Celebrating Dean Rader’s two new books, Works & Days, and Engaged Resistance, American Indian Art, Literature, Film  from Alcatraz to NMAI 

Last week, the Creative Writing program and American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois hosted poet and professor Dean Rader for a reading and a lecture on September 28 – 29, 2011.

Dean examines the broadside of his poem created by Steve and Martin at Soybeans Press Broadside at University of Illinois. Cool beans.

This coming week, members of the American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois will drive in a van [yikes, all together, one for all and all for one.  Somehow that sounds all wrong to me?!] to Ohio State University to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Society of American Indians (SAI).  SAI, was originally formed in 1911 at Ohio State University in Columbus to work on issues facing Native peoples in the early 2oth century.  Some fifty American Indians were part of the organizational meeting.  Founding members included Dr. Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai-Apache), Charles Eastman (Dakota),Thomas L. Sloan (Omaha), Charles E. Dagenett (Peoria), Laura Cornelius (Oneida), and Chief Henry Standing Bear (Oglala Lakota), among others.

Watch for two new books by Muscogee Creek poet Joy Harjo coming out this fall!  Congratulations Joy.

   and

MFA students, AIS and Creative Writing faculty and staff hang out at Escobar's in Champaign, IL.

Joy Harjo, me, and Tim Tingle - escape artists one and all.

 And there we are side by side in a stolen car driving a promise road fast trying to escape the very place we’ve come from and paid good money for, and you floorboard it down the paved road until we hit the guardrail and sail across a dusty sandstone cliff onto an Oklahoma hay pasture, the car bucks to and fro like a rodeo bull but you don’t flinch; no, sir, you yank the gear shift into first, gun it, and off we go toward Big Sandy Creek, laughing.  Somehow we look into each other’s eyes and I can hear you say,  see, what did I tell you. . . 

My poem is an attempt to explain how I feel about Oklahoma, I love it, but I often run away from it like an escape artist.  On September 16, 17, at the 5 Tribes Story Conference writers, storytellers, filmmakers, performers, researchers broke all boundaries between us — and I was reminded (again) why I always return home . . .

The event was held at the famous Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma and shows why artists migrate in and out of Oklahoma, ever-returning, ever-living in Indian Territory and parts unknown.

Some things I said in my opening remarks were that for most of my life, I’ve tried to live up to what it meant to be an American Indian.  When I was young, I was very ignorant of what it meant to be “Indian.”  Everyone in my family was “Indian,” both my adopted Cherokee family, and my Choctaw birth family. I didn’t know that we were any different from other families.  We were just people doing what people do.  When I’ve stopped to think about it, I’ve had relatives that were barbers, soldiers, sheriff’s deputies, bakers, cleaning ladies, farmers, bronco riders, teachers, local feed mill workers, and Avon ladies.  Two of my great aunts worked in airplane factory in California during WW2.  All these people were Indians.

But does any of this sound particularly “Indian?”

As I was growing up in the 1960s, the world seemed very chaotic: the Vietnam war, the struggle for civil rights, the police beating up American Indians in Oklahoma City every Friday night, these were reoccurring events, juxtaposed against regular family gatherings in Ada, and other towns in southeastern Oklahoma.  Some of my great uncles and aunts went to stomp dance, and would also host family reunions in and around Ada.  Relatives would come home each summer from California, Arizona, New Mexico and even Texas.  There were all night sings at Stonewall with a great aunt playing the piano, my grandfather playing the fiddle, elders feeding the spirits, and me, eating crackers and squirrel dumplings listening, watching all these goings-on until I would fell asleep on family quilt.  My relatives would sing church hymns and popular songs, and I can remember my Cherokee grandmother singing Mockin’Bird Hill, a song written by Vaughn Horton, 1951.  I still know the refrain.

Does any of this sound particularly “Indian?”  (There’s that word again.)

Tribal peoples in Oklahoma would say “yes,” but mainstream Americans would say, “not really” because they expect Indians to look and be like “Hollywood Sioux,” riding horses and making statements like, “Today is a good day to die.”   I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples, I’m merely suggesting that because of Hollywood, everyone thinks we look like the Indians in John Ford films.

The 5 Tribes Story Conference showcased stories about who we are now, and who we were back when. . .   I’m indebted to my Choctaw brethren, Greg Rodgers and Tim Tingle, and Mary Robinson, director of the 5 Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma for creating this wonderful event.

Down in front, Cherokees: Les Hannah, and Robert Lewis; and, Choctaw Tim Tingle. Standing left to right: Muskogee Creek Joy Harjo; and Kim Roppolo; and Chickasaw Lynn Moroney; and Mary Robinson; Choctaws: me, and Stella Long; and Diane Glancy; and Choctaw Greg Rodgers; and Jerry Lincecum.

Phil Morgan on guitar.

A Life in Stories

My storyteller definition includes academics, (especially theorists) no matter the discipline.  The umbrella is large, but not unwieldy.

Can you name any of the storytellers in the pictures without captions?  If you can, give them a shout out the blog and I’ll send you a bookmark.

You’re right, these are not the same events. AIS hosted several storytellers.

 Can you name this Mayan scholar below? He was also part of the Sovereignty and Autonomy seminar last week.  [AIS faculty are excluded from this offer.]

Pictured are various writers at the first Carr Series’ dinner for Rolando Hinojosa-Smith for Creative Writing at Illinois. And one pix from the 5 Tribes Story Conference.  C’mon, names anyone?

Author Rolando Hinojosa-Smith from Austin Texas gave a reading for the Carr Series at Illinois.

Always have paper and pen handy when you ride.

To quote the late Choctaw author Roxy Gordon, here are “some things I did” – at least since my last blog in March 2011.

In April and May, 2011 I had radiation for the nuclear reactor in my body, the thyroid.  The similarities between your body’s metabolic system melting down, and a nuclear reactor meltdown are stunning.  Metaphor-wise, I mean.  With Graves Disease’ running amuck in one’s body, the levels of T4 and T3 rise to dangerous levels and burn out the control valves in your thyroid gland. T4 and T3 control how quickly your body uses energy i.e., the heart constantly races ahead, as you shed pounds and muscle; heart, kidneys, begin to suffer, and you think you’re losing your mind. The thyronines act on nearly every cell in the body, including those in the brain.  At the time I had radiation, I was living alone in Amman, Jordan.  It was during the heady days of the Arab Spring.  Living a solitary life turned out to be a good thing.  The first few days after radiation you can’t be in direct contact with anyone because you’re leaking radiation like a nuclear reactor.

All better now.  No worries.

Always have pen and paper handy when you ride.

Left:  Wintertime in Wadi Rum.  Sunset.

As a Fulbright scholar for 2010-2011, I was able to finish the semester at the University of Jordan in June, 2011, but not all of my research.   Yet, I had wonderful graduate students at UJ.  Pictured below.

Final Class Presentation, "At the Door of Spring."

