Mister, I believe in the Promise Land

Been so long I almost forgot how to long in. Truly, though, blogging stopped when I started writing. I can't even explain the words I've been floating the paper boats and twigs the best couple of months. Suffice to say, the real work has begun and while my project is supposed to wrap June first, a mere five or so months away, I feel like the longer I think about this work the longer the whole thing seems to stretch out in front of me.
And tonight, lying in bed feeling absolutely mind f-ed after reading The Griffen and Sabine Trilogy and thinking about how much I like my new boots, I had one of those epiphany omelets where I think I've hit something really grand and really big. Now, normally, when this happens I eventually realize that instead of hitting a vein of originality, I've hit ambition magma and it's just too volcanic and too difficult to wrangle, but this time, the idea is do-able. I just hope it is compatible with Middle Ground.

Fire up the Good Earth tea-it's going to be a long night.

I have to explain the ingredients, the chemistry first. This idea sprung Athena-like outta these other animals:

1. I wanted to a memoir and the land (ie, The Rez) that we both share and can't get away from. I wanted that book to be different than regular nonfiction. I wanted it to be cross between and memoir and a field journal and letters and a pop-up book. Seeing as how I have MG to work on, not to mention a burgeoning editing careers (I'll never get those thens/thans right), a impending move, and a degree that will never be completed (math credits-psshh!) I set that concept on the proverbial shelf to be taken up, I dunno, decades down the road when I will no doubt be extremely successful and required Oprah-reading.

2. This idea had a lot to do with me wanting to capture the physicality of the Rezervation. For me, it a place that is very physical. I had the idea of bring top soil to the Symposium, which still seems campy and probably illegal. But I want, somehow, to show whoever ends up reading this work the artifacts of my life out there.

3. I've had an extremely difficult time dealing with presenting the spirituality of the place. Possibly because I have such a hard time understanding my own spirituality and it's link to my childhood and ceremony and medicine people and my friends. In a nutshell, how to I explain concepts that are 1. On their way to poofing out of existence or have completely transmorphed from what they were when I was a child. and 2. How do I got about presenting those belief to an audience that most likely exists in a much more pragmatic and linear world.

4. Following the above, some 120 years ago some president declared that there was no more wilderness left in the USA. He was wrong. I grew up in one of the wildest places I can imagine. Sure I cafeterias and Pepsi and television like the rest of the world but I also had an entire culture staring in front of me. Instead of proper American History I was told coyote and origin stories. I truly believe that i grew up in a place where wilderness, where magic, still exists. Or existed. It could be gone, I am aging fast. I believe in the shared human condition and the ability to relate but the reservation is its own world.

6. But wait! How can I say magic! Magic isn't real...is it? And if it is, isn't the very word a kind of turn off. It conjures (lols) images of Harry J. Potter astride a broomstick at best and at worst 16 years insisting "No, it's majick with a K!!!" Only Neil Gaiman gets to write about magic. And if it is magic, can't I call it something else....like "energy" or "manifestation?" Maybe I'm just a kook who is having issues detaching from childhood and didn't actually grow up in a fantasy land.

7. I like maps. Like a lot.

8. I met Art Spiegelman a couple of weeks ago and he was lovely. Then I saw him speak. He broke down comic panels and made me realize how much I miss drawing. I've always been a middling artist but I can doodle one hell of a doodle.

Here's the rub: Why wait for an interesting physical text? Why not do it for MG? Why not draw maps of my childhood, as I remember it, to help situate readers. Let's make this a fun adventure, let's show them where I'm from and then direct them to other place they can go. I will draw maps for each MG piece and than bookend the whole work with drawing/maps of the Reservation. My renderings, of course. It's hit me that my perceptions of Rez Land should not be exercises in accuracy. Four piece is overwhelming but even more overwhelming is the impossibility of explaining this place, still so mysterious to me, in that amount of paper. Visuals will give a quick, albeit biased, look at the individual places the pieces take place and place as a whole. This will also be in keeping with the four scared mountains idea I previously outlined. This will also help me structure the piece because I really do want this piece to not just be four random splashes. I want wholeness.

I tire. I will try to upload my rough sketches as they come in.

Symposium

I am very, very, VERY excited about the undergraduate  symposium. Even if it is not until April I am already in the beginning phases of planning my presentation. I am unsure what the time restrictions are, if I will be presenting on all three days or if its more along the lines of a fair...BUt I still have some great ideas.

Here's what I'm grooving on:

A reading: Obviously, this would be the most direct presentation if there is time allotted and if the Symposium isn't like the aforementioned fair style.

