I Don’t Know

 

I Don’t Know

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I don’t. Truly, I don’t know.

Life is so much more interesting when I don’t know. When I “know”, I limit myself to where it is difficult for new and different information to filter into my brain. Hey, because I already know! A closed door. Right?

Take something simple, like tortillas. What is there not to know about tortillas?

I feel pretty puffed up that I can make decent corn tortillas. I seldom make flour tortillas because they always come out looking like amoebas.

I had leftover sweet potatoes, so on a whim, I decided to invent sweet potato-flour tortillas. Okay, I borrowed the idea from rotis. Flat bread is flat bread, I figured. If it works in India, it should work in Mexico.

My Grandma taught me to cook, and even her written recipes called for things such as “butter the size of a walnut” or a pinch of this and a handful of that. So when confronted with a recipe, I look over the list of ingredient, frequently substitute, add or subtract: kitchen chemistry.

Though I use a Mexican foods cookbook I’ve had since 1975, with recipes from various regions of the country, I tend to use recipes as, well, suggestions. The other day I decided that maybe I don’t know, so I read the directions. Knead the dough? Let it rest in a cool place before rolling? Who would have thunk it? I didn’t know.

In my usual fashion, I mixed my sweet potato and flour, salt, shortening in proportions that seemed right to me, drizzled water, kneaded the dough and put it in the refrigerator to rest.

All my life I’ve made pies. I roll out a mean pie dough, perfect every time. I allow myself a sweet burst of pride over my pie dough. So rolling tortillas should be a slam dunk, right?

Wrong. I mean, I’ve nothing against amoebas, but an amoeba doesn’t hold fillings the same way a perfect round tortilla holds them. For those of you not keen on reading all the directions, in case there is another of us, form the ball, flatten it with your hand, roll once, quarter turn, roll once, quarter turn, roll, turn until your beautiful round of dough is the thinness you desire.

Pretty slick, eh? See what I mean? I could have been making my own glorious flour tortillas all these years, but I already “knew”, thus limiting myself.

That’s a pitiful small example, but, believe me, it works on a larger scale with important stuff.

Dreaded winter is here. During late November, December, January and early February I am an icicle. This year I did something different. I spent money. I bought a different kind of space heater with hope. Hope that it might work warmly. Then I went all out and blew my limited budget on a posh, thick, men’s extra-large bathrobe. Men’s because men’s are better made, and larger to double drape over my legs.

The day after Thanksgiving I pulled my heater out from behind the chair in the corner and read the directions. See, one can teach an old dog new tricks. Plugged it in and within two minutes, I knew my heater was worth every hard-scrabbled peso. See me smile?

Last night, after my shower, I pulled my bathrobe on and fell in love. I felt like I was held in warm, cuddly arms.

Speaking of love, I have fallen head over heels in love with a real man.

My morning routine includes short readings, from poets, other writers. They make me feel good, make me think, give me something to chew on throughout the day. A few months ago I added Gerald Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, English poet and Jesuit priest, to my list, simply because so many writers referred to him, a stranger to me. My degree was in History. I missed a lot of Literature.

For weeks and weeks, I wondered, why am I reading GMH? What was so brilliant about him? But gamely, I kept going, until one morning I had an on-the-road-to-Damascus experience.

I got it! How could I not see it? How could I not know? How could I be so ignorant? The man is beautiful, brilliant, genius, full of love and light and life. I’m his. Now I can hardly wait for our morning tryst.

So, see. Every day now I try to remind myself that I just don’t know. If I don’t know, incredible gifts tend to fall in my lap, like love.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December? Already?

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How many times have you said . . .

 

            How many times have you said . . . 

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If only I could live my life over knowing what I now know?

Well, guess what. If you woke up this morning still breathing, you can indeed. Live your life over. Start right now.

What? You think you need a special invite? A ticket? An epiphany?

I’m not preaching to the choir here. I’m preaching to myself.

