The hawk is hungry & other stories / D'Arcy McNickle ; edited by Birgit Hans

Third Floor

PS3525.A2844 H38 1992

They came here first : the epic of the American Indian / by D'Arcy McNickle
Third Floor
E58 .M18

"Not all music is meant to be beautiful." -Sam Riley in Control.

Quite the opposite actually, sometimes music, poetry, art is meant to convey the deepr, darker sides of human existence. To explore fear, paranoia, neurosis in an effort to express isolation, alienation, self-deprecation and why? Is it to serve as some selfish, burrowing need within a person to root out all the lingering traces of innate evil which so many philosophers and later, psychologists, exist within each and every person. But, to an extent, this sentiment would depend chiefly on the artist or the prime mover of the work. They may have their own particular intentions for bearing their soul to the solitude, at least temporary solitude of the page. But even so, there must be some sense of desparation that the author would feel toward warning the rest of humanity of the same dangers with which their soul has been affected. Think of The Plague by Camus which on one level, the surface level, deals with the plague and ensuing events of quarantine in the small town of Oran, Morrocco. Naturally, the events and occurrence make great press, as they still do in our times. Indeed, whether through truth of fiction, we could find this story rather entertaining in the same way that a horror novel or true crime writings would be. But we gain so much else from a novel like this one when reading between the lines, working the analysis and uncovering harrowing truths about the human condition.

the crow's feet follow you morning

after morning, you portray as being younger

still to those who seem to be around you,

but they're often party favors, with no room

for weak types, no room for angels,

but instead, the time to bolster needs has arisen,

when autumn sets in, the retaining wall flattened,

you hover beneath the crabapple tree looking

for a bite, the tart pulp smeared on your lips.

Rough Draft...

Standing by the wreck of the Missouri,
she and I were prehistoric, gazing upon the flight of birds,
they whorled up in patterns, let loose their wings,
and fell upon air pockets above the water,
the catfish flopped up on the rocks above the banks,
their fat bellies pulling them back down into the muddy deeps,
the otters on the far banks, burrowed farther into earth,
the autumn breezes beginning to send their signal,
the leadening weight of the season an echo to all passing creatures.

We dreamed for a moment of a life that never was,
but could have been, but might never be, unless we made it so,
the waters, untouched now by clipper, or man, and buoyant,
a tableau, millions of brushstrokes, thousands of thoughts to the wind.
Alone, the waters would pass as they always have, the southbound
current steady at five knots if there were a clock to measure it.
But with us, the river harkened itself, bearing down upon us
in the same way heaven can always be planted, here, now, now.

And in the hours that followed, the silence of that lilting river,
its slow plod, as we drive home in that same silence of which we shared,
fell into our rhythms for just awhile, in the quiet chir of the crickets
somwhere on shore, somewhere in the weeds, the grasshoppers
leaping around cornstalks, the long cut of the skyline, thick beds
of clouds, bordered by the dying sunlight, licking the heavens
a dull gold, a deepening sleeve of orange, the end of all wars,
that now would be the peace that we had promised each other,
that nothing need be said, in this prehistory, by the wreck of the Missouri.

http://www.geeksquad.com/tools/detail.aspx?id=339- Geek Squad Q&A page

I had a similar issue as well. I looked all over the net reading through all these forums and posts and called tech support to no avail. No matter how many times i changes my setting and reset stuff on both dekstop and laptop nothing worked. Finally, someone had an idea that worked like magic and was very simple! The problem was not with the computers, hardware, or the ip settings... the problem was actually with the linksys software. I know this sounds crazy, but what i was told to do was: uninstall the software, reboot, let your computer automatically detect the new hardware, the install wizard will pop upand ask you if you have the linksys cd, pop the cd into your laptop and only use it to install the drivers. just reboot again and you should be good to go! hope this helps...

http://192.168.100.1/-- cable modem's status page

Click on the Start button >>> go to RUN>> type in "services.msc" >>

click on OK- On the Services Local page double click on theoption "Wireless Zero configuration"- Here the Startup Type shouldbe "Automatic"

- Click on the "Start" button and "Apply" the settingsand OK.
Deleting Preferred Network Click on the Start button >>> Settings >>> Control Panel >>>NetworkConnections >>Here right click on the "Wireless Network Connection"icon and select Properties-

Click on the "Wireless Network" tab- Make sure that ""Use windows to configure my wireless network settings"" is checked- In the "Preferred Networks" box select each network name and click on "Remove" to make it empty- Click on OK.

**Click on the "Advanced" button(below the Preferred Networks) and makesure "Access point(infrastructure) networks only" is selected- Andalsomake sure that "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks"shouldbe unchecked >> click on "Close" and click on OK on main propertieswindow.

