Jimmy Santiago Baca

Baca is a very recollective writer. What goes through my mind when reading A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet is "how does he remember that?"

Of course, I already know that a major part of writing memoir is knowing that you have to administer fictional (yet close enough to the truth) elements into prose so that you can fill in the much-needed details. I still can't help but wonder about this, though. Any astute reader, when reading any memoir where the writer writes about their childhood, would wonder how that writer remembers such solid, amazing details. Kids don't remember that! It's really interesting that we don't even question it, though. That the thought doesn't even cross our minds. How does Baca remember that the jail smelled like whisky vomit? How does he remember the dialogue between his mother and her secret lover the day he witnessed them having sex?

There are more questions, though, regarding the technique. When writing about one's childhood, what kind of voice should be used? There were times when Baca seemed like a child retelling the story, so I figured he took on the voice of a child to tell this portion of his story. But at other times, the voice seemed inconsistent or contrary to that--that the voice belonged to Baca as an adult. So, I got a little confused. Which way was he trying to go?

Wild Spot

People don't seem to understand my fascination with dead animals and their  bones. To lighten up the mood, I often say, Well, I like animals when they're alive, but it's hard to pet a wild deer or bird. I am hunched over the remains of a dead deer. It has been dead for months, I'm sure. I love this change in my wild spot's landscape. This area, in August, was covered in foliage, weeds, and high stalks of bamboo-like weeds. From up near the mouth of the cave, I was unable to see this forest floor that I am walking on now. But fall is here and its various falls have happened, allowing the forest floor to be seen and easier to explore. But this deer. It has been dead for quite a while. Long past stench. Long past maggots. I pick up its skull and there is only a little bit of flesh still clinging to the light-weight bone, but not too much. A hoof, still covered in fur as if it refused nature, is riddled with orange ticks, little circles with legs. I can't seem to scavenge many of the other bones that belonged to this deer. What stands out most is the skull and this preserved hoof. I wonder how this deer died. 

It is deer season now, for those who hunt with bows. The Monday after Thanksgiving is a holiday for Pennsylvania. The first day of deer season for those hunters who hunt with rifles and shotguns. On that Monday, there will be more people out hunting in Penn's Woods than there are people in the state of New Mexico. Not only is it deer season in the woods, but it is deer season on the roads, as well. All those hunters meandering through the woods, getting down on their haunches, poking their rifles through thick leaves, covering their human-smell with anise oil, scare the deer into the crowded streets where they meet their demise by rubber, metal, and glass rather than the projectile-quick bullet of lead alloy, as small as the eye it will inevitably close.

So, there are a lot of animal carcasses in Pennsylvania. Not just because of hunters. Some animals just need to cross the street. Some are attracted to the lights. Some smell human. And some want to lick the hot, sweet asphalt as it cools in the midnight hours. When driving home from my camp near Brookville [in the Allegheny National Forest], I tease my family saying, I saw more dead animals on the road than I did out in the wilderness! 

So here I am now, stroking the contours of deer's skull. A skull that was carried by a body that bounded through the forest in fear many times. Probably died in that same fear. But in this area where I am at now, with this deer carcass, is an area I have mentioned before. It's an area at the deep  base of the cave where deer sleep. For in the summer time, it is well-covered and there is a lot of foliage. When I venture into this area in the summer time, I see a lot of bent grass where the bodies of deer would lie in the daytime. When I would first enter this area, I would hear the deer raise their bodies from the ground and bound away, their little white tails like flags getting smaller and smaller in the distance.

I'm looking around. I want to find something romantic. I want to find something funeralesque for this deer. I want to liken the deer to elephants who actually cry and have grave sites for the members of their family. A bamboo weed shoots up from the ground near where the skull lies on the ground. The bamboo shoots here are no longer a rich green like they were in the summer, but a little bit more dull: a gray/green. Attached, though, to this particular shoot is a piece of wood that has grown around the shoot to the point where the shoot looks squeezed by the wood that embraces it. I see this a lot in the forests. When wood embraces or becomes attached to something that is not itself. You can find it in backyards...where clotheslines or fences grow into the bark of trees. But this isn't a growing into. It's a growing around. The wood is embracing the shoot. It's interesting to liken trees to weeds because it always seemed to me that trees lasted longer. But in order for this phenomenon to take place, the weed had to stay alive and in this spot for a long time, along with the piece of wood that wraps itself around it. This reminds me of a poem my boyfriend read to me once.

The Way They Held Each Other by Mira

A woman and her young daughter were destitute

and traveling to another country
where they hoped to find
a new life.

Three men stole them while they were camping.

They were brought to a city
and sold as slaves; each to a different
owner.

They were given one minute more together,
before their fates became unknown.

My soul clings to God like that,
the way they held
each other.

*

Pittsburgh & Environment

Businessmen can tell you. Delivery men can tell you. Mailmen can tell you. Truck drivers can tell you.

Pennsylvania has terrible roads. The worst in the country, probably.

