Image-ing Poetry

Poetry videos have been around for quite some time now; I remember my first experience with them was some years ago at an AWP conference, when some conference organizer had the bright idea to pipe them into the elevators (which, conveniently, had small video screens).  For four days I'd get into an elevator to go somewhere and find myself riding up and down a few extra times just to see the loop of new poetry set to visuals.  I thought of it as "Image-ing" poetry, giving a poem a set of images to accompany the words, and to tell you the truth, I was not all that thrilled about it.

After all, for me, the moment when a poem's image reaches out and runs goosebumps down my arms is a joy, and a sacred one, at that: in part, because the poet's choice of words, syntax, pace, tone, all combine to connect - zap! - with some long-lost, subconscious image of my own.  If I have someone choosing the visual images for me, would that still happen?  Wouldn't that limit my possible responses to a poem, force me to see what someone else has decided I should see?

But years of exploring the connections between old photographs and documents in my poetry have given me another perspective on the inclusion of visuals in a poetic presentation.  Much of what I wrote in Bad Indians has come directly from a photo or the handwriting of a priest or the textures in a tule mat - and, given the historical significance of some of these objects, I do want my readers to see some of them for themselves.  In fact, I chose Heyday as my publisher in large part due to their willingness to work with me on making the book as multi-genre as possible, to give readers access to some of the materials I'd been able to lay my hands on, to tell the story on multiple levels.

So when my university offered a "Digital Storytelling" training session before classes began, I was eager to sign up for it.  Unfortunately other meetings took precedence, but I decided that it was now or never; I signed up one of my Fall courses for a workshop and crafted a vague-but-fun-sounding assignment.  Then I began watching iMovie workshop videos on YouTube and playing with that application in my 'spare' time - hoping to have some level of understanding by the time my students hit that part of the syllabus (nothing like the potential for sheer embarrassment in front of a classroom as a spur to preparation!).  I have a lot of interesting video footage and photographs from my June research trip to California, and some new poems/prose that might lend themselves to that kind of exploration...

Given my time limitations to learn by playing around, I have temporarily put aside doing the video project I had in mind - something that requires a bit more skill than I currently possess - but I have attempted a "poetry video" using still photographs culled from my own collection, and Project Gutenberg.  I figured out how to do a very basic audio recording and attach it to iMovie, and off I went - learning as I tried this and that. 

I'll be showing this to my Memoir writing class today, and my Native Lit course tomorrow.  Baby steps though it may be, I'm excited to give them another way of image-ing texts and creating a kind of snapshot of their own learning.

This video poem is part of a series I've been working on called "Interviews with California Missions."  My working summary goes like this:

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"In the summer of 2014 I traveled to eight of the twenty-one California missions established by Franciscan priests from Spain during what is now called the Mission Era, 1769-1823.  My purpose was to interview these venerable establishments in order to listen and scrupulously record for posterity their side of the historical controversy concerning alleged roles in the murder of tens of thousands of California Indians.  Were these missions complicit in war crimes?  Or were they, too, victims of Spanish colonial greed and conquest?  What secrets did they tuck away in those adobe walls?  My extensive research had not prepared me for the raw truth of these mission voices; not only was I fortunate enough to learn each mission’s secret name, never before revealed, but my sources seemed relieved to give their testimonies at last."

Enjoy my first effort!  And forgive my beginner's mistakes.

click on the photo to go to video

In the Beginning

I’m seven years old.

I sit down to write my first story:  How the John Rabbit Familys Lived in the Tall Grass.

The plural is important, as you will see.

Once upon a time in the wild wilderness in the tall grass a baby rabbit was born.  It was white with a little tail and a light pink nose.  Its mother was white and black and the father was gray.  Their eyes were red and they sparkled in the dark.

Colors are clearly important to me.  I add a baby brother rabbit, gray with a black nose.  The whole nuclear family thing makes me happy.  But …

Then in a year it was rabbit season and the mother and father had to leave the baby rabbits.

