way in the back

I want to post some of the old work OLD work that will not appear in the book - FORK - I want to look at it here - listen to it again here - let it do it's thing - give it a chance to re invent itself ----

Sometimes Angel
turn toward the space of the heart
work in the work
movement requires
letting something
unconcealed be
heard

All words are
contaminated
get rid of it
solipsistic
passion without the other
without you
grammar my freedom
and you make
dangerous my faith
protect sometimes
agreements grow
out of dreaming

I See You - part two - retold by Forget

I See You - According to Forget


At this moment something is a question – reconsider
Because there is a story
it began when you sleepwoke


Our eye ability is eternal – We respond yes O U forget

Words resonate because of your memory – intimate images create agreements
Create images intimate agreements
Images – agreements – blackest red
Our new body is strange – but forget have memory of this image – mine
another language – forget see you – Africa – a tradition seeing into
celebration and difference vital parts recognize someone – the pupil the eye
keeper of souls please breathe

Eyes that look you became – the eyes you look with – forget am not afraid or
bored by history – In fact forget don't – believe a word – forget have eyes and they are
yours as well – always looking at...Who has not caught themselves looking through
someone else's eyes – Was that history
What makes the eye dart away – the need of the eye to belong
Is it more painful than the assumption that it does

In another story – forget would never without speaking – forget saw you then
This is an action – ability to respond
All this space is our breathing – without decision – remember
we are not remembering anymore – we are knowing- and without you
the image lacks imagination – forget leaving
on the word
It is the most visual of my intention

Fork

I See You

At this moment – I am not sure about something – I am reconsidering – something is a

question – reconsider our assumptions – and I know this is not really occurring – Because

there is a story

Perhaps there are two ways of telling – perhaps is another way of saying – there are many

many more – Do I need your help to exist at all – no not really – but I do need you in

order to move from this spot

This story began with you – it began when you sleepwoke – it began when you chose -

you led yourself to this text – and you led me to this text – that only sounds strange – I

have no secrets – when I am in between decisions

I want to be everyone - hold all points of view – close – Can you hear them -

hear the shapes – cracking – a cracking sound – I return with the essay – in

the form of a body – anybody will do

The only difference between humans happens in the act of seeing – our gaze tradition -

You see we cover a great deal – our eye ability is eternal – in other words – when we

witness another body – it is a self recognized

What have we decided – there is one body – A person is only a point of view – but I

didn't come here to talk about that – Hold that please until I finish – there is one body -

Words resonate because of your memory – the memory before everything was repeated

as if that means anything

My new body is strange – but I have memory of this image – mine – all stories came to

me in a sound – I was busy – with another language – who told you – that in order to

exist – you must reflect a desire – that's not desire is it

I don't want to reference or go back – rather to come with me – that's right -

continue – It is African – I call it gaze tradition – or rather I was the saw it that way

because a memory recorded a moment over and over – you can train yourself to

remember anything

I see you – Africa – there is a tradition – of seeing into – to recognize – someone – the pupil

the eye – beyond the soul – namesnamesnamesnames – I would say rather the motion of

one existence in relation to spirit – the reason for being – I see your truth

That is not a projection

It is a beautiful tradition – that assumes a body – and when I looked at the child -

imagine the mother and child – because on some level this occurs with every baby – the

gaze – Let us return to where it is known – awake – The mother says – My eye – the

way it moved – told my baby this is who we are – this is how I see myself – and you -

my truth about you is in the choices I make with my eyes – how I love to look at you -

your eyes are learning what movements to make – they learn how to love your image -

The eyes that look at you become the eyes you look with – Imagine the eye that knows

this – cultivating your humanness – the formation of what we call memory begins

Imagine the way you walk – Do you walk the same way – move the body in basic sameness

year after year – Well that sameness is also your decision – you know the one we are

remembering – the assumed one – The feeling of natural – What is that really – and is it

that thing you just decided upon – Is it that all the time – Is that easy

You don't need this text to remember with you – I prefer collaboration – The part that

writes – that me – the part that rewrites – that you – planting eyes in the text like seeds

There is absence – that's how I remembered you body and eyes – because I missed them

Legacy – from slavery – this did not come out of nowhere – not there – not here in the text