After a miserable few days of standing knee deep in the mud of an alligator swamp, of feeling like I should be more Important, like I should be Special, maybe better educated, or with some kind of polished halo or something to set me apart from the madding crowd, I talked to my daughter.

She said, “I noticed but thought I’d just ignore it.”

As generally happens, she made me laugh at myself, an exercise I recommend, one that is great for balance.

One of the first poems I memorized because I liked it, not because Mrs. Berglund made me learn it for English class, was by Emily Dickenson. “I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know.”

That has never left my mind and often has saved me grief. “I’m nobody.” Which gives me freedom to do a lot of things important people don’t dare try because they might fail and if one is important, one dares not fail.  If you are Somebody, you must be very careful. If you are Somebody, it is not so easy starting your life over.

I’m a very fortunate person, I believe. If I were to write my memoirs, and don’t worry, I’ve no intention, they would look like a thick book of short stories, written by a woman with “the seven year itch”. It would have that many chapters, each telling a distinct and separate story.

I don’t have a long string of initials after my name, highfalutin titles, but I surely do have a handful of life experiences, some of which I’d rather erase and forget, but those are the ones that might be the most important. I’m an ordinary country person who’s done a lot of ordinary things, learned a lot along the way, laughed and cried in equal portions. My wealth can be neither weighed nor measured.

“How dreary to be somebody. How public like a frog, to tell one’s name the livelong day to an admiring bog.” Thank you, Emily.

When I got out of bed this soggy rain-drenched morning, I knew I could start over, still knowing what I’ve learned all these many years, even though I frequently forget, even though I falter and fail.

It’s a beautiful day, somewhere the sun is shining and somewhere there’s a tie ballgame. An iguana ate half my new Comfrey plant. I found slugs. Slugs? How can that be? I’ve had occasion to laugh out loud, full-belly hoots, twice before noon.

I’m starting over with baby steps. Nobody defined “starting over” in marathon terms.

All this nonsense came about because I realized I have nothing to say. Truth. There is nothing I can say that you don’t already know. Perhaps, like me, you frequently forget. I hope you have somebody in your life who will laugh at you. Laugh is another word for love.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 15, 2021

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The P O, a Prayer and Poetry

The P O, a Prayer and Poetry

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            I live at #3 Nopales on a small piece of the Rancho Esperanza set aside for a dozen or so retirement homes. That’s the sum total of any pretense to an Americano community in this still traditional small village of Etzatlan. It’s not an official government-recognized address. No mail delivery.

            Jane emailed me that a woman she knows, a woman without benefit of email (How quickly we believe if we do it, everybody does it.) would like to correspond with me. This is not my first such message.

            But it is the first time I addressed the issue in a non-convoluted way, by-passing third party relays and such non-workable ideas. I often have great, even brilliant, ideas that don’t work.

            The local mail service is in a corner office above the Mercado. A tiny corner office. Mail is delivered by bicycle carriers from blue pouches hung on their battered bicycles. Everybody knows everybody in that small town way. There is little need for individual boxes. The mail boxes off in the corner take up about three feet by four feet of space. Little keyed doors just like ours.

            I presented duplicate copies of my passport, my electric bill to prove where I live, my Residente Temporal card. The amiable clerk filled out what seemed an inordinate number of pages of information on her computer while I stood waiting at the counter. 

            This happened to be an unusually hot morning, one of the few in which it had not rained in the night, in this, the rainy season. Not a breath of air reached the upstairs office. Mucho calor!

            A half hour later, when the clerk finished my application paperwork, she explained that she had to go downstairs, across the street, to the internet café to print the papers for me to sign. The office did not have its own printer. This is not unusual. I’m used to it. Didn’t bat an eye. This is business in a small village.

            I secured a chair from an office next door. Sat and waited. There’s always a line at the internet café.  And of course, everyone knows everyone else. Chit chat of the day. This is not unusual. I picture all this while I wait. I’m used to it. No problema. I have a chair.