 A short documentary film: I am enlisting on my friends, Tony C., to get some footage of the Rez, of me, of me on the Rez. I think that this could be really cool way to create a conversation presentation of the project. I would explain what the project is, show footage of the Rez, emote, etc. MUCH more exciting then a poster board.

This is where I get all new age-. I want to bring dirt from the Reservation. I really want to play off the idea of transplantation, of misplace ground. I like the idea of taking the place with me. 

Writing continues, imagery is tight. 

Genius Sister!

Anything written at 3am is probable a good thing. Barbra Anderson said last semester that I must be a night person, as opposed to a day person, since I told her I did a great deal of my writing in the am, witching hour. As much I love sleep (you're innocent when you dream, as Mr. Tom Waits says) I mostly just always look forward to being awake. I do some living in the day time.

But! Here is my epiphany. I have been trying to reconcile the creative aspects of Middle Ground, which could possibly be seen as liberties, with what should probably be a more informative, journalistic aspects, in addition to properly present the Navajo culture in the way that is interesting. Basically, I want to make sure that there is sufficient justification for this being a research project.
My solution is the number 4:

“The number four is a sacred number for the Navajos, coinciding with the number of points on the cross. It also represents the four essential elements (abalone, turquoise, white shell, and jet), the four sacred plants (corn, squash, beans, and tobacco), the four sacred rivers (Colorado River, Little Colorado River, San Juan River, and the Rio Grande); and the four sacred mountains that define the four cardinal directions (Mount Blanca of the East, Mount Taylor of the South” (pulled from a website on Hozho ie, harmony)

And low, MG will consist of four piece, or four parts. I think it only follows, then, that each piece present some aspect of my subject matter, and that each aspect coordinate with one of the four essentials. I think that I want to focus this coordination on the Four Sacred Mountains as the mountains are what make up the tradition borders of Navajo society, which is not to say that the works won’t occur off the Rez. I’m not totally sure yet.

So, what, then, are my four aspects. Obviously they are all inner connected, but, if I am to generalize…what then? I think that at least two of the aspects, judging from the material I already have will be death(this one for sure) and language/communication.

I do not know if I will stick with structure for Middle Ground, but for now I am really digging the concept.

And he always makes me pay for dinner!

Writing this project is like having a boyfriend who shows up on my doorstep when I'm lying in bed trying to sleep. And I let him in every time, never knowing what he'll be like, if he'll have dyed his hair again, if he'll remember my favorite songs.

Guess I'm engaged to be married to my work.

belated update

I haven't posted here in a while. I've been doing a lot of journaling on my own and, a gasp!, have been writing a done. Working on finishing that first essay and am working on two stories, one isn't for Middle Ground but I feel compelled to finish the beast anyway. 

Am thinking of using some facts in at least one of my essay, I am reconstructing so much from memory and I don't know if that properly illustrates the work/ research I have actually been doing.

The biggest challenge I face is with fiction. Because I am dealing with a clashing culture and with race I fear that I will become preachy or heavy-handed. I'm trying to create people and situations based off of people and places I knew, but still. I am not trying to teach anyone anything. I am trying to illumination, which would be blessing enough. 

Technology, ho!

Mondays are best perfected, I think, will a poem. Here is one of mine. It has alot of themes, with a big "T."

Before Colonization

I arrive, an eager castaway,
toothy grinned provisions
in hand

at your shore.
A place in my scalp
ready for your sand.

How tame the animals were.

Litters of kittens
flocking to my lap.

A fawn resting its head
In the crock of my elbow.

It was easy here
to catch and kill.

Fire from hand comes
easily enough too. I learned

to burn things down
as swiftly as they had been
built by you,

and release them thickly
around me. I drew

with soot. Ash,
that opposite chalk.

See my splayed palm becomes
the branches of a tree.

Everything I touch
turns into something
it isn’t.

(I am going to try ot transfer my interview files onto this blog tonight. Proofs)

Death Essay part one

A very, very early draft. 1,760 words.

The Graveyard

“I think that’s it.”

“I don’t know,” my brother says.
“But see all those white things.” I say pointing at the boney objects sticking up along the small ridge a mile or so away. “I think they’re crosses.”

“I told you, Kat. Nothing grows out here,” my mom says. She is walking with her palms flat against her thighs and sounds out of casually out of breath. My mother’s body language gives the appearance that she is always walking up hill.
“What? I said ‘cross’?” I say. My brother loops ahead with the dog, who jumps into some bushes.

“Thought you said grass,” is her reply.

I am up here on my first visit. I am intimidated by my old schools, my old teachers and my peers that might be still be around. My old haunts aren’t mine anymore, I have to look for new ones. When I arrived Thursday night, I asked my mother if I could see the Kayenta graveyard.
“Do we even have a cemetery?” I asked her, in macabre glee.

