WestWords

at a london was provided by the corporation for public broadcasting to a grant from the pacific now network program planned and viewers like you seen is the renaissance a story in we are having heard her explosion like herself in the thirties now the western writers are more independent so maybe reserve area restaurants i think it's just so wonderful to use this this flourishing of western regional actors and a whole

passel of good writers living and working and writing about the american west big canvas with our lives being leaned against it i never had to look very far to find that kind of material and i thought that was a ranch hand and both tall boy in cheek manner my mother of course rance cook there and all my own mother lived long and thirty one and so all of that my growing up my dad's side as if he were

his ranch hand jobs are entertained himself mine saloons white sulphur springs montana that's where i got my loan for lingo of characters that i now see his good fortune on early adult in those salons six and seven when i was doing my first book is house sky one of the things i did was sit down with five by eight file cards and begin remembering what things were called growing up on a sheep ranch episode as i have are driving all right what we call a fuel cans that we put the use and when they have their lambs joe's and it was a union head to the shed before we drove them about why don't you know i saw some you've got these two very

powerful pieces of memory as well as strong words to go where we multiply that by several thousand file cards and begin to have the makings of a block to me languages says the point of all this that the dance of language on the page as what literature is all about every was identical to the frigid was in the very start of the last of its four appointments became the de waal decisions do we know slut as that rebuilds

what we are with your eyes command and how in hell was i supposed to know that the biggest winners and so the song its way much of the history of weston's three changes all around that's what the great topics for sin it's in our family trees everywhere i look back at my family are trying to sell something that is happening mostly not of the ringling family is come out from wisconsin bought up half the thousands of immigrant parents who were milking cows and intellectual

through it and realizing he somebody you age and so the violent means that the job of one way thought then came the move to seattle to get back get back west within view of bounds in some water at it and i've stayed on in seattle or i suppose it's not been a popular view with with writers the suburbs are good for you but i was sloppy they are people walk to school got shot up and so i have to have this to myself or wrong doing the diaries of a small diaries sound poetic about a

nineteenth century and so i spent the winter of seventy eight seventy nine taking it is to go around the other side so on had lived and recorded his things and did a kind of a biography of the journal i suppose kate flattery is says i've said as far west as in step on the mainland forty eight states but along came specific extremity there are thrust of cliff actually alter both the election all the sharp points of lansky is that the new congress having to devise west west from a logging road i climbed down the forest trail and typically this long thing that happened at the trailhead like our tribal council of male the alarming signs run at high plains extremely dangerous and her own risk file brink of the trail leads up to the va simply snapping all serve palms on the

whole surprisingly little boys when ancel i crouch carefully not to be puffed offer come to peer out the half mile or so to turn to a lighthouse island here at the entrance to the strip on it i think all writers are regional in the sense that it is their place that gives them a sense of who they are and identity or great literature record one who swings from a particular place i think the landscape defines who we are certainly landscapes it's called sure the notion of a bus sitting around writing literature plays bothers me a little bit in that were not to sit around to writing travel often this stuff is hard for vets to lawyers and craft an ardent

everything else landscape empty spaces outdoors and i think things like that are reflected in the difference between eastern and western right he says i tried to do in his battles are critically poor readers into a culture are and crash things that one embassy so that they i do teach them something about it i'm a barrier to go through i think all americans should know something about but it's got a major mind of applause no i'm of roman catholic i disagree frequently with the with the hierarchy but i'm i'm on my faith is important thing and when you find people and you find a lot of money a new regulations food

hair of faith and i believe i like those people i returned to him or their value we have was all the same kind of things that that won't grow older we didn't have indoor plumbing until i was a big teenager we didn't have a telephone with an electricity until again later on in life they'd rather quickly recognized me as a member of the underclass you know on that plaque on the wall with given day to me about the network of expression or appreciation and friendship for authentic way portraying really strengthened the traditional navajo culture one thing that's probably characteristic of western riding our please more common than it is it is the landscape being your mind to the plot in this book and in the passage i'm about her extensive on

