Terri Windling's Blog, page 171

Notes from the desert, Friday:

Too tired for words today (we're in the final stages of packing/moving now), so I give you these pictures instead. They say it all.

Descriptions of the photographs can be found in the picture captions (which can be found by running your cursor over the images).

Notes from the desert, Thursday:

"The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still, and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!"
  -  Willa Cather

To the Desert
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

I came to you one rainless August night.
You taught me how to live without the rain.
You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,
The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand
Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
I wake to you at dawn. Never break your
Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,
Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,
I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.

Notes from the desert, Wednesday:

Javelina seem to be the patron animals here at Endicott West this week, as they've been coming around quite regularly -- particularly out at the Bunk House, where I'm sleeping, where they snuffle around both day and night and prowl right through my dreams.

During one of the times when Howard was here in Tucson he remarked that javelina, despite their bristly bulk, looked to him like ballet dancers en pointe as they crossed the desert on oddly daintly little feet. This sparked the following little drawing by me, followed by a charming poetic ditty by Howard, from which these words are drawn....

Since the local javelina have an uncanny knack of appearing only when my camera is not nearby, the photographs above come from the Tucson Weekly site (photographers uncredited).

The talismans I hold...

"We need to return to learning about the land by being on the land, or better, by being in the thick of it. That is the best way we can stay in touch with the fates of its creatures, its indigenous cultures, its earthbound wisdom. That is the best way we can be in touch with ourselves."  - Gary Paul Nabhan (The Geography of Childhood)

"I heard a young city boy ask an elderly Papago woman if, lacking a harvesting pole, one could ever collect fruit off the tall cacti by throwing rocks at the tops to knock the fruit down.

"'No!' Marquita replied with a strain of horror in her voice. 'The saguaros -- they are Indians too. You don't ever throw anything at them. If you hit them on the head with rocks you could kill them. You don't ever stick anything sharp into their skin either, or they will just dry up and die. You don't do anything to hurt them. They are Indians."  - Gary Paul Nabhan (The Desert Smells Like Rain)

"We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery.”  - Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)

"Experience is the talisman I hold for courage. It is the desert that persuades me toward love, to step outside and defy custom one more time."  - Terry Tempest Williams (Desert Quartet)

Pre-Raphaelite Lovers Take Note

Ellen Kushner is running the last of the Endicott West auctions today, starting with the promised "Pre-Raphaelite Blow-out." 

As I mentioned in a previous post, E-West's extensive library must be entirely cleared out this week -- and although most of the collection is being donated to the research library at Northern Illinois University (via the excellent Lynne Thomas), we've chosen a few books to auction off to those of you who might want to own a small piece of E-West history (and to help defray expensive moving costs). Today's offerings were specially selected for all our fellow Pre-Raphaelite fans....

The first is a box of Pre-Raphaelite books of various kinds. The books are pictured below (click on the photo for a larger version), plus I've thrown in a few surprises (not pictured).

Second, a Strictly Morris box. Here are the books that it contains :

Third, we're auctioning off my old "Hell's Pre-Raphaelite" motorcycle jacket, handpainted by my friend Cortney Skinner. I wore (and dearly loved) this jacket for twenty years -- but health issues, alas, have put my motorcycle days behind me, and it's time for this amazing jacket to be passed on to someone who will love it just as much as I have. The painting on the back has faded a bit due to all those long motorcyle rides in the hot desert sun, but Cortney has very kindly offered to touch it up again for the auction winner.  (More information on this auction is here. And to see Cortney's other fabulous illustration work, go here.)

Other auction offers: two boxes of fabric bits and pieces (left over from curtains, pillows, and such at Endicott West), which we reckon could be of use to quilters. One box contains Morris, Liberty of London, and velvet pieces (brought over from England); and the other one contains a miscellany of Western prints. Go to the auction page (on Ellen's "Puggy's Hill" blog) for more information.

And finally, Ellen has two more auction offerings in store: a box of books by writers who have stayed at the retreat (all signed), and a box of sketches and prints by me (from last week's studio clear-out). Stay tuned for those later today, as they will be the very last E-West auction items.

If any of you can help spread the word to folks who might be interested in any of these items, I'd be grateful indeed.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

This morning: music from the American south-west, in a range of musical moods.