Next come words that I know never appeared in my school vocabulary list: scared, dangerous, rough, sad, hid, shot.  Phrases like there were few of them left. 

I don’t know the word “survivor” yet.

I do, however, have some idea how to survive.

…it was mateing time and they didn’t want to leave each other, so they chose mates and had their babies. 

And life is good again, especially if we overlook the incestuous nature necessitated by rabbit massacre.  They didn’t want to leave each other.  Who can blame them? 

I know one thing for sure: never let go of anyone.

The rabbit siblings become Father and Mother rabbit to a brood of four babies who learn early how to forage: when they were two months old they got their own food but their mother and father were still with them…they liked their home in the tall grass.

My seven-year-old self knows about seasons:  Then it started to hail and the rabbits started to look for food because when it hailed it would snow the next morning.

I know how to make grocery lists:  They had 8 carrots, 8 bushes of grapes, nine piles of grass and a tin can of water. 

I know about the importance of a home:  Father rabbit went to look for shelter…he found shelter in a nearby cave with hay on the bottom to sleep on.

I even seem to know that life is hard on parents.  My rabbit family waits out the heavy snow in their snug cave, and surprise!  the next day is Christmas Eve.  I was hoping you wouldn’t ask, Father rabbit tells the kids when they inquire about the holiday.  Clearly the guy is feeling the weight of responsibility. 

Still, the little rabbits receive decent, if sadly gendered, presents: “I got a sling shot.”  “I got a little dolly.”  “I got a toy gun.”  “Let’s play dolls.”  “Let’s play war.” 

Predictability ranks pretty high in my seven year old world.

I make certain that Mother rabbit is very resourceful.  She takes good care of Zelda when the little rabbit catches cold:  Mother gave her most of the food and some water.  Then she covered her up with hay to keep her warm.  Later, in the Christmas Eve scene, Mother made sure no one was hungry, thirsty or sick, then she went to get the tree. 

Mother rabbit also makes everyone go out to play when the snow melts, which makes the baby rabbits cry.  Father rabbit is very stern. Go outside or you can not have any food.  Since it is also little Dan’s birthday, Father rabbit wants to give Dan 1 swat and a pinch to grow an inch, but no presents because its too close to Christmas.  Now if youre going to cry get to bed, Father rabbit tells poor sniveling Dan.  Dan chooses to play outside. 

Good sport, says Father rabbit.  Evidently I have clear ideas about fathers and crying.

Then come more words a seven-year-old shouldn’t know so casually. 

Rabbit season again. 

They stayed together but five got wounded and soon died. 

And father rabbit was the only one left.

Like a good survivor, Father rabbit quickly remarries and raises up five more rabbit children.  Father rabbit told them he was the only one left in his family.  Alice, his new mate, asks, What did you name your other babys?  and Father rabbit reels off the names of the dead in a loving litany.  Then tells them, We better get to sleep, its going to be a rough day. 

Uh-oh.  Is it rabbit season again?

But no, I'm the writer of this story.  I may be only seven years old, but I’ve had it with this murderous universe these poor rabbits find themselves in.  I know how to fix things.   

When they awoke they were in a strange place.  “it's a house” said father rabbit. A little human girl arrives and gives them all the feed and water they wanted. 

They are saved!  No more living in the wild wilderness of the outside world.  No more rabbit season, guns, hunting.  No more dead, missing or wounded children and parents.

They were very happy to be with the little girl, I write on the last page, and they lived happily ever after.  THE END.

This story marks the first time I ever used written words to save myself.  This story marks the first time I wrote down what had happened to me, and how much I wanted to be rescued. 

Forty-four years later, I finger these yellowing pages, the faded pencil on blue lines, the bright green yarn stitching the pages into my first book.  I have to smile.  There is no manly prince galloping up on his horse.  Father rabbit does not slay the rabbit hunters or lead his family to safety.  Mother rabbit does not sacrifice herself for the sake of her children, or if she does, it doesn’t work. 

