Land Fishing [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dearest Bleaders,

The Rolling Stones are making it hard for me to garden.  I am thinking too much about the underground.  Live on the green side of the grass (forget walk on the sunny side of the street) is what I advise, but for myself, I got a dark heart.

In part my morbid refusal of north is a fault of San Andreas.  I'm unpolarized. 

I also blame my dear friend, the poet Amy Holman, who wrote a brilliant interview with Bill Wyman, bass player for the Rolling Stones, called "Land Fishing," published in Barrelhouse last September, 08.  Can't get to the interview online, (though here's where it lives) but I'll just say it makes you aware of certain unforeseen factors of reality: 1) the coolest items work their way up to the surface, or were always there, but are sometimes just lying there. 2) if you are in England on the hay side of Hadrian's wall, a coin from 1220 AD is disappointing, and one from 122 AD delightful indeed, whereas in my back yard, a soldier's leg from any era not my own can cause a curious poet to dig up much of Brooklyn (without hitting what a bassist hits under the couch in his living room) in a spectacle of spectacular bespectacled speculation, spade in hand.  

Okay, go to Wyman's Website.  Wait for the top line of menu items to appear and click on Archaeology. You don't get the metaphysics that Holman helps him get at, but you get pictures and the strange sense that there is something on which strange is going.  I too, am a strange thing, so I rully like it for that reason too.  But mostly the metaphysical and actual digging.  So much less messy than autopsy.  Well, less sticky.

More beauty on the theme?  The Past is Always Coming, Holman at Archaeology.  

Enjoy the sun, chums.

love,

Jennifer

ps  Here are my great grandmother's ceramic dogs, a tiny perfume bottle being the only thing I ever stole in the particularly way I stole that, as a child, my paternal grandfather's wedding ring, a small bird skull, and a bottle of no.  They are in the first pic too.  I made that mosaic fish scene.  I love sun dapple.  xox

pps My friend Amy will forgive me I think if I share with you that she is on return trip from scattering the ashes of her mother, recently passed.  Archeology no idle theme.  Courage, bleaders!  Courage my friends!  Soon we shall feast on eggplants.

Jennifer

Comments

[Laura Orem]

There was an article in the NYTimes a couple of weeks back about a retired firefighter who collects antique bottles. He finds them by excavating privies and outhouses from the 19th century all through the five boroughs. (Apparently people used them for general trash dumps, too.) He uses old survey maps to locate them, knocks on folks' doors, and asks to dig holes in their backyards. Most of the time, the people say yes, and they have a little archeological dig for a while. He's found all kinds of old stuff from the 18th and 19th centuries.

[Amy Holman]

Wow, those eggplant jewels, those plumbable depths of dirt, and the inspiration I've given. Hey, I've got copies of my interview with Bill Wyman, anybody want one, only $5. Archaeology still accepts archaeology poems, I think, so go for it. Thanks, Jennifer, I think Brooklyn backyards can offer some cool finds amid the beautiful nightshades.