"Sing sorrow, sorrow"

A 2008 production of Aeschylus' Agamemnon at L.A.'s Getty Villa. 

[The following was published as "Tragic Opportunity" in GREEN STATE, my column in the Emporia Gazette, on June 18, 2010]

As I write this post, we are at Day 58 of the BP oil spill, the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Eleven people killed, countless birds and sea life dead, coastal lands soaked in toxic oil and the region's economy crippled. Every day, about 2.5 million gallons of oil are gushing into the Gulf with no end in sight.

“Tragic” barely describes it. The media has finally been let in, the high-definition cameras are rolling and we are now face to face with tragedy.

But tragedy does not have to be a one-way course. We can learn something this time. Watching the Deep Horizon disaster thrusts us into the emotional hot seat that tragedy always forges. The Greeks produced tragedies in order to purge themselves of pent-up emotional energy and observe the consequences of human flaws and misunderstandings. Drama, now delivered by the hour on TV and DVD, still affects us the same way. Going to the movies is a safety valve of sorts and we pay real money to indulge in the strife of heroes whose crises pile up by the minute. We savor the relief when those crises are resolved.

Real-life tragedy, however, has no safety valve. Our hearts and minds are as vulnerable to the toxic slime spreading through the Gulf as are the water, creatures and their habitat. Suffering is inevitable, but we can put it to use by applying our raised awareness to new policies about energy and those who control it.

Two silver linings, however faint they may appear today, are: (1) a wider acceptance of the fact that the fossil-fuel era is over, and (2) recognition that deregulation run wild is a policy that cannot sustain our way of life or our planet.

Oil is a finite resource and even the Saudis, who export more of it than anyone else, have admitted that they have to start investing in alternative energy. “The oil won't last forever,” said the Saudi minister of petroleum and mineral resources a few weeks ago.

Demand for oil has dropped among industrialized nations due to new policies for energy efficiency, but it is increasing in other areas, especially China, the fastest-growing economy in the world. With demand from China and India soon to outgrow supply, oil-producing nations have the foresight to diversify their energy industries. Two years ago, Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister described the kingdom's new focus on clean energy, including a solar program designed to make it “a major megawatt exporter” of solar energy over the next five decades.

In TV commercials airing over the past couple of years we've seen that ExxonMobile and others are tapping into green alternatives, too, mapping out ways to stay in the energy business by producing biofuels, wind and solar. But it's not giving up its potential for a few more years of multi-billion-dollar oil profits without a fight.

As President Barack Obama said in his Oval Office speech this week, the path leading away from our addiction to fossil fuels has been blocked for decades not only by the oil industry, “but also by a lack of political courage and candor.”

It takes political courage to go against the stream of fifty years of deregulation that have allowed one of the most destructive elements of human nature—greed—to run its course. Oil and gas, electric utilities, telecommunications and Wall Street have been given increasingly free reign under Republican and Democratic presidents alike. The result has been economic meltdowns like the savings and loan bailout, Enron, a global recession ignited by Wall Street's freedom to gamble, and an oil spill that hasn't been plugged because oil companies have been allowed to lie about their safety programs.

Regulation is a four-letter-word among those who try to equate it with the destruction of the free market. In truth, regulation does not destroy capitalism but makes it functional and sustainable. As FDIC chief Sheila Bair put it, “There's a difference between free markets and a free-for-all.” Unbridled greed that pursues profit at the expense of society cannot endure. Look what it's done to our economy. Look what it's doing in the Gulf.

I am optimistic that we are now learning from the crises created by the “free-for-all” free market. We elected leaders who are scraping away at the excessive practices that have degraded American capitalism into an obscene force of greed that has devastated our economy and quality of life (except for the 1 percent at the top). And I am hopeful that our suffering over the death of wildlife, habitats and economies in the Gulf will motivate more of us to accept the fact that the Age of Oil is giving way to the Age of Renewable Energy.

We cannot escape the Gulf tragedy, but we can anticipate a brighter future, like the Chorus in Agamemnon:

“Sing sorrow, sorrow: but good win out in the end.”

Feel It to Heal It

Over the years, the work of French artist Louise Bourgeois (now age 98) has changed my life.
          If you've ever experienced a snag in your emotional, intellectual or physical life due to "mother issues," gazing on one of Bourgeois's spider sculptures will trigger you into a tidy little total meltdown. For which I'm always grateful because, as the saying goes, you've got to feel it to heal it. Take a look at her monster-sized sculpture below, entitled Maman. Still able to deny those unpleasant feelings about your mama?

I'm sorry, but I think this sculpture makes Spielberg's War of the Worlds--which I consider the most visceral portrayal of post-9/11 American angst in the arts--look like a Hello Kitty cartoon. I dare you to see the piece in real life--there's a bronze cast near me at the Kemper in Kansas City, but I haven't ventured near it. I think I'd pass out.

