Monthly Archives: March 2011

Chuquicamata

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He has always existed as myth for me–this man who started a lineage of people who made lives of constant relocation. But this morning, I got to meet him via the VHS tape (transferred to DVD) interview recorded in 1981 when he was 90 years old, sitting in a black suit and tie with spectacles teetering on his nose. Ovid Hundley, my great-grandfather, started his career by high-tailing it to Mexico from Texas, where he sold his cornet, a type of trumpet, to keep from “starving to death” until he got a job in the cyanide mine. Eventually, after passing through Colorado Springs and then Chloride, Arizona, he moved to Chuquicamata, Chile to work at what at the time was the the world’s largest open pit copper mine. He lived in South America for 35 years. But, of Chuquicamata he said:

“She [his wife] liked it alright. She was a good sport. I don’t think anyone likes it there. I had warned her that it was a terrible place. Perhaps I overwarned her. She never complained. She always told me she liked it there.”

He sounded unconvinced by his own statement.

“I got $250 a month to start, but they had to pay that to get a white man to get down there to such a horrible place. So, the consequence was, that it was a place that gave me a start for making some money. When I left there, I figured I had had enough. Most of my financial troubles were over then.”

As I watched him speak, I wanted to crawl through my computer and ask some penetrating questions to this man whose blood is somewhere in me. To begin with, “Why such a horrible place?” I can guess. Unsatisfied tired migrant workers living in shitty conditions and separated from their families. Prostitution. Fights. Murders. Nothing but dust. A gaping wound in the earth.

Ovid looked like a figure from the ancient past. He used words to describe people that were common to him but that horrify the 21st century, politically correct woman that is all of me. That said, a tenderness surfaced when talking of his mother. She died when he was age 7 and then arrived a step-mother who felt she “had to beat the life out of him. I was glad to get out of there. She was mean. I don’t think she had any love for me.” Then he paused and glanced down, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “A step mother is bad business, … bad bad business.”

I wish the interviewers had lingered there for a bit because, well… because everyone’s got gaping wounds. I would have asked him more about that one and also about the one at Chuquicamata. Mostly, I want a time machine. I want to go back and get him and bring him back to right now, today, Thursday, 5.42 pm, Montana, and see how his thoughts chew on this 2011 world.

The Alley

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I associate alleys with freedom. Texas was my first dose of American living and my brothers and I would take off on our bikes, coasting down our neighbrohood street, zipping down back alleys, finding shortcuts, skidding out, jumping puddles. In the alleys, we could spy on laundry lines, pop into Valerie’s backyard for a swim in her grimy pool, investigate trash cans, coo at cats and navigate a public space that somehow felt private.

What I valued about the alley was its straight-forwardness. No attempt to impress the neighbors, no attempt to attract real estate agents, no attempt to save face, no attempt to hide all the grit.

Some alleys are delicate back ways.

 

 

 

 

What about the alleys of the mind? Just yesterday, I was talking with a friend about the importance of exploring those places we don’t often show people, the places that are vulnerable and honest and full of cracks and texture. They are a repository for learning, just like those physical alleys that grew me up in a way front yards never could have.

What Place Matches Your Beat?

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I know a woman who met an old artist in Italy who said this: People go looking for a place to be until they find the place that resonates with the same vibration that they do.

Of course. But, that’s a lot of pressure, almost as much pressure as finding your one and only true soul mate. I don’t believe in soul mates. There are at least a handful of people on this planet that I could have fallen in deep love with, that I could have made a life with. My husband would say the same thing about himself. That doesn’t discount what we have together. We entered each other’s lives with purpose and, I do believe, a knowing that we were meant to teach one another. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Back to the conundrum of place. Perhaps that red city of Marrakech would have matched my vibration as much as the mountains of Montana do. We go searching. We test places. We narrow it down, if we have that privileged option. We eliminate potentials, like, for example, shopping malls. The first time I stepped into the carpeted and glitzy Galleria Mall in Dallas, Texas (my Welcome-to your-life-in-America moment), I knew that it did not match my vibration; in fact, it deadened it. Some people come to Montana and wither from sheer boredom.

We’ve all got a beat. Places have a beat. We try to match it up.

**Any insight on this? Tell me about the places you’ve found that match your beat.

Utopia, huh?

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Utopia–an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. The word was first used in the book Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More. ORIGIN based on Greek ou ‘not’ + topos ‘place.’

Perfect, huh?

 

Oscar Wilde says: A map of the world without Utopia is not worth glancing at.