“Sure we do.” She tells me. “That bone yard? That’s what it is. It’s the most barren and depressing piece of earth I have ever seen. Promise me you won’t bury me there? I want to be cremated.”

“Alright,” I say, “but can we go Saturday?”

We’ve walked about a mile to get here. There is no real trail, but on the outskirts

of town where you can see everything, the landing strip, the sewer ponds, and the housing, you don’t need trails. The ground is pounded flat by drought and joy riders. If you emptied glass of water out here, I imagine it would roll over the ground for yards before sinking in to nourish the budding tumble weeds.

About a half a mile before I see white crosses on the horizon we came to two

roads and a sign. “No Dumping,” it said in crooked black spray paint and “Show Respect.”

“We’re must be getting close,” I say.
My mother and Charlie, on his first visit home from college, runs ahead of me. I look down and see a bright green grasshopper anchored to the road. He is the greenest thing I’ve seen. His transparent wings, pulled away from his body by the wind, mild today, are also a transparent green. So are his eyes, I think I can see tiny black pupils, but I’m also not that versed in insect anatomy. Maybe his pupils are as green as the rest of him. Green like a rainforest frog. Green like pictures of New Zealand.

I look up and in this distance, coming from Snake Rock, I see a red pick-up coming down the road. Two or three people sit in its bed, and a dog runs, opened mouthed, behind the vehicle.
“Hey,” I shout, moving towards the graveyard. “There’s a truck.” Neither my Charlie or my mother look at the truck. “They have a dog.”
“Leash him,” my mother tells Charlie, who removes his leather belt from his jeans, and moves to attach it to Max’s collar. “We shouldn’t go in there, with them passing by.”

I pull the hood of my black jacket over my conspicuous blonde hair. I don’t want them to see me. I am pretty sure there are no Anglos are buried in that cemetery and what right have I to grace their grave yard with my straw-colored hair? I try to ignore the passing truck and walk the final, slightly uphill, yards to the graveyard. I don’t look at the passing truck but I hear it getting closer, and finally pass us by. I turn, holding my hood to my head and try to look into the faces of the people in the truck. I wonder what they think of us.

Charlie is being yanked around by Max, who has a small triangular object in his mouth.

“Is that a hoof?” I ask Charlie.

“No, it’s a fish head,” he says. “Attached to a some wire.” He jerks the fish head out of Max’s mouth. The fish looks gray and deflated. I can’t tell if it has eyes or if they have just sunken into its head.

“It’s bait.” Says my mom, who has reached the entrance of the cemetery first. “Figures we’d find the one fish in the entire desert.”
“People don’t fish here,” I say.

There is no discernable entrance to the graveyard. The fence that outlines the property is made of a variety of decaying materials. Twisted chain-link in some places, bleached and cracked wood in others. My family and I step into the cemetery.
“Look,” my mother says, “And people use it as a dump.”
She is pointing to a pile of trash, just inside the graveyard. We look closer; the mess is a mix of plastic bags, broken glass, and fake flowers. I see a small metal grave marker inscribed with a faded name. I squint but can’t read it. When I look up I am greeted by the most uneven landscape I have ever seen. Hundreds of dirt mounds extend unevenly for a quarter of a mile. They remind me of the hills kids make to jump their bikes, but these tiny hills are flatter and decorated. The mounds are covered with old fake flowers bleached out by the sun, glass vases and coffee mugs, things you might find in a kitchen.

Something I do not need to be told is that all the mounds are graves and that there is a person under each and every hardened hill. I recognize these kinds of graves from old photographs. I always assumed that these graves were shallower than most, because of the lack of construction equipment. But even the oldest graves I have seen, the ones back East around Boston, with the crosses and headstones sinking into the ground and the tree roots twisting around them, were smoother looking than these.

“Keep Max out of here,” she tells Charlie, who stays outside the intangible border.

There are very few proper makers. There are a few crosses, a few praying angels, and a few names spelled out using small rocks. The biggest maker is a piece of red-orange sandstone. The word “Sweety” above a cascading rainbow has faded.

“Sweety,” my mother says as I step further into the graveyard. “Tasha, I didn’t know she was buried here.”

“There’s nothing Navajo here,” I say. I am weaving my way between the graves. The mounds, like something out of a spaghetti western, make me feel like the bodies aren’t buried very deep. Like they are they, just beneath the dirt that make up the mounds.

I’m not paying attention and step on one of the mounds. It’s small, about the size of a backpack. My foot leaves a slight impression. Do I reshape this space with my hands? Do I ignore it? Is it possible that anyone could track me based off my sneaker size. I am not supposed to be here.