First, two pieces for Native American flute by the brilliant Ute/Navajo flautist and composer R. Carlos Nakai, who lives here in Tucson. Above, "Feather, Stone, and Light," performed by Nakai with his long-time collaborators William Clipman and William Easton, at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix. Below, a solo improvisation on the Native American flute, at the same performance.

Next:

The wonderful Mexican-American singer/songwriter Trish Hinojosa performing "Donde Voy," backed up by Marvin Dykhuis. Hinojosa hails from San Antonio, but performs here in Tucson quite a bit.

And last:

Tucson's own Calexico, performing "Crystal Frontier," their classic song about the Arizona/Mexico border.

The Endicott West Book Auction Continues

Today there are four boxes of books from the Endicott West Library being auctioned off: a Biographies Box (books pictured above), a Poetry Lover's Box, a Short Story Lover's Box, and a Native American Authors Box (pictured below). For more information, visit Ellen Kushner's "Puggy's Hill" blog. This auction runs until noon (American Eastern Standard Time) on Monday, January 27th. Please help spread the word to any book lovers who might be interested.

On Monday is the final E-West auction, which will be a Pre-Raphelite Blow-out. Stayed tuned for details.

Coyote sunrise

When I first moved to the desert, in the autumn of 1990, I shared a little house down a long dirt road with my friend and fellow writer Ellen Steiber. Charles de Lint wrote a magical poem about it -- and I'm reminded of his words on this early desert morning, as coyotes prowl the E-West grounds, closer and closer. Singing....

In the Women's House
spirits are speaking.

The women
are tapping word-hoards
until stories
jump like cholla thorns
from mind to pen,
burrowing deep beneath
the skin.

In the Fairy House,
Coyote sleeps.

All around him, in the desert,
saguaro dream like green giants
while Coyote juggles
mischief and luck in his sleep.
All around him, in the desert,
the uncles and aunts
teach us to remember
that we are still animals....

To read the rest of the poem, go here.

The painting above come from Old Coyote by Nancy Wood, illustrated by Max Grafe; and the drawing is from Medicine Road by Charles de Lint, illustrated by Charles Vess. The bottom photo is of Charles de Lint and me in Arizona, many moons ago, snapped by Charles' lovely wife, MaryAnn Harris. It's just one of the many things I've come across while clearing out the E-West files. Memories, memories, memories....

Dawn in the desert...

...is a glorious thing.

The view from the porch at Endicott West: dawn breaking over the Rincon Mountains to the east.

Dawn over the horse corrals and the Santa Catalina Mountains to the north.

Dawn over the entrance to the Casita, one of the Retreat's guest spaces.

Dawn over the campfire pit out by the Bunk House, another guest space.

The land here sings a song of beauty: prickly and soft, harsh and lush, a place of contradictions ...revelations... stories...spirits...and twenty-odd years of my personal history. It's an emotional experience clearing out the ranch -- each drawer, each shelf, each box coated with memories thick as the dust of the desert.

On Tuesday I closed down the art studio....

...and we began to sort through the many things that must be packed, or sold, or given away, or given back to the various folks in the E-West community that they belong to.

Yesterday, we began to dismantle the Library...a Herculean and melancholy task. I haven't the space to house the books in the UK (nor do I have the small fortune it would take to ship them there), so I'm plucking out a boxful of sentimental favorites and sending the rest out into the world again. Let go, let go, let go, let go, has been my constant mantra this week, these wise words from Mary Oliver's poem "In Blackwater Woods" running through my head:

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

I am letting them go. I am letting it all go. Life moves on and so will I.

Speaking of the E-West Library: would you, perhaps, like to own a small piece of it? Most of the books are being donated to The Special Collection at Northern Illinois University, where they'll be of use to students and researchers of mythic arts and fantastic literature -- but a few special boxfuls are being auctioned off by the indefatiguable Ellen Kushner, to help defray moving expenses here. Go over to Ellen's "Puggy's Hill" blog for details. The auctions will be running until noon tomorrow, January 24th.

Now back to work.

Cactus country

"He'd always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite."  - Dorothy B. Huges (The Expendable Man)

 “It’s strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self."  - Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge)

"I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen."  - Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge)

 It's lovely to be waking up to the sound of Sonoran desert birds again.

Photographs above: sonoran desert pathway, saquaro cacti, Gambel's quail, curved-bill thrasher, road runner perched on a cholla cactus spine, hummingbird, cactus wren, and a cactus-dwelling elf owl. (Photographs draw from Audubon and Sonoran information sites, photograhers unknown.)