May 21st: The Creek Is Rising
Susannah Israel
May 2011
May 21st: The Creek Is Rising
Three days ago the creek was burbling cheerfully past my window. But it’s no longer flowing gently along; it shoots out under the little bridge and races madly around the bend. It’s much wider too. I’ve been monitoring it nervously, giving hopeful reports about how much it’s risen, and how much more it has to rise to cover the lawn, measured in terms of the height of the kitchen backsplash. I stayed calm, as things don’t seem to be moving along too fast, until I tell Robyn my findings. Now I learn about flash floods. The snow also melts in this rain, and can abruptly fill the waterways without warning, sweeping everything and everyone under in its icy, merciless current.
I am not very happy about this information, and mill around in the kitchen. We make a fire, mostly in response to the rain and lashing wind, but it actually is cold. After three days of fire making, we’ve gotten competent at it. Thick dark smoke no longer billows out the front door when we open it to see why it isn’t burning yet. We no longer pull off important things like handles by mistake. We know the parts of the stove – the correct position for the handles, how to make a teepee with kindling, and to use 4-5 sheets of balled-up newspaper. I am very grateful for the detailed, step-by-step instructions that are provided on a laminated sheet, fully illustrated.
I make some tea and Jeff, Charlotte and I talk about sociopathology. Jeff has learned some fascinating things about sociopaths and their neurobiology. When tested, true sociopaths have the same non-emotional reaction to “mother” puppy” or “happiness” as they do to “chair” spoon” or towel”. The testing reveals that only the quantitative part of the brain lights up, in such cases, making it impossible to have, or even comprehend, emotions of attachment, compassion or love. We find ourselves talking about people we’ve encountered who don’t seem to care what happens to anyone else, as long as they come out on top.
It’s May 21st today, also scheduled to be the end of the world. This will turn out badly for anyone who’s not sociopathic. Personally I don’t think it’s all that great to be saved while everyone else dies. But at 6 pm today, it will all be over – there are all sorts of natural disasters predicted, with floods of course among them. This does not do much to improve our outlook. Robyn is sorry for scaring me about the flash floods, but I assure her, sadly, that ignorance is not bliss. Meanwhile, if the world doesn’t end, we can expect another week of heavy rain
Rochelle and I confer, conspiratorially; if this gets much worse, we’re going to bring the cats inside, although it’s been expressly forbidden. We’ve been cuddling them, - well, the only one who lets us - and I put my towel on their old, dirty blanket. It’s a red towel, and its cheerful appearance is soothing to us, and the cats seem to like it too.
I strongly feel that we ought to try to do something in this emergency. We look at the situation from my room, which is, of course, the closest to the surging creek. It’s an alarming view. The waters have spread to the lawn, and although it isn’t up to the house yet, it’s snaking its watery fingers in our direction.
I actually feel funny about having a lawn. I’ve never lived any place with a lawn, maybe briefly in New England as a child, though all I recall is snowy sidewalks. The entire Jentel compound is a wonderland, actually; it’s beautiful, and everywhere there is thought and care taken for our comfort, for ways of gathering, for meals, conversation, and repose. The furnishing are amazing, and Lynn told us in our orientation about the 174 people whose art and skills have made the place what it is, and who still ask how things are looking, how this or that part they made is holding up, if people like and appreciate the fine work there. We do. We would really hate to see everything swept away.
I’m still trying to think of what we might do in the event of this flooding disaster. In California, the land of earthquakes, mudslides and sometimes floods, we form brigades and put out sandbags. There don’t seem to be any bags around, though, and there certainly isn’t any sand. There are a quite a lot of rocks, which we could use, I suppose, if we had any bags, but somehow, I am dubious. Those rocks would not make the kind of densely packed barrier that sand does – in fact, the water might just flow right through. Also it is clear that we will need an awful lot of them.
It suddenly occurs to me that I should start my truck, which has been sitting all week. Just to be sure. I go start it, to charge the battery, and run it for twenty minutes, all good sensible safety precautions. Sitting in the truck with the wind rocking it, I realize another problem. If we need to use the truck for a getaway, I’ll have to sacrifice the contents of the back, a big sculpture that I just made in Montana. I fired it in the kiln, but only once, so it’s at its most fragile state. No one could sit on it without crushing it. Now I realize that we’ll have to just fling it out of the truck so we can squeeze everyone in. Of course, in such a situation I guess I won’t be firing that sculpture in any kilns anyway.
