Luis Alberto Urrea's Blog, page 28
October 10, 2010
Archive 3: Bath to Stonehenge
In Bath Abbey, watching them tune
the grand piano for Rick Wakeman's concert.
Arches and buttresses pulling you up
almost against your will
toward heaven.
Having spent yesterday underground in the old Roman baths,
it's particularly dense today to know this site was a pagan
place of worship and prayer before them, and now
it's a Christian church: this same prayer circle in this same marsh
generating steam and generating prayers since the dawn
of human time.
All that soul going out like a laser
forever.
On a small patch of dry lawn, eating a Cornish pasty
with the pigeons. Laundry soap
in the city fountain. Jane Austin's house
down the road; though she hated Bath, the love her.
On the road. A sign:
FRESH
PET MEAT
DAILY.
Heading across the mystical countryside, we see Peter Gabriel's house.
And there's Solsbury Hill, where he climbed and decided to quit Genesis.
Thus, "I walked right out of the machinery." It's tall--no wonder
his heart was going BOOM BOOM BOOM.
We stop and walk through Lacock. Step back 700 years
in the town barn. See the house somebody in Harry Potter movies lives in.
The kids react; I don't know what they're talking about.
St. Cyriac's church. A lovely old flower lady is arranging flowers. She tells us
tales of royal weddings. Prince Charles sat right there! No, there!
The greatest redunadant sign is on the wall:
PLEASE PUT MONEY
FOR FLOWERS IN THE CHURCH
IN THE CHURCH.
The flower lady tells us that anti-terorr sniffer dogs following Charles around
peed on the carpets.
Sword marks from when Henry VIII
had religious symbols
cut down from the church
are still visible in the walls.
Chayo goes into the cemetery and picks and apple off a tree.
Sheep!
Thatched roofs!
In the fields, a great white chalk horse
carved in the sod!
And real white horses that look like
they're carved out of chalk!
House sign:
SOD THE DOG
BEWARE
OF THE KIDS.
Madonna's house is next door to Sting's house.
In golden fields of barley.
Chayo has never heard of Sting.
Tempus fugit.
Cheddar cheese, my kids are delighted to learn,
comes from Cheddar.
You're driving down the road, and suddenly it appears.
An apparition.
Loving Stonehenge. Blind to tourists. Deaf to traffic.
Bitter wind.
Moody low clouds.
Crows circling the monoliths.
The mad endless loops of
squabbling Pink Floyd meadowlarks.
Heinous gift store crowds--rubber Stonehenges.
6,000 years of howling in the wind.
Squadrons of crazy little brown mottled birds fuss in the clover
while I write at this forgotten bench.
Everything around me has fallen
into an eerie time loop, and it keeps repeating:
this wind gust,
the small black cloud speeding by,
the ravens bowing to the stones,
the call of the lark repeating and repeating
exactly the same over and over and over....
the grand piano for Rick Wakeman's concert.
Arches and buttresses pulling you up
almost against your will
toward heaven.
Having spent yesterday underground in the old Roman baths,
it's particularly dense today to know this site was a pagan
place of worship and prayer before them, and now
it's a Christian church: this same prayer circle in this same marsh
generating steam and generating prayers since the dawn
of human time.
All that soul going out like a laser
forever.
On a small patch of dry lawn, eating a Cornish pasty
with the pigeons. Laundry soap
in the city fountain. Jane Austin's house
down the road; though she hated Bath, the love her.
On the road. A sign:
FRESH
PET MEAT
DAILY.
Heading across the mystical countryside, we see Peter Gabriel's house.
And there's Solsbury Hill, where he climbed and decided to quit Genesis.
Thus, "I walked right out of the machinery." It's tall--no wonder
his heart was going BOOM BOOM BOOM.
We stop and walk through Lacock. Step back 700 years
in the town barn. See the house somebody in Harry Potter movies lives in.
The kids react; I don't know what they're talking about.
St. Cyriac's church. A lovely old flower lady is arranging flowers. She tells us
tales of royal weddings. Prince Charles sat right there! No, there!
The greatest redunadant sign is on the wall:
PLEASE PUT MONEY
FOR FLOWERS IN THE CHURCH
IN THE CHURCH.
The flower lady tells us that anti-terorr sniffer dogs following Charles around
peed on the carpets.
Sword marks from when Henry VIII
had religious symbols
cut down from the church
are still visible in the walls.