Our last class together, and with some  visitors to our class presentation.  Pulling these pictures together for the blog makes me weepy.  My students for this class were:  Rasha Shaher, (back row, third from left) Majd Al-Kayed, (standing next to me, left) Malik al Khawaldeh, (standing on my right) Zainab Al Qaisi, (second row, second from left) and, Ayah Waqqad (front row third from left). Here’s a shout out to you all!  One of my students from the fall semester 2010 is also pictured here: Eman Ghanayem, (front row, second from left).  Here’s a shout out to Eman! Mabruk to Rasha, Madj, Zainab, Haneen, Eman that graduated with MA degrees.  And, Mabruk ya Zainab and Ahmed on the day of your wedding, September 10 2011.

In my Spring 2011 graduate class at University of Jordan students chose to show Arab transnationalism and how it works in modern context by creating five film short-shorts that were loosely woven together in a presentation we called, At the Door of Spring.  Each film project was created, written, filmed, produced, by a graduate student. Titles were: Amal’s Water [set in Libya]; Guevara, the Arab [set in Syria]; Fida’s Play [set in Egypt]; Khalid’s Choice [set in Palestine]; and Ooruba [a journalist covers each of the above events and narrates them.]  I miss Jordan, long to see it again, soon, and I especially miss the wonderful students and the Jordanian people, their hospitality, and all the things they taught me.   Below, here we are all piled into one car, zooming around Amman — for fun of it!

Rasha in sunglasses, me, Zainab, Ayah, and Eman.

 After classes finished, some other travels:

First night in Beirut, the Mosque downtown.

Flew to Beirut, Lebanon, for some additional research at the American University of Beirut.

Beirut, Yatiki alfia!  More pixs, far below, and left.

Beirut, Lebanon. Standing in front of Pigeon Rock, the gleaming Mediterranean Sea behind me.

Before leaving the Middle East, Jim Wilson and I devised Writing in Petra, a 10-day creative writing retreat in Petra, Jordan, June 2012.  We hope to bring writers from England, Canada, the U.S. and other countries to write in a retreat in Petra, a city as old as time.  If you’re interested in a cross-cultural writing adventure, check out our itinerary and website.  We’re just now beginning to market the writing retreat to writers.  We have 9 spaces left!

Always have pen and paper handy. Watching camels in the distance, Spring, 2011 Wadi Rum.

Saying good-byes, we left Amman, and headed straight for Alaska to the Kachemak Bay Writers Festival.  Some 14-city stops later, we arrived in Homer, Alaska.

There were two eagles outside the hotel room window.   I took that as a good sign, an eagle’s welcome.

At swim two eagles. Homer, Alaska, June 2011.

The sun never sets in Alaska in June.  So from desert sands reds to blue water and snow covered mountains.  I gave readings, and creative writing lectures in Homer, Alaska, and suffered from jet lag, at least I think it was jet lag.  I also got to see a dear friend of mine, Rigoberto Gonzales, fiction, CFN, and poet of six books.  We also had a sing-along and bon fire in the land of midnight sun.  A kind of dreamcycle moment for those of us not accustomed to midnight sun.

Poet Rigoberto Gonzales and me in a restaurant in Homer, Alaska for the Kachemak Bay Writers Festival.

Pictured far below are authors to the left, and right and all around, with author Hannah Tinti (The Good Thief) on ukulele, singing with friends “If I had a hammer.”

And Rita Dove sings back-up. Homer, Alaska.

Then back to Oklahoma in late June for Salon Ada: This year 8 writers and visual arts came together for a literary weekend in Ada, Oklahoma.  Four new books that are out from Salonaires this year are: Hanging Men, by Alvin Turner; Spare Parts by Ken Hada, winner of the 2011 Western Heritage Award for poetry, Dynamic Chickasaw Women, by Philip Carroll Morgan, (Choctaw-Chickasaw) and Indios, by Linda Hogan (Chickasaw).  Please give them a hand, or better yet, buy a book and read aloud to one another.  Beats TV!

Speaking of new books, Illinois colleague Jodi Byrd, (Chickasaw) has a new book, Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism.

Her book sails out scross the heavens, September 15, 2011.  Here pasted from the website: “In 1761 and again in 1769, European scientists raced around the world to observe the transit of Venus, a rare astronomical event in which the planet Venus passes in front of the sun. In The Transit of Empire, Jodi A. Byrd explores how indigeneity functions as transit, a trajectory of movement that serves as precedent within U.S. imperial history. Byrd argues that contemporary U.S. empire expands itself through a transferable “Indianness” that facilitates acquisitions of lands, territories, and resources.”

Also, colleague and friend, Dean Rader has a new book out, Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI.  Here’s a true confession.  My copy just arrived this past week so I’ll be reading it before he transits from the University of San Francisco to University of Illinois next week.  Pasted in from the University of Texas Press website:  From “Sherman Alexie’s films to the poetry and fiction of Louise Erdrich and Leslie Marmon Silko to the paintings of Jaune Quick-To-See Smith and the sculpture of Edgar Heap of Birds, Native American movies, literature, and art have become increasingly influential, garnering critical praise and enjoying mainstream popularity. Recognizing that the time has come for a critical assessment of this exceptional artistic output and its significance to American Indian and American issues, Dean Rader offers the first interdisciplinary examination of how American Indian artists, filmmakers, and writers tell their own stories.”

Dean will also be reading in the Carr Reading Series, September 28, 4:30 p.m. at IUB on the Illinois campus.  His first book of extraordinary poems, Work and Days, was winner of the coveted T. S. Eliot prize in poetry 2010.  Look for the schedule of events on the Illinois’ Creative Writing website under “Carr Reading Series.”  We’re delighted to host him.

Finally, I’m working on a new theater project with playwright and performer Monique Mojica.  (Grandma Builds the Fire, Smoke Signals.)  We’re working on a new play, Sideshow Freaks and Circus Injuns for which we (six principle investigators/researchers) were funded $238,500 by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines Research/Creation Grants in Fine Arts: November 2010 Competition Awards in Ontario Canada.  The project is to research Indigenous knowledge, contemporary performance over the next three years.  This past week we trekked across four states and visited mound sites. From mound sites outside of Toronto Canada, our travels took us to Cahokia Mounds, Poverty Point Mounds, Spiral Mounds, and finally Tuskahoma for the Choctaws Labor Day Festival.

Monique Mojica, a cotton field, and Jackson Mound in the distance, Epps, Louisiana.

Of course, once at the Choctaw Nation’s homelands, we hung out with ball players, and visited the Choctaw Museum and gift shop at Tuskahoma.

Always have pen and paper handy.

Above, Monique signs autographs while we talked to Jay Watson, coach of the Chahtas Women’s ball club.  The Chahtas were winners of the 2011  Women’s Fastpitch Softball tournament at Red Warrior Park in Tuskahoma.  Go Chahtas!

Pitcher for the Chahtas. Winners of the Women's Tournament at Tuskahoma, 2011

Working, writing, working, writing on new play, a new collection of short stories, nearly complete, a memoir, a scholarly book on base and ball, and a new novel.  Okay sometimes I am all hat and no cattle, I admit.  However, Seeing Red: American Indians and Film will be out next year, fingers crossed, from MSU Press, edited by Harvey Markowitz, Denise Cummings and myself.   Whew, that’s all folks.