Connecting to Wireless Network (WLAN)

Click on the Start button >>> Control Panel >>> Network Connections-Right click on the "Wireless Network Connection" icon and select "ViewAvailable Wireless Networks"- If you see your wireless network in thelist, highlight it by 'single' clicking on it-

Now click onthe 'Connect' button below- If your wireless network is secured, it would ask you to provide the network key- Provide the wireless network key and confirm it again in the confirmation box andclick "Connect" & you should be able to go Online Wirelessly!!!

I've been wanting to go back to the priests lately. Open the spring action door, walk into the cloister, cross myself and kneel down on the long wood pew. I remember sometimes when you went face-to-face, which I often did, it felt awkward to go behind the screen, talking to a wall, thwen on the other side you'd have a proverbial sponge. Unless I confessed murdering someone, or worse. Then, they'd have a conscientious duty to either turn me in or convince me to turn myself in. And that could get dangerous. Muddy. But when you walk into that place, it can be suffocating. I used to think that was an entirely internal experience. Knowing that you were about to cough up your worst attributes, the things you'd done. How could you breathe? Like your body was going into that shock mode, like you were about to hyperventilate. But that wasn't it at all. You could say what you wanted. Lie if you felt you had to need to. But always and every time, God knew the truth. God knew what was in your heart. Just about every preist I ever came into contact with, whether liberal or conservative in his religious leanings, would tell you the same thing--- delight in the truth, for it will set you free. And depending how you want to respond to that statement on any given day, either the light that shines upon you is quite white or else it fades to dull grey.

The truth and the guilt was what sucked the air out of that room. How a priest could stand to cover himself in cloaks and stay in that room, not knowing how many people would come through there, not knowing what personal burdens would be laid upon them-- unfathomable. How you could muster up the courage to not sit in judgement for so many judgements which had been rolled out that way. If you were a priest. But I received sanctimony for everything that had come from my lips before. It's like the quiet stillness of a cold freezing room with so many spirits, so many demons, and there you are with all your black vows. Your great little deaths.

I am not, as she says, trying to trick myself into imagining

or fancying us together--- there is no trick in that:

either she is running parallel to me, or one of us

is lagging behind, out of spite, out of apathy, out of range,

ignoring the lingering within earshot, self-deafened,

imposed upon, or feeling bereft, afloat on a raft in a Martian sea.



Sometimes I try to trick the bogeymen, the white hooded

figures which lie somewhere in my occipital lobe, strangers

to flight, estranged by sleights of hands, bedeviled by mists,

or Bidwell's ghost, but with me as the spinner of a wheel,

looking out at the world, judging, reshaping, discarding

and ignoring the design, my hands shifting back & forth.



Often times, the bogeymen are like Stygian boatmen,

they stop to carry you through the darkness, sometimes quietly,

respectfully, and other times, speaking to you in low tones,

whispering the madness, in sheer, cold sentences, like steel staples.

But I've tried to look instead to my reflection, where the cold

black waters meet my face, knowing it as a mirage.



The workings of love, the love that acts, the kind you can kick

across the floor, wrestle with, stumble over on the dance floor---

force you forward, or they grind you down to a white-flag surrender.

Creating faith from uncertainty or despiar from doubt,

even so the person who shudders in its wake ultimately has

the upper hand, that no matter what the cost or how deep the scars,

there is still golden grace in the palm of the hand, once it is wished.



Sometimes love is knowing that you don't need to talk about it anymore.
To move on with the business of trying to love again.

List of things I need:

Safety or the feeling of safety, like people aren't out to screw with me, especially in the home,

esepecially with people I am trying to trust

This kind of runs chills down my spine. This poet was gifted with vision to say the least... he seems to be possessed of loneliness. I'm not sure why the lonely-hearted poets have always spoken to me so loudly. Maybe it's the same sense of being lonely in a world full of people you are so sure are unlike you, despite that delusion, despite how little that takes into account. Or maybe I just like some of the images here, the ideas. Glen Uig
by Richard Hugo
Believe in this couple this day who come to picnic in the Faery Glen. They pay rain no matter, or wind. They spread their picnic under a gale-stunted rowan. Believe they grew tired of giants and heroes and know they believe in wise tiny creatures who live under the rocks. Believe these odd mounds, the geologic joke played by those wise tiny creatures far from the world's pitiful demands: make money, stay sane. Believe the couple, by now soaked to the skin, sing their day as if dry, as if sheltered inside Castle Ewen. Be glad Castle Ewen's only a rock that looks like a castle. Be glad for no real king. These wise tiny creatures, you'd better believe, have lived through it all: the Viking occupation, clan torturing clan, the Clearances, the World War II bomber gone down, a fiery boom on Beinn Edra. They saw it from here. They heard the sobs of last century's crofters trail off below where every day the Conon sets out determined for Uig. They remember the Viking who wandered off course, under the hazelnut tree hating aloud all he'd done. Some days dance in the bracken. Some days go out wide and warm on bad roads to collect the dispossessed and offer them homes. Some days celebrate addicts sweet in their dreams and hope to share with them a personal spectrum. The loch here's only a pond, the monster is in it small as a wren. Believe the couple who have finished their picnic and make wet love in the grass, the tiny wise creatures cheering them on. Believe in milestones, the day you left home forever and the cold open way a world wouldn't let you come in. Believe you and I are that couple. Believe you and I sing tiny and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.