Chayo goes into the cemetery and picks and apple off a tree.
Sheep!
Thatched roofs!
In the fields, a great white chalk horse
carved in the sod!
And real white horses that look like
they're carved out of chalk!
House sign:
SOD THE DOG
BEWARE
OF THE KIDS.
Madonna's house is next door to Sting's house.
In golden fields of barley.
Chayo has never heard of Sting.
Tempus fugit.
Cheddar cheese, my kids are delighted to learn,
comes from Cheddar.
You're driving down the road, and suddenly it appears.
An apparition.
Loving Stonehenge. Blind to tourists. Deaf to traffic.
Bitter wind.
Moody low clouds.
Crows circling the monoliths.
The mad endless loops of
squabbling Pink Floyd meadowlarks.
Heinous gift store crowds--rubber Stonehenges.
6,000 years of howling in the wind.
Squadrons of crazy little brown mottled birds fuss in the clover
while I write at this forgotten bench.
Everything around me has fallen
into an eerie time loop, and it keeps repeating:
this wind gust,
the small black cloud speeding by,
the ravens bowing to the stones,
the call of the lark repeating and repeating
exactly the same over and over and over....
September 25, 2010
Archive 2: Bath, UK
London. Up at 6:00.
Daughters acting like they're
being martyred on Tower Hill.
More rain. Why do I love London rain?
Because it's so cool to say "London rain," no doubt.
One of those Donovan songs I'd listen to
in San Diego, where I'd never see London, where
I'd seldom see rain.
Paddington Station.
Bought Chayo a Paddington Bear
at the last outlet in London registered directly
to the author. Paddington with his little hat.
The salesman said: "The author's a lovely man.
Eighty-some. But just like you...
Daughters acting like they're
being martyred on Tower Hill.
More rain. Why do I love London rain?
Because it's so cool to say "London rain," no doubt.
One of those Donovan songs I'd listen to
in San Diego, where I'd never see London, where
I'd seldom see rain.
Paddington Station.
Bought Chayo a Paddington Bear
at the last outlet in London registered directly
to the author. Paddington with his little hat.
The salesman said: "The author's a lovely man.
Eighty-some. But just like you...
September 18, 2010
Archive: 1. Cussin'
I fell in with Oglala Lakota brothers at Pine Ridge Reservation. This helped me through some of the most harrowing terrors of writing The Hummingbird's Daughter, and gave me a couple of my favorite short stories--not least of which is the NPR "Selected Shorts" perennial, "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses."
Better than all this, of course, if friendship. And of my friends, DuaneBrewer is the best cusser. Cussing is a fine art, and I enjoy it. I was told by an angry book club maven in Pasaden...
Better than all this, of course, if friendship. And of my friends, DuaneBrewer is the best cusser. Cussing is a fine art, and I enjoy it. I was told by an angry book club maven in Pasaden...
September 7, 2010
Brooklyn
After an epic summer of Book Tour USA, Family extended adventures in England and France, and the Squaw Valley writers' workshops, I am coming out of my summer hibernation. Man, I got home in time to see Megan off to college, to suffer through another birthday, and to start teaching again. Other than that--nothing. No workouts, not gardening, just a month of stunned vegetating. Oh, yeah--there was that one small thing of writing more of the Hummingbird's Daughter sequel.
This coming weekend...
This coming weekend...
August 25, 2010
Teresita Psalms: Saint of Cabora Texts
Lots of readers/fans and a few scholars have written to me over the past year asking for some insight into thde background of my novel, THE HUMMINGBIRD'S DAUGHTER. (And, I suppose, its sequel, coming next year from Little, Brown.) Although I do have piles and stacks and shelves full of rsearch, and I suspect the longest Teresita Urrea bibliography ever compiled, I don't think that's what people are after. People want stories. Some want revelations of spiritual secrets, some want adventur...
August 23, 2010
Recent Publications
ORION
Chip Blake and his staff continue to make brilliant art with their magazine, ORION. I am excited to be in the September/October 2010 issue. be sure to pick it up. Not just for my small contribution.
The cover says "Luis Urrea's Border Patrol." (Warning to my Chi-town homeboy, Carl--there's a shout-out to you in there, brother. Well, to your story.) It's not really MY Border Patrol, it's David Taylor's. His powerfukl book of USBP photos, WORKING THE LINE is coming out now. I wrote ...