On the topic of women artists who make me glad to be alive (meltdowns are incredibly life-affirming when you wake up on the other side of them), here are a few images I treasure:

Kathe Kollwitz, Self Portrait, 1898

Berthe Morisot, Julie Daydreaming, 1894

Morisot, Young Woman Leaning on Her Elbows, 1894

Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Le Brun, Self Portrait, 1791. I love how she's not afraid to illuminate herself. You don't become a court painter for Queen Antoinette by second-guessing your worth.

Louise Bourgeoise, Arch of Hysteria, 1993. I like to call this one See How Far Thinking Alone Has Got You? The neglected body hangs frozen in space, but still shines like a . . . well, work of art.

Mary Veronica Sweeney, Plein Air Study, Vermont, 2007. By my friend and constant inspiration.  

Sweeney, The Way to Marin County, 2008. I never tire of this living sky.

Brucey our Beloved

2007–2010

 "Life is life--whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage." --Sri Aurobindo

The Tallgrass Prairie in Early Spring

In March, the tallgrass prairie in Chase County, Kansas, is tan, brown and gray with specks of moon-colored limestone creeping through the grass. The Lower Fox Creek School was built with that rock--Cottonwood Limestone--in 1882.


The Ranch House at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve was known as Spring Hill Farm when cattle rancher Stephen Jones built it in 1887.


Spring comes to the banks of Wolf Creek.

The tallgrass prairie once covered 140 million acres of North America and was home to the Kansa, Osage, Wichita and Pawnee Native American tribes as well as millions of bison. Less than 4 percent of the prairie remains today, and most is in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

Prairie fence, 19th-century style.

But spring is fickle:

The above photos were taken on March 18, 2010; on the 20th--the first day of spring--we awoke to five inches of snow in eastern Kansas. I lured one of our neighborhood cardinals, "Mr. C," and snowbirds, sparrows and starlings to the porch during the snowfall.

A cowboy eating lunch at the Hitchin' Post in Matfield Green, Kansas (population 57 ), in the Flint Hills.

Puerto Rico's Southwest

The town hall in Lajas, which houses the mayor's office.

My work on a book about United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose mother comes from Lajas, brought me to this small town in the southwest corner of the island. The nineteenth-century town hall faces the plaza, which is dominated by a bright yellow church from the same era.

I was sad to leave. It had been my good fortune to drive along back roads where locals ride elegant Paso Fino horses and canopies of fruit trees block out the sun. It had been an even greater gift to visit a remote neighborhood in which people live in simple houses pounded into a rocky hillside, surrounded by papaya, mango, anona, banana, lemon, orange and carambola trees. They told me they live off the fruit, which I could almost reach out and pluck from their open-air rooms. Since coming home, I find myself revisiting them throughout the day, imagining them embraced in all that green and birdsong, holding avocados and sensing if they need to ripen for one more day, or two.


Isla de Ratones, a swimming spot reached by boat from Cabo Rojo .




The lighthouse at Punta Jaguey, overlooking 200-foot limestone cliffs. I had the luxury of being alone in this place for a good chunk of time late one afternoon and later wrote in my journal: "Is it possible to fall in love with a place? As if it were a person?" My emotional response was compounded by the fact that one month earlier I had dreamed about standing there, looking out at the sea from those cliffs, before I knew the place existed. Can a place call out to you in your sleep?

Sunset from Punta Jaguey.


Variations on the Sea
94

Francisco Matos Paoli
(transl. Frances R. Aparicio)


Man:
something false which triumphs.

Poet:
something true
that weeps.

The Sea: a diamond
fluctuating
between the two.

A Cowboy Took Me to Lunch

There are a lot of great writers in Kansas and a lot of friends and fans of those writers. Among the fans is a cowboy named Dick who calls himself the "sidekick" of western novelist and singer/songwriter Jon Chandler. Dick came to the 24th Annual Tallgrass Writing Workshop in late June to hang out with Jon, and I was very pleased to meet them both. Dick took Jon, me and some other workshop presenters to lunch one day, and when I rode back to campus with him I learned that cowboys keep rat poison in their cars. Dick kept his in a plastic dish behind the driver's seat. It looks like rabbit feed and keeps out the wire-chewing rodents that live all over the ranch.

*

At the Tallgrass Workshop, which is presented by the Center for Great Plains Studies at Emporia State University, I was happy to present my "Dreams & Creativity" seminar for the second year in a row. We talked about identifying shadow figures and how working with them can enrich the creative process, the unique characteristics of creative peoples' dreams, the meaning of the anima/animus or "soul image" and many other aspects of dreaming. As usual, many writers had dreams to talk about, and I was anxious to share a story about a writer who had attended the previous year.

