutes had no real authority to object otherwise. Playwrights generally left the whore in the dust. Even the rebel Aphra Behn leaves her character, Angelica, the prostitute in The Rover, unmarried and unsupported. Angelica sums up her ending with, “He’s gone, and in this Ague of My Soul/ The shivering Fit returns" (Behn 74). Until recent history, men have not traditionally been excoriated in text or in life for having extra-marital sex (Garton).

The Wife Archetype portrayed social respectability, a role that centered around the affairs of domesticity and childrearing. In the lower classes (even today) the role of wife was (and is) synonymous with that of a slave worker. Ask any working wife trying to raise a family with a lower income about her life.

Historically, playwrights often used the role of slave or servant to ridicule the upper classes and speak to the heart of the matter i.e. in Aphra Behn’s, The Rover (1677), it is the servant Moretta that quips to the roguish Cavalier, “Your Linen stinks of the gun room” (35).

Reducing the sum of assigned roles/archetypes to women as “Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves” catalogues broad categories that reflect the female stock characters on stage and in life. By scrutinizing how playwrights in the West and elsewhere have used these archetypes throughout recorded history, the next extrapolation would suggest Goddess/Virgin, Whore/Sex-No-Marriage, Wife/Married, and Slave/Worker.

With ancient texts labeling women as the “root of all evil” (Kramer & Moore), it would seem that a discussion about women and their role in theatre should begin with an examination of language, segueing to a look at Euripides’ Medea, as an early example of Greek theatre to kick-off the discussion.

According to the earliest (male) writers of Greek antiquity, the Muses were goddesses of song and prophecy. They lived on Mount Helicon in Boeotia. The exact number of Muses and their parentage varies from source to source. Early on, there were three of them. Some claim that they were the children of Mnemosyne (memory), one of the few Titan relatives Zeus favored and found useful. The popular Greek poet Hesiod (7th century B.C.E.) was the first to name nine muses—all female. Later writers assigned them to nine branches of literature, art, and science (James).

The Musae

Erato – Erotic poetry
Urania – Astronomy
Polymnia – Sublime hymn
Melpomene – Tragedy
Euterpe – Lyric poetry
Thalia – Comedy and idyllic poetry
Calliope – Epic poetry
Clio – History
Terpsichore – Choral song and dance

It would seem from this that women were prominent in the original scheme of things, based on key positions of deity and power, but certain early male writers took umbrage as to why women even existed. Theories abound. One currently circulates that the act of writing and reading somehow rewired our brains, splitting the sexes into a power struggle that literate societies continue to wage. Non-literate aboriginal societies have typically not vilified women (Schlain).

Pomeroy suggests the advent of the city-state (polis) advanced a culture ruled by laws and courts, instead of tribal law. This city-state evolved outside of the home. This new realm of men excluded women whose realm of influence remained inside the walls of the home. “Misogyny was born of fear of women. It spawned the ideology of male superiority” (Pomeroy 97). Since records are sparse, historical context might be missing, but misogynistic examples are numerous in ancient texts, including the above mentioned Hesiod, who wrote in his Theogony that “Zeus who thunders on high made women to be an evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil” (590-93).

One wonders if Hesiod was working off his angst after being jilted in love when he wrote that, but the Judaic canon written roughly about the same time corroborates the stiff sentiment with “in sorrow dost thou bear children, and toward thy husband [is] thy desire, and he doth rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16). Even Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the angelic doctor, refers to women as “defective and misbegotten” (Kramer).

Euripides’ Jason in Medea (431 B.C.E.) laments, “Life would be better without women if men could get children any other way” (564), and that was before Jason’s ex-wife, Medea, killed Jason’s virginal bride, the bride’s father, and his two young sons with Medea. Earlier versions of the Medea myth implicated an apparent unintentional killing of the children by the sorceress Medea during a ceremony to immortalize her sons. Another story blamed the Corinthians for killing the boys after Medea fled. Robert Graves catalogued the story about Euripides being bribed by Corinthian businessmen “with fifteen talents of silver to absolve them of guilt" (Graves 617).

Euripides upped the stakes by having Medea commit infanticide, which more than muddles the crimes committed by Jason. A mother killing her children betrays the most basic human interaction and therein the foundation of civic society.

It seems a girl can’t get a break from certain ancient writers.

PART 2: Next Week. Women Write, Too!

WORK REFERRED TO

Behn, Aphra. The Rover. com. by Bill Naismith. GB: Methuen Drama, 1993.

Brockett, Oscar G. and Franklin J. Hildy. History of the Theatre. 9th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2003.

Campbell, Joseph with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1991.

Case, Sue-Ellen. “Re-Viewing Hrotsvit.” Theatre Journal, Vol.35:4. Dec. 1983 533-42. http://www.jstor.org 8 Feb 2008

duBois, Page. Sappho Is Burning. Chicago: UCP, 1995.

Garton, Stephen. Histories of Sexuality: antiquity to sexual revolution. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths: Complete Edition. London: Penguin Group, 1960.

James, Vanessa. The Genealogy of Greek Mythology. New York: Penguin Group, 2003.

Jung, Carl G. The Portable Jung. Ed. Joseph Campbell. New York: Penguin Group, 1976.

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. 5th Ed. New York: Inst. General Semantics, 1994.

Kramer, Daniel & Moore, Michael. “Women are the root of All Evil: The Misogyny of Religions.” Secular Web Modern Library 17 pp. 2002. http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=203 30 March 2008

May, Rollo. The Courage To Create. New York: Norton, 1994.

Murphy, Brenda, ed. American Women Playwrights. UK: Cambridge UP, 1999.

McDermott, Emily. Euripides’ Medea: The Incarnation of Disorder. USA: Penn State U., 1989.

Partnow, Elaine T. with Lesley Anne Hyatt. The Female Dramatist. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken, 1995.

Schlissel, Lillian. Three Plays by Mae West: Sex, The Drag and Pleasure Man. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Shlain, Leonard. The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image. New York: Viking Penguin, 1998.

Theatre Theory Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel. Ed. Daniel Gerould. New York: Applause, 2000.

Watts, Jill. Mae West: An icon in Black and White. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.

Women writing Latin: from Roman antiquity to early modern Europe. Ed. Churchill, Laurie J.; Brown, Phyllis R.; Jeffrey, Jane E.. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91r/complete.html 8 Feb 2008.

© 2008 Conrad Reeder All Rights Reserved

WHAT DO ANN BOLEYN & WEETAMOE HAVE IN COMMON?

2008-09-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

What do Anne Boleyn and Weetamoe of the Wampanoag Tribe of Colonial New England have in common? They were both Queens and both had their heads chopped off by a fanatic.

The Captive presents the story of Weetamoe, a Native American Queen in 17th century New England, who led her Pocasset braves (the ones who survived the scourge of European diseases) in battle against the invading English and their Native Allies during King Philip’s War (1675-76). The Colonial Army was organized under the auspices of the United Colonies, a body formed to combat Natives that evolved into an enduring institution, eventually challenging their overlord, the British Crown, a hundred years later in the American Revolution.

King Philip’s War (Metacom) was the last concerted effort of coastal northeast Woodland Nations to expel the English, in particular the Puritans, and they nearly succeeded. This singular event ignited a firestorm that swept over the entire North American Continent, annihilating ancient cultures, entire eco systems, and the animals they supported. For eleven weeks and five days in early 1676, when a Confederation victory was not assured, Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan Preacher’s wife, was Weetamoe’s slave.

This true encounter has been brought to life on stage in context with the events of their time. The metaphorical story of Annie and Joshua gives voice to the dispossessed. Musical instruments, period songs, and dialogue lifted from historic journals all combine with the thrill of spectacle into a dramatic play in two acts: THE CAPTIVE

Painting: Indian Princess by Anthony Gruerio

THE CAPTIVE MIND: THEN AND NOW: PART 2

2008-09-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

IT SEEMS CAPTIVE MINDS WORKING TOGETHER CAN WIN WARS, build towns and universities, but at what cost to humanity and the environment? And is it worth that cost?

The Mayflower Compact, deemed by some as one of the documents that inspired the U.S. Constitution, came from a “people who had more in common with a cult than a democratic society” (Philbrick 40). These days, Puritans and their Republican allies offer the gift of a “safe” society, a gift I seriously doubt they can deliver.

ON TOP OF THAT, A PURITAN SOCIETY charges a hefty price then and now. Literature, music, science, art, freedom of thought or speech, invention; all suffer in a society dominated by captive minds (check out Cromwell's England—no laughing matter). Like Mary said, “Mine eyes have seen it”—mine, too.

My journey to escape my captive mind began around the age of eighteen. I had moved away from home with my (now ex) husband, who had left college to join the Army, into the vast and howling wilderness of Army life. Luckily, I attended a local college near the base that was concerned with education, not biblical dogma, and I started reading books called literature, but more importantly, I stopped going to church. There is a reason backsliding is attacked vehemently from the pulpit. In order for the mind to stay captive, a constant flow of dogma must be administered. Ballet, theater, literature, wine, films, meditation on the inner light we all share, and all holidays, religious or otherwise—I enjoy with gusto—daily reminders of the rich culture I almost missed out on. Oh, and I wear a bathing suit in front of men, and enjoy (God forbid) sex.

After thinking about this a lot, ( I WROTE A PLAY ABOUT WEETAMOE AND MARY ) I wonder if Mary would have been more receptive to the Native People around her without the physical Bible in her hand, nourishing the mustard seeds of dogma grown as big as oak trees in her head?

“I repaired under these thoughts to my Bible (my great comfort in that time)” (Lincoln 137). As soon as I had an opportunity, I took my Bible to read, (Lincoln 139). I was turning the leaves of my Bible, and the Lord brought to me some Scriptures, which did a little revive me (Lincoln 142). “I had time and liberty again to look into my Bible: Which was my Guid [sic] by day, and my Pillow by night” (Lincoln 144).

Time and time again Mary buried her face in the Bible to escape the tangible world. Granted, the poor woman deserved some respite, but why block all sensible feelings?

Mary refused to acknowledge that the kindness and “common mercies” shown to her many times during her ordeal came from people who were suffering greatly themselves. It was a sympathetic Native that gave her the Bible in the first place. In Mary’s captive mind these friendly Natives were only agents of the “goodness of God,” not free-agents acting out of the kindness they felt in their human hearts (Strong 101). The material world was strange, and the people in it were strangers. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I believe in the existence of the material world as the expression of the spiritual...the laws of both are one” (Dillaway 33).

Puritan Mary didn’t see it that way. The singular expression of the spiritual for her came from pulpit-fed perceptions—reinforced daily by the Bible she held in her hand. Only a savage heathen would like living in a material world of “vanities” in the “vast and howling wilderness ” (Lincoln 163). The Bible was the software running the captivity program in Mary’s mind.

Yes, Mary was wronged by the Natives-—her daughter and others were killed, but why did Mary feel she deserved this suffering? “Affliction I wanted, and affliction I had” (Lincoln 142). How sadomasochistic is that? The Natives living in 17th century New England, of course, had many reasons to be angry and vengeful. Their lives had been turned upside down: their land stolen, their people killed and worse--sold into slavery. Native People who lived through the European encounter suffered unimaginable loss.

