I had ten pages in the previous Stimulus Space Colony, titled A House in the Colony. Morning Star, here, was in print but not online from O/W Engaged 11, II, my last to show in the many sided exhibitions there. I did not remember Morning was booked at this Stimulus until now. Morning Star concerns the commune near Taos, the people there, the soil, the etheric relation in the Kiva, subsequent memories and corrections laid bare, all of which derive from Bob Northcott whose obit is now entered into public view. https://insightstatutes.blogspot.com/2024/07/bob-northcott.html
MORNING STAR
Words by Ae Reiff
The trip to the Morning Star shows the transit between the 3 and the 4. I have a pencil map
for the up and down roads to Morning Star. It had rained. We end up the next commune over, a Chicano
redoubt, New Buffalo, pull up about dark, mufflers blazing. Those inside hear the car and think it’s Andres, a friend, which is what they called me in Central America before, so I call out, Esta, and go in to get directions.
A buxom of the jefe welcomes us until he comes out and threatens. Looks like it will end bad until Cleopatra comes and shows again the pique and steel she’s made. She has done this since, fierce, she interrupts the malcontents with ferocity. We get away. Back down, up another mud hill is Morning Star. Nobody around, we camp in the dark, ignored.
Drizzling. The commune sheriff patrols by night. Next day, giving homage to him, says he heard me and
Cleo noodling and talking to sleep. It reminds him of himself and his mate, daughter of the great pitch-
hitter, Dusty Rhodes, who won the 1954 World series. Next day, Sunday, I propose we go get some drink,
didn’t quite know he was an alkie then, says he knows a place open at 9 AM, wants to drive the Mustang. So he and I take off over hill roads deep in mud and I buy bottles to bring back. This is a way to make friends if done with no intent. But imprudent. Next day we go with his Dusty along the river to breakfast with friends who make hand tortillas and pan fry in the rain. Dusty says am I OK to drive the mud?
I am OK to drive mud, rock, river sand, always saving a piece of chicken wire. I am still getting indulgence for who I will become.
We got to Arroyo Hondo from Eugene that late August, at Christmas send them a pkg of spirits. For
some reason I open one bottle, an Irish whisky and then wrap it up good, like a drink offering maybe, packed up snug in a box so it won’t break. Later a would-be who was there, an embezzler, said that when the sheriff said he was a harm to the community, but that rascal only gave presents to himself. They let him stay out of deference to good will. This guy provided a down payment for our house when he was caught. A hundred sins and a thousand mark the sins of our youth. Remember them not according to your mercy.
But there are more. After a feast that night we are invited and descend in the kiva to smoke deep in the earth. It is intense below, like a passage tomb. They tell stories of the Streptococcus running free in the soil from a cavalry massacre of women and children that occurred there. It poisoned the soil as a curse. Very OT, that behavior curses the land. This undocumented response and outgrowth of reprisals against the Taos Revolt and especially the Arroyo Hondo Massacre has no record in historical writ. Massacres against the myth of dominance don’t count. I see and hear the ghost shapes in the kiva like at any spit back karma group where they confess the damage done. Spit backs accost in alleys and on trains. To recognize the wrong done another is like the wrong done to God, so use the word with respect, the one Lord must be followed and proclaimed. To mistreat another imperils.
I see them replay.
Two weeks as a boy at scout camp the youngest, 11, swimming, canoeing, hiking, games good beyond years, this got a mascot status for this innocent among the elite campers who ranged up to 18. My question for knowledge is, how does it stop? When a group of bikers and their women came one weekend, taken along, in the jousting one weak boy was the victim I was baited to fight. The beginning of an immense journey downstream on my back, simmered and steamed, boiled and fried, pushed down, bubbled up, innocence declining. I took him down with a natural, left, left, left, headlock flip, to much approval. Injustice never dies, it has a pay check. Four years later at midnight I am in a friend’s car to get paid. We pull into the diner where the biggest of the town stands. Hey I hear you lookin’ for me. He comes up to the car. The window is down. I say to friend, get outta here. But providence is calling on karma. The car begins to move as the mallet fist hits the side of my head. Kaboom! the memory the boy payback, a deal between Lion Gardiner and Yovawan, Sachem of the Pommanocc, an expectation of the Massachusett pummunnum, she gives away the paumpanummunum, offers it habitually by custom.” Woe to them who harm the weak.