“I can’t be here,” my mother says. She is still standing in front of the Sweety grave. “ I’m sorry, I’m going. I’m going home. I didn’t know they buried her here. What kind of person would do that to their daughter?”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked to come out here.”

“Didn’t I tell you it was the saddest and most awful place you would ever see?”

“It’s something else. Did you notice, there’s nothing Navajo here?”

“Of course not.”

My mom leaves the graveyard. Charlie removes the belt from the dog who starts running ahead of her, back towards the direction of Black Mesa. Charlie enters the graveyard.

“She’s upset,” he says. “That was one of her students, I think.”

“Yeah.”

We start to walk through the graves. The places feels as though it has no atmosphere. I can see the American flags and ribbons whip about and I can hear the only real roses we see scratch the insides of their plastic bouquets, but I don’t feel the wind. Usually the wind mixes the smells of the near-by sewer ponds with the rest of everyone’s life, but I can’t smell the ponds today, or the horses. It doesn’t even carry the voices of children playing in the near-by neighborhood, though I heard them before we entered the graveyard. The graveyard exists, I decide, in outer space. That’s why no one visits and I wonder if that bothers the dead here. Can all the bodies since the lack of grass above them. I wonder what the place looks like from space or from an airplane, if it is even distinguishable from the rest of the land here.

“We should catch up with Mom,” Charlie says. “This place is terrible.”

I don’t say anything to that. I am upset with his obvious observation and petty reaction. I am upset with my own reasons for coming here and what I was hoping to get. I am tempted to do something really bad. I am tempted to steal one of the coffee mugs or fake flowers that decorate the graveyard because I didn’t get what I wanted. I am tempted to tuck a small angel statue into my jacket pocket and am tempted to steal the pebble that might complete the spelling of someone’s name. The only reason I don’t is because I am scared of what I might be taking home with me. There is no such thing as a good spirit in Navajo culture. Furthermore, I should be careful about what I leave behind here, a piece of my hair, or a sneeze.

I shove my hands into my pockets, like a tempted teenager in a drug store.

“Come on,” I say to Charlie. “Let’s catch up with Mom.”

She is more the half a mile away when we leave the graveyard and I want to catch up with her very badly. The wind has picked up considerably, as it tends to do in the afternoon. There are no trees to lend it a sound, the entire landscape looks still, but it is harder and harder to hear myself when I talk to Charlie. I look behind myself and the sight of the graveyard unravels little by little becoming smaller with every step I take until it was the mirage it was before I had entered it. I can hear Max’s collar and I can see my mom’s maroon jacket. I would shout for her if I didn’t know the wind would throw my voice back into my face.

mmmm, these logistics are delicious

Talking with Gillian was good. I've known her my entire life, and while I think that came in handy I am thankful for this project's transformative abilities with regards to, well, me.
I outlined my project for her and told what I needed and what troubles I have been having. Mostly, how hard it was for me to get face time with youths.
Here's what she suggested;
If you are researching the reservation in order to really properly gather data you need to go through the Tribe. Which can take time and lots and lots of money. While I am going to pursue this option, it may only become really possinle after January. But here's what Gillian suggested. I will go to Kayenta and give presentations to individual classes, in a class period or so, wherein I outline my experiences post-high school/college life off the Reservation. When I am done with my story I'll open the floor up for the student's questions and a general discussion.
I am thrilled about this idea, mostly because it isn't bogged down in paperwork. I can give 6 or 7 of these presentations in a single day and their are multiple teaches who would like to have me speak with their students. I will probably give multiple sessions like this between now and the end of the semester.Furthermore, I can use the idea of "middle ground" (Gillian called it "in-betweeness) to steer the discussion, since that is what I am presenting on. This is a project of imagination, and I consider myself a fairly observant gal, and I am sure I can gleam plenty from these sessions. Also, basketball games, I need to go to basketball games.

I just finished reading Towlhead by Alicia Erian. I am still digesting the novel, and cannot quite figure out what I shold say about it. Erian has done a very good job of disguising herself in this book...What I do like about this is the way the main character, and speaker, Jasira, functions. There is, of course, her story. The disfuntion is palatble. But there is also the social and cultural backdrop, which helos define the books characters with out completely dictating their circumstances. I appreciate this and would aim for the same air in this project's stories.

I have done alot less work than I would have liked this weekend, on account on my being sick I have been peering at the increasingly shiver-y looking a world from inside my apartment most of the weekend. I am wanting to write a play about a shut-in. Really.