Weetamoe and her allies may have briefly captured Mary, and done her physical harm, but Weetamoe’s entire world was annihilated by the onslaught of Puritan emigrants greedy for land. Had the Natives of New England worked together, King Philip’s War might have ended differently, changing the course of history, or at least some of history. In the spring of 1676, the Natives nearly drove the “English to the very edge of the sea” (Philbrick 302). Although outnumbered, the Natives were better shots, and maneuvered easily through the environment, unlike the clumsy English farmers unfamiliar with skulking warfare.

The irony is Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan preacher’s wife, and Weetamoe, Queen of Pocasset, were both captives. Weetamoe was a captive to exterior events that spun out of her control, and Mary was a captive in her own mind.

If we exist because we think, THEN AS NOW, the struggle to think clearly continues...

WORKS CITED

Dillaway, Newton, ed. The Gospel of Emerson. Mass: The Montrose P, 1949.

Winthrop, John. “On Liberty.” 1645. Constitution Society.5 Aug 2008 http://www.constitution.org/

Lincoln, Charles H., ed. Narratives of the Indian Wars 1675 – 1699. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1913.

Mather, Increase. A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England (1676). Ed. Paul Royster. Nebraska: U of Nebraska, 2006. 8 Aug 08

Page, Jake. In The Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 -Year History of American Indians. USA: Free Press, 2003.

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. USA: Penguin, 2007.

Strong, Pauline Turner. Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives. USA: Westview P, 1999.

More information and links: http://www.conradreeder.com/TheCaptive.htm

Conrad “Connie” Reeder was born in Columbus, Ohio, and recently graduated from the University of New Orleans with a MFA in Film, Theater, & Communication Arts with a concentration in Playwriting.

The Captive is a dramatic play in two acts.

Contact: conradreeder@gmail.com

© All Rights Reserved

THE CAPTIVE MIND: THEN AND NOW: PART 1

2008-09-11T06:14:00.000-07:00

MARY ROWLANDSON was already the captive of a religious cult before the Natives of New England grabbed her during a raid in 1676, she just didn’t know it. (Woodcut of Rowlandson's kidnapping. Reprinted in Captive Selves, Captivating Others by Pauline Turner Strong

Like Mary, I was born into the same cult—three hundred years later. By the time of her abduction during KING PHILIP'S WAR, the beginning of the real end for the sovereignty of New England’s Native People, Mary had lived her forty years in the religious movement called Puritan, so-called by their peers. Puritans professed to lead a life of purity, a life of pure thoughts, a life dedicated to finishing what the Protestant Reformation had started the century before—eliminate any residual popish rituals in the Church of England. Of course, many Englishmen liked their Church just the way it was.

So, Puritans immigrated to America starting with the Mayflower in 1620 to not only escape persecution, but to build a New Jerusalem in a new, pure environment, free to rule their city-on-a-hill without any pesky King or Archbishops to interfere. Soon after, their hero, OLIVER CROMWELL, seized power with the help of his New Model Army and lobbed off King Charles’ head, but ten years later, Cromwell was dead, and the throne was restored to Charles’ son. In spite of it all, the Puritans of New England forged ahead, and by this time (1660) they outnumbered their Native neighbors by at least three to one. European diseases had killed many Natives, who some ethnographers think numbered 144,000 in New England circa 1600, shrinking to a mere 15,000 by 1620. Entire villages…gone (Page 174).

Puritans modeled their Churches of Christ (Winthrop 264) after the Christian church of the first century following the death of Jesus (at least their vision of what the church was like), a primitive Christianity based on the letters of the Apostles in the Geneva Bible, the preferred version for the English dissenters. My Church of Christ is a modified version, but still sticking to their patriarchal attempt at a first century model, and they vote overwhelmingly Republican (Bush), in part because of their anti-any-abortion-for-any-reason stance, but mostly because of the ongoing cultural divide between Puritans and non-Puritans. Of course, Republicans are a diverse group, so any generality is fraught with danger, but a large block of the Republican Party traditionally votes for candidates that favor dictating moral behavior to that old tune of what came to be called manifest destiny.

After all, God is on their side.

Like me, Mary was born into this cult. Mary’s father, Puritan John White, brought his family to New England in 1638 during the Great Migration, when Mary was three, and had moved through the forest to Lancaster about forty miles from Boston around 1652, which at that time was the “vast and desolate wilderness” (Lincoln 132). Mary experienced life through the Bible-tinted glasses of a New England Puritan, a life that was conditioned from birth to believe only the Saints (Puritans) would inherit the Kingdom of God, if they measured up right. Puritans constantly searched “for clues to God’s purposes” (Fischer 125), and the Natives were obviously sent by the Devil to test their faith. The Puritan Priest, INCREASE MATHER, wholeheartedly agreed with his predecessor and father-in-law, John Cotton. “The conversion of the Indians is not to be expected […] before the conversion of the Jewish Nation” (Mather 4). Cryptic scriptures were dredged up to justify the wholesale slaughter of innocent Native women and children. “I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of the Covenant, Leviticus 26:25” (Mather 1). The Bible was their creed, a malleable text to justify their every edict or law, then as now.

In the course of researching my MAYFLOWER genealogy, I stumbled across THE STORY OF MARY BEING WEETAMOE'S SLAVE. In fact, I don’t remember any American history class I took that talked much about the 17th century. The nice Thanksgiving picture with Indians and Pilgrims getting along would dissolve into the next big event—the American Revolution. Not much happened in between, right? Wrong.

The contrast between Weetamoe and Mary Rowlandson could not have been more stark. Weetamoe was born a beloved Queen in her community. Mary was born a wretched sinner, and as a woman, a second-class citizen (Fischer 84). Weetamoe was a warrior, Mary was a homemaker (I'm not suggesting this is bad), and the list continues. In the Puritan world women carried then and now the burden of their sex causing the downfall of the entire human race, thanks to Eve’s dalliance with the snake in the Garden of Eden. This event is still taught as fact. And how about the planet being 6012 years old? What’s wrong with you scholars, can’t you add up all the begets in the Bible’s Old Testament? I was told to ignore what I learned at school. No dancing, no swimming with the opposite sex, no sex for fun, in fact, don’t even mention the word sex. Puritans censor a wide-ranging selection of words and artistic endeavors, such as literature, art, film, and skinny-dipping.

Mary was unable to see Weetamoe and Natives, in general, as human beings. The Native propensity for nakedness shocked Puritans. Adam and Eve in Genesis were ashamed of their nakedness. Why not these Natives? Native People were wolves, heathens—wicked creatures of the night. Mary didn’t see Weetamoe’s religion or its rituals. She didn’t see their villages as communities, but rather dens of wolves. The natural environment was not a rich, ancient forest, but a “vast and howling wilderness” (Lincoln 134). Puritans, like many Europeans, believed “unicorns lived in the hills, […] mermaids swam in waters, […] tritons played in Casco Bay,” and of course, witches must be burned (Fischer 125). As late as the 18th century, artistic drawings suggest Europeans in general “still had a hard time actually seeing Indians” (Page Centerfold). (“Drawing of the Savages of Several Nations.” Alexandre de Batz (1735). Reproduced In The Hands of Great Spirit.” Jake Page.)

Mary was eventually ransomed back to her husband and reunited with two of her children. One daughter died during her captivity, but Weetamoe (her children had already died) and what was left of her family died soon after. The Puritans stuck Weetamoe’s head on a pole at Taunton, the site of her ancient homeland. At seeing this head, members of her tribe in the stockade sobbed, “Our Queen...our Queen is dead” (Mather 137). Mary returned to her Puritan life and was encouraged to write her captivity story, most likely by Mather, who may have written the introduction, perhaps in part to stop any nasty rumors of her defilement (read sex) from the hands of any “savages,” a common problem for any woman returning to Puritan communities from captivity (Strong 101), although rape of English women by Native men was an uncommon occurrence. Of course, if Mary willingly had sexual relations with a Native man, she would have been branded or worse. MARY'S BOOK also provided a fresh text for Mather and friends to use in the pulpit as propaganda against Native People. Sometimes even the Bible didn’t frighten the flock as well as a good, scary story in their own backyard, using fear to control people—straight out of the Republican/Puritan strategy book. Captivity narratives became all the rage after Mary published her book.

Now as then, the struggle to think clearly continues...

WORKS CITED

Dillaway, Newton, ed. The Gospel of Emerson. Mass: The Montrose P, 1949.

Winthrop, John. “On Liberty.” 1645. Constitution Society.5 Aug 2008 http://www.constitution.org/

Lincoln, Charles H., ed. Narratives of the Indian Wars 1675 – 1699. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1913.

Mather, Increase. A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England (1676). Ed. Paul Royster. Nebraska: U of Nebraska, 2006. 8 Aug 08

Page, Jake. In The Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 -Year History of American Indians. USA: Free Press, 2003.

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. USA: Penguin, 2007.

Strong, Pauline Turner. Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives. USA: Westview P, 1999.

More information and links: http://www.conradreeder.com/TheCaptive.htm

Conrad “Connie” Reeder was born in Columbus, Ohio, and recently graduated from the University of New Orleans with a MFA in Film, Theater, & Communication Arts with a concentration in Playwriting.

The Captive is a dramatic play in two acts.

Contact: conradreeder@gmail.com

© All Rights Reserved

THANK GOD FOR KEITH!

2008-09-11T03:07:00.000-07:00

Bless everyone's hearts on this day of infamy. Shame on any politician who uses this tragedy for a campaign slogan. Shame on the politicians and their backers who used it for financial gain and perceived power.

I repeat, like Keith and a host of others, THE REPUBLICANS WERE IN CHARGE ON THIS DAY IN 2001. Why are they in office? Not only does the King have no clothes, the King has no conscious, no moral ground to stand on, and no credibility with anyone that has eyes to see, ears to hear, a brain to think, and a heart to feel.

NEW AGE SHAKERS! WOOHOO!

2008-09-06T15:56:00.000-07:00

MYTH AGAIN!

2008-08-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

HELL, it’s all too easy for some moderns to look at Greek, Inuit, Hindu, Viking, or anyone else’s myths and dismiss their stories as the workings of unsophisticated minds. What I got from my Latin class in High School was a validation for believing in the superiority of my beliefs. After all, Venus was the Goddess in a mythical pagan pantheon and Jesus, the Son of God, a historical fact. To step out of one’s own myth and scrutinize it with equal veracity is not something I would recommend for the feint of heart.

My stepping-out started in college. Having moved away from my family to another state, I found myself going to church less and less. I knew this back-sliding was not acceptable in my circle, but things had started to unravel in my thinking. Ideas were fomenting my brain i.e. General Sherman was not as revered as I’d been led to think by the North American history book used in the public school I attended (I have a gr-grandfather who was in Sherman’s Ohio army and my college was in TN), OR the planet might be older than the 6,012 years I was taught in Bible School as fact, OR could it be the Garden of Eden story was just another myth like Pygmalion and Galatea?

