A route of evanescence
A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel –
A Resonance of Emerald
A Rush of Cochineal –
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts its tumbled Head –
The mail from Tunis – probably,
An easy Morning’s Ride –EMILY DICKINSON
First light. From my chair on the front porch I can hear a ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris, the only hummingbird species we have here) just around the corner of the house. I get up and look: it’s a male, filling up on nectar from the comfrey flowers. Out of all the more showy flowers in my garden, it’s the nondescript, reddish-purple comfrey that’s drawing the hummers right now. Watching the crimson-throated male thrust the tiny sword of his bill into the flowers’ upside-down cups, I think of one of the Spanish words for hummingbird, picaflor.*
Contrary to popular belief, a hummingbird’s bill is nothing like a drinking straw. It opens just wide enough to allow the bird to lap up nectar with its brushy-tipped tongue, which zips in and out at the rate of thirteen times per second. The hummingbird tastes little of the flowers, other than their relative concentration of sugar, and he smells nothing at all. His vision, however, is acute. And anecdotal evidence suggests that hummingbirds have long memories, as well, in some cases appearing to form strong bonds with human benefactors and returning to visit them throughout the season and even in subsequent years.
A long memory would be a highly adaptive trait for a creature whose survival depends on being able to find reliable sources of nourishment from food sources that change by the day and even by the hour. One wonders how many details of his thousand-mile round-trip migrations he can recall from one year to the next. Imagine what the mental map of a hummingbird might look like: bright jewels of color like beads in a rosary stretching from Pennsylvania down through the Appalachians to Georgia, west along the Gulf Coast and then south through Mexico to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, even Costa Rica.
The male rubythroat returns twice more to the comfrey during the half-hour I’m out on the porch. I recall what an ornithologist recently told a meeting of our Audubon chapter concerning hummingbirds: the males are smaller than the females, just barely above the energetic limit for warm-blooded creatures, below which it isn’t possible to eat quickly enough to stave off hypothermia. And they expend so much energy on their spectacular, U-shaped mating/territorial flights and in fighting with other males – chasing, jabbing with their bills, striking with their feet – that they have few fat stores left over to keep them alive during the cool spring nights. Many of them don’t make it. It’s not unusual for female hummingbirds to outnumber males four to one by the end of their first breeding season.
Hummingbirds are unique to the New World, and occupied a prominent position among the marvels described by the first European explorers. It occurs to me that the Aztecs were well justified in associating the hummingbird with their kamikaze-like warrior cult of death and flowers – especially that crimson flower in the chest, whose sacrifice they thought necessary to feed the sun. A ruby-throated hummingbird’s heart can beat 1,220 times a minute. It accounts for some 2.5 percent of the bird’s total body mass, which means that in proportion to its size, the hummingbird has the biggest heart of any member of the animal kingdom.
Ironically, for a creature still associated with male prowess in some parts of Latin America, the male hummingbird has no penis whatsoever. He fertilizes the female merely by touching the tip of his cloaca to hers for a fraction of a second; his relationship with flowers is vastly more prolonged and solicitous. During the non-breeding season, the sex organs of both the males and the females shrink to a tiny fraction of their active size to make the birds better fit for their lengthy migrations, like backpackers chucking every ounce of unneeded gear. For the same reason, the female makes do with a single ovary.
They leave for Central America when the nighttime temperatures here are barely above freezing, flying low to the ground to avoid cooler temperatures aloft. Just before and during migration, their diet becomes largely insectivorous as they stock up on fats and proteins, often doubling their body mass. In the tropics, rubythroats may continue to rely much more on insects than on nectar. But even here, a sizeable proportion of their ordinary diet consists of small insects found in, on or in the vicinity of flowers, as well as pollen, which they play a major role in spreading from plant to plant. Their ability to key in on bright spots in the landscape probably allows them to quickly locate their favorite kinds of insects during migration. Their breeding range maps closely to the range of eastern deciduous and mixed deciduous-coniferous forests – a fact which may also have direct dietary relevance, since they sometimes rely on tree sap when no suitable flowers are in bloom. Their arrival back north (late April to early May in Central Pennsylvania) seems to be timed to take advantage of sap flows in birch trees “tapped” by the yellow-bellied sapsucker, though doubtless the presence of small insects also plays a role.
