HOLY RELIC OF OLSON CULT RETRIEVED FROM SUBTERRANEAN GROTTO

It started out innocently enough, I mentioned so many of the fascicles of A Curriculum of the Soul were printed by mimeo and they were so beautifully done. "Because of Guy Berard," Albert Glover said. Berard was the artist and designer involved. "Where is the machine, I'd like to take some photos of it?" I asked. "You did the printing yourself, right?" "Photos, yes, photos - that's a good idea, that's a very good idea.." he said looking me up and down as if measuring something in a distracted way. "Can't do it today. You'll have to come back tomorrow, today we have the..the piano tuner. Yes that's it the piano tuner. Come back tomorrow at three. The mimeo is not here. It is up on campus. We'll go tomorrow." The next day he drove. Said he'd be able to find parking. I noticed a small archaic symbol and mystical number combination struck to his window. "This will let us pass." he said. The road turned and twisted in the labyrinth of odd appearing building. They were typical two and three family wooden structures like those found in rundown slums through-out the Northeast. Yet these had no peeling paint and there were crowds of carpenters swarming the buildings, rebuilding porches, replacing weak boards and putting on new shutters. I was hopelessly lost and feeling more discontent looking over at my intently focused driver.

The unreal village went on forever. Suddenly he swerved, miraculously a place opened, where I saw none but a moment ago. "It has been thirty years since I have been this way." Glover said. "I must go first, to be sure the way is still open."
We entered a building and walked through the corridors with more strangeness. There were no people living here, just desks, offices with people sitting with piles of papers before them. They all seemed to know Albert. They said hello while ignoring me. I wondered how many others had been lured on the path I was on. We came to a door

Relics of Olson Cult revealed

which opened on to steep descending stairs. I took a deep breath and began my descent. They way was dark, time had no meaning on the endless stair. At last we came out in a subterranean grotto. Glover began speaking. "The mimeo machine is a Gestetner and there is a stencil maker also. They were left over here, in this corner." Quietly, carefully he began removing centuries (or maybe thirty years) worth of debris. There they were. My breath caught. I took out my camera and began taking pictures. Glover kept removing accumulated coverings. He maneuvered the printer till it came loose.
"We are taking these," he said daring me with his eyes to say "no". "Yes, lets do it," I said.
He grapped one end and I the other. A different doorway suddenly came into view opening to the daylight and green grass. We carried first the printer and then the stencil maker to his car and he drove us back to his home. Taking the mimeo printer out of the trunk and downstairs to his study area he said "Pat is going to kill me!" It was the obligatory remark of any married man which could have been left unsaid as it was alreadly implied by the situation. Albert Glover digs out Gestetner

The Gestetner machines were set up in a sort of altar area in a side room. Instead of incense an open can of mimeo fluid would be used during ceremonious visits. (Special Warning: Do not breathe in the mimeo fumes in imitation of the Rites of the Delphi Oracle). "It will never run again," Glover says. I respond, "You know how I've spoken of ambrosia. A different way of measuring life, not the bio way but by the life that is in something. Something has more life in it, it has more ambrosia. You can see it like a bowl of fresh picked fruit or a special bright beautiful day. If you drink ambrosia, that is the life that is restored. Those Gestetner machines have more life in them now then they did before." "Ambrosia," Glover says, "that is a good name for a magazine."

WHEELER HILL READING SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

click on pictures for larger view

A day of high slow grey clouds with warnings of "sprinkles" coming through brief breezes of cooler and moist promise. Periods of sunshine visited regularly and no hard rain was seen to fall. The weather was "perfect" some were heard to say. I took my usual all-accepting attitude and, as directed, picked flowers so the outhouse would smell purdy. Host of the Wheeler Hill Readings (an outdoors series of poetry held in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State) Michael Czarnecki was amused when the weatherman stated there was a chance of "sprinkles". What sort of self-respecting weatherman uses the word sprinkles in an official sounding public report?
None that I knew of and I bet this guy doesn't know which way the wind blows either. But was "sprinkles" related to "sprites" or "fair" weather to "fairies?" I never got a chance to ask Michael as I was joining in and helping out with the domestic chores, chopping onions and trimming chapbooks. The Fair Folk are the fairies so I think there must be such as "fairy weather." I'll have to call up that weatherman to see what he knows about it. Looking it up I say we can rule out "sprites" as sprinkles comes from Middle English sprenklen; akin to Middle High German sprenkel spot. "There may be a spot of rain on Wheeler Hill this afternoon."














