i put a spell on you • (halloween suite)

MY FATHER IS A RETIRED MAGICIAN

(for ifa, p.t., & bisa)

my father is a retired magician
which accounts for my irregular behavior
everythin comes
outta magic hats
or bottles wit no bottoms
& parakeets
are as easy to get as a
couple a rabbits
or 3 fifty cent pieces/ 1958

my daddy retired from
magic & took
up another trade cuz
this friend of mine
from the 3rd grade
asked to be made white
on the spot

what cd any self-respectin colored american magician
do wit such a outlandish request/ cept
put all them razzamatazz hocus pocus zippity-do-dah
thingamajigs away cuz
colored chirren believin in magic
waz becomin politically
dangerous for the race
& waznt nobody gonna be made white
on the spot just
from a clap of my daddy's hands

& the reason i'm so peculiar's
cuz i been studyin up on my daddy's technique
& everythin i do is magic these days
& it's very colored
very now you see it/ now you
dont mess wit me
i come from a family of retired
sorcerers/ active houngans
& pennyante fortune tellers
wit 41 million spirits critturs & celestial bodies
on our side

i'll listen to yr problems
help wit yr career yr lover
yr wanderin spouse
make yr grandma's stay in heaven
more gratifyin
ease yr mother thru menopause &
show yr son
how to clean his room

YES YES YES 3 wishes
is all you get
scarlet ribbons for yr hair
benwa balls via hong kong
a miniature of machu picchu

all things are possible
but aint no colored magician in her right mind
gonna make you white
i mean
this is blk magic
you lookin at
& i'm fixin you up good/
fixin you up good n colored
& you gonna be colored all yr life
& you gonna love it/ bein colored/ all yr life/ colored & love it
love it/ bein colored/

Spell #7 from Upnorth-Outwest Geechee
Jibara Quik Magic Trance
Manual for Technologically Stressed
Third World People

Ntozake Shange

c copyright ntozake shange 2009

My friend from Asia has powers and magic, he plucks a blue leaf from the young blue-gum
And gazing upon it,
gathering and quieting
The God in his mind, creates an ocean more real than the ocean, the salt, the actual
Appalling presence,
the power of the waters.
He believes that nothing is real except as we make it.

I humbler have found in my blood
Bred west of Caucasus a harder mysticism.

Multitude stands in my mind
but I think that
the ocean in the bone vault is only
The bone vault's ocean:
out there is the ocean's;
The water is the water,
the cliff is the rock,
come shocks and flashes of reality.
The mind Passes, the eye closes,
the spirit is a passage;
The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself;
the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

Robinson Jeffers

turning mother goose • (halloween suite)

three dames walk into a bar: a witch, a hag, and mother goose. 'aha!' cries the bartender -- 'it's the triplets!' am i the only one it took so long to figure this out?

the elements of cats, brooms, and good old age appear so often in illustrations of all three, that one becomes confused just trying to get it straight.

"The existence of demons and the efficacy of witchcraft were accepted facts throughout the world in 1692. The Puritans of Salem Village were certain of the devil's hand in every incident of evil they suffered, from petty misfortune to apalling tragedy. Witches and agents of 'the ould deluder' Satan delivered to the people of the commonwealth all manner of torments: deadly epidemics of smallpox; murderous raids by Indians; and ignorant children."

The Witches of Salem were hanged. This was less painful than the burning of witches in Europe. They thought the burning of a witch was the only way to release the evil, since the Devil would be forced to exit the melting body through the smoke.

Witchcraft in Massachusetts singled out:

• spinsters
• barren women
• the ugly
• the extremely successful
• the independent
• the reclusive
• the litigious
• the willful. 1

i can assure you, i am every single one of these (well, maybe not litigious), and i suppose i am also, now, old -- or at least to the degree these other women are. and while i have no goose, i do have a cat.

would you need more proof?

let's look at that list once more: every single item challenges authority (usually male). if one is any of these she must be punished or laughed at or belittled: silenced.

to live the quiet, solitary life, free and in constant communication with the birds and spiders and fish, and the cat, to tend the garden, read a book, answer to no one....

