DANCING WITHE THE GYPSIES

DANCING WITH THE GYPSIES

     By Travis M. Whitehead

     My mother grew up during the Great Depression (there wasn’t anything “great” about it) on

the Texas side of the Red River, with Oklahoma on the other side. Her father was a man of many

talents. He was a carpenter, a mechanic, and a popular singer in local barber shop quartets. He

made his living by fishing the Red River. He was also known for the fish nets he made and sold

at a decent profit. He even saved the family money by constructing a two-bedroom wooden

house on property owned by his brother-in-law. It was a sturdy home, but not a very good one.

The structure had no insulation, and they froze in winter and baked during the summer.

     He could have provided well for his family during these hard times, but he drank away all the

money. He made his own corn brew in the woods behind the house (this was during

Prohibition) and often sent my mother out to make deliveries. She and her sisters had to endure

the humiliation of standing by while the FBI raided the house on several occasions.

     My mother’s father was a mean drunk who made a habit out of calling my mother stupid

every time she tried to accomplish a task. She remembered very vividly his taunting as she

learned to ride a bicycle.

     “I don’t know why you’re even botherin’,” he told her. “You’re too stupid. You’ll never learn

how to ride that thing.”

     “You just watch,” she said spitefully. “I’m going to show you.”

     She turned away as he laughed sadistically; within a week she was riding on her own, no

thanks to dear old dad.

     In spite of my grandfather’s relentless belittling of my mother, she found ways to enjoy her

childhood with great zest. She hunted bullfrogs along the riverbank with a .22. She smoked

grapevine and stuck wads of chocolate powder in her mouth and pretended it was tobacco. She

spent late nights on the front porch ad-libbing her own one-act plays, singing, dancing until

everyone told her to quiet down and go to bed. 

     However, she didn’t always do as she was told. In those days, the Gypsies still lived their

legendary nomadic lifestyle. Dressed in their bright colorful clothing and heavy jewelry, they

would sometimes set up camp in the area.

     The adults, seeking to “protect” their children, told them that Gypsies liked to kidnap white

children and eat them. My mother, being the precocious and inquisitive nine-year-old that she

was, decided she had to find out if it was true. So, one night she waited until everyone was

asleep, then snuck out the window and ventured into the night to go see the Gypsies.

     She came to the clearing in the woods where they were camped. They were in great form,

playing music, singing, dancing, and making merry. After a few minutes, a little girl my mother’s

age walked over and offered her an apple. My mother gladly accepted, and the two stood there

a few minutes eating their apples.

     A few minutes later, the little girl’s mother walked over and asked my mom, “Would you like

to dance with us?” And my mother said, “Yes, I would.”

     And so she danced with the Gypsies. And after that, every time the Gypsies were camped

nearby, my mother would wait until everyone was asleep, then sneak out through a window to

go dance with the Gypsies.

THE DAY I BECAME A CLOWN

SHORT STORY - THE DAY I BECAME A CLOWN

     By Travis M. Whitehead

     I was only five or six years old when I saw my first circus. I loved seeing the lions and the tigers and the elephants and the trapeze artists, and when a guy in a gorilla ran around wearing a woman’s bra I couldn’t stop laughing, nor could my mother.

     However, those clowns prancing around in front of the audience scared the hell out of me.  Clowns are supposed to be happy and playful, but oh no, not to me. They totally creeped me out, and when one of them began making his way up the bleachers in my direction I wanted to run and hide.       

     The clown had this grotesque red grin surrounded by this pasty white paint like it had spent the whole afternoon rummaging through an Avon bag. Those monstrous shoes looked as though his feet had swollen up like the balloons it was now twisting into bizarre shapes to hand out to the kids.

     And that hair! Oh my God, the hair. How in God’s name did he get hair like that? Had he stuck his finger in a light socket? What had happened to this guy?He was running around like he was crazy, twisting those poor balloons into unnatural shapes. Balloons were supposed to be round like kickballs or long like hot dogs, not bent out of shape like a pretzel.

