I accepted the place in the wrestling competition because I felt inside, when Aceituna Rubia asked me to do it, that I am a fighter. On our way to the arena, she stops to change clothes, and when she emerges, she is all in white. Her feathery blond hair bears a white woman's hat with a round, medium sized brim, and a tailored suit and cape flow down her slender body. Though it's made of wool, the fabric is very light. Straight lines, reminiscent of Flaxman.

I begin to doubt. I begin to think it through. I don't know which moves are accepted and which are worth a penalty. This barely makes a dent with her. Can you grab someone's back with your hands? Can you grab someone's upper arms? My ignorance gets through to her. She explains about the pillow. The pillow is the torso and its vulnerable, sensitive areas. There can be no touching there. I wonder about the extent of similarity between the true sport of wrestling I've glimpsed on televisions showing the Olympics and the sport I will encounter today. Will my vicious, street style grappling help me.

I face my first opponent in the ring. My gaze has that you're dead look, I know. Despite my level eyes, I may be vanquished. I have no idea what moves to make. But it is in me to fight. I won't now reveal that this is my first time. That would dilute my ability to intimidate. And I won't give up anything, not even my facade. But after it's over, whether I've won or lost, I can say this to him, in a spirit of good humor, hey did you know this was my first time in the ring?




Another of this dwelling with its feeling of family or communal living comes upstairs to my chamber to tell me that downstairs there is someone who says I must return a book. Well, I remember that we were going over a lot of books on shelves. There was a group goal we were researching. I go to my shelves, racking my memory about whether any of the books are borrowed rather than my own possessions. All I can remember is having loaned out many of them. But here's a squarish book with a trade paperback binding. This one may have never been loaned. I don't think I have any books that don't belong to me. But maybe the person downstairs has a need that hasn't been revealed, that they are unable to express, and it is for this one book that I haven't yet shared. I carry it down and hand it over, intending to ferret out their need, to explain. The person leaves with the book.

As they depart, I begin to smell a rat. My initial, immediate reaction was to assume that I was to blame in some way, and to posit myself in the role of helper. But what if the other's intent was to take my stuff.

I leave to get my stuff back. In the head man's dark, small office, I see the shelves that cover the walls jam-packed with unique items. He hoards everything here. I demand what is mine. He prevaricates. I become louder and more menacing. He hands over a chocolate heart, a flat disk almost an inch thick and the size of two small hands next to each other. It is intricately molded in a baroque style. This is what he took from me. But when it is like this, without its gold paper box, it must be eaten or shared. It can no longer be presented as a gift. And there might be milk in it, which I do not eat, although those who give me gifts usually know not to give me chocolate with milk in it. Give me the box. He has discarded it. Then you must buy me another with a box. I repeat my demand, with more hostility. I will not back down. I will get back what is mine.




Descending into the nighttime street I realize that the ten foot tall, bonfire-like apparition at the corner, spilling partway into the intersection may be an evil demon. I run at it. I will press the holy object into its face and be engulfed in its fiery death throes. I will fight it to the last.

She is leaving. Tara V. It is time for her to travel to a new life. Among her books. There are many books. What is inside them. Weathered, aged cover of one slim volume. One of her documents or works is given to me with the instruction to take it to the Process Work Institute “the Center” and instruct them: make a sound recording.

I do drop it off, put it in the hands of the man who answers the door, and relay the instruction: make a sound recording. I wish I could tell them about my acting skills. I could be the performer for the recording. I do an impromptu selection from the work, in front of the mirror. I wash my hair over the bathroom sink and explain how to distribute the shampoo to end up with a full cap of suds. Starting at the base of my skull, demonstrating the massaging circles with the tips of my fingers. At first I think I'll show how to spread the shampoo up to cover the top of my head through these motions, but as I massage my scalp, I think better of this idea, and I add more shampoo to ensure a rich lather.

Suspended diagonally, a large, rectangular, white chart, dimensions several feet, with areas of health for the body represented with visual images. The large icons are in two columns, widely spaced. I have just demonstrated one of these areas of health.

The man I gave the document to has seen my demonstration. He would like to speak with me about being the person who performs for the sound recording. The Center is very clean. I find some small amount of refuse outside, decide they must want it removed, and put it in one of the plastic newspaper bags I carry to pick up my dog's poop. Will this be okay? Do I have permission to do this? I learn from the man that it is, that I have been helpful. It makes sense that I was uneasy, though, since I was perceiving a shared space where few people leave a mark. He shows me, under the sink, a couple of tied off plastic bags, and explains that even the First Couple leave very little trace of their presence, even they “have only one bag.” How might I find a place here. How might I fit in, when the practice of the leaders is to leave about so little of the self.

