We lost both times. We fought back
poison against poison, and guns, sold
bread with arsenic at the bakeries for Westerners.
When I learned my history, I stopped smoking
cigarettes, pot, any kind of shit.”
The young artists don’t understand
a thing he says, else they’d laugh over
the bakerman, bakerwoman guerrillas.
They do know, they give their lives for xun,
for art. They take his waving and pointing to mean
admiration for them and their work. They open
albums full of photos of paintings with prices.
Their brushwork takes your breath away.
The lines and angles of Picasso. The impasto
of Van Gogh. The colors of Rothko.
The icing of Thiebaud. They can do anything.
But where is the new, the never-before-seen
that we’re counting on the post-Liberation
post–Cultural Revolution generation
to give us? Art schools in the U.S.
are folding their painting classes, teaching computer
and industrial design. The young artists show
the old artist (buyer? patron?) their portfolios.
Chinese kids selling their art
on the streets of Sydney, Florence, San Francisco.
On these walls, their latest work: dark
pictures. Heavy black crosses. Black
cross in foregrounds crossing out whatever else.
Black cross in backgrounds or upper
corners, a coming menace. The New China
still hung up on Christianity.
Let it go already. But look,
we’re painting exactly what we see
before our very eyes. There, above
your head—the stovepipes, one up through
the roof, and 2 arms out the walls.
Like the number 10. We are painting
hearth and home. The world will see Crucifix.
Chinese viewers will read personal
messages, and political messages. And the government
read forbidden messages, and the artists get
into trouble. And what is that above the door,
the kiva, hogan door? Eagle, you are here.
Bear, you are here. Bear, protector
of journeys west. Dragonfly, you
here too. And Snake. And Coyote, you,
here. And Zia, sun and sipapu.
Kokopelli on flute. Whirling Logs,
like Buddha’s hairs, like swastikas.
All bordered by beansprouts, river
waves, whirlwind. And the threshold
lintelpiece itself border, land
bridge, rainbow. “Nicolai Fechin,”
say the artists. “Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin.”
They name the woodcarver who made this icon,
and placed it at this threshold, that we be
aware coming in and going out that
we, people and animals, migrated across the top
of the world. They came our way; we
went their way. All connected with all,
all related. The rain stops. The painter
with the purple beard motions Come come,
and leads the way through the mud to his home
and studio. “Nicolai Ivanovich Fechin.…”
They stand before a wet oil. The paint
wet but also a river rushing, mud, and men,
men drowning? mouths wide open
crying Help? No, they are cheering and
laughing—Eureka! The pan is full of gold!
They—Chinese American Forty-Niners—
fall into the gold-giving water,
and roll in it. In joy. In fear. O,
Comrade of Californians! You we left
behind know and care what became of us
who went to Gold Mountain and never returned.
O, Artist. Draw me. See me.
Show me beautiful, old. “Draw you,”
says Purple Beard. Dui. Dui. Dui.
So, for long sessions of time, the wanderer
holds still as the artist draws and paints him.
The artist looks and looks, squinting his eyes,
to see everything, what’s there, the visible,
and what’s not visible, only he can see.
Suddenly, at a break, at a meal, Purple Beard’s
face comes up close to Wittman’s
face. He’s studying my profile.
Tonight by electric light, the left profile;
this morning the right profile, the 3
quarters profile, the angles the eyelids
open and shut, the ear, the other ear,
the hairline, the texture and many colors
of hair and skin, the lines, the creases. Eyes
asquinch, he’s studying me, breathing, smelling me.
He hasn’t begun the actual painting, won’t
begin until he’s made studies and decisions.
Here, let’s work in the courtyard,
the light from the north. No, let’s go
indoors, this house, the light
from the south. The artist faces the sitter,
looks and draws, draws and looks, and one
day decides: Fullface. Good.
The face I myself looked at every
morning first thing back in the life
where bathrooms had mirrors. Full on. I, the writer,
look in the mirror more than the normal person.
To know my mien. Mien same-same
Chinese, English. To track and trace
momently changes. That’s me, still good-
looking. But can’t hold any one
expression for long. Hold it, and you freeze up.
Think upon looks, and that vanity shows.
Try method acting. For lovingkindness
in the eyes, look upon the other lovingly,
kindly. Purple Beard works without
talk, can’t understand him anyway,
makes you quiet down yourself, likewise
be without talk. Be Nobody. He’s
making an idol of me, admiring, adoring me so.
Lately, Taña doesn’t draw her husband,
doesn’t use her art on him. Doesn’t give him
her artist’s interest, regard him, record him, behold
him, find beauty in him. She disdains “narration.”