Chip Blake and his staff continue to make brilliant art with their magazine, ORION. I am excited to be in the September/October 2010 issue. be sure to pick it up. Not just for my small contribution.
The cover says "Luis Urrea's Border Patrol." (Warning to my Chi-town homeboy, Carl--there's a shout-out to you in there, brother. Well, to your story.) It's not really MY Border Patrol, it's David Taylor's. His powerfukl book of USBP photos, WORKING THE LINE is coming out now. I wrote ...
August 19, 2010
Book Tour Texas Pt. 2
It's hard to believe I'm doing Italian translation work
on Hummingbird's daughter via iPhone with Rome
from a speeding car in Texas.
Low clouds only 7 stories
above the plain.
90 to Hondo:
There is a novel in every hovel.
Appropriate or what:
ZZ Top in Hondo.
FM!
Pro-Ag warehouse,
roof peeled off & curling
aluminum wave.
Seco Creek, Live Oak Creek, pretty pretty Texas:
every little town graced with gardens
of highway sunflowers. Squirrel Creek.
400 hundred miles of love & freedom.
Corn
blackbirds
East Elm Cree...
on Hummingbird's daughter via iPhone with Rome
from a speeding car in Texas.
Low clouds only 7 stories
above the plain.
90 to Hondo:
There is a novel in every hovel.
Appropriate or what:
ZZ Top in Hondo.
FM!
Pro-Ag warehouse,
roof peeled off & curling
aluminum wave.
Seco Creek, Live Oak Creek, pretty pretty Texas:
every little town graced with gardens
of highway sunflowers. Squirrel Creek.
400 hundred miles of love & freedom.
Corn
blackbirds
East Elm Cree...
August 18, 2010
Random Book Tour Dispatch: Texas in June Pt. 1
"Me and Cinderella, put it all together,
We can drive it home
With one headlight." --The Wallflowers
#
Up at 4:00, leaving Boston before sunrise.
Grind, grind, grind. Get to Dallas, and Ronnie
drives us to Dallas Morning News offices--
reporters watch the World Cup over my shoulder
as I try to answer their questions.
100 people at my luncheon talk.
One old woman had a Mexican-stroke and
raised a shaking finger at me and shouted
MEXI-KANZ! MEEEEXI-KAAAANZ!
Nobody likes immigration, lady, but I smuggle
ill...
We can drive it home
With one headlight." --The Wallflowers
#
Up at 4:00, leaving Boston before sunrise.
Grind, grind, grind. Get to Dallas, and Ronnie
drives us to Dallas Morning News offices--
reporters watch the World Cup over my shoulder
as I try to answer their questions.
100 people at my luncheon talk.
One old woman had a Mexican-stroke and
raised a shaking finger at me and shouted
MEXI-KANZ! MEEEEXI-KAAAANZ!
Nobody likes immigration, lady, but I smuggle
ill...
August 17, 2010
No really, this IS the last chance to vote!
Please vote for Luis in One Book, One San Diego! Voting closes tomorrow and the one thing he'd love for his birthday, is the chance to celebrate in his hometown!
It's easy to vote and you don't have to live in San Diego. Click here or go to www.kpbs.org/one-book to register and make your choice.
Thanks for your support and enthusiasm. It means so much to both of us!
XOXO
Cindy
It's easy to vote and you don't have to live in San Diego. Click here or go to www.kpbs.org/one-book to register and make your choice.
Thanks for your support and enthusiasm. It means so much to both of us!
XOXO
Cindy
August 5, 2010
Arizona Lamentation
We were happy here before they came.
This was always Odin's garden,
a pure white place.
Cradle of Saxons,
birthplace of Norsemen.
No Mexican was ever born here
until their racial hatred and envy
forced us to build a border fence.
But they kept coming.
There were never Apache Villages here--
we never saw these Navajos, Papagos,
Yaquis. It's a lie. Until their wagons
kept coming and coming. And their soldiers.
We worshipped at the great god's tree.
We had something good here.
We had family values and clean si...
This was always Odin's garden,
a pure white place.
Cradle of Saxons,
birthplace of Norsemen.
No Mexican was ever born here
until their racial hatred and envy
forced us to build a border fence.
But they kept coming.
There were never Apache Villages here--
we never saw these Navajos, Papagos,
Yaquis. It's a lie. Until their wagons
kept coming and coming. And their soldiers.
We worshipped at the great god's tree.
We had something good here.
We had family values and clean si...
