Autumn Equinox 2007

Responses to Kent Alexander’s performance

Kent Alexander read us the story of his uncle Eli, an innocent teenager murdered by lynching in the 1950’s.

 

The place    the scene    the boy
            make it stop
The penknife    the plan    the day
            please no
The joy of life    the innocence
            not here    not now
It unfolds with the inevitability
            of Euripides, Aeschylus
No way out

Brave man to tell us this story
            forty or fifty years is no time
All time is now
            all tragedy is here.
- Ann McNeal

 

How can the man on the school board at
Jena High say that hanging 3 nooses from
the tree is a prank?  Doesn’t he remember
when Eli was lynched? He says that white boys
wouldn’t know what a noose stands for.
Does he believe what he says? How can we
believe this is true?
- Mary Ramsay

 

Terrifying to make the journey that
Eli makes – very vivid – very
present – amazing strength
and insight to re-imagine so fully
what happened –
especially powerful now – the
week of the protests in
Jena, LA – the 50th anniversary
of Little Rock – Central High

What were the white students
thinking who put up the nooses in
Jena – and not charged –
what were the black students
thinking – and they charged for
attempted murder
- Art Larson

 

I search for the word to end his panic

But I can’t think of it … yet.

Eli lives on and I must not forget, turn away, recoil
The only way to the other side is through
- Lee MacKinnon

 

Kent take me somewhere
I’d never go by myself
close my eyes
read faster –
     I know it’s true
     I know it happens
remember

- Melinda Buchwalter

     I feel guilty for smiling &
enjoying the piece so much.
     I’ve seen some of the
pictures, makes me sadalmostashamed
to be a white man.
     I do believe, I do believe,
that we, as a species, are
healing. I celebrate our
progress!!
- Brian

And now he’s immortal,
I kept thinking, because
of your story, and in the
recreating there is the force
of all creation, and in
the awareness of one’s
own thoughts, a light
that blasts away the
shadows of ignorance
so thick, like anti-matter,
like a solid wall of
heartlessness, here come
your words like a train
of heart, a pulse of
unending life and now
Eli lives in me too.
- Christie Svane

 

Horror
Fear trickling through every pore
How can it be?

 

Why do bullies have that right?
Please get me out of here
Allow me to disappear
Unharmed and with my dreams
Let me live and be me
Please,
This cannot be happening to me.

- Miranda Shannon

Bi-racial relationship
memory cousin Urban, Ohio
lynched from a lightpost
Jena 6  Eli Swings
Gandhi  “Violence will prevail over
violence only when someone can
prove to me darkness can be dispelled
by  pocketknife.”
Glad Kent went after me – tears just tears –

- Kacenka Hruby

 

Anger, tears, skittish left leg
dancing, running – more story –
more anguish – more choices
Breath – Breath – Breath
never forget – never again
But here we are AGAIN – Louisiana
- Kent Alexander

Responses to Melinda Buchwalter’s performance

Melinda Buchwalter appeared wearing a garland of photographs, invoked the Mahavidyas, danced inside, then led us outside where laptops were playing
danced in the parking lot

A quest
a question
quickening quirkiness quietly quits
- Lee MacKinnon

     I’m not sure, I guess I
hesitate to say it but truth
requires-me-to-tell that I
felt like the guy that
didn’t get it.
     Why, why, no really, why?
- Brian

 

Who are these goddesses
     and why are they possessing me?
                divine madness
                 rain pours through me
                 rationality flees
I can only yield
                 resisting
                 laughing
                 crying
I embrace     the you      that is I.
- Ann McNeal

 

Mahavidyas
Playful/ritualized encounter with
the often not so playful Mahavidyas
to make something creative out of
what haunts and obsesses us
to exorcise – to be free – to see
your obsession whole
- Art Larson

 

What a sequence?! Only I would
give away my polluting car keys,

 

I the only one who absolutely can’t get home
without them…that & my pen, nothing else
in my pockets, so empty these days.
- Kacenka Hruby

 

I am at home. I relax.
Your superwoman costume
with butterfly undies
over green tights and a
garland of goddesses and
a garland of people I
assume are friends
or family – this is my
grazing land.
I am a happy cow
eating your symbolist daisies
and clover. I want to tell
you I believe you. I want
to tell you I believe they
believe you. How gorgeous
your running black
robed body lying on the
black asphalt like
a horse in a field,
and how like family
you make me to
scream “why?” in
my presence.
- Christie Svane

I want a necklace of skulls and a belt
of goddesses. The Mahavidyas – how can
we find them today, in the parking lot? You
Tube Mahavidyas.  Mahavidya dolls.
Mahavidya tee shirts & the Mahavidya
line of make up & perfume. You just need
to know where to look, how to look,
where to shop.  Shop on line. Shop till
you drop – dead.
- Mary Ramsay

It’s a celebration of goddesses
celebrate yearning – not knowing
seeking – fornicating – destruction
& the harvest that makes room for birth.
Call forth those spirits – invoke the
rituals of the ancients so that
all know that a past has been re-entered
and shifted towards sweet moonlit
madness! Celebrate madness, celebrate
the unknown, celebrate
chaos – dance dance dance…
- Kent Alexander

Melinda
Yes?
So free
Brave a laugh
Entertain
Be me
Art
And Expression
Eloquent theatre
Ah to be me
- Miranda Shannon

Melinda
Melinda?
Melinda
Melinda
Melinda
Melinda
that was intense
- Melinda Buchwalter

Responses to Kacenka Hruby’s performance

Kacenka Hruby danced in her wheelchair, telling the story of many hardships.