Will it even be worth it, if the world is ending? Now I’m restless, as any Californian, reared in biannual disaster-preparedness drills, would naturally be at a time like this. To make things worse, I am a former paramedic, and have already ascertained the location of our first aid supplies, I know exactly where all the fire extinguishers are located, and I know we have no burlap bags and no sand. I really want to take some emergency measures, if only there were any to take.
I put on my coat and stumble out to look at the creek more closely. The winds buffet me with such force that I can barely make it to the creek. At close quarters it looks and sounds really scary. When I first arrived, I thought, how wonderful to be in a room right next to a creek. But the sound of the water, flowing endlessly along with a kind of steady pouring hiss, kept waking me up, thinking the bathtub was overflowing. That really did happen once when my roommate ran a bath and then started a big fight with his girlfriend. From downstairs under the bathroom I first heard splashing and then saw waterfalls pouring down the wall, to quickly rise around my shoes. The roommate wasn’t much help. “Aw man, what a drag”, he said.
This creek no longer sounds like a bathtub, even to my urban ears. It makes a kind of triumphant chuckling noise, a strong hint of malevolence in it. I’ve seen too many horror movies, I admit it. But at least I learned from the movies to stand where I can’t get sucked in. Now that the water is higher, the lower lawn is gone from sight. I stumble back to the house hoping dimly that Annie knows some woodcraft that will save us all. After all, she just spent a month hiking alone on the Pacific Coast Trail, which requires composure, fortitude and preparedness. Unfortunately, it doesn’t flood on that section of the trail so she’s as much in the dark as the rest of us. We decide to plan our escape, and consult the house atlas. But wait - the map of Wyoming is missing! It’s been neatly scissored right out of the book. This ominous development suddenly draws all eyes to the clock. We see that the time has slipped away while the storm occupied us. It is 5:53 pm, and things are getting worse.
Well, that’s the month.
Tony Tulathimutte
September 2009
Well, that’s the month
Well, that’s the month. A month of 30 days passing in anti-calendrical ranch time, in a place where dog bites man, bear bites man, weather bites man, gun bites man. You can find hedgehogs and snakes and the bones of the insufficiently ornery just lying strewn around here, and people expect you to be calm about it. (in our first week here we had our first pulling-together moment when we found a rattlesnake sunning itself on a rock nest to the barn, and after making all the appropriate phone calls, leaving notes, and taking thirty pictures at a safe distance with every camera on the grounds, Ken realizes it’s made of rubber. We wondered why a snake would keep its mouth open so long. And how should I have known that snakes don’t yawn?)
Jentel, Ill miss it: and I speak as someone who, prior to arrival, had been preconsciously imagining the whole venture as a sort of endurance test or hair shirt atonement for all the time I never spent outdoors as a child. I have my allergies, yes, and I have my peculiar ideas about people who get too much sunshine (now what the fuck are they so fucking happy about?), so actually enjoying my time here, in a place where the sun will do whatever the fuck it wants with you—hey, you’re not warming it—has been a minor coup for me.
I was received at the airport by Mary Jane who claimed she could pick me out at the gate “by my shoes”, and I’m looking around and thinking I’m the only non-white, non-cowboy hat wearing individual here, and the only one who isn’t basically riding a steer bareback out of the baggage claim, and it’s my shoes that tip her off? We left the terminal and stepped into in hot weather, and then we were driving past acres of level, dry terrain, all of which resembled different kinds of cracker and crouton. On we went past the Biscotti Flats, through the Matzah Plain, up the Nabisco Heights. In the car I made the acquaintance of Mary Frances, whose admission that she’d never watched reality television before sat uneasily against the fact that she’s really young looking. This, along with other curious biometric data about Mary Frances—such as the fact that she feels hypothermic in 65 degree weather, and that she only sleeps in short intervals, and that she eats practically only tuna and chocolate—leads one to suspect either that there’s some strange reverse-metabolism tantra afoot, or that she’s one of those Black Ops military replicants who’s become self-aware and discovered “art” and “feelings”. (A likely explanation, given how traumatized she was after seeing Transformers 2.) I made a note to keep an eye out for her, but she was less Terminator and more Haley-Joel-Osment-in-A.I. (I’ll explain later, Mary Frances.) The relationship between Mary Frances and I has evolved into one in which we give each other stuff and commiserate about how fucked up everything is and also swear a lot, all of which as far qualifies us for common law marriage as San Francisco is concerned.