I am however, going to post my first 1,000 word segment tonight. If you do critque this, and I hope you do, keep in mind how rough this all is. I am just trying to show some of the themes and imagery I am working with here. I plan to post another 1,000 words by monday afternoon. As for the other grand, they will be going to my very neglected lumberjack columns.

The essay segment will be posted in the next hour or so.

dinner and a show

I am sick and I am not going to Kayenta. Which may be a good thing.
But! Good news! Fortunes has degreed that I am having dinner with Gillian Vornittagg, one of the KUSD principals tonight. Work some networking magic.
Also, I will begin to post drafts of my first essay this weekend. I will be posting pieces in 1,000 word sections. I hope you all will real, comment and critique.
For now, I think , a poem:

Excavations

I would prefer you
sort of ruined

housed Anasazi style
peering from under cliffs
an eye curtained by rain.

Freckled by bootprint,
spooking astounded hikers.

Hidden like a pottery shard,
the half zig-zag or raven
under sand or dung.

The pilfered feather
the rattling, dislodged tooth

or the preserved, nibbles
corn cob turning to powder
when touched.

The first sifted gold
in the netted pan.

The pressurized shale
shaped by first worm.

I would prefer you
a history so old

it is mere speculation.

Can I get a Logistics with a side of semantics?

Am trying desperately to find a  ride outta this town, tomorrow afternoon. 

My father can get me as far as Cameron and my little sister can get me nowhere at all.

It isn't only a matter of me finding a ride, it is also  matter of Lumberjack Deadline changes. Basically, this weekend is the first we will be instituting new deadlines for ourselves, and our writers. I may not be the best idea for me to take off, and be, for the most part, completely unavailable by phone.

In addition, I am poor and would like my back pay please. 

More Grand Plans:

Using National Novel Writing Month, aka November to work on HURA writings.  The goal of those who participate in NaNoWrMo is to produce a 10,000 page number by the end of November. I will adjust to fit my project accordingly. Words are Words. Words are good.

Much needed update

Here is how Middle Ground stands:

-After much ado and discouragement, I am logging HURA hours. There is the matter of back-pay. Should I contact M. Bowling or the English Departments.

-I am really hoping to incorporate Navajo into all my pieces. I want to purchase this book:

Diné Bizaad Bínáhoóaah or Rediscovering the Navajo Language by Dr. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie.

Perhaps an interview can be gleamed.

-Have signed up for a (free) writing workshop on children's books on October 10. While I am not writing a piece aimed at children for Middle Ground, I am writing at least one story from the perspective of a 9-year-old. I am curious to see how this workshop will help this piece. Perhaps, it will keep my grown-up voice in check.

-Found out today that Neil Gaiman started as "a journalist with dreams of one day writing novels." I do not feel so soulless. 

-I am heading up to Kayenta this weekend, come hell or high water. I believe both will come. I have yet to reimburse my drivers (ie, my father) with HURA funds. I need to figure that it out. 

My biggest concern is that i will not be able to get into the classrooms. I will be sending out e-mails.

-I cannot figure out how to upload interviews from my digital recorder to my interviews. Which means they are taking up space on my recorders. Ew.

These are the logistics. Expect me emoting all over this place some time tomorrow.

chasing the last weekend's tail

This is late, me vouching for the work last weekend.

Here's a summary:

I am trying to figure out a way to up load the two interviews i was able to conduct this weekend, one with West Ellis, and one with that omniscient, Rez-centric figure, my mother. The Ellis interview may be of a grainy and distracted quality. While talking with him, his 20 month old daughter, Eseme systematically emptied my purse and put it back together. The shining moment: Eseme removing a tampax from it's paper wrapper and carrying the object in her mouth.

My biggest challenge for this project, I suspect will be getting to interact with the youth. There is a huge group of adults who would love to speak for them. Right now, a lot of data I am gathering is perception, which is falling into two categories.

1. "The Rez is great...no further comment, thanks you."

2. "Life here is really, really hard. The school is failing. We are poor. Alcohol abuse is rampant... Etc"

Perhaps, I am pig-holing  my subject .I am just finding it very difficult to get a clear picture of the young people's lives.  Ellis, however, was very helpful. He provided me with some insight into the security situations at KUSD, where the fences, brick walls, video cameras, and backpack searches originated and why. 

Note: Investigate bomp threats, Insane Clown Posse, civil rights/privacy rights for individuals under 18.

But beyond that, Ellis gave me great little kernels of story.  I don't know if he realized that that was the gold I wanted. Look forward to drafts. Ellis also told me that he has a study hall on Wednesdays and that i could come in and talk to his students than. Looks like I'll be making a few mid-week visits this fall.