*

Diana had contacted me a few months after last year's workshop to fill me in on the extraordinary dreams she had been having while working on a book about an unsolved murder case in Kansas. A series of lucid dreams gave her clues and other priceless insights about the crime. Her dreams continue to play such a big role in her writing that she is weaving that story into the book's narrative.

A Day in Gyongju

Customers' shoes lined up outside their private dining rooms in a Gyongju restaurant--a common site in Korea. This particular restaurant was unique, however, in that instead of each of the many dishes being brought in separately by one or two servers, an entire laid-out table was carried in at once and placed before us!

Gyongju is about a half-hour's drive south of Pohang and is the historic capital of the Silla Kingdom, which ruled from 57 BC to 935 AD. One area contains large royal burial mounds, king-size versions of the ones on top of my hill, which, from one angle, echo the mountains in the background.

Royal burial mounds that echo the mountains surrounding Gyongju

Another relic of the kingdom is a palace retreat called Imhaejon, complete with colorful pavillions, a man-made pond and paths that wind through the forest. I learned from my Korean-speaking colleague that an informational piece stated that Imhaejon was built as a place to entertain visiting dignitaries, but was actually used more frequently as a royal playground, where gentlemen invited young lovelies to frolic in the woods. (The English version left out this tidbit!) Imhaejon, which I dubbed the Silla Playboy Club, sounds more like something a French king would dream up, but I don't recall seeing any hideaways among the manicured lawns of Versailles.

A pavillion at the 7th-century royal getaway, Imhaejon

Brightly painted eaves on one of the pavillions

Gyongju is also home to the National Museum, a treasury of relics from the Silla Kingdom and artifacts dating back to the bronze age. My guidebook tells me that the "human" history of the Korean peninsula goes back much further: neanderthals may have lived on the Korean peninsula for about a half million years. Korea seems like the perfect place for cave men--lots of mountains (70% of the country is covered with them) with lots of caves. I look up at the sky at night here and imagine those ancient humanoids looking up at almost the same thing. For some reason, I see them talking at the sky at the sky talking back.

Gold slippers, remnants from the Silla Kingdom, at the National Museum.

The giant "Divine Bell of Great King Songdok" hangs outside the museum.

This distinctly Korean image, the Bhaisajyaguro Buddha, represents the healing aspect of the Buddha by portraying him with a medicine bowl in his left hand. The inscription on the base of the statue (dating from the late 8th/early 9th century) states that he heals sickness, even the "disease of ignorance."

This Buddha, part of a trio, was originally placed in a carved-out opening on a mountain just south of the city.

Built in the 7th century, Cheomseongdae, or the Star Observation Tower, has become the symbol of the city of Gyongju. It's the oldest observatory in East Asia, with an opening on the top that is believed to be aligned with particular stars. Every piece of the stone structure has a symbolic meaning, such as the 12 large stones making up the base that represent the 12 months/zodiac signs.

Park attendants

Kite flying in a Gyongju park

ASIDE:

"Please don't eat me, Mr. Roy!"

Out and About the Region

A rocky spring flowing down Naeyeon-san mountain

My first week of teaching was richly rewarded with a trip to a mountain near Pohang called Naeyeon-san and the Bogyeong-sa temple that sits in its shadow. Several students joined me and the three other English instructors on a 1.5-kilometer hike up to the first of many waterfalls that grace the upper reaches of the mountain. Most of the Korean hikers we met on the trail were in their 40s, 50s and older, and we passed two parties who were picnicing between the boulders on the stream bank. The delicate stands of trees dotting adjacent mountains in the distance reminded me of the mountain landscapes portrayed in some of the Asian art I've seen over the years. I had always assumed that the spacious elegance of those landscapes was simply a stylistic characteristic of artists in this part of the world, but seeing the mountains first hand revealed that those portrayals are highly realistic! What an illumination. It reminds me of the shift in my perception when I learned that Monet's increasingly blurry paintings were likely the product of his cataract-infested vision rather than his expanded take on impressionism.

Picnic among the boulders on Naeyeon-san.

Many hikers made the trek to at least the first waterfall, and the vast majority appeared to be over age 40. Some of them came prepared for the eye-blearing gusts of wind by sporting dark green visors over their faces. I saw many vigorous, 50-something couples and small groups strolling up the mountain, all in great shape and dressed in attractive sportswear. For them, a Saturday outing involved breaking a sweat. Younger members of their families were nowhere to be found, and my students told me that young people aren't into hiking. It's a pity, because Naeyeon-san is one of the most serene and awe-inspiring places I've ever been. It's hard to imagine a more romantic spot.

Wind rushing around the slopes makes its mark on the water.