Beauty in front of me, beauty all around.  Beauty in all things. . . achukma.

Later this week, I’ll be posting the fast-pitch softball tourneys for summer in Oklahoma courtesy of Jay Watson. Go Jay! Can’t wait to come to some of the games this summer.

The ear of Petra

Things are pretty quiet here although since January protests have been ongoing in the ballad [downtown Amman] each Friday after prayers at al-Husseini Mosque.  People are angry over the extremely high prices of vegetables, gasoline, heating oil, and many other essentials.  Wages are low.  As I wrote on FB, the price of sugar in January was five dinars a bag, about $6.70 US dollars.  In the last month sugar prices have now come down to 2.99 dinars a bag.  Of course, things are more politically complex than just the price of sugar, but the government is working on the problems.  Just like in America, middle class people everywhere are scraping by, and just like in America, there’s a wide gap between rich and poor.  (Anyone want to talk about Wisconsin?)  Just like Americans, people everywhere want good jobs, food on the table, health care, and good educations for their children.

Crimony, watching American politicos and pundits on cable news networks blather about the Middle East is mind numbing.  Kinda like watching Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons.  For those who’ve never seen the series from Looney Tunes, each episode has Coyote scheming to cause the downfall of his “friend,” Road Runner, (a bird).  Over and over Coyote uses flimsy “Acme Corporation” devices to try and trick Road Runner.  Same scenario again and again in every cartoon.  And right now it seems to me that US politicians use the same weak narrative to try and disguise what they really want from the Arab world . . . See The Palestinian Papers released in January 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/201112214310263628.html.

You know.  And I know.  And all of our friends know.  We are all very knowledgeable people *

Perhaps there’s another analog even more appropriate to this discussion.  There’s a nineteenth-century American motto used by Christians and military men alike: “Kill the Indian, Save the Man[1].”  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865 If you haven’t read any American Indian history you should.  US federal Indian policy is a template for colonizers everywhere.  However, American Indian resistance to being colonized is a template that can be used for anyone trying to shake off the chains of colonialism.  “Kill the Indian and save the man” is also emblematic of the US policy to control our minds (and our lands) in order to “save us from ourselves.”  But for what?  And for whom?  That’s the 70 billion dollar question the Egyptians are now trying to figure out.

Ah-hum.  I have just more thing to say about US politicians before moving on.  Here is a special shout out to former Minnesota Republican governor Tim Pawlenty.  “Shut up, sir, you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to Arab peoples.”  (Sorry I had to get that off my chest.)  Pawlenty’s interview last week with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour really irked me the way he talked about all Arabs as ideologues.

The door is open

Jordanians are hospitable and generous.  They’re some of the most patience people I’ve ever met, except for maybe the Lakota, and I should probably include my own tribe, the Choctaws, in these sweeping generalizations.  For the most part, Jordanians are kind, even when they’re going through your UPS package at the airport.  Recently I had to go pick up a small box of books at the airport.  It had been tagged for “search.”  I was the only woman in the airport custom’s office, sitting with security officers, UPS and Fed Ex guys, and Muhaberat.  Everyone was very professional.  Checking international boxes for contraband is routinely done here, and I understand why.  So, I had to wait my turn, an hour or so, and eventually three men opened my book box to make sure it was only filled with books.  Someone brought in breakfast, and they offered me a falafel sandwich and tea, and I must say even with my bad Arabic, and their good English, we had an excellent exchange about American Indians, tribal sovereignty, Indian fast-pitch softball, and why I teach in Jordan.  I know, I know, I may have misread cross-cultural cues going on all around me.   Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I get it wrong.  I did what I always do in these situations, I talked about sports, and soccer, er-r-r, I mean, football.  “Go Jordan.”  All in all, we exchanged information about our families, and ourselves even in strange places such as a custom’s office.  Like I repeatedly say to friends and family, via email: it’s safe here despite what’s going on in other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.  And I’m okay.  Come visit me.  Yeah, I mean it.

A change of point of view.

I’ve also learned that it takes a special wacky personality to want to live in a foreign place where you don’t speak the language or the cultural cues.  How to manage it?  You must start by replacing all you know.  Everything familiar must be broken, remapped, filed away in a coffin of former memories.  Living abroad is a brainfire, you burn off the old grasses so new ones can grow.  That’s what I’ve been doing these past five months.  My guides on this journey are the people of Jordan; the students at Jordan University, friends, bank clerks, pharmacy, and grocery clerks and yes, even the taxi drivers.  Inshallah, I learn.  I came here to research a novel about the 1917 Arab revolt, and twenty-first century American Indians.  At first it may seem like a strange combination to write about Indians and Arabs, but you’ll be surprised.  Of course, I’m revising my chapters set in 2011.

PS: The Flamboyant lives.  He’s still crowing every fifteen minutes of every day.

PPS:  I am not patient.

[Just FYI.  My comments here are my own.  I am not an official of the Department of State, and this is not an official Department of State website.  The views and information presented here are my own, and do not in any way, represent the USA's William J. Fulbright Program, or the Department of State.]

Two Crows Talking, the High Place in Petra

Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,

And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:

Rays that have wander’d into Darkness wide

Return and back into your Sun subside[i]

I’ve longed been compelled by The Conference of Birds.  Well, that’s putting it mildly.  I’ve longed been compelled by birds.  I’m not sure why.  Probably because of my grandmother, but that’s another story.

In writing my first novel Shell Shaker, 2001, I used lines from The Conference of Birds, that served the plot in a variety of ways.   After all these years, I continue to re-read the Sufi poem for poetic language and its dynamic spirituality: that is — what is eternal, (the God, Allah, Yahweh, the Great Spirit, the essence of the universe) is not external or separate, rather it is all that is.  The totality of existence.  We humans and our world are made of that existence.  In the Sufi poem when the thirty birds reach their destination, they see only each other and their reflection in the lake.  Hence, they are the ones they have been seeking.  All that is — is with them.

Of course, there are many interpretations of The Conference of Birds. I don’t know them all.

“The Parrot longs for immortality”

I bring it up because as I’ve been watching the Egyptian people protest against the 30-year regime of President Hosni Mubarak, I realize that the poem still affects me. So far, all of the colonizing western nations, including the USA, have been wringing their hands saying, “Who will take President Hosni Mubarak’s place should he leave?”  Actually, I think they mean, “How can we replace Mubarak with our man when we don’t know who our man is on such short notice?”

At first, I found myself asking similar stupid questions. “Who will lead Egypt?” Then light dawns, “Hey, this is not for me to say.  I’m a foreigner living in a neighboring country.  Egypt is not my homeland, not even close.  The Egyptian people will solve this without outsiders.” So I again re-read the final passages of The Conference of Birds.  The 30 birds find, at the end of their journey, only themselves, their reflection.  Perhaps it’s the same with the Egyptians.  And by extension, all of us. We may find that it’s our own highest selves we seek.  I believe, (hope) that the Egyptian people will visualize a new leader for the new era, the twenty-first century.  All that we are, all of existence, all atoms, molecules, sub-atomic particles, the vast expanse of space, McDonalds’ french fries, everything was created at once and integrated in us — all through the art of creation.  Let’s make the most of it.  Together.

