Embedded Files
December 2012
WHR Dec 2012 GCR (General Common Room)
Welcome to our GCR (General Common Room)! GCR is a forum like someone’s living room or even kitchen where our readers can freely express themselves in the haiku literature.
In this issue, we have: Anita Virgil and John W. Sexton
Contributions by Anita Virgil
THE SENSE OF MYSTERY
“The best artists speak “to our capacity for delight and wonder,
to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives: to our sense
of pity, and beauty, and pain.” [1]
NOW
It was happenstance that led me to see the following old poems of mine paired together on one page. The sight of them released a torrent of memories which unlocked a story that until now I simply could not face. They were quoted in an email from Melissa Allen on February 10, 2012. Instantly, it was clear that both poems have underpinnings of death and both confront different aspects of mortality
“An early favorite was "walking the snow-crust." Last summer at Haiku North America there was a sort of quiz bowl game in which I was one of the contestants, and a series of questions asked us to identify the author of numerous famous haiku, one of which was "red flipped out chicken lung." Immediate chorus of answers: ‘Anita Virgil!’ “ [2]
walking the snow-crust
not sinking
sinking [3]
red flipped out
chicken lung
in a cold white sink [4]
Seldom do readers ever find out how poems come into being or how much lies behind them, but this is one time you shall. When the poems were written, without intending to bestow symbolism upon them, by their very nature, both these actual ‘happenings’ were imbued with some unknown significance that stirred me.
THEN
Stuart Smith [5]
Duane St. NYC
Who is this handsome New York man with the surfboard? For many years, he was a top-notch deep sea diver for the U. S. Navy involved in recovery of classified objects worldwide -- including the wreckage of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 shot down by the Soviets off Sakhalin Island in 1983. Of Stuart in those days, a fellow shipmate, Pops Reno, wrote:
“ . . . on our ship "The Conserver."
We were cruising one late night, far out at sea. The night sky was glowing with an amazing concentration of brilliant endless stars. It was so bright, that it lit up our decks as if it were daytime.
Stewby was up on the top deck by himself as a lookout watch. I was roaming the decks as the sound and security watch. I knew I had to pay him a visit on my rounds. He was up there writing poetry. Me, I just got done smoking it, so everything sounded like poetry. . . .
Anyway, I popped up to the upper lonely deck and said my usual, "What's up Stewby"? I just then realized how beautiful the sky was. Stew started showing me , planets, star formations and all kinds of "Star Trek" stuff. . . . It blew me away.. . ..
Then I would have to split and report to the Captain.
"Everything is sound and secure, Captain."
Stuart at the wheel
Pearl Harbor 1984 [7]
But I knew Stuart from the time he was a little boy and we were neighbors in Kinnelon, New Jersey where both poems were written.
The snow-crust poem was written because of Stuart, who was maybe five years old when we shared this experience. He and his older sister, Tracy, were my daughter Jen’s friends for life. Their mother, Lee, is still mine.
I had promised Jen and Stu we’d go sledding on Caruso’s Hill one winter afternoon. But when the perfect cold clear day arrived, Jen, too sick with fever and a horrid cold, could not join us. Unwillingly, she stayed at home with her father. But Stu who had waited anxiously for this adventure, I could not disappoint. No more than I did at Halloween when he refused to go Trick or Treating unless “Mrs. Birgil ” took him. I did very bad things and he was equally scared and thrilled. I taught him to identify mushrooms, especially the poisonous Amanita muscaria. (He could pronounce that clearly before 1st grade. ) He would go on mushroom hunts with me, learned great caution, and even on his own, if he found some and if I wasn’t home, he’d leave them neatly arranged on my doorstep.
I taught him “music appreciation” in that house when he was little. Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid.” With the music blaring, he and his older sister Tracy, and Jen, the youngest of the trio, galloped through the downstairs on my fireplace brooms, then stopped in the living room for a drink at the “bar” which was my childhood doll furniture dresser. On it, in a small antique pressed glass decanter, was cream sherry poured by me into three tiny glasses. After all, everyone knows cowboys always end up having a drink -- or more -- at a bar.
Returning to that cold and shining wintry afternoon back then: Stu and I, dragged a Flexible Flyer sled, crossed Cutlass Road heading for the wide expanse of snow. We began to walk up the white hill, its snow in the shade of the pines, blue and somewhat frozen. Our steps were careful. Even so, unexpectedly, we’d sink below the shiny crust. And laugh. And go on . . . .
The following email from Stuart reminisces about that same time period. It
was sent to Jen February 23, 2007, days after the blog on her father, illustrator Andy Virgil, appeared online
"Jenny I am so touched by your mother’s writing about your father. I am back in 1966 playing with you in your magical endless back yard with your father watching from the upstairs window. I have no words, only the most beautiful memories I will forever cherish . . . You were the best friend I could of ever asked for growing up. . . Your home and family was magic.