I drive almost every day on Route 28. This road is a very special place in my life. I drive north on it to get to my camp. I drive south to go to work, go to school, visit Pittsburgh, visit friends. When hiking on the Rachel Carson Trail, I get a nice aerial view of it from the various hills that parallel it. When walking to my wildspot, I can see portions of it. I can see portions of the various large hills that were broken by dynamite in order to make that road. When sitting at my wild spot, I can hear the cars driving on that road.

Before history books were written,
family blood ran through this land,
thrashed against mountain walls and in streams,
fed seeds, and swords, and flowers.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

But this road, it cut through large hills, forest-land, streams, and other various natural habitats, including people's homes. When driving on a side-road with my ex, he pointed at crumbled foundations that spotted small plots of land between thin trees. He pointed to a particular foundation of bricks and said his family lived there until Route 28 was being constructed. When driving along the road, I always take care to look at the sliced mountains that bear their various layers and stratigraphy of rock and dirt. The differing shades of browns and yellows and grays. It is glorious to look at but devastating to comprehend.

But the most devastating realization is that this 97 mile-long highway is always under construction. Although it is built and developed, it seems to be going through a constant rennovation or face-lift. If they're not widening the lanes near the Cheswick exit, then they're adding lanes near the Sharpsburg exit. About seven years ago, plans were developed to turn natural farming and forest landscape into Pittsburgh Mills Mall--a mall that is architecturally appealing, but not doing so well financially. I was away in college when the construction of the mall was taking place, but I do recall a lot of levelling machines and bulldozers. I go up that way often to shop at Wal-Mart or go to Starbucks and god, the sky is so beautiful up near that mall, which is perched on top of a large, elevated land.

But face it. Construction projects always disturb the natural landscape. Luckily, there are laws now that forbid road construction or development if it causes a disturbance to a natural habitat to an endangered species. When driving around Altoona with my boyfriend, he pointed at a hill covered moss-like with trees and mentioned how there were once plans to build a road through that hill, but those plans were cancelled because that hill belonged to an endangered species of owls.

So, when construction jobs such as these take place, there are regulations that the developers must follow. It is important to preserve the various surfaces of water flows, be them above or below ground. This helps sustain the species that inhabit the area.

Luckily, PENNDOT funds various research projects that are conducted by professionals and students in universities such as Pitt. For instance, PENNDOT funded the Swanson School of Engineering so that they can study new concepts of roadway design that will help improve the environment. I'll have to keep this in mind next time I'm stuck in traffic and wriggling in my seat, impatient with PENNDOT.

Wild Spot

The sun is due to set soon and I am sitting away from the cave entrance, at the bottom of a steep grade. My walk here was very aromatic. A sweet smell stopped me in my tracks almost out of fear. Of what? I do not know. It didn't smell like a natural sweetness. I immediately thought of rot or death. The smell literally stunned me. And now I sit here, my feet in the leaves, feeling each minute get colder. 

I hear sirens in the distance and short, loud sounds as if someone or something else is exploring this darkening section of woods. The horizon is golden with leveling sun and the night sounds and song birds are revealing their noise. I hear three different birdsongs and the squeaky stop of a city bus on the main street in Creighton across the river. Brown skeletons of flowers still stand with their off-white crumbly blossoms. Yards away, a wind I cannot gauge or feel is blowing the hanging, leafy branches of a tree which has not gone barren yet. The sky is blue-white and cold and all the leaves on the ground can easily be mistaken for something stilled with fear or something else that is dead. That one looks like a chipmunk on its haunches. That one, a splayed-0ut mouse. That rotting wood looks like the  backside of a groundhog. And speaking of backside, I just heard a loud rustle behind me. It may be a deer. Quick sounds in the leaves. And then silence. All of it behind my back. Yet I turn and see nothing. I hear it again, but it's out of sight. Unclear. Not nearly as clear as this tree in front of me with its deep-grooved bark that gives the tree a canyon-like appearance. Something just landed beneath the leaves near my feet and I see its burst-movements beneath the leaves. A mole?  An insect? Again, I see nothing and it's right in front of me!

What looks like a snake skin poking up from under some leaves is a strap of material. I pull at it and relieve one end but the other end won't budge from its roots underground. The rich, black dirt I pulled up, though, smelled delicious. I read somewhere that some pregnant women crave dirt. What an amazing time to experience the outside world--when one is pregnant! I c an only imagine how amazing yet conflicting it would be to truly sense the world outside me when so much is going on inside me. I am jealous of animals in a way. They are always out there. Making their calcium eggs and regurgitating their food for their young. They gather, sort, bury, climb, build. I want to make a nest. Lay an egg. Teach my children that they must learn to fall before they learn to fly.

"The Solace of Open Spaces" by Gretel Ehrlich

I felt that there were a lot of open spaces in Ehrlich's essay "The Solace of Open Spaces". Spaces that she could have filled in, I mean. While reading the whole piece, I felt as if I were holding onto a very thin thread that kept me going along with the rest of the essay. But barely. There were several times where I felt I was just hanging by this thread and at some points, I just wanted to let go.