She paints lines and spaces like calligraphy
that’s not words. She can’t stand Frida Kahlo—
“Too much narrative. Too much pain.”
All the way to China to get appreciation.
Taña would love it here, among this commune
of artists. No, no, she wouldn’t. She
wouldn’t live like these girls. Bicycling
away rain or shine to run an errand
for her artist. Coming back with cigarettes, food
supplies, art supplies, coal, wood,
money. They aren’t so very communal;
each woman serves just her one
boyfriend. We’re back to the days of
James Joyce and Henry Miller, women
living to serve genius. Taña would organize
a cultural revolution. Girls, you
can be the artists of your dreams. She’d
see to it that this village dine together.
Everyone cooks for all. Give dinner
parties, be civilized. You ALL come.
Walt Whitman: “I will not have a single
person slighted or left away.” But Taña
and these artists same-same: Once they regard
a thing, it becomes treasure. Surprise:
I’m not bored sitting day after day.
I’m old, worked for a lifetime, time
to rest. Chinese know about working
hard, and give rest as a gift. “Sit.
Sit,” they invite the guest. “Sit, la.”
You take the crate or stool or the one chair
(Chinese invented chairs), saying,
“No, no, you sit, la,
don’t stand on ceremony, thank you,
thank you.” Purple Beard crouches, peers,
takes a kung fu step forward,
a tai chi step back, moves himself and
his metal easel right beside his subject,
paints, paints, backs away, easel
and all, paints some more. Turns his back
on the model and the picture, holds up a hand
mirror, and looks at their images in reverse,
turns around quick—catches something—
paints it down. As if I am
hard to see. The artist is doing mighty
feats of concentration to hold me real.
Across the courtyard is a south-facing
window, dark inside, nobody lives there.
One day, the window is utterly gone.
Nary a jamb or corner or glint remains.
The explanation has got to be that tree;
it leafed out, and put the window out
of sight. Must’ve mislooked, imagined
a window through the wavering spaces between
glittery leaves. Then, another day,
the leaves disappear, the tree disappears.
A green tree? A red tree? Gone.
And there’s the window again. Next to the window
is a gray wall. There are no shadows
on it because no tree, no branches.
Only light, light that changes, changes
with the moving day. So beautiful, the non-
repeating universe, I could watch it forever.
So beautiful, the nothingness of the ground.
Suddenly, the artist picks up the painting,
turns it around, thrusts it toward its subject—
“Finis!”—and has him see his portrayal. Omigod!
So much strain. So many wrinkles.
Read the wrinkles. I’m straining might and main
to carry out ideals. I have ideals.
I didn’t lose them along with my young self.
But I try too hard, the strain shows.
Not graceful under fire. I ended
the war in Viet Nam. I am determined,
we shall stop warring in Iraq,
and Afghanistan. Well, not
the fun-loving monkey but the world-carrying
citizen, okay. Wittman leaves
the art village, leaves the picture for history.
SPIRIT VILLAGE
He betakes himself to yet one more village.
I need him to go to an all-male place,
a monastery, to make sure that Shao Lin
or Han Shan or Water Margin sanctuary
exists. That the Chinese religion lives.
He locates and climbs Su Doc Mountain.
(Su Doc, Think Virtue, Hong
Ting Ting’s father’s name.) Through
the fog and mist of dragons breathing, following
a trail, possibly made by deer, he comes
to a ramshackle mew, a temple. No one
answers his knock. He opens the door, and enters
a dark room. Silent men and a few
little boys are eating supper. Someone
hands over a rice bowl and chopsticks,
and gestures eat eat. The food
is leftovers of leftovers. Even
the child monks practice eating meditation,
mindfully selecting some unrecognizable
brown vegetable, chewing it many times,
tasting it, identifying it, thinking about
and appreciating who grew it and cooked it, grateful
to them, and to the sun and the rain and the soil,
and all that generates and continues all.
After eating (food still left over),
the monks sit enjoying stomachs full,
holding the segue from this present moment
to this present moment. The kid monks
play kung fu boxing, push and
chase one another unreprimanded
around the table. The floor-sitting adults
get up. With sand and a small pail
of precious water, each cleans his bowl.
No leader tells the newcomer
what to do; no explainer gives
instructions. Under the vow of silence, we
can know we are all equally human.
Can’t tell who’s smarter than who,
whose job is better, who has more
money, more class. Silence, democracy.
Enemies can’t argue; thoughts and feelings
deepen, alter, fade, merge. The monks go
outdoors and meander in the dusk
that shadows into dark night. You
can see the Milky Way, the River of Heaven,
bridge, trail of corn, diadem
made up of individual stars.
