Cassidy

When John and I moved to our new home in NW Portland last autumn, I was missing Comet and the guinea hens and the deer that grazed in the pasture at dusk. But on the first day, sitting at my desk in my new study, I had a visitation. Directly ahead of me, just outside the window, was a large rabbit. We stared at each other and I said “Hello, Bunny.” He lingered for quite awhile munching on grass while I wrote poetry on my computer. Occasionally we’d both look up at one another in quiet companionship. The next morning he was there again, in the same spot, gazing at me and grazing. He’d show up in the evening as well, nibbling at the quince.

I immediately consulted my dictionary of animal totems: Animal-Speak. It reported that rabbits are known for fertility and new life. This was a propitious sign for our new lives in our house on the hill. Moreover, in Chinese folklore, the rabbit is a sign of sensitivity and artistic abilities. I felt truly blessed.

After about a week, it was time to name the bunny. I came up with Cassidy. When I told a poet friend, Charles Goodrich, that I'd named our feral bunny 'Cassidy,' he smiled and said knowingly 'Neal Cassidy?'


'No,' I said, 'Hopalong Cassidy.' I realize now, with some sadness, that many people will not get the reference to either one.

This spring, another rabbit showed up. A baby. Just one—a very cute one. I watched her  delicately nibble the grass and then stand on her hind legs to reach the azaleas.  I hoped that she wouldn't develop a taste for my beloved peonies. Just to make sure, I put metal cages around the tender red shoots. After a few weeks of daily visits, she became part of the family. I named her Camille after the French poet.


A year has passed since Cassidy first visited. Both rabbits come infrequently now. I realize that I know almost nothing about rabbits—their life span, mating habits, hibernation. I do know that coyotes walk boldly down the street at night. My best guess on the location of their burrow is that it's under the hawthorn bushes. With the hawthorn's sharp thorns and thick foliage for protection, I hope that my rabbits are more wiley than the coyote.

Naming

Name them and they become yours. Think of your children, who are named even before they're born. We name our cars, our books, our homes, our pets. When John and I lived in Kyoto, we inherited two lorikeets from the family next door, who were moving back to England. The birds were always making a ruckus, cooing or chattering to one another. We named them Billy and Cooey. Sometimes we'd leave their cage door open so they could fly around upstairs while we were gone. One day we accidentally left the window open and out they flew. Billy came back, but soon perished from lovesickness.

I love books about animals. Growing up in New England, I read all the Thornton Burgess stories. Reddy Fox, Sammy Jay, Billy Skunk were as real to me as my friends in school. When we moved to our grandparent's farm, my sister and I spent weeks taming the barn cats and giving them secret names. I  still remember the day Pumpkin was run over. Nana lifted her off the road with a shovel and dropped her limp corpse in the ash pile. I watched from the upstairs window and wept at the unceremonious burial.

My friend, Doris Ober, has written a heartwarming book called The Dogtown Chronicles: Our Life and Times with Sheep, Goats, Llamas, and Other Creatures. Doris and her husband Richard populated their ten acres in this small California town with a menagerie of animals: a llama named Lloyd, a ewe named Little Lulu, Scottish Highland steer named Moe and Curly, geese called Mother Goose and Alger Hiss, and goats Mephisto and Isabella, among others. For Doris, born and raised in Manhattan, taking care of animals was a challenge. "Once I understood them, I loved them truly and deeply. This is a most selfless kind of love—love of sheep, love of goats—because understanding them means knowing deep down that they don't love you. Not at all." And we grieve with her when she says, "When they go, there goes part of you. Everything that was between the two of you, vanished."

Maggie and Comet at Bishop's Close, Spring 2009

It is emotionally wrenching to lose an animal through separation or death. This is particularly true of dogs, with their unconditional love. Animals are intuitive. They sense our moods and our needs, sometimes even before we do. As Doris says "The grief we have for people who die is much different than what we feel for our pets—even for the people who have seen our true selves, as the dog and the cat and the horse have—because people are not silent, our love of them and theirs for us is conditional."