Wyoming is known as a red state, but here on Jentel grounds it’s actually more of a burnt sienna. I stood around taking pictures of Shooter the Dog, and Mary Frances, Likely responding to some subroutine hardwired into her CPU, announced that she was going to take a nap. I walked gape-jawed around the house until at some point I saw two bearded men talking to each other, probably about beard care. These were John and Ken, and I’d heard of these types before, these bearded Real Men. For whatever reason, and I don’t care to get into it now, but for whatever reason, none of my friends can grow beards, or grow above 5 foot 6 for that matter. That is because they are all either female or because they, like me, have their own skepticisms about sunlight and so-called fresh air. My inclination is to distrust Real Men: they might force you to light a fire or climb up a long rope at any time. Intimidation mounted as John told stemwinders about hiking dozens of miles through forests at night and getting run over by a forklift as a longshoreman and standing astride nuclear reactors and rescuing a girl who was hanging from the side of a barn by her ring and having to nearly tear her finger off; and then there were Ken’s epic morning runs in high-elevation and sub-Arctic weather, whereas the closest I came to exercising all month was contracting athlete’s foot in the second week. Weren’t Real Men supposed to suck, and not be cultured and friendly and articulate: This unfamiliar Proximity to full-spectrum manhood was obliging me to once again revisit my Half-A-Man status. After learning, however, that Ken made jewelry and that John drank bottled mojitos, my concerns were mooted entirely: these were my people. (Incidentally I did light a fire later in the month, by accidentally leaving a box of matches on an already-lit furnace.)
A few hours later came the last two arrivals, Jana and Erin. Now I had heard about Jana in advance through a friend of mine in San Francisco, who’d been in an art show with Jana a few Years back, and my friend had led me to anticipate that Jana was fairly stunning, and a San Francisco native whose father was in a seminal SF art band besides, and of course my thought upon meeting her was, And how the fuck am I going to get any work done with her around? She is exactly what I’m here to avoid! Fortunately it was soon made known that she had a fiancé, and thanks to a number of harrowings in the past involving spoken-for women, the words boyfriend and fiancé have become as libido-deadening to me as the words sales tax and half-marathon. (I do however pity the poor rangy teenager at the antiques store, who was looking at Jana with big cartoon hearts in hi eyes.) One final thing I will say about Jana is that it is a pleasure to know a Williamsburg artist who can appreciate a goddamn fishstick.
Erin, as The Only Other Writer, also came in a sort of crosshairs of expectation for me. I wasn’t going to be shown up by some poet. Oh sure she’s friendly, as we shake hands and agree on books and I find out that she lived in San Francisco too and she makes me coffee in the morning and lets me use her blender—friendly until the knife’s in my back! It’s likely that some of this competitiveness bled through into the götterdämmerung we had two nights later over the subject of prostitution, but as both of us were equally stubborn and equally wordy, exhaustion made a truce look very attractive. Very fortunately for all of us, Erin was a good decision maker, and good decision makers are indispensable in small communities of artists, whose primary decision in my experience is along the lines of With my last ten dollars, do I buy drugs or art supplies? And as cooking partners I daresay there was never a pair more suited than me and her: she knew what she was doing, and I can move a knife up and down for a long time without complaining. At any rate I can hardly stay long in conflict with such a stalwart protector of Grey Kitty, and at the Old West bar three weeks later Erin played a crucial role in fighting a second front against the Executive Director of the NRA’s legislative branch, whom we encountered by chance and then engaged in an utterly pointless gun control argument. Don’t bother arguing with a guy whose hair never looks dry.
