for Joan Woodbridge, traveling companion, all kinds, Oaxaca being one of the journey, the ghost horse is yours, no stable needed, miss you mucho:
Something exists here that
you already comprehend,
but if forgetfulness persists
on the opposite side of the
fence where you now reside,
I now serve as a reminder.
My hands tenderly caress
echoing equine elegance.
Within their eyes, I can see
in that way of all breezes
finally where you departed.
Curandero's "power spot" Monte Alban,
Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico -
photo by M. Cipriani
". . .will call in the horseman and his short-legged horse, roll up this scroll, wrap it secure in chamois, tie it tight with good cord, pay the restless postman his due, his room, his board, and send this to you over the high passes and that wide Gulf to that high place where you still dwell six days by hoof, High Sierras' Mount Dragon-Horse generously allowing your weight" - late 1800's unattributed letter
found in the possessions of a long deceased sorcerer in high mountains of Mexico
Prolegomena aka Starters/Sutters Toward Contexts
"... that any coherent understanding of what language is and how language performs, that any coherent account of the capacity of human speech to communicate meaning and feeling is, in the final analysis, underwritten by the assumption of God's presence. I will put forward the argument that the experience of aesthetic meaning in particular, that of literature, of the arts, of musical form, infers the necessary possibility of this 'real presence'... the seeming paradox of its] 'necessary possibility'... when we come face to face with a text and work of art or music which is to say when we encounter the 'other' in its condition of freedom, [it] is a wager on transcendence... a wager on God." — George Steiner, from Real Presences p.3
William Hawkins BORN KY JULY 27 1895
Self-taught artist William L. Hawkins (1895–1990). American Folk Art Museum in NYC
Hawkins Horse
How would he now depict it,
even a corner of it,
paint it,
busy with the making
of it -
belly's too much,
needs thinning, haunches
trimmed too to size, or
not,
concise seizure of
eye and paint dependent
upon hands, monumental
concerns aright or at least
perspectives' private
suffering amidst, against,
or in the teeth of,
daily concerns
taken on as
ultimate-form
It is
visual commentary, response
imaged, is backyard ruin put
to good uses, kindness extended
in hammer's claw on cast
off wood, it is Crow near the
barred door, and with heart,
with heart meds, provide limit
to dulling
descents,
such may then
find yet-again's
Desire, may
plunge further,
deeper,
Hawkins Sketch Blue Horse
into muck magic of
shorter days given
to winter, to longer
nights generously
dumped proportion
control upon the human
Such occupies, with familiars,
allusive smears serving now
and ahead who will partake
of the offering, what will be
held, will be healed in their
beholding
nuanced in cloud swatch
in land swath tumbled
Yearning Toward Ixtlan - A'Wandering
Stick horse - high sierras - Ixtlan, Oaxaca 2013
"We were in the waiting room of a bus depot in Arizona. I asked him in very formal Spanish if he would allow me to question him. I said, "Would the gentleman [caballero] permit me to ask some questions?"
"Caballero," which is derived from the word "caballo," horse, originally meant horseman or a nobleman on horseback.
He looked at me inquisitively.
"I'm a horseman without a horse," he said with a big smile and then he added, "I've told you that my name is Juan Matus." - from Journey to Ixtlan -The Lessons of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda
Stick Horse & Me
I found my "horse" just a few kilometers steeply up a well worn dirt road from Ixtlan de Juarez to a fish camp with cabins to let and all the "trucha" (trout) you could eat, caught fresh from the tanks, cleaned, and straight to the grill. My wooden horse, not Trojan, was a Giacometti-on-peyote artist rendering of a horse, prehistoric as it is, and works for me still, the horse, and yes, the Giacometti flare -
NOT the peyote.
Imma wimp when it comes to "heroic" substances that induce encounters that more often than not cause breakdowns rather than breakthroughs - s'just my opinion gathered from younger years of working in psychiatric institutes, drug and alcohol rehab, and halfway houses; more than a few patients/clients/ residents had partaken of what are called in primal cultures of the still alive, old but not calcified into creeds/dogmas "sacreds" - herbs and potions and secretions (say, a toxic blue frog in the amazon, similar reptilian fluids that, in very small amounts induce, hopefully, a direct encounter with what is referred to as, indeed sacred, which NOT the same use of the word in Western religions aka "all Good and Light identified" claiming that THEIR version IS the Final Word and that their version is the only right and true one. Well folks -
NOT all the time.
