Cibola 60
Esteban (3) (cont’d)
He remembers Cabeza de Vaca’s sermon
on Ash Wednesday, the date
revealed in a dream–or so he claimed.
The Ever-Present, Dios, speaks
through fire. This day recalls
a time his Word walked
like a man, even went
through the motions, the agonies
of death, solely to heal us.
To keep us from burning
in the lights of primordial Wisdom,
stronger than a thousand suns.
Had the four of them not been traveling
from the east, he often wonders,
would they have been so welcomed?
And could the lack of such orientation
explain in part why his present
journey pales? For now, too often
his medicine stays in the gourd–
or bottled up in some high canyon–
& in dreams he chases trails of smoke,
teasing clouds whose rain
never reaches the ground.
Three years in that squalid
ruin of a capital have made me soft,
that’s all. Most days his guides
leave him in the dust, & lately
even the women seem impatient.
Take this one:
at first she didn’t want to,
then when she consented, pinched
her lips tight against all kisses,
rode him so grimly he was afraid
his heart wouldn’t keep up
with his over-taxed lungs–
would liquefy, or fly to pieces
from a misplaced blow.
He pictures
the smithies he hung around as a boy
in the Black Quarter of Azemmour,
learning to operate the goatskin
bellows with his feet, pumping
the master’s signature rhythms–
in counterpoint, sometimes, to the wives’
steady rain of pestles
in the yard–& all the ghetto’s
apprentices joining in, the smiths
grinning as they toyed
with the soft white metal.
Marmota monax
This enigmatic megalith measures about seven feet tall and sits all by itself in the middle of a lawn behind the old sheep barns on the Penn State Berks campus, near Reading, Pennsylvania.
Earlier, travelling east on U.S. Route 22 between Huntingdon and Lewistown, we had passed a barn with huge letters painted on the side: “At the End of the Road, I Will Meet God.” An hour later, on an off-ramp of I-81, we got rear-ended, but far from meeting our maker, the car sustained no damage whatsoever, thanks to the trusty tire-carrier. (The other car did get its hood crunched a little.)
We had come to the Berks campus not to meet God, but to interview the foremost groundhog scientist in the state and to tour his study area. Stam Zervanos describes himself as a physiological ecologist, and for the past six or seven years his research has focused on the biological rhythms of woodchucks, a.k.a groundhogs, a.k.a. Marmota monax. Berks campus grew up around a couple of old farms, and it includes a mixture of habitats ideal for the ecotone-loving marmots. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Zervanos’s incredibly dedicated assistant, June, the grounds crews at Berks have learned to tolerate groundhog burrows just about everywhere, including in the flower beds and right next to the library. The 60-acre study site currently supports a population of about 30 chucks.
The heart of the study area is in a wildflower meadow adjacent to the horticulture department’s experimental garden. Several woodchucks have had their privacy permanently violated by the implantation of radio transmitters in their abdomens and the installation of motion-triggered cameras outside their burrows. Body temperature information is collected every hour throughout the hibernation period, which in Pennsylvania lasts from early November to early March.
There are two types of mammalian hibernation, Dr. Zervanos explained. Woodchucks, like chipmunks and jumping mice in our area, go into deep torpor, meaning that body temperature goes down below 20 degrees Centigrade. Black bears, by contrast, maintain a body temperature between 25-30 degrees, and can rouse fairly easily.
The data collected so far show a pattern of regular awakening every week to ten days throughout the winter. Males are lighter hibernators than females, waking up more often and maintaining slightly more elevated temperatures. Some speculate that this periodic reawakening may be related to a need to maintain muscle tone. But at this point, how animals in hibernation or estivation maintain muscle tone remains a mystery.
The regular arousals appear to have social benefits. Groundhogs are the only solitary marmots, although June showed us one, rare exception – a burrow currently shared by two young males. When they rouse in early to mid-February, male woodchucks do much more than check for a shadow. They pay social visits to all the females within their territories – re-acquaintances made necessary by the fact that woodchucks do move around, whether as a result of juvenile dispersal, or simply to acquire better real estate. The high ratio of females to males that drives this annual peregrination stems partly from the increased exposure of male woodchucks to predators, especially in late winter and early spring when cover is scarce and predators are hungry. I can’t help wondering if monogamous co-habitation wouldn’t be a more sensible approach. But doubtless that would merely result in over-population, as it has for humans.