No. 

As the author of this story, I’m seven years old, but I already know about genocide, abandonment, disappeared parents, hunger, hiding, tough love and a deep craving for home.  I’m seven years old and already I know how to trade independence for domesticity, wildness for the assurance of food, water and a nice cage (a temporary solution that will give me some serious issues with men and marriage later in life).

I’m seven years old.  My father, descendent of indigenous peoples ruthlessly diminished from one million to a few thousand, lives in a distant place called San Quentin not far from the missions that incarcerated our ancestors.  My four sisters from his first marriage have dropped off the face of the earth, though I can recite all their names.  My mother-who-disappeared-for-a-year has eventually returned; I’m still watching her every move to make sure she doesn’t run off again.  My two older siblings from her first marriage have been left behind in a foster home in California.  Once a year, my mother sobs over photographs of the baby girl who died from neglect.  My step-father moves us from one ramshackle trailer to the next as he patches together part-time jobs.  We can’t always pay the electric bill or fill the propane tanks.  We eat a lot of rice, beans, and USDA commodity food from the food bank.  I bounce from school to school, always a little behind everyone else, never on the same page of the reader or arithmetic book.

Notice that my rabbits form and re-form nuclear families, name their babies, celebrate holidays and birthdays, yet the concept of formal education is never mentioned?  School is not a friendly force for good in my life.  Yet.

But I'm seven years old and I’ve just figured out something enormous:  the alphabet is my friend.  Spelling may be tricky, writing may cramp my hand and teachers insist that my pencil grip is all wrong, but the alphabet makes me powerful in ways nothing else can.  Pencil and paper are my tools.  Words are my weapons.

Looking back at this story, I see it:  that little girl is going to use this alphabet to write her own way out of civilization.

Behind the Teach-In About Tucson: Washington and Lee Professors Respond to Censorship

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by Deborah A. Miranda

Associate Professor, English

Washington and Lee University

  

At the end of January, I felt far from my friends, fellow authors, professors and teachers in Arizona, when the news broke:  the State of Tucson had shut down the much-lauded Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District mid-semester; targeting and removing books from classrooms based on the racial and/or political perspective of the authors.  Arizona officials stated that these books cause "resentment toward a race or class of people" - meaning, Caucasians - and "aroused emotion" in Mexican-American students.  Many Mexican-American and Native American authored books are on the list, but so are texts like The Tempest and Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.”  Isn't good literature supposed to arouse emotion in the reader?  Isn’t it one of the few ways we have of experiencing different perspectives? 

Regina Mills (’09), now teaching ninth grade in Arizona, wrote to me, "We have been banned from teaching our kids to feel empowered in a world where most issues stem from generations of powerlessness." Regina’s comment highlights the real issue:  banned books tell truths that are often difficult for us to hear, but the MAS Program worked because it made critical thinkers out of students (all of whom, irrespective of ethnicity, scored significantly higher on achievement tests after taking the classes).  

Several community responses arose at once; “No History is Illegal”  organized a month-long Teach-In About Tucson, set to begin February 1.  Seeking a way to engage rather than watch from a distance, I composed an email to my colleagues that included links to several informative websites, including the “Librotraficante” movement headed by Tony Diaz, and  suggesting that we take part in the Teach-In by incorporating a lesson about Tucson into our individual classrooms. 

I was overwhelmed by the immediate and savvy responses from my busy colleagues.

   

Washington and Lee students (and their parents) choose our university because they know our faculty is made up of professors highly skilled in teaching, scholarship and service – and what my colleagues told me in email after email is that we faculty honed our skills on book lists that would make TUSD's hair stand on end, books that taught us critical thinking skills and lit the spark in us that we pass on to W&L students.  