Lots of love and Aloha, Stu ” [8]
That red chicken lung I automatically flipped out -- as I’d done unflinchingly a thousand times before -- stunned me: in a shocking flash I realized it displayed my callousness and the disconnect we operate under relative to what once had its own life, was actively sharing our earth.
It was basically the same anonymity that accrues to unknown victims of war, human and animal; the same detachment that accompanies the push of a button in a bomber high above its target or the squeeze of a trigger into a crowd of strangers -- for whatever motivation.
Without intending to bestow symbolism upon either poem, by their very nature these two happenings were imbued with some additional unrecognized significance below the surface. That tiny piece of flesh landing splat! on the cold hard surface of the sink was symbolic of all this though I could never have identified it as synecdoche when I was moved to write the poem. All that hit me was “The horror! The horror! ” [9] A rush of empathy turned this morbid reality into the poem. For the first time ever, I recognized the little lung as emblematic of any abruptly ended life. And that “cold white sink”? It was not only the porcelain one, but my emotional reaction to this confrontation with death.
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day. [10]
Though apart for decades, Stu and I kept in touch intermittently by phone and letters. We shared a love of books and diverse subject matter. Our exchanges ranged from contemporary political and ecological matters to The Trilateral Commission, to a DVD he sent me, The Money Masters: How Banks Create the World’s Money. On February 14, 2011, he wrote me about a mind-blowing book I surprised him with: The Grain Merchants. He was intrigued reading a book I had recommended earlier: The Wizard of the Amazon by F. Bruce Lamb, husband of Elizabeth Searle Lamb, haiku poet and an early president of the Haiku Society of America. I knew them well. Bruce’s book was full of adventures in the jungle with native hunting practices, hallucinogenic fungi, native medicines and diagnostics. And I shared with him some of my second husband’s adventures in the 1950s when he was a young geologist working for Standard Oil of California in South America. All of this fascinated Stu. With friends, he was planning a trip to Machu Picchu for the fall of 2011.
Stu and I were last together for a day in late June of 2003. I had flown from Virginia for a Haiku North America weekend in New York City. Stuart, by then, had long lived in the TriBeCa section with his lovely wife, Aileen Oser, the successful designer of lingerie. Together they created what came to be a well-known unique shop, Bikini Bar on Duane Street. Within sight of the Twin Towers.
9/11
Duane Street NYC [11]
Their businesses utilized the first floor of the old five-story building. Bikini Bar specialized in all kinds of Hawaiian memorabilia. It featured period rattan furniture Stu restored and there were incredible surf boards for they both loved surfing in Hawaii where Aileen was raised and where Stuart, early in his Navy career, had been trained for a mobile diving salvage unit. At the back of the store, past the tiki bar, was the workshop for Aileen’s lingerie designing business.
Bikini Bar [12]
After Stuart joined the Navy and had been diving worldwide as a senior submarine salvage inspector, he became the diving supervisor for the Submarine Rescue team in Groton, CT. While driving in New York one day, Stuart had stopped for a red light at the bottom of a hill when he was back-ended by a careening truck. The resultant severe injury ended his eight-year Navy career and left him in constant pain. In the years that followed, Stuart became a great cook while also managing and doing renovations on the shop. He and Aileen catered elegant parties at Bikini Bar.
After the HNA poetry reading was over, driving me to New Jersey on the way to his mother’s lake home where I would spend a few days, Stu wanted first to go to nearby Kinnelon. He wanted to visit my old 1847 house. Relive with me those days of so long ago. Said if he could afford it, he’d buy it in a minute! Confessed to me something I never was aware of: as a child, he used to climb up into my huge Norway spruce trees to look at where I lived from his high perch.
NOW
What the snow-crust poem depicts is true for us all. It displays the arbitrariness of our path through life. The thin line we navigate between life and some unexpected end. It was Stuart’s and my laughter that day veiled the unthinkable “zero at the bone” [13] I sensed lurking beneath the surface. Today, I read that poem differently because of its unimaginable conclusion. And together, the two poems have tragically become one and the same. How and what actually occurred last summer will forever remain a mystery to me: Stuart fell from that Duane Street rooftop on July 10, 2011.
Special Thanks To
Lee Smith MacKenn, Stuart’s mother
Aileen Oser, Stuart’s wife
References
1. Joseph Conrad Nigger of the Narcissus
2. Melissa Allen to AV , pers. corres. Feb. 10, 2012 by permission
3.“walking the snow-crust” Anita Virgil A 2nd Flake 1974 Montclair
4.“red flipped out” Ibid.