The month passed with surreal quickness and maximum contrast, as if Lynn had contrived to speed up the rotation of the earth and then divert a number of warm and cold air streams through the state so that we could enjoy every kind of weather possible, which it is no doubt entirely within her capacity to accomplish. We’re all barred from applying for another five years, but like Jana, I’ve been won over to applying to other places, the idea being that if I make my life an unbroken series of residencies, then I can be permanently avoid the rent check and coin-op laundry, the bachelor’s insomnia and work angst, the hustle and bullshit that go hand-in-glove with the life I’m accustomed to, which for some reason I’ve been convinced is the normal life. |
Topographical Map: Jentel
Donna Barkman
March 2008
Topographical Map: Jentel
Start by staring straight ahead
Especially far, especially West.
Three sets of mountains
brown, dark blue, and then high white
layer against the horizon
backed by clouds
whose colors vary, evening best
for brilliance.
Turn left to view the conical hills
close up, sere and plain in March yet
many topped by rosy areolas
betraying the heat of their lava birth.
Another left where scattered Black Angus
punctuate a snowy slope
mudsliding to a stand of cottonwoods,
stark dark reminders of vertical pride.
Another left invited by rushing
hushing Piney Creek
banked by thick snowbound edges,
clotted by icy slabs
floes enough for you
and Lillian Gish.
One more left,
A scoria drive burns to buildings
That praise the landscape
Full circle.
You’re not lost.
You are here.
In Wyoming
For Gail and Lisa
Catherine Chung
October 2007
In Wyoming
For Gail and Lisa
Every day the braying of cattle, the hum
and thud. Box elders dripping into our hair, our food, wrapping the ground in a shroud of motion. The tumbleweeds blowing by. The smell of sage.
This is how it was: every day, the mountains, the sky so wide I knew it held whatever I had lost-what escaped me still, out there beyond the land, galloping away.
How the dying insects hovered in the air,
as if air could preserve even time
the way it bleached the rabbit’s skeleton and left it lying for us to find, its tiny bones arranged in perfect order.
How it held the dust, the buzzing yellow-jackets,the mountains—as if the world could explain the world If only we knew how to read it. Look, it said, at what spreads itself against the earth and is gone.
Plenty
Pamela Steele
June 2007
Plenty
Buying a peach in Story, Wyoming
is just asking for disappointment—
what you end up with is a leathery lump
of pulp, arrived two weeks ago,
bruised and exhausted,
two thousand miles from the tree.
Make out the best you can—
buy fruit in a jar at Albertsons,
eat pinto beans, they’re grown here.
Just be sure to go out of an evening
and lean against the last warm stone of day.
Watch the velvet light sweep over
the hayfields. Look west. Over the Bighorns
will be the perfect raw flesh of the sky.
Wyoming sketches
Carolyn Dille
September 2005, May 2003
Wyoming sketches
bunch grass and golden asters
bent by the wind
cowshit and mud
poplar and cottonwood
new leaf green
chokecherry in bloom
rain squalls over
snake hills
wet walk through
meadow-wide
double rainbow
marmots and cottontails
on the way up stile hill
antelope dead and alive
jacob’s ladder bluing
near a small seep
wild onion and lamb’s quarters
enough to feed hungry
residents
no snowshoes at medicine
wheel
I climbed the clouds
instead of stones
mule deer in the meadows
below
moraine ice running
rivulets in the sun
northern harrier airlifting
a snake
orioles chanting
a plainsong
gray-striped tabby
with peach ears
mouses around the house
killdeer nervous at nesting
along the creek
bluebird warbles
in hawthorn gulch
magpies and phoebes
sun on dead trees
yellow lupine purple phlox
golden balsam root
wheel a color
cattle lowing, backhoes
backing up
wind always whistling
creekside bathroom
roof rattling
paints an palominos
sorrel colts
clinkers blood red and lava black
sharp scalloped
from their Vulcan-earth journey
juniper and sage scenting
cooley and basin
full moon total eclipse
copper and rust
blackening to silver
ring
long slow blue
northern late light fading
glowsticks and kites
Art-makers home-makers MJ and L and N,
K-who-flies-light, Zen-fire-painter S
rad-fem bone-funny PB, Lib-Rarian PT
lucent L, waking the morning and writing it free you’ll stay under my skin
being with you a great gift
As I was walking along Piney Creek road toward 14, a dozen or so cows and calves began to watch me from more than a hundred yards behind the fence, then slowly came closer, I was saying poetry aloud, stopped to look and them and began recite them a chant that came to me then: Take all the time you need, take all the space you need, follow your path, get to know yourselves…over and over, standing, then squatting while they kept coming closer and closer. Some, clearly more curious and leading the way, came right to the fence, some strayed further back. After 10 minutes or so I moved slowly on and they followed a couple of yards from the fence. In another few minutes they began to trot on their way down toward the creek, though a few of the curious would stop to look back at me every now and then. Take all the time you need, take all the space you need, get to know yourselves…
What is a Residency and How Do
I Get One?