Following this rare burst of sociality they return to their burrows and go back to sleep; mating only commences after final emergence in March. So it seems that having biorhythmically timed arousals and emergences helps keep local populations on the same wavelength, so to speak – males can be reasonably certain to find females awake when they make their February rounds, and again during mating season.
However, up to ten percent of Pennsylvania woodchucks don’t hibernate at all. This is surprising, since the main reason for going into deep torpor is to make it through the long months when forage is unavailable. Apparently, southern groundhogs may never hibernate, though this remains to be verified by scientists. But during a severe drought back in 1999, Dr. Zervanos and his assistants found that their study animals were going into deep torpor on a daily basis in the middle of the summer to conserve water and energy.
A new theory holds that torpor patterns in mammals can be traced back to our reptilian ancestors. Some lineages that subsequently lost the ability to hibernate, such as primates, may still posses genes that could be switched back on, if they haven’t already mutated too much. The study of hibernation may yield some medical insights or applications, Dr. Zervanos told us, since deep torpor apparently interrupts the activities of viruses, and possibly of internal parasites as well.
June showed us the burrow of one female in the middle of a small woodlot who only hibernated for the first time this year. The previous two winters she had stayed awake, and not coincidentally, didn’t bear a litter in the spring – her body was probably much too weakened. This made me wonder if perhaps skipping hibernation wasn’t a deliberate attempt at avoidance of estrus? June did say that this was an unusually anti-social individual.
Woodchuck personalities can be quite diverse. June told us about some that are completely placid, and seem to enjoy their periodic captures once they find out about the fine marmot cuisine she whips up for them. Others remain unremittingly hostile. These personality differences seem mirrored by their divergent choices of home burrows. Some groundhogs nest right in the middle of cornfields, which are as devoid of forage as woodlots. Dr. Zervanos was surprised to hear about the groundhogs we occasionally find living deep in our wooded hollow, but it is apparently not uncommon for them to share burrow complexes with other species, such as skunks, porcupines, raccoons and opossums. This is the situation under my house, which has more things that go bump in the night than you can shake a stick at. Regular readers may recall my occasional descriptions of animals fighting viciously right under the floorboards where I type. In many cases, these are probably male woodchucks in a territorial dispute.
It occurs to me that such diversity in personality and choice of home site is probably highly advantageous for a habitat-generalist species. How much of our own vaunted individualism stems from our ecological role as highly adaptive, edge- or savanna-dwelling scavengers?
Various woodchucks were out and about during our visit. While the sight of a distant chuck is nothing out of the ordinary for us, it was interesting to see how attentively the researchers watched them. “I’ve developed a groundhog eye,” June said when we marveled at how easily she picked out a brown animal against a brown background from several hundred yards away. “I’m always spotting them from my car now, everywhere I go.”
It’s always inspiring to meet people who are keenly observant and deeply involved in the study of something for its own sake. We were also impressed by how generous both researchers were with their time. My mother plans to incorporate much of what we learned into her “Naturalist’s Eye” column in Pennsylvania Game News magazine. I hadn’t really planned to blog about our visit, so I wasn’t particularly well prepared, and didn’t write down any good quotes. I didn’t even think to ask some of the most obvious questions, such as: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck? Are there any plans for a woodchuck webcam? And what was up with that strange, vaguely groundhog-shaped megalith behind the sheep barns?
Words on the street
Cibola 59
Esteban (3) (cont’d)
It was never clear who decided
that they should all play doctor:
probably, again, the Indians.
But the same strange enthusiasm
gripped all four. A fever.
He remembers the first morning
after their escape, how the air,
suffused with floating tufts
of cottonwood down,
turned to fiery gold through
the sun’s alembic. They took
deep lungfuls of the stuff.
Praise God–the world’s nothing
but pure Spirit! Castillo exclaimed,
& for a long time thereafter
everything that happened seemed only
to confirm that inspiration.
Though now, plagued
by second thoughts, he wonders
why he never considered the obvious
opposing proposition: that this so-
called spirit simply masks
holy matrix, uttermost matter.
Which might’ve been closer to the views
of their various hosts, who saw them
clothed in power despite their nakedness
& their condition as virtual hostages,
unshod & shuttled from tribe to tribe
like the sticks or balls of rag
in an Indian relay race, propelled
by deft maneuverings
of toe & instep.
Twice entrusted to old women
as they bridged borders
between hostile nations,
too delicate a thing for male
guides to try. And not quite
as galling as he would’ve thought:
the women were chosen because
they had nothing to prove.
