Restored to Sanity

Escape from the Slavery of Migrant Work: A Close Reading of Diana Garcia’s poem “When living was a labor camp called Montgomery”

2010-08-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

The voice of poet Diana Garcia in the title piece of her only collection of poems by the same name “When living was a labor camp called Montgomery” can be heard as that of a truth-telling tour guide of the past. Instead of focusing the reader’s attention on the scenic attractions of place or presenting glossy historical vignettes, she takes us on a journey of suffering, “hidden behind the orchards.” The momentary fantasies, limited choices and eventual escape from “living…(at)…a labor camp” have been witnessed and told back to the relative who was able to take flight from her greatest fear, that she “could die in the camp.”

In the beginning stanza we are shown the first scene and action of what appears to be a pleasant reminiscence. “…Sort(ing) dried figs” certainly sounds like light work and the protagonist is doing this work together with her family. But if “economic rights are the essence of human rights” and “constantly moving is a disruptive process that creates isolation and fear and makes one vulnerable” then the segregation that poverty and illiteracy create is exposed. Migrant farm families were forced into the necessity of traveling “From Santa Maria, to Gilroy, Brawley to Stockton…”in order to survive. The reader is being handed clues that a problem is being presented here, cued in to understand that the writer is not speaking about abundant work opportunities for migrant farm workers.

In the next stanza the title and the information in the first line, has not quite sunk in, and my attention is distracted by the glamour of Hollywood evoked in the name of Dolores del Rio. Yet something is wrong, the mention of stain in the second stanza coming “…off on your fingers…” hints that a deception is being perpetrated as the narrator begins to build the case details for work-related racial oppression. To the main character her own identity as a migrant farm worker is not so desirable, and pretending to be a famous actress, albeit still Mexican, begins to reveal the way a young girl coped with the harsh reality of “the San Joaquin heat and fruit flies.” Forgetting is the tide that allows her to make it to the other side along with movie plot fantasies; brief sweeteners that offer glimpses of other worlds, however make-believe.

Then comes the moment in the poem where the motive of the poet is told, she plaintively states“…to tell the truth…” in the first line of the sixth stanza. An incredible and credible shift occurs here. The story is lifted out of the manufactured environment of the local cinema’s air-conditioned seduction, where everyone has bought a welcome ticket for a bit of oblivion. Romanticizing the life of this labor-camp living fieldworker is done. The “packing shed” is ground zero, a screeching halt that announces the end of the fairy tale the narrator was spinning, in which our heroine was “tall and thin and everything looked good on…(her). Bacall’s whistle is a famous anthem for making the escape and she hears it. The calculating or “eye(ing) your brothers’ friends,” was grasped at as the solution to the problem of living invisible on slave wages. The unnamed woman views “those (men)who wanted out of the fields” as her means for a way out.

This was the beginning of a personal uprising, a movement towards some type of change for what she could only imagine as a better future. An interesting irony is noted in the first line of stanza seven, “of the fields. You picked one…,” she has gained some agency here, choice-making is a certain kind of power, but a wry irony is contained in the word “picked,”; she is the one doing the picking for her own profit, instead of for the one who would normally profit from the picking “of the fields,” the orchard owner. In the next line, “your mother’s choice” is not just about her selection of a husband but is clearly what she is running from in a much larger sense, a life under the blistering sun, suffering the rootlessness of migrant seasonal work.

The faintly accusatory tone that the poet’s voice takes on in stanzas six through eight switches with the first line of nine to reveal what might have been a cover for the narrator’s feelings all along. “You visit the camp each summer reunion.” The poet has stopped tearing the protagonist down, her voice is kinder. She, the one who left, has behaved admirably, because she has not abandoned them completely. She can bear to come back. By returning she gathers the strength she most likely needs that is never spoken of. She is the one who got out, the one who most likely bears “survivor guilt”; escapees from any traumatic situation will carry this with them when they manage to free themselves from difficult conditions and have to leave others, especially family members, behind. She has achieved the impossible and jealous sisters dare not look freedom directly in the face, “snatch(ing) peeks at your husband….(whose)teeth still look good.” Is the dream kiss from the cousin a sign she is still a beloved part of the family after all?