I've the book in my hands. I've been presented as the reader of the poem. How to interpret this cerebral, obscure, layered text. It will be incomprehensible. I give a short history of the meaning of Aaztlán (SP) and the Chicano movement. A part of North America that is not now part of Mexico, but long ago... They'll be impressed by my knowledge. It's also incumbent upon me to give a short history of the ephemeral print history of this book, its publication by Weird Tales. Perhaps this context will help them when the words begin to spill out.

Turning the pages, looking for the text. Page that is a leaf. Page that is part lace doily. My eyes will find the right page. Flipping. Tiny, dense, square type.

As reader, I stand on a low dais in front of wood and glass panelled doors that can open and close. People will mostly enter the space behind me and to my right. The seating, large, carpet covered steps, rises in front of me and to my right. Gentle, diffuse, pooled lighting.

The audience is bound to shift, drift in behind me as I read. And they'll leave, too. Can they really want to hear this reading, which will surely go over their heads. I speak to them, take an informal poll of their desire to hear poetry or do readings themselves. I request information about time constraints. Surprisingly, the majority is intent on hearing the poem.

I return to the task of finding the text among the pages so crammed with type, brown and brittle with age.

The broken space inside me. The walls. The spread. Say the words I associate with the image. Say them in the order my eyes move across the objects in the drawing. This is how this image is read. Or better, simply describe the whole of the image in my own words. This is how the image is read. I have been used to the poem being the precise words of the author. But these images can be described in whatever words the reader chooses.

As reader, I stand in my damaged feet in loose, white, cotton socks on a wood floor. Lucky I can't feel my feet. In front of wood and glass panelled doors. Audience members drift in and out. More joining than departing.

Horses burst through doors in front of me and to my left. Dappled white gray horses. The listeners up in front of me and to my right are still attending to what I'm reading. The exuberance of the sports enthusiasts outside can't be quelled. The crowd roars. Tremendous haunches, backs decorated in red and gold. Prancing hooves.



~~~~~~~~~

Balancing being a body and exploring the life of the mind.

This is how you use the magic medicine, she says. The new plastic bottle of amber liquid, covered from top to bottom with a white label full of black print. Now is a good time. There's a full moon in Czechoslovakia, so the time is right. I'll have to buy a little book that lists the positions of the planets throughout the year, so I will be able to know what times to choose to employ the medicine. She didn't even need to refer to a book.

You put this in your mouth. My tongue senses slippery and hard, two parts held together by delicate cord, one larger than the other, a solid but raw organ of some small animal. I'm embarrassed to have dead animal in my mouth, and I feel ashamed to have given up being vegan so easily. And you need to swallow it next to your address. Does she mean on the steps in front of where I live. Where is that. An apartment building with names typed in black on white paper next to an old-fashioned buzzer system with black buttons? Maybe if I write out my address and lie down near the paper. It's tough holding it in my mouth. I want to swallow. Do I wash it down with the liquid in the bottle. Oh, one half went down my throat. Salivating with the effort of not swallowing the larger part.

Do you feel that? she asks me. Her facial expression directs my attention behind me. I turn, still seated in the chair at the table I share with her, and see that the other woman is giving birth. Her question meant did I feel the glowing energy that she is able to sense radiating from the birth. I can't feel the energy the way she does, and it occurs to me that I could lie, oh sure I feel it, but I decide to simply not answer. Two men stand over the woman giving birth on the sofa, a father and brother. She makes the sounds of giving birth, but the pain doesn't sound as extreme as it usually is. After a few pushes, she makes a larger sound and her head arches back, her face contorted more in pleasure than in pain.

She's had the baby. That last push moved it out of her. She stands up from the sofa, smiling, and her blue granny dress covers her. There's no sign that she's just had a birth experience. Wow, I say to the woman who's giving me the medicine, how are you gonna top that? Because she's pregnant, too, and will give birth soon. And she will naturally feel the need to compete with the speed and ease of the birth we've just witnessed.

First Wrathful She-Khan and then Sonreído enter and stand near the table. WSK tells me that Sonreído has finished his opus. I'm moved and pleased. I look at his smiling, relieved face and think of his thirty hours a week of work and his twenty hours a week of refining the magical, transformative elements of his creation, and try to formulate something to say to him about how amazing it must be for him to have the fruits of his dedication, how hard he worked.

Then we're outside, walking on the grass near the cliff down to the water, and I'm explaining to WSK how to take the medicine with your address. Do I have some paper and a pen so that we can write down her address.