I disagree with you, Oscar.

Toni Morrison says: All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.

Okay, getting closer, but still….

Why can’t this place, whatever place you are in right now, be Utopia? I guess that depends on how we define perfect. I wonder if all the mess is some form of perfection. I wonder if that chaos is part of a greater evolution. I like to think so.

Or, Marge Piercy’s classic Woman on the Edge of Time might have another theory.

We all like to imagine something better. That thinking is brilliant, but I suspect there’s some flaw there, some aim at something that is never quite reached as it was imagined, and so… a disappointment. I’ve witnessed myself and other ‘achieve’ sought-after goals (job, partner, weight, house, etc) only to be mildly sedated afterwards, and then quickly onto the next thing.

What? You mean my whole life didn’t transform like I thought it was going to when X or X happened? Yep, that’s what I mean. As a kid, I once had an intense craving for green olives, so intense that I needed one now and I truly believed that everything would suck until I got a green olive. That green olive would make my world perfect. I remember the nagging feeling. I got the green olive and my world didn’t explode into unicorns and dolphins and side-pony tails. My world stayed the same. The olive taste good, but then I moved on.

That’s why I’m not sure a Utopia can exist, unless we somehow access it in that deep pit of calm within.

How To Shed

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This is a stretch for Local Sundays, but I couldn’t not write about it. Look what I found on my afternoon walk today–right beyond the yurt we live in, just lying in the matted down grass at the edge of where snow has melted. I’ve never stumbled upon an elk antler so my reaction was almost as dramatic as the Double Rainbow guy. Except I wasn’t baked.

I know a herd of elk passes through here. Once, at some ungodly hour before dawn, I rubbed my eyes open to see females with their caramel-colored babies only 15 feet from our yurt. The elk have shared our path up the hill, and eroded it more than we ever will. Right now, at the start of spring, they migrate back up into the mountains.

Because the owner of this antler is local to the Gallatin Valley, here’s what he would tell us if I could ask him some questions:

It only took him about 3 to 4 months to grow that antler. He might still have the other one on his head, though he’ll probably shed it in the next day or two. Once his antler drops to the ground, nearby rodents will immediately scarf up the high quality calcium, which means that this one is newly shed. He’ll grow a whole new rack for the next season. Antler size is an indicator of health; this elk sourced the calcium to make his antlers from his own ribs. What many people don’t know is that an antler is bone tissue. Conjure this up… prehistoric elk had racks that measured to almost two meters in size.

This antler reminds me of the importance of shedding the heavy shit we like to lug around. We are good at holding on to things. But, the human body sheds–skin, blood, teeth, eyelashes, fingernails–and regenerates every seven years. So does the human heart, mind, soul. Amazing, right?

Fissures

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When the earthquake in Japan struck, I was hiking up a pink granite mountain in Texas, examining fissures in the rock, delighted by how water collects in those cracks and green things grow. That’s me to the left. Those are the fissures. Recently, a friend spoke to me about tectonic plates as a metaphor in her life. She explained that anytime she tries to shift the deep groove of an old pattern, it feels catastrophic, like earth’s plates crashing against one another, rearranging, and finally settling in a new place.

The earthquake shifted Japan’s coastline by eight feet.

What I think about now are the people displaced by this event, the people who are standing in line to be scanned for radiation, the people whose sense of home or neighborhood has been obliterated, the people who cannot blame a human perpetrator, who cannot spew their anger or sadness or disbelief at anything but the earth. Loss isn’t a new phenomenon. People have been familiar with it since people existed. But that fact alone doesn’t make it any easier to witness, even from distance, even from behind the sterile sheen of an online newspaper.

Koyaanisqatsi

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Koyaanisqatsi, in Hopi language, means “crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.”

Hmmm. Last night, sitting around with my husband’s family, ruminating on the headlines of every newspaper this week, we tossed around the word un-hope. Each one of us had a different feeling about it. I kept coming back to this: lack of hope is a waste of time. Of course, I know that none of us can bow out of reality, nor should we pretend to. But I’d rather not use my breath composing a list of why everything sucks and is doomed. There are enough people doing that already. To me, that list-making act, something so easy to do within the mob-mentality of a group, is a stepping backwards.

I know every generation has said it, felt it, lived it–that life seems to be hurling itself towards a big loud catastrophe. But it’s hard not to read about Japan, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Haiti and our own Unites States without zooming out to take note of what is–on many levels–a global rumbling.