But the reality of what the sister has escaped is placed front and center in the last two stanzas. The poet’s method of working is to engage us through the senses and ground the telling in the body. We are assaulted with the offences that are commonplace for those living in the camps. It is hard to even imagine what the horrible combination of “rotting figs, (and) too full-outhouses” smells like, never mind having to live with it day in and day out, and so Garcia declares that “the nose closes off.”

In the beginning of the poem we are in front of the fig trees, being told the story from a distance, the names of towns, the wide expanses of farm fields. Now at the end of the poem we are behind the screen of fig trees, and the flavor of the camps has no starlet glamour about it, the illusion that everything might be o.k. has been completely stripped away. The picture of the red cabins “hidden behind the orchards” is fully developed here. Labor camp living is no postcard holiday as the lens of the poet’s eye zooms in to divulge the details of this “voluntary” internment. Creature comforts such as “personal space” we take for granted are not even a possibility here, where the room for living in tiny crammed cabins is devoted entirely to sleeping and cooking.

The last stanza brings it as close to home as it’s possible to get, the desire to preserve life and health while avoiding the ever-present fear of death. Yet hope is flagged in a divided and very dark way in the last line, it speaks to both the havoc present at the camp, exactly what the sister has escaped from, that she “could die in the camp.” The part the woman had wanted to escape most, the devastation the work wreaks on the body that could lead to an early death, “arms thickened long ago,… peasant ankles” has been circumvented but smell is referenced again.

This time as a mark of connection, that to be known deeply is for another to be intimate with the way you smell. The last line is a hammer blow that’s force is felt upon letting its meaning unfold. By contemplating what it means to not be smelled, that the stench of where you live has drowned out the precious qualities of your body’s own familiar smells,the reader can relate to this devastating loss, what we all need as creatures. We all relate on some base primal level with our lover, family, friends, and even neighbors in this way. The funny slang expression “Smell you later!” comes to mind. The ability to know one another has been squashed under the oppressive weight of these intractable conditions; the breakdown of defenses that occurs when living is forced to happen in a labor camp tinged with the deathly scent of neglect.

what are your top three core values?

2010-04-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

i'm looking at how i spend my time today. is it quality time?

i am doing things i love, and i'm
working to realize a long held dream of finishing
my degree. it took me ten years to complete
an associates degree in art. i used to be ashamed of that
fact until i recognized how much perserverance it
shows!
learning is in my top three core values,
and the other two that come to mind are love and play.
i see how those other two are sometimes met through being
dedicated to learning, but also are sometimes
swallowed up by the narrow focus on one thing.
so a new very core value that almost seems impossible
to achieve arises,
BALANCE.
may you find it today,
blessings,
gineen

meditation on clutter

2010-04-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

todays question:
how does what i have serve my life?
these possessions?
papers?
i think it's about lots of protection...
what do you think?

i'm thinking about things that are difficult to deal with,
not things that are constantly in use, like dishes or towels,
no questions there.
do you have too many ___________?
why?
what function is it serving in its annoying or difficult form?

what would it feel like to have a different space?
without the things that are difficult?
by removing them would you remove the problem?
where is the problem really, inside or out?

Come hear me read at the Naugatuck River Review's Release Party

2010-01-17T19:03:00.000-08:00

A reading and release party for
Naugatuck River Review's Winter 2010 Contest Issue
will be held on Saturday, February 27, 2010
from 2-4pm
at Forbes Library Community Room,
20 West St. Northampton, MA.
Come celebrate narrative poetry
this afternoon, as myself and other Valley poets
read new poems accepted for this contest issue.

www.poetrynewscalendar.com for more info and
other great Valley poetry events.

Birthday Poem

2010-01-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

a poem written on the occasion of my birthday 1/14/2010...

14,965 days here

thinking about dying on my birthday
I sit on the cushion
my body is a comfort soaked-sponge
of the winter's still.
I see in the purple electric of lowered lids
a line hanging down,
opposite of the tail of a new made
white mohair prayer shawl
whose tail I wove in to the whole today.

this thread hangs down
from the infinite unknown
take it in hand:
I didn't come down into this world,
falling into a midwife's hands
from my mother’s body,
she was supine, drugged for pain relief

I want to be upright
when my hair is white
and my light is done
sitting spine awake for the final
upward downward flight.