Err-r-r, snap! See why I return again and again to The Conference of Birds. We’re separated; we’re connected; we’re separated; we’re connected; which is it?

“Where is the hand to pour dust on my head, Or lift me from the dust where I lie dead? Where is the foot that seeks the longed-for-place?”

There are paradoxes to be considered.  Questions to be turned over and over — like our relationship(s) with everything, including the divine.  Should we stick to our own bordered enclaves, or should we connect and link our stories?  I’m not entirely sure, but here goes:

According to a news story in the Jordan Times, July 2010, Labour Minister Ibrahim Omoush said, “that over 100,000 out of the 338,000 Egyptian workers in the Kingdom do not have valid work or residency permits.”  (It costs 400 JD to get a work permit in Jordan. The residency permit costs 69 JD.)  I’m not complaining about the fees, I’m in the guest worker category as a Fulbright scholar, and immigration and visa rules are in place for valid reasons.  Goodness knows in America we’re ate up with “illegal-alien-immigration” issues, even as Mexicans still do the bulk of the farm work, restaurant and domestic servant work in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.  You know, mowing lawns, housekeeping, nannying, picking lettuce and tomatoes, all jobs most Americans refuse to do.  According to the same Jordan Times’ article, Egyptian laborers constitute around 70 per cent of all guest workers in Jordan.  In that way, Mexicans in the USA are not unlike Egyptians in Jordan.  Both countries depend on cheap foreign labor.  So we’re linked by our economic self-interests.

In this week’s demonstrations in Tahrir Square it’s clear why Egyptians turn to other countries for work.  There are not enough jobs at home.  As the most populated Arab country, two-thirds are under age 30, and ninety percent of that age group is unemployed[ii]. But as University of Illinois professor Asef Bayat writes[iii], “At stake is not just jobs and descent material welfare; at stake is also the people’s dignity and pursuit of human and democratic rights.  As we have seen so powerfully in Tunisia, the translation of collective dissent into collective action and sustained campaign for change has its own intriguing and often unpredictable dynamics.”

“Being just is better than a life of worship. Justice exercised in secret is even better than liberality; but justice professed openly may lead to hypocrisy” Aaron's Tomb, Petra.

Yet another connection.

In my area of Amman, there are many young Egyptian workers.  They’ve come here to work.  Most send money home to their families.  Sound familiar USA? Today, I paid the monthly utilities bills for my flat.  I gave the money to Mohammed (not his real name), the under-thirty-year-old Egyptian who takes care of the building where I live.  He speaks very little English, I speak very little Arabic.  This morning when he comes to collect the bills, he looks tired and sad.  I have the tv on Al Jazeera, watching the events unfold in Tahrir Square. We exchange polite greetings.  I ask about his health.

“Keif el saha?”

“Tamam.”  Fine.

For a brief second we lock eyes.  There’s a glint of a tear.  He looks away.

“I am sorry,” I say.

“I go now.” As he’s about to head to the next apartment he turns, “Mubarak go.”  He says it firmly so there is no misunderstanding as to what he means, or how he feels.

“Mubarak khallas,” I say.  Mubarak finished.

Later, as I watch the continuing media coverage around Egypt, I know that I don’t really know whether Mubarak is finished or not.  Since I write mainly for my friends, maybe this story is for you to connect with.

“The journey of the birds takes them through the seven valleys of the quest, love, understanding, independence and detachment, unity, astonishment, and finally poverty and nothingness.”

And as we are told in countless stories, nothingness is everything that is.

[Just FYI.  My comments here are my own.  I am not an official of the Department of State, and this is not an official Department of State website.  The views and information presented here are my own, and do not in any way, represent the USA's William J. Fulbright Program, or the Department of State.]

I took this picture while driving to my flat in Amman. That ought to scare everyone!

Remember that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), you know the one where Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) looks like he’s 10,000 years old sitting at a breakfast table somewhere in space eating a bowl of corn flakes.  Freaky right?!  Like uh-hum, he doesn’t know he’s 10,000 years old and the corn flakes he’s eating are way past their expiration date.  Imagine the smell.  Then in the last scene in the film, Dr. Dave’s back in the womb about to being reborn in the USA (it’s Hollywood, after all) and he’ll undoubtedly grow up and vote Republican.

That’s what happened to me.  I don’t mean I was reborn, nor will I ever register to vote Republican.  But I’ve been sucked into a time warp just like Dr. Dave.  Consider the similarities: Dave was living abroad, (me too).  He was trying to learn a new complex language he didn’t understand, (same here).  He was living alone (moi aussi).  Because no one was around to say, “Hey deadbeat, 10,000 years just swooshed by while you were eating breakfast,” Dave let a few things go, like his fingernails.  While I’ve not let my personal hygiene run amuck, I have let a few things slip, — this blog, some half-dozen other articles I was supposed to have finished two months ago (whereby my friends are now gnashing their teeth and sending emails filled with words like shi*.)  You know the word.  Then there’s my novel.  I’ve promised that I’ll have a draft finished before I leave Jordan in June.  Yikes.  Now I’m biting my nails. In my defense, I can only say, “Hang it all, I’ve been busy!”

Excuses 101:

Found a mysterious, obviously artificial, artifact buried on the moon and, with the help of the intelligent computer HAL, I’m working on decoding it . . . No wait, mish hak, not right.  Stanley, please excuse me for plagiarizing from the movie trailer.

Arabizi. I’m learning a mix of Arabic, English.  Bankers, candlestick makers, electricians, clerks in all the shopping malls speak Arabizi.  Day-by-day I lose more and more English.  Amman’s taxi drivers are my best teachers.  King Abdullah II should know just how lucky he is to have a jillion cabbies in Amman teaching foreigners about the city, Arabic language, and about Jordan. Once you get in the cab conversations often go like this:

“From where?” asks the taxi driver, swerving through bumper-to-bumper traffic, while turning around to look at me.

“Min Chicago?”  I always say Chicago.  It’s the closet city to Urbana-Champaign, where I teach at the University of Illinois.  Most Jordanians know it.

“Ahlein. Welcome to my country,” he says, still looking at me while honking at a pesky driver who’s just thrown his car in reverse and headed right for us.  My cabbie swerves just in the nick of time.  Honks. Honks. Honks.

He turns back to me. “Why to come, Ordinea?” He’s driving. Still honking. Now he lights a cigarette to calm his nerves from the last near head-on collision.

“Ana doctora Jama Ordinea.” (FYI, in case you can’t tell, all my words in Arabic are tragically misspelled.)

“Wayne hatha?” I ask, pointing toward the streets ahead and the buildings. “Where this?”

“Sweihlah,” he says, answering his cell and turning to me so I’m re-assured that he understands my pitiful Arabic.

“Ah.” I say.

He looks concerned. “You go Sweihlah?”