the problem is finding a place in an empty roller slams the plot terms of a problem this passage also shows the touchy relationship between and my complete characters to leap on an empty utah arizona new mexico where countries a maze of washes guilty to all ten thousand women are sheltered some fencing know literally scores of thousands one house in the big city that mountain to an area bigger than kinetic occupied by maybe five thousand lloyd hand was a side description that might be useful its location

obviously perhaps she had known that young men smart apparel or with slightly slightly wat tham not exactly it wasn't just the kind of emotion following early on congress with his work he was a romantic reforms that was it man with olive trees casey was like an island of a hundred ninety thousand navajos could live your worry in a wide ocean thousands of them could if they're actually on mutton tactics not practical now won't have to compete in the real unalloyed didn't think far from it i've been accused by critics of time to have of stopping the action describe thunder storm clouds and i admit weakness for that they pour walk the son omar in places a sandstone left it was littered with

hail in places a hot stone city a song for now warming a facade of the warmth of the afterglow favorite from the cliff you are tensely stopping every few yards both a listen and to make sure that he's breathing reminds foreign law once he was followed by a sudden scurrying the road and then destroyed your voice fifth of motion straining bigger more land for coming from somewhere down and then deliver the varga says some of luck and then he was coming forth and many other legal and that the trick was odd because

of wheat plants the petition it's often nausea of the system overwhelmed with gram he was safe for the moment on the ball but you know it's only exposed the bulk phone or i don't have the more for my book the mystery tends to be not so much who did it has a wise leader why i was a rifleman and they were to him and you saw a lot of death i want a cup of decoration was not badly wounded and then i worked as a place for portraits are you workin on we both it orbits of the corner to

talk to you don't know exactly what you're going to do next year is talk on the board couldn't find a way to motivate white policeman and so weezer wants to ration and while we were out there are just before another summit that was an odd thing to do and when i've certainly been that we could see why some of my deadline to unveil and we hurried home and i finished a book that the whole book revolves around a lot of rhythm about as much maybe more nonfiction section of her book of essays published over in all sorts of very long pieces the whole report for profit isolation

are you i want to climb down from the room for white house through they got my shoes off and supply for the shallow water and up and down the screen they don't tell your deposit on each famous and so i looked at a graph the work of basket by going on the saws and hopi and navajo you wander along so familiar all large mammal arms race i think these are messages left for us that we've forgotten how to read remind me of how little space to pick the graphs of how little time so one of things having lived in the west in

the movie are huge social skills that was again really change your idea who we are i think it's easy to stereotype and i think it's easy to say yes there is a character in the american west and it's the cowboy think has been very damaging and i think that's an old story if you just get past the outline of a cowboy hat there's all this other stuff going on back there which is a whole hell of a lot more interesting he began to get the chicano writers a native american or an asian writer sale along the upset the coast women writers writing about their experience as you get a fuller picture and amongst the minority people a as a as we're writing about our lives and that we have a very strong sense that we're also creating and building cultures you know my

mother is my great inspiration but it's not just in a spiritual sense or a quarter a supporter since she actually assigns me things to write about and she wants me to write about unemployment and town so right here i have an assignment to write about an idea that it's much more interesting to me to go on you write about some people who are unemployed it has to come from the person it take experience pain feelings and then you put it and you put it into women's then there is a transformation that has taken place that is art my own father came to the us when he was a teenager they were married in china we have that if you have two children and then and then he

sent my mother fifteen years after he died here a handgun meanwhile in china she got a medical degree she wasn't practicing dr christian church in the united states she couldn't practice and so i said for him or maybe she slipped it with a pair of neo scissors i don't remember her doing it only her telling me about it sometimes i feel very proud that my mother committed such a powerful act upon me at other times i was terrified why did you do that to mean mother i told you tell me again i cut it so that you would not be tongue tied your tongue would be able to move in any language she should've cut more scraped away the rest of the phantom skin because i have a terrible time talking

the dumbness of shame still cracks my voice into even when i want to say hello casually or ask an easy question in front of the checkout counter was questions of a bus driver the woman warrior has in most appropriate subtitle memoirs of a girl who had a mom goes on because this is so very autobiographical into these memoirs night after night my mother would talk story until we fell asleep i couldn't tell whether stories left off and the dreams began after i grew up i heard the chant of final climb the girl who took her father's place in battle instantly i remembered that as a judge child i had followed my mother about the house the two of a singing about how far milan fought gloriously and