     A sense of dread swept over me as he came closer, and closer, and closer…I started breathing heavily and sweat soaked my shirt. Finally, he was towering over me with this ghastly grin, his eyes glittering as he turned the balloon into some strange animal.

     “Keep that thing away from me,” I said as he leaned down to hand it to me. Without even thinking about it, I popped him right in his big red bulbous nose. He went down, my mother shrieked, and all the kids started laughing.

     Now I was the clown, and I didn’t even have to wear any makeup.

THE STARRY NIGHT

THE STARRY NIGHT

     By Travis M. Whitehead

They speak to me from their stormy portals

     housed in their cave black shrouded

          Drops of twilight from the eyes of God

            Scattered across the shadow sea

              By a cosmic wind

    

Through these fields of light flowering

     I’m mounted on a winged stead

        Riding that cosmic wind

          Listening to the music

              Radiating from their shimmering smiles

              

Drops of shimmering ecstasy

      Musical notes from the symphony of God

          Whirling through the universe

                Morphing into melodies forgotten

                      Revived for the anguished soul

Anguished souls riveted

     By the dissonance resolved

        Into a poignant harmony beckoning

           To phosphorescent hummingbirds

                  Rising from the earth-bound sea

Winged twilight

    Soaring across the universe

         To dance to the ever-changing melody

             Played by the hands of God.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE WIND

THE LANGUAGE OF THE WIND

      By Travis M. Whitehead

     She rises from the depths  of the sky,

           The wind spiraling down

                   A desperate spirit racing across the world

                           Bearing her naked soul

    

     Whistling through narrow canyons

          Roaring across raging seas,                

                 Winding through alleyways and caverns dark

                          Pouring her heart out, aching to be heard.

    By human portals filled with emptiness

         Pilgrims seeking purpose

              Voyagers yearning for direction

                    Eyes set on stars estranged

         Into hibernating wanderers she empties herself

             With forgotten memories of eternity’s youth

                  Transfusing the hot blood of the universe

                       Into chained dreams desperate for liberation.

     From the confines of wakefulness,

          She liberates humanity’s slumber

                        Igniting her senses.                            

                              With waves of illumination

                                    

     Release, set free by the wind’s whisper

          And the imagination sails across the sky

                Guided by the language of the wind

                       A teacher, a student, a mentor

                               

     Imagination, the gift of eternal youth

         With time’s shadow lingering nearby

                The wind bears visions of discarded gateways

                      To pyres of resurrected dreams

     Where the cadences and melodies

           And the rhythms of life

               Beckon the wandering student  

                      Now healed by the aromatic tonic of the wind.

MORELIA'S SYMPHONY OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

MORELIA’S SYMPHONY OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

     By Travis M. Whitehead

     The sun eases slowly toward the west as I stand in front of El Revoltijo, a restaurant across Avenida Madero from the Cathedral of Morelia. Warm golden sunlight slips slowly across the west side of the cathedral, turning the pink stone into revolving shades of orange and yellow. A pigeon flies through bands of sun and shadow into an archway of the cupola where a bell rings. A chilly wind sweeps down Avenida Madero. Bands of shadow slip slowly across the arches, catching a trace of the bronze bell before it’s overtaken by more kisses of the glimmer of night. Westward light illuminates towers cloaked in shadow and song; a corner of a tower, the hem of a saint’s stone cloak catches the sun as it crawls away.

     I stumble into the evening as the sun cascades into the belly of the night. I’m running,

chasing flashes of light before they recede beyond my reach. It’s like trying to catch the

wind, a useless enterprise, but once in awhile I can hear its whisper, and that’s all I need

to keep going. 

     Up El Nigromante, shafts of dissipating light race across the eaves. Pediments and

flowered ornaments are replaced by warm floodlight; it spreads over the rough walls,

sending ribbons of shadow that clash with the evading sun; window balconies of

midnight metal sweep away in gentle arcs frozen by the hands of old artisans.