When John and I moved out of the house that we'd rented for seventeen years, we also left behind our landlady's Rhodesian ridgeback. Comet spent much of his time at our house; keeping me company as I gardened, sleeping on our porch on hot summer nights, romping and kicking up his heels in the pasture. He was always ready to jump into the back of John's van for a hike, whether we were just walking locally in Tryon Creek park or setting out for an arduous hike in the Columbia River Gorge. Although we did not name Comet or own him, we felt that he was our dog. And he was—for awhile.
                                                                                          
on the eve
of the Year of the Tiger
I dream about our dog
who we left behind
his eyes burning bright

To see photos of the stars of Dogtown and to read more about The Dogtown Chronicles, go to www.dogtownchronicles.com

Wordstock Literary Festival

Kilong Ung and Margaret Chula, Wordstock 2010

On October 9, a large crowd gathered in the Wordstock room at the Expo Center in Portland Oregon to hear Kilong Ung and me read from our new books. I began with poems from What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps, illustrated by posters of quilts by my collaborator Cathy Erickson. Kilong read from his memoir Golden Leaf, A Khmer Rouge Genocide Survivor. The audience was in tears hearing about his last moments with his mother before his parents were taken away and killed. Only he and his sister survived. Our readings were a departure from the plethora of coming-of-age novels and New York Times best seller authors, offering a more reflective and somber note to the weekend of literary events.

Powells' Books sponsored a book signing following each reading. It was fun to meet the other author's who had presented at the same time as me. Because there were six events each hour, I was unable to hear many of my favorite author's read, which was frustrating.

Margaret Chula booksigning at Powell's Books

The high jinx of Wordstock occurred at the Authors' Party held the evening before at the Cleaner's Event Space adjacent to the Ace Hotel. Wine and conversation flowed smoothly and laughter bounced off the walls and ceiling.

I met Chelsea Cain outside the Ace Hotel. We were wearing the same lacy short dress; hers was pastel blue, mine black. This definitely called for a photo!

Margaret Chula and Chelsea Cain hamming it up

Laura Winter and Margaret Chula

Then there was Laura Winter, performance artist and poet. We had a good time perched in the corner, our wine and cheese waiting on the windowsill as we talked about our creative ventures and "Po Business".


For more information about my recent books, visit http://www.margaretchula.com

Just Another Day

Today 10-10-2010 is my birthday. After weeks of activity—giving programs and poetry readings, traveling, teaching workshops—I decided that today I would do as much of nothing as possible. In my readings, I learned that the number ten signifies that the cycle is complete and that everything is in its proper order. Whatever thoughts and feelings are put out on this day will manifest or multiply three times.

At 10:10 a.m. I sat on my meditation cushion, took out a new stick of incense, lit a candle in the shape of a chrysanthemum, and tapped my Japanese meditation bowl three times with a padded stick. As I chanted the Heart Sutra

ma ka han nya ha ra mi ta sin gyo

kan ji zai bo satsu .......

I began to feel that I was inside a cocoon of peace—memories of walking in  the cedar forests of Ohara, monks chanting at Sanzen-in, their breaths visible in the cold morning air, fields of pink cosmos swaying in the wind, the sound of an invisible stream. And I wondered why all my memories of tranquility were set in the past and in another country?

Returning to my body sitting on the cushion, I came to the realization that this moment 10-10-10-10-10 would never come again. What if we lived our lives this way? Cherishing each moment or even each day?

After chanting and meditation, I opened Daniel Skach-Mills’ book The Tao of Now to a random page. Here’s the poem that came to me today.

Twenty-Five

Can you tend a garden

without turning deer and insects

into enemies?

Can you drive a vehicle in winter

without making a menace

of snow?

Can you plan a gathering

without planning on others

to execute and follow your plans?

Practice what’s easy first.

Then, when illness comes,

and finally death,

you’ll be ready

to let go of plans;

drive straight ahead;

attend to what’s being eaten away

without bitterness.

