october 31, 2004 - dream of fleeing flood

[the following is taken from my dream journal----october 31, 2004----dream recollection, along with the notes i gathered in my mad struggle to find out whether what i dreamt was a premonition or a re-cognition]

key term i woke with this morning/dream interrupted by viciously-loud cat fight: clover stand clover stand cloverstand

the dream:
with family/extended family, packing the valuables in plastic bags and rushing to catch a boat off our island, only to realize that all boats were booked. somehow we end up on mainland, but find that this place too is threatened by impending flood and high tidal sweeps of ocean. i am in a small slender boat with only 2 of our larger group, and we are rushing to higher land. but know that we will encounter the storm and be tossed about, maybe to our finish. somehow, i end up in what seems to be called hong kong and i am surrounded by chaos and frantic asians rushing to safety. i see people on high rooftops and see that most of the buildings in this coastal city are only 1 or 2 story. i see a bell tower and wonder why no one has taken refuge there. then the phrase or word cloverstand comes to mind. is that where i was from, was that the original geographic location of this spree of fleeing? another word, a place name, flickered into mind, but only briefly and i lucidly thought, remember the easier term, remember cloverstand, it's like understand. the other word was like: mantamount, something mount. mountenmille or something compicated like that.

google results:

Clover Island 1948 flood in Kennewick

Australians tried to plant clover in Concord(?)

Agog He is all agog, in nervous anxiety; on the qui vive, like a horse in clover. (French, à gogo, or vivre à gogo, to live in clover.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GLOBAL CLIMATE ORIGINALLY COMPILED FOR GEOS 596R - SPRING 1991
EDITED AND EXTENDED BY OWEN K. DAVIS   1991-1993 (cite O.K. Davis, unpublished)
Age: 1575-1654 AD
Reference: Stine, 1990
Comments: Clover Ranch High Stand of Mono Lake


*** actuality, which i found out about, upon opening yahoo news @ 10pm:

High Tides Put Venice Sites Under Water

Sun Oct 31, 2:20 PM ET

VENICE, Italy - Unusually high tides sent sea water sweeping through Venice on Sunday, covering 80 percent of the city by afternoon. St. Mark's Square and other famous locations were inundated, forcing tourists and residents alike to don rubber boots and use elevated walkways.

St. Mark's Square, the heart of the city and one of its lowest points, was covered by at least 16 inches of water. A canoeist was spotted in the square.

City officials put out raised wooden walkways, but in some places the water rose above them, the ANSA news agency said.

Leonardo Cossutta, of the city office that monitors tides, said Venice's waterborne public transportation was suspended for about an hour and some shops reported water damage.

Venice is prone to periodic flooding. The government has approved a plan to install mobile barriers on the Adriatic seabed near the entrance to the Venetian lagoon to protect the city when threatened by high tides.

dream fragment - december 8, 2004

[this is excerpted from my dream journal, posting from december 8, 2004 - morning around 7:30am]

onboard ship w/ cut hand, open wound, encroaching storm
pain mounting. feeling pressure to do something. why i
waited, i don’t know. i now have the gauze, the salve or oil
for what’s the word DRESSING my hand. the injury is in my
palm. in the palm of my hand.

back to the ship, seeing the sense of panic in my partner’s face, he the normally very cool and collected shipmate.
now, now is the time we must go, it’s coming, it has arrived.

what?

the hurricane, the gale winds, the storming sweeps of water that could collect
us in its ferociioius arms and carry us off to its depths.

December 22nd, 2004 - dream remembrances

[dream journal entry: December 22nd, 2004]

flood impending. things melting. making waters rise throughout
central u.s. etc. even
i was in several-story house with 2 boys (sons?) or brothers.
put on shorts, i said. clean clohtes. sweaters too. to oldest:
help me shut the windows,, as i grabbed all the little musical
instruments. we are the ones who celebrate with spirit in the
city, so we will be on the top floor or the roof of the house
and we will not show a dejected, failed spirit. the village counts
on us for this.

dream memory : february 1st, 2005

[dream - February 1st a.m. right about 9:30am or 10am - 2005]

who made it home?

one woman with fruits and sea products
paddles assuredly, but slowly in a narrow
rough-finished dugout watercraft.