    

Ebb & flow of the turning wheels. Where were
you as Katrina raged?  Witness this story of
pain and survival. Witness this story of
injury and abuse. Please, see the children.
- Mary Ramsay

Much brave deep sharing
   tremendous strength and
     serenity – to be where you seem to be
        now – to have channeled so much
             creatively
- Art Larson

Strength, loss, change,
license taken, opportunities denied
someone lives
                  despite
someone dances
                   nonetheless
Faith broken, hope tossed around
                  like a worn stuffed animal
Determination remains.
- Ann McNeal

I want to know the details of this story
the specificities in writing
I want to go back over them at my leisure
and dig in
There was an abuser who hid things
was that the wife that gave joy?
Like the leg that supported and now pains?
Physician heal thyself
To heal thyself is to know thyself
Know.
-Melinda Buchwalter

Survival
Harsh painful fights but determined to see the light.
Deep pain
Unbearable
And yet I take a step
need to stay alive
but can I survive?   I hurt.
Will I survive?
One more step
Another
I’m doing it.
- Miranda Buchwalter

I felt some kinda-not-really-
able-to-and-not-sure-I-wanna-
describe      it       pain
- Brian

     That you are here
in spite of it all, that
is like the sun rising
every morning, your story
is the mourning cry of
the heart of humanity
and the spirit of renewal.
     The man’s voice felt like
food. Like a meal that
strengthens after weakness.
- Christie Svane

Waves on the beach
roll in and out
tossing the pebbles and a single conch shell
shining in the sand
as the water recedes
Pink alabaster on the shore
- Lee MacKinnon

Shrouded walking
sleeping heated
hands in air
fans spinning
lost in non-silence
a scream that echoes
a dance that….
- Kent Alexander

 

It was not what I expected
it never is          I had prepared
so much, over much.    Brevity
is best.    Bookmark it is time
to stop here.
- Kacenka Hruby

Responses to Carolyn Shakti Sadeh’s performance

Carolyn Shakti Sadeh entered singing a song, told a story, and passed out apples from a basket.

I hear the snap of teeth biting into apples
and imagine the sweet juice exploding in
mouths around the room. I hold my
apple, waiting until I digest my dinner
and feel some hunger again. Those cycles –
the body’s of hunger & eating & digestion -
the year’s as it swoons into longer, darker
nights. We hang in the balance today
of equal days & nights. And the season
of celebrations shift from patriotic,
rather dry observations to rich & textured
markings of the cultures among us. Always
there is food. Sometimes song and prayer.
Histories. Our stories.
-Mary Ramsay

 

Time / cycles of time
    black & white / matrix of colors
         observing the changes
linear time & circular
    time – the Torah rolling &
         unrolling & rolling & unrolling
- Art Larson

 

Penelope’s eyes
The dusty road home
Fall once again with its brilliant light bouncing off
   the blue sky, perhaps the color of Penelope’s eyes
I want to be the mother, the grandmother, the daughter
Rooted in this place
I want to wave as you drive by
Welcoming you back home.
- Lee MacKinnon

 

Sounds from long ago
Traditions never forgotten
Foreign melodies
Warm, deep
waves lapping at one’s feet
Memories brought to life
While crunching on sweet tart apples.
- Miranda Shannon

 

So wonderful to hear the deep resonant
voice, ancient Hebrew melody inscribing
my name in the book of life yet again
Such gratitude for my culture to be
brought to me – the sweetness of life/
apple/Eve/Lilith on my tongue. blesses me.

In my illness, full, grief this
has been my only celebration this
year, except silent Tashch (casting
away, sorting out, letting go) at 4 AM
the only 8 hr sleep since 9/7.

Where were you 9/11?
Do you remember?
Where were you 8/28,  8/29,  9/1,
2, 3, 4,   2005.

Do you remember?
I was… balloon?
- Kacenka Hruby

Layers and patches
Patches and layers
Fullness of the season
spilling over into loss.
Orange to brown
Green to something else.
It’s the mournful tune
       that stays.
- Ann McNeal

 

Shaktishaktishakti
   I woke up.
Much of today I was on
automatic pilot…a sort of
sleep walking in that I wasn’t
truly present (or at least as
present as usual…) …
     Yea, took a nap this pm,
the beeper went off & woke me,
but the nap continued after
dealing with it.
     I sorta woke on the bike ride
here, but still have driven this
route, so much that there was a chance
stay in myself & not in
my world.
     But I woke up, I joined
another’s world, I was curious &
waiting & wanted to know what
came next.
     I joined Shakti’s world
more than I had been in
mine –
             Thanx
Oh – did you notice you are
wearing black & white?
- Brian

 

Today I was thinking how
I have yet to connect
deeply to this spot on earth.
I miss the sea. But what
am I holding out for? She
is everywhere, and I must
find more of her face
in the particulars of this place.
Hearing you speak of
the people, your neighbors,
you love, their parents, their
children, I realize that is
the way in, through the
people, conduits of earth’s
spirit.
- Christie Svane

Fields filled with tall corn – birth followed by death followed by rebirth followed by death followed by – In this never ending circle tradition whispers like a parent to a sleeping child – remember this – forget nothing – hold all sacred. Breathe – sing - touch – forgive – renew.
- Kent Alexander

History is a she
She’s in Shakti’s basket
Wears a long dress with patches of light
that you wouldn’t see unless your heart’s been broken

A memory of Uncle Lincoln
living his final days in an old folks’ home
far from his family
When I go to pick up his effects
     and clean his room
the old Jewish men tell me how
he participated in their holy days
saying prayers in Hebrew

My Uncle Lincoln, a gentile!
a crossword puzzle loving postman –
atheist turned holy man
in the rest home by the sea
in Long Beach.

Cool.
- Melinda Buchwalter

empty empty & full full
apples crunching with the crispness
of autumn we had a brief moment
of
just a sliver, just a precious
sliver of a day in a life is so full
crunch crunch crunch
- Shakti Sadeh