After she left in the sinister black van to move on to her next disciplinary assignment of the night, I could not sleep, despite aspirin and vitamin intake. Finally by sunlight I drifted off to frightening nightmares, one after the other. Awake finally at mid-day I felt I should exercise. Still shaking, I couldn’t run, so I walked on the sidewalks toward the 20,000-square-foot clubhouse, hoping to seek quiet solstice in the mahogany-paneled library with others of my age.
Outside the large building the delicious fragrance of freshly cut lumber filled my nostrils. Now I love the smell of lumber, having spent years amidst the sawmills, the plywood mills and the Douglas fir forests of Oregon. Looking about, I saw a freshly constructed scaffolding adjacent to the clubhouse. Beyond, from inside the basement windows of the clubhouse, I could see several hands reaching through the vertical black bars guarding an open window down. And there beside the scaffolding stood our “beloved” Activities Director, ticking her February calendar with the names that I saw as I peeked over her shoulder, of several guilty homeowners, followed by another list, on which appeared my name, the heading reading “Those Scheduled for Next Week’s Gallows.”
What is My Address?
I had this dream about addresses, and I caught it in my dream catcher: I was supposed to give my address to someone. I tossed and turned, trying to decide which address this someone required of me. I have no idea why this person wanted my address, although at the time—in my dream—their request became the priority of my mystical moment.
Of course, I couldn't remember any one of my long list of addresses, street, Internet, or email so that I might decide—in this dream of mine—which of my many addresses to give out. One doesn't readily volunteer addresses these days; indeed one keeps them secret. After all....
But dreams are the bane of logic, and I suppose, on the brighter side, offer a release from the rigors of logic. Surely my e-mail address was what this mysterious person wanted. But then—in my dream—as I tried to recall the @, I thought, "No, it wants my fax number." With area code first? But what was my fax number? I think I did voice my three-digit area code, but then the numbers began to run together with my street address and my landline voice telephone number. Suddenly my code word to log onto the Internet popped up in Times 12 point bold—that is, the first letter or two, and then I was hiking in the English moors, reciting random and meaningless numbers as I climbed a fence and followed a directional signpost toward the next hamlet, which of course I was not allowed to reach because this abstraction of a person kept insisting I return to Santa Fe and give it my address. There was to be no escape from its demand!
My dream thoughts turned to my list of bookmarked Internet websites and a host of dot coms volunteered themselves. I believe I even offered this stranger several ISPs, which were promptly rejected as specious to the requirement at hand. I was in deep trouble.
Next it was time for lunch and we were in a deli, but I couldn't order my sandwich without first reciting—not my name—but my address. And I was hungry, awfully hungry. That was when the real tossing and turning began. So much so that I must have awakened myself.
During breakfast, which I devoured sitting at my keyboard, I opened a file called "Addresses" and began to type in every number, every password, every user name, every website, every e-mail address, every street address I could think of. I'm still typing, saving, and memorizing.
Next time, tonight perhaps, in my dream, I shall be prepared.
On Being A Writer
A group of us who hiked up Stone Mountain outside Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday evenings would always gather for dinner afterward in Mamma Mia's trattoria in the old part of the adjacent village of the same name. The maitre d’ was quite tall—almost seven feet.
Months later in Birmingham, Alabama I happened into an Italian trattoria with the same name to be greeted by a similarly tall maitre d’. Instantly I was certain these two unusually tall men surely must know each other. After, all they were each a maitre d’ in a Italian restaurant with identical names; perhaps these two men were twins.... After inquiring of the man in Birmingham, at first I didn't really believe him when he shook his head negatively and told me that he knew no one across the state line “over in Georgia.”
A similar scenario of “surely you know” awaits writers. Each time I tell someone I write fiction, I am met with, not with “why do you write” or “how do you select and compose words,” or similar relevant comments, but rather with one of the following reactions:
1. "Oh, then you must know my third cousin in Alaska who writes cook books."
2. "Do you know my mother, then? She is writing a children's coloring book."
3. "I'm reading the new mystery book by Hortense Binderup about murder in the Bodelian Library stacks at Oxford. But I'm sure you know her and have probably read all her books."
4. "I've always wanted to write a novel. My neighbor says he's written one, too. Do you know him?"
My replies of "no" in each conversation are met with the same disbelief as I received from the Birmingham maitre d's negative.
I suppose people in wheel chairs have similar experiences. And war veterans. And musicians. And airline pilots. And farmers. And tour guides...and on and on and on. I have concluded that this act of categorizing people into packages in which everyone within the wrapper knows everyone else is a modern human mental maneuver intended to shrink the ten billion pool of people, or whatever the world's population has grow to, down into manageable groups that we can more easily comprehend. I also doubt that a hundred years ago such categorization was practiced. Back then, I should think, individuals retained unique individual traits by which they were known. For writers, what they wrote was important, or not, as the case may have been, who they knew that we might know. And the same for every "group."