It’s not a long wispy cloud as in light-
polluted America. Dok dok dok.
Dok dok dok dok dok.
The sound of wood clapping on wood calls
the community back inside. This monastery
is so poor, it doesn’t own a bell.
They’ve transformed the room where they’d eaten
into a meditation hall. Candlelight
and incense and dok-dok-dok summon
deities. They arrive upon the altar.
There’s Kwan Yin the merciful. And Kwan Yin
the wrathful. She who imprisoned Monkey, and freed
him. And red Gwan Goong on his red horse;
that book he’s reading is The Art of War. The 8
Immortals are here too, and lohans and arhats
and Buddhas and monkeys. We offer this incense
to all Buddhas and bodhisattvas throughout
space and time. The cushion in the middle place
among the monks is empty, for the new brother.
The community is aware of his presence; they look
after him. I will stay and sit until—
satori! Where else but in China?
Breathe in … breathe out … breathe
in … breathe out … breath incoming …
breath outgoing … breath incoming …
These monks don’t have a chanter guiding
their meditation. Peeking at them, you can’t tell
who’s meditating, who’s acting.
Surely, nobody here’s an actor, a spy
with a temple in the middle of nowhere?
No one hits Monkey upside the head
for mind-wandering. He tries signaling a need
for a whack, taps himself on a shoulder blade,
taps himself on the head. No minder monk
whacks him with a Zen stick. But Zen is Jap-
anese, and satori is Japanese. The monks
sit on, the kid monks gone,
to play, to do schoolwork, to sleep.
Monkey would leave too but for his sense
of competition and peer pressure.
The usual workings of his mind take him over;
he plays the time game: 29 …
30 … 40 minutes … 1 hour …
2 hours … 3 … real time?
Seeming time? It feels 9 o’clock,
then at length, or shortly, 11 o’clock.
How to be in sync? Whyfor in sync?
Because joy and life exist nowhere but the present.
Dok dok dok dok dok.
At last, the monks stir, wake up,
massage their feet, pound their own shoulders,
walk about, go out, come
back, unroll the cushions, which become beds,
blanket, and pillow. Meditation hall
becomes dorm. Wittman does get tap-
tapped, on the feet. A monk about to bed
down beside him tap-taps him, and makes
a circle motion with his hand: Turn around.
You dis the gods, giving them the underside
of your feet. And your head will benefit
exchanging vibes, chi, dreams with the altar.
Candles burn down. Shadows on the ceiling
fly into night. Snoring, snuffling,
vocalizing—aaahh, oooo, rrrrr—the community
sleeps together. Breath breathing breath.
Dok dok dok. Wake up.
4 a.m. Time to meditate again.
Everybody gets back up to sitting
position, and breathes out, breathes in,
aware of breathing out, aware of breathing in.
When I, Maxine, am worried and can’t sleep,
I remember to remember: at 4 a.m.
the Dalai Lama and William Stafford are awake
with me, and meditating and making up
a poem, and making up the world, preparing
the morning that we can
live as peaceful gentle,
kind human beings. We build the Kaya,
the Body, and the Dharmakaya,
the Buddha-body. Hold our bluegreen
world joyous and vibrant. Mm nn
nn nn nnn mm mmm
I am hearing Heart Sutra in Chinese.
Heart Sutra that won the war for the Vietnamese.
People awake around the globe turning and
lifting day into being chanting
Heart Sutra. No eye, no
ear, no nose, no tongue,
no body or mind, no form,
no sound, no smell, no taste,
no touch, no object of mind,
nor feelings, nor perceptions, nor
mental formations, nor consciousness.
All things are empty. Nothing
is born, nothing dies. No ill-
being, no cause of ill-being,
no end of ill-being. No
old age and death, no end
to old age and death. Wu wei.
Wu wei. Wu wei. No,
not heart Sutra. Older than Heart.
Tao. Wu wei. Wu wei.
No way. No thought. No
doing. No willing. Dwell no-
where. Rest in nothing. How did no
bang the universe to life? No answer.
Dok dok. Dok dok dok.
Next, go outdoors to play / work /
fight / dance / move chi kung fu.
Begin, stand, root into earth,
root like tree. Knees bent, seat
heavy, feel chi, imagine chi
rise up through the soles of your feet.
Lift arms, pull the chi from the earth
up to the sky. Circle the Sky. Stir
the Universe. The police in Tiananmen Square
watch for lift-arms—first move
of Falun Gong. They’re Falun Gong. Arrest them.
Commies haven’t lost belief in the old ways,