(somehow i know that she has been away, maybe displaced, for some time, and has survived a long absence maybe not of her choosing. it has been a long haul, but she is serene with relief, knowing that she is almost back to her home place. a world of ocean and sea life that is comfortable to her.)

dirty h2o is home. a pocket of dingy, well-populated
turf in the cove. again, it feels asian/eastern.


seaside vacationing hoteling:

sleeping in ocean
(comfortable sea-steeped lodging)

a beautiful series of sculptures in the water
at shallow’s edge, i guess, for how could they
be rooted in the seabed, miles and miles below
the water’s surface?

one particular sculpture that fascinated me was
high and curvilinear, tall as a tree, with beveled
shelving abutments. it stood lone, provocative
and mononumental. it seemed utilitarian or had
the potential to be.

a friend, “my friend flirt” (?), gave me a brief tour.

i saw a stubby white tourist couple sink into
adjacent sleep pockets, seemingly fashioned of
material resembling whale blubber or thick black
rubbery vinyl. little wombs in the warmth of the beach-
fronting waters.

Family together - "Christmas Story"

Last night, I had my immediate family (mom the matriarch, sis, bro, and niece) over for a home-cooked meal. I barely arrived home from the grocery store before they showed up, but fortunately I'd already prepped a few things earlier in the day. I swear they musta made a pact to go easy on me and "if you can't say anything nice, well...." because I noticed they were so so patient and cool with everything. It's as if they (particularly mom and sis) left their critical mode batteries at home, and this was very relieving. I confined them to the front room--it was the least cluttered of the house--and strictly forbade them from following me into the kitchen. It was fun playing chef for 90 minutes, emerging from the cocina with bowls and plates of steaming victuals (potato soup, bratwurst, sauteed spinach, french bread, and more) as they munched and chatted among themselves. Once I sat down to join them, for a cup of Mexican hot chocolate and a cup of soup, they seemed content and relaxed by the meal. It was the right time to read them something, which was "Christmas Story" by John Henry Faulk an Austinite who tried to have a career in radio broadcasting in spite of rampant McCarthyism. I just heard Faulk's reading of this story on NPR the other day, and it officially put me in the holiday way. The story, which you too can hear Faulk read, helps me imagine the Depression-era christmases my own father musta had, back in west Texas in the early 1940s. By the end of my own living room reading of the story for my family last night, we were all teary-eyed and full of w.f's (warm fuzzies).

Side note: During the 1980s, Faulk traveled the nation urging students to be ever-vigilant of their constitutional rights and to take advantage of the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. The Center for American History at UT-Austin sponsors the John Henry Faulk Conference on the First Amendment, and the Texas Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Handbook is dedicated to the memory of Faulk.

MY FORT WORTH: Kino Monda Cinema presents---tonight!

[John Singleton's got me on his e-mailing list, so I get the announcements about the weekly film screenings at TCU for his Kino Monda series. John's one of those people I hardly ever see, but whom I imagine is probably one of the tribe--folks you ultimately would count as cool and close. Somebody said that about me once, after watching me dance and carry on at a radio station fundraiser in Austin: "Tammy, when the end of the world is near, and everybody's reaching out for someone, I wanna be dancing with your tribe." That's kinda how I feel about John. Hmmmm, maybe I'll cut out from work tonight and go see this flick--free food is always a nice enticement too.]


free thought **free food **free cinema

wholewideworld.tcu.edu

 
tonight's film: "Love Actually" (dir., Richard Curtis/UK/2003)

6:30 pm, Wednesday, December 21st
Sid Richardson Lecture Hall 4

Love Actually!     If you’re already in the holiday spirit, this film is like a steroid shot of Christmas cheer. For some (me), anyway…this movie threads functional and dysfunctional romance, hope, loss, reemerged hope, lost again, found again.  Spoofs on icons like rock stars and presidents, improbable loves and probable pre-disasters, all set around the Christmas holiday.  If I were psycho-analyzing a planet, I’d suggest "Love Actually" is the same message delivered to earth that was delivered by Jimmy Stewart in "It’s a Wonderful Life", only it is translated into a language we speak now.   Moral purists might prefer the Nutcracker. - J.Singleton