5.“Urban Surfer” photo by permission Aileen Oser
6. Pops Reno pers. corres. Aileen Oser Oct. 2, 2011 by permission
7. Stuart Smith photo at the wheel Pearl Harbor by permission Aileen Oser
8. Stuart Smith pers. corres. Jennifer Virgil Gurchinoff, Feb. 23, 2007 by permission LSM
9. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
10. “ A word is dead” Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
Random House Modern Library, p. 46
11. Stuart Smith photo 9/11 by permission Aileen Oser
12. Bikini Bar photo by permission Aileen Oser
13.“ zero at the bone” from “A narrow fellow ” Emily Dickinson. pp. 81-2
For details on this story see
DIVING LIFE a memoir by Stuart Smith
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/boutique_owner_dies_in_roof_fall_XPkpagvH8mVtPlWJWFSyUN
http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2011/07/bikini_bar_co-founder_stuart_s.html
Tribeca Citizen 7/11/11
DIVING LIFE excerpts from a memoir by Stuart Smith
I started diving off of Ambergris Caye, San Pedro, Belize in 1975 with two cousins. . . I was certified that year and I had my first license to explore the depths of the oceans fulfilling part one of a dream I had since first viewing the cold gray Atlantic. It was the lure and the seduction of it’s vastness and hidden treasures buried beneath her waves that sucked me into it’s depths. After graduating Kinnelon High School in 1981, I left New Jersey’s early fall for sunny San Diego . N.A.S.D.S - NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCUBA DIVING SCHOOLS instructors college. Run by an elite corps of ex-navy frogmen from the Korean War and Vietnam era. These early SEAL TEAM guys were the explorers with all sorts of experimental diving rigs that came since World War Two. . . After graduation I was awarded OWIC #568. Open Water Instructor College 1981. It was a big deal to me to wear that pin, it was not easy . . .
A network of jobs was opened up for me across the world and I somehow took a job in Tucson, Arizona. Tucson School of Scuba Diving took me into the heart of the Gulf of California, Mexico. I always wanted to see this part of the world. . . I would drive 400 miles through the Sonora Desert down route 15 from Nogales Mexico to San Carlos. We would stay in this Penthouse Magazine Pet of the Years home way up on this hill overlooking San Pedro’s bay. Sunken Tubs, Scorpions, good tequila and these giant shrimp and scallops all over the sea floor right over the cliff kept us diving every day. Right over the mountain is the beach where the movie “Catch 22” was filmed. No one around but Saguaro Cactus standing guard over huge tumble weeds and giant jack rabbits running the range. We would take our students out to San Pedro Island to dive with the seals and huge hammerhead sharks that mate on the surrounding sea mounts. One day we swam through a school of thousands of hammerhead sharks. You could reach out and ride their dorsal fins. After working in a dive shop for six months I realized that I needed to take my diving career to the ultimate level and I joined the U.S. Navy in August, 1982.
During boot camp I took the UDT/ Seal/Diver screening test. I was the only one to pass that night out of 320 other men. I then graduated number one out of a graduating class of 975 enlisted men. I entered Gunnersmate school to learn about small arms (machine guns and ship missile systems and was given my choice of orders to attend Second Class Divers school in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I got on a plane and left for the Hawaiian Islands. My class consisted of 33 other men. We only graduated 6 men. For 4 and 1/2 months my instructors ( a mix of Vietnam Seal team members and Marine Recon teams) ran us into the ground daily. Our class became famous as one of the toughest classes to ever graduate. I was then handed secret orders to report to the USS Conserver, a rescue salvage boat used in the atomic bomb tests of the 1950’s. The Conserver was stationed off the coast of Siberia, Russia looking for flight KAL 007 shot down by the Soviet Union during the Reagan era in 1983. I was part of a 12 man lead diving unit looking for the black box of the plane for over two months in freezing temperatures. I spent two years on the Conserver doing all sorts of diving work. In 1986, I was trained for six months in Panama City, Florida in Mixed Gas diving and Underwater Demolition. I was then sent to Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. We were the only team in the world with portable mixed gas systems for deep, deep ocean diving. We responded to all downed aircraft and lost explosives anywhere in the world. Most of the jobs were highly classified and I am not allowed to discuss them. My last tour was as a diving supervisor at Groton Conn. Submarine base. I was part of a Submarine Rescue team for the last part of my Navy career. My main job was senior submarine salvage inspector. No Submarine could leave the yards with out my approval. I had to make sure if the Submarine sank, we could rescue the crew, crypto, or weapons could be removed or destroyed. If you ever see a movie call “The Abyss”. That was my job. . . .