            An hour later, I signed numerous pages and now have a key and an official snail mail, real mail address: APDO Postal #3, 46500—Etzatlan, Jalisco, Mexico. Please do write.

            I grabbed fruits and vegetables in the Mercado downstairs and headed to the car which was parked on the side street by the Cathedral.

I was suddenly and inexplicably visited with an overwhelming urge to go inside the Cathedral.

            I sat in the ancient wooden pew and burst into tears. I think that might be prayer. Wordless, no entreaty, no requests for help, no expectations, no thanksgiving, just hot tears. Twenty minutes later, I thanked the Great Spirit and was ready to go home. 

            After washing my face and putting away my groceries, I sat down to work on my poetry.

First and foremost, I am a poet. Ha—wait a minute—I saw that. I saw your eyes glaze over. All poetry is not vague or incomprehensible. I believe my work is accessible, easily understood, simple even. I write everyday stuff in everyday language.

I’ve been invited to read at the monthly gathering of poets at Poulsbohemian Coffee in Washington in September. This is a great honor for me, to once again share my poetry with friends where I once lived.

            So as long as I’m sharing personal information, let me also share this. I have begun an online forum for my poems: www.montanatumbleweedpoetry.blogspot.com. Please join me. I promise to not confound you.  

            It occurs to me that Mexican mail, prayer and poetry have commonalities. I’m never sure the message will get through, it might take a while, and the response might not be what I most want. But why should that stop me?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 2, 2018

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Rejected By the Only Group In Town

Rejected By the Only Group In Town

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            I’ve moved often enough to know there are certain mathematical realities. Generally it takes two years until I have an acquaintance or two, someone with whom I can attend the opera or go to a play reading, both of which I can find here in Mazatlan.  In five years I shall have acquired a friend or two, not necessarily the same first two people. That is just the way it is. Sure, I can go places by myself, and do. But it is more fun to share the experience.

            I can goose the program forward a bit in two ways, by joining a group of like-minded people and/or by volunteer work. The other day I set off to find information about a group of writers. Where better to discover writers than at a bookstore. Writers are readers. Half a block over and a dozen or more blocks up the street the Mazatlan Book and Coffee Company sits snug back in a small plaza behind a bank and a laundry.

            This bookstore, which I found the first year I vacationed in Mazatlan, is filled with used books, books in English, overwhelmingly of the beach-read variety. But by diligent probing, plucking and piddling through the stacks I can always find a few gems of literary fiction and the occasional non-fiction book that grabs my attention. Not that I’m a snob. I read trash too.

            When I left Harlem, I walked away from a 4,500 volume personal library. I brought with me a mere five boxes of books. One box contained my two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, my indispensible Strunk and White on style, which I read annually for fun, and a couple other books on style and grammar which I should consult more frequently. The rest are old favorites. I’m reduced to maybe a hundred books. I have no intention of re-creating a vast library. But I am a reader. Eventually I’ll own an e-book. But I’ll never lose my love of the heft of a book and the tactile experience of turning paper.

            Within ten minutes at the Mazatlan Book and Coffee Company, I had chosen a book on basketball (think Chicago Bulls in the ‘90’s) by Phil Jackson, a book by Coetzee and one by Achebe, not exactly beach reads, and a bag of coffee beans. Coffee and books go together like, well, like books and coffee.

            Given another ten minutes, I had swapped yarns with Jerry, a snowbird whose uncle is a beekeeper in Power, Montana and whose wife is a writer.  Then Twila came around a corner of the stacks to tell me her husband was a McPherson from Chinook, class of ’59. She lives in Glendive and knows people I know.  

            In half an hour I had gathered three books, coffee beans, stories, smiles and the name with email address of the contact person for the writers group.

            I have been known to embarrass my friends by how easily I insert myself into conversations with complete strangers. But it took two days to gather my courage and email Mike to ask about the writers group. I threw out a feeler. I’m a writer. It is a solitary life. I would like to join a group of writers. That is the gist of what I said.