Rumbling not only of environment but of political systems, of social understandings, of everything that “used to be.” I always err on the side that rumblings are good. Despite the pain they initially cause, they awaken us. The rumblings in my own life have led only to positive outcomes. But that’s philosophy, and sometimes philosophy is bullshit.

In the immediacy of it (and I’m not even directly in it, only feeling it from a distance at this point), I don’t know how anyone can get solid footing. In this era of disintegration, I keep wondering: How do we wake up, how do we do it quickly?

Though even that, the desire for quickening, is naive.

#9 Airplane Talk

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I met Cathy on a tiny plane flying from Denver to Helena, Montana.
We were sitting in row 1, our legs pressed up against the bulkhead.
The night sky was black outside.

At first we didn’t talk, but she noticed me reading a big fat book and scribbling notes and asked whether I was a student. Conversation rolled and soon we spoke of when she used to live in Australia as a kid, how the aboriginal people there see the world from above like a bird. They believe in meant-to-be intersections, not in imposing your vision on your life, she explained. She liked that, and also looking for frog holes, a secret source of water that, according to her, anyone living in the Outback knows about.

Cathy grew up military. I grew up international business.
So we both moved about ever 2-3 years.

“It taught me how to be invisible,” she said about relocating.
“Me too,” I laughed.
I wasn’t sure if we had qualified that as a good or bad thing.

This is what our flight would have looked like during the day.

Now she lives in Montana.
She has for 16 years, and she thinks the ranching culture of being rooted is “about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Thing about Helena is that people are even keeled. Nothing about it is dramatic. There’s a lazy river. It’s quiet. That makes people even keeled.”

When the stewardess came by, I ordered a seltzer with lime and Cathy asked for tonic water. She used to “drink” (alcohol, I assumed) on planes but has found that tonic is better over all, especially since, as a nurse, she knows better.

“I love limes,” I told her.

“You know,” she responded, circling back to our discussion about floods and her sister in Mississippi, “when she was up to her neck in water with Katrina, well, she held her dogs up by balancing them on a plank of wood that had floated by. Like that for hours. Now she has an ax in her attic, incase she has to ax her way out of her house for the next flood.”

“I can’t even conceive of that,” I sighed.

“Yeah, I told her she wouldn’t catch me living anywhere where I needed an ax in my attic.”

Our plane touched down gently.
Back to land-locked Montana.
We smiled, shook hands and went on with our lives.

Sabbath

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sabbath |ˈsabəθ|

a day of religious observance and abstinence from work, kept by Jews from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and by most Christians on Sunday.

So many of my generation, at least the people I know, are terrified by religion. It reminds them of dogma that gay people are evil, that women have no place in the world, that intolerance of others is ‘the way’ and that molesting young boys in secret is par for the course. I agree, the whole thing freaks me out too. However, in abandoning those organized religions, I know that many are searching for a replacement, for something that connects us to source. I’m not convinced the once-a-week yoga practice or random self-help book or occasional 10-mile run are going to do it.

I’ve been ruminating on this because I am sitting on a porch in Austin, Texas. It is humid and hot. My best friend is lying on the floor with her 4-month old daughter Sabine. On Sunday, the sabbath, we attended her baptism, and I was made her god-mother. What a privilege, not only that duty, but to spend the entire day doing nothing but celebrating a new life.

In her book “An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith,” Barbara Brown Taylor writes about the practice of saying no. She breaks down the term sabbath, because we all know it’s loaded. She explains that ‘the sabbath’ is simply the practice of saying no to everything that convinces you that you have no time to pause and be with yourself or with your version of divinity. Who of the ‘non-religious’ crew actually takes one full day a week to reflect and be in gratitude. Um, very few of us. Not me, that’s for sure. I work or busy myself right on through the weekends. Why?

Taylor writes:

“The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth once wrote, ‘A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.’ By that definition, I have a hard time conuting many free beings among my acquaintance. I know people who can do five things at once who are incapable of doing nothing. I know people who are able to decide what to do without being able to do less of it. Since I have been one of those people, I know that saying no is a more difficult spiritual practice than tithing, praying on a cold stone floor, or visiting a prisoner on death row–because while all of those worthy activities may involve saying no to something else so that I can do them instead, they still amount to doing more instead of less.”

I am intrigued by the importance of developing sacred space in an otherwise ‘busy’ modern life. People love to tell other people that they are soooo busy. Maybe it makes them feel worthy. Maybe it is encouraged by peers. Maybe we are afraid of the nothingness. Maybe sabbath needs to be reclaimed, folded into the lives of people who might never join a religious community. What would it look like for you?