There was an old woman
tossed up in a basket
Seventeen times
as high as the moon;
Where she was going
I couldn't but ask it,
For in her hand
she carried a broom.

"Old woman, old woman,
old woman," quoth I,
"O whither, O whither,
O whither, so high?"
"To brush the cobwebs
off the sky!"
"Shall I go with thee?"
"Aye, by and by."
•

Old Mother Goose,
When she wanted to wander,
Would ride through the air
On a very fine gander.

Jack's mother came in,
And caught the goose soon,
And mounting its back,
Flew up to the moon.

•

The words of the original Old Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme can be interpreted to find a darker meaning to the identity of ' Mother Goose'! The title ' Mother Goose ' probably originates from the 1600's -- the time of the great witch hunts. Comparisons can be made between the Mother Goose in the above children's poem and the popular conception of a witch during this era!

• Witches were able to fly (the broomstick has been replaced by a goose).
• A witch was often portrayed as an old crone (with no man to defend her
against accusations of witchcraft).
• Witches are closely associated
with living alone.
• Witches were known to a have 'familiars,' most often cats but also owls. 2

so who am i now? from east or north? good witch, bad witch, in-between? & i know it doesn't matter. i'm a happy old woman, with cat, with garden, of modest means and expectations, will the iris open, will the spider catch the fly?

An Index to the Panama Pacific International Exposition

California's Magazine.
Pan-Pacific Expo edition

University of Colorado Digital Sheet Music Collection

PPIE Clickable Map!

San Francisco Memories: The PPIE

PPIE 'Official Program' Guidebook

The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco: PPIE

DONALD G. LARSON COLLECTION ON INTERNATIONAL

EXPOSITIONS AND FAIRS

The Herbst Theatre Brangwyn Murals

Panama-Pacific from CALISPHERE

The Evanescent City

Artists from the Fair

San Francisco Bay Area Postcard Club: PPIE

The International studio, Volume 59: Women @ the PPIE

Found sf

Remnants of a Dream: a search for the Jeweled City's relics.

California Historical Society: the PPIE Orange Crate

Books About California: Panama Pacific Exposition

PPIE @ archive.org

The dream city: its art in story and symbolism

PPIE @ googlebooks

History of the Palace of Fine Arts

San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

PPIE: San Francisco’s Finest World’s Fair

Presidio of San Francisco: PPIE

the panama-pacific, that is! • part 4

just gaze for a moment at this spot which really existed for a few short months, about a hundred years ago, as its city still reeled from its earthquake and fire, and while the rest of the world warred on.

can you imagine? wonderland indeed.

you've come to see the murals and the french painters, and now see the statues. there are more statues at this fair than you can look at in a week and a half, and that is just the beginning.

you can see the bathing beauties,

then fifteen minutes later you can go listen to john philip sousa and his band play a march.

you can visit, with- out leaving the fair, yellowstone, the grand canyon, or even mt fuji.

perhaps you're curious about panama itself -- well then visit there -- or maybe china, or samoa, or, other nations far and near.

or maybe, after visiting the national parks, and then japan, you decide to visit hawaii, as you've just heard hawiian music for the first time and you couldn't keep your those hips from swingin' to one of the many new songs introduced at the fair (even irving berlin had one) that then went on to make it big all over the world.




but the palace of fine arts keeps drawing you; you see some japonisme,

but maybe less than you had expected, given what you'd seen in europe just one year ago.

you love being introduced to tonalism and now that you have spent more than a week in san francisco with it's cover of fog all day, even in the summertime!, you understand why the tonalists use such muted colors.

and since you loved her husband's mural, you are thrilled to learn his wife's a painter too.

lots of etchings are exhibited, but nothing like the won- drous work from nabis or any of the other new-century art trends that you'd seen overseas.

and what they did show was usually without color and sometimes even appeared to have travelled back in time while the rest of the world moved forward. were the american judges classically trained and old-fashioned?

why were so few of the prints and paintings so far less colorful and free as the murals. certainly not that guerin guy.

and yet, is there any way to say that this has not been a dream with sincere magic? has not your heart been lifted and your mind eased and entertained?

and in the end you are grateful, very grateful, for all the colors
of the jewel city.

(tomorrow more references than you can shake a stick at)