To Be In This Moment

(a little food for thought linked in the title and below)

So, here we are.

From On High

Oh, To Be A Sari Clad Satellite

Would I distinguish the myriad messages coming through?

Would I know who was sending, and like an old time switchboard operator, know how to plug in the appropriate connections?

Would I indulge the temptation to listen in, reaping vicariously the joys, thoughts and despair of both the signals transmitted and received?

Would I, out of devotion to my beloved, always orbit closely or would I spin off regularly to allow chaos to remix the signals?

And would I be self maintaining as I've always been or would on occasion some Earth centered entity send out a little support?

And YES, that I might still catch the drift from my favorite messengers, and, as I have on occasion, be compelled to drop the Sari that I might dance unencumbered in the cool night sky.

(she's left wanting the XM signal...)

Mourning Song

I sit in the old quad of Bakersfield High, out front of Warren Hall. This time it's February 2009 already, and all of the days I spent here as a kid, in a state of elevated darkness, still haunt about in the ashen, dwindling palms.

I turn my graying eyes to the sky and think of you. I wonder how so many miles and tidal surge of lifetimes separate us now. You call to my heart and mind with such consistent kindness and, like all my girlhood boyfriends, I heard you first on the radio.

Back then, in the stifling heat of nights possessed by want and innocence, rocking my pillowed head to the metal collisions; the terrors of purgatory: the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe switching cars; 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, 3:30, 3:45, on and on till light. The trains and radio were deep comfort to this girl interrupted.

I didn't know I'd be riding those freight trains two years later, following vision North. That they would deliver me from what was murderously mundane, undone, to the cherry orchards of Stockton. Two million Bings and Queen Anns later we'd pick enough for the old Chevy flatbed. Four months after, it was "get thee" to Alaska.

And there I'd find you.

Boys from your parts flocked to my tavern, we of chess and politics and poetry jams. These kids, high on seine crew wealth and good beer, knew of a new comer, their college home boy, red hot radio. I fell, pell mell and stayed.

Sunlight muscles it's pushy way onto the walk, driving me towards the guarded tracks. Beneath the two train crossing, screaming sounds peal from every neuron. Those shades and memory, his dangle dance, open my throat and the morning fills with song.

That older heart duet; there's something more to be sung.

March 17th, 1963

All from the capital city would come by to confer with the Irishman, the dark one who led their imaginations toward a better St. Paddy Day's parade.
I was set atop the bartop, black hair and sallow skin. He gave me the sparkle of Irish mischief in my saddle shoes and eyes. Poppa had handed me a leprechaun's white clay pipe, the stem so thin and elegant I could only imagine someone as clever as he using it.

I have it still. I use it now to help weave a different story. But tonight my eyes keep closing mid sentence, only to jerk awake with moisture threatening to slip down my chin. The fire's so cozy. And the miles spent to get here have me mellowed.
Perhaps tomorrow...

A Duet

Tomorrow night at this time, I'll have made a nest in some quiet corner of the airport in Reno! After five long months of focused intensity, (as my writer father claimed, "I've mastered the art of sitting"). I can't believe I'm heading home.

Today went according to plan. Assisted help came to be with Ma that I might slip away and spend one last scribbling session at 801 Real Rd. The little house seems happier for our visits. The three giant shaggy barked trees out back, one with the nailed on cross ladder, blew brightly and were full of leaves, dancing as wildly as the fledgling birds calling.

I'd snap this little aging wonder up in a heart beat, knowing it's doomed to the bull dozer. The roof is gone. Blue tarp covers the remains of the simple felt and wood shell now holy access for pigeons. But it calls to me, even in my dreams now.

At first I thought I was being reminded of Ma, she too losing her roof. Or of my not so girlish years and terrible diffuculty spelling, though wanting to write while removed from my life.

But then it came to me that it's also a symbol of the other dearest involvement of mine. I think it stands in my heart of hearts for the breaking down of a wonderful forum for discussion that for awhile was holding the fort for many people during this particularly tough season. I'll have to think on that more.

What ever the case, it feels right there.

It's late and my heart is quiet and telling me to tell someone in the world that for today this mother's use of the alphabet is pooped.

Got the garden in today though. And I've planted something for my brother. it will grow to be a particularly poetic salad, if I keep loving this beginning.

The Older Twin

I knew him. I knew him before he knew himself.

And he loved me before anyone knew I could soak it up yet. When I was still more dimple and black kitty trouble propped in the corner of the couch than real.

