Waiting for wovoka, p.10
Waiting for Wovoka, page 10
“Atomic 16 bears the atomic plague,” said Toothy.
“Everyone was poisoned by radiation,” said Aloysius.
“Thousands of soldiers were exposed to dangerous radiation in nuclear bomb tests at Yucca Flat in Nevada,” said Basile. “The military used soldiers as guinea pigs, and government scientists proclaimed that radiation was not the cause of cancers.”
“Radioactive iodine poisoned milk,” said By Now.
“Break uranium and wither with cancer,” said La Chance.
“Nuclear fission poisoned me as a soldier and now cursed as a new atomic creature with so many others of me poisoned with radiation,” said Atomic 16.
“Fission in the blood,” shouted Master Jean.
“Radiation memories,” said La Chance.
“My genes have divided many times, more of me in the air, and there are many others of me on the streets, and we are the deadly shadows of nuclear war,” said Atomic 16.
“Blue radioactive shadows,” said Poesy May.
“The regret of me is in the eyes of others, and they know me, we are the same nuclear mutations,” said Atomic 16.
“Nuclear totemic unions,” said Bad Boy.
Dummy listened to the atomic stories with the mongrels George Eliot and Dingleberry at her side, and then she created a dream song about the atomic plague and ruins of a nuclear war on the chalk board. Later she mounted the dream song on the front bumper of the bus.
atomic plague
deadly science overtakes poetry
nuclear faces in a mirror
ashes of children
blue shadows of the dawn
Nathan Crémieux named the date and place to meet but not the actual time. Paris was a culture of memorable places to meet, familiar parks and squares, but the precise time was vague in the easy count of social expectations. Nathan simply noted in his postcard that we were to meet at “Tilikum Place, July 4, 1962, in the morning.”
The Theatre of Chance troupe and stowaways, along with Atomic 16 and Toothy and the six mongrels, set out early in the morning as a carnival parade to Tilikum Place, a cozy corner located about two blocks south of the landmark Space Needle at the World’s Fair. Dummy worried about dog leash rules, so she loosely tied the mongrels together with red yarn to sidestep the fright of citizens and gaze of the police. Dingleberry circled, bounced, and bound her legs in yarn, but the other mongrels seemed to understand the restraint and willingly followed the pace of the puppeteer.
The Chief Seattle statue, Siahl or Seahl in the language of the Duwamish, was the obvious reason we were invited to meet at Tilikum Place. Aloysius pointed at the copper statue on a huge stone plinth and declared that the right arm was “no doubt raised as an ironic gesture of compromise with the explorers, territory government, and the loutish grunts of early loggers and settlers.”
Chief Siahl, the principal of peace, apparently delivered a thoughtful, crucial, and elusive speech to honor Isaac Stevens, Commissioner of Indian Affairs of Washington Territory who visited the skid row timber town in 1854. Surely the visionary words of the native chief were heard in a native patois or trade language, and yet there were no reliable accounts of translation and how the wise words of the native leader endured for more than a century.
“The shadow words of a native,” said Basile.
Doctor Henry Smith, the legislator and pioneer poet, as the story goes, created the prominent speech several years later from sketchy notes. Siahl was also known as Noah Le Gros. The first baptismal name was merged with a common nickname for one of the tallest natives in the local fur trade.
Poesy May created two husky cloth hand puppets and prepared for a morning parley near the copper statue of Chief Seattle. She raised the right arms of the puppets in front of the chiseled head of a bear on the face of the plinth and bounced the puppet heads from side to side to engage strays and strangers.
Prometheus wore white gloves and gestured to nearby tourists to move closer to the statue. About thirty people gathered around for the puppet parley of Chief Seattle, or Noah Le Gros, and the poet Robert Frost.
Poesy created ironic lines of the poem “The Gift Outright” for the hand puppet Robert Frost, and recast the strange poetic diction, “The land was ours before we were the land’s,” with the obvious, “We grabbed the land and made it ours.” Frost recited in a frail voice the land was “still unstoried, artless, unenhanced” at the Inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. The pleasant poet seemingly had no common sense of natives on the continent or the presence of other creation stories about the land.
