Pre-Conception
larry goodell July-September 1968
duende open words open pictures open voice 2013
larry goodell po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043 USA larrygood@comcast.net
Pre-Conception
including some images from 1968 (some from Notebook #7) & a watercolor by lenore goodell
larry goodell
Joy had the like conception in our eyes And at that instant like a babe sprung up. Shakespeare in Timon Of Athens
Foreword Pre-Conception is a jumble of my thinking/expressing at about the time of our month long trip to Mexico, in a way a pilgrimage to see Coatlicue in the National Museum of Anthropology, during my earliest relationship with Lenore Schwartz and right before our son was even thought of or conceived . . . our marriage was December 2nd 1968 and our son Joel was born November 7th 1969. At the time I met Lenore she was doing steel sculpture at the University of New Mexico as well as doing photographs. She’d just received her Masters in Fine Arts. After we got together I cashed in a small life insurance policy ($1000) and we went on a trip to Mexico by bus dealing day by day with knowing no Spanish. We were determined, in spite of the chaos of bus travel & finding places to stay, to see some pre-Columbian art and sites . . . The friend quoted at the beginning is Jeff Sheppard who I’d met in San Francisco and who visited me in 1968. This written piece came after I’d written A New Land, a much longer piece with similar breath pauses. The cartoony Aztec Sun Disk comes from a Mexican newspaper picked up on our trip. lg
1 a friend’s letter head in a leap-frog basket my body was never found feeling it all over come into it where she gave me her hair bush I looked in poked to find my own “the Way encompasses one . . . more part of my life accepting the woman in me wrote a letter to Sandy unmailed yet about this on LSD the next day came into town my mother very sick she’s fine now after a coma the woman in me is my mother made clear by contact with her that day me on a hill her in a coma she’s much better now” – Jeff
2 a woman instead now that she’s dead I’m in her what was left in time, my mother . . . “the motion of the afterlife” to quote a quote the Master sat before the master sat before the master sat before the master sat before the greatest sculptress of all time was Fuzzface I give you the given & you grind it to powder fleabane & sorghum it doesnt matter what take all the instruments & focus on what you’re doing laser beams fromall locations in a sphere your basket in the center where yr head is time life orgasm spasm in the hair-pit the speaking clit tongue-waggers quiet she raps so much I turn to you and thank God you make it Fuzzface I lie on the land she photographs terribly focused parts of it slide by slide pushed in & out you make it fuck to find my body sculpt head-hunters go quietly to bed we all feeling the same ways & love following the Way perfectly like a road following a road 1
erasing my own past putting it down set free photograph the ghost of her anti-mother Pisces swimming in no death mother faced with her hair faded & her body full of water strain on the heart alive again in the motion of where we’re going inertia 5 senses inaccurate organic everything shows anti-images bleed thru the hermetically-sealed coffin CASKET (basket) the head-hunters’ yodel & tear off their buttons awake for the escape into the night fuck where half a mountain is torn off coming it is one and the same seeing a fear from all sides a rock a rail-trestle Toltec faces in her photographs photograph the flesh we swim out of there is my fear sitting on a hill one hill away up and back each time easier encompassing being encompassed like stroking into a young girl’s cunt Fuzzface on a hill I lie under the master half torn away the rest covered with gas & burned half a body a head mountain rainbow lying along the ridge & into the canyon her coming brot it rain after a dry spell & people running around at night not dancing stoned in and out in the head argument between the dead image in her my body takes off in hers is it I find somewhere along the road in town reasonably infinite near the plot line of the life he thinks he’s the master of the Master in a basket that leap-frogged over bridges reverses in the mirror the explosion learning to relax all these questions on my shoulder logs for me to build a house digging the foundation level it and make a dirt floor fear of her photographs of myself has never photographed a person only me carrying in the dirt plants & their shadows entrance inthe quiet where the meeting rocks us lying under the motion on which side of the world drops off in the head seeing it from all sides destroyed in the image made her next to her duplications in theocean-bush looking out of each other’s eyes rocking is the motion ghost of it two heads arguing in a bush flame up the water of the body dropsy & one-lunged she died & alive now that I’m in her whoever heard of flowers arguing – 2
a light to keep on your head keep blowing out of the dead mama calling
high over the surf