Remembering the Blue Flamingo days

I was just reminded of the Blue Flamingo, the former Austin hole-in-the-wall punk-noise-rawk club that the AusChron referred to as being "in all likelihood the stankiest, most low-down joint to ever qualify for a TABC liquor license." I loved that place. When you got bored at Emo's (and that's saying alot, as you could easily count on free admission performances by the likes of El Vez, Stereolab, and Blonde Redhead at the Emo's mainstage--even on weeknights), it was fun to cruise over to the Blue to get your earholes flossed, i mean good. Miss Laura, the obese Black transvestite proprietess, staunchly defended your right to party hard in s/his space--all eight by ten feet of it. It was always sweaty and screeching, blow-your-eardrums-out loud. One night I stumbled by myself into the Blue only to find the sweatiest, funkiest punk outfit calling themselves the Cleofus Trujillo Trio. I loved them. That was the mid-1990s. And guess what? The Blue Flamingo may have gone the way of all awesome rock clubs--blues and overdues done 'em in. But--the Cleofus Trujillo Trio has re-emerged as Snowbyrd. Still based in San Anto, Snowbyrd is amping up and playing out in Austin and beyond. Matter of fact, they are scheduled for a set at Room 710 on Friday, December 23rd, in Austex with none other than (and I thought they had died too--lo and behold, rock-and-roll resurrection is for real!)the legendary Hickoids. Highly highly recommended.

I'm going to jail today!

A Special HOLIDAY CELEBRATION
FOR THE CHILDREN OF WOMEN INMATES

AT DAWSON STATE JAIL in downtown Dallas
ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16 FROM 4-8:00PM

The women are minimum-security prisoners who participate in a creative new pilot project of Hope Literacy. Hope Literacy programs at Dawson, Hutchins and Gatesville Prisons train inmates to serve as tutors for their fellow inmates. These women are participants in the literacy program who have also been selected to participate in a program in which the inmates live together in a dorm unit -- which they have named Unity City -- and practice the principles of self-government.

Their children, from toddlers to young teenagers, are being given a unique opportunity to spend quality time with their mothers during a holiday celebration in the Dawson gym. Invitations have been sent to about 75 children.

I'm going to be reading the Tex-Mex version (!) of 'Twas the Night Before X-mas, and helping kids create a mural for their moms to take back to their unit and display during the holidays. I sat around late last night, imagining what it will be like to be in such close proximity with mothers who only rarely get to visit with and have physical contact with their own flesh and blood. I found myself already bracing for the inevitable tears and hearttugs that I will probably witness. I cannot take a camcorder in with me to document the experience to share with others, but I will most certainly bring back my own impressions. It's been a few years since I've had to visit a prison in painful circumstances. But then again, visiting a prison can never be like going off to play a round of Putt-Putt, can it?

Hopefully, I can offer some moments of cheer and entertainment pleasure for these separated family members trying to experience an evening of closeness and sharing. Wish me luck luck luck.

Here's more about the Hope Literacy project.

MY FORT WORTH: the Chicano Luncheon - a Cowtown tradition since 1965

The CHICANO LUNCHEON is an amazing and unique (cuz i don't know of any other city in the US that does this) opportunity and concept.  Folks (you the public) show up for an EXACTLY ONE HOUR IN DURATION noontime meal and networking gathering.  Once you step through the portal of that salon (Spanish pronunciation of this word, with the connotation that it is a "hall" or "community space"), other attendees smilingly offer you their: flyers, business cards, brochures, event promo info, etc.

It's very convivial!  Once we are formally greeted by the wonderful RENNY ROSAS (long-time Chicano activist in the FW community), we are invited to line up for the food (yummy $5 enchilada plate). You sit, where you like, and then the introductions begin.  EVERYone in the salon is invited to introduce themselves and tell who/what they're with.  After that, we continue eating as the PROGRAM begins.  It is TAPED FOR LATER BROADCAST ON FW CABLE TV (multiple-broadcast, i should say).

During the PROGRAM, various folks announce their community events at the podium.  Then, the keynote speaker(s) are intro-ed and they speak for no more than 15 minutes.  Short and sweet.

So---today, in 12 hours (eek, i need to go to bed!) THURSDAY, DECEMBER FIRST, I am slated to present for 10 minutes.  As spoken word artist, and as member of Peaceful Vocations. Hope you can join me there!

The specifics:

The Chicano Luncheon.
Thursday Dec. 1, 2005.
12:noon to 1:p.m.
La Trinidad United Methodist Church.
1300 Gould Av. @ Northside Dr.
Fort Worth TX 76106
Program:
- Tammy Gomez - Spoken word artist
- Brenda Gonzales - Free income tax service
- Steve Lerma - Tarrant County

This will be the last Chicano Luncheon for 2005.
Jan. 5, 2006 begins the 14th season at La Trinidad United Methodist Church.
 
The Chicano Luncheon, keeping our tradition alive since 1965.
Renny Rosas
817.924.8181 ofc
chicanoluncheon@gmail.com