So, anticipate my interviews. 

Anticipate a typed up version of my experiences at the Kayenta cemetery. I believe that one of my essays will chronicle the perceptions of death on the Navajo reservation. I hope to juxstapose traditional Navajo attitudes towards death and illness, with modernity as well as tie those together with the death of my friend, Beranda Thinn, three years ago from alcohol poisoning.

My biggest fear is this project is going to be, because of my work with the Lumberjack, perceived as  journalistic expositions.  I am doing this as a labor of love, and a labor of a few other things. I am really worries about the doors i will be unlocking. I am really worried about hurting this community in my efforts to present an honest, emotional account of this life.  There is a lot I am constructing form memory and from the lives of the people I have known. These reflections are a risky business.

Watch out for an interview with Nalani Piucci, a childhood friend,  interview next week.

"Beulah Land, I wonder when I won't need you anymore"

This is the first time I have been in Kayenta during this time of year in three years. The air smells like football games, like sports practices. It is more autumn here than in Flagstaff. There are leaves all over the ground that move the way they always have. There is an abandoned bike at a playground, the streamers on its handlebars are pink and opalescent and move in the wind. There is a pile of apple cores and skins. In the middle of the disintegrating pile is a pamphlet belonging to one of the many evangelistic sects in Kayenta. LDS? Witnesses? The Baptists? I have not be religiously propositioned since moving too Flagstaff. I almost missed the well-dressed and ultimately well-meaning missionaries asking me if my mother was home.

I’ve been making generalizations about small town life for about thirty-six hours now. I’m wearing silk but my sleeves smell like diesel. I am confused about my capacity. Am I to be soft and impressionable or fueled, spitting fumes, an aluminum dragon?

Writing is, I suppose, viewed as being a transformative art. When you type you are really spinning out cocoons for yourself and your friends. Write something that will make you change. People keep asking me what I think of the changes.
“What do you think of the new school,” one teacher asks me, from behind and metal screen that separates the cafeteria from the courtyard.I look at the rows of cafeteria tables, the giant menu on the wall, the big screen TV where CNN broadcasts Ike swirling collision with Texas.
“It’s so,” I’m trying for linear. “Institutionalized,” he finishes for me. I interview him tomorrow.

And maybe he’s right.
But I walk through the halls, I can’t help but wonder if those cameras are functional.
The school was always a place of half-hearted noncommittal threats.
A nine-foot black metal fence borders almost all of the school property. The tops of the fence are sharp like spears and I imagine them snatching a wiggling sophomore by their backpack. But I opened the gate as easily as anything tomorrow and entered the science building unnoticed.
Inside that black fence at least ten red-roofed pagodas have been built, kids get shade from a beige brick wall. I can already hear what everyone was talking about.
You can change the property but you can’t change the school. Or the people inside. The lockers and the couches in the library are the same. So are the kids, from what I can tell. High school, the land of sneakers.
It’s weird to inhabit a place where so many dramas took place. Where friends dished out sympathy or talked behind your back and shoved notes gleefully trashing the newest white girl. Francesca, olive-skinned, and oozing tom-boyish sexuality was the target in the 7th grade. After her, it was Jenny, who had animal fur from home stuck to her fleece sweater and a habit of spouting socialist-esque propaganda.
I’ll admit to my espionage. I helped create ugly nicknames for all these girls, while, at the same time, brought them Christmas presents. Eventually the girls, pale and cracked thermometers, moved away.I befriended a lot of these girls, and, to an extent, found them more comfortable than Racquel, Beranda, or Brittany. Brittany is the one friend I can’t find, in my memory, perhaps because we were the closest or because, in the end, I chose myself over her.

The faces that stump me the most are those of the Anglos. At Basha’s, which looks like a well-stocked warehouse, I play the Tourist Game, my own invention. I try to guess if this or that white face is a tourist. And, if possible, what country they hail from. A lot depends on whether or not they have a fanny pack.

Everyone expects that I am here with a Kayenta-instilled sense of pride. I don’t know what I am here for. I imagine my mind to be like on of those space-age smart foam mattresses. I imagine the impressions left behind my fingers and kneecaps.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Katherine, one thing that has changes,” my mother says. “I remember people coming to town with wagons and mules. No one liked to drive at night. Because of the sheep, and the yannies. Now you see all those houses, but then it was dark. Dark as a wilderness. Now there are so many lights.”

