The night before my birthday I dreamt I was back at school. University or some such thing. Sitting in a comfortable study lounge in a dormitory in the evening having a meeting. The room was full of people I knew. We couldn't think of the word for "shipwreck" in German. Nobody knew it. We were stymied. But a number of people had dictionaries: Langenscheidt German-English/English-German dictionaries. I could see them under chairs and next to bags with their distinctive yellow covers and the big blue L for Langenscheidt. I demanded, "Would someone who is not mentally retarded please hand me a dictionary?" My old friend John H handed me his. Weirdly, the back cover was wet. It was just water. But why? I didn't know. I looked inside it. It was actually not a regular dictionary, but a picture dictionary. I looked in the table of contents and found ships. There were a few pages on ships, but no word for shipwreck. I handed the dictionary back. "I'll find i...
Popular posts from this blog
The Old Yage Drinker’s Visions
Miguel Angel Cabodevilla Miguel Angel Cabodevilla is a Capuchin priest, born in Spain, who spent thirteen years in the rainforest working in education and on the preservation of native cultures. Fernando Payaguaje, the drinker of this narrative’s title, was the last of the shaman-chiefs of the Ecuadorian branch of the Secoya tribe, now known as Siekopai. T his story is from Cabodevilla’s 1998 nonfiction book Oro Creciente. The translation into English, by Nathan Horowitz, appeared in Shaman’s Drum Magazine in Autumn, 2003. I knew I would never see him again, alive or dead. He had yielded me his hammock, with the exquisite courtesy that always characterized him. With a silence so close to grief, I observed all his movements, trying to make of them a photo album in my mind, trying to win over death the illusory victory of memory. The cavernous cough that sounded in his chest was like termites hollowing him out inside. He shuffled across the dirt floor of his...
Nighttime Daydreams Show 20
1 Alone in Cabana Supernatura -- a chapter from my unpublished manuscript Beyond Wahuya 2 Sphinx Wolf Cactus Tree of Life -- a chapter from my unpublished manuscript Beyond Wahuya 3 Poetry is Not an Accident -- A clip from an interview with a poet in Urdu with added echo effects. That makes it sound worse than it is. It's quite beautiful. These tracks have been sound-engineered by my good friend Raymond Soulard. http://spiritplantsradio.com !
Comments