He can still recall that first
sensation of power, ocotillo wands
crackling in the faintest breeze,
a slow fire unfolding at the tips
of a leafless palo verde,
the sound of water dripping
in a dry land. And each night
when the sick & wounded
crowded in to be cured, the gourd
whispering in Arabic transported him
back before the Fall, to the place
where earth & sky come together
at the source of four great rivers–thus
the old man who gave it to him
described its origin.
To use it, he’d had to learn
how to sing from the Beginning,
how to act
as if the world were still
somehow in essence a garden:
it lurked like a troupe of angels
in the wings. Waiting for the curtain,
the shroud that cloaks the East
to rip, to fall . . .
Outline found on the backs of several napkins
Ideology of “Growth” (IOG)
– assumption of no limits: metastatis, envelopment rather than development
– only thing that increases over time is the PAST
– Past is intangible, inexhaustible, infinitely malleable (unlike real matter)
– IOG keeps focus on FUTURE – distract attention from what is happening in the present —> rapidly converted into more past
– consumer economy obliterates attention – should be numbered among:
EXTERNALIZED COSTS
– everything of actual (subsistence) value
– e.g. clean water, clean air, healthy soil, entire web of life
– also family/community values, public space
– some of these may soon only exist in the past
WHO IS THE CONSUMER?
– fiction of marketing
– spectator (rather than participant)
– temporary container of waste products
– permanent loser/debtor, b/c of externalized costs —> sucker
– transient human resource —> statistic
– target of crime, terrorism —> “body count”
BUT we are not consumers!!! To realize this is to bring about:
UN-TELEVISED REVOLUTION
– impossible
– essential
– any attempt to fill void w/out challenging void-creating machinery (i.e. “wants”) is FUTILE
– Love, God, Family, Community, Wilderness, etc. all equally susceptible to commodification, i.e. conversion into vacuums
– televised revolutionaries —> “Everything sucks” simply feeds the IOG
NEEDED: ANTIBODIES
– immune system works by beating invaders at own game
– examples: questions vs. answers, free love vs. lust/greed, public libraries vs. bookstores, wild places vs. zoos, playing games vs. watching sports, DIY networks vs. commerce
– laughter most effective weapon against void (IOG can’t be conquered through argumentation)
– spontaneous healing: logic of participation (“magic”) as full partner to discriminatory logic
– autopoiesis
HOW TO GET THERE
– build respect for authentic past (unknowable) & nature —> cultivate awe
– apophatic method: negative growth
– slow food, slow lane, living deliberately (not just “doing without”)
– more pleasure, not less —> more things give pleasure, giving itself is source of pleasure
– more “goods”, not fewer —> many small things/beings in place of one or two big abstractions
– plenty of energy
Cibola 58
Esteban (3) (cont’d)
Yet Esteban too had had an entourage,
just as on the present journey: at times
in the high hundreds, more numerous
than all three of theirs combined.
He remembers the deer drives
staged in their honor
as they threaded the sierras,
the circle dances & all-night sings,
the masques performed at midwinter
to entice the animal masters
to lay down their burdens.
One whiff of sage or cedar
still summons up what seems
in memory now like a three-
month-long feast, & his head
swims again with strong tobacco,
soft laughter, firelight dancing
in rings of smoke-brown eyes.
All the same, they barely
slowed their headlong flight,
even when the Indians presented them
with the now-famous six
hundred hearts of venison.
Beyond accounting were
the armloads of loot–pelts
& pots, rugs & baskets–they had
to refuse. And their stature grew
with each refusal, each festive
plundering: the host villagers, usually
outnumbered, had little recourse
but to take the raiders’ places
as members of their entourage,
try & reacquire a set of household goods
at the next town. Thus it grew,
Esteban & the others awed
& a little frightened by their role
in something so big, so hard to unpuzzle.
They hid their confusion with
frequent sermons on holy charity
& the transience of earthly things,
trusting Esteban’s quick wit
& divine inspiration to somehow carry
the meaning across.
His hands mimicked birds when
they spoke of the immortal soul;
eternity became a very great number
of winters. And a Being who lives
in the sky? Well,
that part they all seemed to grasp.
Everyone knows the Sun is a stern father.
But Cabeza de Vaca would make
the sign of the cross, commend
their souls to Christ
& the whole assembly would smile
& shower them with still more gifts.
Blessings, Esteban realized, were
the one thing that always translated well.
A likely story
A light rain is falling outside the offices of the National Chamber of Converse, where the current occupant of the position known only to the Secret Service as POTUS has convened a special meeting with his cabinet of curiosities. A pair of common or English sparrows is busy mating on a high ledge. The male hops on and off at three-second intervals, unseen by anybody but the omniscient narrator.