     On the west side of the street, the stone of the Palacio Clavijero recedes into a cool darkness, evoking a mesmerizing purple. The dream of night is taking effect, injecting its narcotic trance into my consciousness. I look up and see pale blue, lavender and chartreuse flying across the sky, releasing themselves from the light of day.

      There’s not much time left. I race up to Allende Street, where Melchor Ocampo once lived. There’s a rich quiet blue creeping in from the jagged tear of bright light burning above deep purple clouds in the west, pouring up Allende Street. This street runs east to west, and the blazing play of gold on stone walls gives way to lanterns casting shades of darkness, etching themselves into my memory, conjuring a forgotten dream, a lost piece of identity.

     I’m running through the streets along Allende, through the fading doorways of my dreams, chasing shafts of light dancing across time, I’m running  along La Corregidora where the Templo de San Agustin rises high enough to still catch a glimpse of the rapidly disappearing day. The sun creeps across scarred stone, blemished columns with etched flowers, exhausted stained glass and brutal towers saddened by time’s eternal gaze. It creeps across the fountain and blemished cantera whose beauty marks sealed their fate long ago.

     I can only believe that the architects of this city were creating a stage for the plays of light and shadow following the stars, tuned like a fine Stradivarius, the clouds improvising their own rendition, time molding its symphony as wind and rain shape the stones; the passage of time releases its character, gives birth to its own personality, etching its texture.

     It’s this play of light and shadow at the break of dawn and nightfall that reveals the shadows of the soul, a forgotten heartbeat, a dance that lies dormant beneath waking and dreaming, yet in those wandering shadows between night and day, there’s a glimpse of the sleeping poets in us all. In this city, the stone walls have created a rare doorway where eternity offers a reflection of itself; the play of light and shadow lives throughout the night, and the poet dances, the poet sings, the soul harmonizes with the forgotten harmonies forever possessed, but seldom realized.

    

CONCERT IN MORELIA

CONCERT IN MORELIA     Written in 2008

     By Travis M. Whitehead

     Four men appear on stage to play three violins and a cello. The music begins with a slow

murmur indented with pensive sighs emanating from a violin. The sadness grows, wistfully

evoking a disturbed memory crawling to the surface through the consciousness, shuddering,

quivering, then falling into a slow moving stream.

     Suddenly it awakens, frustration rekindled, the dissonances pushing against each other into a

tragic harmony, sorrowful and conflicting emotions fusing, then separating, hovering in the

background through the stream of consciousness, pondering, falling into nothingness, dissipating

to the outlying boundaries of the musical landscape, the notes coalescing into a tragic whole.

     They rise with a renewed vitality, dashing about, rushing in a frenzied determination for

satisfaction, shrill notes jumping, seesawing like the psychotic anger of a distressed soul, now

resolute in its quest for justice, a woman humiliated into fury. She dashes from one precipice to

another within sight of the glory of madness, as though insanity is seducing a tortured soul into

the realm of universal justification. Now each musician takes turns plucking strings as the

insanity crystallizes into focused and calculating barbarity.

     In the second piece, notes slide around ill-defined, the cellist bouncing his bow across the

strings. The musical artisans venture toward the precipice of discovery, musical possibilities

dangling from a cliff, a spider dancing from a single thread over a candle. Chords are ripping

together, clashing, compromising, exhausting their own dreams, resurrecting anguished notes,

dragging them across their conscious lives, stretching the limits of their musical language. They

squeak, pour, slide, struggle for actualization, racing toward a harmony that lingers beyond

reach, sad and dissonant notes struggling to find agreement. And then finding none, they resign

themselves to their dissonance, then rush suddenly, irrevocably into nothingness.