It always boggles me a bit to think about pollination: one species relying on another, completely unrelated species to perform what is, for us, the most intimate of acts. The variously curved and elongated bills of hummingbirds are well adapted to flowers with deep throats; their co-evolution suggests an effort on the part of the flower to exclude insect pollinators, whose senses and memory may not be up to the task of properly cross-pollinating between widely scattered individuals or populations. At least nineteen species of plants in North America have co-evolved with hummingbirds as a primary pollinator, including trumpet creeper, beebalm and jewelweed. With their bright, iridescent colors, hummingbirds seem more than a little like flowers themselves – or rather, like a flower’s wet dream.
But it’s no surprise that birds with such highly developed visual cortexes would wear bright colors; the primary audience for a male hummingbird’s aerial display is, of course, another hummingbird. From where I sit here at my writing table, looking out my front door, I am often treated to a partial view of this display, probably from the very same bird I saw at the comfrey this morning. He hurtles back and forth along a hyperbolic arc like the pendulum for some invisible, mad clock, his metallic green plumage flashing in the sun.
__________
*The usual, more literary word – as in the first of the two Lorca poems I translated yesterday – is colibrí. But in my brother Mark’s Birding Honduras: A Checklist and Guide, there are neither picaflores nor colibrís, but gorriones and gorrioncitos – words otherwise applied to sparrows. In other Spanish-speaking countries, the term chupaflor – sucks-the-flower – may be used instead of picaflor (pecks-the-flower). And in Brazil, a hummingbird is beija-flor, kisses-the-flower – arguably the most appropriate name of all.
Primary sources for this essay included: T. R. Robinson, R. R. Sargent and M. B. Sargent, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, No. 204 in the monograph series The Birds of North America, edited by A. Poole and F. Gill, The Academy of Natural Sciences and American Ornithological Union, 1995; Alexander F. Skutch, The Life of the Hummingbird, Crown Publishers, 1973; and the terrific (if poorly designed) website for Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project.
Federico García Lorca: two translations
GHAZAL OF UNFORSEEN LOVE
No one understood the fragrance
of the dark magnolia of your womb.
No one knew how you tormented
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.
A thousand Persian ponies bedded down
in the moonlit plaza of your forehead
while for four nights I lassoed
your waist, the enemy of snow.
Between gypsum and jasmine, your glance
was a pale branchful of seeds.
I searched my breast to give you
the ivory letters that spell always,
always, always: garden of my agony,
your body forever fugitive,
the blood of your veins in my mouth
and your mouth already my tomb, emptied of light.
*
GACELA DEL AMOR IMPREVISTO
Nadie comprendía el perfume
de la oscura magnolia de tu vientre.
Nadie sabía que martirizabas
un colibrí de amor entre los dientes.
Mil caballitos persas se dormían
en la plaza con luna de tu frente,
mientras que yo enlazaba cuatro noches
tu cintura, enemiga de la nieve.
Entre yeso y jazmines, tu mirada
era un pálido ramo de simientes.
Yo busqué, para darte, por mi pecho
las letras de marfil que dicen siempre,
siempre, siempre: jardín de mi agonía,
tu cuerpo fugitivo para siempre,
la sangre de tus venas en mi boca,
tu boca ya sin luz para mi muerte.
GHAZAL OF THE TERRIBLE PRESENCE
Let the water do without a place to settle;
let the wind do without valleys.
Let the night do without eyes
and my heart without its flower of gold.
I want the steers to talk with the large leaves
and the earthworm to die of shadow.
I want the teeth gleaming in the skull
and the silks drowning in yellow.
I can see the duel between the wounded night
and noon, how they twist and tangle.
I resist a twilight of green venom
and collapsed arches where time suffers on.
But don’t illuminate this limpid nude of yours
like some black cactus open in the bulrushes.