“La,” I say, trying to flick my chin upward  to emphasis the word, “no.”   I add in English. “Just asking.”

“Shoo?” “What?” Between chatting on the cell phone, driving, and talking to me, I can see we’ve hit a roadblock in our cross-cultural communications.  My fault, my fault.   Also, I think he must be talking to his children, because every few words are Babba Taabani. “Father tired.”  I don’t know for certain though, I’m handicapped by my inability to truly ease drop on the conversations of Arabs on cell phones. . . something I do all the time with Americans.

“La-la-la.  Sorry.” I say.

“No problem,” he answers.

What’s happening to me is that I’m trying to ingest survival Arabic.  It’s a strange phenomenon to hear oneself speak broken English, broken Arabic, with someone else’s accent. One of my friends here is a professor from New York’s Suny Geneseo.  She and I were laughing about how we’re losing English.  What does that say about cross-cultural exchanges?  Maybe because we have no one around to speak English with on a daily basis, not at home, not at work, not everyday, the loss of language happens much faster.  This might be insight as to why American Indian children such as my great grandparents, grandparents, my birth mother, lost their language so quickly at boarding schools.  I’ve only been in Jordan for three months and wallah, don’t have, I forget words.

Notes on Amman – Part 1

10/27/10

What the hell am I doing here?  I shouldn’t have come. The end.  Grrrrgh.  Yesterday was a bad day.  Today is starting out not much better.

10/30/10

That cartoon summer.

11/01/10

My dear friend, Ken Bordeaux died in a rest home somewhere in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I grieve.

11/4/10

A bee committed suicide today in my kitchen.  He flew directly into a tub of Clorox water.  Why?

Ooo Baadan.  And then later at a restaurant.

“Biddee hi, — shooishmoe — agua, la, mishhak, water, Maiyi.  Maszboot. Maiyi.”

“I want this. . . . what is it, agua, that’s Spanish, no, not right. Water. Correct. Maiyi”

My friend and I started to laugh. What’s happening?  We lose English.  It’s a good thing Jordanians are so tolerant, I’ve butchered all words, male, female gendered speech, everything, all the time.  Many times a taxi driver will say, “Talk English, I understand.”

I’m considering that I might be undergoing a complete personality overhaul.  Not a bad thing, I know.  I could also be experiencing a change in my social skills, too.   Not a good thing.  Here, I smile too much at complete strangers, (my home training) a cross-cultural mistake. For example it gives some in Amman the wrong idea.  “I’m easy.” “A simpleton.” “Lose woman.”

In Ada, for example, I talk to everyone on the streets, in stores, hospitals, movietheaters. We tell our life stories to the grocery clerks at the checkout counters.  They reciprocate.  I once had a heartfelt conversation with the CableOne technician outside in my backyard about the trouble he was having with his teenage son in the ninth grade.  I tried to help him by making suggestions. Listening.  We were complete strangers, but we talked sincerely about his son – what to do.  We trusted.  I’ve never seen him again, nor do I know his name, but I remember his story.  In Ada, especially among Natives, it is considered rude not to look at people, chat with them, and smile.  Be open to strangers like the tiger lilly blooming at dawn.  Always open.  (Probably another reason American Indians have vulnerability to foreign diseases.)

I also think when there are two languages floating inside one’s head, time stands still, slows down.  In a culture different from our own, we must learn new rules, new physical routines and gestures, just as we once did as babies.  Open, close.  Open.  Remember how time dragged on when we were young children? I’m convinced it’s the physical embodiment of new gestures that intervenes, disrupts our mental and physical aging processes.  Hence time slows down, even reverses itself.  Living abroad we become newborn.  Perhaps this explains how it’s possible to feel 10,000 years old, and yet still be in the womb.  Just like Dr. Dave Bowman.

Notes on Amman – Part 2

11/09/10

Four Jordanian men including the guard at the gate at the University of Jordan help us read a map so we can get to our formal dinner on time.  They bring help from their friends.  All seven men are talking at once and earnestly giving advice on how to negotiate our journey outside of Amman.  I can’t understand a word.  Eventually one man waits with us in the dark to flag down a taxi so he can tell the driver where to take us.  He will not leave two women alone on our own.  What a kindness to behold.  I feel renewed.

11/16/10

“The family is the atomic building blocks of Arab tribes,” says Jim Wilson.

11/20/10

I stop at Al Qutrana rest stop off Highway #15 heading south when I see President Barak Hussein Obama driving a Petra bus.  Swear to God.  He is quite handsome dressed in a blue bus driver’s uniform.  I wave.  I am a nationalist after all.

While it looks like a small desert road, over the hill is the great Crusader castle at Al-Shawbak. A memory. 1993.

11/21/10

I find the Jordan we knew in 1993, it exists on the little road to Shawbak Castle. (I’m incognito, driving myself, I pass unnoticed.)

11/26/10

Today is begging day.  The ladies in black are back knocking at my apartment door.

11/30/10

Tonight my Mom is watching TV in the living room of my flat.  I heard her sniffling as I type this.

Metaphor over Amman

Then at dusk

the heart of the world showed up

looming large over my balcony in Amman

like a circulating ship,

its two great arteries pumping oxygen,

sacred rain

the color of blood.

Taybet Village. 18th century village, outside of Wadi Musa where friends live.

Left.  Taybet Village in southern Jordan. 18th century.  I drove there myself.  YAH! All over the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan by myself.  YAH!

Pictured far below, right, Rasha Shaher, and a curator at the Old English Church in Salt, Jordan.  Rasha is my TA this semester at the University of Jordan.  We went to find the The Old English Church and the English hospital, a site in my latest novel, and part of my research here in Jordan. Construction began on the hospital in 1869.  Medical work to the public, 1873.  Christian Missionaries often came to Beirut first, then made their way to Salt one of the leading trade centers in Bilaad Ash Sham.

Below-below, right.  I’m invited to a wedding during EID al Adha.  Eman Ghanayem, my student at UJ, invited me to come to her cousin’s wedding.  An honor, truly. The food was great, the cake was gorgeous as were the bride and groom.  There must have been 300 people in attendance from all over the Middle East.

PS:  The Flamboyant One Lives.

PPS: I will write this book.  Hekano!  (Choctaw. The last word.)

Rasha Shaher and the curator at the Old English Hospital, Salt. Newly restored to the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf.

The bride entering the hotel where families have gathered.

Fatima Ghanayem, me, her daughter Eman Ghanayem. I'm invited to their families' wedding.

What are you looking at? Don't you recognize the yoga Corn Tree pose when you see it?

In my rush to present my urban upgrade to Amman, Jordan as sizzle, snap and pop, which it is by the way, (even after one month, I love it here all the more) I did leave out one itsy bitsy detail:  I live in a birdcage.

Okay, okay, so I don’t live in a birdcage, ignore that for the moment, but I do live among the birds of Amman.  I’m completely surrounded. From my top floor apartment, there are pigeons practicing yoga on the rooftops, crows gossiping on my windowsills, and some variety of tiny songbirds, can’t tell what they are, flying around the balcony each morning singing happy tunes.  They’re in Arabic, I can’t decipher them, yet.  And of course, the English sparrows.