The kiva smokes. Pass to Padre Island, Galveston, driving an old MGB roadster. Two six volt batteries
hooked up in series rot, four cables not two, under the back seat. Take out the seat, there they are. Batteries
weak had to be caught in gear the same way the starter stuck. Put in 4th and rocked back and forth the
teeth released. We stopped just over a bridge. Tall grasses, sea trusses, sand, wood. It wouldn’t start. I have
her to pop the clutch, another innocent to count the cost. Doesn’t seem fair, that two are one. Push the car,
no prob, I’m strong. She pops the clutch. Sputter and die. Have a little query, do again harder, pop and die.
Take a break. Maybe change from first. Give it gas! Push hard. Pops and dies. I curse God, really a curse
at her. Amazed I would do that. The fourth time it works. We drive off in the air around my head. Driving
N Lamar, Austin, Saturday, same car, same companion, six weeks later, stopped at a light, truck behind me
can’t find the brakes. They’re on the floor! We’re stopped. Hits the MGB from behind, 30 mph. Kaboom!
Big fist in neck and shoulders. She gets it too, but not so hard. A big balsam fir truck goes by, heading the
other way, on its side emblazoned: O Lord our Lord how excellent is your name in all the earth. To impress, He teaches the humble his ways.
We are still down there in the dugout, just a fire for light in the kiva, wisps in the air no menace. Why should they be, I lean among the pots, the wings of his dove are covered with silver and her feathers of shining gold which went on a long while as we were entertained, and everyone in the underground slept.
Many sense memories accompany this experience. Visiting along the river and entertained by people with
a wood stove cooking tortillas on the grill, the smells, the warmth of welcome, the shared life, for they
welcomed me to the max seeing the spirit revealed. That night up on the mountain, from an anchoress who
lives alone, come long sonorous songs directed at me who never met the singer. The community says this
happens rarely. Where is this community now? Where has all the bright company gone/ Waking the next
day in our tent I hear that otherworldly high soprano echoing again from the Sangre de Cristos up high
where they say their morning star is singing, which she does. I hear the greeting, like later, stopping in Keams Canyon, as wife and daughter shop. I lean against the hood of the car. A Hopi elder, ancient, next car over, does the same. We never speak for that half hour.
That day, back at Morning Star, directions given to Black Rock hot spring in Rio Grande gorge, I am lean
muscular and weak. In the hot spring a naked father and three buxom daughters pass smoke, hang breasts
on the water. From the hot spring I dive the cold water and swim across and back. Then appears a really
beautiful girl, yes, naked. It weakens me more. I almost see her face, like on the shores of naked Comanche Trail. Cleo is smashed at the sight. I dive in again and almost drown, though swim pretty good.
We get out of there. At break camp I find a piece of elk horn left behind by Bob Northcott who gave me the pencil map. We camped on his spot. He used to carve pipes out of elk horn, had left the days before. I still have the elk horn, waiting. He turned up later in Austin afflicted. Said to ask his name if he went off. Which worked. He stayed over that night and the house, all stone, was hit with heavy winds and blown. He showed up one more time after a winter alone in the Alaska bush, selling photos I bought. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.
I didn’t yet know why I am there. I had married Cleo and changed her name to Eden. After an invitation
from her patient, slouching in an overstuffed chair, I look away as they go prepare. Bored, I walk this
complex of six large pools like beds whose inmates are old Jewish folk, women and men. Wander back to the lounge and the doors are already closed, the lobby vacant. I go in to join the event. It is a Kamu, a “catch,” a Hausa pre-wedding for people to come and “catch” the beautiful bride. Her face is covered as she hides among her friends, a garden enclosed, hands dropped with myrrh to feed among the lilies, as friends haggle for the bride price to be paid. Veil lifted, we see her face. The King’s daughter is all glorious within; he clothes her all of wrought gold. All kinds of people, happy and sad, all shapes, sizes and statures are kneeling, some sitting.
Eden is on stage. I am just coming in as it starts, all saying bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name, when suddenly I wake in the hearing, and begin aloud, bless the Lord all sea and mountains, birds of the field, grass, trees and all that is made. Bless the Lord rivers and hills, sea and the dry ground, small and great, open & shut, living & dead, everything that has breath or had breath or will have breath and all that is within me Bless the Lord and Bless his Holy Name. Then I realize what they are doing, but not sitting or kneeling, I join the praise and wake to continue the psalm.
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