Leave me in an agony of longing for dark planets,
but do not teach me the ways of your cool waist.
*
GACELA DE LA TERRIBLE PRESENCIA
Yo quiero que el agua se quede sin cauce,
yo quiero que el viento se quede sin valles.
Quiero que la noche se quede sin ojos
y mi corazón sin flor del oro;
que los bueyes hablen con las grandes hojas
y que la lombriz se muera de sombra;
que brillen los dientes de la calavera
y los amarillos inunden la seda.
Puedo ver el duelo de la noche herida
luchando enroscada con el mediodía.
Resiste un ocaso de verde veneno
y los arcos rotos donde sufre el tiempo.
Pero no ilumines tu limpio desnudo
como un negro cactus abierto en los juncos.
Déjame en un ansia de oscuros planetas,
pero no me enseñes tu cintura fresca.
Words on the street
Cibola 110
Owl-Meeter Shaman (conclusion)
Ah, my brothers & sisters,
my nieces & nephews whose scalps hang
in the eastern rainhouse,
go where they send you:
to the springs, to the great oceans. Swim
& burrow through the mud. Be happy
if you can.
I watched that red-faced chief encircle us.
Those he sprinkled water on–already
their shadows grow thin.
They drape the crossed sticks
with all the flowers they can find
but still their skins loosen.
In the smoke from my cigarette
I can see a bitter wind
building in the south,
scattering our ragtag remnants
across the desert.
In the crystal’s frozen kernel, a flood
that sweeps away towns
& buries villages. This time
it wasn’t the shaman who worked witchcraft.
Ah, my lost children,
be clouds, be rain–if you come back
wearing any other kind of feathers
I won’t be there to meet you.
Be siblings to the rainbow, to lightning,
to thunder that makes
the hollow mountains shake,
rattling their seeds.
The packrats have plenty of shamans.
Come visit us in the west
when the saguaro’s ripe.
__________
the eastern rainhouse: I.e., Shiwanna.
that red-faced chief: I.e., Marcos de Niza.
if you come back wearing any other kind of feathers: I.e., as owls – a form frequently adopted by the spirits.
The packrats have plenty of shamans: Burrowing owls are sometimes referred to in O’odham lore as shamans for the packrats they live among (and predate upon).
Bridge
In the middle of the 5,000-acre wild area, itself surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of state forest, a sturdy footbridge spans a large creek. Twin telephone poles serve for its beams, supporting a four-foot-wide deck of pressure-treated planks and a single railing on the downstream side. It took a National Guard helicopter to airlift the thing in, ten years ago or more. And there it sits in the middle of this mini-wilderness, a tribute to something-or-other. Hikers who would never consider spray-painting a rock or carving a tree – not even a dead one – have scarred the railing with names, dates, even a crude etching of trees and a campfire. I wonder how many of these graffiti artists would have ventured so many miles off the pavement were it not for our country’s draconian drug laws? But then, I suppose we all go out in the wilderness to alter our minds a bit.
I don’t know why this comes to mind now; perhaps it made an appearance in one of last night’s dreams. So often in the dreams that I can remember I have found myself suddenly on a bridge, staring at the water. Living where I do at the head of a small stream, and having grown up here, I have never felt threatened by floodwaters, though they’ve cut off our access to the outside world more than once. But a river marks the physical end of this hollow and the ridges that enclose it. When I was a kid, the school bus always dropped us off on the far side of the river, and our mile-and-a-half walk home began by crossing the one-lane county bridge. The first time I did this, as a five-year-old kid returning from a highly traumatic first day of public schooling, I was terrified. The bridge has open metal decking, a grid with three-inch-wide squares. Twenty feet below, the river ran brown and gave off a peculiar odor. It was all my big brother could do to coax me across.