The other featured reader, Jennifer Campbell from Buffalo, New York arrived and shortly after the chairs and hay bales were filled with listeners and raconteurs and the reading started. Jennifer is co-editor of Earth's Daughters (a feminist literary journal) and has a FootHills Publishing book available Driving Straight Through (2008) Her poems displayed a variety of movements, comings and goings, strong swimmer knowing the tides and able to challenge and respect the natural forces. She also writes poems of human relationships, man/woman, family, friendship, toil. I get the sense she uses observation as we sometimes say "the power of observation". One poem she read titled That M.C. Escher Drawing puts her and another in the familar Escher imagined space of doors and stairways. "Its me, he says on voicemail/confident in your automatic reply."

Creature of expectation, you call back
right away, lead with the full name
your mother used to yell from the bottom of the stairs.

I liked the new unpublished poems she started her reading with and hopefully she'll stay in touch and sharing her work with us at Rootdrinker. Then I read next. I guess I did O.K. Some people said they really liked my reading and poems. These were the same people who thought the weather was "perfect".

My own FootHills Published book Thirty Poems was released on this day. The title is not an attempt at concrete obviousness like naming your dog, "Dog". There is a literary tradition surrounding the title and I intend writing about that tradition as I introduce the book to others. If you want to do your own research, mine is not the first book titled Thirty Poems. The poem I finished my reading with I DREAMED LAST NIGHT OF THE CIRCLING OF STARS had been mentioned by many poet friends and this day Michael Czarnecki pointed out that the outdoors was the right setting for reading the poem. My own field of vision expanded as the poem asks us to see:

Horizon is not a line.
Horizon is also a circle, turn around,
circle as the stars circle, look in all directions,
each shows horizon
the boundaries of a great circle
as well as the sky.

The day before my wife Jennifer Pearce and I had gotten lost on some of the back roads as we tried to drive from Seneca Lake to Hammondsville on Lake Keuka. Many smaller country roads did not have route markers. Even intersections were unmarked. We were approaching the crest of a long straight uphill stretch. Ahead you could see lighter sky and the deep downhill road beginning right behind the crest. "There's the lake right ahead," she said and I agreed. We came over the rise to see straight ahead a landscape of pastures in a series of brilliant green swelling hills. No lake but I immediately said, "Look at the lake today, the water is so green and the size of those swells-- must be a heavy wind out there on the surface to cause the waves to be so huge and rise that high."
On Wheeler Hill you can see out over many acre sized hills. The landscape of the Finger Lakes Region has large hills that fill horizons with summits that themselves cover areas big enough for homesteads, clusters of farms and hay fields of 50 acres or more. A city on the hill could be built here pretty easily. There is no city here now. My expectation of a tent city and acres of R.V.'s all parked for the upcoming poetry readings was alittle unrealistic. There was a gathering of friends. One of my suggestions to local poets of the northeast woodlands is to develop a calendar of events and I'd like to add the Wheeler Hill readings to just such a calendar. Totally informal at this point. The evolution of territory is the evolution of the brain.




















A FINGER LAKES CREATION TALE

Mother Turtle and Grandfather Carp
were together at the beginning.
They named Lobo, they named Trout
Bear came upon them
"Let us have Bear help us create this world"
said Grandfather Carp
"Fine" said Mother Turtle
"Bear, What is the name of that green frog?"
"That is Green Frog."
"What of the black bird with red on the wings?"
"That is Red-Winged Blackbird."
They all thought this so funny,
they laughed till their bellies hurt.
'Oh Bear," said Mother Turtle
"You are very good at the naming of things."
"Yes" said Bear, "but I have to go. Before I do
I shall name my kindred"
"No." said Grandfather Carp still laughing.
"That is Brown Bear and that is Black Bear"
"Delightful," said Bear, "Exactly as I would."

Note: As Stephen Lewandowski might point out carp are not native to the Finger Lakes Region, however Grandfather Carp was present and involved in the naming of things back at the time of creation. He did not stay around and returned to Asia by swimming through the mysterious sprenklen, also known as "the doorway to infinity" found at the bottom of a deep hole in the water of Canadice Lake ( Which had a different name at the time)