Tucked safely but alone, he'd show up there, talking a blue string of energy charged sounds, so rich I had no choice but to be enchanted.

That's when I learned how to turn the tables on him. Shave and a hair cut, two bits. If I could make him laugh, he'd stay close, playing with my hands while yelling tall stories into Ma.

Ma still young and challenged with all that we were and everything else.

She whistled. Beautiful sounds, split into two and dancey.

And those two danced. As much for each other as they did for me. They danced together close by, Mama bending over to be the same size he was, both grinning at me cause they knew I'd start laughing. A black mopped, gummy mouthed belly roar.

I was the dark haired spectre who knew them both, especially him. Cause he was always there.

Until he wasn't.

This was written in honor to my old pal Garrison Keillor, who's just lost his brother to a skating accident.
His fine tribute is linked in the title of my poem for all brothers.

the cloister

...under the low hanging steep incline...holding the brightly polished jewels

It's About Form AND Function

In preparing to travel home to my beloved Northlands, and those there who are my beloved, I'm sprucing up the long neglected Blue Room and Hinterlands sites.

My season away, while caring for our Mother has been educational beyond compare. Much has had to do with learning a bit about this amazing cyber medium.
The Internet is remarkable. All those who've known this forever bear with me.
This year due to captivity, I've dispelled with my "fear of technology". Due to the generosity of my sister Mick and her gift of a laptop (Pewter),I've been able to access the world while housebound with Ma.

I'm beginning to shape my pages to reflect those interests. At Gather.com, I've been a daily participant with writers and thinkers of all persuasions. I'll begin to add RSS feeds to some of my favorites.

This week I'm bringing on board The Writer's Almanac, The Poetry Foundation, and American Life In Poetry. On the Hinterlands page I want to have Bob Edwards podcasts and access to his web page and blog.

If you have any thing you'd like to share, I'd also love to feature other's writing. All genres: literary, news, feature stories, journals. My address is on the Hinterlands page, a clickity clack back.

Let me know. I'd be thrilled!