Melanie Jennings
November 2003
What is a Residency and How Do
I Get One?
A residency is a beautiful thing. As I write this,
I’m kicked back in a comfy recliner next to a
wood-burning stove in a cozy studio, a room of my own, as it were, smack in the middle of
Wyoming. Outside my window, a white-white
half-moon rises above a boulder-strewn hill,
atop whose peak a pair of bald eagles have made their nest in which to raise two baby bald eagles, all of whom soar past daily. I’ve been awarded a month to write in this studio, to have no other obligations but to work on my novel, to “trust my process” as commanded by the executive director of the foundation, and to live comfortably in the gorgeous six-bedroom house next door with four artists and one experimental filmmaker. Sound insane? Or like heaven? Well, it is, and it’s called being a writer-in-residence.
Residencies provide artists and writers of all kinds the opportunity to pursue their craft unimpeded by the responsibilities of their daily lives (you know, stuff like the telephone, the kids’ homework, nagging spouses, and those pesky things called day jobs). They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but typically include a place to stay and studio/office space. They may or may not provide food or money for food and living expenses. They can range from posh private studio spaces to remote wilderness cabins which require you to hike in and essentially camp out. They can last a couple of weeks or several months. They may serve artists and writers, or only writers, or only artists. You may be expected to teach a workshop, give a reading to the community, provide pages of work in progress at the end of your stay, or none or all of the above. Whatever the particularities of a given residency, recipients are essentially awarded the gift of time to pursue their creative work.
Sounds Great, How Do I Get One?
You apply.
Expect to submit a sample of your work, a statement of intent that outlines what you intend to work on while in residence, professional references, and an application fee.
In my experience it’s the sample of your work that counts the most. When the foundation or organization to which you are applying receives your application, your work sample is sent out to a committee of professionals in your genre which then judges the work blindly (in other words, the judges don’t know your name, your achievements, or lack thereof, etc., all they know of you is your collection of poems, your play, short story, or novel excerpt). The judges rank the work samples and inform the foundation of the results. The foundation then extends invitations to the “winners” and maintains a “short list” in case the winners have to cancel for some crazy reason (not as uncommon as you might think). Because residencies vary so greatly, your guiding principle to the application process should be: Know thyself above all things. If you know that you don’t write well when you have to interact with people, then stay away from residencies which require that you live in a house with four other people, or require you to eat together at community meals. If you know that you work best in the city with lots of stimulation, then stay away from rural residencies. You get the idea.
What Do I When I Arrive?
There are a couple of different scenarios. You must either arrange to get to the residency location yourself (I know a woman who hiked all of her food and painting supplies into a remote Lake Superior cabin), or the foundation will arrange to have someone pick you up at the local airport, train, or bus station, and transport you to the residency. From there, you are simply expected to work on your essays, poems, screenplay, whatever. Again, requirements vary greatly.
What Happens When Fame and Fortune Follow?
You graciously acknowledge the foundation’s support in helping you complete your opus. You send them an autographed copy. You donate money to them from the gazillions you earned from your grocery store bestseller. In this way, you help them continue to help other writers who were once like you. This is your way of thanking them.
How Do I Find a Residency? Poets & Writers maintains a list at:
http://www.pw.org/links_pages/Conferences_
and_Residencies/
In addition, the National Parks has its own artist-in-residence program. You can browse their site at: http://www.nps.gov/volunteer/air
.htm Finally, check out www.artistcommunities.org
A Final Word
The gift of time is invaluable. We bow down and worship the folks who make residencies possible. Now, I gotta get back to work!
Writer Melanie Jennings from Jamul, CA shares her insight and experience about residencies from a comfy chair in her studio at Jentel in November 2003. The article appeared in San Diego Writers Monthly, a print and online magazine.
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