Professor of Romance Languages and Program Head of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Jeff Barnett wrote, “Our assigned reading for the [Feb. 1^st] class by chance is the Victoria Lena Manyarrows ‘Confronting and Surpassing the Legacy of Columbus’—an example of (contra)banned literature… On the night of Feb 1st, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies capstone course meets at 6:30.   I would be happy if anyone wished to join us in the seminar that evening to participate in the discussion … Reading Rodolfo Acuña’s Occupied America:  A History Of Chicanos was one of the formative experiences of my undergraduate education and training for LACS.  Now, of course, it’s one of the seminal works that has been banned.”

Robin LeBlanc, from the Politics Department, wrote to ask for excerpts of banned literature, and I sent out several short pieces from Woman Hollering Creek, by Sandra Cisneros.  Robin crafted her lesson plan and shared a story about how close Arizona is to W&L:  “I'll be opening POL 255 Gender and Politics with a short reading from Freire, followed by a discussion of our regular syllabus assignment about Latinas in politics, and a reading from the Cisneros stories Deborah shared. Yesterday afternoon I was approached by a student I had not yet met and who described himself as a ‘Mexican American.’ He said he had overheard me describe the Arizona situation to my East Asia students yesterday and that he had been wondering how the Washington and Lee Community would respond to the issue. He said he was glad to hear what he described as my "fair" treatment of the issue; he said he had met students in California who had fled Arizona because of its politics. He had not yet heard any faculty mention the Arizona situation. The encounter reminded me of how important it is to let our students know that we do care about their multiple perspectives, and what a good chance this is to do that.” 

Suzanne Keen, Chair of English, reported after teaching her class on February 1, “My students in English 232 The Novel gasped when I held up AZ banned book, Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  Five of them read it last semester.  They explained to the others Freire's contribution to a pedagogy emphasizing dialogue and discussion over lecture. Since we are reading and discussing Xiaolu Guo, a filmmaker and novelist from the People's Republic of China, a discussion of book banning and the fragility of our American liberties fit right in.” 

Jim Kahn, Professor of Economics and Director of the Environmental Studies Program, wrote that he planned “to use the situation in Arizona when I teach global warming and the assault on science associated with global warming (and environment change in general). I will use the situation in Arizona to help place the "denial" of global climate change in a context of a society that prefers to remain ignorant of the book banning is in some ways analogous to the State Attorney General of Virginia trying to prosecute climate scientists who worked at UVa.” 

“I can also talk about the current issues in Arizona in my class,” Romance Language Professor Monica Botta contributed, “Tomorrow in my seminar we are going to examine how ‘selective’ is Sarmiento (1811-1888) when he constructs a discourse of his past by only mentioning  his ‘criollo’ ancestors in ‘Recuerdos de provincia.’”

Gwyn Campbell, Spanish Professor, shared that she “did bring the subject up to the other classes today, because it is so appalling, and it dovetailed with the issues of censorship, in the one class, and issues related to the ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’ in the other.” 

“I don't teach tomorrow,” stated Monica Gonzalez, also from Romance Languages, “but on Thursday I will be mentioning this in my two classes. Also, in my 240 Latin American Literature class, I am teaching Andrés Bello's ‘El castellano en América’ (‘Spanish Language in America’), a text written in 1847 that refers to the use of Spanish language by the new republics in Latin America. If you want to join me in the class to ‘re-read’ this text from the perspective of the current U.S. legislation towards hispanic immigrants, you are more than welcome!”

“My current course on ‘Ralph Ellison and the Civil Rights Movement’ meets Tu/Th, so we entered into this issue today and had a great discussion,” Marc Conner, English and Head of the African American Studies Program, told us, “About ¼ of the students knew about it, though two of them are in Deborah’s creative writing course so they have clearly been grappling with this.  Some were stunned that such things are happening today.  It led to a fine discussion of the complexity of American cultural experience, and the dangers of flattening that complexity. —it’s had a real purchase on what we’re teaching and talking about.”

