A rambling essay about space, ethnography and poetry and in the end A feeble attempt to explain Muskrat...

Reading over the rough draft of my last posting, a poem about space, a poem about the telling, re/telling of that perceived space I am brought back to two of my favorite ethnographies; James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (and the loss of my second edition copy of this book last semester I count as more tragic than my car accident and loss of vehicle) and Kathleen Stewart's A Space on the Side of the Road.  Stewart's treatment of anthropology, the practice of ethnography, modern ethnography becomes  an extension of the storytelling practiced by Agee's voice and his partner Walker Evan's breath taking photography (much less the ethnographic documentary photography of Dorthea Lange).  These poems I've laid on your door step over the past two thirds of a year, these Muskrat ramblings, are my fictionalized ethnography of a world I have existed within as a author, as a poet, as a human being, as a bartender, as an old trainrider exploring the idealized notions i've created of a settled life and balancing that with wanderlust and genuine intrigue of my fellow creatures i've encountered along the way

A friend of mine, a poet, a wayward soul, in her struggle to let go of her poems and let other people enjoy them, expressed her frustration that she was afraid that her words, her stories would be misinterpreted, misread.  To me this is the ultimate release of the story, the oral tradition, the mesh of poetry and life and lyric.  What I write, what I read from my own poems changes from day to day, from reading to reading.  It becomes the act, the performance, the as Goffman would interpret, presentation of that piece as self in everyday life.  This idealized presentation or performance of self, of art then in communicated as a sign/signifier relationship to my audience, my friends, and myself, from the inception of the idea of the poem, the perceived reaction/interpretation I want to convey and eventually the actual release and maintenance, and communication/ beautiful miscommunication of the poem, the release of authorial control.  (Goffman, 1959:51) Its performance, its subjection of itself onto the public, the Public sphere, (to paraphrase Pete Seeger) the body politic, is the essential release of the poem into performance and ergo the world.

Kathleen Stewart expresses that in essence, contemporary anthropology and more essentially ethnography as an exploration of culture, an exploration of ourselves and our neighbors becomes
"...a cultural critique that is not so much a decoding as an engagement, not so much a hermeneutical interpretation as a crafted mimesis or re/presentation in the same way that an "interpretation" of a piece of music or a play is not an exegesis but a performance.  It is a reading akin to what Barthes called the blissful reading of a text..." (Barthes, 1975:22) (Stewart, 1996:24)  This beautiful analogy of the social sciences as a performance, a means of understanding and in essence re/telling those around us about the things we experience in everyday life.  We, as writers are using narrative to translate and release into the wild our versions of the world around us.  Whether or not we a re successful doesn't matter.  Poetry and the words and stories we transcribe push into social scientists.  Whether we realize it or not we become the voice through which culture is transmitted, every culture, every utterance becomes narrative.  As Kathleen Stewart notes "narrative is first and foremost a mediating form though which 'meaning' must pass.  Stories, in other words, are productive" (Stewart, 1996: 29).   We live, we exist with art, with story, within narrative, a space in which we create an idealize version every morning when we open our eyes, percolate our first cup of coffee on the stovetop.  Watching the rings on the stove turning red, we create folk music in our imagination to our existences.  We create these stories, I create Muskrat as a means of translating the world through my eyes.  A fictionalized, idealized sad bastard country song, a Lightnin' Hopkins blues song in narrative about a fictionalized me.

I cannot help but insert Muskrat into Stewart's discussion of storytelling and ethnography.  To me, this blog and the on going ten year experiment of Muskrat as a means for me to explore my mental states, the world around me and the process of becoming comfortable in my own skin and the stage in which i, and Muskrat exist, is all about the performance.  Thus the release of Muskrat stories, recollections and poems into the body politic, no matter how limited is therapy, is social science, is ethnography, is my performance, my interpretation of the play in which whatever role I've been assigned in constantly changing.  I cannot help but inert myself, Muskrat then into Stewart's analysis of a conversation of a dialogue, an ordinary conversation. "Dialogic performance and dialogic exchanges within the story stretch the meaning of narrated events into the complex sociality of narrativity itself... he constructs his story, even at the very moment of his experience of its events, for a range of implied audiences... a world, then, in which events are always mediated by story... that things happen that places mark the space in lingering impacts and unseen forces that the world speaks to people who find themselves caught in it....(Stewart,1996: 32)  It is my every action that creates story, Muskrat, poetry and this blog in extension are merely interpretations of the world around me.  My favorite poetic exercise is the sitting poems, a variation of Wendell Berry's concept of Window Poems, in which I sit, and explore what I see, feel, and hear in my immediate vicinity and let my mind wander out, and bring it back in.  Staring at the glass of water on the red round table, the water shifting clock like in motion to the movement of my arms as they type, the black metallic chairs in the outskirts of my mental and visual range, all of this an exercise in the perception, the organization of narrative, in essence practice for simple character studies.  Which is in the end what Muskrat and my Muskrat poems have become, a character study.




thanks for putitng up with this rambling nonsense... I was fun to write.  I don't know if i want to read it yet now that its finished in extreme rough draft form... Mistly i was excited to share Kathleen Stewarts prose with you all.