Moments I remember most are diving on the USS Arizona and all throughout Pearl Harbor. We did the underwater survey of all the wrecks sunk in the December 7th, 1941 attack. I made several underwater movies for the Department of Defense and located a Japanese torpedo used in the attack on Peal Harbor. It is now in the museum at Pearl Harbor. The Dept. of the Interior hired us to survey the sunken Japanese wrecks throughout the Caroline Islands and Palau. We were diving with free swimming diving rigs that scrubbed our own oxygen and did not blow out bubbles. Our dives were consistently in the 400 feet depth range. I was standing on the bridge of Japanese destroyers and cargo ships full of Zeros (aircraft) that had not been seen since they were sunk in 1944 in 410 feet of water on the edge of a submarine canyon. You never forget that feeling being down that deep. It’s a very serene, beautiful feeling and a sad feeling at the human loss of war. We were there to study the cargo and map out each vessels location. We them moved toBikini Atoll and dove the atomic bomb wrecks used in the tests. . . . .
I was injured in a car accident and received a medical discharge and retirement after 8 years. I could not dive anymore because my injuries created numbness in my legs. This will mask symptoms of DCS type II. Which is Decompression sickness type II. In short, “the Bends”. But a serious hit which affects the central nervous system. Not something to play around with.
Diving is one of the greatest ways to view mother nature at it’s purest form. You venture into a world of pure magical energy. Into a world where you do not belong, yet you feel you always belonged there. I recommend you all give it a try and open up your world a little bit more. And do me one favor. Support all environmental protection of the world’s oceans. Without them we will not survive.
(END)
Haiku di Moussia Fantoli – Roma
1)
sotto la neve
giardino e giardiniere
in nuova attesa
under the snow
garden and gardener
in a new wait
2)
Villa Adriana
sopra le antiche pietre
passi di brina
Adrian's Villa
on the ancient stones
steps of hoarfrost
3)
sul ramo nudo
un corvo silenzioso
ascolta il vento
on the naked branch
a silent crow
listening to the wind
4)
voci perdute
ritornano nel vento
che mi accarezza
lost voices
come back in the wind
caressing me
5)
il fiume scorre -
il tuo velo da sposa
tra le mie dita
the river flows -
your bridal veil
among my fingers
6)
sotto la neve
cimitero di guerra
non più nemici
under the snow
war cemetery
no more enemies
7)
notte di gelo
la luce d'una stella
scalda la neve
chilly night
the light of a star
keeps the snow warm
8)
sopra la siepe
le bacche rosse come
quando partisti
on the fence
red berries
as when you left
9)
brucio lettere
il cuore è sufficiente
per conservarle
burning letters
my heart is enough
to preserve them
10)
fossa scavata
a colpi di piccone
causa il gelo
sulla piccola bara
una coperta rossa
grave dug
with strokes of pick
owing to the ice
on the little coffin
a red blanket
Four Works By John W. Sexton
(i) Few Realise
(ii) Taints Forever
(iii) No Small Thing
(iv) Only the Best
Few Realise
(a sequence of scifaiku)
in the vacancy alleged
to be sky …
a moment named crows
an elephant in every room …
the graphene city
folds in its case
the solid starlight
of moth’s smear … I shut myself
into the wardrobe
in her cloak
of starlings … lime burns a swathe
behind her
spirits of canaries
flutter in the mine …
his lungs inhale souls
Mineday morning
they take a step
into smithereens
few realise the Heavens
in cancer …. Fermi
enters the atom
Taints Forever
(a sequence of scifaiku)
wary Mary Macaroni
we made whistles
from her bones
my moonshadow
its heart a beat
more than mine
internalized tunnel math
the mindfleet goes just
anywhere
forty days an intense
itch ... then his skin left
as light
the Belsen bomb
its radioactive shame
taints forever
Samson's cuttings
Delilah crochets a pair
of durable socks
all the yellow
bath time ducks that ever were
... Moby Duck berths
asunder down the meadow
the skeleton dog
comes unfetched
his shadow fills the field
portrait of the artist
as a long man
with his mongoose familiar
together they opened
the door of scales
No Small Thing
(a sequence of scifaiku)
how far to the stars
till they become suns?
darkness of space our waiting
aeons since leaving Mars...
their vacuum-packed oceans
ready for landfall
infinite lint times-tables..
in space
dust is no small thing
playing fossil records ...
ectoplasmic gramo-
phonic time-machine
fissionable ...
the shortened name for God
disguised as a star
syringe full of nations..
methanogenic selkies
of Saturn VI
mothlings of pure
fluorescence ... chemical
planet an ultimate trip
Resurgent Mars
dustmites harvesting
the Collected Rice Burroughs
tuning in to our TV noise –
jelloid minds
of expired starlight
Only the Best
(a sequence of scifaiku)
a knock strikes hidnight ...
shadowlanches detach
from the mountains
“the moon’s
a ball of string”
was grandpa’s thing
ripple outdoes the stone …
Paradox Lords
forever on their way
he discerns in the beach
a sand abacus …. the tide
hisses in
moon-yolk quivers …
the empress pengwitches
climb the aurora staircase
the prisoner
in the diamond cell …
only the best for you
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