Letter to Jack Grapes

Dear Jack,

I’m writing to you from India. Your ever-devoted student is sitting on the back porch of her spartan cottage in Goa, lap top on her guess-what, a few steps away from the Arabian Sea, reading Roberto Bolaño’s maddening The Savage Detectives, about a bunch of crazy poets. In the first third of the book I kept thinking about Henry Miller. In the middle of the book he took off in another direction; now I’m thinking Leo Tolstoy. He’s almost too intense, hard to read, but I can’t put the book down. Anyway, when I got to page 221, I jumped out of my seat. Hey, I shouted, this is straight out of Jack’s Poetry Collective Manuel, it’s Jack’s method! Is Jack a secret visceral realist?

I’m sure you already know this but since I want to refer to it again when I’m in need of a new exercise, I thought I’d write it out & send you a copy.

The poets’ group in the book is called the “visceral realists” & one of the characters, Rafael Barrios, reports their activities after its leaders have left…

“automatic writing, exquisite corpses, solo performances with no spectators, contraintes, two-handed writing, three-handed writing, masturbatory writing (we wrote with the right hand and masturbated with the left, or vice versa if we were left-handed), madrigals, poem-novels, sonnets always ending with the same word, three-word messages written on walls (“This is it,” “Laura, my love,” etc), outrageous diaries, mail-poetry, projective verse, conversational poetry, antipoetry, Brazilian concrete poetry (written in Portuguese cribbed from the dictionary), poems in hard-boiled prose (detective stories told with great economy, the last verse revealing the solution or not), parables, fables, theater of the absurd, pop art, haikus, epigrams (actually imitations of or variations on Catullus, almost all by Moctezuma Rodríguez) desperado poetry (Western ballads), Georgian poetry, poetry of experience, beat poetry, apocryphal poems by bpNichol, John Giorno, John Cage (A Year from Monday), Ted Berrigan, Brother Antoninus, Armand Schwerner (The Tablets), lettrist poetry, calligrams, electric poetry (Bulteau, Messagier), bloody poetry (three deaths at least), pornographic poetry (heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, with no relation to the poet’s personal preference), apocryphal poems by the Colombian Nadaistas, Peruvian Horazerianos, Uruguayan Cataleptics, Ecuadorian Tzantzicos, Brazilian cannibals, Nô theater of the proletariat… We even put out a magazine… We kept moving…We kept moving… We did what we could… But nothing turned out right.”

Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

Love,

P.S. has anyone in the collective working on “poets” ever chosen Ted Berrigan or Brother Antoninus? .

Benaulim Beach, Goa

Still the quiet boring place where I spent several idyllic years (6 months at a time) writing my memoirs, never lonely or feeling I was missing something going on outside my clean simple cottage room, happily grinding out at least a thousand words a day, until I was ready for a swim in the sea, a long walk on the beach, & lunch.

Somewhere, probably in the Paris Review, I’d read that Eugene O’Neil wrote for four hours each morning and then went for a swim before lunch, which sounded like such a great way to live I adopted it. In my case, however, no masterpieces have resulted and my book is still not published.

I’m in paradise; all’s well; the ceiling fan whirs, keeping mosquitoes away while I lie in bed, reading Roberto Bolaño’s maddening masterpiece, The Savage Detectives. Outside, waves pound the shore at night and crows screech in the garden in the morning. From the kitchen the noise of chopping onions & garlic; the cook stokes his tandoor, prepares dough for naans, & grinds spices. I think I’ll have chicken tikka masala tonight.

On the beach I come across old friends & familiar faces: the hustling rickshaw drivers & beach shack owners, the lady in the purple & green sari on the beach who talks me into buying a pineapple every day after my swim, the English ex-pats who have a dog, two Italian troubadours who play soccer on the beach, the retired Swedish sea captain who writes short stories, the British publican who has given up drinking, a Scotsman who claims to have climbed Everest, the usual crowd of boozers, druggies and beach bums who come here year after year. The swinging crowd & planeloads of tourists (mostly Russian, I hear) are up on the northern beaches doing whatever they do, but here in the south, on Benaulim Beach, things are quiet.

The sea is calm, but I’m told there was a cyclone recently, completely out of season; 6 fishermen were lost, including two from our village, as if life wasn’t hard enough for them scouring the sea with their poor nets for a few rupees a day.