 

 

#8 Hadi and Abdulrahman

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Abdulhadi and Abdulraman are Saudi men here to study at Montana State University. They grew up together at home and now share an apartment. My friend Mike, their ESL teacher, introduced me to them. I asked them to send me a photo and they both sent me two–one in Saudi dress, one in American dress. Because Abdulhadi goes by Hadi, I use H in the interview for him.

Abdulhadi

M: Can you describe for me the place that you were born?

 

H: We born in Saudi Arabia, in east Saudi Arabia, Dhahran. There are a lot of American people there, it’s a big area. Yeah, it’s a city. It’s close to capital city Riyadh, maybe 3 hours.

M: What does it look like?

H: You mean the views?

M: Yeah.

H: I think it’s a great area, because it’s close to the biggest company in the world. Biggest oil company in the world. That’s why it’s a great area.

M: You are both from there?

Abdulrahman

H: As I told you, we live in the same neighborhood. Our fathers are friends.

M: How old were you when you met each other?

H: Ahhh, 14. [Abdulrahman nodding]

M: Do you know the word landscape? How would you describe the landscape of your town?

H: Saudi Arabia has just two seasons. Okay? Winter and summer. There are many mountains. East of Saudi Arabia is like humidity weather. It is very hot. Like Miami. It is an industrial city. There are many factories. Big towers.

M: If you go outside of city?

H: It is desert. If I go out of my place, it is desert.

M: Do people travel in desert?

H: Camping. Yeah. Many people like to go there, camping, maybe 1 week, 2 weeks. There are people who live whole life in the desert. Bedouins, yeah.

M: Do they come into the city ever?

H: Yeah, they come to city to go to medical hospital. Because he has childrens in the city. He cannot live in the city. Fresh air.

Abdulhadi

Abdulrahman

M: So, tell me why you came to Bozeman?

H: Maybe because of the university. I think it’s one of the best universities in US. Because I would like to be a mechanical engineer.

M: How about you, Abdulrahman?

A: Same thing. I like a small university.

M: How was it for you when you first came to Bozeman?

H: For us? Surprised.

M: So tell me why.

H: Because my friends told me its like a town. I thought it has like highways, towers, and my friends went to California, Texas, Arizona. I saw lots of highways and towers and I like it. So when I came here, I thought that there are towers and highways, and I say “Wow, what’s this?”

M: How about you? Same reaction?

A: Yeah, just mountains, hills.

M: Has it become easy, become familiar? Continue reading →

Squatters On High

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Caracas, Venezuela

You are walking home from a long day at work. You live in what many now call the Tower of David, one of the tallest buildings in Latin America at 45 stories. It used to be an office building, but now it is abandoned, run-down and unserviced. And over 2,000 of you have taken up residence. You don’t mind the lack of guardrails or elevators or even windows. Somehow you’ve piped electricity in. You have running water that goes half-way up the building. There is a bodega on every floor. You are self-organized because you have to be. There are very few other housing options provided by your government, so this is your one option. In the geography of your city, your home sticks out. Everyone knows about you. Now, even me. I am curious about this make-shift home, one that doesn’t seem all that make-shift after the improvements you’ve made. I would like to know more of your story and whether this home has become a haven, or whether you want something else. Your community impresses me.

Sinuous

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sinuous |ˈsinyoōəs|adjective
having many curves and turns : the river follows a sinuous trail through the forest. ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from French sinueux or Latin sinuosus, from sinus ‘a bend.’

I was reminded of this word when I read Elizabeth Dodd’s essay “Sinuous” on terrain.org (a journal of built and natural environments). Here’s an excerpt:

What does a sinuous petroglyph call to mind? I mean the pecked or carved line that curves beckoningly back and forth across the face of the rock, or the top of the boulder, or the shelf in the cliff where someone once crouched twenty feet or so above the canyon floor and hollowed out a small basin the depth of my own cupped hand, making this particular shape that snakes across the Cliff House sandstone I’ve slithered up in order to look out where Andy is measuring sightlines along the southern horizon. What does it look like, this petroglyph stilled in its hint of motion? What does it mean?

During winter, when snow has made a canvas for the land, I get to inspect what animals have gone where and how they have done so. Not one of them moves in a perfectly straight line. They circle, backtrack, and even go on tangents, and this reminds me that sinuous is the rhythm of life. It is easy to forget this, especially when we wake up every morning as a particular goal-oriented human.