returned alive from war to settle in the village i would have to go a woman warrior i wrote about one more year in china man almost as if i were a translator all the time i was building up to me or window i get to use my language which is slang me bert rein in mind they're in florida that's the chance to ninety was overpowering when us saying is a here are cosby made me beauty of the mid sixties i stayed at the bus stop on the corner of our whale owen fulton he was avoiding the corner where the grizzly bear in one rocking the mountain lined with tense shoulders on the opposite rock look down at you and you need thus came along on the cables not to much

later on the ride downtown out the bus window the kids find people who are stranded him in their pastures and gestures there was there you know is blowing their clothes their facial expressions normal humanity mean in all out of pocket he took his real for such bans they carry the notebooks of martin lawrence create in his pecan and read out loud to his fellow riders none of the passengers was telling women to cooler it was pleasant than for them to ride the bus while the milk or shaded unpolished the city's stray dogs whitman has begun a sunday tradition that may lead to a job as a reader riding the railroads and the west along the nsa ocean on the way to wean of mice and men in the mother lode of mark twain and robert louis stevenson

travelers will go to the greeting card to hear that long novels of the country they were riding through four hours every day with most talent was that he couldn't read while writing without getting carsick when his chest down put on a show in which he's included everybody he notes and other reviews have just come in and he's reading them on stage the east meets west inside a sino american theater snaps crackles and hart's light same rights sweet and sour they sent their food critics they they wrote a sound like they were tasting chinese food they think they know what's a wide range of us from sweet to sour because they eat in chinese restaurants i think he tried explaining that history being trapped in people means that history is embodied in physical

characteristics and you know what part of our bodies they find some mysteriously inscrutable it's our little ice they think were sneaking squinting at them through spy eyes and that's why you girls are slicing your ideas openly isn't it i don't like his eyes that have been cut and sewn like she ate something too hot jalapeno know she'll have to meet new guys who will believe she was born like that she'll draw black lines on top of the scars and dated white guys who don't care one way or the other single e n double ah into the city quick pastel barrio chino and of telegraph hill to quit town wooden

cart next to christopher columbus welcome to my state time to sit with him as he opened the car door for her and they went up the stairs that with a stairway of rita hayworth mention how joey elevator doors were in the middle of a mural about workers turning wheels of cable it however after the epa art where women in white hats and a princess angeline milk the golden gate the most bridge like the ridges swept them from the green presidio to them are in heels where the manson the end of the bridge are the same ran fog poured out of the fires his grandmother lived being taken for sunday drives time he would enjoy meeting her they didn't have to worry about media time his family why people don't have families they're free western riding relaxes critic smart enough to

get it i'm always amazed when a critic and reads a piece of work from the weston and just since then i think it's a great surprise i've seen my own work reviewed as odd as if i were chinese and not as if i were an american western writer and we seeing any dancing write poems really tell stories and when health care is that the west if these true grit likes it or not we were cool we're also emotional and intellectual call used for a long long long time and the now or not and are nearly so much the west is really a defining itself with another country and a secretary at a new newsweek showed a couple years ago that in a water is a really formidable show and i know people resented around that's wonderful great writers we are during the students who get here are quite wonderful and come here

to the west i think is that because we don't like that because american oral home and just people on a smith and i have a then forty one during the last best place and just for that one only two or three films so i was two or three short stories that was long essays everybody who needs the left he raised money last but until friday as all layaway you wasting what time we have my own a lot of commentary with bob kane as he speaks of himself the last great essay of experience which i take to be about making the best of what we get he called seneca the life

of a fool is joyous full of trepidation human our holy to the future most of the cuts as hard clay was an sos for your attention toward energy as the waters as their old natural way of the human uncomfortable part of it is quieting down looking touching listening looking smelling we know the rituals of intimacy are we capable of fearing not not sure when a ceo is a story that started in my imagination in the middle nineteen seventies when a friend of mine a woman in tony who has a student actually an insulin in quite well was last break our technicians are dangerous and they're an and always eaten and after a while i thought what is this such a sort