And Carl Jung did say,
God is a trauma.
He didn't stop there but needed to say it out loud.
Caravaggio's "Conversion of Paul on the Way to Damascus"
I have been at hard inner and thinking-though work on a three part poem bringing Hawkins' massive Horse together with Caravaggio's massive HORSE in the painting above, realizing that the last line of
the poem is my only articulated credo, too, my having been hard pursued, coagulatio-ed and also "mortificatio-ed", have had this mighty GOD HORSE DRIVE ME on the mission of what wants to be said, revealed, concealed, of the TRACE (all caps to go with Hawkins and Caravaggio's HORSES), which thus becomes the Origin of the Origin….and that I, to, am, and "host"that HORSE humanly so, like Saul who slain by God is filled with the DRIVE, a GOD DRIVE, if you will, MASSIVE like both Hawk's (another bird!) and Caravaggio's STEED. I have been, and am stilllfaithful to Thee, my Blue-Lensed Charger, this name arrived from a dream I had a few years back, my being followed by a large horse with fierce deep dark blue eyes…I moved because moved, it pushed hard air behind me forcing me onward…terrified, awed, a revelation for the last third of my, I finally see and recognize that this has pursued and shaped my path earliest on.
I can poetically (synchronistically) put together now Caravaggio's horse and soon to be Paul is thrown into the dirt. At three years of age, I don't remember this but bear the life long scar over my right upper lip, I was in the backseat of the car my mom was driving (no car seat then so I guess I was free ranging in the backseat). My sister, four years old than me, was in the backseat with me. At some point mom looked back and saw that I was not there. She asked my sister where I was! and sister said, pointing behind, "He fell out." Frantic mom got out ran down the road and saw me crawling on the side of the road, blood all over my face.
I was fine apparently but for the big cut on my lip which healed and is part of my character or what I call 'scaracter' since character etymologically means "scratched (or scars!) on a surface"…so, a humble comparison, I'm not that inflated but, like soon to be Paul who was knocked off, thrown from his horse, I was thrown by mine at three, car = horse. May mean nothing but the word symbol etymologically mans "throw across"…throw/thrown from horse, from car, got my literal scar from the horse/car and my very real felt sense is that event for me is an early marker of my personal myth, as Jung speaks of, that major theme one's life is to be about, known or unknown. It is very clear to me now what my personal myth is and it will be a hovering awareness as I live on this last part of the DRIVE/ride, guided by hard air, blue, and blue the eye of that CHARGER. Here's the last third of my Hawkins Horse poem (still being worked on but this last part is locked and sealed:
Poem For Caravaggio - Contemplating "The Conversion On The Way To Damascus" At 4 a.m.
In the shorter light, the extended
night of cold and star-bright questions,
may you cast clumsy net forward into
what it all might mean to fretted you,
to me, stretched canvas, though I will
not thrust these words upon your paint
or palette but make offering for your
own work to feed us through the eyes;
perhaps time to remount the horse
and soldier on, or to fall again, gain
Damascus perspective, from one's
back watch vision distort massive
horse into a God receding into necessary
darkness foregoing image,
see what may form in the spreading dirt,
what resurrection there is in the smell of paint.
So, grace, trace, however you shape it, my fall was what it was and I got lucky and perhaps something caught my fall…and I charged on, more stumbled and mumbled (I'll blame the lip scar) and live long enough to discover Mexico as a soul home at last, so all in all, I got lucky by Mexico and...
The author a year before the blotter was filled and...
"Nadda tab to soon…."
SO, early October, North Carolina, Asheville area….1981 DOT DOT DOT or, rather,
BLOT BLOT BLOT . . .
One LSD trip, early 60's tab of blotter acid a friend gave me from a goodly pure acid stash for his future years, a good investment for the crazy cultural years ahead. He had bought plenty of tabs from his days in San Fran at the height of the hippie hay day, no smoking the hay, pleae.