            Mike replied that the group met once a week and in order to join, a writer must be committed to the group and serious about writing “fiction stories” and seeking publication of the same.

            My heart broke and sank to the soles of my sandals. I am a poet and essayist. I don’t have a single plot, story line, or fiction character cluttering up the back passages of my brain. I have been outright scorned and rejected. This group does not want me.

            I wrote back and said that if a fiction came to visit me, I’d contact him again, blah, blah, blah, making nice. Mike wrote back with more blah, blah, blah, making nice.

            So for the present I’ll hang out more often at the Mazatlan Book store. I’ll volunteer to dust the stacks at the English Book Library.  I’ll keep writing poetry and essays. Sooner or later I’ll rub up against another poet, another essayist or two.

            In a few days maybe I’ll quit plotting the murder(s) of the despicable antagonist Mike and his twisted band of followers by the rejected and lovable protagonist (heroine) who commits the perfect crime(s) and lives to tell the story.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 20, 2014

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The Ice Age Creepeth

The Ice Age Creepeth

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It’s easy to become downcast in winter, even as mild a winter as this, thus far, knock on wood, salt over shoulder, sign of the cross. I try to keep an upbeat attitude, but sometimes . . .

One seemingly ordinary day last week, I had a fright. The day started as usual: snow fall in the morning filled in my footprints and cat tracks of the day previous, a shout of afternoon sunshine, a bit of breeze. A good day, a good mild winter’s day, a day to bless and fill with murmurings of gratitude if not outright songs of praise. You get the picture.

In my warm and cozy house I had a canvas propped on the easel, paints on my palette and all the tools to paint a still life. At the same time I was immersed in three books, an Icelandic mystery by Indridison, poetry by Mary Oliver, and another book by Richard Hugo. Simultaneously I was tightening a batch of my own poems that I had left to simmer and cook down to their essence. Oh, and I had a pot of soup on the burner. I moved easily from canvas to book to keyboard to book to stir the soup and around again. Yes, a good day, indeed.

When I’m working, I go to my window seventeen times a day to look out over the hills across the valley, a view that refreshes me. But what was that? That creepy mysterious thing? That ominous line of luminescent white stuff which pulsed over the top of the hills? I watched, my feet glued in place. It, whatever it was, got bigger. It was whiter than white. It seemed alive. It seemed to glow from within like an intergalactic menace from a 1950’s sci-fi creature movie. It looked like a tsunami of ice, edging closer, threatening to carve the hills, grind them down and push them into town. I felt sure there was no stopping the on-coming disaster. Surely the next phase of glaciation was upon us, and with no warning. Global warming, indeed!

But, I hoped, if I hurried, I might flee to safety, somewhere far, far south.

The phone rang, a friend from Pender Island in British Columbia. “I’ve got the flu,” Kathy said. “I think I might die.”

“The flu? Is that all.” I said back. “I’m at my window watching the next Ice Age creep over the hills and down toward town. It’s eerie—a wall of ice, roiling with all the boulders in Canada. It’s headed straight for me. I’m going to jump in my van and race south as fast as I can go. In fact, I was headed out to warm up the car when you called. Oh, bother, it’s getting closer. Look, if I hadn’t answered the phone, I know I could have outrun the glacier. Now it’s iffy. But I’m glad you called. We get to say good-by.”

“Ice age, hmmm. Aren’t you afraid of saber toothed tigers?”

“Naaa. Alpha cat that I am, saber toothed tigers hold no fear for me. But I do worry about the wooly mammoths. I’ve always been afraid of wooly mammoths, ever since I was a child and had nightmares about them. To this day I have to cover my hands and feet and ears when I go to bed or I can’t sleep. The wooly mammoths might get me.”

“I see,” she said. “Have you thought about mastodons?”

“I try not to think about mastodons. Aren’t they extinct?”