Close up shot of the English House Sparrows eyeing the sack of bread atop the chicken coop.

There’s also a wily rooster living directly below me.  Yeah, you know, a cock.  That’s right, gallus gallus domesticus. Et pullus.  Chickens, too.  He, The Flamboyant One, (not his real name) lives in the birdcage, a.k.a. the chicken coop, pictured right, with bread sacks atop it.  He’s rather large in size, weighs at least 3 kilos, and solid black.  From my fieldwork investigations I’d say he’s a Spanish Black Castellana, they’ve been selectively bred and are well known for their motto: no ducor, duco, “I am not led, I lead.”  The Flamboyant One is usually one beat ahead of Adhan, the sunrise chant that calls all Muslims to pray, sent out from the nearby Minaret by a Muezzin.

A month ago when I moved into the apartment in the late afternoon, I was charmed by the rooster’s crowing routine. How delightfully quaint. But when he started up the next morning at 4:39 a.m., I jumped straight up out of bed.  Egads, he’s crowing at 4:39 in the freaking morning! The screeching reverberated off the limestone walls of the adjacent apartment buildings and continued every 30 seconds until 10 a.m. when he took a brief respite.  At 10:15, The Flamboyant One was back on the job until he stopped for lunch at 1 p.m.  Afterwards he disappeared into his modest abode for a very long nap rousing occasionally to step outside, sniff the breeze, stretch his wings, showoff his fancy wattles and flashy red comb, pick at a piece of bread, or potato peel, whatever is left for him by his devoted caregivers.  Last rooster crow, sunset.

Sunset in Amman serenaded by The Flamboyant One

Don’t ask me how I know all this: endless note taking, fact checking and rechecking, jotting down the rooster’s hourly behaviors, interpreting meaning out of each flap of the wing, and worst of all — taking samples.  Surely it must be obvious what’s happened to me.  I’ve become a fowl anthropologist.  Bioarchaeologist, whatever.  To be a legit bioarchaeologist though, I’ll have to get a look-see at his bones before I leave. . .more on that later.

Anyway, you get the point.  It’s been the same every day for over a month.  Endless crowing, and the reason I say to passersby on the streets, I live in a birdcage.  Of course now that the sunrise is later, I can sleep until 6:40-ish.  I’ve tried to remedy the situation:  I turn on a fan and put it by my head to muffle the screeching.  I’ve shut the windows and suffocated in the heat all September.  Lately, I’ve simply given up, or given in to the bondage of birdcalls.

Once before I’d witnessed this kind of behavior from a rooster.  It was when I was visiting a friend in San Francisco.  This particular gallus gallus domesticus acted in similar fashion — crowing to wake the dead. The renters on the first floor apartment near Golden Gate Park kept chickens penned up in the back of the apartment.  With each crack of dawn that California bird would give it his all.  Repeatedly.  However in San Francisco, unlike Amman, one can just shut the windows to blot out the clamor of farm animals.  Not so in Amman.  All the windows should remain open at night to allow in the desert winds to cool down the houses, apartments, unless you want to wake up completely covered in sweat. I have.

Yet, it’s easy to understand why people are raising chickens these days.  They need the eggs.  It’s much healthier to raise our own chickens – just like our ancestors/relatives used to do in “the good ole days.”  My tongue is in my cheek. But check out this article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/business/22eggs.html that ran in the NYT this past summer on the “Salmonella Enteritidis King” Austin J. DeCoster, one of the biggest egg producers in America. DeCoster’s egg operations are located in Iowa, so Iowans be warned: get your bird flu shots early and often!

Back to my life in a birdcage:

Normally, I’m not like this. Birds are very important messengers to American Indians.  The eagle is a powerful symbol of protection and valor in warfare, and highly revered, and there are hawks, ravens, also beloved for their variety of interactions with native peoples.  Even the owl is a special kind of messenger.  I should also mention that our tribal newspaper at the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is called, Biskinik, meaning the newsbird.  And I do love all birds and wildlife. In fact, I’m quite partial to shooting, grilling, and eating doves. “Grain feeders” as we Okies like to call them in the parlance of our homelands.  Doves are cousins of pigeons in the group known as Columbidae within the order of Columbiforms.  Doves are superior in all ways.  Sacred in some cultures. Who can forget Mourning Dove, the Salish author who wrote Cogewea, the Half-Blood. No one names themselves, or his or her kid, “Mourning Pigeon.” And nowadays city pigeons are inedible.  Trash eaters.  Believe you me up close and personal as I see them every morning on the windowsills, looking around for a morsel of garbage, I must report — pigeons are downright disgusting.

But chickens are a different breed of fowl.  They don’t go all to pieces when trapped in a small city garden.  In fact, they thrive in cities just waiting for a chance to have a go at their captors.  And really, who can blame them?

From my balcony, the chicken coop and the garden below.

Once when I was two and a half, maybe three, I accidently wandered inside my mother’s chicken pen.  She kept chickens.  We were living in Bethany and while our house was only a block from the Wiley Post Airport, we had a large vegetable garden, a cement cellar, and two dogs named Skippy and Tex, plus some chickens and a rooster from hell.

I don’t know how I got into the chicken pen, but I did.  Before I knew what was happening our big black rooster, most likely a distant Spanish ancestor of The Flamboyant One had jumped on my back. What I do remember clearly was trying to run away as he was pecking at my hair, clawing my back and face.  It was like that scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s, movie The Birds. You know the one where the kids are running down the street, screaming with blackbirds pecking their ears.  I still have a faint scar that our rooster gave me under my right eye. Mom said he was trying to peck out my eye.  Awesome.

Chickens, purportedly are one more damn thing that the Spanish brought to American Indians. That’s why I think it’s ironic that the two roosters I’ve had dealings with are Spanish Black Castellanas. Recently though, a new archaeological survey suggests that radiocarbon dating coupled with DNA analysis of a chicken bone in far west South America points to our friends the Polynesians as the true culprits for bringing chickens to the New World.  All I can say is fight it out amongst yourselves, whether Polynesian or Spanish, either brand will wind up in the frying pan at my house.

After Mom cleaned me up and doctored my eye, all those years ago, she grabbed a large butcher knife and went outside.  Our rooster became dinner. “Tough old bird,” she’d say, laughing softly, whenever she’d retell the story.  The rest of that day for me is totally blank. Trauma usually affects me that way.

Of course I have other childhood recollections of birds.  My grandmother kept many varieties of songbirds in birdcages on the back porch of her house in Ada.  Each morning, she’d talk to them, and they would apparently talk to her.  She used to scare me to death with stories of birds turning into beings, and how she herself once flew over my hospital bed as a large bird.  I’ve written about Grandmother’s life with mysterious birds in “The Story of America: A Tribalography,” and in several other memoir-like stories.  And there was my character in Shell Shaker, Grandmother of Birds.