Big Rant chanted the ironic recast lines of the poem by Robert Frost. Bad Boy was the mellow voice of the hand puppet Noah Le Gros and he pitched the serious poetic tones of the lines that were selected from his speech, the same words that were supposedly delivered more than a century ago.
LE GROS: My words are like the stars that never set.
FROST: We grabbed the land and made it ours.
LE GROS: Like the grass that covers the vast prairies.
FROST: Pious pilgrims landed here in biblical time.
LE GROS: While my people are few.
FROST: Even before we settled on the land.
LE GROS: I will not mourn over our untimely decay.
FROST: Mostly the states and rivers bear our names.
LE GROS: True it is, that revenge with our young braves.
FROST: True it is, we were only colonials on a boat.
LE GROS: Old men stay at home in times of war.
FROST: The pietists were celebrities of nothing.
LE GROS: Your god loves your people and hates mine.
FROST: Possessed by nothing but our declarations.
LE GROS: Two distinct races and must remain ever so.
FROST: We were weakened by holding back.
LE GROS: Our religion is the tradition of our ancestors.
FROST: We were weak about ourselves.
LE GROS: Our dead never forget the beautiful world.
FROST: No reason to hold back our customs.
LE GROS: Day and night cannot dwell together.
FROST: We surrendered and found salvation.
LE GROS: Men come and go like the waves of the sea.
FROST: We gave ourselves away outright.
LE GROS: Every part of this country is sacred to my people.
FROST: We conveyed only the feat of wars.
LE GROS: The white man will never be alone.
FROST: Forgetfully our catch was to the west.
LE GROS: Let him be just and deal kindly with my people.
FROST: The land with no stories was ours to enhance.
LE GROS: For the dead are not altogether powerless.
FROST: The land would never be lost in native memory.
Nathan Crémieux arrived at the very moment that the puppet Noah Le Gros declared, “Your god loves your people and hates mine.” Poesy May raised the right arms of the two puppets, and the entire carnival of veterans, stowaways, and mongrels gathered around the owner of the Galerie de la Danse des Esprits, the Galerie Ghost Dance in Paris. Nathan praised the ironic lines created for the eminent native poet, and then raised his right arm, lowered his voice, and repeated the line, “Men come and go like the waves of the sea,” in the words of the puppet Noah Le Gros.
“Le Gros was a slaver,” shouted Master Jean.
“That should be in the parley,” said La Chance.
“Slavery is not an irony,” said Poesy May.
“Poetic slavers overturn history,” said Aloysius.
“No truth, just the nuclear dust,” said Atomic 16.
“Noah Le Gros was a warrior, but that was not an honor because he owned native slaves, and no slaver deserves to be celebrated in history as a wise man,” declared Master Jean.
“No wonder the source and translation of his words were obscure,” whispered Atomic 16. “Yes, the curse of slavery lasts forever, and the curse of nuclear poison carries on in stories of blood and bone.”
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CASTLE BRAVO
The Space Needle was stupendous, more than five hundred feet high, and hundreds of people waited in line for a fast ride to the observation deck and the spectacular views of Seattle, Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, Lake Washington, Elliott Bay, Glacier Peak, and the Cascade Range.
Nathan bought tickets for everyone, the troupe of veterans and stowaways, to enter the fair and ride to the top of the Space Needle, but the wait time was more than two hours, so the troupe decided to mosey around the exhibitions. Nathan learned from the ticket agent that about twenty thousand people a day waited in line for the Space Needle.
“Tourists standing by for the clouds” said By Now.
“The mongrels are elevator outlaws,” wrote Dummy.
“Swarms of sentimental spectators,” said Poesy May.
“Tourists wait to favor hearsay,” said Prometheus.
Dummy and the stowaways had never seen so many people clustered in one place, and with the loyal mongrels, they were not at ease in the pant and push of the crowds. Pioneer Square and Tilikum Place were chanty ghost scenes compared to the hordes of citizens and tourists from around the world that morning at the World’s Fair.