Accepting this phenomenon of packaging, as a fiction writer I now find conversations much more amicable if I reply, "Oh, yes, I've read your aunt's children's novel about the three bears eating their corn flakes," and then refill my wine glass.
Storyline
Learned literary persons say there are only three elements, or acts, to every storyline; oh, some say seven, but regardless of which count you subscribe to, these storylines all fit into the same set of templates—a formula developed by the ancient Greek playwrights for their plays to be presented on one of their many stages. Across the centuries, nothing has changed: the beginning, the middle and the end (or denouement)—these are, say the Master of Fine Arts graduates, the ever-present and always-present elements to any story.
Consider the logic in this numbering of the acts. If one is to tell a story, one must generate interest in one or more characters, describe the challenges and complications to and in their lives, then resolve the circumstances facing them, either for them or against them.
Follow this: astronauts—and we have been told by the storyteller about them—their marriages, their children, their rigorous and demanding training, even their children and possibly their pets. After this introduction they board the rocket ship Swish and fire off for the Moon. End of story. The MFAs will quickly declare you can’t stop there!
What happens to them during their journey through space? Do they arrive on the Moon? Do they return to Earth safe and sound? If we’re not told—and the telling would constitute acts two and three—we become quite disturbed. And that would be the end of that particular storyteller.
So here’s at least Act Two: They do land on the Moon and begin to explore about. One discovers a sipapu. A what? Well, a sipapu is the hole in the earth, upward through which most Native American tribes believe they came in order to arrive on this Earth of ours and continue their existence today. Sipapus are usually found in sacred kivas, the mysterious below-ground meeting place of the prehistory Anasazi peoples.
The astronaut peers into the sipapu and then explores, lowering himself through the cold and bleak crust of the Moon into the world down below. There in the core of the Moon he finds millio
ns of people, well, actually souls in various amorphous shapes. One welcoming soul approaches the newly arrived visitor and informs the astronaut that he has just arrived in heaven. The astronaut, rather stunned and clearly surprised, looks about.
Atop a mound sit the Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost playing cards with the real God, and on another mound sits Allah, on another Buda, and on another very crowded and larger mound are assembled the entire Pantheon of Greek Gods.
Now you’ve got a storyline and the undivided interest of the reader or listener. Yet to this storyline I doubt there is a dénouement, an Act Three, because the astronaut has obviously become hallucinogenic with the aromatic atmosphere of the Moon, so can there be an ending?
Ocotillo Omen
She stared for a long time at the Ocotillo plant in the protected courtyard garden of the Palace of the Governors, New Mexico’s flagship museum of Southwestern treasure. The multiple unbranched stems of the thorny cactus-like shrub were sprouting their tiny green leaves of spring, yet the time was midwinter in Santa Fe. The courtyard’s spreading old Cottonwood centerpiece was bare, and snow covered its tree branches. Museum Director Lee Roberts shivered at the thought of her own barrenness, having devoted her life to her career instead of mothering a child. Yes, the Ocotillo plant was reminding her of Running Deer’s special baby, born on the very day she had opened her museum’s exhibition of magnificent 10th- and 11th-century Mimbres and Anasazi pottery—the pièce de résistance of last August’s Indian Market Week, beautiful pottery with designs so precise, so imaginative, so ingenious as to rival any metropolitan museum’s artwork.
Lee thought back on her participation in the modern evolution of a museum’s role in cultural society and how, in addition to expanding permanent collections and hosting the occasional traveling exhibit, museums had to initiate super shows focusing on a single subject of artistic achievement in order to compete for super money from super donors—foundations, corporations and wealthy individual benefactors. She and her staff, in a culmination of five years of meticulous work, had inaugurated on that portentous night the super bowl of priceless prehistoric Native American artwork. And for the first time in the museum’s opening night history, they had collected one thousand dollars from each person who craved to see the splendor.
The sheltering tent outside the museum’s entrance had bubbled with caterers, benefactors, and dignitaries clinking glasses of champagne. The strolling mariachi band serenaded thousands of the wealthy-privileged from New York, Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles, who were dressed in the tuxedos and evening finery of those metropolitan cities, not the bluejeans and cowboy boots of New Mexico. Even the parking valets wore formal attire this night.
Lee remembered how, in her strapless evening gown, the warm summer breeze caressed her shoulders. Was her Dallas-designer creation passé, reminiscent of the 1960s instead of a statement for the twenty-first century? No, for a museum director, the dress was perfect, complemented as it was with the delicate Zuni turquoise necklace. She had accepted a kiss on her cheek from the governor and returned one to the mayor, welcomed each of the benefactors, exhibiting the correct degree of sensuality to male Manhattan moneyed while smiling into the television cameras.
Yes, those moments had promised a springboard to exciting opportunities to advance her career. Oh, to re-live those moments, to stop the clock, to not have had those dreadful next moments crash down upon her. She chided herself for having turned a blind eye to the country’s recent pertinent federal legislation and thereby inviting dire consequences, but who would have anticipated how cataclysmic the night would turn out to be.