When life moving in

and out of itself

is all you can see,

then you are at peace

with everything.

Copyright Daniel Skach-Mills




The Dao of Now is available at Amazon.com and at the Lan Su Chinese Garden gift shop in Portland.  

Wordstock Reading

Come to Wordstock, Portland's gala literary festival, featuring Portland's finest poets, writers, and publishers.

I'll be giving a reading from What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps, a seven-year collaboration of poems and quilts with fiber artist Cathy Erickson. The reading begins at 2:00 on October 9 on the Wordstock Stage. I'll be sharing the stage with poet Kilong Ung, a Cambodian genocide survivor, who will read from his book.

While reading each poem, I'll show an image of Cathy's accompanying quilt and then talk about how I used the color, texture, shapes and images in her quilts to create my poems.

Visit my website http://www.margaretchula.com to hear me read poems from What Remains. Cathy's quilts can be seen on her website www.cathyerickson.net.

Radiance by Cathy Erickson

Fires on the Mountains, Fires in our Hearts

Margaret Chula reading at the Japanese American National Museum on 9/11/2010

 “When it snows, the San Gabriel Mountains look beautiful,” the Japanese woman at the front desk of the Miyako Hotel Los Angeles tells me. “But sometimes there are fires on the mountains.”

Exactly nine years ago on the morning of September 11, I awoke in Portland smelling smoke. I searched the house thoroughly. There was no fire, yet I felt uneasy. At that moment, on the east coast in New York, planes were crashing into the Twin Towers.

Now on September 11, 2010, quilt artist Cathy Erickson and I presenting our book What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps at the Japanese American National Museum. The room fills up early. Many of the audience were imprisoned in internment camps during World War II. Others are second- or third-generation Japanese Americans who learned about the camps in school, not from their parents, who were too ashamed or emotionally scarred to tell them.

September 11 is a day to reflect on not only the loss of innocent lives, but also the dissolution of human rights. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and transported to ten concentration camps in desolate areas of the country. Seventy percent of them were American citizens. Fifty thousand were children. Not one was ever convicted of a disloyal act.

We begin our presentation with projected images of Cathy’s quilts. The audience oohs and ahhs at their beautiful colors, textures, and creative patterns. As I read my accompanying poems—in the voices of a young boy/a grandmother/a dancer/a carpenter/a teen-age girl—I hear women in the audience quietly weeping.

After the hour is over, I lean against the wall emotionally exhausted. The men and women quietly file out. Several of them come over to me, take my hand, and look me in the eyes. “Thank you for telling our story.”

Visit the JANM site at http://www.janm.org

Tea Party Under the August Sun

Nana Maggie, Shaina, and Angela

On a hot July afternoon this summer I treated our granddaughters Shaina (10) and Angela (8) to a tea party in the back yard. But before the party, we needed to find appropriate outfits. 

"Where are we going?" they asked from the back seat. "On a magical mystery tour," I replied. (We were giving their parents a day off to shop and relax.) John had gallantly offered to accompany us. First we stopped at Trilogy to get a Marx Brothers movie, then to the library for some books to carry them through the week, and finally to our destination—GoodWill, the mother store. 

First, the dresses. The three of us crowded into one dressing room and tried on dress after dress. John stood patiently outside the dressing room and gave his opinion on each outfit. The girls ended up with two dresses each and even I found one that may have been a wedding gown! "Great," says John, "can we go now." Oh, no, we have to find accessories and maybe some shoes. " At the jewelry counter, they each chose beads to match their dresses. Shaina found a pair of shoes and Angela a long flowing scarf. 

Back at home, I brought out all of my mother's and mother-in-law's tea cups, saucers, and a flowered teapot. Yellow daisies, cookies, peppermint tea, a pastel tablecloth, and Japanese fans, completed our party decor. We spoke of gentle things: the rabbit Camille who we had left weed clippings for, the beautiful white roses, the abundant raspberries that we picked each morning for our cereal, and how lucky we were that we were girls and could play dress-up.

Shaina

Angela