The puppeteers were almost overcome with the crowds at the entrance to the fair and distracted even more with the stream of spectators at the exhibitions. The horde moved slowly from the International Fountain through the worlds of science and commerce and entertainment and grew into a strange anonymous creature with thousands of heads, arms, and tentacles in search of forage, exhibition fantasies, and salvation. The creature surged near the Food Circus and Show Street. The stowaways circled the creature and waited for a suitable space to present hand puppet parleys.
“Too many people at the fair gates,” said La Chance.
“More than the entire reservation,” said Bad Boy.
“Tourist teases of celebrity,” wrote Dummy.
“Turnout for fancy starts and stays,” said Big Rant.
“The crowds vanish in the night,” said Poesy May.
Aloysius led the way the next morning through the curious pavilions and worlds of science, commerce, art, games, food, and entertainment. The Space Needle was a high and mighty cosmic shadow over the entire landscape of creatures, curiosities, and theme exhibitions of forest products, banking, automobiles, electrical power, oil industry, nations of the world, and a limited choice of religions.
The World of Science surely teased the godly presence of three pavilions, Christian Witness, Sermons from Science, and Christian Science. The churchy hearsay and catchphrases of monotheistic creation were tedious covenants that somehow would defeat the communist demons and curse of the Soviet Union. The various denominations never mentioned the rush of missionaries and colonial slavery, or the pious perpetrators that carried out native separatism on treaty reservations. Not a word, not even slight tributes to the native combat soldiers who served the nation in every war and then waited centuries to be endorsed as citizens of a constitutional democracy.
“Cold war fear and dopey dominance,” said By Now.
“Tiresome satires of progress,” wrote Dummy.
“Progress is not a place to live,” said Toothy.
“Salvation in the radioactive ruins,” said Aloysius.
“Denominations of nuclear poison,” said Atomic 16.
“Backyard fallout shelters of shame,” said Basile.
The Seattle World’s Fair was one more continental colony with a merchant deity, a perilous wave of nuclear peace, and space flights of fancy, energy, fashion, and risqué marionettes, nudity, and other bawdy entertainment on Show Street. The only memorable deviation from the crave for science, holy potencies, modern enterprises, and salvation was at the Fine Art Pavilion.
The Northwest Coast native traditional arts, painted totem poles, carved masks, and screens by Tlingit, Haida, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, and Chinook were presented in the Fine Art Pavilion along with paintings by Willem de Kooning, Paul Klee, Georgia O’Keeffe, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, Claude Monet, John Marin, and Pablo Picasso.
Dummy, Aloysius, and Poesy May wandered through the galleries of great painters. Aloysius was enchanted once again with the magical presence of Blue Horses by Franz Marc and the Sea Piece by John Marin. Dummy swooned in silence and danced lightly near the Nymphéas, Water Lilies by Claude Monet, and then she slowly swayed in the shadows of Under the Pandanus by Paul Gauguin. Poesy May was eager, beguiled, and out of breath as she moved closer to the Woman Seated in Chair by Pablo Picasso. She was captivated by the contrary grace of visionary contortions and at last turned in silence and gestured in tears of gratitude to others in the gallery.
Aloysius told the troupe over dinner at the Theatre of Chance that night about the emotive perceptions of Dummy and the great delights of Poesy May. He related that Picasso created the cubist image, Woman Seated in Chair, during the fascist terror of the Nazi Occupation in Paris.
Dummy printed “Lebensraum: Friday, November 5, 1937” on the chalk board, a chapter in Satie on the Seine: Letters to the Heirs of the Fur Trade. Basile and Aloysius clearly understood the gesture was to the exposition they had attended in Paris, and they told stories that night about the International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life, Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in 1937.
“The exposition had commissioned eighteen composers to create and record music for more than forty nights along the River Seine in Paris,” related Basile. “The conclusion was a wistful and melancholy broadcast of Fête des Belles Eaux, or the Festival of Beautiful Waters, composed by Olivier Messiaen.
