Folk Bloggin' and Eubelio's Story.

When I went to Guatemala as part of my MA Thesis research I spent a lot of time collecting stories from the muchachos, the local workers of the archaeological site I was at. They weren't just stories, they were myths and tales and aphorisms; they contained the combined wisdom of their lives I think. Very deep stuff shared in a simple format.

I tried to compile a few of them with my own poems and stories and that became my master's thesis. I just re-read it the other day for the first time really since I turned it in (Aug 08). Luckily it still was something I could be proud of. That's a good feeling.

The thing that was so weird about my experience in Guatemala was that, despite my most earnest attempts, there was no way I was ever going to be anything more than an outsider to those muchachos. Their stories weren't my stories, and never could be. So even though I recorded them, there was an inevitable distance in my retelling of them.

I'm almost finished with my first semester now in Columbia's MFA fiction program and one of my classes has focused on Faulkner and the Latin American writers (think Boom) that came after him and named him as a major influence. That class has proven to be an interesting synergy between the myths, tales, fables of Central and South America and the Americana myths and folk fables of which Faulkner is the master. It seems that one thing Marquez and Rulfo and Vargas Llosa (and others) really found liberating in Faulkner was the literary permission to dive into their cultural psyche, and to do so with a deep level of experimentation with technique.

And it's been a revelation for me too, my experiences with the stories I heard in Guatemala, and now with these novels I'm reading has opened up a serious creative can of worms for me. I find myself wanting to write about my myths, as a way of using a simple form to get to deeper things. Everybody has a lot of history, things in the cauldron that deserve a churning. Among other things I have my Mormonism, and though its a relatively young religion, it claims a restoration of some ancient cultural concepts. Plus, it already has it's exodus story.

But I'm also part of the deep but dying culture of Americana, and I'm finding myself drawn to explain that as well. For example: I found an online archive of Arkansas folk songs, most sung without accompaniment and all recorded in the 50's to early 60's. You can find it at http://www.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/songs/songs.html if you're interested. These songs are beautiful, most of them are lost. Everyone who sang them is dead. Most of them are expressions of faith, or admonitions on how to live. There's got to be at least 300 of them.

There's that part in Odysseus (another simple tale that touches on the deepest things) where he goes to Hades, and he meets Tiresias, and Ajax, and finally his mother comes to speak to him. They all admonish him and mourn with him. That was my favorite part of the epic. When I listened to a bunch of these folk songs I got the same feeling, eerily so as they are sung without accompaniment. I got the sense that I was being admonished, and pleaded with, but most important I felt like I was able to communicate, commiserate in the ephemeral nature of humanity. I think the best stories get to the heart of all those things.

So, I've been writing stories with those songs as a touchstone, and I'm really loving it. Hopefully it will coalesce into a project where I can use the songs, their tone and even meter to inform stories, and then I can build a connection/accretion of similar themes across stories in a collection with the songs. It's interesting. I'll post some soon. Right now, to end this Mammoth post, I'll paste a story from my MA thesis. It's the part I think held up the best. It's a verbatim story I heard from one of the muchachos, and I think it illustrates how strongly they believe in myth. I've come to really envy that conviction. Beware: Language.

Eubelio, tell me a story.

We are inside Pinturas, refilling a tunnel with stone and mortar. I need a running distraction. Eubelio has a body odor so horrible. Like every sin he ever committed was distilled into sweat and now leaks out his pores. He begins,

Here is a story. In a village there were two secret lovers. They met in town and the man said "meet me at the secret pool in the jungle at dusk." "But we must go separate to the pool" the woman said, "so the village doesn't notice. If you get there first, wait for me, and if I get there first I will wait for you."

When the man got to the secret pool he saw his lover from the back. She was bathing in the water. He moved close to her to heat her up, because you know, when you are with your lover you first have to heat her up. So he is heating her up and whispers "lets make love" and she says, "not here, not yet. lets move a little further into the brush" you see, she is not his lover. She is la Llorona, you know, the crying woman with long hair and the face of a horse. Maybe you do not know. He is in her spell and they move deep into the brush and he begins to make love to her. Suddenly he breaks from the spell and he realizes he is making love to a pile of cow shit. Thlop, thlop, thlop he is fucking this huge pile of cowshit. And that is how he died, with his dick in the cowshit.

Eubelio, what is the moral of that story?

It is not that kind of story. It is a true story.

Tell me another true story.

OK. When I am drunk I always end up at the cemetery. My woman is there, in the ground. When I am drunk I bring her candles and I lie on top of her grave. One time it was so dark and I got to the cemetery and death was there sitting in the branch of a tree. Death was hideous, with a black face, horrible to look at. You know how to save the life of a sick loved one? Remind them how ugly death is and they will be too scared to die. So I am drunk and even with death there I lie on top of the grave and I say to my woman, "woman, do you want me to spend the night here with you. do you want me to lie here with you". Suddenly I hear this moan "mmmmmmmmm" and I ask again, "woman, do you want me to spend the night here with you...." and again "mmmmmmmmm". One more time I ask, "woman do you want me to spend the night with you my love"....."mmmmmmm" and the sound was so close I got frightened and ran from the cemetery to my mothers house and cried when I told her what happened.