of accepting of that if you can and so i began to direct a story to probably three years there were no crowds anywhere in the long sky reaching off south of weston thinks ports like shown the late afternoon sun that day our sons of the morning climbing along the southern rise of the grange they are the drive probably live breaking on this open burn slow but this was directly out of there she had fallen all this way and his idea was to forestall you see him who felt over there there it was down over someone who auditioned for now which move to make what you can do is go down there with a knife pervasive this letter postman postman how the shooting see if you can do it alison said and so the

cartridge into the firing chamber and handed a rifle to barbie she took what she had been waiting only winning move closer more the ground looking upwards and leafy green rush dollars and lastly the animal he was being watched and running a stop in our stomach the soul of their rarity and gazing down on him nothing but curious dark eyes were soft the terrible hoarder was a stage with a knife still up raised over some waited the schools you want to read it before no one pounds of the act of fortune in some ways what's of the first of a lot of latin in his ability a red sale the tables are was the footprint of about two hundred would change for john deere tractors everything would recognize with other women agribusiness everything there afterwards was changed i've written about her life in and similar cities are

directly and i'm a little bit drained and low pitched in oh for a long while our crops were all any of us could have asked for over five thousand water control devices we constructed of agricultural place and was sacred so it seemed then and all went dead over years but swiftly the way an opera l'enfant land of peat soil began singing leaning on the tailgate of my pickup i first came to my awareness of this valley weren't always lived down a lifeless in some terrible way and i was frightened at that point i was thirty five or six years old i thought you know i really don't want to do this anywhere really i'm not interested in the euro zone or isn't completely nuts about books and read write or sort of thing at the time the roast also getting a divorce for recklessly for a while a member of a father coming in was really simple the world

yourself and i told it wasn't about to graduate from writer for a long time there was a reasonable society and in that part of the west that the i mean it's a hard driving hard drinking goal raising society and i read the middle of it jane russell was upstream along the blackfoot river the asphalt weaving between some fine and fragile music putting out music is an early day it always seems like that idea of those warnings of along the blackfoot stop the wheel in another near outskirts of lincoln i'm wondering for the road and some banter with a hippie girl are wrong after the first hesitation or stopping in such establishment as inevitable and quite enjoyable one after another saying that find blue bowl of heaven and your exquisite freedom or forgotten no more vivaldi it's only noon you're going to take some singing along wondering if the

debate in the country music business by now you all along a dangerous way from home and somewhat disoriented you've drifted into another mythology a lot of traveling and lost highway is a place where you really don't want to be in such a fine spring day once it seemed like a release oh yeah as the consequence such as do we conservation alliance of theatrical doing it anyway this oftentimes an emotional rats nest of rootlessness country music although the worn out with their syncopation there not be another ally terrific support the real thin the big issues of life rather than the shoe box

mentality use of sometimes get off of japan expression manhattan island where the imagined of france of apparent thirty years ago or somebody like screw it becomes silly little musical chord for your novel the things are a lot bigger the consequences are a lot bigger would first have to look at what we see out the window what were reading the book what jobs here is different we want the world to be preserved we think the world is alive in some kind of way many of us at least in the west and i think a lot of other places that robot here are so clearly were for a short time because were outdoors or in the world of the natural world so much if there's a renaissance in western riding i think it's because as people we are recognizing what we're busy and we are losing their land and therefore i think many of us are riding out of a sense of loss i'm writing out of a sense of love writing about a desperate attempt to preserve what remains

is digging in staying put and i'm feeling a deep sense of connectedness and that it's this weird sisters by here and then ten eleven immigration can we live right on the mormon trail and so there isn't a day that goes by that we don't think that they can you know looking out over the eye and say this is the place and there are those of us and an incident to them my people came here on this insistence of sovereignty whenever and grandmothers in six minutes have all have the us tightens

