Au Natural
En plein air
from indigo’s soft sea
with violet duneshadows
o temper the orange enchantment
of subtropical sun-spell—yellow all
over the blue syllables I whisper
around our quiet circle unbroken
by toxic red tides of Time—
at the end, the mystic green flash
for your freshened horizon
A Charlottesville ER Nurse Speaks After a Day of Decompression.
By
Kellen Squire –
August 13, 2017
I’ve sat here at my keyboard staring at the blinking cursor for awhile. There’s words inside me that need to come out about what happened in our community yesterday, but… I dunno. They’re stuck there. Nothing seems right. Especially after watching everyone’s “hot take” on a community you’re from. But there’ll be time later to go over those- particularly those of the President and my Congressman. It doesn’t help either that our community isn’t out from under the specter of the Nazis who visited us- there are vigils across the country for Charlottesville, but our own vigil was canceled because of a credible threat by white supremacists to invade it and take it over.
Those of you who read my diaries here pre-rally know I had pushed for people to ignore the Nazis who invaded our community. They were here because we were a huge target for them; ranked the “happiest city in the United States”. Outspoken against the President and his policies. Very progressive, but not perfect- hell, no, we have plenty of faults. But we work through them together as a community as best we can.
And ever since I became intimately acquainted with the “alt-right” in the wake of the Y’all Qaeda nonsense in Oregon– which is almost the entire reason I’m now running for public office at all- I knew what their goal was, plain and simple: terrorism. And terrorists don’t attack folks who are already afraid. They don’t attack anyone who isn’t a threat to them. Which made our community the perfect target for them- and since they were gathering from across the country, in numbers they would unlikely be able to easily come up with again, I had an awful feeling that violence would ensue.
To read this thoughtful expression in its entirety: http://bluevirginia.us/2017/08/a-charlottesville-er-nurse-speaks-after-a-day-of-decompression
I’m at the David Bowie concert in the Railyard this balmy Saturday night. Then one of the MCs says something that truly upsets me, about how Santa Fe is so great and loving and diverse that “what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia could never happen here.”
Please think again. The cities are the same size. Both are liberal, and yes, diverse. Both love their outdoor concerts, their dogs, their local foods. Both have considered themselves occupied territory.
I’m very fond of C-ville, and my friends there. Earlier this very summer I sat on a shady screened porch and listened to sad and worried talk about the alt-right protestors. Were they only to be feared, or could they be communicated with? How to respond? What to do?
And now tragedy has stuck—as has the assignation of blame. I’ve never been a mayor or a police chief—and I would not presume to tell either how to do their job. You can try and blame the ACLU or your own privilege or whatever you want—but I think blame just distances us from reality.
Earlier this week Santa Fe witnessed a case of extreme cyber racism. And an armed belligerent man in the city council session. At the start of the rise of Nazism, Germans no doubt said—it can’t happen here, not in the land of Schiller and Goethe, of Bach and Beethoven. But happen it did.
And saying things can’t happen neither prevents them, nor prepares us. Santa Fe is many things, including my beloved home, but it can also at times be racist, violent, and troubled. And if armed fascists from out of state marched through our Plaza I don’t think they’d be greeted with just a kumbaya moment.
Anything can happen anywhere. You can blame so called human nature. Or, in the specifics of these events, you can blame the United States of America. Which, I might remind Santa Fe, we are part of. For which you can blame the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Great ideas for sharing! Looking forward to HNA conference in Santa Fe next month!
If you’re a Haiku Canada member you’re familiar with trifolds since there are usually one or two included with the Haiku Canada Review.
A few years back, Michael Dylan Welch started creating his own trifolds to share his haiku with attendees at conferences.
Today, trifolds are one of the most popular freebies at haiku conferences. They’re made of one sheet of paper printed double sided, and folded like a brochure.
Letting Go: haiku & haiga (interior), by Naia
When designing a trifold, pay attention to the cover since it’s the first thing people will see. Make sure the cover has an attractive picture, a title, your name.
Letting Go: haiku & haiga (cover), by Naia
The back of the trifold usually holds bio-bibliographical and contact information.
A Common Touch (back), by Michael Dylan Welch
You can create a trifold using the theme of the conference.
Autumn Haiku, by Barbara Hay…
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“Do you have an image of the perfect way for your audience to experience your work?
Yes, of course! I visualize them enjoying the visuo-spatial and emotional impact of my writing, make them sit up and say,’Ah, would like to read more.’
Do you think of someone reading it silently in a garden, reading it out loud, lying in bed listening to a recording of you reading it, or experiencing it in some other specific way?
Wherever they choose to read the work they should walk along with me every step of the way, listen or read into what is left unsaid, go beyond mere words, connect in some unique way.
“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” Maya Angelou
I can remember the first time I read Bluebird, by Charles Bukowski. I was sitting on the floor amidst a loud group of young people, drunk on youth and whiskey. But this poem. It made all the noise in the room, all the laughter and gossip, come to a halt. My heart hit the pause button on this life and I fell into his words. They became entangled within me. They took my breath and tucked it away in some old heartache. His words made me stop. I devoured every single letter, every syllable, and sentence. This. This is how I want the words that I weave to be experienced.
Serena Rodriguez
Do you have an image of the perfect way for your audience to experience your work?
Last year I had a reading of essays from my book Night Writer (my essay and Eddie Tafoya’s) at the Espanola iconic liquor store/bar Saints & Sinners. It could not have been a more perfect place to read/hear this particular work as it was an affectionate and badass homage to Espanola that had pictures of the place Saints & Sinners too. There were snacks and mixed drinks! I tend to have different “perfect” locations in mind for each of my books to be read and listened to — “intimate” events at small spaces. The essays in my book CLOUDS (images and essays) are scheduled to be read high on a hill at a friend’s gallery in Cordova as close to the clouds as possible!
Laurie Tümer
***
I just have to say that the perfect way for me to experience this book is to be delighted I have a copy I can look at any time. It communicates utter transcendence. Here are some images from the Photo Eye site–
http://blog.photoeye.com/2017/03/laurie-tumer-clouds-new-work-and.html