During this period a trippy event happened to me, while sleeping soundly in bed one Sunday morning. A large clap of thunder vibrated my dwelling, and I nearly convulsed onto the floor. My body seemed to have a mind of its own. Lightening was not the culprit. Fear shook my bones. I was afraid of being cast into the fiery pit of Hell for all of eternity. My entire being felt the second coming of Christ and the onset of Judgement Day. A hologram of the event appeared all around me in living color with fiery dragons and seven-headed beasts. Withdrawal is rarely a smooth transition—and this was B.D.E. (Before Drug Experimentation). Somehow I survived this crash. Working as an actress on stage at the time helped me navigate this adventure. In the process of analyzing and portraying another person, I started to analyze myself--an ongoing process to this day :-)

Along the way I decided to search for the root of this addiction to myth, and not fall into the trap of replacing the big hole in my heart and brain with more useless babble, or mind numbing addictions. (OK I admit it - I’m addicted to coffee and sugar) Some in my current circle might say I took up with Juno. “If I cannot sway the Gods above, I’ll stir up Hell.” (Virgil - Aeneid, VII.312).

All this led me to Mary, who represents the female aspect missing or maligned in the Jesus story. For all the arguments about how inclusive Christianity is, I have yet to see it realized in any society or historical events.

I regret not getting more of my writing in print before the media splash of The Da Vinci Code, so as to seem more of a leader than a follower (my hero journey), but que sera sera…

Utor Mens!

I SPEAK FOR THE DEAD

2008-08-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

I speak for dead people—some with real historical lives that can be read about in books, some who live only in my head, but I hear them speak. Just because people are dead doesn’t mean they never existed. Just because people are dead doesn’t mean they don’t have a story.

The challenge for this writer is to portray these people as authentically as possible, a daunting challenge at best. Sometimes the facts of their story have been written down, at least some of the facts. As any writer or reader knows, sometimes there are big holes in the facts of someone’s story. How they thought and felt is another matter. Even writing what I think and feel about my own life can be a mission sometimes, at least in a way that others will feel compelled to read it. Throughout history, I bet people who journaled felt the same pressure, at least the ones hoping to publish--very tricky this stuff of portraying a story, anybody’s story. And what about the one's who didn't journal? Who speaks for them, especially when someone else tells their story and gets even the facts wrong?!

So in walks the Trickster to help move this process along, sometimes referred to as one of the Archetypes found in all stories. Carl Jung, an inspired psychiatrist who explored mythology with the idea of explaining a collective consciousness, found Archetypes to be shared by all cultures, all human stories, just wearing different costumes, events, hairdos etc. The Trickster with a dual nature—half animal, half divine—creates havoc for all, and presto-chango, here comes a story. One must have some sort of havoc to get the ball rolling, the story, that is—the events of a life. I have yet to meet or hear of anyone who doesn’t have a story.

How can I explain my need to write the words of the dead? The Trickster enters into my stomach (through a process I don’t entirely understand) and creates this “havoc” or a “gut feeling,” and away I go. I start hearing dead people talk. Dead does not mean silent, as long as there is someone to hear them and type down what they say (I hardly write anymore, my hand hurts). So, I hear it, and I type it. Whether or not the dead are happy about this, I have no idea. They haven’t said one way or the other, but they keep talking, and as long as they’re talking, I’ll keep listening, and typing, speaking for the dead, as best I can.

Then there’s music, I hear that, too. But that’s another story…

Green (my addition) Dragon from the 13th century Southern Song Dynasty.
Trickster, is that you?

And Happy Birthday to my daughter Ashlee! What a story she will tell...

THE CAPTIVE

2008-07-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in a land not far away, a Queen lived by the name of Weetamoe. Her people inhabited a world in balance with Nature, and her culture had survived tens of thousands of years until disease and a religion that fueled a movement destroyed this world in just a few generations.

During Weetamoe’s revolt against injustice, and in her case the English invaders, her allies captured a Puritan minister's wife by the name of Mary Rowlandson. For a brief period, Mary was Weetamoe's slave. Weetamoe's short-lived reign ended as the European tsunami of disease and destruction swept over her and all the Native Tribes living on the American continent.

Consider this:

Every period of the past, when understood in it's own terms, is immediate to the present.

David Hackett Fischer.

Fischer's statement haunts me. As a descendent of Quaker and Puritan invaders, sometimes erroneously referred to as founding fathers, I am appalled at the violence, which has come down through the ages and continues to this day in the name of misnomers such as: PROGRESS? or DEMOCRACY? or TRUTH? To be fair, had my Quaker ancestors won the day, the Native Tribes might have survived more intact, although even devout Quakers such as Jonathan Dickinson owned slaves in the 17th Century.

Historians love to point out that Puritan Massachusetts won the city-on-the-hill game over Quaker Rhode Island. By comparing the two states a 100 years after the English migration that began in earnest around 1630, researchers find that Puritan-driven societies built more churches, farms, and buildings. Does the definition of civilization have to exclude wild animals, trees, and water sans-pollution? What useful knowledge to humanity did the pigs and cows of New England trample? What insight into human relations did religious dogma extirpate? Psychologists today explore the benefits to society of not whipping children, something Native People practised three hundred years ago.

The Captive is a dramatic play in two Acts.

I recently started to write this play during my graduate playwrighting workshop at the University Of New Orleans Maybe the miracle of my school surviving the Katrina flood will start a chain of miracles and resurrect a Queen.

To Be Continued...

© Conrad Reeder
All Rights Reserved

Painting: Indian Princess by Anthony Gruerio

DAUGHTERS

2008-07-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

My daughters, Cimcie and Ashlee--what a lucky mom!

WALLACE STEVENS: West Imagining East

2008-06-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

WALLACE STEVENS took to heart Kakuzo Okakura’s question, “When will the West understand, or try to understand, the East?” Okakura’s 1906 treatise on the Chan Buddhist and/or Zen infused tea ceremony, "The Book of Tea," fell into Stevens’ hands by way of his Harvard acquaintances, Walter Bynner and Arther D. Ficke (Willis). His first national recognition as a poet was winning Poetry magazine’s 1916 contest, and a $100 for his play, “Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise,” a story woven around three Chinamen fixing tea in the Pennsylvania woods (Murphy 132). This was a direct result of Stevens’ brush with Tao, The Way, or The Path, that which encourages the artist to develop a “wide and keen observation, eventually to find in enrichment of the spirit, the secret of the rhythm of nature.” (Sze 18)

Maureen Kravec noted, the play evinces “the early modernist fascination with chinoiserie.” (Kravec 310) The layout of the play on the page is interesting, in that it presents an amalgamated version of a play and a poem. For example, the line breaks would not be such in the dialogue for the usual play format. The form is sometimes referred to as verse drama, but Stevens reworked it a bit after his win “to have the play a play and not merely a poem” (Murphy 132).

As a playwright in the UNO graduate MFA program, I find this quite intriguing, although not a total surprise. At the turn of the last century, Stevens and other poets were enthusiastic about the literary possibilities in the new art theatres popping up all over the East coast, emulating the independent theatres of Europe. Stevens shared the bill at Provincetown Players with fellow poets, Alfred Kreymborg and Lawrence Langner, but unfortunately before “Three Travelers” was produced, Stevens was intimately involved with the production of his second play, “Carlos Among the Candles,” and had a harrowing experience. The lead actor forgot three of the twelve pages of dialogue, and the whole production was a huge disappointment. After one opening night, the show was shut down, and Stevens fled the theatre, referring to the entire affair of producing theatre as “the horrors.” (Murphy 132)

I couldn’t find the original pear-shaped vase Professor Qian mentions as a possible inspiration for this play (Qian 39), but I did find this motif, which captures the spirit of the three Chinamen in the story, that of the first being “short, fat, quizzical, and of middle age. The second is of middle height, thin and turning gray; a man of sense and sympathy. The third is a young man, intent, detached.” (Loving 494)

The play incorporates the aesthetics of Chan/Zen to guide the audience through the horror of suicide and lynching, “the invasion” of humanity, and in my opinion to give people an alternative to despair, or as the Third Chinese says, (the one likened to Stevens’ personae), “The candle of the sun/ will shine soon/ On this hermit earth” (Loving 499).

After the American Civil War came a plague of black lynchings, mostly instigated by the Ku Klux Klan. In Stevens’s own Pennsylvania locale occurred an infamous lynching in nearby Coatesville circa 1911. Although the black actors in "Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise" don’t speak, their actions and body language signify this major theme, and by juxtaposing black actors with a body hanging from a tree “the invasion of humanity," albeit a suicide, the audience is forced to think about this tragic topic of lynching. Stevens incorporated this Taoist idea illustrated as the “[…] value of suggestion. In leaving something unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea and thus a great masterpiece irresistible rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to enter and fill up the full measure of your aesthetic emotion.” (Okakura 46)

This play may not be regarded as Stephens’ “greatest masterpiece,” and it was a flop, due mainly to the poor production, i.e. the sun did not “rise”--a light bulb flashed on instantly (Murphy 138). Stevens used the vacuum of Taoist space in and around a bottle to invoke an aesthetic emotion. The story begins with the Second Chinese saying, “All you need/ To find poetry/ Is to look for it with a lantern” (Loving 494), and if that doesn’t work then, “There is seclusion of porcelain," the same porcelain with “[…] the three figures/ Painted on porcelain/ As we sit here,/ That we are painted on this very bottle” (Loving 499). The bottle represents the very earth we stand on, illuminated by the lantern, held by the old hermit that holds the light of imagination.

What made Stevens’ psyche so receptive to the “rhythm of nature” art produced by the Oriental Taoist? For one thing, Stevens inherited the influences of the New England transcendental movement voiced in the monumental writings of Emerson, an earlier Harvard graduate, and the likewise Emersonian naturalist, Walt Whitman (Bloom 10). Stevens embraced Emerson’s transcendental message for students to observe that “all things in Nature, the animals, the mountain, the river, the seasons, wood, iron, stone, vapor, have a mysterious relation to his thoughts and his life; their growths, decays, quality and use so curiously resemble himself, in parts and in wholes, that he is compelled to speak by means of them. (Emerson) The world is a “picture-book” of every passage in human life, and in every object of Nature is where the poet will find the essence of man.

Emerson himself studied the Oriental nature of Buddhism, as received through the sages of India, and wrote extensively on the matter. (Gordon) The magazine, The Dial, in which Stevens would later be published, was initially formed as a transcendental publication with Emerson as one of its early editors. Stevens was influenced by his Harvard philosophy professor, George Santayana, in whose honor he wrote, “To An Old Philosopher in Rome.” (CP 508) An avowed atheist who aesthetically mirrored much of Emerson’s Naturalism, and later called himself an “aesthetic Catholic,” Santayana fostered in Stevens a creative imagination, and offered a “sensitive account of the spiritual life without being a religious believer (Saatkamp). Santanyan died in Rome under the care of nuns--interesting in that Stevens allegedly converted to Catholicism on his own deathbed.