I have given seeds to the world to hold in their hands seeds with memories planted in the seacaps swell thru the ears sing-song from the heart of the kelp the seeds rattle from the shore
soup I eat
riding breakers
drink
to bounce
shake the heart
the Pacific palms
(Mexico comes back thru the calendar of fish their hearts hanging out) Puerto Escondido & the pages are full of sand thumbprints arguments left behind raucous public address & scratchy mariachis long to handle long to firm where we were fish with lime juice by a Pisces woman
Oaxaca
green chile caught at either end Pescado on the rocks we dashed & roared
give me lesion to be God all day & not just where the seeds come out of my body planted in myself herself my love lies in the capital of memory where of is destroyed & metaphors are drowned I draw another word the hermit comes back from the cave in the ocean to where he left his woman the love in the room beside the palms & a man in New Mexico tossed glitter to the 6 directions & sat down on the rock to think over looking the last land permitted him to breathe casting spells in seeds out of Mexico the magic is unconscious exercised in gestures when will the ocean come here lap at his feet
the dance
in love
3
the King of Cups wandering orgy by himself his hands in the silence of the mountain the wind cups hollow laughter & tells him of the girl who caught the largest fish in the ocean & found the largest rock unphotographed forever the waves dash against it classic spray & the sun colors all the clouds in New Mexico the pinyon jay flies toward a three-quarter moon her name? a rabbit flung at the moon
left her imprint
3 a marriage and son to be there in the bed have a son the seeds are calling break all formality of fear where the legs cross getting into it again the well-tempered clavier from the photograph hermit shows the light for someone to follow the generation born skips a generation picking up from the way before over this mountain bathed in the sacred spring gold light of sunset a thousand blues in the dome of sky do not argue among themselves or with it nor the flowers out there yellows all over peyote rock promontory jut out over the mesas of the Indians’ land us in's trying this and that too born of alcohol into the blood of the sacred plant juiced there to have a son, the trips tell me the woman out of the ocean wraps the fish together at my loins blesses my Gemini heart with her hands & waves at the moon 4
her name? out of the end of summer directions given directions surpassed where communities of l-o-v-e shoot dogs my dog I’ve had 4 years black beautiful half-lab, half-pointer gone dead for killing chickens ‘will I ever learn to love’ did the guy with the gun ask keep blowing out of the dead our brains out on the line drying new food for generations to skip a beat the heart from the sea speaks her name? the hermit asks I am myself intertwined sing-song come back from Mexico with her in love with the woman who caught me drawing back from full moon give in rest on plenty water under my chair ends up at the pregnant woman's feet androgyne or not & not at the high priestess' till I come back from mating to the altar on the hill behind my house over looking land we give in to grow out from & back where ancestors' homes mingle in the rocks Indians' with mine and speak thru the lights around the head I carry in my arms the need even on high jangling frequencies of man & woman edges to fall lack down where the bed rocks instead of the ocean without any ruling-out one first altar grown out of the 2 first mist breathes over the altar 2 , 2, 2 ,
essence in cloudy myth
3.
/written July 7th and September 1st 1968
5
lenore in her garden - photo by John Wood
favorite old tree, origin for the staff in Staff of OmetĂŠotl - photo by John Wood
trying out Lenore’s colored pencils . . .
after Coatlicue came other goddesses
collage from NB #7
on the patio at the Hertford house where we lived . . . window & door of our casita can be seen behind us . . . photo (1970) by Curtis Nelson . . .
opposite: water color painting by lenore goodell
envelope from Gino Sky, another dear friend
old friend Kell D. Robertson, Jr. wrote this . . . .
envelope from Ken Irby, another dear friend
“All nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined.� Gilbert White
envelope from Ann Quin, a dear friend
I relished my contemporaries Ken Irby, Ann Quin, & Gino Sky . . .
post card from Ann Quin, British novelist who often stayed in Placitas, a dear friend
duende open words open pictures open voice 2013
larry goodell po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043 USA larrygood@comcast.net
68 Sep 4 (postcard in NB #7) Thoughts of you. Memories. Just moved in to MacDowell Studio called ‘STAR’!! Ed Dahlberg had it once back in ‘29. Good omens. Two blue jays & squirrel joined me for lunch. Circle of sunflowers. Yesterday hypnotized by a frog! There are signs everywhere. Renewal. Transformation. See with ears, hear with eyes. Blessings. Love. Love. To you. For All. A
Pre-Conception
larry goodell July-September 1968