     More dissonance arises in the third piece, with violins and cellos becoming percussion

instruments, bows bouncing off strings like the hum of bumble bees, thump, thump, thump,

thump wrenching from the very abyss of the instrument's consciousness to borrow from some

other musical alphabet, a tortured soul. High-pitched notes cut into the air, then all four charge

onto the stage, shrill notes and a bass line like the galloping of two terrified horses thundering

through a dark wood. \

     It slows, as if the riders, lost now in an exhausted ecstasy, stop to discover their fate. Two

lovers seek each other out - this is their meeting place. They've dismounted and they sneak

through the woods, looking around trees and over rocks. They spy one another but, alas, soldiers

have come seeking their beloved princess and the pauper who has captured her heart, the music

rising in a crescendo of distress. He takes her hand and hides with her in a ravine until slowly, as

the music fades, they are alone, the soldiers vanishing into the darkness.

     The musicians have stretched themselves beyond the limits of their own auditory dialect,

slicing prior knowledge, cutting through the layers of mundane musical dogma, rearranging their

musical alphabet, peeling away layers of obsolete revelations. The music has rushed toward

listeners with hearts flung wide open, filling the vacuous depths of their souls with an agonized

wonder, morphing their clouded perceptions into a speechless clarity.

GALAPAGOS NIGHT

Galapagos Night

     By Travis M. Whitehead

On a star-filled Galapagos Night,

     When the universe bore her soul,

             I sailed across the sea

                       Riding the ocean’s currents.

But I was drawn by her breath,

     Sweet jasmine from the stars,

           And her flirtations of ecstasy

           Teased me away - 

And the sails became my wings,

        The ocean’s breath my sorrow,

                As the voice of eternity’s youth

                Beckoned me away

The breath of the ocean,

     forever burning in my mouth,

           now awakened me

                 From the stupor of wakefulness.

I was an albatross,

     soaring between night and day,

              following in the footsteps of time’s shadow,

                        intoxicated by the hot blood of the universe,

                               heaving, pulsating, groaning.                 

 

ARTISANS OF MICHOACAN PRESENTATION

Hello, everyone:
    Below is a short presentation about my experience in the Mexican state of Michoacan. I've been going there since 2001. I spent eight months there in 2008 writing a book called, "Artisans of Michoacan" for which there is a Facebook page by that name. The book can also be found on Amazon.com


Forty-five years ago, I saw something that grabbed my attention and never let go: a caterpiller evolving into an elegant monarch butterfly.  Witnessing this display of metamorphosis would leave a lasting impression on me, one that would eventually lead me on an odyssey of change, of release, the discovery of identity and, ultimately, the human condition.

The journey toward that odyssey began the day my mother showed me how to remove a monarch caterpillar from the milkweed plant outside my Texas house, place it in a jar with plenty of leaves, and watch it grow.  Soon it would wrap itself into a green chrysalis, and I would wait anxiously for it to emerge into an entirely different form of life.  My curiosity was forever ignited by this process of change, and I kept a close eye on the milkweed plants so I could capture more caterpillers and observe this process again.

When the butterflies finally emerged, I would take them outside and watch as they flew into the blue sky.  I didn't know then what we all know now: they were headed for Michoacán.  I wonder if perhaps the butterflies I released took a part of me with them, bringing a trace of myself into an enchanting place.  I wonder if perhaps that part of my soul born on the wings of the monarchs hibernated, even gestated, in the magical wonderland of Michoacán, awaiting my arrival when I would regain part of myself, taking full possession of my poetic voice.

I found the place I'd been seeking my whole life quite by accident, stumbling across it while working on another project.  That project failed to materialize, but by then I had become intoxicated by the state's metamorphic personality.  That metamorphosis was everywhere, in the food, the language of the Purépecha indians, the crafts, and even the very landscape.  The state, I learned, even has two local varieties of the tamal--the corunda and the uchepo--and I discovered that in the Meseta Purépecha, even these and other regional recipes vary from one village to the next, and that the language has slight changes in communities only a short distance from each other: a metamorphosis taking place in food and words.  The very landscape itself is a metamorphic experience, ranging from pine-covered hills to stark deserts, from winding rocky shoreline to tropical jungles.