Steven’s disillusionment with Christianity was made public in his published and first critically acclaimed poem written in 1915, “Sunday Morning” (Bloom 22). Instead of going to the obligatory church service (that is, for Christians who want to go to the Heaven in the King James Bible), Stevens' character chooses instead, “Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,/And the green freedom of a cockatoo/ Upon a rug mingle to dissipate/ The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.” (CP 66-7) Note the lower case “h.”

By this time the Christianity Stevens grew up with in his Dutch/German Pennsylvania home had “dissipated” in his face. His father experienced a mental and spiritual breakdown, as well as a bankruptcy, which must have affected Stevens enormously, and he wasn’t speaking to his father at the time of the latter’s death in 1911. It would seem the Christian home where his mother read the Bible every night couldn’t sustain familial devotion in negotiating a riff triggered by Stevens’ choice of Elsie for his wife. Never recovering from her grief, his mother died soon thereafter. (Peiu)

Only after these events did Stevens find a voice that appealed to a wider audience. Stevens found comfort in writing to assuage these real life tragedies, and his exposure to the active tranquility of Chan Buddhism helped him fill the void where a dogmatic religion had been. The “awakening” first seen in his “nothing that is” poem, “The Snowman,” (1921) sustained him in the years to come, and so, despite the lukewarm relationship with his wife, Elsie (Voices & Visions), Stevens found in his imagination “The loneliest air, not less was I myself” (CP 65). Other than a short break after the release of Harmonium in 1923-30, he never stopped writing.

Professor Qian has eloquently presented a thorough investigation regarding Stevens’ reading habits on Buddhism, and Stevens' exposure to Chinese Landscape Art and Oriental ancient artifacts at the MFA in Boston and exhibits in New York, specifically those which flowered from the Southern Sung school, fueled by the Tao of Chan Buddhism, which in turn inspired the Zen school of Japan (Qian). It seems only natural that a sensitive, individualistic hardhead like the Dutch-German Stevens (I should know, my mother was a Stevens, and both of my parents came from Puritan/Quaker stock) would be receptive to the “awakened state” of Chan Buddhism.

Stevens' birth place of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn--a haven for Quakers, who fashion their belief around meditating on the “internal light,” and southeastern Pennsylvania is full of quiet vistas for contemplation, but not many 19-year-olds would question, “why people took books into the woods to read in summertime when there was so much else to be read there that one could not find in books.” (Qian 96) Stevens' bent for the philosophical started at an early age.

Maybe one way to analyze how Stevens felt about Chinese art is to show an example of the “orientalism” he loathed. The following is a painting by Eugéne Fromentin, an artist who thought “a painting should be neither eastern nor western, but a conglomeration of both […] I [Stevens] can only say that I detest orientalism: the sort of thing that Fromentin did […] although I like it well enough the way Matisse does it“ (Qian 200).

Let’s compare the aspects of Chan Buddhist Chinese landscape to this painting. Is there a state of “active tranquility? Is the figure in harmony with nature? Does the water flow? Can you see the water’s source? Does the wind “breathe” a rhythm throughout the picture? Do the mountains in the distance evoke a “quality of spirit” (Sze 21)? I agree with Stevens. The man (I think it’s a man) is in the center, not off to one side in contemplation. There is activity on the man’s part, that of riding a horse. This is about a journey, not contemplation of the “rhythm of nature.”

The man riding the horse may be in an awakened state, but there are no clues to this. The image is a manipulation of Nature, not a transforming moment of clarity in awe of Nature. The road cuts through the heart of the meadow and the water has no visible source. There is no flow. Is it a lake or a bay? The grasses do not move with the “breath” of the wind. The scene is probably proportional to reality, but where is the, “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” (CP 10).

Stevens found many things to his liking in one of his favorite books on Chinese art, “Painting in the Far East,” by Laurence Binyon (Qian 27), and Binyon touches a Western nerve when speaking of Turkestan where “we touch three great civilizations at once: India, China, and Greece,” where “Apollo transforms himself into Buddha” (Binyon 28). For me, that is one more key to the thinking of Wallace Stevens and his interest in Chan Buddhism. Steeped as we Westerners are in our dogmatic religions (and we're not the only ones), it might be beneficial for us all in the East and West to pause and contemplate that we all share a common ancestry from an earlier time.

Recent blood DNA studies are pointing to one small group in Africa that populated the entire human race starting around 100,000 years ago, a blink in the evolutionary timeline. (Sykes 277) If anything, Stevens may have found a cultural inheritance in the “quietism” infused into Chan Buddhist art that had been lost somewhere along the way. In “Six Significant Landscapes” (1916) “An old man sits/ In the shadow of a pine tree/ In China” (CP73). So many of them do. “Viewing the Moon under a Pine Tree” in Ma Yuan style (Qian 104) is an example of this type of old man Stevens got inside of to “breathe” and “awaken” not only to read about in his poem, but as a way for himself to physically experience this "breathe."

Through the years, Stevens collected many Chinese artifacts, but one of his favorites, a carved wooden figure of “the most benevolent old god you ever saw,” was shipped back to him from Peking by the sister of Harriet Monroe, the editor of “Poetry” magazine. The old man carried a staff, and a lotus bud. For Stevens, this old man, a Shouxing, “is so humane that the study of him is as good as a jovial psalm” (Qian 157-8).

The implication here is obvious. Stevens filled his spiritual and mental cup, in part, by reading about, viewing at museums, and surrounding himself with Tao-infused artifacts, especially of the Chan Buddhist type, because they stimulated his imagination, and infused his poetry with an "awakened" awareness. This was his way as a Westerner to experience the gifts of the East. He continued to study this phenomena to the very end and invented his own rhythmic dance with the river of life that continues to flow East to West and back round again. Imagine that. “Surrounded by its choral rings,” in the Buddhist breath, Stevens discovered “A new knowledge of reality” (CP 534) and shared it with us with his words.

Now. Everyone take a deep breath.

Works Cited

Binyon, Laurence. Painting in the Far East: An Introduction to the History of Pictorial Art in Asia, Especially China and Japan. London: Arnold, 1908. 4th ed. rev., 1934. Reprint New York: Dover, 1959.

Bloom, Harold. Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate. New York, Cornell University Press. 1977

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essay “Poetry & Imagination” (1872) http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/poetryimag.html 9 Nov 2006

Gordon, Robert. "Emerson's Earliest Interest In India." http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/i_es/i_es_gordo_emerson.htm 11 Nov 2006

Loving, Pierre. Shay, Rank. Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays. Cincinnati, Ohio. Stewart & Kidd. 1920. 494-500

Okakura Kakuzo. The Book of Tea Classic Edition. USA: Tuttle P, 1989 46th ed.

Peiu, Anca. "After the final no: The World of Wallace Stevens” http://www.unibuc.ro/eBooks/lls/AncaPeiu-STEVENS/chronology.htm 11 Nov 2006

Qian, Zhaoming. The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stephens. USA, U of Virginia P, 2003.

Saatkamp, Herman. "George Santayana", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2006/entries/santayana/ 10 Nov 2006

Stevens, Wallace. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York, Vintage Books 1990.

Sykes, Bryan. The Seven Daughters of Eve. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001.

Sze, Mai-mai.( trans). The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. Chieh Tzu Yuan Hua Chuan, 1679-1701. New York, Princeton University Press 1977.

Willis, Patricia C. (curator) Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, 1997 http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/orient/mod7.htm 11 Nov 2006

Notes

“Wallace Stevens - Man Made Out Of Words.” Dir. Richard P. Rogers. Sr. Consultant Helen Vendler. Voices & Visions Series. Natl. Endowment for the Humanities. Wash. D.C. 1988.

Poetry has dedicated a slide show of the original copy of Stevens’ playbook, “Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise” here: http://www.poetrymagazine.org/webexclusive/vol8no4.html

“Three Chinamen on Porcelein” - http://www.rugreview.com/stuf/chincer.htm

(This was a class presentation for Professor Zhaoming Qian's graduate class Modernism & the Visual Arts November 2006 at the University of New Orleans)

SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDER

2008-01-24T01:23:00.000-08:00

WHILE DRIVING SOUTH TO MIAMI after dropping my teenaged daughter off at a retreat in upstate New York, I found myself somewhere on I-95 on a dank, cloudy September morning. About half-way through the Carolinas I’d played out all the CD’s brought along for the trip, and let the radio scan through the local stations, spitting out music between white noise. My thoughts swirled around five seconds of a country song, then a top ten hit, and on to a preacher making his point about hell, but always back to my daughter, and our private nightmare.

A few months earlier a voice in the middle of the night called to say my daughter, struggling with addiction and missing for several days, had overdosed and was dead. This proved to be false, but hours passed before I knew she was alive, and by then my heart had nearly pounded through my chest--death is hard on the living. For now she was safe, but the fear of losing her was ever present. This retreat I’d dropped her off at was a favorite of mine, and my friend, John Denver, whom I sang and traveled with for over seventeen years.

JOHN AND HIS MUSIC were not on my radar growing up. Rock and roll mixed in with The Beatles was what I droned into my head. My Ohio click of goofy teenagers made fun of Take Me Home Country Roads, associating West Virginia with rednecks carousing in rusty pick-up trucks. John’s image had always conjured up a dorky guy with simpleton songs for a simpleton audience. I reluctantly told my friends, especially jazz musicians, about my gig with John, just to avoid the snickers. But John, tall, handsome, and not dorky, soon won me over, not necessarily for his music, but for his truth, his sincerity, and for his genuine affection for people and nature.

Before John’s tour the largest audience I’d performed in front of topped maybe five thousand. Millions filled John Denver concerts for decades. Sometimes from the stage I’d look out over a sea of people. His "simple" songs struck a chord for millions of fans that still cherish him years after his death. They were way ahead of me.

Losing my mom and then John four weeks later, had tested me in ways likely known to people who experience a tremendous loss, which probably includes anyone breathing and walking around on planet Earth, but years later this new test: my beautiful daughter--my baby’s life seemed over. Being at the retreat had reminded me of John, and this love for all things seen and unseen that we shared. Maybe that’s why I stopped the scanning radio when I heard John’s very familiar, very clear, tenor voice singing, “Sunshine, on my shoulders makes me happy. Sunshine, in my eyes can make me cry.” Through streaming tears I started singing lyrics with this forever-disembodied voice on the radio. I instinctively sang a song I’d sung hundreds of times at hundreds of venues in front of millions of people. “Sunshine on the water looks so lovely.” Then it happened--a narrow beam of light pierced through the lugubrious wall of clouds, and tapped my left shoulder.

On this lonely stretch of southbound I-95, a narrow strip of sunlight seemingly dissolved my sorrow, my bitter angst, and several destructive thoughts. In the space of three chords I intuited volumes about myself, about music, about life, about the singular simplicity of love and John, who knew his audience well--the audience I was singing to--me. “Sunshine almost always makes me high,” and it did at that moment, and it still does…almost always.