I used to imagine another exit
equally as pleasurable of a scene-
my old body in a serene smile
laying down in my garden
sinking slowly into soil.
Ether or Earth;
I am reabsorbed by original Mother,
offering release, solace
from her cradle of vast peace

One from 30 Poems in 30 Days

2009-12-28T06:55:00.001-08:00

11.20.09 this morning I woke up exasperated that I was still judging myself and others incessantly…I had only been awake an hour!

Thankfully my thoughts turned to a more inspired perspective and this came out of the pen…Buddha head with a topknot!

Angry Buddha weepy Buddha

Silly Buddha bumbling Buddha

Tipsy Buddha exhausted Buddha

Hard Buddha bright Buddha

Loving Buddha pissy Buddha

Skinny Buddha tiny Buddha

Hippy Buddha nature Buddha

Fast Buddha road-raging Buddha

Gardening Buddha wired Buddha

Observant Buddha judgmental Buddha

Cooking Buddha bouncing Buddha

Swimming Buddha still Buddha

Sparkling Buddha cranky Buddha

Eloquent Buddha elegant Buddha

Instructive Buddha dirty Buddha

Melancholy Buddha sweet Buddha

Triggered Buddha lonely Buddha

Contented Buddha honest Buddha

Powerful Buddha grieving Buddha

Speechless Buddha strident Buddha

Charming Buddha blue Buddha

Cold Buddha sexy Buddha

Magnanimous Buddha lazy Buddha

Winsome Buddha funny Buddha

Wholesome Buddha slapstick Buddha

Farming Buddha dancing Buddha

Wealthy Buddha communal Buddha

Clumsy Buddha learning Buddha

Hungry Buddha tall Buddha

Piquant Buddha creative Buddha

Simple Buddha empathic Buddha

Orange Buddha slow Buddha

Crone Buddha Baby Buddha

One Buddha

A L L B U D D H A!

2009-08-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

www.projectonstudentdebt.org

2009-08-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

Stopping the Burden of Student Loans

2009-08-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

this is a must read website for anyone considering
going to school and doing it debt free.

many blessings,
and may you spend only what you already have
and live within your means!

Preview: Vase with Eyes

2009-07-28T18:52:00.001-07:00

here's a preview of my newest painting.

Art Portfolio Website-new update coming soon...

2009-07-28T18:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.gineen.com is my online art portfolio
and also lists art and spirituality workshops I facilitate in western Massachusetts.
I will be posting a whole new section featuring my paintings, old and new, from the past 15 years.
Please stop by, have a look, and feel free to drop me an email with feedback on what you saw.

Also stay tuned for announcements about local poetry readings I participate in.
The next will be at Forbes Library, an Open Mic Community Poetry Event in Northmapton, Ma on Wednesday August 5th, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.

I am currently co-facilitating a writing group every Wednesday from 2:00-3:30 pm at Windhorse Associates, 211 North St. Northampton, Ma. This group is co-sponsored by the Recovery Learning Community, Windhorse Associates and The Freedom Center.
If you are interested in attending please call the RLC in Holyoke.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY and then some...

2008-11-30T15:41:00.000-08:00

I was tempted to edit the blog on the first Way of the Dream class, because now my perspective has changed so much. i have an immense feeling of respect and gratitude that Fraser Boa made the film we are watching. I still don't agree with the stance Dr. Von Franz takes in the first section but I accept it as in and of a certain context, the expert to the analysand. Her experience and knowledge are deeply effecting my understanding and I have a serious respect for the power of complexes and drives in the psyche.

Last night I went to see Happy-Go-Lucky and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that Mike Leigh was the director, having walked into it without knowing a thing about it. What a touching and very worthwhile film, I found myself mulling over the storyline and the compassion this woman displays as she trips and giggles through her life, seemingly. i was annoyed at the beginning and had a really hard time following the thick and quick British accents, noticing that i was listening as hard as i could but still couldn't make out what as being said. a little patience payed off as i got used to the style of speaking. such a humanistic story. so sweet, my only criticism would have been why the need to have her wear such trampy outfits, it seemed such a mismatch, though i appreciated their small element of visual suprise, and certainly the clothes did fit a very important part of her personality, the playfulness of the ensembles felt like an expression of her own inner child. the needless? display of her body in one scene, which i feel in retrospect just underlined her character development, key word being : vulnerability. the display of trust that this character continually bore out for others was such a lovely and refreshing draught.
what a potrait, how idealized i wonder some might think- even her nickname is a spinoff on another loving caregiver exrtaordinaire...