This is where the body went – specific – well disappearance is an old mirror – Remember

the point of view I spoke of – whose body is ultimately a coloration – and without the beauty

of gaze tradition it sounds like this

I wonder did ancestor hear this child turn to the other child – What you lookin at – You got a eye

problem – unbearable gaze sees you seeing me like I see me – looking at me – I'm still here

in the text – It is impossible for me to be anywhere else at this moment

Gleaning

Gleaning for her voice
every wrinkle - every old man
walking - away is my memory
All I know you have - hearing
her where she was not
scattered - my feet was there - always
a place that was not - is
collage - Oh your're impossible in
my body - wood for word - you
created what created language
your bent whispers - what hands
do - passing through you


This poem comes back to me often and always showing me the infinity of it's meaning - it's shifting images not dependent on images and agreements of word meaning - for me the poem has a history of movement following how meaning shifts - it looks to it's origin - it is a poem in love with that something solid seeing it's own dance and freedom - can language be free like voice?

A Constant Prayer

I include in every moment i am still - in the waking - in rest - looking at water moving in a constant oneness - a prayer for my spirit son - safe blessed space to move in to suffer in to thrive in to breathe in to share from - godself godself god self birth right birthright

A given
giving
living
with
because of
in honor of
blessed by


Sasha Hanz and Alithea Thomai Manuel are constant flowing love and protection and prayer - my children my sister my partner

Hanz you are loved and it is safe to thrive on up and up and all over the place - listen to the space talking and shifting - changing

airport meeting

Roosevelt Island

From the window here on the island - the window my grandmother looked out of when she came to New York - I see this view the view that has always been a tease and torture leaving me wanting to be over there in it and feeling very almost in life - but what I see as well is a dance of moving lights and a view that most New Yorkers would appreciate because i can see the city the whole eastside almost - FDR drive- while I have often felt like a prisoner in a tower there is just no need for that huh

"fill your pockets up with earth - get yourself a dollar's worth"

Christmas is down the street and up the street and around the corner - little wooden houses lined up to sell the holiday goods - some unique to me others the usual crap candles and gloves and roasted nuts - from my window alone I see a huge tree all decorated with big lights that change colors and enough space between the lights that when the wind blows the lights on the branches wave to you in their sway - late into the night (about til 10pm here) some awful holiday music some of which is great because it is so bad - the folk stuff is always better than the mall music of the world which is all the same - all top 40 just about all American and all at least 25 years old - I just observe - if I want 34th street energy and I never do I go outside and to the left - there are children's rides that go round and round one such ride is so old DATED there is a black as coal man with a turban on a big white eyes positioned as if he is pushing the seat - positioned as magic as servant - I won't be taking any pictures of us riding on the good googly moogly machine - I swear my mouth fell open when I saw it - ever so harmless like white sugar (it's in there) dead relics speak - - the charm comes from these silent old buildings in the old town and the animals - snow days that don't last but a day - so far - calendars with one little gift for the children each day til the big day and it feels not so religious although it is but it lends itself to the magic of holiday - these strange and beautiful and stupid days that can be whatever we want them to be - these tiny breaths and think again days - where choc is allowed a bit and sharing is assumed - most of us live in a space that we decorate and we ritual and we share and feed people - holidays are more of that I guess - I like that Alithea gets a gift a day - one day walnuts another day a ballon and it builds - if you like cozy and cold that is not to cold weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

table is Thomai blue

Our old table from New Orleans - I flung myself on it and inhaled from it's wood - some call it full circle but that is only a moment on the spiral - awake - all moves fast aka flows and some old friends feel so new as we move through life seeing each other - Alithea is good with dogs and loves animals and of course - and teases me with big laughing eyes "You like flesh mommy?" "I do" and she laughs and laughs - I am documenting the move because the pictures of where we have been are all gone only room for life for moving forward

Mama et Bebe

self portrait

Ok what we have hear is a certain little girl with a pull-up diaper on her head - there are more of these but this is the set where she is holding the camera herself and taking her picture - ladies and gentlemen introducing pull-ups

Christmas on our way to Brasserie 81/2

Every year we have family dinner with Manuel's uncle Robert and his partner Harvey and Alice and various folks - this year Michael Mirlas joined in and made my evening - Alithea was and is so cute as she flutters about charming all she lets in her space of charm - she finally grew into the dress we got her last year - I like this restaurant the food was good and the entrance with it's huge sweeping staircase is so like whatever film comes to mind - I star in my own film often

it's cold out

We noticed that there were few pictures with me and Alithea - so that is changing - the mother daughter relationship is under represented as is - hahahahah

