A personal flamenco journey 7

          

            3. Leaving Portland

 

 

 

wenn einer fortgeht , muss er den Hu

 

mit den Muscheln, die er sommer u''ber

 

gesammelt hat , ins Meer werfen

 

und fahren mit wehendem Haar,

 

.............

 

............

 

Herz, Anker ud Kreuz,

 

und fahren mit wehenden Haar

 

Dann wird er wiederkommen.

 

Wann?

 

Fag nicht

 

 

 

when you leave,

 

you must throw your hat

 

full of shells collected in Summer

 

into the sea,

 

and leave

 

flapping your hairs in the wind.

 

........

 

then

 

is it when?

 

you will to come back ,

 

don't ask about it.  

 

 

 

 One or 2 days before I left Portland the lines of a poem flashed across my mind lingering on. The lines were a part of the poem titled 'Lieder von einer Insel' of  Bachmann. a German poet. It was in the evening after sunset . Then I was sensing Autumn creeping closer to me sitting slantly on the red-bricked stairs of the Pioneer Square ,empty and calm. Nobody except me was there. Disappeared youths puffing up with their naked upper bodies. Out of sight were children jumping with pigeons and their mother, too.

 

 

 

What invoked the lines kept somewhere in me?  Perhaps or not, the circle-shaped square, empty and calm, resembling at a glance an amphitheatre in the old city state of Greece might be the cause of it. Just prior to it was my heart  beating quick at the idea of the Aire performance scheduled held the day after tomorrow. Sitting alone there I was picturing in my head myself on the stage as a special guest to introduce Morning Dews .What is more, my mind even grew restless at the very message from Lau which I had read just before: <Hi, Gohk! We will have a rehearsal on Friday, September 14 in the afternoon so that you can meet the singer and work with her on Morning Dews. Abrazos! Lau>

 

 

 

 At the Pioneer Square in spite if myself I felt heart-rended to see the void square! Strangely enough, for a moment the sight of the scenery began to drive me to get more and more conscious of the situation in advance where in a few days I  would be. As you know, in a couple of days or so , with the curtain down of the Aire performance, I would have to leave Portland. It was at the silent moment that the lines of the poem occurred to me. But I didnt know why.  The very deep emptiness ,it was only inferred, awoke me to a sense of  what I ought to be? Possibly what the unusual moment made me aware of the vanity of a situation which  I , intoxicated, was caught in . 

 

 

 

 Wake up and return to what you are..

 

What you believe now you are is not you in real,

 

but an illusion. It's just a shadow of what you wish to be. 

 

 

You, Gohk!

 

'You are not a duke well known to the world,

 

nor a hero of sturdy build .'

 

 

Haven't you heard of broad-shouldered American Indian youths,

 

with two eyes stable in horizontal balance,

 

and with strong skin hardened by the atmosphere

 

above the river running through the prairie? 

 

 

 

You are not such a brave warrior.

 

You are just a nameless traveller

 

pursuing a dream to write small poetic proses

 

which at most you could be good at. And nothing more.

 

Then, how would such a  humble man have a desire

 

heart to heart to come still closer to a bailaora,

 

one of the most beloved in Portland! 

 

 

 

Free yourself from such a daydream.

 

Throw it into the Willamette

 

with the pebbles of reminiscence in summer

 

in the pocket of the mind!

 

 

 

 Leaving Portland, I was thinking of the poem of Bachmann several times. And I got it lingering on in the mouth. So did I at the moment when I was boarding a Greyhound bound for Atlanta 5 or 6 days distant by bus, And at the moment of not only passing through the black Steel Bridge across the Willamette river, but also  running along the straight line of the road with the city left behind , I even recited two lines of the poem.

 

 

 

'Take off and throw away into the river

 

your hat full of shells collected in summer,

 

and leave fluttering your hairs'.

 

  

 

With Spocane of Washinton behind, when we are running  out of the State, forests and river began to get less and more obscure in the distance to just  a couple of small clods of painting pigment. When we were running into an expanse of Savannah plain ,with great rocks and sand field here and there in it, it began to get dark. Soon the view out through the window of the running bus were beginning to be buried under the black darkness. And together with it the sweet blackberries at the opposite bank of the Willamette, the bright smiles of Lau , and the guitar rhythm of Aire performance were running one by one much farther away into the darkness.

 

 

 

 Greyhound stopped for a short time in the city of Billing , North Dacoda and began to gain in speed  under the cover of deeper darkness. It was silent in the bus. Half or so of the seats was left vacant and  passengers seemed to keep their mouths shut. Not a sound in the exception of the soft engine noise the running bus was making. I felt rather comfortable at the engine sound as if listening to Bach's unaccompanied Cello sonata. The sound was never  noisy to me. It even called back to my mind the intoxicating things of the past summer in Portland.