Pictures from Sprint : Uploads

2008-11-29T09:48:00.000-08:00

Pictures from Sprint : Uploads

a summer photo from my studio window- looking southeast

The Way of the Dream - the first meeting

2008-10-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the first viewing of Fraser Boa's The Way of The Dream, a film 20 hours long, that explores dreams and focuses particularly on the wisdom and experience of renowned Jungian, Dr. Marie Louise Von Franz. She began analysis with C.G. Jung at 18 and went on to devote her life to the study and interpretation of dreams for 30 years.

We are meeting every Wednesday, noon- 1:30 p.m. at the Recovery Learning Community, 187 High St. in Holyoke in the beautifully restored Caledonian building. We watch a half hour segment and discuss our responses as well as spend time working on our dreams through writing and sharing.

Since undertaking this group I researched methods of doing group dream work, especially hoping to find a leaderless format or something that mirrored a possibly more indigenous style of a group working on dreams together, holding the dream, with no one person being the authority/interpreter/expert.

What I was led to was a perfect answer: the work of Clara E. Hill, whose approach to dream work is from a client-centered perspective. She has constructed a framework and instructs therapists that that they should not put their own reactions on their clients dreams, for dreams are deeply personal. She states what an impossibility it is to say with surety what a dream means for someone, other than the person who it came to. The role of the therapist instead is to act purely as a guide, a skilled questioner, a deep listener, one who stands next to the seeker of self, as they venture forth, side by side. The only caveat she makes is if a person seems stuck one could say "if it were my dream I would think/feel this way about it."

I have to say, though delighted as I was about her overall method, I was disappointed that this had to be slipped in. Can we let be with another's stuckedness? That is a much harder practice. Can we listen to the silence, the place where the gold of who they are is waiting, to be discovered by them. Honoring process is very delicate and demanding and so needed in this world of rush,
'I want it now'.

Dr. Von Franz, as I somewhat expected, but was also surprised at the veracity of her inhabiting the role, plays the expert to the hilt. I hoped to find a teacher, a fellow sister of the deeps, who was inhabiting the wisdom of the feminine and a model for all to see. Instead I witnessed a woman who was a product of her time, conscious or not of the patriarchal coat, her alignment with power hierarchies was evident in her approach. She spoke of the clients who come to her with their own 'completely ridiculous kitchen table dream book" interpretations to share with her. She goes on about how dangerous an operation it is to fool with the unconscious "on your own" , that the dream world can destroy and is a mighty fearsome thing to approach only quaking or with a body-guard in the form of a professional analyst. Yes, her authorship, scholarship, experience and undoubtedly her intuition are profoundly valuable, but what about her spiritual values, her ethics, her heart and her relationship to her own body?

The stance she has lived and worked from seems to be one that has decided that people are basically unequal and non-experts on themselves. To teach people that they should fear themselves and what is deep within them, their unconscious contents, seems misdirected and a ploy for keeping control. This might be true to a huge degree, with addictions, compulsions, and various manifestations or sympthoms of mental unease, but I don't think we move forward from a place of fear as much as from one of love for ourselves and all of who we are, all parts that make up the whole. There is enough fear in the world and the potential for it to be triggered in each of us. Mental illness or unease has only so recently and with awful consequesenses, been defined as a frightening illness, allowing for heaps of stigma and abuse to be hurled at people in a spiritual process of healing. If we weren't so fearful, (AND judgemental) our culture might not have lost this early more wholistic way of viewing "the crazy".

Certainly the woman she refers to coming to her appointment with her own interpretation was seeking her own power. Was trying to understand herself as the avenue upon which to heal, not have someone else define herself for her. Isn't it a great form of madness to let others tell you who you are, if and when and before you yourself know who you are. That people with mental health issues struggle at their core with self-esteem, trusting themselves, boundary and identity issues.

On the other hand the methods of Clara E. Hill speaks to the quiet revolution that is sweeping the earth in some parts, that of NVC or Non-Violent Communication. Marshall Rosenberg, its creator/formulator, who authored Non-Violent Communication, A Language of Life (www.cnvc.org) says that whe we tell another who they are it is a form of violence, and if this brings any raised eyebrows, doubts or questions, please read the book.