God speed Lil animals... solidarity forever, ride free, live free, dig in the dirt... if i don't find love or someone to touch me, touch my face, I just may lose it and commit my life to Muskrat and strange rambling essays like this that go no where... So don't go down my path... love each other... be good to each other... and always work hard.

It is march and the snow peas are peaking their green heads above ground

It has been a while friends.  I’ve been neglecting writing as candidly and as often as I had hoped to.  Spring is teasing its way early into the state and I have been trying to resist the temptation to risk a late frost and plant rows of snow peas, spinach, pak choy, and other leafy greens.  There are a slew of seeds in the mail from various distributors on their way, and long eggplant starts in the living room.  As the season continues to warm and the ladies of the city don spring dresses and short sleeves, this little muskrat’s beard, as trimmed and cared for as he has ever maintained it, gets distracted by these long stretches of solitude.  It’s alright friends, I have a new poem here… nothing to write home about, something simple, an exercise I tried this morning on accident.  Started writing and noticed that the first four lines all started with the letter T, and so I continued and forced every line to start the same… It didn’t always work as smoothly and fluidly as a poem should but it was enjoyable, forced me to think about my words, my intentions and my thought processes.  A good meditation if nothing else.  I recommend it for those long stretches of writers block we all endure. 

There is a sense of space

That pervades our morning routines

That chair by the window facing outward

Tree branch constructed deer grazing in the upper garden

Three potted pansies in salvaged plastic containers

Twice I’ve stirred my coffee

Though I drink it black.

There is a sense of space

That soothes our ritual waking

The hot water of the shower on our kneecaps

Teal bathrobe hanging from an old hook on the bathroom door

These early mornings, starting the truck

Turning the key and waiting for permission to blow clean into the interlock

To start a half mile drive to work, an excuse for practice driving stick shift

There is a sense of space

That enters our movement through

Tying back the window shades

The morning paper next to the rear tires in the driveway

This movement through shifting into reverse

That seemingly long arc as we pull into the sidestreet

The calm morning interrupted by the Mississippi Shieks or Bruce Springsteen

There is a sense of space

That invades our nostrils pulling the quiche out of the oven

Turning the heat down to three hundred and fifty

Twisting our necks to stare at the clock

Teasing in a rack of chocolate chip scones on our mornings off.

As always solidarity forever, solidarity in struggle, live simple, ride free, live free, be safe, tell someone they are beautiful, god speed lil animals and for muskrat’s sanity sake grin and bear it growl and go!

Another oldie from days of whiskey and denver past

Found these typed in the middle of some scraps of muskrat, looked like the typewriter in was running as low as my patience had been.  I Hope to have a new poem and a letter to mink in the coming days, until then this is all I got. Two short untitled poems.  I promise to give them titles and a proper existence soon.

These days trickle by

Like poems off a typewriter

threats of an afternoon drizzle

            spent in frantic moments

            and relaxed cooking hashbrowns over a gas stove

eyeing green chili’s in the back recesses of the freezer

and tossed around like history books

Denver monsoons brought

Four in the afternoon cloud cover

Rumors of a small trickle

            Enough shade to watch the sun

            Set below the clouds.

It’s threatening rain and Albuquerque

a cold cup of coffee in Denver

 and a glass of canned apple juice

brought down in showers from the attic.

God speed little animals, solidarity forever, ride free, live free, don't give up... I'm trying not to.

an old poem from denver life and a little muskrat

Over the past few days I've started transcribing old typewritten poems from when I lived in Denver. It was an period in my writing that reflected that stage in my drinking and living at the time. I've been working on putting together more and more old poems and muskrat ramblings from that era.  Slowly working on hopefully a collection of both old and new works and am hoping to be shopping it around by the end of the summer to mid fall.  Fingers crossed.  I hope you enjoy my lil animals.

1236 Corona

The moon was hanging heavy like a cinderblock dangling from one arm

And the hole in the blanket cut out like a broken thumbnail

The queen of spades dyed her hair red, while blue contacts give a false sunrise

Cigarette smoke off a second story balcony, a 747 comet tail heading for the coast.

There are two olives left in a shallow bowl next to the ranch dressing

There is no drama in the situation, just orange juice and cold coffee.