I must admit, though, that the topics on which she writes about are interesting, but the way she goes about writing them is not. She approaches the subject on which she writes about as if it is dirty dishwater and her task is to dip her hand in and pull the plug from the sink. She doesn't seem to want to get her hands wet with her essays. In her essay "The Solace of Open Spaces" there were quite a few people she mentioned, but I felt no attachment to them whatsoever, and I felt that I should have been attached because she spent a lot of her time working with and collaborating with these people. These essays are not too intimate and I wonder if that is her technique, though. I'm not judging or despising her work. I am keeping an open mind, or so I'd like to think. The word solace has the prefix sol- which comes from the Latin solus meaning "alone" or "single". The idea of open spaces allows ideas of vastness and overwhelming to enter the mind. There is all this space for the mind to move around in this essay. It's like driving a bumper car with no one else to bump into... so it's kind of tedious.

What I did find interesting was the sociological information she shared within her essays. Some of this information is coupled with a quick anecdote that allows intimacy, but as soon as I begin to enjoy it, it is taken away. Here is an interesting excerpt from "The Solace of Empty Spaces" where she talks about how the landscape reflects on the people who live within it:

Conversation goes on in what sounds like a private code; a few phrases imply a complex of meanings. Asking directions, you get a curious list of details. While trailing sheep I was told to "ride up to that kinda upturned rock, follow the pink wash, turn left at the dump, and then you''ll see the water hole." One friend told his wife on roundup to "turn at the salt lick and the dead cow," which turned out to be a scattering of bones and no salt lick at all.

In this excerpt, interesting sociological information is shared about the people who live in this landscape and a brief, amusing anecdote compliments it. This is one of a few feel-good moments in this essay, for most of her writing isn't really humorous. She seems to have a very serious tone throughout her essays. In her essay "About Men" she gets serious about how the media portrays the cowboy compared to what a cowboy really is. She could have gone into better detail to show the distinction between the two, if you ask me. I thought more personal experience...dialogue, anecdotes, relationships...using those ideas and techniques would give her more credibility as a woman who knows what a real cowboy is.

It isn't that I don't like her writing. It's just that the style of writing that I would use or admire is different. I like the topics and ideas in her essays, but in my opinion, they could be portrayed so much better if she had manifested more personal experiences and emotion.

Wild Spot & Some Very Bad, On-The-Fly Poems

O, Sun!

I stopped in my tracks, I paused,
when I came upon the threshold
of my wild spot. Today, with this sun,
rings glory. I did, eventually, start walking,
but more slowly, my head up. The blue jays
are out. The canopy, dissipated,
I see everything that falls or takes flight.
It is one of those days where the sun
is so bright that even the clear air
takes shape, a thin fog. Light so bright
that the invisible becomes visible.
It is quite the phenomenon.

*

[That was actually prose, I broke the structure and rebuilt it into a poem without changing a word.]

The crows are still out. When I get home, I'm going to research how I can possibly attract them to my backyard. And then I'm going to collect leaves for next year's compost. The forest floor is a confetti of golds and browns. Everything is bare and vulnerable to my eye. What a transformation. And how sensational this all is. I want to put leaves in my mouth. I can imagine what they taste like and what their texture would be. This leaf, as I chew it, tastes like water at first. And then bitter lettuce. It's still slightly green and pliable to my tongue. I spit it out.

A day like this makes me want to focus on every single thing.

SMALL WHITE SPIDER

You seem no different,
you white speck crawling
down my black pant leg,
than a louse, a tick,
that blood-stain bug
I'd smash against cement
as a child, feigning pain
with something else's blood.

SPIDER WEBS

The dogbane holds you.
The air plays your trembling strings.
The light wears you.
Diamonds.

DOGBANE

is what native americans used for rope.

First, you pull the dryest,
deadest stalk and peel its fragile bark away,
exposing the taut cord, that thick vein.
Take an end in each hand and twist them
with your thumb and forefinger. Watch
as the air seems to bend it into rope. Watch
the physics of twine and pull and twist. Watch
how something can move contrary to air. Envy
that movement, wish you could do the same.

Then burn it.
Get the excess off.
Tighten the strings.
Tune it.
Boil it
until the water
turns
brown.

*

Before winter comes, I want to build a bird's nest and see if in the spring a bird will use it. I will make it and keep it in the freezer all winter and put it out in the spring. Or perhaps I will keep it outside all winter. I don't know yet. I need to do some research.



[Today, before I walked to my wild spot, I read some poetry that seems to compliment this entry, so here it is.]

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost

Many people find autumn to be ugly. I think it might be my favorite season, though. Honestly, I think it is the most comfortable season. I fall along with everything. I settle into things. I crawl into warm areas and dark areas. Part of me hibernates into myself. I make more time for myself. It feels just right.