During last autumn’s flood – the result of two hurricanes a week apart – my dad and I made our way down the hollow with some trepidation about whether the bridge would still be there. It was. The roiling, chocolate-colored waters were barely a foot below the deck of the bridge, and a massive pile of logs and debris against the upstream railing showed that the river had crested several feet above that. The highway beyond was still flooded; only an occasional pickup truck ventured through. We stepped gingerly out onto the bridge, venturing maybe a third of the way across. The bridge shook with the force of water thundering against its single, stone pier; once or twice a minute something large would strike against it with a hollow boom. We quickly retreated, remembering stories of how the previous bridge had been taken out by a floating oil tank back in the flood of ’36.
It seems a little odd, even to myself, that I’ve never run a river – not in an inner tube, a raft, a kayak or a canoe. On the one hand, it does seem like fun. On the other, I don’t relish the thought of spending all that time sitting, and in the hot sun to boot. I’d rather be walking in the woods, thank you very much. It has nothing to do with any fear of water, the fact that I’m a poor swimmer or that I almost drowned once while swimming in the ocean. No, sir.
I do enjoy walking beside streams and rivers, and I imagine I’d enjoy fishing if I ever got into it. There is something undeniably refreshing about running water, even in a small stream like Plummer’s Hollow Run. Not only Baptists, but Cherokees with their “going to water” rite and Hindus bathing in the Ganges are all convinced of the curative powers of streams and rivers. I’m not too well-versed in the science of this, but a Google search of “ions” and “flowing water” brings up a commercial website for some purveyor of home water fountains called – I kid you not – Holy Mountain.
The air all around us is electrically charged with positive and negative ions. Positive ions are emitted by computers, microwaves, air conditioners, heaters, televisions and other conveniences of modern-day life. These positive ions in the air we breathe can result in feelings of mental or physical exhaustion and affect overall health.
It has been said that the movement of water releases negative ions which in turn make you feel refreshed, and bring peace to your heart and mind. This is because these negative ions naturally attract airborne particles, such as pollutants and dust. A waterfall or water fountain acts like a magnet to pull these particles out of the air. As a result, the air is purfied [sic], humidified and noticeably fresher.
So “troubled water” – as in “a bridge over” – may be far less troubling than we think. A little more web searching reveals that, as one might expect, these claims are regarded with some skepticism in the scientific community. But then, scientists are supposed to be skeptical. Given the title of this blog, I am intrigued by the notion that something referred to as negative can be regarded so positively.
Another site, peddling high-tech negative ion generators, summarizes a couple of experiments that seem to bear out some of the claims of mental health benefits. I was interested by the suggestion that long periods of negative ion depletion – caused by, say, sitting in front of a computer monitor – can lead to “an increase in serotonin and its attendant drowsiness and relaxation.” Serotonin, eh? No wonder blogging is so addictive!
Does this mean that if we want to be properly productive Americans we should all be rushing outside to stand beside waterfalls, or installing miniature waterfalls from HolyMountain.com in a corner of the office? Well, not necessarily. Apparently, far simpler options are literally right at hand.
Josh Backon, a member of the Department of Cardiology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes in an Internet posting that in order to increase left-hemisphere activity (linear, language, logical), one can block the left nostril and engage in “forced unilateral nostril breathing.” Likewise, to increase right-hemisphere activity (creative, holistic, emotional), the right nostril should be blocked. This practice increases the supply of negative ions to a specific hemisphere.
So the astounding mental agility you’ve come to expect from Via Negativa probably owes something to the fact that I am an inveterate nose-picker. Whenever I pause to think – which is more often than the evidence might suggest – either one nostril or the other is getting blocked, you can count on it. And while the thumb goes diving, the index finger leans comfortably against the bridge of my nose, high and dry.
Words on the street
Cibola 109
Owl-Meeter Shaman
Again at dusk Blue Mockingbird alights
on the topmost twig of the mesquite tree
that stands on the western edge
of Rain Plaza. He preens
& pirouettes, hangs upside-down
as he holds forth once more
on his favorite theme:
Nights are for singing, days are for gathering songs.
How many medicine men do the packrats need?
Ah, my fallen nieces, my fallen nephews!
Since when can’t a shaman cure
his own ailment?
We tried to keep him
from making off with the better part
of the pueblo’s youth–at least until
I could assemble all my helpers,
send fog & nightmares down
on the warriors of Shiwanna.