My trip while in a deep depression in the late '70's had a positive impact on me and within two months I was out of the south and soon in NYC - HARLEM when Harlem was still, well, Harlem. I loved the mountains of the southern Blue Ridge and Smokeys where I could hide away, withdraw, and pace my human encounters but at some point even the mountains, in many of my dreams, were insistent and screaming at me - GET OUT! YOU WILL DIE IF YOU STAY HERE. So, I had already read Jung's autobiography, knew that dreams are very important, so, with an acid trip that ended on a golf course in downtown Asheville, 3 am, and a little tiny dwarf of a sign poking a few inches from the green on the 18th hole (I found out later it was the 18th as I knew nothing about golf and found it one of most stupid wasts of time in the universe)…I opened up a little lid of a metal box on. the top of pole, and there was writing, a mesae that said:
NO MULLIGANS
I imagine tripping, not knowing golf form a hole in the ground (I am SO sorry) and reading that - and I knew it was, whatever it meant, was the revelation from God that I needed.
Next day I called a friend who wsa a Golf-iain, like Christian, only his religion really was GOLF, ask him what NO MULLIGANS means and he said,
NO SECOND CHANGES
BINGO. I got my marching orders and was, as I said, taking my chances in HARLEM and Manhattan, USA.
Meanwhile, THE PHOTO - Horse n me:
The pic (and variations) was taken at fish camp cabaña in Ixtlan, Oaxac, Mexico…drove up a winding dirt road northwest and up from Ixtlan to a fish camp there, trout, alive, fresh, and an open air restaurant to chow trout in, with other local fare…there are 2 cabins to stay in….incredible views of the one of the twin Sierra ranges, dual spined, me on the Eastern most range. The owner was a young man who grew up there, got to Los Angeles, saved money and then returned to the home and business there to take over as his parents were getting older…he inherited the place. Spoke English well learned In his LA days.
A great place to get away from tourists Mexico though one must pass through Italian which Carlos Castaneda made world famous in ongoing series of his (rumored to be) apprenticeship with a Yaqui sorcerer called Don Juan. Ixtlan is a Mecca of old hippies, mostly European, walking around in white tunics locally made…I could take about on hour there then fled to the fish camp remoteness….and, yes, I had my.worn paperback Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, lol. Guilty as charged but I was In my late teens/early 20's when Castaneda published one book after another in his series of (rumored to be) encounters with Don Juan, don Genaro and fellow apprentices. A great read but enough is known, confirmed now by researches, that Castaneda was actually more a novelist though he did have degrees in anthropology of Mexican culture, religion, etc.
Castaneda in truth was a con man, and drug addicted at the end of his life but pretending to be a shaman guru, had himself 4 or 5 women disciples (mistresses) who all killed themselves after his death so they could join him in the astral plane.
I was already hip to the real Castaneda, the real "Joe", Jose, rather, when I got to Ixtlan but he did preoccupy me much when younger as. he, his books, were an international phenom…the Western culture was hungry for alternative spiritualities to the stale wafers that had woven themselves into politics and national identities, the USA especially, and that still, arrrggghhh! is going on now. Cristofascism is much easier to "do" than are the actual teachings of the namesake of the religion (and its zillions of flavors around the world.
Even at the fish camp, just an observation, NOT a judgement were many Virgin of Guadalupe, saints of kinds, statues, prayer cards…Catholic mysticism braids into local and national pre-Christian religion and practices….has its horrors and charms as do all religions since they are manifested in all too human human groups. They are actually, as Jung pointed out, vast collective psychologies shaped by geography, clans, environments, weather, etc. The psyche is endlessly creative, activated by what and wherever it, in humans, is manifest.
S'why I say, and not in a reductive way, "all deities are local."
Wherein, barrio, I do stilldwell for thirty & nine years NYC
rooftop view looking north
So factor in location, location, location. Tab no longer needed.
Basta!
Click here to read, out of chronological order of Castaneda's books, Journey to Ixtlan - The Teachings of Don Juan:
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Click here to read, out of chronological order of Castaneda's books, Journey to Ixtlan - The Teachings of Don Juan:
https://archive.org/details/journey-to-ixtlan/page/8/mode/1up
**
[NOTE - All images but for the Hawkins and the Caravaggio are by Warren Falcon. All rights reserved for Falcon's photos. None at all for Hawkins and Caravaggio\
