Taos Writers Part II / Venus Envy

January 18, 2010

Last month in the Fly, I presented the debuts of two writers who began exploring their life’s experiences in my Workshop in Memoir at UNM-Taos. Here are two more. All are writing at a level surpassing most graduate writing programs.

Peter Callan—who as a boy in Arizona played with the sons of Art and Susan Bachrach, owners of Moby Dickens Bookshop—moved to Taos last year and decided to write about some of his adventures in a long career in hotel and hospitality work. He has a million stories, and this one is about “A Commitments New Year’s Eve.�

“In 1993 I was living in London. My best childhood friend, Aliza, came to visit, and when she decided to stay longer, we took a coach cruise from London, north through Manchester and the green rolling hills, ending up at Holy Head in Wales, where we boarded a very large ferry and crossed the choppy and white-capped Irish Sea to the port of Dublin. Upon arrival, we taxied and checked into a posh hotel in Temple Bar District and settled in for the holiday festivities. Early in the evening, hungry, we wandered into the hotel bar. Were we nerdy Americans too early? No, we were almost too late! The pub was already crowded with hearty, singing Irish. Black leather jackets, black leather boots, happy red faces. The band for the evening, we found out after taking our seats at the bar, was The Commitments, who had become pretty famous a couple years earlier in a popular film of the same name that chronicled their coming of age.

“It was loud, crazy fun. I had never been a big fan of the dark frothy Guinness until that evening, but each pint was better than the one before it. As the evening wore on, then came the stinging shots of Irish whiskey. The crowd was outgoing, assertive, and aggressive, even, in their rowdy friendliness. The night had a foreign, earthy, cold-steamy-winter-sexiness to it I had not previously experienced.

“Sometime after 11:00 p.m. but well before midnight, a boozy but happy and charming Aliza looked at me and winked and nodded toward a young man who was ordering a drink at the bar. She leaned over and said, ‘that one looks like he’s moved a brick or two around the yard!’ … i.e., healthy, hearty, horny. Knowing her as I do after all the many years of our shared lives, birthdays, and family holidays, I took it as a clue that she wanted me to make some kind of contact and see what happened. I stood up, turned around and tapped him on the shoulder.

“‘Hey mate! I gotta friend who wants to wish you a Happy New Year.’
“He turned around, looked at me and then her. ‘Grand! I’m David! Bloody hell, who’s your lovely friend?’

“A year later, on New Year’s Eve, they were married in Edinburgh, Scotland. It hasn’t been one of those starry and fake fairy tale romances, but there they are—still together, 16 years later, to this day!�

Amy Miller spent two years living with her husband, Shiloh, in the canyons of Red Mountain above Abiquiu. Town residents called them “The Mountain People.� They shot, trapped, caught and gathered their meat, fish and plant food. “Shiloh had lived a life I had only dreamed about,� she writes. In this episode, Amy tells of a conflicting encounter with a coyote she admired, but that her husband killed:

“Shadowing morning silence and dampened dewed sweet earth fill my consciousness. My sleepy eyes open. Yowling in the distance heralds yet another morning. My old friend is back, taunting the hills of Death Valley above where we slumber. My curiosity, like so many other mornings, entices me to peek out and see where the elusive creature I so admire has perched itself today. Like a painting, the young coyote bold and sharp sat on the hill, and howled.

“I softly pat the motionless body lying quietly next to me. ‘Wake up.’ As Shiloh awakes, he seeks my warmth and intimacy. A gentle warm softness brushes against my inner thigh. ‘No baby, listen, look outside, the coyote’s back.’ Shiloh’s lids open. His piercing blue eyes focus. Young and tired, he looks at me with a hint of mischief and curiosity. As I crawl over him he positions himself to imply he’ll come back to me later.

“Suddenly Shiloh lunged with a great force, swiftly pulling the gun from the tent floor. He’s outside the tent before I can stop him. His pursuit of the coyote is speedy. The shocking sound fills me with terror. I hope with all my might that he misses. But he never misses, I think to myself.

“I wait in silence, listening for something … anything. I could never get used to this, I tell myself, this is murder! I had loved animals as a child, their softness against my cheek, fur in my fingertips. Coyotes were a lot like a small dog and I loved dogs. How could I let this happen?

“After I helped Shiloh carry the skinned coyote back down to camp, its wet ligaments slippery in our hands, I told myself that no matter what, we would use the entire coyote including the bones for medicine. Its early winter fat will be used for butter; the hide will be tanned and worked for clothing and blankets. The skull will be boiled and cleaned for protection purposes and his bones will be filed and used for beads. Even the leftover bones will be thrown to the earth to provide food for the mice, I thought confidently. I will begin to look at this as a positive learning experience that shapes me as a woman and a mate.�
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Venus Rises while Envy Spreads

After a seven-year hiatus, Venus Envy, an art and literary magazine based out of Taos, is being resurrected. Submission guidelines are as follows: Up to three poems (one-hundred line limit) or two works of prose (2,500 word limit) can be submitted per quarterly reading cycle. Visual art is also accepted and should be sent as a j-peg. Open to all styles, flavors and genres, quality being the key. Submissions can be emailed to venusintaos@gmail.com, or snail-mailed to: Venus Envy, c/o Ned Dougherty, P.O. Box 120, Taos, NM 87571. Deadline for the spring issue is February 28th.

Contributors will be paid $10 (check or Pay-pal). Accepted or rejected, you will be notified. If your work is accepted you will be asked to send us a short bio, and if you live in Taos, or can make it here, you will be invited to read your work at our publishing party.