 

 

 

  In the darkness did come in and out of sight  the dim images of  the downtown of Portland, which I visited twice one in 1999 and the other in 2001 ,but in either case left it saying nothing at the end of the summer. The city was rich in the sunlight with the  deep blue sky high above, but the shadow of it  was thick and dark. Bathtubes in the rooms of Days Inn hotel were ivory-white in contrast to the gloomy eyes of  Mexican female part-time employees working for the hotel with no visa , The applauses of spectators at  the Aire concert were bright with big laughters compared with  the dark and unstable faces of the alcoholic homeless standing in a line at a charity party held in Washington Park. In a sense, the city seemed to be impressive in that it showed a sharp contrast of light and the shadow in the center of the downtown.

 

 

 

 On reflection, when I was approaching the Portland aboard Greyhound it was the exotic top of Amtrek station reminding a bell tower of  the traditional Islamic church that caught my eyes through the bus window at the first time. Then the sky above was brilliant with no indications of cloud. Conversely inside of Joyce hostel was dimly-lighted the timeworn corridor and gloomy was the ｅxpressionless of the counter clerk. And the Willamette enjoyed the bright sunlights pouring down on the surface of the river in contrast to the dark image of the steel-built Hawthorn bridge over it.

 

 

 

 Now I throw my eyes out on the lights of a remote city leaning my head against the window. The lines of Bachmann comes again lingering on in my mouth shut : you have to throw your hat  full of the shells you collected throughout the summer . What on earth is the city of Portland, which I happened to spend summer twice? No more for it. Next time will the place be the Time Square of New York which is familiar to me, or the Mediterranean sea side ? No. the Vical lake in Siberia will be possibly the next point!

 

 

 

But how can I forget  the pebbles of reminsinces collected in Portland: "you are inspiring!", the fascinating words Lau whispered to me,  the remote, bitter cry of the cante, the impressive contrast of the brightness and the dark grey of the downtown, the sea-blue eyes of a homeless youth playing an impromptu melody by his guitar ? 

 

 

 

  I love words more than anything else. I am apt so easily to lose myself to certain passages. For example, such are these:

 

' the handkerchief of nostalgia in eternity  flupping toward the deep blue sea',

 

' a walking shadow muttering to himself words with no verbal meaning'.

 

'the first grey of dawn'.

 

'the beauty of impermanence',

 

'autumn sunlights descending diagonally between the boughs of trees by the forest path.'

 

 

 

And I will never forget  the right moment when a simple line went home to my heart:  'an art is ardent confession.' It was Rouault's, a French painter. The line of his came to be a surprisingly profound guide to me. Because it hit me at the moment I got stuck in a series of questions: 'Could I write a poetic prose?, ' how can I get a sort of  writing I would be satisfied with?', 'what style of writing could  I  be good at?' It was really fortunate for me to meet this guide. Probably without the encounter with the simple and pure words, I couldn't have a mind to do write this!'

 

 

 

 Before making my second trip to Portland, last early spring , I got a advice of Rilke, a German poet: 'in order to get a line of poem, you should meet many people, cities and many books. More than anything else, you could recall to your mind the nights of twinkling stars you met on the road.  And Furthermore, you will have to do writing at the end of everything'. Until now I do  love the poet and a line of a poetic ｅxpression which I read somewhere in a book in Korean of his: ' the blue flame of the soul'. 

 

To me the writing is in a sense like the work of sculpture. Sculptors cutting the raw material of marble have a burning desire to have their dreams of images in their minds visualized into a form of art . For this they would often have to go on a long trip to an exotic land and after returning home with the raw mass on their backs keep themselves isolated in their caves, solitary and bitter, to be absorbed in wrestling with it in the poetic sense of touch.

 

 

 

That's it. To me, as to a sculptor. It is essential for me to go on journey to get the raw material of contemplations for the work of writing. No work of writing without the raw stone of it for it. For me to be on the road is in a sense to grub up the raw material buried somewhere in  light  and shadow on the  road.

 

 

 

On the unfamiliar road of prairies of North Dacoda or Minesota my eyes are again turned to the night view outside. The sky above the horizon side is coming down this way to me. Greyhound is dashing more deeply into the darkness. My eyes averted a little upward, I see the numerous stars, listening to them whisper secretly between them.

 

 

 

Wow! beautiful! All of a sudden I am reminded of 'a night with stars twinkling', the painting of Van gogh. In spite of myself, the painting gives me a feeling of my soul souring into the cluster of the stars there twinkling ,as if they were whispering to me that at the end of  this journey with stars no more in sight, be ready to greet the first grey dawn of writing coming neare