Transformed

An Honor

after letting his hair grow for years "Is it long enough for cornrolls" "Can you braid it yet" not even in high school yet - 8th grade I think - the time had come for a shift - to change a familar - to be more of self - and I got to cut it off - he made a noise as the process of cutting began - "it's never to late to get out of the chair" this too is an experience - sitting there an honoring your first knowing - love you Sasha

Alithea was witness to the event - it was special and so cool of Sasha to share it with me - to assume it

Me and you

and now we clean the collards

Nothing Is All It Takes


In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.” William Burroughs




The Adulterous Woman by Albert Camus is a story told from a third person perspective or from a seeing eye; this third eye where we can look into the intimate and locate ourselves or ready ourselves for a revolt of a different kind. There is a force working on many levels, on the surface it is a story of a couple alienated from each other and themselves, it is also the story of a French couple in Algeria, a country fighting for independence from the French, the French who were just defeated four years earlier in Dien Bien Phu what was known as Indochina. The story is a constant merge of micro and macro world views and the power of creation held by both. “A housefly had been circling for the last few minutes in the bus, though the windows were closed. An odd sight here, it had been silently flying back and forth on tired wings.”(3). There is something absurd going on that tells of what is to come, there has been a break in the routine and opportunity for change is present. “An odd sight here…” Janine will be that odd sight running in the cold, later in the story and she will be noticed and seen and embraced(ritual). ”Garlands of stars hung down from the black sky over palm trees and houses.”(31). Camus uses beautiful, delicate and at times cliché words (like when the couple stop at a hotel) to paint images of revolt against the order of things on a personal and national level, the words he chooses allow for access to both sides. For example, we find the words struggle and invaded used to discuss the elements and the sun on page 31 but this creates also (another layer) an opening for change (one can trace the events of what seems magical because everything is always communicating, it must be seen), “At the top of the avenue, however, lights appeared, then descended toward her zigzagging.”(31).Then we have “…extended its straight lines all the way to reddish horizons. But the wind had risen and gradually swallowed up the vast expanse.”(5). The use of nature as a force and as something constantly speaking and seeing is beautifully done in the story, Janine becomes a second bride as she goes out into the night and breathes (inspire) this cold that burns like an initiation from her former self to the transformed (surrender). The power here that she encounters dwarfs the power of her husband Marcel and of the French occupiers, allowing her access to that quiet (solitude) confidence of “the Arabs”. “They encountered Arabs who stepped out of their way without seeming to see them.”(16). The act of seeing is important in the story, Camus uses words like mantra almost to lift a veil of perception and allow the reader to shift as well, just as the wind is symbolic of change but not only symbolic, as the deity Oya is change itself. Oya is not in the story proper but Camus gives the elements this kind of respect and power as seen in the end with Janine’s relationship with the cold wind (entering the body – ritual).

Nothing is a word that approaches the end of the story, it is found numerous times and functions as a thread through a map, “Nothing about him seemed active…”(4).”Twenty-five years were nothing”(6). “No, nothing had happened as she had expected.”(7). It goes on like this and remains in the context connected to what is to come. Marcel’s first words are “What a country!”(4). Janine had contempt for Marcel and he has contempt for Algeria, he is mute almost only speaking to Janine about what relates to him, she is exiled in his kingdom. It is the space and alienation that allows for her to cultivate over time an eye to see herself, she thinks of her body and she ponders her name and how it doesn’t suit her, she remembers the power she once had as a gymnast, this is how time is utilized best in the story, as a tool for change, and how memory as well serves as a possible creator of choice. Time is not however honored in the western tradition and falls away into the void in Algeria where such rules that are followed blindly become absurd. There is a language spoken and a language to be learned here, it isn’t so much Arabic but the ability to see what creates our world and ourselves, to know the forces at work in life. In the end Janine honored what she discovered with silence, she too now speaks the language


Fork

revision

Daughter

I return to my perfection
To be eaten
I want to devour again
It is memory under my skin

Your home stays with me
Is me
And I am - my hand
across your back
The width of a single slice
of bread – now our oneness

Detachable

The womb shifts definition
Pull from my inner body

Leaving is constantly

A time for need
turns to sleep
I want to hold you and see you
To remember and be now
Curve everywhere
Nourish a spiral open



Fork

Alithea and Madeleine

I am having that thing where words look funny so I am sure that I have mispelled the boys name "the boy " as Julia calls him sometimes hhahahah - oh thats awful - sorry - Alithea and her buddy from French class Maddy - who I think looks a bit like Hanz use to as a toddler