Like most women of her era, my grandmother kept chickens.  One Sunday when we were staying at her house, she asked me to help clean a fat hen after she’d killed it.  ”You should learn how to do this,” she said.  I was probably six or seven and hadn’t yet understood what “you should learn this,” really meant.   She used a big knife.  Then she put the hen in a hot washtub of boiling water.  After a few minutes, she brought it out of the water and we pulled all the feathers off.  A big smelly messy job.  It seemed to take hours, but I’m sure it didn’t.  She then cut up the hen, floured it, fried it, made cream gravy and mashed potatoes covered in creamery butter.  By the time we sat down for dinner, I’d completely forgotten where the meat came from.  To this day, I still remember how her southern fried chicken tasted cooked in a cast iron skillet.

Here in Amman, I’ve noticed that the frozen chickens in the markets are called “Grillers” and on the packaging it says they are killed in the Islamic tradition, halal, “by the hand with a large knife.”  This sounds right to me, given my history.  While Choctaws and Cherokees weren’t replicating Islamic traditions, we always used large knives to kill and butcher our meats.  If you think it’s cruel and unusual treatment for the chickens, you haven’t been keeping up with current events.  Take a look at this news report about how chicken is being processed these days for fast food restaurants?

http://early-onset-of-night.tumblr.com/post/1206666159/say-hello-to-mechanically-separated-chicken-its. 

Whew, what a way to go!  Much worse than anything I could imagine.  In the few hours left to me during the night, I’ve dreamt that The Flamboyant One dies in a horrible accident, mowed down by one of Amman’s fast maneuvering yellow taxis.  I admit zipping in, around, and through six or seven lanes of Amman traffic in a tiny hybrid car punctuates the central nervous system like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, save psychedelic drugs.  More on driving fast in the Middle East while playing with my Arabizi . . . in the next blog. Suffice to say that seeing the Spanish Black Castellana rubbed out on the payment right in front of my eyes seems like an accident waiting to happen . . . gate left open, time of night.  You get the picture. Of course in the same pre-dawn dream, I’m being interviewed by the Muhaberat asking me about the cause of death of the neighbor’s pet rooster.  Smiling devilishly as if I’ve got a secret like one of the female vamps in the TV commercials for True Blood, I shrug and say, “Maabarif.” I don’t know.

In another of my crazy dreams, The Flamboyant One is ripped wing-by-feather, thrown to the four winds by a blast from a particularly nasty dust devil, (desert tornado) along with the crows, pigeons, and hens.

So okay, okay, enough of counting crows and killing cocks. After re-reading the report about the smushed-up chickens in an industrial sieve, all pink goo and everything, I’ve had fitful dreams.  Listen, the food here in Amman is fabulous. So are the fresh eggs. And given my snootiness about food, I don’t think I’ll be eating that pink stuff any time soon.  Regardless, this morning I woke up half worried that something might have happened to the poor rooster downstairs.  I was sick at heart, feeling guilty especially after all the disasters I’d wished would befall him.  Within seconds though, I heard his familiar obnoxious voice, and I grabbed my camera to get his picture, as well as the other birds I live among.

Strutting in the garden below my apartment!

Pictured above, The Flamboyant One, alive and well and living in a beautiful garden in Amman, filled with fig trees, a grape arbor, flanked by a rose garden, and a row of enormous cactus plants.

Oh by the way, this evening I bought a griller and cooked dinner for myself. Southern fried chicken, potatoes and peas, and cream gravy. It was the least I could do.

Allah yatiki al-aafi.

Wedding fireworks

I arrived in Amman, Jordan from Ada, Oklahoma during the last three days of Ramadan, a major event in the Arab world celebrated yearly during the ninth month of Islamic calendar. Observed by more than one billion Muslims worldwide, Ramadan is for spiritual purification achieved through fasting, self-sacrifice, and prayers.  The fast takes place from sunrise to sunset, and is one of the five Pillars of Islam.  On my fourth day in Amman, Ramadan concluded with a 3-day festival known as “Eid” or “Eid ul-Fitr,” which literally means “the feast of the breaking/to break the fast.” The holiday marks the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, and is a culmination of the month-long struggle towards a higher spiritual state. I was badly jet-lagged from the long flight, so unfortunately hard as I tried, I could not stay awake for all the final hours of Ramadan.

But many Christians here in Amman do fast during Ramadan to show respect for their fellow citizens.  I’m told this increases solidarity between religious communities here, and I note that Christmas is also listed on many calendars in Jordan.  When Ramadan ended, I was still staying in a hotel and had not yet moved into my apartment.  August is ruggedly hot in the Middle East and for two million people in Amman to refrain from their most basic human urges: to drink water, or eat anything at all, [or smoke cigarettes] is remarkable. Imagine in the United States if each and every person refrained from eating and drinking from sun up to sundown — for a month?  (Imagine if our US elected officials were to give up campaigning for a month.)  So as I witnessed “Eid ul-Fitr,” from my hotel room window, I can report that I had an overwhelming sense of joy — it was in the air and on the faces of everyone I came into contact with.

Since the breaking of the fast, the kingdom of Jordan has been in a celebratory mood with dozens of wedding parties to attend.  I, too, am in a festive mood because at last I’ve moved into my new apartment. As I write, I’m seated outside on the balcony watching the moonrise over Amman.  See pix below left.

Moonrise over the city of Amman

This evening one wedding party after another drives around the neighborhood honking and caravanning happy couples to their honeymoon destinations.  All this excitement reminds me of the first wedding I attended decades ago, around the age of eight.  Maybe nine.  I was spending the weekend at my friend’s house in Bethany Oklahoma. Her sister had gotten married that same day. I must have attended the wedding, but those details have faded from memory.  I do however recall a young blond woman, tall, wearing a white dress, ankle length, with yards of gathers in the skirt, a pink belt around her waist.  Seems like her shoulders are exposed. She has the whitest skin I’ve ever seen, yet I can’t even remember her name.  As for my clothes, I have no idea what I was wearing.  That’s the way memory works, we can’t always see ourselves as we were.

I was probably invited to the wedding to keep Charlotte, my third grade friend, company. Her sister was much older than she was.  Probably 18 at the time, but I’m guessing.

The stories of our life, or anyone’s life are breathed into existence when we remember them.  Tell them.  Repeat them.  Share them.  Memory is the spiritual realm of our being, the things we know about ourselves are centered there, and we make sense of these random images, scenes, abbreviated sentences when we relate them to what’s happening in present tense.  As far as I know I’ve never spoken of this event to anyone, but now, a tiny piece of my spirit realm is being brought to life by the honking of the Jordanian cars below.  As I’ve said before, one thing leads to another.

From this distance of many years, I can still see the bride, but not the groom.  Yet I know they both leave through the backdoor of Charlotte’s house, jump into a turquoise, white-topped 1957 Chevy and drive away.  Tin cans drag behind the car.  These few images are mine, filed away decades ago.  Once retold they will resurface again in the future.  I think I also see fireworks going off in the backyard, but I admit those images could be invented.  But here’s the part I know is true.  None of the guests at Charlotte’s house knew where the couple was going on their honeymoon.

“Practically no one,” says Rick, from Casablanca.  (Did I mention that often my memories are inculcated with film dialogue?)

