CUMSHEWA HEAD
8:40 AM Apr 25/90

we 3 technophiles
spun out of cultural orbit
cultivating coincidence
kneel here on wet moss
at Kingui Beah
getting farther

sometimes we wonder
why bother with a wilderness experience?
as I listen to this peculiar echo
I feel the answer will come from within
afraid of something?
almost, of leaving footprints

Paul's shooting a collapsed tribal house
with Skedans village
& the Louise Island clearcut
quite near, across the Inlet

We find an arch covered by the waves
& wonder stupidly
why did Nature make this?
for a wedding ceremony, says Alfred
or a human sacrifice, I think.

I'm hearing & seeing
smelling & feeling
and still thinking
as I shoulder my machines

Did I come here to think?

Kathy called from Toronto last night
- wanting to get pregnant
to trick her urban body into fecundity

Listening to natural sounds to plunder
all I can hear is boots on rocks
a tripod clanking
the sounds of hiking
but even these become my immediate environs

What do we take from here?
Our tired bones.
I address those in fear of violation
by our peculiar fascination.
This place is tribal property but
this sense of place is personal realization.

We achieve fulfillment
by experiencing this emptiness
Refreshing our enthusiasm
by taking the fresh air into us.

No-one can live here
but you can visit.

Up!
Up!
There.
Down!
we whack bush
the jumped-up salal
leading following
leaping falling
on the 2nd part of our trip
the danger adrenalin of
rock climbing, cliff hanging
slowly giving way to the
soggy exhaustion
the sweaty, steady plodding
up steep mossy hills
searching for plastic ribbons
marking a grown-over trail.

My companions share
the Cumshewa Head-
ache
from the fresh air
& the exertion.

Tomorrow
back in civilization
I'll return to my sedentary
repetitive mind-numbing tasks
Withdrawn from this wilderness
I'll no longer be able to contemplate
a primitive existence.

Oh yes, let's admire the rocks.
Shall we?
The terrain dares us
to master geology.
How marvelous! but why
and how persist.
These questions need not
remain unanswered.
But the inspiration for our curiosity
must never dissipate.
Go see these rocks. And walk
along the shore, the way we walked.
Word are words, and rocks are rocks.

ARRIVAL
Four white guys landed here
at Kingui Beach on Cumshewa Head
early this morning in the Spring of 1990
with the burden of their civilization

Laden with the trappings of technology
they seek to shed the veneer of manners
These Johnny Come Latelys arrive with
an Attitude.

AN APPEAL

Art, Nature, property and politics
like eggs in milk must be whisked to mix
The distance we have come today is all
that allows us to speak the words we must say.

Don't shut us out! You are aware
Our photographs do not steal your soul.

IN THE CAVE

Just silence.
In the womb of rock we can talk,
about our formative years
& anticipate the form we'll take
when we emerge, laughing
past the vulva littered with shells
no-one knows how old
& over the slippery, dangerous &
mountainous puzzle of logs
that hides this primjitive cave from the beach.

APPEAL (2)

Since, as artists, we deal with illusion
we are not gods; we start with everything & create
nothing. We take from your land the most valuable
thing and bring nothing to your potlatch.
A closed policy is always easier to
deal with. You know what you want
when you're told what you should want.
Thus you don't have to sort my words for truth.

--

It is 20 years now since our visit to Cumshewa Head
we are long scattered, ambitions neglected,
friends forgotten, even their names lost.

We returned to the world, and the world returned to us.
A little celebration of friends was held,
there was punch drunk, painting and sculpture displayed,
and music was played, and it faded away.

But the feeling persists through the long years since,
the sounds of the shore and the voices in the cave still echo,
and politics has had its way with history.

Though we may have survived, or one of us has passed away,
or abandoned art, knowing its intimate ephemereality,
there is no doubt. This event is part of my personal history,
and it is shared. These words speak of this event.
I dedicate them to Canada. Be their custodian!

Ammo
January 27, 2010
===============
Alfred Muma's paintings from music can be viewed on this page.

Dec 22/93
writing without reading/fighting, but not bleeding
living in a vacuum - what a sin!
to let it all out, I think, or keep it within -
but will nobody ever see this ink?

[RE: CODCO Plays] Jan 5/94
Weeks gone. delving into memories
Nostalgia caught up with me
20 years down the road
eating my dust all the way
here to show me how much I've slowed

What was it about those people
that turned me against success?
Was that a play they played for me
that I swallowed hook, line and sinker?
Or am I too passive, too much the Thinker?
[finally, I must admit, YES!]

Feelings were a science to me
in them days, I was a licensed amateur;
Now double those years, I'm barely born
A stranger in this town, for sure;
Upright, passé, unfree, unreknowned.
[and seeking a cure]

Christmas before Dad died
he drove me to the back-whacker
with a pain in the neck;
was it psychosomatic, he grilled,
or was I a total wreck?

Memory's a poor judge
& my diaries are scattered; while
Living life is finished for me now --
my boys will do that job & write,
"For Dad, that's all that mattered".
["and he left us all these files!"]