French Resistance

French Resistance
Micah R. Bochart
November 2007

Le gen d’arme, arms crossed behind his back, tells us with impeccable decorum that we owe ninety euro each for our so-called moving violation, plus another twenty-two for the defunct headlights freeloading their way along the front of our bicycles. Sam’s composure quickly deteriorates, followed by her French. I’ve lost my translator, and, with her, the irrationally cozy feeling that I’m somehow being taken care of, protected against all possible evils in this large and chaotic city that prides itself on the shunning of my native tongue.
Lucky enough, the Frog speaks English, so I talk back. I walk the tightrope between firmness and shameless brown-nosery, telling him we can’t possibly pay the fine, telling him it’s our first offense and he can be absolutely certain that there won’t be a second one, trying all the while to keep my voice steady, to bury the panic that threatens to explode every time I think of what one-hundred-and-twelve euro sums could do to our futures.
Ninety seconds ago, we were millionaires. We pedaled the streets of Paris so fiercely that the Maquis itself would have faltered before us. Back and forth across the Seine, in and out of traffic, from the Jardin du Luxembourg to the walls of the Louvre. Every street and alley our legs could swallow, a montage of berets and public toilets sweeping by on either side of us. Problem is, an empty crosswalk on an empty street with traffic lights so inconspicuous that any God-fearing American would be Godly to spot them is apparently sacred ground to a badge with an ego. Now we’re here, paying for our transgression, for running a crosswalk at ten miles per hour in a pair of squeaky bicycles on an alley without people. Notre Dam looks on from two blocks down the street, and we’re so distracted by the moment that it seems stripped of all its historical enormity, just another witness to this exercise of petty justice.
“I can’t afford to pay,” I tell the cop. “We’re students. This will bankrupt us,” and I’m hoping he won’t end up thinking what so many other foreigners think – that we’re rich and cushioned and lavished simply by virtue of being American.
Strangely enough, it took this cop almost two minutes to correctly peg our nationality, assuming, at first, that we were English. Somehow, I’m feeling like it’s a good thing that our Americanness isn’t screaming out of every pore, but one thing’s for sure: the fact that we’re foreigners isn’t winning us any sympathy points, not from a man who seems like he’ll only be won over by the fine but complicated art of sweet-talking.
I try for simplicity, for the shortest distance between two points.
“We’ll never do it again,” I tell him, but his posture never falters, and neither does his smile.
“That’s what they all say,” he replies, “and as soon as they’re around the corner, they do it again. Ninety euros each. Plus twenty-two for the headlights.”
I’m not exactly sure what causes him to relent, or if you can even say he relented. Chances are, he’d never intended to force the money out of us, though he’d certainly have taken it if we’d coughed it up prematurely. In any case – after begging for amnesty for the fifth or sixth time in a row – we don’t get the response we’ve grown to memorize. There’s no knee-jerk refrain of the money we owe, just a flamboyant gesture down the street in the direction we were traveling.
“Go ahead,” he says, and adds, as only a Frenchman could, “It brings me great pleasure to see you follow the law.”
Relief is tremendous. So is my gratitude, but both are short-lived. By the time we’re on the other side of the Seine – walking our bikes this time, like the Maquis shot us in the kneecaps – all I can feel is frustration that a day such as this could be punctuated with a scolding.
It makes a good story, of course. “American in Paris tangles with cop and sweet talks his way out of bankruptcy,” but I, for one, was happy with the story as it stood.
“American in Paris bicycles the city from one end to the other.”
“American in Paris sips wine by the Seine and praises the power of words.”
“American in Paris watches long-term lover cruise on her bicycle, master of the streets, if not the laws that govern them.”
Lucky enough, “long-term lover” is a writer herself, so between the two of us, we should be able find a headline that suits us.
“Long-term lover” lives near the base of Montemartre in a room of her own, five floors up from the bustling tumult of one of the city’s international districts. It’s a massive modern-art building, structured around the unlikely theme of a naval ship. Though not precisely of a piece with the cozy three-story villas of the expat mythos, the pad gets by, and Sam makes up the difference. She’s managed to clutter her room with books and papers and pens and other instruments of creation, and done it so profoundly that I’ve taken to calling her my Anais, my writer in stylish exile. With this kind of bastion at her back, all she needs is a pen in her hand and no experience is safe. Any event, no matter how trivial or humiliating, can be exploded into adventure, into a study on alienation, on collision of cultures, on how one responds to crises and comes out feeling richer and more delightfully idiosyncratic with each little twitch of the watch.
In any case, we keep on walking, put a river between ourselves and Monsieur Law Enforcement, go trekking off somewhere to watch the new Jesse James movie with Brad Pitt and marvel at the French subtitles. It isn’t until the end of next day that we can really laugh at the event, and by then we’re two thirds of the way down the Eiffel Tower, halfway between the mobs of sightseers on levels one and two, pausing on the empty stairway to admire the mass of metal surrounding us.
It’s a chilly night, chilly and tastefully humid. A wind blows gently from the north, the same kind of wind that almost blew away our ninety euros each (plus twenty-two for the headlights) and there’s a faint layer of mist hovering over the tops of the buildings. From what I’ve seen, that mist could easily be cigarette smoke, because everyone smokes here. Seriously everyone. Old men hang in front of bookstores and blanket their faces in puffs of gray. Fair-skinned women sit with their legs crossed in the cafés and restaurants, monologuing the merits of art and moviemaking, cigarettes fingered elegantly, adjoining lungs unfazed. Algerians smoke against the streetlights and the intricately sculptured walls of the opera house. A man in a helmet and sunglasses sits on his motorcycle, cigarette burning away in his mouth, like a frame out of a Godardt movie, waiting for the light to change. How they make it to fifty I’ll never know, but we’re above it all now, high enough to discourage the smoke from following us.
I’m standing here watching the flickering lights of the city, wishing I’d made it to the grave of Jim Morrison, that in consonance with all the other attractions a short-term visitor to Paris inevitably misses, but find that this moment, as period mark, is beautiful enough as it. Sam stands behind me, at the place where the pillars of the tower just start to spread out: the attempts of a pragmatic architect to beat the odds and build something the wind couldn’t blow over, attempts that would later be criticized as being unnecessarily artistic before critics of next generation label it as an ugly but inseparable part of the Parisian skyline, and perhaps of Parisians themselves.
When I think of the cop again, it’s with an air of pity, because I know Sam and I are thinking of all the wild ways we can violate him with our pens. We’ll take his smile, his stance, his flamboyant gestures. Everything that makes him distinct is about to become our property, discharged upon the paper and rendered wild and defenseless, to the judgments of whatever readers decide to make him their own.
She steps closer, chuckles. I cradle her cheek in my hand, and we stand there together, surrounded by open air and the cold embrace of metal, and the wind, without ceremony, fails to knock us down.