“The Fête de la Lumière, a display of lighted fountains was magical with the sound of the recorded music, and the motion, shimmer, and melancholy shadows that decorated the Palais de Chaillot, the new museums, Musée de l’Homme, Musée de la Marine, and Jardin du Trocadéro, and the majestic five arches of the Pont d’Iena.”
“The River Seine inspires poetry,” said Poesy May.
“Poets are haunted by rivers,” said Prometheus.
“Apollinaire and Le Pont Mirabeau,” said Basile.
“The Mississippi River no longer inspires anyone because the river died near the university,” said Aloysius. “No magical waves, poetry, or melancholy water music there, and nobody can remember the last lively ripple of clarity or critical gasp of the great river, no one, not me, not you, and the dead river continues to flow but not with great music or poetry.”
“The Spanish Civil War continued in abstract art at the Exposition Internationale,” said Basile. “Adolf Hitler celebrated fascism and the savage removal of Jews.”
“Joseph Stalin posed at a great distance with the communists and anarchists on the side of the Spanish Republic,” said Nathan. “The savage delusions of Hitler and Stalin, two poseurs of peace and progress, were revealed in the architecture of the pavilion empires at the end of Pont d’Iena.”
“The Nazi Pavilion, enclosed in massive pillars of granite, and with no sense of natural motion, faced down the River Seine. An enormous predatory eagle, wings cocked, was perched on the crown of a swastika,” said Basile.
“The swastika would be nuclear today,” said Bad Boy.
“Fascists of slavery linger in the wings,” said Master Jean.
“Reservation agents are everywhere,” wrote Dummy.
Dummy, the stowaways, veterans, and mongrels gathered after dinner near the Iron Pergola at Pioneer Square. The night was clear with a brisk breeze from Elliott Bay, and the stories were generous and easy after a long day at the crowded fair. Toothy regretted that he had never visited the great city of Paris at the end of the First World War.
“The Nazi Pavilion floor was coated with red rubber, and Basile and Aloysius refused to set foot in the fascist empire of racial vengeance and book burners,” said Nathan.
“The Soviet Pavilion was futuristic, constructed with marble and yet with a sense of light, motion, and, of course, the irony of peace,” continued Nathan. “A gigantic sculpture was mounted on the marble prow of the pavilion, and the modern design was by the architect Boris Iofan, a Soviet Jew from Odessa.”
“The enormous sculpture, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, by Vera Mukhina, depicted a factory worker, muscular and clearly heroic, with a hammer raised overhead, slanted to the wind, and a sturdy peasant woman with erect nipples, thick streams of hair, and one arm raised with a sickle,” said Nathan. “The socialist realism was obvious, but there was no trace of terror in the sculpture or notice of the thousands of factory slaves and peasants that vanished in labor camps.” The ironic sculpture, almost eighty feet high, faced the steady flow of the River Seine and the stone pavilion of the fascist Third Reich. Tallulah and the other mongrels bayed over the stories. Dingleberry danced on her back feet around the Iron Pergola.
“The new fascists are scientists who design deadly nuclear weapons, and the world is much more dangerous today than the desperate years between the two world wars,” said Atomic 16.
The thousands of visitors at the Exposition Internationale sauntered over the Pont d’Iena and paused between the two pavilions of social realism, communism, and the brute force of fascist vengeance, and never cursed out loud about the fascist architecture of the Soviet Union and the German Reich as the absolute demonic reveals of national terror and another world war.
“Sometimes world expositions convey the obvious rise of fascism in design and architecture of gaunt political structures and statuary, and today, close at hand, the big tents and folding chairs of evangelical caravans bear witness to the rise of a new fascism,” said Nathan. “Seattle is an exposition of contenders, more science, space, and futurity than the extreme nook and cranny fascists or the authoritarian hearsay of evangelists.”
The Christian Witness Pavilion was located near the United States Science Pavilion, and the promotion of science and godly creation continued with the tedious tournament of theories about causation, divine faith, human evolution, biblical trust, relativity, demonic tumbles, earthly wobbles, and cosmic chance.