Postscript: I started this piece several years ago. Knock on wood, or whatever scares away the boogieman, and “one day at a time” --my daughter has been clean since her stay at this retreat.

© C. Reeder All Rights Reserved
*********************

FEDRA LIVE AT THE ROMAN THEATRE IN MÉRIDA, ESPANA

2007-12-16T07:41:00.000-08:00

13 July 2007 –Val and I took the bus from Madrid to Mérida to see Fedra, yet another adaptation of the twisted, tragic Greek love story about a woman (Fedra) who madly adores her stepson, Hippolytus (Fran Perea), an unrequited love, the outcome of which dooms Hippolytus to death. Playwright: Juan Mayorga. Director: José Carlos Plaza. Ana Belén, a truly talented singing star born in Madrid, plays the sexy, unhinged Fedra with adroit skill.

The spectacle of a modern production in an ancient Roman theatre was one of the highlights of my UNO playwriting residency this summer. (the other: the reading of my play, Graffiti, at Chaminade in Madrid). Even sitting on sharp rocks in the top row of slave seats didn’t bother too much, especially since we’d been warned and had come prepared with seat cushions. (Me & Val)

Agrippa built this Teatro Romano in 18 B.C.E.. Mérida was founded as a Roman outpost circa 25 B.C.E.; commissioned by the Emperor Augustus from whom the name of the city, Emérita Augusta, was taken.

Except for the ice in the drinks at the bar, the venue does not offer much 21st century luxury. The show started at 11pm—to avoid the heat. The summer heat in Spain immobilized my body, a draining, dry, insidious heat. Just to keep moving, I was forced, at times, to drink copious amounts of refreshing tinto de verano, a mixture of red wine, and something like 7-up with the all-important ice.

Since I am familiar with Euripides's story (428 BC) about the lustful Phaedra titled, Hippolytus, I was able to follow along with the plot, all in Spanish. Through the ages the story has been retold by Seneca, Racine, and the bilbaíno, Unamuno. But this version, premiered at the Classical Theater Festival of Merida, was obviously written for Belén—long, longggg monologues. In truth, the other main characters had their time in the spot, but Belén owned center stage. However, in conversing with an educated male of Mexican/American heritage, I was impressed with his confession, "the performance brought tears to my eyes." Belén’s numerous, long soliloquies didn't ruin the drama for him.

Since Mayorga won the National Theater Award last month for Fedra, and received 30,000 euros from the Ministry of Culture, the play, and most definitely Belén struck a chord in the hearts of many. But even Mayorga admitted, “It has been said that I have written this work for Ana Belén, […], but it is not true.” The “author” doth protest too much.
Fedra Review

Regardless, the production and set stunned me with the extraordinary mix of ancient and modern. A large red rectangular (or trapezoid?) shaped backdrop was placed upstage dwarfing the actors and used as a prop from time to time, to lean on, crouch next to, and so on, and a diagonal line cut into it illuminated with a laser light during intense moments.

The stage lights were strategically placed to highlight the various headless statues and half-ruined columns, and the excellent surround music track of eerie voices, coupled with occasional fog, added depth to the sword fight and tragic end. Bravo!!! The crowd wildly applauded during curtain call and rewarded the cast with a vibrant standing ovation--a welcomed event for me after sitting two hours on rocks (cushion notwithstanding). The pageantry of the event overwhelmingly carried the night.

The theatre seats about 6000 and the adjacent amphitheatre could have held 15,000 on a good day in the province of Augusta Emerita. Other productions at the 2007 festival: The Persas, Lisístrata, Adiós, Brother Cruel, Andrómaca, The Banquet of Orfeo, The Troyanas, Metamorphoses, , Orestíada, Antígona, Orión, & Electra.

The next day Val and I toured the relic of an amphitheatre adjacent to the theatre, where many gladiators and animals met their bloody death to entertain the local population; obviously one, if not the ancestral origin of the bullfight staged in Spain today.

SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDER IN ASPEN

2007-10-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

(From the left) Edna (John's Aunt), me, Erma (John's mother) & my daughter Cimcie

It was 10 years ago today my good friend,John Denver, stepped, or rather crashed his way into the great beyond. We celebrated his life with friends and loved ones in Aspen.

His legacy lives on for me and millions of others. Thanks to You John!

CAN YOU FIND ME?

2007-10-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

Number 31 by Jackson Pollock 1950 MoMA

ESPANA JULY 2007

2007-08-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

Segovia - I found my eye gravitating to an old woman sitting in front of a building that is probably representative of the type that was torn down for the monstrosity of a gothic Cathedral built next to the Plaza Major in the 16th century.

She is scouting for potential sales among the turistas looking at her shawls. I obliged and bought two colorful crocheted items, a direct contrast to her own dark attire. Perhaps her husband is dead. Our guide, Miguel, said women, both Catholic and Muslim, are consigned to black in widowhood.

An elegantly dressed elder walked passed me with a small bright gold cross on his lapel, minus the Christ figure.

It seems his wife is alive, but of course, who would know since men have never been constrained by this black garb tradition. The people of Segovia, and Spain in general are a mixture of the stately, peasant, and entrepreneurial middle-class type. Not so different in that regard from populations everywhere.

Madrid - Parque del Buen Retiro - my refuge in the UNO workshop storm. My years living in Manhattan taught me the value of Nature in an urban environment.

The landscaping in Retiro Park feels more sculptured than Central Park, and Retiro seems to have more older trees; certainly not from rainfall that averages 17 inches a year (Manhattan gets about 47 inches), but from the springs and aquifer under the Madrid basin…more research. I did notice extensive sprinkler/watering systems in Retiro that water at night.

I found oak trees in Retiro that look over 300 years old, and the Cedars of Lebanon are very old and majestically tall with a canopy over 60 feet – at least 300 years. The plaque says they were brought from Lebanon in the 17th century. (Keith standing at the base of a cedar)

Mérida: Roman Theatre - The Temple of Diana - Roman ruins galore - Established in the year 25 BC with the name of Emerita Augusta by order of Emperor Augustus to protect a pass and bridge over the Guidiana River. Two legions of Romans settled here and built a cultural outpost. The Amphitheatre was the stage for bloody entertainment.

But, Roman culture is in my blood - and gene pool.
I love all things Roman!.

FUGITIVE BLONDE

2006-12-16T12:59:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, I had this band...

The Music of Fugitive Blonde

photo by Deborah Gray Mitchell

A PRAYER FOR WILMA'S ARRIVAL

2006-10-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

Gust – the whipping wind
wraps lovingly around dieing limbs,

releasing

life from the bondage of
limbo, a pale place between
alive and not quite dead.

Others not ready
to die – die anyway
cracked in two.

The splintered shards stab
at the free air.
The radar rumblings kick

dogs in the rear, lift
spirits out of a deep slumber.
Taken sand swirls in a twister

of wished potential – a
howling black melody skips over
cracks. A door bangs

to remind me the experience is shared.
The banging owns no
rhythm or rhyme.

The sound defies prediction.
Upper air balloons
fail to warn the

very people who set their
sails, while they sail away
to parts unkown conditions

deteriorate quickly.
The people, at this moment
in time, forget to care.

Like me, the people are
hiding in their safe room,
that place of phantom noises.

Fear breaks down the door;
the belching engine blows.
The Western Train Wall wails

and rolls over me.
Twitching, the grey squirrel
pauses briefly

at the unboarded window
to scrunch his teeny nose
as he scurries by for shelter.

To know what he knows
in his parallel world,
that would be something to know.

The Anima is a-walking
on a walk about,
cleaning house as she goes.

My sister calls to check.
“You’re alright?”
I think no - and say yes.

I’m not alright – but
I’m not all wrong either.
Two worriers fix naught.

And so I pray –
Once upon a time the wind stops.
The banging ends.

Amen.

© October 24, 2005

LIZARD

2006-09-30T21:39:00.000-07:00

The Emperor forgot to wear his clothes.
Constituents fell into clouds of Fools
from steaming golden leeks cooked in the pot
burned black, when the water boiled off sticky
temple tangled sentences with empty
words, while all the interns kissed the Lizard

of crossly Knights. Monkey shouted, “Lizard
get some air, and our leader back in cloth!”
Monkey gave up yelling at the empty
headed lights, floating up the Yangtze. Fools
don’t sense danger when their brains are sticky
cells of grey glop. They smoke a lot of pot,

and anyway the garden’s gone to pot.
Rabbits chewed the carrots and Lizard
Back-o-gammoned while the imps drove sticky
wagons on a search for royal clothing.
In looking high and looking low, the Fools
forgot, and sure enough the gas was empty.

The naked monarch screamed, “Find me empty
space! I need to piss rum, my, where’s my pot?”
Rum Man blamed the Monkey, who blamed the Fools
who always blame Rabbits hounding Lizard
smokin' Cajun “Ah – EEE”- wearing silk clothes
from Barneys on Madison. He bought stick

dolls on three inch stilettos, who foolishly
thought they deserved a Hampton House of sticks
and bones - legends from the mist all Lizards
believe. Until the telling time empties
all trash, all waste into the sacred pots,
the Monkey wants the Emperor in clothes

now, before the Fools run off and empty
all the golden pots of sticky treasure
into pockets of Lizard who wears clothes.

Lizards

Conrad Reeder
Copyright 2006
© All Rights Reserved

SMOKING AREA

2006-09-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

Have some fun. Paint this picture on the ceiling of a smoking area.

EXCERPTS FROM A MEE-MOIR OF MADRID

2006-08-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

Roy Lichtenstein's Brushstroke at Reina Sofia in Madrid

Madrid was beautiful on my walk home from the University Of New Orleans's opening night fiesta at Plaza Mayor last month, an event for students studying abroad, and in my case, working on my MFA residency in playwriting. Shiny marble statues adorn granite buildings with massive doors of wood or steel and line promenades that periodically give way to plazas centered around grand lit-up fountains honoring gods like Neptune, Cibeles, and (guffaw) Christopher Columbus? I was born in Columbus, Ohio. Not a name I particularly like to honor these days. The brainwashing about the ‘discovery’ of the New World was excised from my brain years ago, but Cristobal Colon is still a hero in Spain.

Life is good. ¡Pero, Madrid es muy caliente! Everyone's got to have a fan!

Literature ruled the day, especially my re-visit of Hemingway for the Expatriate Class taught by Dr. Nancy Dixon.

Most of my life I've had no use for Hemingway, other than a required High School assignment. His bruhaha and machismo made me puke. I gave up on him years ago, after I read the story about how he liked to shoot terns for fun. I couldn’t divorce my opinion of the man from his writings, no matter how special...or handsome.

After reading A Moveable Feast, I found myself laughing out loud. The ‘pussy’ stuff about Gertrude Stein is a riot, but then he describes her.

She got to look like a Roman emperor and that was fine if you liked your women to look like Roman emperors. (119)

Stein's chastising Hemingway for reading Huxley hilarious;

Huxley is a dead man. Why do you want to read a dead man? Can’t you see he is dead?