He said If Owl,
if Rattlesnake,
if Gila Monster send sickness,
cut off their heads!
Surely a doctor
who spreads disease is no doctor.
The same way old Nawitsu talks: inside-out.
Up on Sun Plaza the priests smile
their tattooed smiles
& dribble coded messages
in colored sand; Nawitsu below
makes handprints, spits tobacco.
Straight-faced master of interpretation,
polished mask,
his medicine is proof against
excessive smoothness,
the dry scales of a snake
that nothing ever sticks to,
joy or pain.
That’s what
I should’ve told the Black Shaman,
instead of impersonating
a respected elder with a set-
piece for the occasion:
smooth.
(To be continued.)
__________
Owl-Meeter Shaman: This fictional character was introduced in the song contest. In conformity with the conclusions of archaeologists, I picture Hohokam society as two-tiered. I further imagine a priesthood allied with the nobility, and medicine men and women of various kinds, similar to those who still exist among the O’odham, ministering to the needs of the common people. (There are many other examples in the Americas of native societies that persisted as hunting-gathering-gardening bands like the O’odham after the loss of priesthood, nobility and urban infrastructure to conquest and/or pandemics.)
Blue Mockingbird: A central figure in traditional O’odham oratory for the cactus wine drinking festival which doubles as a rain-bringing ritual.
If Owl, if Rattlesnake, if Gila Monster send sickness: The O’odham theory of disease attributes many illnesses to the involuntary giving of offense to a variety of animal spirits. Such illnesses can only be cured by all-night shaman-led rituals featuring, in homeopathic fashion, the chanting of songs given in dreams by the very beings responsible for the illnesses. Each shaman has ownership of the songs of one or more spirit being which he or she has personally received in a dream or vision-quest. Thus, an owl-meeter shaman is a master of owl songs. (See note to Cibola 83 for more on the owl-meeter shaman’s role.)
Nawitsu: The only mask traditionally worn by the O’odham. Nawitsu is referred to as a clown by anthropologists, though among Native peoples of the American southwest, clowns are far more sacred and powerful than the silly creatures usually meant by the English word. Here, I am imagining that Nawitsu’s role among the Hohokam was as a satirist and advocate for the common people, similar to the role of the Newekwe clowns among the Zuni.
Legends of the Cherokees
These are legendary in the sense that they are my own, brash interpretations of sacred traditions, drawn mainly from material collected and interpreted in the late 19th century by the anthropologist James Mooney.
LONG MAN
Long Man dips his toes in the ocean and cracks his knuckles in the coves. He is the original “long drink of water;” when he climbs over the rocks, fish fall out of his hair. His skin is so translucent you can see the veins ticking beside each ear. Ball players always go to him for help, because weak as he sometimes appears, nothing in the world can hold out against him. He is never silent, though it takes a trained listener to distinguish his words from the ordinary drip & flow of events. Those are his wet footfalls just beyond the campfire’s circle of light.
WILDERNESS
To change into a bear or panther, go live among them & eat what they eat. Quite soon they start to look like people, how people would look if they weren’t so hairless & full of spite. Bear & panther can get everything they need with so little effort, who wouldn’t want to be like them? The name of their country is Always Enough. The only immigration requirement is a seven-day fast; it’s going back home that kills you, almost every time. The borders of our country & theirs make a perfect match, but here everything’s turned outside-in, like the fur in a hunter’s boots.
SHINING WOMAN
Shining Woman lives in the south & walks on a shining road. Her shining cloak opens wide, a house that expands to accommodate all visitors. She has the power to banish sorrows; she can exorcise despair. No one can travel her road & not lay down their burdens one by one, growing lighter with every step. Such happiness, they say, is contagious – the same as misery. But beware of her imitators here in the north, those with a small share of her magic who awaken only a restless itch to be elsewhere. Bar your door against these beautiful ones, unless you would turn as blue as a tree’s naked shadow on the snow.