Charlotte and I do know.  We’d overheard her mother telling her maternal grandmother the destination.  Soon a teenage boy with hair greased back like Elvis Presley comes running into the house.  Charlotte and I are in the kitchen eating the last bite of white icing off the top of the wedding cake.  At first, he looks aghast, (our fingers) then asks if we know where her sister has gone.

Charlotte says, “yes, we know.”

“Tell me.”

Silence.  We continue licking our fingers.

“C’mon, ple-e-e-ese,” he says.  “We just wanna show them we care.  Have some fun.”

More silence. The boy with the Elvis Presley hair leaves and returns to a group of his friends outside.

Another wedding caravan gathers in the street below my apartment building.

The shebab, a group of young men, begin playing the tbila, a set of drums that resemble bongos. They pound out rhythms and sing in unison, Salaam-Alaikum, Alaikum Salaam, Peace be upon you.  I can’t see the wedding couple, but there’s a large crowd in the street.  Fireworks shoot off right above my head and I go inside to fetch my camera. They’re still singing and drumming when several of the guests start their cars. When I look down into the street, I think the men must all be Gulf Arabs.  At least everyone is dressed like the Gulf Arabs on television.  Their stunningly regal and beautiful, but I can’t be sure of who, what, when and where.  I’m a foreigner here, and I know that I don’t know much of anything for certain.  Soon, the caravan drives off honking, and I return to my seat on the balcony.  And to my memories.

Charlotte always had mixed feelings about her older sister.  That much I knew before the wedding.  All day long she’d been whispering snide comments like: “She’s going to have a baby.  Can’t you tell?” she says.  I shake my head no.  Charlotte is one of those girls who always seems to be in the know.  After all, she’s a whole month older than me.  I’m just the opposite, never in the know, but fearless.  It’s a pattern I will repeat the rest of my life.

Within minutes, the teenage boy comes back into the kitchen to bribe us with one of his 45s.  Runaway by Del Shannon.  A very hot item in the autumn of 1961.  (For those of you who don’t know what a 45 is, or was, Google it.)

“C’mon you two, give. Tell me where they went and I’ll give you Del Shannon,” he says.

Charlotte looks at me as if to say, I can’t tell him.  So I blurt it out for her. “They’re going to the boathouse, Lake Overholser!”

Pretty soon, everyone jumps in their cars and drives away honking their horns.  I’m a hero to them, but an ingrate to the mother of the bride.  Charlotte and I are sent off to bed without Del Shannon.  Now decades later, sitting on the balcony of my apartment in Amman, Jordan, the wedding in Bethany Oklahoma seems an odd memory to recall.  But perhaps not.

Another wedding entourage drives passes. Seventh one tonight. Salaam-Alaikum, Alaikum Salaam.

[Just FYI.  My comments here are my own.  I am not an official of the Department of State, and this is not an official Department of State website.  The views and information presented here are my own, and do not in any way, represent the USA's William J. Fulbright Program, or the Department of State.]

Alas, the good times are over.  No more blind screaming hedonism at all hours.  No more back rubs, or for that matter, front rubs.  Sleeping is pretty much out of the question.  (If you’re gonna panic, now’s the time.)

Attention people of the Northern Hemisphere, summer’s kaput!  Work, work, work, work. I’m afraid it’s time to put our noses to the grindstone.  By the way, have I told you about my theory concerning the challenges of “putting our noses to the grindstone.”  Recall Michael Jackson. His famous nose, or lack of one.  Forget the rumors about multiple plastic surgeries, it was that nose-to-the-grindstone-thing.  Poor fellow.  

(I’m off topic.)

Okay, like I was saying, work, we must do it.  Before I head off to Amman, Jordan to work as a Fulbright scholar for 2010-2011, I thought I would post some pictures of the good times and good-timers that came to visit me this summer.

Four Chocs and a Taos Pueblo

It seems all roads bring Indians to Ada, Oklahoma during the summer.  (Just kidding.)  But hey, my friend, Taos Pueblo writer and scholar Jane Hafen, [left front] came to town to yuck it up with four Chocs at a local restaurant.  Also pictured is Jacki Rand, [back, left], Jay Watson, Sheila Watson, and me.  Jay and Sheila are the genius-fast-pitch-softball manager/player duo.  I met them at Tuskahoma in 2007, and their team, The Chahtas.  The Watsons stopped in Ada to see us before heading to Anadarko, Oklahoma to play in a Kiowa ball tourney.  Go Chahtas!

Here’s another pix of the “J” girls sitting in the living room of my house.  (I swear they were rolling snake eyes before I pulled out the camera.)  Seriously, Jane’s a professor of American Indian literature at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.  Jacki is a professor of history at the University of Iowa. But each summer she lives in Ada.

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here."

Later, we all visit Linda Hogan’s home in Tish.

Scroll down.  Pictured are, Jacki, Jane, and American Indian lit scholar and dear friend Patrice Hollrah, ( also the director of the Writing Center at the University at Nevada at Las Vegas), Alyssa Craig (my granddaughter), Chickasaw writer-in-residence Linda Hogan, and me. By the way, thanks Patrice for the butcher knife for the ART HOUSE.  What a thoughtful gift.

Scroll down again.  Way down. More end of summer blow outs pixs.  Salonaires gave a literary reading at the Ada Heritage Center.  About 35 people attended our reading.  It was 101 outside.  Jeeze.  Jim Wilson read  from his memoir, Journeyman, set in Beirut from 1980-1989.  In the memoir Jim tells of fleeing the Lebanese civil war in 1987 for Athens Greece.  He later returns to Syria to continue his work as an archaeologist  with his lover, also an archaeologist, at the American University of Beirut.

Jim Wilson reading from his memoir, Journeyman.

Scroll way down.  More. A little more.  (Sorry.) Choctaw-Chickasaw poet Phil Morgan reads from his book, The Fork in the Road at the Indian Poetry Store, Salt Publishing, 2007.

Pssst: Ask Phil Morgan, (Choc-Chick) about his collection of new songs that he's written.

Way-way-way below, Ken Hada reads from his new poetry manuscript-in-progress.  (The poetry is fabulous by the way.)  As soon as he has a title I’ll leak it to the media.  Ken worked on his new book at Rilla Askew’s Kiamichi mountain retreat outside of McAlester, OK.  Rilla, an Oklahoma fiction writer, lives in upstate NY during the summers. (And yes, Ken is really sad that summer’s over.)  Other readers were Jacki Rand, Chris Ross, and me.

Poet Ken Hada, professor at East Central University

Way at the bottom of the post is me.  I gave a talk at the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy on a film I co-produced in 2006 with Native filmmaker, Jim Fortier.  The film, Playing Pastime, American Indians, Softball and Survival is a documentary about the 11 tribal fast-pitch softball tournaments in Oklahoma. Okay that’s all folks.

PS: Remember however to stay-tuned this fall for my blog posts from Jordan.  I promise to try and be serious.

I screened "Playing Pastime" at Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy in July. This is a documentary I co-produced with Native filmmaker Jim Fortier.