Week 1 pt.1

Coming up here is a strange-Pandora’s box experience. I feel a bit like I am smashing open Zeus’s head and watching all these sand-colored babies pop out of a Black Mesa sized crack.
Maybe that’s overwrought.
The two and a half hour drive up here never feels long anymore. I’ve had to have done it hundreds of time by now. Mostly it feels like a tumble-weed filled time machine.
My father drove me.
Not long after we passed Cameron, we hit rain. The rain out there, by the dinosaur tracks, doesn’t sink into the soil. It sits on the surface, the land is a giant puddle. The clay under the surface dirt expands when it comes in contact with water which makes it impossible for water to sink any further.
“They line stock ponds with this clay” my father says a name I can’t remember. “It’s a cheap way to keep water from sinking into the ground.
I feel like my ears are stuffed with this clay.
When I get up tomorrow morning, I will head over to the middle school first. Apparently, if I want to have any interactions with the students, I will need to be fingerprinted and receive a special access card out of Virginia. It will cost 50 dollars. But my HURA equipment funds will probably got towards that.Apparently, though, if I want to go hang out at the school, I should just show up and sign in at their main office.
Small town life, expect small time complications.
When I expressed concern about the unplanned-ness of my visit, my mother told me “Everyone knows you’re coming,”
I feel slightly prodigal. I am making every possible effort to leave my preconceptions in Tsegi.

fur, straw, metal

I am continuing to work on Middle Ground without being funded. This does not bother me because my current work load with regards to Middle Ground is so light. I do feel, however, that I am not able to do as much as I would like because of my lack of funding. For example, I cannot properly travel unil I find out how to get compensation.

I feel I am forever stuck in the land of the brainstorm. Great things I would like to start doing that I can't because of logistics.

What have I brainstormed this week.

1. Disregarding my feeling towards feminism, I am taking an introduction to woman writers course. Exciting news! There is a whole section of the course devoted to Native American woman writers. Selections for the course include works by Joy Harjo, Paula Gunn Allen, and Linda Hogan. Very, very easy research. This also reminded me: I need to come up with a very specific reading list for the semester. Look for that in the next week.

2. The first essay we are reading is by Virginia Woolf. I haven't read her since I was 15 or 16 and am interested in seeing how my own identity as a "woman writer" has changed. Who am I now? At 15, or was it 16, I felt like V.W. failed somewhat in her asserations, although I cannot presently remember just what those assertions were.
I learned today that VW held her own salons as a young woman in London. Bohemians talking loosely about everyone. I would like to have my a couple of my own salons to use as a research method. I would invite various mixtures of poeple over, provide eats and then let them cut loose on some of the topics I hope to address with this project.

In other news, I am more tired then tired. I go and go, I am a as fuel as efficent as a Yaris. My biggest fear is that I am losing myself under my work load. Who will I be come December? Where is my courage, my heart, and my brain? I am straw, I am metal, I am fur. I really cling to any taste of my former lackidasical self. I find myself in moments of eating sushi, in a kiss on my stomach from a boyfriend, or a good scarf. I find myself in my laughter. The kind that doesn't come from my increasingly forced jokes.

Dust

Going back to the source.

Having trapezed across campus for over a month now trying to get my grant funding figured out, I may actually have a solution.

Basically, I went to NAU Human Relations last week. Here's what they told me: We can't help you. Contact the financial aid office.

Who, as I expected, had never heard of the HURA award.

In addition, HR told me that they could not confirm my present NAU employment without first having contact with the Lumberjack. I then started out to fill out a New Hire application, my fourth, if memory serves.

Luckily, and I write this in the Lumberjack office, I should be able to get the my ambiguity as an employee squared away by Monday evening at the LJ's first ED Board meeting.

I will also probably finish filling out that new hire information.


*

Life feels a bit like camping with my father.

When I was young we would head out after dark. After we had eaten "pocket stews", potatoes, groundbeef, and bell peppers baking over a campfire in tinfoil.

We would head out on foot or in my father's Toyota Forerunner, which exists in my mind, a far off white beacon at the end of our many hikes.

If we head by foot, my father would often stop and attempt to call in owls.

But right now I feel more like those excursions. in the Forerunner. My father would take his spotlight and shine its yellow light out the window of the car and we would the dust swirl in front of us as we drove, very slowly, hoping for an animal that might dart out in front of us.

I feel like that. All night and wind, and one spotlight, a glaring metaphor, shining through the kicked up dust and sand.

Braincloud

The clouds part, and behold! A Blog post.

Seems like "middle-ground" is no ground, or at least, no where to be found.

What haev I been working on, exactly? Alot of brainstorming. My brain is a storm.

1.After what seemed to be a miraculous, Lazarus like healing by my Laptop, the thing broke again last Sunday. It appears to be the 8 month problem of a bum charger cord. I am getting a new one as soon as I get paid Friday. Blog will bemore frequent. As many as three times a week, or with multiple posting in one day.

