The Dredge Cycle

A Programming Note

Some­times a wave of despair fol­lows me through this book. Every year or two the ground shakes some, and I won­der: it’s too long; it’s too com­pli­cated to be enjoy­able; the research is crush­ing me; I have no for­mal train­ing; my Wampanoag and Mass­a­chu­seuk con­tacts aren’t writ­ing or call­ing back; or the clas­sic, I’m clearly just a fuckup. Right now it’s a lit­tle of every­thing. I’m read­ing Red Earth, White Lies, by Vine Delo­ria Jr. now. It’s chal­leng­ing me at a depth I wasn’t expecting. The gist is that…

Continua

I make it no secret that my book is pow­ered by con­tinua. Though as a pos­ses­sor of opin­ions, and a left-​​of-​​leftist when pol­i­tics come up, I’m invested in con­clu­sions – when I’m work­ing with process, I’m much more inter­ested in ques­tions. And con­tinua – gra­di­ents – turn ques­tions into lit­er­ary mechanics.

The Purpose of Stories, 2

I’ve had an amal­gam of texts at a rolling boil in the back of my head lately. They all deal with a spe­cial cul­tural dis­tinc­tion between between Taker (colo­nial) and Leaver (indige­nous) cul­tures: the strange insis­tance on his­tory over stories.

Mother Culture Croons All Night

This week­end I began recov­ery from read­ing Ish­mael. It’s hard not to won­der how we’re sup­posed to move for­ward from this damn book. Quinn him­self, in an author’s note at the back, refers to it as much more than a book.

Appropriating Spirituality

I’m a spir­i­tu­ally amor­phous Jew-​​​​by-​​​​birth. I spend a lot of time read­ing about and pon­der­ing indige­nous spir­i­tual modes. I don’t think I’m advo­cat­ing the White Man’s Bur­den, but I think sin­cerely nego­ti­at­ing spir­i­tu­al­ity is hard in a cul­ture that’s under­mined it with impe­ri­al­ism. How do you move toward com­pelling spir­i­tual mod­els, like those of many Indian or Abo­rig­i­nal tribes, with­out merely appro­pri­at­ing them  –  and so miss­ing the point? We have the hip­pies to blame for a lot of these ques­tions, but we can also thank them,…

Effect and Cause

If you’re just tun­ing in, these come from a dis­cus­sion at the Lan­guage of Spirit con­fer­ence last week­end, and were pro­posed to a group of respected indige­nous elders and schol­ars — and high-​​octane physi­cists. So, let’s get to it.

Science and Indigenous Knowledge

I’m think­ing a lot about this (para­phrased) com­ment from Jill Mil­roy, an abo­rig­i­nal woman from West­ern Aus­tralia, and one of the wiser humans I’ve ever spo­ken to. Take this as a pre­am­ble to more for­mal dis­cus­sion when the week’s over, and I’ve got time/​​mind for a proper entry. This comes from my notes on this last weekend’s Lan­guage of Spirit Con­fer­ence. But let’s not let a state­ment as provoca­tive and exquis­ite as this go head­long into the ether, yeah? The spir­i­tual and phys­i­cal worlds’ rules…

The Packrat and the Taxonomist

Two things: 1. I’m a sworn pack­rat. I’ve only ever defeated the instinct with greet­ing cards, which after read­ing I have no idea what to do with, and while trav­el­ing for long peri­ods. 2. Some­thing my 9^th grade Eng­lish teacher/​​10^th grade advisor/​​3-​​​​year var­sity foot­ball coach (I was the man­ager) said once that I’ve never for­got­ten: “We remem­ber things because we assign them mean­ing.” Like every­one, I have a store­house of child­hood mem­o­ries I can’t explain. That is, I can’t explain why I remem­ber them. When…

Enter Insanity

Sat­ur­day I sat down with my edi­tor (Pat) and the cur­rent cut of the book. I spent the day tight­en­ing again, and couldn’t shake the sense that two poems which’ve been inte­gral for ages are no longer nec­es­sary. Tak­ing these out revealed some­thing dis­tress­ing: there’s actu­ally quite a lot miss­ing. Now, there should be a lot miss­ing. There are thou­sands of morn­ings and after­noons that didn’t become sto­ries; refuse, the truly banal process of grow­ing up. What’s miss­ing are key ele­ments in the emo­tional narrative.…

The lines open

Before we get started, peep last week’s part 1 of the SEED Con­fer­ence for con­text or a refresher. Back a week now, I sit down to din­ner with Jill and Gladys Mil­roy, and Tjalaminu Mia. I must’ve exuded excite­ment. For them, it was a 3^rd or 4^th night in the States, and that must be excit­ing (they said they love sweet potato fries), but it was a hotel lobby restau­rant, no site of great prece­dent. And it would’ve been enough to engage them there, as…