THE GOOD PEOPLE
The Ní»ñní«’hí¯ – Immortals – hide in plain view. They are no different from us, except that the eye of envy never comes among them. Their farms are disguised as wild forests, their homes as holes or mounds. Their invisible towns leave footprints on the highest mountains: bare, open spots where no trees grow. Sometimes their young women show up for dances, strangers circling with uncommon grace, their hair sweeping the ground. Love-struck boys who try to follow them home watch them turn sideways into a shimmer of air among the trees, where the road deteriorates into a rabbit track & disappears into a thicket. Lost hunters tell of hearing drums & flutes, a bewildering music that leads them in circles, unwitting dancers at a never-ending feast. Free of the fear of death, who wouldn’t dance?
UNBIDDEN FRUIT
The very first married couple in the world have their very first fight. What do they do? There’s no one to arbitrate, no story or proverb to point the way. The only road is the sun’s road, so the woman starts out on it, aiming for the sunrise – a fresh start. The sun, too, is a woman, & she minds everyone’s business. Her verdict can burn, but with the exception of one memorable incident, she always strives for balance, turns each small death into fuel for new growth. Do you want her back? she asks the husband, who trails mournfully behind. Yes! The sun makes a patch of huckleberries spring up in front of the woman, hoping to tempt her, but she walks right through it without a pause. Next comes a blackberry tangle, loaded with fruit: she walks around it. Pawpaws, service berries, peaches, all manner of fruit: nothing works. At last the sun thinks strawberries. Strawberries! The woman stops, her concentration broken. What fruit is this, the color of sunrise, of life itself? She tastes one, then another. She can’t stop eating them, can’t think of anything else. Then suddenly she remembers her husband. He would love these berries! she thinks. And he does. And they do.
MOON MAGIC
Scoop the moon out of the river, mix it with red clay & your own saliva. Paint yourself red, red. Young women will see your skin & immediately feel an ache between their thighs. They will long for fullness, banishing the moon’s red cycle. The sun-living-in-the-night looks kindly on human beings, who never squint at him the way they do for the sun-living-in-the-day. Red & blue are the same to him. Everyone looks their best in his forgiving light.
BUSYBODIES
The council of birds appoints the wren to go live among human beings and report back. Every time a baby is born, she twitters the news. If it’s a boy, she cries more arrows, more wounds! If it’s a girl, she sings more fields & bigger harvests! The six-legged tribe sends the cricket to spy. When a girl is born, he rubs his hollow belly & hops for joy.
TRANSPARENT
The great horned serpent Uktena has a blazing diamond in the middle of his forehead, clear but for a red streak running through its heart. This jewel, called Ulí»ñsí»’tí® – Transparent – is the most valuable thing in the world, but also the most dangerous to obtain & the hardest to keep. The serpent uses it to hypnotize his prey. When a hunter sees it, he throws down his weapons & rushes forward to die. Only one hunter ever succeeded in killing an Uktena, and its Ulí»ñsí»’tí® still resides with the eastern band of the Cherokee, wrapped in a deerskin and hidden deep in a cave. It has the power to satisfy every desire – brings success in hunting, rain making, love – but if its owner forgets to feed it twice a year with fresh blood, it turns into a ball of fire, a vengeful meteor. Of all crystals it is the best at showing the shape of things to come, as clearly as reflections in still water. It sees the way a serpent sees: all warm-blooded beings are transparent except for the red streak running straight through their hearts.
CHEROKEE PRINCESS (ancient Anglo legend)
The Cherokee Princess lives in a wigwam palace & gives orders to an army of spirit helpers: friendly woodland creatures with sad brown eyes. Her buckskin gown reaches only partway down her dusky leg, & her cheek is in permanent blush. The Cherokee Princess never worries her pretty little head about war or diplomacy. She must come from a different stock entirely from the Beloved Women whose words used to carry so much weight among those who called themselves Tsalagi. She is such a slight thing, she might well be made of posterboard, or even celluloid. But a vast & clamorous tribe claims descent from those insubstantial hips. Her destiny reaches far into the Darkening Land. Side by side with her handsome blue soldier she rides into the sunset, shedding tears of joy.
Words on the street
(See here.)