Aphonia

Striving to shake the freezing grip of dread (cold is so not my thing), in late January I took a little roadtrip trip into the northern interior of enchantment.

It’s was lots of things.

Including a visit to Millicent Roger’s Art Museum in Taos.

Where I spent some time with Quilted Survivance the Susan Hudson and Navajo Quilt Project exhibition of fabric art called quilts, but probably these cloth creations are never going to drape a bed or keep a body warm. Beyond, of course, the considerable warmth there is in giving voice, speaking one’s truth.

At one point, in the video which accompanies the exhibition, fabric artist Susan Hudson (Dine) says this about her 2024 National Endowment for the Arts award (some paraphrasing might be present in my retelling) “The government gave me an award for telling the stories of what the government did to my people” .

Ja well no fine. True dat and all that. Yes the irony, the resonance, of venturing out into, shall we call it “inclement weather”? to bear witness to a collection of quilts hung on walls was not lost on me.

With meticulous craftsmanship in a traditional (dare I say colonial) quilt style, what distinguishes this collection of storytelling quilts from any other quilt exhibition in any small town across this nation currently so in need of warmth?

The words. The story. The story within the story. The why, what and who of ledger book art as a genre.

Stars and horses there were aplenty. Hello Fire Horse!

And yet. And yet.

On this day

I couldn’t shake the shadow which falls between the thought and the action.

Couldn’t shake a notion, a memory, of circled wagons.

What arcane language is it when a rabbit guards a lock? Am I banging on or whimpering?

How long can I lose myself in surface texture, colour, shape, form, design, before I’m back with the hollow men?

At Millicent Roger’s Museum I gave shaking it all off a damn good try. That matters. Thank you Blue Eagle for restoring my heart, my blood, my hope.

Art matters.

Does it save lives or stop bullets?

The Hollow Men - T.S.Eliot

^{A penny for the Old Guy}

                              I

We are the hollow men 

We are the stuffed men 

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when 

We whisper together 

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass 

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour. 

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lost 

Violent souls, but only 

As the hollow men 

                              II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams 

In death’s dream kingdom 

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are 

Sunlight on a broken column 

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are 

In the wind’s singing 

More distant and more solemn 

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer 

In death’s dream kingdom 

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves 

No nearer—

Not that final meeting 

In the twilight kingdom

                              III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are 

Trembling with tenderness 

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

                              IV

The eyes are not here 

There are no eyes here 

In this valley of dying stars 

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places 

We grope together 

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless 

The eyes reappear 

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose 

Of death’s twilight kingdom 

The hope only 

Of empty men.

                              V

Here we go round the prickly pear 

Prickly pear prickly pear 

Here we go round the prickly pear 

At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea 

And the reality 

Between the motion 

And the act 

Falls the Shadow

                                  For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception 

And the creation

Between the emotion 

And the response 

Falls the Shadow

                                  Life is very long

Between the desire 

And the spasm 

Between the potency 

And the existence 

Between the essence 

And the descent 

Falls the Shadow

                                  For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is 

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends 

This is the way the world ends 

This is the way the world ends 

Not with a bang but a whimper.