So strong was Michoacán's power over me that I felt compelled to spend an extended amount of time with her, so I moved there in 2008 and spent eight months visiting artisans in their homes and workshops.  I was quickly charmed by the way they welcomed me into their lives.  I was a stranger who came knocking on their doors, and they quickly extended their friendship to me.  They allowed me to observe them practicing their crafts and take as many pictures as I wanted.  They patiently answered my endless questions.  I was intrigued to discover that even their crafts were continuously evolving into innovative forms, revealing still another experience of metamorphosis.  With every Michoacán experience, my artistic life constantly split and then coalesced into an ever-evolving consciousness.  It was a revolving kaleidoscopic experience of dissonance and resolution, crescendo and diminuendo, soaring to enormous heights and then crashing miserably so that I would have to hibernate for a while until my previous perspective acquiesced to the new insights I had achieved.

However, as my poetic voice matured, so did my perspective about culture.  Initially, my experiences with the artisans were conduits through which I could communicate my ever-changing poetic voice.  The artisans, though, offered me genuine friendship and even a chance to participate in their daily lives.  I sat with them around their hearth fires; they shared their meals with me.  I took them to a cornfield so they could pick loads of corn; then I helped shuck that corn to make  uchepos.  I watched with delight as their children laughed and played together, sneaking up behind me with their toy pistols--BOOM!  BOOM!  BOOM!--before giggling and running away.  I participated in one of their festivals, and soon 'my' project became less about me and more about giving them a voice to the rest of the world, sharing the story behind the crafts for which they are so famous.

As I observed the pace of their daily lives and the way they related to one another, I began to wonder if the crafts, the festivals, and dances are really what define a culture.  Are those the things that really define culture, or are they merely details?  I'm not so sure.  Perhaps the real cultural experience is the way a group of people relates to one another and interacts with each other.  It's a question I still ask myself.

The crafts and artisans and the metamorphic life of Michoacán still have a hold on me.  But I think that Michoacán has taught me a much greater lesson: the value of life and the way people experience that life, and the warmth and friendship people extend toward one another--and even to strangers who come knocking on their doors.  This was truly the greatest of my metamorphic experiences in Michoacán.

JOURNEY OF AN EMPTY SOUL

JOURNEY OF AN EMPTY SOUL

     By Travis M. Whitehead

     A vacant soul, dark-shrouded

          Suffocated by false apparitions

               Sanctified delusions

                      Devouring the human senses

Lost humanity wandering

     Speechless through the human journey

          Life without drama, tragedy or comedy

               Blinded from ecstasy, robbed of transgressions

Struggling, aching, longing, dreaming,

       Agonized by lost memories

              Tortured by sacrificed passions

                     Restless for humanity dreaming, laughing, crying,

A bland world

     Of smells without fragrance

         Visions without color

             Tastes without flavor

                  Music without melody

Leaping from the precipice

     Thrashing, flailing, terrified falling

         Clinging to nothingness

                Hungering for sanity.

Safety abandoned, dogma discarded

          Death desired over breathless life

               Falling, crying, laughing, senses absorbing

                       A butterfly emerging

Diving into a sea of color

     A breath of ecstasy, a timeless wonder

          Smells with fragrance

               Tastes rich with flavor

                      Music dancing with harmony

Scented dancers beneath flowering trees

     Winds intertwined with perfume and  laughter    

          Twisting shorelines of rocky beaches

                 Stars whirling, moon beckoning

              

Warm breath, sweet kisses, a passionate embrace,

      Lovers twisting and turning, rising and falling

          A heart beating, enthralled with life

                Beckoning an anguished soul

                        To laugh to cry, to breathe, to dream.