All the phone numbers she left on bar napkins turn out to be wrong numbers

Drinking soda at the bar makes for long nights and longer walks through downtown.

If my breath is as hard as ashtrays and my elbows face down in bed,

Wake me after two in the afternoon with black cat paws running across wood floors

Let the queen of hearts have her breakfast behind our shower curtains

Say hello to the folks and drive over fifty through the Wisconsin Dells for me.

Japanese literature in the morning, tequila after coffee and French fries at the diner

A punch drunk Qwest neon horizon forces its way through morning smog

Second story wood plank porches make for excellent cigarette litter boxes

There is snow on blank branches, garlic powder crusted hash browns in the kitchen,

Black tea bags collect mold on the dining room table

and orange juice wants more drama than the morning newspaper promises

the only head on his pillow is his own half bald and ink stained

I hope you enjoy mis amigos, as always solidarity forever, live free, ride free, be safe

god speed lil animals,

a new poem written while transcribing old poems

we write poems about other things than poverty and whiskey, just not this one

There are new poems to be written

Without references to evening glasses of whiskey

Or memories of rusted train cars

And the dirt that cakes underneath untrimmed toenails

Clean new poems about doing laundry

Watering gardenings and hammering nails

into cold frames for spinach in February.

The neighbor’s pitched roof

Instead of flat roofed shotgun row houses

and a tree growing up through the basement.

We won’t mention in these poems

Frozen fingertips and ice frozen on brown tarps

Sleeping through a railroad crew change in Havre, Montana.

Wanting nothing more than a hot shot of whiskey

and a juniper twig of a cigarette rolled without the cover of cotton gloves.

Bright poems about house plants

Walking their way around hallway corners

prayer flags getting tossed in forty mile an hour gusts

A new used pickup truck in the driveway

Silver like the tracks of the Burlington Northern through Abo Canyon

East of Belen and south of Albuquerque and a quiet sobriety

Mink, a letter to...

well this is no poetry and no work of fine literature but these letters to mink are an extension of the on going muskrat theme and methodology of my madness and exploration of the fine line between autobiography and fiction.  As the line between fiction and life blur, details and emotions give way to the story.  As one of my favorite ethnographer's Kathleen Stewart observed in her book A Space By the Side of the Road, its the telling or rather the act of re-telling that creates our truths.  Truth lies within the story and within the teller/re-teller.  Maybe i will further elaborate on this at a later date.  Here is my latest letter.  god speed lil animals...

Dear Mink-

Night has settled in nicely and a cold front is blowing in. They say rain turning to snow over night.  That’s just fine with this old Muskrat.  The edges of the gardeners plastic is weighed down well with cinder blocks and the spinach is well watered and almost a weeks worth of nights in the ground.  The cold frame is a well supported contraption of two by fours, pvc piping and rebar forming the skeleton.  Pansies and Violas are nestled in their pots for the hardy re-visitation of New Mexico February weather.  Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings are crackling over the record player, old 45’s I found at Charley’s Records.  It is quiet this year for Valentine’s and I am oddly content.  I have a Tupperware container full of buttermilk biscuits for the morning and white chocolate macadamia nut cookies for dipping in tea as I settle in for the night.

God speed lil animals, solidarity forever, ride free, live free and for the love of sanity fall in love with someone and tell them....

new poems and it tried snowing early this morning

I know I am not faithful to you dear friends... I forget to write, or scribble things down and lose them.  But I have a few small short new poems for you.  Its not much this close to valentine's day but its better than roses I assure you.  Watching A Charlie Brown Valentine's last night by myself, sipping a grapefruit soda, I remembered our own theatrical version we performed in Denver a few years and a life time ago.  Those were good times.  I have the flier somewhere in a shoe box tucked in storage.  But enough is enough.

I- Valentines present for me from a sunday morning

Waking up to a brief Sunday snow

Pulling back the light blue sheets

a bathrobe and a wool blanket mingle

and curl like a pit bull at my feet

Small flakes line the cinderblock wall

A baking flour coating over red paving stones

Leading towards raised beds and pansies

Brush off the dusting and accept February’s attempt at weather

With a shrug and yellow and blue blossoms.

 II- backyard scenery in black and white

In stark black ink lines

Cottonwoods and aspen branches in winter

A yellow breasted finch

stands out like a morning dove

the blackbirds eating breakfast

in the Governor Bent Elementary school

parking lot and dirt playground

under the swing sets and along the chain link fence

we along stood twenty six years ago

 I know its nothing much but its what i have right now.  I have another letter to mink in the works for early next week. Until then love the people close to you, take care of your feet, touch your fingers to the pages of a book.  Ride free, live free, tell someone who doesn't already know it that you love them. God speed lil animals and solidarity forever.