Hemingway busted Stein for saying the current generation (1920) was "lost." Hemingway goes on.

All generations were lost by something, and always had been, and always would be.(30)

I agree. My generation is certainly no exception. Look at the "lost" leadership that rose to power from my crew. Pathetic. The 70s did seem a little fuzzy in terms of definiton. That 70’s Show isn't far from the truth - just screwin’ around, getting laid or trying to get laid – both parents still in the house, and the dad "seems" to be the boss. Glad all that war stuff is over. Time to party! There’s a token foreigner hanging around, and he’s gay, so that only takes one actor.

Hemingway is a dick to wag on F. Scott Fitzgerald and others, but then he says things like this.

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it up by finding something better. (62)

The thrift of his writing was a phenomena in his time. After reading A Movable Feast, I let my indifference go. I love his writing, at least in this book, and honor the moments of perfection in an imperfect man. Once I realized that Hemingway paved the way for some of my heroes like (early) Henry Miller and then later Hunter Thompson, his legacy made sense. His line about "transplanting yourself" (5) rings true - as I write about things back home...

The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's book about Europeans grousing around the bull run and fight in Pamplona, was a painless read, but pain is all a bull gets in a bull fight - disgusting event disguised as art. I suppose when the animal groans it means he's happy?!

Feint of hearts - close your eyes :(
Yuck!!!

And then, there's the other art in Madrid. I paid my homage to Guernica...

It was something I needed to do by myself. When I moved to NY in the 70s, I spent many hours at MoMA (in total) staring at this. This exhibit at Reina Sofia has no benches, so I didn’t stay all that long, but there was the pitiful horse, the pitiful women, and the stodgy bull still lording over all. My eye seemed to gravitate to the female holding a lamp, zooming in from above to shine a light on the horror for the world to see - for a world to care is another matter.

In the 70s when I first looked at this painting I had no clue about the Spanish Civil War, other than it being the cause celeb for writers and actors. Errol Flynn comes to mind, as well as Hemingway et al. For me, the suffering was (and still is) a global malady, a malady that still tears at my heart. Picasso nailed it with this work.

And speaking of Goddesses…

The day I arrived in Madrid I was surrounded by a huge Gay Pride Parade. The streets everywhere around my apartamento were blocked off. My place was near the district of Chueca, a sort of West Village gay community. I have since explored the area, and love the little shops, and cobblestone streets. At one edge of this community is the huge statue/fountain of Cibeles, the Greek Goddess of fertility. Her priests in Rome were trans-gendered males. This Goddess is the one Waite used for the Strength Card in his Tarot. I have certainly relied heavily on the strength of Cibele over the years. I’ll end this chapter of my mee-moir with a picture of the Goddess watering her lions.
Hey, Madrid is one HOT city!

PARIS REVISITED

2006-05-31T19:54:00.000-07:00

Envolée lyrique
La Forêt des Mânes
Reserve Naturelle
Je suis vide
Je suis plein
Je suis plus qu'ici!

LA FORÊT DES MÂNES

"The Forest of the Manes thus symbolizes the way of the exile; volunteer or not, of transplantation, and at the same time as it celebrates a multitude of possibilities it acts like that of a projection, rather than a return to the origins - it is a questioning on the act of becoming to being. "

JE T'AIME RUE L'ODEON

2006-05-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

BOOKSTORES
and wearing Hollywood designer J. Gerard posh with

Cimcie Chic

SUMMIT PROTEST

THEATRES

...escargot, truffles, crepes, croissants, cobblestone streets, ghostly cathedrals, flagons of wine, memories of my youth, the fragrance of today...

AND of course, life would not be complete without Roger being Roger. Here he is doing something obscene to a nose in the La Fontaine des Medicis located in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Viva la France!!!

THANKS TO YOU JOHN DENVER

2006-03-30T21:24:00.000-08:00

AND THANKS TO YOU TOO ROGER NICHOLS

photo by Tom Crum

STEVE MATTY

2005-10-11T02:32:00.000-07:00

"Last night's moon was tremendous, casting veiny limb shadows on fresh snows. Eerie. A spider web of images projected on untouched canvas. Sweet sleep happened. Cozy as the brew of nectared gods. Barely had time for a dream that night. Didn't mind at all. Fermented, cemented." River boy (©sjm)

Steve Matty is dead. Writing those words sends a chill up my spine. His birth name has some 'ski' on the end of it, but he was always Matty.

I sit here dumb, and wonder what's to be done. Matty was one of those lone wolf types with arms in constant motion. His 'from the hip' journals are legendary among friends, of which I feel honored to have been for twenty-five eventful years. How do I replace someone who reminded me of who I really am? Impossible.

Jim Harrison (one of Matty's favorites) describes him to a T. "I'm a poet and we tend to err on the side that life is more than it appears rather than less."

(Excerpt from For The Life Of Me, I Just Can't Make Her Fart)

...I lived off the 101 between Laurel & Coldwater on Moorpark. Vitellos (where Blake’s wife was murdered) was a great place for clams and linguini. Sometimes me and some boys would have some tables full of pizza there, although, Mary's down on Lankershim served up a good pie. It wasn’t far from Beverly Garland’s Ho-Jo where us music types would bunk up on many occasions.

But I liked the Sportman’s Lodge much better. Not better than the Westwood Marquis where Jim Harrison and I slept and drank, unbeknownst to the other. They had a good pool there tucked away in the foliage out back with chaise-side phones…where Dustin Hoffman ranted in a tirade to his agent one afternoon and all participants gave the little talented squirt a standing ovation. He bought a poolside round for all clappers. If I’d been thinking more clearly I would’ve insisted that we hoisted glass in toast to say, “…here’s to you Mrs. Robinson…” But I forgot. It would’ve been a decent chorus.

I enjoyed staying in Neil Diamond’s guest house just down the street from the Playboy Mansion (never been there) in Holmby Hills a couple blocks off Sunset. I may have been the only pick-up truck driver in LA then, certainly in that neighborhood. Cops pulled me over for a swerve on the Strip once, but let me go when I said I was bunkin’ at Neil’s. Name dropper.

We’d smoke fat honkin' joints by his pool and talk about French poets a lot, then ring up Dylan to check and see if we were on the right track. Bob would just say, “Quit askin me stuff like that. And, do you guys know anything about peacocks???” Why Bob?? Is NBC buggin’ you?? He’d laugh at that one. But later on when he found out that Hunter had a brood of birds, he sheepishly asked, “He doesn’t let em in the house, does he??” Which meant, Bob did. tee hee...

Everyone should know a pal like Glen d Hardin: The President of the Pacific. Barney and I named him that along with his den called the Shipwreck Lounge….lots of stuff happened there on the corner of Ethel & Sara. Gram Parsons hung there often. Wish I could’ve known him, but then he had to die for some reason known only to him. Phil Kaufman stole the body and burned it in a pyre in the Joshua Tree desert, it was a fulfilled request of Gram’s, I guess. All charges were dropped.

Phil later owned Douglas Corner in Nashville, a hang. Funny how the connections keep connecting the dots. Gary Vincent and the Swamp Honkies played good music there. That goofball Vincent sometimes played in pajamas. We’d go fishing out to JI’s driving in his pink Porsche. Nice visual... ©sjm

Matty loved to bate people and watch em squirm. Here is one of mine.
{ Tues Jun 28, 2005 3:20 PM ...they never let me testify in your DUI case. I was ready. Had my rap ready. love, steven - (my reply) Wed Jun 29, 2005 12:19 PM - Not guilty!!!! Video doesn't lie! That black cop's head was spinning 'round. That happened when Lightning 100 was playing my track, I'm Blonde, He's Black. He told the judge I was drunk, mumbling somthin’ about 'karma.' The better word would have been IRONIC. I had bruises on my wrists from the handcuffs. That was actually the watershed event that ended my solo career. Sheesh, I didn't want anybody else raising my 2 beautiful girls.
F**k it, it's all a dream anyway. C }

Anyway, you get the idea, lots of history, good times and bad. In light of recent events I think his thoughts on the great beyond are appropriate.

(excerpt from River Mix)
...I’ve been spewed on recently about…rapture. None of my beeswax, choose yer own gods and leave me alone about that stuff. Figure out your predestination and then think that the god who loves you will destroy you. Go ahead. I can’t subscribe to Armageddon. I’ve got bigger things on my mind. Ain’t that right, Jesus?? ©sjm

For some reason known only to him,(to steal his phrase) Matty wrecked his truck coming down the road from his cabin in Wisconsin on the Peshtigo River, dieing instantly. In the absence of toxicity the general consensus is heart attack, based on recent complaints about his arm being numb. In human years he was 54, but Matty said he was really 14. He never told me why he settled on 14, but I can guess. I do know this means I'll spend the rest of my life missing him.

Don't know how to end this, so I'll hand it over to Matty.
"Peaceful sleep within the eyes of Great Spirit is insisted. I hope so...and then to revisit as a peregrine falcon in a steep high dive towards a spinning Earth." (excerpt from Red Topped Maples ©sjm)

Steve Matty - Poet

A HURRICANE CALLED FETUS

2005-09-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

Things change, but yet they don't. A Christian group called Columbia Christians For Life sent out the alert. God punished New Orleans with a killer fetus seeking revenge for the abortion clinics in the area. Albeit laughable, yet an eerie reminder of just how far we've not come in nearly 300 years.

No less strange is the response to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 that crumbled the town and killed a 100,000 souls. The nutty religous leaders at that time decided "that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible preventive of earthquakes." (Candide-Voltaire) The ensuing battle of philosophic differences fueled events that sparked revolutions all over the place; the French and American being two. Nature certainly does have a way of stirring things up in the ant hill.

(Note: Some claim roaming priests burning heretics after the Lisbon quake is an urban myth. The argument being this 'wild' rumor cannot be substantiated. While this may be true, the karmic fallout from the substantiated history of abuse from the hands of religious or political zealots will not be denied; karmic meaning violence begets violence. War begets war. Voltaire seized the moment so to speak, while he had everyone's attention.)
Refute this!
Catholic Torture - Inquisition
Puritan Torture - Mary Dyer
Plenty of pain to go around. Torture

And for those who view abortion as a violent act I ask, "Why is a collection of cells with the potential for life (regardless of the mother's ability to care for that life) more important than the 43 MILLION CHILDREN ALIVE who suffer daily in abject poverty, 11 MILLION of which die each year before the age of five.
Torturing Children

People who don't support birth control and safe abortion are part of the problem. Shame!

New Stratagem

2005-09-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

It's a back-up plan!