Perscription.

Some yoga. Exercise. Ride a bike. Make it to the YMCA.

Eat healthier. Eat a salad instead of a cookie.

I don't need to eat every cookie I see. Blood sugar.

Cool down. Be cool. Like Troy said, "You're alright

I was reading about Gustavus Swift in the 1880's the first to begin using railway cars to ship frozen meat from one city to another- hence the beginiing of meat-shipping companies and refrigerated railcars-- I'm getting to be so saturated with useless but interesting knowledge...
But what if --and how are we to doubt that it didn't happen-- employees of the slaughterhouses falling into the meat-packing refineries... shipped off to other cities and placed on the grocery store shelves or in the coolers... then some pour soul happens upon the grainy remains of the sad worker who fell into the combine... I shudder to think of it. OKay, OKay, so that's a dark thought, but it came to me. I guess there's parts of history that sort of pull you in. Others that make you yawn-- wide.

bursting sparkles
of color above our eyes,
squinting sometimes,
fingers in my ears at
the loud explosions of light.


craning my neck backward,
the light sprayed over the field,
the soft grass under my ankles,
where are you I wonder,
are you in the night or just beyond me?

the dog plants his paws,
little nails on your arm,
you pause before the notes,
and your hands carress the dog,
a ball cradled in his jaw.

Thoughts on Reconstruction. 1865-1877.

The Civil War may have ended the fighting between the North and South on proper battlefields but the war never really ended in the South even after the Battle of Gettysburg, Antietam, etc.
The real battle continued to take place in establishing the Democratic party in the South and making sure that the Republicans were scared out of their seats and the elections lost. It has been noted, too, how African Americans were intimidated out of requesting any kinds of favor or funding except from Northern Republicans or even some Democratic leaders in the South. You can imagine them going to leaders who very well may have once been slave-owners. What hell- you think you've one a victory for your people whose greatest distinction is the color of their skin and their lack of education, then you have to beg some slave owner for a little help. No doubt, they were forced to scrape by on what could be given as a hand-out, a favor...

Also, new information and new concept about the time after the war. Blacks reaped the rewards of the post- Civil War legislation for only a short period of time, but that would likely have made it worse for them- the reason being that they would still have been served by restaurants, stores, bars, hotels, street cars during the 1880's. Then comes the 1890's and suddenly, you have a recommencement of "disenfranchisement" . So they won their freedoms for awhile, earned their comfort, only to have it snatched away from them once again. Think of the fear and anxiety, believing that once again they would slip away into a depraved and deformed state of being.

The Northern Republicans even gave up on the cause of Reconsturction and ensuring back rights were upheld. We're talking about 12 years, really. 12 years to work on, policing, enforcing and ensuring that African Americans get the same kind of treatment... it took four years and thousands upon thousands killed in the war, and they have a reconstruction and change ipso facto overturned after twelve years because they can't figure out a way to make the South do what they want it to... plus nobody really wants a big federal government.

He stood on the precipice above a valley of tornadoes.

His terror was complete, as he watched the whirling columns

extend into the sky, an ever-darkening field of purple madness.

The two of them had driven hard into the deep landscape

which threatened like a womb of torrents.