My Goan friends tell me they’re unhappy about the new construction in the village—a couple of massive, unfinished concrete structures, apartment buildings with downstairs shops that remain empty, abandoned by the Mumbai speculators for lack of buyers. The locals are bitter because there’s less land for them and no jobs. The best thing that can happen to the sons of the fishermen is to find work on cruise ships – mopping decks & washing toilets on the Mediterranean or Caribbean. They leave their wives & children for months at a time to earn money to live. There’s nothing for locals to do here but watch bloated foreigners gorge & guzzle, & try to hustle a bucks off us here & there, but how?

The big news is the new Indian visa restrictions. I got a stamp in my passport when I landed in Mumbai that states when I leave I must stay out of the country for 2 months before returning. This will have no effect on me, but for the ex-pats & recidivists who live here all year round, it’s treason. Where can they go after their 6 month visa expires? In the past it was a quick trip to Bangkok to renew the visa & then right back to their homes in Goa. Now people are talking about leaving & never coming back.

Paradise is never what it seems.

Stars in Mumbai

I want to live in a 5 star hotel. The Mumbai Leela Kempinsky, the joint I’m holed up in now, will do nicely, thank you, with its palatial marble entry filled with cascading fountains, crystal chandeliers, massive golden sculptures, great ivory carvings, fine art, fresh flowers, carpets, fineries, and discreet servants at your back & call. My bedroom is a masterpiece of quiet luxury, with fine sheets & towels, sunken tub with perfect water, lamps that dim, even a scale in the bathroom. The Indian Times, wrapped in an embroidered linen sack, is delivered to my door in the morning. The Leela offers all the comforts I’m used to at home, plus perfect service, which I’m not.

Security is heavy here; the taxi wasn’t allowed past the front gate & my luggage was scanned before I could walk through the great front doors. After what happened at the Taj last year, I’m glad for that. Airport security outside the USA, however, is less scrupulous; going through the Hong Kong airport security check we could keep our shoes on & no one looked at the liquids in my quart-sized plastic bag.

Breakfast was a mile-long buffet table, with delicious coffee, croissants as good as real French ones, and everything one could possibly wish for to eat, Indian & western style, laid out on great porcelain platters and served under hot silver domes, from perfect, individually prepared scrambled eggs all the way down to home-made strawberry jam. I did my best.

The voyage was long & exhausting, but thankfully uneventful. I knew I was in India the moment stepped off the plane and caught my first whiff of air, thick with the odors of spice and smoke, and had to wave away the big-eyed, scrawny beggar children who crowded around my taxi at the airport, hands outstretched... medem, please, please medem, please.

Contrasts in India astonish; fast jets, slow roads, opulent palaces, homeless misery on the streets, 5 star buffet breakfast & starvation outside. All the things that remind me I’m in India.

(written in Bombay, mailed from Goa. More about that anon…)

SETTING OUT

Took myself out for sushi at Hirozen last night. Sat at the bar & asked the master to prepare anything he wanted. I love everything, I said. He smiled. Then I turned to see what my neighbors were eating & we fell into conversation. The man next to me was a Guatemalan who was flying to Spain for business the next day. We agreed Up in the Air was a depressing movie. He told me he’s married. I didn’t ask why he was dining alone. The couple next to him said they ate at this restaurant once a week; we all agreed it was one of the best in LA.

The chef handed me plate after plate of different kinds of sushi – twelve all in all; I ate slowly, savoring every flavor & nuance, kept praising and thanking him. He was inspired. When I tasted the fresh sardine sushi I moaned and rolled my eyes. Everyone at the bar said, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

I left the restaurant reminded of why I travel alone.

These days I’m experiencing a keen awareness of my fine, soft bed sheets. I lie in my bed and luxuriate in the cool, clean feeling that surrounds my body, the delicious comfort of my mattress and the fresh breeze coming through my window, knowing that soon all this will change. My sheets will be rough & sometimes questionable; I’ll feel hot and sweaty, the air will have a smoky, pungent odor, I won’t be able to drink water from the tap, walk around barefoot without checking the floor, flip on the TV, surf the internet, drive to the gym, talk on my cell phone & read my emails.

It’s why I travel. Not that I like to be uncomfortable, but to break up my habits, re-discover myself, become aware of the world around me.

Setting out tomorrow night; first stop: India. So excited I can hardly sit still.

I’m trying out my new email moniker so next time you receive an email from the lady upstairs you’ll know it’s from me.

Namaste!