Seventeen blue vans careened from all directions into the historic plaza in front of the Palace of the Governors. Five times as many agents wearing blue jackets, each displaying those authoritative three yellow capital letters, FBI, charged through the tent and into the museum carrying packing crates and packaging materials, their weapons in plain view. Their field commander spoke into his bullhorn, bellowing for everyone to stand perfectly still, not to leave, and not to obstruct the raid. “Under the provisions of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the FBI believes this entire collection of pots has been stolen from sovereign Indian nations and, if our experts so agree, the whole lot will be returned to their rightful owners.”
Infuriated, Lee stepped up to the FBI field commander and demanded that he and his goons leave immediately. He had dismissed her with, “Stand aside, honey, we’ve got an eighteen-wheeler outside waiting to load up these dishes.”
Bristling, she shouted back at him, “Why are you singling us out—what about the National Gallery, the Smithsonian, the Peabody—are they next on your hit list? No? Are we a political target, then?”
“We’re just doin’ our job, lady.”
The governor and the mayor had tiptoed away into the dark night. At the edge of the plaza, she saw the Indians. They were no doubt gathering in celebration of bursting the balloons of Anglo domination. Having come from the twenty modern-day pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, they were hoisting hand-lettered placards written in their native languages of Tiwa, Tewa, Towa, Nahuatl, Penutian, and Keresan; and Lee translated the phrase “return our sacred art” on each sign. She realized that they had known about the raid in advance—probably had been the ones to tip off the FBI.
And then, as word spread among them of Running Deer’s delivery of her milky-skinned albino baby, they cheered that news as being a sacred sign as momentous as the birth of a white buffalo, an event signifying great change for Native Americans everywhere. Drummers began to beat the seminal message for all to hear. Their ominous repeated thumps added to the night’s tension.
Running Deer’s husband, gallery owner Paul Zimmerman, was as angry as Lee with the raid.
“Who the hell does the Federal Bureau of Investigation think they are, coming in here and ripping off these treasures? Is it for their own gain?”
Lee tried to recall the sequence of events. It was only hours later that a grief-stricken Paul told her that his baby had been kidnapped from the hospital. In his bewilderment he said he suspected that the ransom note demanding three million dollars was from his black market pothunters who hadn’t been paid. He told her he couldn’t go to the police or the FBI knowing he, too, was guilty of accepting illegally-acquired loot. She panicked because he had loaned these prized pots to the museum’s exhibition, and at that very moment his “collection,” along with all the other priceless pottery, was being packed into FBI crates to be carried off to who knows where.
A clumsy FBI agent dropping the classic Mimbres bowl, the shattering crash breaking into a thousand shards the black on white scene of a rabbit, a star, and the A.D. 1054 supernova, and the cries of the aghast onlookers caused Lee to grab a gun from the first holster she could reach; to everyone’s shock, the weapon discharged toward the ceiling before she leveled the barrel directly at the field commander. “I’ll shoot this G-man if anyone as much as looks at another pot,” she screamed. “Do any of you FBI agents realize the significance of the Mimbres bowl you just demolished?” Struggling to regain her composure, Lee continued, “These prehistoric people, who had no written language, communicated this rare celestial event to us through their art. We have written proof of this extraordinary explosion in the heavens from an ancient royal Chinese astrologer who wrote about it in court journals. And now,” Lee choked up, “you...you’ve destroyed America’s only register of this eleventh century cosmic phenomenon!”
Lee remembered how the lone Indian potter from Acoma calmed her and the crowd with his carefully-chosen words. “Many moons ago, our potters deftly coiled their ropes of palm-rolled clay to form these hand-crafted vessels. They painted, fired, and polished these cooking and storage utensils for use in their daily lives. What would these early potters say to us now in this summer of our disputes? They would counsel reflection on all sides.”
He was right, Lee reflected. It was time to question every museum’s miss
ion. Beginning in the late 19th century those early archaeologists dispatched to the Southwest by the National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and the Peabody, as well as those archaeologists who came later, rationalized that only learned Anglo scholars could interpret Native American values through their analysis of collected artifacts. Hundreds of academic careers and museum collections had been built around illegally acquired pottery ware from one field expedition after another—the treasure hunts of their times.
But what if these professional and amateur archaeologists hadn’t excavated the ancient ruins? What if the 1990 Graves Repatriation Act had been passed along with the Antiquities Act back in 1906 and the pottery left undisturbed, would the Indians have built museums to display their “sacred” art? Would they have educated the world’s children about their heritage? No, she had told herself in justifying the actions of the archaeologists. The lore of New Mexico, the lure of tourism, the grist for the academic mill, and the inspiration for the art world would still be buried in remote sites in the high deserts of the Southwest.
Lee reflected on how a lot of her male museum colleagues had fabricated false provenances for each piece in their collections, circumventing the new law in order to protect their museums’ reputations, as well as their own personal reputations. So why shouldn’t she have done so? Instead, she wanted to be honest about the ownership history for each pot, which meant slow, deliberate documentary research—a task she hadn’t yet been able to complete under the pressure of time to open the exhibit.