Joanna Wiebe

Eat your heart out, Joanna Wiebe, 1977

All moons, all years, all winds, reach their completion and pass.

Just as blood flows to its place of silence,

it also achieves its thrones of power and authority.

The radiant gods

measure out our time of celebration;

measure out the time we know the benevolence of the sun

measure out the time when the stars look down on us.

And until the end, in vigilance, these gods we have ensnared inside the stars,

also look down on the cosmos from outside time and place.

Chilam Balam de Chumayel, translated from Spanish versions, by Joanna Wiebe

The Mayan Chilam Balam books are named after towns in the Yucatec area of Mexico and usually a mishmash of Mayan and Spanish traditions. The Yucatec Mayas ascribed these to a legendary author called Chilam Balam, a chilam being a prophet.  The topics include history, calendrics, astrology and herbal medicine. Originally written in the Yucatec Maya language, in European script, the manuscripts date to the 18th and 19th centuries and earlier.  There are many Spanish translations, including those of Barrera Vásquez & Rendón, Reifler Bricker & Miram, and Roys.

This translation is a work in progress. I have been working on it since 1976.

NOTE: I have a more recent (and better) translation, which can be found at: http://joannawiebe.com/2009/12/15/all-moons-redux/

The night before  Beverly’s  Celebrating the Arts salon, my son suggested that my husband read the male voices in the chapter. So Tim was the voice of Earl Grey, Baudillio, the owner of the Guatemala City Ford garage, and the Transcendental Meditation teacher. My friend Deborah volunteered to be the voice of Bruce, a full-blooded Choctaw in a pink Chanel jacket. It worked very well It was definitely more dramatic than had I read the chapter by myself.

I truly enjoyed being in front of an audience which appeared to be listening with interest as the chapter unfolded. When I read a word or a phrase that didn’t ring true to the story, I felt it in my bones.  Also, reading the chapter helped me uncover a section which needed obviously needed more exposition, as some people in the audience just didn’t get the depth of despair which led my main character to start to bawl out loud, in the middle of a dusty market full of Guatemalan shoppers.  There are some sentences which I excised from that passage quite awhile ago, which might just do the trick in establishing a greater degree of audience empathy, and I am going to dig them out and see if they might work — or else I’ll just write some new sentences.

So now I am a big fan of reading aloud. Who else wants to hear a chapter?

The art is from the program cover, designed by Beverly’s friend Twisha.

Tomorrow night is my friend Beverly’s Celebrating the Arts salon, when I am going to read from my book, Wild and Precious Life. There will be a microphone!  More than 25 people in the audience!

Finally today I decided which chapter to read: Chapter 11, which is entitled “Poem”, and which begins by quoting Adrienne Rich: “The moment of change is the only poem.”

Ah — I just had an idea. I’ll make cards with that quote on them and hand them out to everyone!

Chapter 11 is about my soul’s moment of bankruptcy.  In Chapter 11, I have a juicy, never-ending cold.  Chapter 11 is as a tough as Guatemala City Kentucky Fried Chicken. And it’s in the chapter — Guatemalan KFC, that is– nasty dark thighs with not enough of the salty, crispy bits with their special blend of herbs and spices that drives me mad with desire to poke around in the bottom of the tub to see if there isn’t just one more morsel of crunchy goodness clinging to the grease there. Hardly any of that stuff, just stringy brown over-fried meat with some kind of almost-burned cracker crumbs on it.

How do you do a literary reading, anyway?  Just stand up and start reading?  Should I stop and ask if anyone has any questions? How dramatic should I be?

I guess I’ll just wing it.