The Buddhist temple Bogyeong-sa has been active since the 11th century. I committed my first Korean faux pas taking this picture:

Someone later told me that you shouldn't take a photo of the inside of a temple (nor should you enter through the front, only the side), but I'll continue to play the dumb American and post it because I want to share it. People have been honoring the Buddha mind here for one thousand years: look.

One of four temple guardians

Four guardians glare down at you as you enter the temple grounds. They're huge, fiery red and imposing, ready to destroy any devil or other enemy that tries to come through. As a westerner, I perceived them as threshhold guardians, the people or situations that come our way on an early stage of the Hero's Journey, or monomyth, as Joseph Campbell explains it. Once you establish a goal, there is always someone or something to test your commitment--a college entrance exam, an audition or the miles of paperwork required for applying for your first mortgage.

To me, the four giants seemed to be asking if I was ready to leave my all-important life behind and contemplate whatever lies beyond. I know there are volumes of much more sophisticated explanations about the role of these figures, but my psyche is wired for the monomyth. Or maybe they represent the guardians of my purest state, always working overtime to protect it from my ignorance.

A Writer's Journey to Pohang

On January 31 I arrived in Pohang, South Korea, to teach at an intensive English language "camp" at Sunlin University. On day two, I took a look around.

Fresh catch at the Jukdo Market

The partly open-air Jukdo Market near the center of the city goes on and on. My American-in-residence colleagues, one of whom speaks fluent Korean after teaching here for three years, started me off by stopping at an outdoor vendor who was frying up a sweet. The flat, cinnamon-filled, lefsa-like pastry came hot off the grill. Its scent was soon overtaken by that of fish as we turned the corner into the main hall. The clean fishy smell came from countless varieties that, at four in the afternoon, looked like they had just been caught. Maybe the catches keep coming in throughout the day, but I doubt it. A few tables at the edges of one wing were already cleared out. No one in our group knew how the women--nearly all the vendors were women--kept their items so fresh in the open air hour after hour.

Chestnuts by the box and bucketful

Everything at the market looked fresh, but not necessarily appetizing. Several days later, I'm still haunted by how close I came to chomping down on some dried silkworm larvae. They looked like striped, oval nuts, but thankfully I asked my bilingual friend what they were before having a taste. Later that night I was introduced to typical Korean bar food, a bowl of crunchy dried anchovies, which I also passed on.


Buyer beware! Nutty looking silkworm larvae

Don't get me wrong, Korean food is good. Hot, but good. Really hot. Even our sizzling breakfast bowls contain red broth oozing with hot pepper. The generous dollop of caviar on top of the rice helps.

Seeing red: one vendor's pepper-infused dishes

I couldn't begin to pronounce the names of the foods I saw at the market, even after my colleague repeated them to me several times, and after three days of teaching I'm disappointed in myself for not being able to pronounce my students' names very well. I thought I had a knack at this, but Korean is a few wide steps removed from the romantic and scandinavian languages. I've vowed to work on it because I want to show as much respect for Korean as my students do for English. They approach the language as a crucial step in making any type of success in the world, and I'm convinced many of them will achieve great things. A few of them floor me with their unabashed self-confidence. In one lesson I asked them to tell me, in a complete English sentence, whom they consider their hero. "I am my hero!" blurted out one young man without a second thought. If only I had believed in myself to that extent when I was twenty . . . Each of these students is eager, sharp and extremely polite, and I am grateful to make this brief intersection in their lives.

An impossibly perfect array of men's shirts at the upscale Lotte department store

Politeness is big in Pohang, as I imagine it is everywhere else in the country. The "parking lady" at the entrance of the underground ramp at the Lotte department store came to our car window and apologetically yet cheerfully explained that we would be able to drive through as soon as the next car left. She wore a bright pink wool coat and, as soon as a car sped out of the exit side, gestured us in with white gloves and a smile. Down in the bowels of the parking area, uniformed male attendants--also gloved--herded us to the appropriate level with quick, sweeping gestures that looked like some kind of urban underground performance art.
Harbor view from the Lotte rooftop


Winter pine-needle carpet on the path up the hill

Late one afternoon I took my first walk up the forest-covered hill next to campus. The old lane that winds upward is covered in rusty colored pine needles and at that time of day everything seemed equally soft--the light, the chilled breeze, the drone of the distant road. The path ended in a clearing at the very top of the hill. When I walked into the open area I was awestruck to find a series of burial mounds that swelled up from the ground like giant knuckles. Lying flat on a short pedestal in front of each was a polished granite slab with Korean characters carved into the front edge. I wondered how long it took the grass to cover the iron-red soil on each fresh mound and what sort of flowers first touched the cold stone.

A walk to the top of the hill on a cloudy day led to a burial ground


On the trip back down, I noticed small chunks of the same steel-colored granite and imagined them falling off the sides of a cart that someone lugged up the path. I love this hill.


Stay tuned--more coming soon . . .

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