“I will participate in the teach-in tomorrow, making this issue central to my ‘insider/outsider’ WRIT 100,” English professor Michael Crowley decided, “And I'll see if I can't fold it in to my ‘monsters’ class on Thursday too -- I could make several connections to our reading of Frankenstein...”

“I plan to incorporate it into my class for Wed in Poverty 101,” Howard Pickett reported from the Shepherd Poverty Program, and Theresa Braunschneider of English looked forward to “discussing the Tucson developments today in my seemingly innocent Brit lit class -- which, I hope, is actually fomenting ‘resentment’ every day by thinking critically about the history of the Atlantic slave trade and the British colonial imagination (we even did a critical reading of Columbus on the first day of class!).”

“I've been discussing this whole situation with my Cowboys and Indians class as it has been developing,” English professor and Director of the Writing Center, Kary Smout, commented, and Professor of Spanish Ellen Mayock responded, “This is a great call-to-arms… I'm still on sabbatical and so don't have classes this term, but I think I'll attend Jeff's on Wednesday evening in a show of solidarity.  I absolutely love the term librotraficante--great to see trafficking going the right way for once!” –

The Philosophy Department’s Florentein Verhage found great inspiration in the intersections between her Phil395 work of the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty  and Gloria Anzaldua, saying, “we have been reading about lived experience and the lived-body: the body as pivot, hinge and cross-road between nature, culture, geography, biology, self and other. He speaks of a body as ‘being in and toward the world’, as being of the world, as open to the world. In that context I will have my students read short excerpts of Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera  and discuss the recent developments in Tuscon. Anzaldua’s writing is simply beautiful. In it I read passion, strength, love, rage, pain, confusion, ambiguity, power, hope, openness, but nowhere in this text I find hate.” 

Floretein’s colleague, Melina Bell, also found the Teach-in experience profoundly useful, reporting that “We had a really excellent discussion in class about why we need ethnic studies and to have different points of view included in the curriculum.  Most students admitted that they did not 'think about' the way history is told from a subjective point of view, rather than being mere 'facts.'  We addressed why we need Mexican American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies and African American Studies, but not 'Caucasian Studies' or 'Men in Technology and Science.'  I saw a lot of lightbulbs turn on over their heads.  Thanks for sending all those great links (some of which I required them to read/watch) and for enriching my class and this campus with an unusually strong burst of activism for justice.”

Not surprisingly, poetry also lent itself well to this teach-in topic, wrote Lesley Wheeler:  “My seminar on 21^stc poetry was finishing up several weeks of reading about the aftermath of Katrina as documented by poets Cynthia Hogue, Nicole Cooley, Natasha Trethewey, and others. They were just finishing Trethewey’s BEYOND KATRINA: A MEDITATION ON THE MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST. All of these books concern the relevance of race to U.S. history and contemporary culture and politics, and they’re all working through whatever the social role of literature might be. None of them have been banned in Tucson or elsewhere, to my knowledge, but the book banning intersected in several ways with what we’d been discussing, so we spent the first half of Wednesday’s session considering it. I showed them the list and we talked about whether a book should ever be banned from a high school curriculum (they made varied arguments), books that had offended or excited us, and whether there was such a thing as a good work of literature without an implicit agenda (we couldn’t think of any). “

And so the Teach-In About Tucson took place at Washington and Lee in English and American Literature, Environmental Studies, Sociology, Latin American Literature, Politics, Writing 100, Poverty, Philosophy and Spanish classes.  English Professor Chris Gavaler and Rod Smith, editor of The Shenandoah Review, both published excellent blogs addressing the situation.

We were supported by our Leyburn Library colleagues, as well:  Librarian Yolanda Merrill created a “Banned Book” display, and Librarian Dick Grefe ordered a handful of banned books we didn’t already own to round out the Leyburn collection – reminding us all, what’s a revolution without the librarians?