I felt like Buckner walking back into Shea... of course, that particular analogy doesn't entirely fit when you consider that he has already walked back into Fenway Park, this now only 22 years after the crime. However, there I was walking back into a local public high school, albeit as a substitute teacher but even so, it was a bit intimidating at the first because I found myself walking IN around the lunch room, not really sure if I should be parking in the staff lot or not, so I did the best I could to blend in with the locals. Children have not changed much since I last experienced them, this alone does not particularly surprise me because of the fact that times do change but the human essence remains intact. Like Anne Lamott said, we can't be too sure that Mary didn't want to whoop on Jesus every now and then too. Think of the story of Jesus in the Temple conversing with the scholars of Torah, and even then, he gave them some lip. SO it goes with the average high schooler. Trying to make their way into the big cruel high school world by being the biggest sassers on the block. And God forbid they don't establish themselves, excedpt in the small pack of kids who will hang out with them and will accept them for who they are... then they get really verbal, not just trying to mouth off to you, but trying to mouth off to everyone around them.... in that sense, I felt sheepish, I felt like I wasn't nipping their behavior in the bud enough...like I needed to really gop after a couple of them, chop their heads off and show it off to the rest of them... see what happens when you f**k with me & my mighty sword?? But it begs the question as to why teachers would want to simply ignore the problem and hope that it solves itself. Or skirt the issue in some way, shape or form. But they are smart enough or no doubt learn that with the students it has to be a wrestling match if you're going to complete your objectives. It's just that you're never really sure if that is what is currently slapping you in the face as it comes. You start talking and imparting imformation or spreading the seeds of knowledge and next thing you know, you got somebody talking right over you as you go, as if you are not even there in front of them... wrestling with your muscles pumped. You think that within the last few seconds, perhaps they forgot that I was just about to tell something to the whole class, you think that maybe they figured since you were talking that you wouldn't be able to notice the fact that they were now going to talk while you were. How very strange that such a thing should happen.
At any rate, I did it, after all, and made some small victories for myself in the process by adapting to a bit of a screwy schedule. Welcome to the Big Time that schedule shuffle seemed to be saying to me. and so I did. You got to accentuate your positives and most of all, I refused to fall into the Substitute trap of just going by the game plan. If they were going to be in the same room as me, I figured I might as well talk to them about a few things. And offer them a chance at maybe seeing the Big Picture. God knows I never did. Not in high school, sometime in college and only occasionally, in real life. Maybe it's gotten better, the jury's still out on that one, but at least I'm starting to see how educators build larger frames of the puzzle. And you can start to see how you make that puzzle come together, knowing that with it, students will hopefully be able to gather together some of that puzzle and learn how a story is put together, how to link together the narrative, so to speak.

Today would be an incredible nap day me thinks... yet another dull white, colorless sky

for us here in Omaha... the original proponent of naps I ran into this weekend. Laura

Heinemann or Weber not sure if she's taken on Chris' name yet. But the story goes for those who have not heard it yet that she and her roommate Holly had a loft in their dorm room

in college, a loft that they had borrowed or bought from people who had lived there before, on which someone had neatly written the phrase, "Naps are Nice," which was actually a mantra

for many of us back in those days. College is great for that because it often created that deep relaxed state, ingesting volumes and volumes of intellgence and knowledge for the self... then you would be right in the frame of mind for a long bout of deep sleep.

Naps are Nice. My favorite place to stop and take a nap would have been-hands-down- the Creighton library basement with their long cushioned couches, or even better take two cushioned chairs, push them together and off to bliss you go... the slight buzz from the weak florescent light, the ultra-silent library atmosphere and the cool temperature of the basement, surrounded by all those books, made for heavy dreaming. I found the poetry section in that library too, unrivaled so far by most book stores or other libraries that I've seen.

#2- my parents couch at their house in Florida. Now granted I have to travel 1500 miles and get a quiet moment to myself to get it, but man, the cool leather and the quietude of their living room, the combination leaves me waking up with drool on my lips EVERY time. The leather is soft and malleable to the skin and I know that I have a tendency to feel as if I am falling into the cushion. It's kind of like that scene in Trainspotting where the camera gives us the perception that Ewan MacGregor is falling down INTO the couch entirely.

Up on the hilltop below the Crescent Hotel, Stations of the Cross leading to the Crucifixion, outside of St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, afternoon.

link to St. Elizabeth Catholic Church if you are interested in history. I will have to take a look at this page myself... I went inside and said a little prayer for my friends and family.
http://www.eurekavacation.com/history/church.phtm

View from the Crescent Hotel, Observation Desk, We had a soda even though they did not have any lemonade. You could see the whole valley of that stretch of the Ozark Mountains, Arkansas.

This is going across the bridge from Beaver to Eureka Springs. Heavy rains and late winter flooding have brought the waters up very high against the bridge, but they keep it in operation. If a high tide going over the bridge makes you queasy then you better stay on your side of the river. You have to stop on either side of this bridge and check to make sure no one is crossing. It is a one lane bridge. Wha-hooo!

We ended up kayaking on this lake on the left side of the bridge, and in order to get this bridge, you would have had to jump onto another wooden bridge, older than this one, grab your kayak, flip it over to the other side and get back in on the other side...