2. I will head down to Kayenta, (Or elsewhere on the Rez) every second thursday of the month. I will spend Fridays in the schools. See what I will be doing below.

3. I started to think about the student assemblies my elementary eduacation was pepper with. I have theorized that I could probably get permission to have such an assembly. Even, possibly on in the S.A.C. center, but more likely, I will present in teacher's classrooms. I know quite a few teachers who probably wouldn't mind if I took twenty minutes out of their class time in order to present my project. And what will I say? I don't neccesarilly want to talk at kids, I want to talk with them. If I aim to truly capture a portrait of you native culture, while at the same time examining my own culture, I need to talk with these kids. I want to hear about the music they like, where they shop, what they think of their grandparents, and what they eat for breakfast.

4. Playing off the idea of above, I have started to think aboiut interviewing groups of three or four at a time. Interaction.

5. If iam interviewing minors, if I am asking to interview minors I will most likely need to get permission slips. I could e-mail copies to the teachers whose classrooms I might be presenting to before hand and they could get them filled up and I could interview people at lunch.

6/. I need to e-mail the entire school district.

update

Three posting for this blog is shameful. And I am unhappy that my internet is still not up and running...
My equipment came in though, which is good.

Fences or Nothing New

I have spent the past three days being officially employed by Flagstaff Medical Center. I spent to sitting all day in orientation and one grueling day serving, well, gruel.
I have alot of personal concerns regarding this recent job choice, mostly with regards to my personal strength and willingness. But one thing i noticed immediately.
I am one of the only Anglos holding this postion. Further more, as far as i can tell, I am the only Anglo my age, who is enrolled in college, at this job. Aside from the pay, which, compared with most jobs available, is generous, I have no actual stake in this job. One of the reasons I stuck with my equally grueling food service job for so long was because it infalted my ego.

Almost the entire staff I work with is Navajo, ranging from girls around my age to woman in their sixties.

A confession: When I am in a new situation and I see a Navajo I have a tendency to want to really really really talk to that person. I feel this instant kinship and draw.
I watched two of my new coworkers put fruit in a blender today to make sorbet or a smoothie, and they were chattering and talking with that Navajo repor and I really wanted to join them.

In my interview, my boss made the comment that I would probably never be boring because I had "grown up on the Rez."

I have never felt more invisible then today. Perhaps, this is because the hospital is a huge business with who knows how many employees. Perhaps it is because I am once again doing a completely diserable job, cleaning up undisireable objects, only this time I don't have the advantage of being related to fine dining. I found that very few people made eye contact with me today. In and out of the kitchen.

More frustrating then the distance I felt from many of the hospital employees was the distance I felt from the staff. Like with the pair blendling fruit, I wanted, very badly to shout "Hey, hey! I grew up on the Rez.!"

I often feel that when this little tidbit is disclosed then I instantly earn a little, well, street cred. In both cultures.

This raises a few questions:

Do I use being from the Rez? To I use it to gain equality with a Navajo coworker? To stick out from a Anglo crowd?

In Orientation we actually had to hear the hospital interpreter speak on the cultural sensitivity with regard to Navajo patients. I am not sure what I can or cannot disclose, due to confidentionality, but I will say that I the audience was very sensitive, very curious, and for the most part, entirely uninformed. Some questions I heard:

"Do I shake ALL their hands? Sould I not shake the men's hands if it's a matriarical society?"

"Why don't they like eye contact?"

"Can you say that 'yah-ta-hay' word again?"

I'm not sure where all this is going, but, I still felt a distance between employees, and, as if this was new, I was again agog at the lack of information about the tribe in Anglo culture.

Scrambled

Sifting through the war zone of my hard drive trying to find my HURA proposal.

Found my timeline, and I am on schedule.

Gorgeous recording equipent on the way. I ordered a remarkable device that allows me to record phone conversations. Behold, I am Dick Cheny.

Fodder:

Hiked today and saw a few horned toads today. The word for horned toad in navajo is the same word for grandfather. All of my friends referred to the horned toad as their grandfather.

The night my parent marriage officially distingrated I kept a horned toad in a red and purple satin pouch. I carried that reptile around for twenty-four hours, by the light of the flashing police sirens and the closet where I hid. I slept to the repile on someone else's sofa because my mother wouldn't let me be at home. I stayed in a sticky trailer.

The little toad died shortly before my mother came over and I walked down the steps to that trailer and asked her if there was going to be a divorce.

His little brown body shrivled up inside that soft little bag.

I see potential.

P/S I need to find a really good navajo-to-english dictionary.