And this Teach-In was revolutionary.  The messages this Teach-in carried made clear our faculty’s profound engagement with the critical thinking crucial to education.  If we professors came to our classrooms without having read those banned books, W&L students’ education would be sadly lacking.  The closing of MAS and removal of books in Tucson must be devastating for educators there who have dedicated their lives to teaching students with a critical pedagogy of empowerment.

W &L professors found ourselves recharged and rededicated to our vocations by the February 1^st Teach-In About Tucson.  A sense of alliance came out of our participation, a reminder that every day that we teach what we love, Arizona is not so far away.   I am grateful to the intellectual, compassionate, critical thinkers who surround me at Washington and Lee, and awed by their willingness to participate in a Teach-In on such short notice, with such brilliant results.  Harlan Beckley, Director of the Shepherd Poverty Program here, is currently working on bringing together a group of students for an on-going discussion of the issues in Tucson and has asked for my help; I’m very hopeful that a whole new area of study and activism is opening up for students in Lexington, and look forward to being a part of it.

As I finish writing this blog, it is Sunday, February 26^th.  The Librotraficante Caravan, “Book Traffickers” smuggling banned “wet books” back into Arizona, is prepping for an amazing march to Arizona with banned books and banned authors. They plan to arrive in Tucson on March 16^th.  Funded by various banned book authors and supporters, Librotraficante literally walks the walk.  I feel that, thanks to our participation in the Teach-In, we are walking with them in spirit; www.librotraficante.com allows us to donate financially as well – yes, it takes money to fight censorship. 

As we near the one month anniversary of our Teach-In, I will update my students about the events in Tucson, and urge my colleagues to continue this real-life exercise in critical thinking. 

Thank you, colleagues. 

For comprehensive coverage of the Tucson events, see Debbie Reese's AICL Blog 

VOICE

Terry Tempest Williams asks, I came to finding my voice through the pain and suffering of those I love most - how do I deal with that?  What do I do with that knowledge?

This is precisely the dilemma I faced from the very beginning, when writing about the California Missions became the focus of my work, both scholarly and poetic.

My “successes” in life (tenured teaching position, house, car, children’s college, health care, publications, the attention and respect of publishers, universities, other scholars and poets) have come about mostly through the fact that I write about and research California Indian history and experiences.  And most of those histories and experiences are not pleasant “legends” or warm, fuzzy memories.  Most of them are about death by horrible disease or murder, the fragmentation of family relationships, self-destructive responses to trauma, the abandonment of children, exile and/or homelessness, displacement, loss of language and culture – and more, all at the hands of another people whose blood also runs in my veins. 

Is it any wonder that I am reluctant to claim any of my successes as such?  That I am so careful to always look over my shoulder at what might be coming up behind me?  That I dream about sleeping on a bed of bones carved with the words of another language?  That I feel guilty for profiting from telling the stories of my ancestors in the missions?  That I shrink from compliments about my writing?  That this writing comes so hard, takes so much out of me?

So when I heard Terry Tempest William speak at Lee Chapel, on the Washington and Lee University campus, her questions about “voice” resonated down to my bones.  She spoke about her new book, one that she had thought would be about voice, finding voice, and said those words:  I came to finding my voice through the pain and suffering of those I love most - how do I deal with that?  What do I do with that knowledge?

I went to bed that night thinking, it’s a responsibility.  It’s a debt, this gift, and I must repay it by carrying the responsibility of giving voice to those who could not speak.  Isn’t that the answer?  Isn’t that the way to assuage my guilt at earning my living from the tortured cries of my beloved ancestors and relatives?  To accept it as a charge, not a gift?