Hey You

2005-09-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

Hey you,
I send you kisses.
I send you my mouth –
full of a fine dry Italian wine.
The oak perfume lingers
around our lips touching,
while tongues search
soft insides of petals and stems.
I send you the heavy air from my lungs,
full of bright red blood,
as I write dull black lines
on a scrap of tree that will never
be seen by your epic eyes.
The pregnant air hangs all around with our dreams,
and our potent idea of two people locked arm in arm:
in that moment – safe,
in that moment – alive.
Hey you, I send you kisses,
and a piece of tile washed back to me
from the windswept sea. This piece
of clay, only less than the life we knew,
now holds my hand, and on an occasion such as this,
I almost hear the buried sound of you saying,
‘Hey you, there you are…’

On The Beach ©2005

Urban Guerilla Man

2005-09-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

Concealing, Appealing
Stalking you.
Guerilla Man
Comanding, Expanding
Death defying
Guerilla Man
He could be standin' on your doorstep
On a date with your little girl
He may take her to the movie
Or a trip around the world

Urban Guerilla Man
Bite and Run
Urban Guerilla Man
Punish One
Urban Guerilla Man
Guerilla Man

He's charming, Disarming
Watch him
Guerilla Man
Seduce you, reduce you
To ashes
Guerilla Man
Napolm Rockets Mortars in his basement
Got an uzie in his briefcase too.
World movement against the Zombies
His next contact might be you.

Iran Oman Malta Chile Bolivia New Identity Bank Account in Switzerland

Urban Guerilla Man
K-G-B
Urban Guerilla Man
S-I-D
Urban Guerilla Man
Guerilla Man

C. S. Reeder ©1982

HELP! I NEED LAURA BUSH'S DRUGS!!!

2005-09-09T10:32:00.000-07:00

Can anybody tell me what she's on?
I need them.

SMIRKING CHIMP

2005-09-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

That's it. No more Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Niceguy-gal. Sheesh, this gender correctness messes with the meter.

SMIRKING CHIMP

Keith sez...

2005-09-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

One can hope people will give a listen to Keith Olbermann

I BELIEVE

2005-09-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

I BELIEVE in beauty
The fragrance of a flower
The color of a blue bird’s wing
I believe in music
The drum beating a rhythm
To the melody of voice and string
I believe in things that I touch and feel
I know I’ve been here before
And as long as the stars shine above me
Someday I’ll walk back through this door
I Believe

Kingdoms come and go
And in the name of God
Soldiers fight and die in war.
But wars are never won
And if the truth be known,
Love’s the only thing worth living for.
I believe that heaven is in the here and now
Not somewhere distant and far
No need to wait for another life to find it
I feel it right here in my heart
I Believe
I Believe
(In what I feel for you)
I Believe
VENUS A LOVE STORY

Reeder/Wolfe
©2004

Where's Bill?

2005-09-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

And I thought my life was in a piss pot.
Will you marry me Bill?
I love you so and always will.
Cut the crap, idiot.
Talking to myself,
I wallow in a syzygy of self-loathing –
my inability to do things,
like fix the muffler on my car
or the hole in my roof
or save a drowning city.
Manmade malfeasance
trapped thousands of people
in Bill’s town when the water rose
suffocating my Jazzy Town, the whole world’s
Fatty Tuesday Town.
It’s hap’nin’ on the TV, death.
It’s hap’nin’ on the street, stench.
Is Bill a refugee or an evacuee
or just fucked-up?
I’m on your side, Bill,
when you are losin’.
I’d never scheme or lie, Bill,
there’s been no foolin’.
Wait! I found his picture
on the Internet,
a non-wedding event.
“Committed to a perpetually unmarried life.”
Bill’s words. We’ve never met,
but Bill and his non-wife look happy, in love.
Feeling voyeuristic,
I lurk around Bill’s party
on display to anyone with a search engine.
Tho’ uninvited I yell,
“Get all your stuff and get out!
The flood’s comin’!”
Pixel faces smile back mute.
My link to Bill sank
into a pestilential superfund swamp.
Bill must have got out before
THE LEVEES IN NEW ORLEANS BROKE.
Poor people diein’ – nothin’ new there.
Poor animals diein’ – nothin’ new there.
No way would I abandon my dog Winnie,
well, not on purpose.
Sure, Winnie runs off
every time the front door is open,
but that’s no reason to desert her.
My dumb dog doesn’t deserve to
drown in filth or die of thirst.
No one I know'd have anyone in their life,
if loyalty's based on bein' sharp 24-7.
Kisses and love won't carry me.
Come on and marry me Bill!
Not even six feet of shit can silence
a song or bury a city called New Orleans.
Seriously,
where the hell is Bill?

C. S. Reeder ©2005

The Problems of Eyesight

2005-09-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

The eyes
deceive me.
I see color
water, flow’rs…
sunlight.

The mind
in a dank
mausoleum
of broken bodies
shatters.

My chest
Full of bitter
No in-sight
A picture perfect
Denied!

(On The Beach ©1978)

Third World

2005-09-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

Why are you calling this the Third World?
I only know that it is my world.
Maybe someday it can be our world.
Can you imagine one world, one world yeah!
(John Denver)

This misconception that all humans are somehow not inter-related got started how?

John Denver, my friend, was a great humanitarian. He hit the nail on the head. We are all from the same tribe. All humans on this planet came from one group of individuals out of Africa. Surprise! Surprise! We're all cousins on this planet - all of us. Some I'd rather not claim, but, I'm stuck with it.

A study on human migration adds weight to a belief that John and I shared 25 years ago. Some enlightened beings have known it all along; the interconnectedness of all humans. John (and I) extended that list to ALL living things, plant, animal, and otherwise. Some are surprised to learn we didn't meet in a recording studio, but in a 'tent' in Santa Monica where this Guru was speaking. We both sought answers and found that within each of us dwells an in-sight or our Spirit. John found it, and I continue to explore, not some whacked-out mind-melt, but the realization that we are all from the same source. We are each other.

Before people's eyes glaze over the word 'Guru,' and dismiss everything else I'm saying, the word Guru simply means Teacher. This Guru flipped on a switch and opened up a channel for me and others like John, that's all. It was the switch-on I'd been yearning for my entire life. Some people experience this in-sight in an epiphany. Others find it in prayer. John connected to Spirit in many ways: Indian sweat lodges, music, words, nature... This is not some gobblygook New Age jargon. At least not in the way one might think. There is a method to this line of thinking.

The point is things didn't add up. Why was there so much human suffering on such a beautiful planet? For me (and John) the problem was the story, or rather the lie we were told. This is the lie about the evil other. Religion thrives on evil. Without evil there would be no need for the 'salvation' many of the world religions are selling. The dirty BIG secret is - we are not lost, forever doomed to hell if certain rules are not followed. We are here to enjoy this life and connect with what I chose to call spirit. We are here to connect, and enjoy each other. If the word 'spirit' is too woo-woo for you, then call it candy or styrofoam or whatever.

The only evil on this planet is what humans have created for themselves, and perpetuated on others. Greed begets poverty, poverty begets ignorance, ignorance begets hate… Oh I know my begets. I've researched and relished, not only the Christian Bible, but practically the creed of every religion on the planet. I might have missed something in Siberia, or some oral belief not yet written down, but the point is when a discerning eye compares all religions there are more similarities than differences.

Don't take my word for it. Others have already done the research. Joseph Campbell says it best. < It's main result for me has been the confirmation of a thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology, but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony, with its themes announced, developed, amplified and turned about, distorted, reasserted, and today, in a grand fortissimo of all sections sounding together, irrestibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge. (The Masks of God) >

Wow, what a beautiful thought - 'advancing to some kind of mighty climax.' Sign me up! Try imaging the entire human race as your family. Think it into reality. Breathe it into hardcore acts of kindness.

Mother Nature didn't allow a levee system to fail and engulf a million people in New Orleans. Mother Nature doesn't force us to kill each other for oil, money, TV's, or hate. Turn the word evil around and what do you see...LIVE. Take the word evil out of your vocabulary, and you will only feel love. Thank God and the Goddess for all the rescuers out there.

(Thompson DMN)

Unfortunately, the Third World exists in ALL of the countries on our planet. Cousins, we created this Third World. Let's un-create it.

I Believe

Day 6

2005-09-03T10:55:00.000-07:00

Yay, troops, water and food arrived. Finally. The CNN pool photographer is throwing bottled water from the helicopter to people stranded in homes surrounded by chest-high brown, putrid water. Guys in hazmet suits are cruising up and down the streets of New Orleans on jet skiis. Pontoon boats follow behind to pick up any people they find. Surreal… I'm not sure it's a good idea to throw bottles into that scuzzy water. If people drink water from bottles picked out of contaminated water won't they die from dysentery? How do they get the water in their mouths without touching the plastic that touched the contaminated water? I guess, if you're dieing of thirst...

Stranded people are getting out of New Orleans. Only a crazy street person, thug, or blogging geek holed up on the 10th floor of a highrise building with his 'model' girlfriend would stay in that toxic soup on purpose. The old, infirm, and helpless are just stuck.

The budget for the money for the levees dried up. In 1965 after Hurricane Betsy Congress authorized the Hurricane Protection/New Orleans Levee Plan, which was to be a 10 year project, but ended up being a 30-year project that was never entirely finished. Mike Parker, head of the Army Corps of Engineers three years ago, was forced to resign by the Bush Administration over his opposition to budget cuts, one of which dealt with the levees. The interview is on CNN with Aaron Brown.

My favorite quote from that interview: "I don't think there are 10 people in Washington that know what's in the budget and how it's being spent." (Aaron Brown)

What protection do we American taxpayers get for $38 Billion?

New Orleans Sunk

2005-09-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

Friday - September 2, 2005

Prayer - I do it.
Money - I donate it.

The suffering goes on…
People dieing at the convention center -
Patients need to be evacuated IMMEDIATELY
Bodies floating in the water: This is somebody's mother, father, sister, brother,
grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, son, daughter -
The smell gags.
UNO campus - 3,000 people waded there
When the water rose…
Through toxic sludge from the neighboring houses
And hundreds to the Vietnamese Church -
Thousands huddle in pockets of survival all over the city
Surrounded, trapped by an Urban Cesspool.
THE LEVEES BROKE.
Mall burned to the ground -
Fires all over town,
A chained dog floats lifeless.
Kittens, caged birds, fish in tanks -
All dead.
Pictures on a screen;
Two dimensional,
Yet,
I know that house,
I know that building,
I know that town.
I lived the Andrew aftermath,
And other Hurricanes,
Earthquakes…
I know
Pictures and words cannot tell the story,
Cannot smell the filth, the horror, the fear -
The DESPAIR.
The Big Easy is wretched.
Gunfire in garages…
Families separated.
Thousands trapped in their attics and upper floors.
A woman cries on a cell phone, "My elderly mother was left at the house."

Maybe this disaster could have been prevented by propping up the levees, maybe not. Now we'll never know.

Can the city ever be safe? This artcle from Salon.

< Is it inevitable that this will happen again?
Yep. You could sit down right now and say we're going to design a new levee system, which will be stronger and more powerful. But you're designing it based on the conditions for today. But all the conditions are changing. The climate is changing. The ocean circulation patterns are changing. The city is subsiding at about 3 feet a century, and if sea level is rising at about 3 feet a century, that's 6 feet. You tell me what the long-term prospects are.