seven are dead that you survive just completed in seeking therapy mediation a moon comes to biopsies for breast cancer and so to move between rich diagnosed as a borderline wouldn't say this is the family history where a mormon family with roots in utah since nineteen forty seven and only one face breast cancer prior to nineteen sixty traditionally as a group of people mormons have a lower rate of cancer a little over a year after mother's death a father know how intended to get coverage isn't assured of the ring dream of mine i told my father that for years as long as i could remember i saw this flash of light in the night in the desert but this image and so permeated by being that i could not venture south without seeing it again on the horizon so his

agency has sent someone to follow because we were driving home from riverside california receiving and diane's law were driving north as las vegas within hours so before dawn when our rising from the desert floor this are clearly this golden standpoint the mission and has had a few minutes of light ashes ringing paying attention was at that moment that i realized that the seed i had been living under children growing up in the american southwest drinking contaminated milk contaminated house even from the contaminated press their mother's my mother members years later of the klan yeah i think you you

uncover stories like this in your family history and you know their comfortable owned by costello and not only metaphorically and physically and i think that's where our own they may get the person to the decision to commit civil disobedience with other women from utah with other family members not only in the name of peace but in the name of the client won best he can and i think this is where once again the politics of place the bird refuge a passion of the land of the natural world the wings and water unknowingly gave birth to politics a place where we really do stand our ground in the prices that we love that that sacred rage because not only the writing but on life refugees the story of the rise of great salt lake during the floods of the nineteen eighties and the demise of the bear river refuge and also about my

mother's diagnosis with cancer i am reminded that what i adore my ear and offer another is inherent in the earth my mother's spirit can be recalled simply by placing my hands on the black hundreds of mountains of the main sense of desert her love her warmth and her breath even her own sovereignty and the waves the wind the sunlight water water in the american west is blind rivers streams creeks become hardened spain's kaplan's van dyke or drink anything and so when you say water you're finished no water no life nothing the land body becomes a point where there's water the desert as

if they're sitting in a solitary travels around the northern stretches of great salt lake and stand in the throbbing silence of the great basin exposed and alone in the severity of a salt desert and i don't know and these five my imagination is fired my heart open tennis passionate instance i will have no other and we many of the teachings within the mormon church i loved deeply the sense of family the sense of community on the sense of accountability the work ethic are in prayer all of those things are central to my life as a spiritual practice the other things that i don't feel comfortable with and the sense of patriarchy

the document that is with any religion it as both a blessing and a burden and there is that set aside company that's what i mean when i talk about writing out of a broken heart and it's never easy to defy convention and i think every time writer picks up the pen you are breaking loyalties because if we tell the truth we have to i can say my life is a shared on that track in the canary twenty years that's right in every living thing there's a desire for

love for the relationship and use in the rest of things those two desires how conscious i have become with love when i refuse into it's like a holiday spirit of an unknown landscape is bought sold and about change or grains to stumble oh and hockey shot and hung by its feet on a barbed wire fence my heart cannot be broken because i never just giving it away what kind of a punishment is this to withhold a motion to restrain her passionate nature in the face of a generous life just to appease our fears and then or woman whose migraines in the heart when the body seems desperately for connection can only expect more isolation and greater ecological decisions our lack of intimacy with each other is in direct proportion to a lack of intimacy with the way we've taken our love inside and abandoned the wild there is something in the west of that

says some it i'm going to find it but oh i didn't find it so where is the time we have to keep going a people i moved around a lot out here simply because among other things boom and bust has made them go heather and beyond us as were presented itself didn't measure ari fans to reflect naturally the kind of people who are trapped into the west and end of it and the people who allen not be broached and realize that there's no place to congress too quick and that tour we need to do is to put the daycare when you look at the navajo people of the shoshone people people who knew tom and we do have models for deep and habitation but i don't think as a westerner of european descent we don't know that yet and that's why i think when the process of discovery i think we have that that formula be the

spanish mexican influence of the west that predates anglo america by centuries by dominic izzo multimillionaire who lives in a good game has great plans for it he wants to build the canals throughout the downtown area of gambling casinos from ineffective steering wheel of the sabbath and stuff like that really this was all found on the soviets how the center of all the faces an important tourist attractions last survey or something deeper than any church shops restaurants and on radio from merchants were complaining about dominance plan they claimed they would lose theirs is at the canal system bypass them healthy with simpler business he fancies for dominick would create a new one about is the a