But I wasn’t satisfied.  It felt, not wrong, but incomplete.  Too easy.  And not enough.  I know that often in those liminal moments between wakefulness and sleeping, revelation slips in, so I asked (myself, the Universe, the Ancestors):  but what more is it?  and perhaps because Terry’s achingly honest vulnerability had created a receptivity and openness that hadn’t been there before, the response came back almost as if it had been waiting for me to ask:

It’s not that you’ve found your voice through the pain of others.  It’s that their voices found you.

I opened my hand and put that thought inside it, closed my fist around the warmth of the truth, and slept.

When I woke up, I remembered a dream I’d had twenty years before.  Early on in my adult writing life, when I was about thirty, soon after the poem “I Am Not a Witness” came to me, I dreamt that I was part of a group of Indian people being used in an experiment.  We were locked up in a dark, crowded space together.  Huge wooden doors slammed shut, and we beat our fists against them, splintering the wood into our flesh, but unable to escape.  No windows, no light, just wives, sisters, brothers, husbands, uncles, babies, toddlers, small children, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, in-laws – trapped – while the scientists watched from one-way windows in their white lab coats.  In the dream, I knew we were inside a mission; the experiment was to see how much of what our ancestors had experienced was stored in the cells of our bodies.  In the dream, I opened my mouth.  A scream came out.  A horrible, broken scream came out of my throat.  But it wasn’t mine.  It wasn’t my scream.  It was someone else’s scream, the scream of an ancestor, coming from my own throat.

When I awoke in the dark, damp with sweat and panic, I had not uttered a sound.  But my throat hurt, scraped raw.  My voice, when I tried to speak, was hoarse and dry; my vocal cords scratched and strained.

Not my voice.  Her voice. 

The voice of an ancestor, joining mine.  Singing with mine – making a song, collaborating in a song for multiple voices. 

I don’t mean this in some new-age, “channeling,” Seth-like explanation.  I’m not sure how I mean it.  But if time is, indeed, spiral and happening all around us all the time, then there must be places where people separated by chronology touch as the spiral curves inward.  I know that my sister Louise is one of those people, one who dreams, who listens, and acts for the Ancestors.  We are conduits, but not mindless, robotic tubes through which something is delivered.  That would be possession.  That would be someone else controlling me, dictating to me.  And that is not what I feel happening as I write. 

What I feel as I write is this:  a door opens inside me, a door like one of those between hotel rooms, with locks on each side.  I must unlock my side.  Someone – the Ancestor wishing to speak – must unlock her side.  We must both stand, willingly, in that threshold.

If I am afraid or unwilling or unable to unlock my side, then she will attempt to come as a dream.  Of this I am certain.  Once, during a time of denial about writing, I dreamt of a bear attempting to knock down the door to get into my bedroom!  She was a beautiful bear, and I loved her rough brown fur and long claws and dark eyes even as I barricaded the door against her. 

The stories I tell with this voice that is both mine and the voices of others are, in fact, a lot like bears.  Beautiful and admirable, glossy and strong.  Wild and unpredictable and full of fierceness, scarred, in pain. 

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a turtle.  I have to be able to withdraw into a protective shell at times, rest, then stick my head back out for the next round.  A turtle is a good form to have; a hard shell into which one may retreat is a necessary tool in this work. 

Am I constructing a story that lets me off the hook of survivor’s guilt?  Perhaps.  But what I like about the “revelation” I had the night after Terry Tempest Williams’ talk is not that it somehow removes the responsibility of bearing witness for my Ancestors, because it does not - I owe my very existence to their tenacity, their willingness to be Bad Indians rather than Dead Indians.  What I like is how I see that the Ancestors are undefeated after all:  not dead and silent in the ground, under pavement, in museums.  No.  The Ancestors are alive and kicking – kicking that door down, insisting on telling their stories, still making songs, still bearing witness themselves.  They are not victims, needing my help.  If anything, I am the needy one!  I am in dire need of their wisdom, their direction, their Coyotismo, their survivance. 

What I like is that they share their stories, still tell me how to live, allow me to write it down; what I like is that they are still teaching us how to survive.