At the same time, the geologist in me says you just have to live with natural disasters and you can't engineer your way out of them. Even so, we sure as hell need to take another look at how we can evacuate people in and out of New Orleans when we know a hurricane is coming. (quote of UC Geologist Jeffery Mount – “Why New Orleans is Sunk” Article - Salon.com by Katharine Mieszkowski)>

I can't imagine how the recovery could have been much faster, given that the area devasted in the gulf region is BIGGER than England. But why couldn't water and food have been dropped at locations around town? Also, the National Guard was where? If there was no shortage of troops because of the war in Iraq, then where were they for 5 days?

New Orleans Mayor Nagin on the radio - "No more goddamn press conferences. Get your ass down here!" Presumably to the US President whose ass did show up later in the day to 'look' at the deluge. The President's PR staff missed a photo-op by not putting some water and food in his hand to offer the pitifuls more than a 'hug.' Really, sometimes his handlers bungle it.

Our illiterate leader, or rather current occupant of the White House, and a product of the best education money can buy, offers these words of advice, "Don't buy gas if you don't need it."

I heartily agree. "Don't buy gas. Don't buy cars." The irony: people in poverty don't have cars or the means to leave town, but not because of consumer revolt. Cars cost money. Money these people don't have, or the education to get a job to pay for one.

I still don't know the fate of my professors at UNO. My instinct tells me they're alive anyway. I know Kay Murphy evacuated. James Winter? Bill Lavender

The fate of my much-anticipated collaboration with the UNO community is at this moment a dangling participle, sort of...
Of course, people in the throes of basic survival are not concerned with these mundane matters. I feel guilty as I sit comfortable in my air-conditioned, dry (for now) house built in a drained swamp in Florida. I find myself morbidly glued to the TV - immobilized by events. Vaguely, I am becoming aware of a rising commitment to participate in the resurrection of University of New Orleans. THAT will be something to party about at Mardi Gras.

ODE NEW ORLEANS

2005-09-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

OK, I never supported going to war in Iraq…NEVER. Yet even with proof that this war was totally unnecessary, people are still blind to the elephant in the room. Greed. I have a birthright to back my opinion. This birthright is planted firmly in the soil of this country called the United States of America. My ancestors of Mayflower/Puritan/Quaker extraction bred and bred and bred for thirteen generations to produce me here. I am a Patriotic American.

Of course, while grateful for my life, my country, and my resilient genepool, the facts are this: my kind overran an entire race of people that occupied this ‘America’ for a period of at least 10,000 years before my Grandpappies sailed across the Atlantic in the 17th Century to carve out their Zion in the new land of promise. I guess squatter’s rights didn’t apply to the natives they met.

My cousins are a mix of warring/peace types, but anyone with a brain knows – WAR BREEDS WAR and WAR IS BIG BUSINESS.

This is a segue to my point. I hold the 'pass-the-buck' Bush administration more than partially responsible for wasting my nation's precious resources; people, funds, our elements, and for ruining whatever goodwill feelings my nation of many nations enjoyed throughout the world by invading another country for all the wrong reasons. One end result being, there is an even bigger target on my ass when I travel around the globe.

And now we face this preventable, apopolyptic flood in one of my favorite cities - New Orleans. As a graduate student at the University of New Orleans, my heart is broken for my school, and for the monumental loss of life and property. The power of raw Nature is humbling and unpredictable, but how can anyone with a conscience look at submerged New Orleans and not be ANGRY!

- Thursday, September 01, 2005
This morning, about 7:05 am Eastern time, George Bush was interviewed by Diane Sawyers on ABC's Good Morning America.

This is what he said: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

By Will Bunch August 31, 2005
(Click the above link to see the entire article)

<…When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the LEVEES SURROUNDING NEW ORLEANS CONTINUED TO SUBSIDE.

Yet after 2003, the flow of FEDERAL DOLLARS TOWARD SELA DROPPED to a trickle. The CORPS never tried to hide the fact that the SPENDING PRESSURES OF THE WAR IN IRAQ, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as FEDERAL TAX CUTS -- WAS THE REASON FOR THE STRAIN. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune (Bill Walsh) from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.>

I can't do anything about what my ancestors did or didn't do, but I can shed light on the current tragedy. My hope is that we learn from our mistakes and move forward. Eliminating greed should be a top priority for every human. To create our heaven here on earth, we must focus on the inner light we all share… I Believe

Not preventing the flood in New Orleans, and conducting war in Iraq is a tragedy for ALL Americans - dead or alive.

Martin AP

On The Beach by C. Reeder

2005-06-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

OnTheBeach
Originally uploaded by gopita.

Grief, Laughter, Hypocrisy, Love, Krishna, War, Songwriting, Illumination, Angst, Dickinson, Oslo, Chaplin, Doors, Sensuality, Revelation, Swami, Venus, Comedy, Stevens, Honor, Parents, Respect, Semantics, Lips, Steely, Duh, Thievery, Nietzsche, Prophet, Hands, Flowers, Trees, Animals, John Denver, Children, Jesus, ABC's, Gaia, Mary, Pegasus, Inuit, Pope-Worm...and more in "On The Beach"
Conrad Reeder

What People Are Saying...

2005-06-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

"A must read for anyone who cares about anything."
Roger S. Nichols

Roger Nichols

Time

2005-06-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

"There is still time...brother." So says the Preacher from On The Beach, trying to save those last few souls before the radiation sends them into oblivion or heaven or hell or whatever. (Kramer/Shute)
I'm watching the last 20 minutes of the 1959 movie on Showtime while channel surfing. (Cue creepy twilight-zone music). Synchronicity - Anthony Perkins is so young, so much to live for…sigh.
I've been told that at the time most theatre goers had goosebumps at the sight of human-less cities.
On a lighter note, the world didn't end today, did it?
My Dog...

...who is sprawled out next to me on the couch and dreaming a doggie-running-after-the squirrel dream, just let out a lethal fart. Time to seek an antidote or DIE!!!!!

On The Beach Preface

2005-06-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I was five when Stanley Kramer's movie 'On The Beach' (1959), based on the best-selling novel by Nevil Shute, was released, and by the time I saw it twenty years later, my star-wars brain considered it a bit slow, slightly obtuse. The stark black and white footage registered quaint.

I admired Gregory Peck and sympathized with Ava Gardner's character wanting to experience sensual love at least once before she died, but the annihilation of the human race from nuclear war, as seen through the eyes of the soon-to-be-dead survivors clinging to the Australian coast, didn't measure up to the fast paced disasters of real life in vivid color on my daily screen. Much later I read that Linus Pauling (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954) was quoted as saying 'It may be some years from now we can look back and say On The Beach is the movie that saved the world.' (Pauline Kael Review) Really? Granted, it's nearly fifty years later and I'm still alive, but is the world saved? Maybe, but I'm not so sure about the species Homo sapiens.

My cynicism has grown exponentially over the years. After all, I grew up with this ghastly scenario of radiation death looming over my head. Intellectually, I know it well. If our bodies aren't fried in the first few seconds after the bomb explodes, we'll rot from the radiation clouds that will blanket the Earth. The citizenry of Ohio tried to prepare. In Elementary school we practiced filing into the hallway to put our heads under our arms, as if that would save us from the poisoned air. In my circle of adults prayer was invoked…daily.

Luckily, my father and, in particular, my mother's gift for light-heartedness shielded me from doomsday overkill. In the late 60s - early 70s, the all encompassing fear of nuclear annihilation or hell in the afterlife was too much for a sensitive soul such as myself, so I, like most of my generation, partied heartily. Well, what little I could get away with. My father, a career detective, was good at his job, and my whereabouts were high on his check list.

My parents felt their religion was the only option out of this morass of human-spawned misery, and I instinctively felt, then and now, that patriarchal religions are in part fanning the nuclear fire. My strange beliefs did not always sit well with my father, (my mother bowed out of any discussion bordering an argument), but in the end our love for each other was all that mattered, and we all lived long enough for me to figure that out.

After my daughter was born, I experienced my own peculiar 'Revelation' - don't argue about religion. As a result, my folks and I had good times again, like when I was little. 1957

My husband, the freethinker, suspects we are an experiment for some intergalactic super race. Well, why not?ET

Sometimes I feel like Jacob in the Old Testament. After wrestling all night with his manly Angel he said, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” (Genesis 32:30 KJV) After my own 'all night of wrestling' with manly creeds, I too, have seen the face of a God, and of a Goddess. I am that I, and thereby 'saved' via the wonder of me, a being of flesh, blood, and consciousness, just like you, the person reading this.

As a result of much introspection, I no longer look for all my answers in the Judaic-Christian Bible, a book compiled, and edited by a committee of men with personal and political agendas. In fact, I no longer look for all my answers in any book, choosing instead to be open and receptive to the miracle of life before my very eyes. A cursory read of the history surrounding the birth of many 'sacred texts' is a testimony to prejudices that seem inherently human, not divine.

One obvious prejudice is the lowered status of women in religion, which is reflected in our history, art, and in society, as a whole. Are women marginalized because of religion, or is the religion constructed to reflect the human experience? After all, believers of both sex claim the Judaic-Christian Bible is his-tory. Eve did a bad, bad thing, according to these people. History created, or history recorded? 'Putting a woman in her place' is not solely a religious theme, and therein may be clues to the real problem; human nature, the male - female thing.

Unfortunately, while we're waiting for the experts to figure out the 'why,' the rest of us, male and female, continue to be skewered by the visceral policies of unbalanced patriarchal systems worldwide.

Yes, I'm a cynic, and no one has lauded me for 'saving' the world, yet, but I am definitely a player in the game of life. I keep my game pieces at hand, ready to play. My game of words started many years ago when my skin pricked as I read the poetry of Williams, Dickinson, Whitman, Frost, Yeats, Pasternak, Rimbaud, Sappho, Solomon, Ginsberg, Neruda, Bishop, Gibran, and many more. Like Eliphaz the Temanite, “A spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up.” (Job 4:15 KJV) A. E. Houseman described the seat of this sensation as located in “the pit of the stomach.” (A.E. Housman, The Name and Nature of Poetry - London: Cambridge University Press; and New York: The Macmillan Co., 1933) p. 46) I've been following my gut ever since.

As I write this, nuclear war is still a threat on this planet, and violence wages all around. Somehow (or by the grace of Deity) I've managed to stay in the game long enough to experience a wide range of human emotion. Death, love lost - it all hurts, and can paralyze, but if we open our hearts to each other, and embrace this breathtakingly beautiful planet, a blissful balance can be reached.

Love can come in all shapes, colors, and sizes, even species. My dogs are definitely sensitive to my feelings. When I come home they make a beeline through the doggie door to the backyard, after foraging through the garbage bin that I sometimes forget to empty before I leave the house. I'm sure it's to avoid a nasty encounter that would spike my blood pressure. A sense of humor doesn't hurt either.

In closing, this humble collection of poems and short stories is a sample of my thoughts for friends, new and old, and an offering to those I have loved, and continue to love. Regardless of belief, we share our place in the sun, and it is my sincere desire that we all survive… 'On The Beach.'

Sincerely,

Conrad Reeder
Juno Beach, FL
2005