I know you won’t be surprised to hear that the streets below host an obstreperation of demonstrators. They wave signs printed in yesterday’s newspapers’ Franklin Gothic, sable, with exclamation points rampant dexter. “NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN!” they trumpet, and “NO REST FOR THE WEARY!” The briefer messages seem to be the most popular: “NO OUTLET!” “NO SHIT!” And of course, “NO WAY!”
A flat-chested man in a suit of clothes is trying to push his way through to the entrance, without success. It’s as if he isn’t even there.
The usual small knot of counter-demonstrators tries to make up for its lack of numbers with an unconvincing show of outrage. Their problem is, they don’t actually believe in outrage. Let your hypothetical camera zoom in for a close-up of a telegenically tall, clean-shaven woman chanting into a megaphone, “Chill. Chill. Chill. Chill. Chill,” as her comrades brandish their crudely lettered signs: “Hold Everything.” “Beg to Differ.” “Word.” “Consider the Source.”
“Consider the lilies of the field,” says an argumentative cop. He’s been spending the past week investigating a pedophilia case, and frankly, he’s feeling a little testy. What’s the use of all their new high-tech, non-lethal riot-control gear if they never get a chance to use it? Homeland Security is more interested in radical sheiks than radical chic. “What is it with you people, anyway?” he wants to know.
For her part, the female sparrow is beginning to think she wouldn’t mind a quiet life out in the country somewhere – or failing that, at least a crumb from a crumpet. Unbeknownst to her, her erstwhile paramour has just managed to fly straight into a window, and is lying dazed on the sidewalk. The clean-shaven woman notices him and stops her chant, bending down for a closer look.
“What is it?” “What’s wrong?” The other counter-demonstrators stop brandishing for a moment and crowd in. She lifts the sparrow in cupped hands and, seeing its nictitating membranes raise their curtains, begins to sing to it. She has a classically trained soprano voice; it carries clear across the street to where the flat-chested man stands stock-still, listening to a lullaby he hasn’t heard in thirty years, ever since his youngest sibling graduated from the high chair with flying colors.
The moon’s the north wind’s cookie, the babe is in the forest green and all that. In a few minutes, the sparrow will recover well enough to fly away, fly away, oh glory! – even mate with a few more partners before the blood clot in his brain finally finishes him off. No one will be around when that happens, but fortunately his heavenly father keeps an eye out for just that sort of thing. Or so they say.
The cops will receive contradictory orders on whether to try out their new, fresh-ground black pepper spray. The demonstration will turn ugly and begin looking for someplace to take a leak. A man holding his pants up with a strip of cured hide from a large herbivore will take a turn at the megaphone while the clean-shaven woman lets the flat-chested man buy her a double latté at a nearby coffee shop. They will sit at the counter, where she will use several napkins and a black felt marker to outline her theory about how negative growth is the engine of the gift economy.
She is, after all, a counter-demonstrator.
__________
Tomorrow: Her outline.
Words on the street
Cibola 57
Esteban (3) (cont’d)
He lies back, resigned to insomnia’s
non-stop digging, the incidental maze
left by the quest for seeds,
for kernels. Gnawing
at his gut . . .
To assert, for instance, that nuggets
of gold–or the tremors of a beautiful
woman’s chest–can in fact
be counted, starting
at some arbitrary point, assumes
such things are uniform, interchangeable.
One breath,
one grain can be traded
for any other. The greatest
despoilers of land & men
are eulogized for their wisdom
in introducing uniform weights
& measures: what had been
whispered against as theft
through simple sleight-
of-hand becomes
a system, right as rain.
Fully elaborated,
they called it al-jabr: the Reduction.
The logic of the slave market.
How strange, then–if this clunky
chain of thought links up
to some simulacrum of the truth–that
a merchant & slaver should’ve embraced
a system that dismissed such logic . . .
or maybe not so odd. For if
on the other hand you base
all calculations on the premise
of universal interpretability, then
the numbers don their own wings, & then
every object & event becomes
not only unique but also fated.
Irrevocable. The obscure
will of a sovereign Master . . .
His mind wanders, going back
to that ballyhooed time
when he’d been only one
of four, & the man
whom he had ceased by then
to consider a master–don Andres–
straggled far behind with Castillo
& Cabeza de Vaca, telling each other
Estebanico‘s service as
their spokesman made them appear
more powerful to the credulous natives . . .