Terry Tempest Williams:

An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the field

"It is this tenderness born out of our connection to place that fuels my writing"

(57)

the Serengeti Plains | Artistry of Georgia O'Keeffe | Alaska | Pelham Bay | Bears | Erotics of Place

"A full moon is rising….How I and wait for it echo.…Love always the Earth"

"It is an unspoken hunger we deflect with knives–one avocado between us, cut nearly in half,..."


In the Country of Grasses


An elephant herd crosses the wide Serengeti plains. [JVS, 1989].

On the Serengeti she writes that her guide:
clutching a handful of grass as a sign of humility because grasses are "where the source of his power lies."

p. 12.

The Architecture of a Soul 15

Shells from the beach:

"They remind me of my natural history, that I was tutored by a woman who courted solitude and made pilgrimages to the edges of our continent.

that beauty, awe and curiosity were values illuminated in our own home."

In Cahoots with Coyote (Georgia O'keeffe painted like one)

"She transformed desert landscapes into emotional ones."

p. 20.
Red Hills with bones

"The art of perception is deception‹a lesson Coyote knows well"

p. 21.

Hopi and others refer to the Coyote as a trickster.
1916 Palo Duro Canyon, west Texas
"O'keeffe saw this cut in the earth a a burning seething cauldron, almost like a blast furnace full of dramatic light and color."

Deep Woods of Sitka, Alaska,

"Wolf Pole is the totem with a village watchman atop of a wolfs head, holding the tail of a salmon in his feet, - a sockeye salmon poised to swim "downriver" (?)

Uncle was born (breech) feet first, but deprived of sufficient oxygen at birth to leave him with seizures throughout his life.

Normal is a motif here as she uses two cultures juxtaposed to ask what is normal? (Norma Jean)

Latin: normalis, norma, a rule; conforming with or constituting an accepted standard, model, or pattern, especially corresponding to the median or average of a large group in type, appearance, achievement, function, or development."
p. 29.

 

Water Songs

American Museum of Natural History, NYC

p. 39.

flight

Black Crowned night Heron, red winged blackbirds, cattails,
"brought together by birds."

p. 40.

"the beauty inherent in marshes as systems of regeneration"

p. 43.

"Pelham Bay is her home, the landscape she naturally comprehends, a sanctuary she holds inside her unguarded heart."

p. 48.


Undressing the Bear

Bear stories bear becomes a woman, dream of embracing the beast

p. 52.

"For me, it has everything to do with undressing, exposing, and embracing the feminine."

p. 53.

"a commitment to the wildness within" "our hunger for connection..."
We are taught not to trust our own experience."

Paradox preserves mystery, and mystery inspires belief."

Ancient association of female qualities, "the Feminine, and Bears, ursus arctos. Artemis, Callisto

p. 53.

Artemis is Ursa Major, Pole star the axis mundi of the heavens

p. 54.

"we commit our vulnerabilities not to fear but to courage – the courage that allows us to write on behalf of the earth, on behalf of ourselves."

p. 59.

"Echos are real, not imaginary."

Ecosystem is compared to an echo - system in Yellowstone National Park playing on words and the reverberation inherent in both meanings.

p. 81.

William's meanings

The Open Space of Democracy