“Does that make any difference?”

“Kathy, the glacier is grinding closer. I’ll call you from Denver. Give my love to Richard. Stay warm and drink lots.”

What with one thing and another, by the time I shut off the water, turned the furnace down, coaxed the cat from beneath the sofa, grabbed some books, located my passport, snatched my sock of money from beneath the mattress, and threw a change of underwear in my bag, whew, the glacier had gone. I don’t know where it went—just—gone .

I felt astounded. Clear horizon, the hills stolid in place, sky cerulean blue, a top hat of wispy cloud. I went back to my books and painting, but kept a weather eye to the north.

That night, I slept uneasy, what with wooly mammoths and hairy mastodons about. When I woke at my usual hour the next morning, there was no light in the room. None. It was dark as inside a stovepipe. I knew it—I just knew it—my house lay buried beneath that sneaky glacier. I should have gone to Denver.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 10, 2012
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That Which We Carry With Us

That Which We Carry With Us

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This is a poem. A poem that was pushing at me to be written. I sat down to write it. This is what came out. A prose poem.

I ask myself, “Why did I move back to Montana?” I fish the waters for an answer. Sometimes I haul in a trout or a salmon. Often my line hooks seaweed or a sucker. I would like a rational answer. Even to my mind, decisions based on the smell of bruised sage, the open bowl of forever sky, the gathering of elk at Slippery Ann or the first crocus at Snake Butte do not seem rational.

Good sense would have anchored me in Washington, in the community where I carved a niche of belonging, where I came into my maturity, raised my kids, developed my talents, earned respect. But something elusive compelled me to come full circle, to return to my earlier place, my native ground.

Even clockmakers know that time does not run in a straight line. Time is a wheel, a circle, rolling ‘round and ‘round. We try to bury the past. The past still happens. It never leaves us. The wise elders know. Sit and listen to any old-timer tell his stories. Even my four-year old granddaughter knows this. Somewhere in the middle, we lose it.

It is the stories. It is those who know our stories. The people who know our goodness and who know our failings. The people who knew my Dad, my sister, my husband and his family. The people who knew me then. When those people are gone, our stories live on. Those stories live on in the stones, in the dirt, in the rush and lap of the river. That is what is important, the stories. In them we are known.

We often feel alone. We pretend nobody knows us. We don a mask to get us through each day. We try to hide our warts. We fear if people see the warts, we will not be loved. We reveal more story by what we hide than by the words we choose. But someone listens. Someone hears. Someone loves us.

When I was growing up, when I felt sad or in distress, I ran into the woods along the Milk River and climbed into the crotch of a huge cottonwood and nestled hidden in the branches. Nobody could see me. Nobody knew I was there. I cried or daydreamed or planned and they are all the same thing. I held my sadness close to me. I didn’t want it to show.

Years later, before my Dad sold the farm, I came home for a holiday visit. Dad took me aside and quietly told me, “Your tree came down in a storm. You might want to walk out to say good-by before I haul it away.” I cried and cried, not for the tree, but that my Dad knew. My Dad had kept my secret.

I wrote my first Montana poems in Chicago. I wrote my best Montana poems in Poulsbo, Washington. I pulled my poetry from a bag slung over my shoulders, a bag filled with each sense memory, each life experience. Often I pretended my bag was empty. I did not want to look at what I carried, at what weighed me down, slowed my step. I closed my eyes to the root of my sadness.

The mind pretends but the heart knows. For me, here beneath the slant of autumn sun, there is no room for pretense. My stories surround me. I listen. I learn. In each story is lodged a piece of me. I am not alone. Each story also holds a piece of you. Each story heard lightens my burden. The circle turns.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 20, 2012

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On the Road Again

Here I go again....
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On the Road Again


I received an invitation to read my poetry in Seattle . It was a giant boost to my ego. I drove a thousand miles to be a featured reader in front of a group of friends and fellow poets in a Seattle area coffee house. I miss my poet friends. Having an audience is vital to my creative process. When I read my poetry aloud, I hear things on a visceral level that I otherwise miss.