main character of the novel our young man as talented as a golden gloves boxer and a frank dominic takes him us under his wing and tries to use him advantages stevens instance the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white then you dominic ascribe couldn't dark started the current job you were in central london looking for the safety of the underpass where they could huddle in a cardboard box is homeless people i haven't seen before about why when they leave the sky in the sky plan this crazy dumb and he didn't give a damn about these people nobody did they were like shadows with the people on the street have lost and love lost jobs lost their health last respects they

were shadows you didn't see until you felt was it i think writing is a very strict discipline you have to go to your work like anybody else goes you also have to in a sense meditate on what you're doing enter enter the world you're creating i ran up the steps into the dark vast the church and in effect that the font of holy water with my fingertips and made the sign of the cross lines were already formed on either side of the confessional and the kids were behaving and i each one student about and comparing himself to confess all of this is the father burns my eyes and tried not to be distracted by anything around

me i thought the heart of all the sins that ever committed a necessity many places i could remember i'd beg god forgiveness for my sins over and over i was not satisfied in god i so eagerly sought them is not fair and the understanding i thought the game was not there i had more priests recommend les built the murder of their congregations in april an indiana group probably because if you're sincere about faith then you know that there is all these crises that comes when one tries to achieve faith i was raised in some federal size small town in eastern new mexico large family my father had been out a lot of ranching in his younger days he was a bucket all what are things that

i remember about my childhood is that somehow i never missed not having things life was very rich even though that in terms of money it couldn't diminish is not rich at all and wesley up a monthlong opens up his mind which is what it would be my best and what she represents is i would say a kind of native american guy before him a mentor so whereas before he's had the teachings of the catholic religion or whatever it had to do with western civilization now he sees his indigenous roots which are native american now it is up on poignant to create a synthesis to bring us together rudy muck came to stay with us this summer i was almost seven when she came the beauty of the yarnell unfolded

before my eyes my bare feet felt the throbbing nerves in my body tremble with excitement a step forward into a quick demise and i'm going oh she smiled and i felt the power of a whirlwind sweep around me or islip the surrounding hills and through them saw for the first time the wild beauty of our gills and the magic of the league before the granules of sound that my feet in sky above me seem to dissolve into one strange complete being and william mckinley owl it saw tuning was like a song it's songs seemed to say that it had come to watch over us what to do i knew that those hills cradle of the mysterious hidden lakes but i had never been there and it was a beautiful spot the pond was dark and we're in the water trickles been terrible and over the top of the

dam people point to the golden car will come in and we said for a long time then the polls an arcane huge beautiful form glided the blue waters i could not believe that size it was bigger than me and bright orange the sunlight glistens off its golden scales i felt my body trembling as i saw the bright golden form disappear i knew i had witnessed a miraculous thing that the appearance of a pagan god i interviewed him was room softly only a candle burned in the room and by its light i sat with him of lying on the bed i placed the owl buyer's side and melt at the sight of the bid the owl is did was all i could say not good to smiled weakly but

winging its way to a new place a new time just isn't i am ready to fly to the game i wanted to try out don't die i wanted to really get away from her in the aisle should whisper go west into the hills until you find afford juniper tree there during the owl are quickly i dropped to my knees her hand touched my forehead and her last words were i guess you in the name of all that is good and strong and beautiful and the new and a few spare enters your art look for me in the evenings when the wind is gentle and the owls singing in the hills i shall be with you the spirit of those places where we

can be a rage ruminated regenerated and understand our spiritual connection to the earth have to be preserved and the developers of the west don't understand so i think it's very incumbent upon us as poets and writers to remind our communities of that relationship that we have and how important and if we lose it we lose part of our humanity a lot of writers in the west richard talk about getting back into contact with the self that we are with who we really are and what we really want i can feel the building the culture of the way has to push the edges of the stuff that sets were the greatest lines a good story is this unspoken hunger that can only be addressed and fed through the land through our relationship to the year to something other i feel very connected

to family and community and the spirituality of the place and it was provided by the corporation for public broadcasting to a grant from the pacific mountain at work program planned and viewers like you

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