And please consider coming to join in the conversation, and the work !
Wednesdays Noon-1:30 p.m. www.westernmassrlc.org for directions, calendar & other offerings

Grapes of Beckoning

2008-10-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

the birds eat tiny wild grapes from the vine
at my windows
small and dark

they're rushing their rushing in
softly flapping wings
flashing movement volleying light
back and forth in the air their movements

like souls come to feed
their motion caresses me
the effervesence of the moment
is recieved by the eye of my soul

its mouth drinks in
the perfect peacefulness of this needed effort
showing me what its like to feel free
free in the flapping free in the beaks bent forward quickly grasping
what the vine holds

flapping
unison of group flight

the shift
all at once
to a resting roof

DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL YOU HAVE ALREADY SEEN MCCABE & MRS. MILLER

2008-10-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

LAST NIGHT i went to see McCabe and Mrs. Miller at the Robert Altman film fest in Northampton in our beautiful Academy of Music. I'm sure I've seen all Altman's films, but its been a long time and always rewarding to see a tv-only viewed movie on the big screen.

the volume was way too loud and when i went up to ask if it could be fixed i didn't need to ask, the popcorn guy said "volume too loud? he just went up to fix it"
it didn't really help too much and i adjusted to catching as much as i could of the dialogue, until a psychedelic camera trip occurred whereby the film went completely out of focus, amazingly, in the most pivotal scene of the whole film. after that the sound was 'hearable'

if you read this blog regularly you will find i make up words as is my wont. as is for everyone.

this film was incredibly poignant and i left feeling i witnessed a master with an invisible hand at work. the choppily haircutted dutch boy reveals his coldheartedness by killing the cowboy of love, who i didn't know how to take in his first two scenes, a startingly young Keith Carradine, when in the third scene, he wins approval by making all the ladies of the house happy. we like him, he's a lover, like Mccabe, who only speaks gruff, but never does a wit of violence to anyone, "I got poetry in me, I do..."

And Mrs.Miller the caustic-talking opium smoker who won john mccabe's heart. she smokes to hide from her feelings of laying with men she doesn't love- she charges the highest price of all the hens in the house, 5 x's the regulars, she does it to survive. she knows her worth in a twisted way, smart as a whip, but clearly shows a woman in a man's world, alone, with little chance to get ahead without backing or partnership (yet she does). would she rather be a whore than a wife? for her she says "it's more honest, and at least you get paid."

mccabe knows he loves her but doesn't come straight out and tell her, and she hides her loving smile , and maybe her glee at controlling him by making him pay, behind her quilt.
the perfect accompaniment to the snow cold silence of the town is leonard cohen's songs.
they are soothing, elgaic, trobadourean swirls, weaving a net around our view of these landscapes. the emotionality of the music offers volumes of feeling tone for what we are really looking at, the story we are being told. the mining that's the whole point of the town springing up is never shown, the hard work here are the travails of love, panning for elusive comfort in the midst of addiction and alcoholism. trying to get needs met in the wild and valuing of both the masculine and the feminine for both of their capacities to hold the dual aspects: tender vulnerability and arrogant, raucous power. the main characters repeatedly display this through word and action; mccabe stands out from the other men for his delicacy- he uses words to keep others at bay; his seeming superiority protects a somewhat innocent heart that wants to love.
mrs. miler is a dainty figure "why you're just tiny like me" she says to shelley duvall's character and we are reminded that the picture of her as a larger-than-life 'Tough Madam' belies her actual petiteness.

gentelity of sorts in the wilderness.

does tragedy have to befall them?
or was it written on their record of life ahead of their effort?
that she knew he was too headstrong to be saved, to listen and hear the demands she made to get out of town as a completely torn open love letter? she begs and he, because of his need to prove his masculinity, loses his chance at continuing his life with her.

was it a no-win situation? he humiliates himself when he tries to make a deal with his assassin.
she walks away, soon after, to sink into the oblivion of opium, a response to the pain deeply buried of not being able to save him and to maybe not being able to make herself emotionally available to him. his end is not without its satisfactions; he kills all three of his pursuers; the church is saved. while all the townsfolk are putting out and then celebrating the end of the fire,
he is killing his demons and gut-shot, surrendering to the cold that covers him. snow like sifted sugar frosting falling on him like the harlot's birthday cake he didn't show up to partake in.
for this viewer his loss is sharp, his humanity, once revealed, leaves a bitter tang of longing for him to pull yet another trick and live.