In three weeks I jammed and crammed a lot of visiting. More precious than gold are my friends, my relatives, and my grandchildren. It is good for me to occasionally get away from my everyday world.

When some people drive long distances, they listen to music or books. When I am on the road, I think.

I was on the road a mere thirty five miles from home, between Chinook and Havre, when I realized that my shirts were still stacked neatly on my bed, waiting to be loaded into my van. I pulled off the highway and checked. I was right. I had left my shirts. Now I had a choice. I could return to my house and get them, or I could buy new shirts along my route. A no-brainer, right? In Kalispell I told my friend Sharon that I wanted to go to the Salvation Army store, near her house. “My favorite store,” she replied. I replenished my shirt supply. Sharon bought even more than I did.

While driving in bumper to bumper traffic on Interstate 90, it occurred to me that we were much like the Blue Angels, the Navy’s exhibition flight team. We were driving in earthbound formation while the Blue Angels soared through the air. I had the nose of my van sticking to the tail of the truck in front of me, the SUV behind me was sucking up my fumes, a sleek Corvette convertible held the place to my left while on my right a decrepit rusty Nova chugged along, spewing black clouds.

In the sky, the Blue Angels stay in beautiful precision formation, breaking apart only to create another pattern. On the Interstate, our auto formation was constantly shifting with vehicles randomly changing lanes, speeding up or slowing down. Why is that, I wondered. Training, I answered. The Blue Angels are specially chosen for intelligence and skill. They are highly trained and tested.

We, however, need only pass a rudimentary test at sixteen, then climb into a car and go. We drive while hungry, sleepy, stressed, angry, or late for work. We apply make-up, shave, read, talk and text, eat, drink and threaten other drivers. Where would you rather be? In the cockpit with the Blue Angels or behind the wheel on the freeway?

Jaguars are the only truly beautiful car on the road. In my travels I have seen many, many varieties of automobiles, and none but the Jag has truly distinctive style that catches my lustful eye.

Every town I passed through had empty store fronts. My favorite grocery store in Bonners Ferry, where I stopped every trip for coffee and the best buttermilk donuts, had closed. My heart was broken. I felt momentary depression, then hope, that someone with dreams and elbow grease would come along to open new businesses in the old spaces.

While I was in Seattle , a friend invited me to ride the “Duck,” a left-over WWII amphibious car/boat which tours the city streets and then paddles around Lake Union . In all the years I had lived there, I had never done this. It was great. Be sure to buy a quacker and leave dignity behind. Be silly and have fun.

A surfeit of seafood is not possible.

On Whidbey Island , Washington , there is a pottery shop at Juan de Fuca, a hamlet slightly bigger than Savoy . For years I have said, “Someday I am going to stop there.” I stopped. At this minute I am drinking tea from a cup hand-crafted by an artist.

Several days later I exited into the town of Sprague , Washington , another “I wonder what is there” place. What is there, along the lake, is a grand collection of vintage farm trucks and a lovely former railroad depot which a craftsman has restored into a unique residence.

As the wheels on the van go round and round the wheels of my mind go weird. Why in the world would I break into loudly singing the childhood jingle for “Beefaroni” while driving through Spokane ? (Hooray for Beefaroni, it’s made from macaroni.) It was a warm day and I had rolled the window down. At a stop light I saw that I had attracted an audience. I rolled the window up.

On I-90 I saw innumerable dead tire treads. Back in Montana , on roads the writer William Least Heat Moon called “Blue Highways,” I spotted two big horn sheep, two elk, a wolf, and hundreds of deer and antelope. I also drove through a cloud of eau-de-skunk.

I drove a thousand miles back. Brown is more beautiful than green. Hooray, Montana .

Sondra Ashton
Havre Daily News: Looking out my back door
April 29, 2010
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