Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

"The Right Prayer Bundles" (c) 2007

"The Right Prayer Bundles, Bear Butte State Park, South Dakota" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

"From the Desk of Al Swearengen"

"From the Desk of Al Swearengen"

[Al, talking to the Indian Head in the Box]

"Watching us advance on your stupid Tipi, Chief, knowing you had to make your move, did you not just want first, to fucking understand? Huh?"

"A 100,000 Prayers" (c) 2007

          
"A 100,000 Prayers, Bear Butte, South Dakota" © 2007 Stu Jenks

 

June, 1982:

 

I went to Bo's wedding in Chicago. Nice girl, Cathy. We were all surprised. (Bo had a long history of dating crazy girls. Cathy wasn't. They recently celebrated 25 years together.) I then proceeded West. Plan was a bit vague. First visit Eric in San Francisco and surprise Lisa while I'm there (She wasn't happy to see me), then swing south to Tucson and visit my Uncle Len and Aunt Virginia for the first time. (My Chevy Two broke down there, I became lovers with my cousin's roommate, had my first real live Déjà Vu in my life and feel in love with the desert. After returning to North Carolina it wasn't six mouths before I was back in Tucson.) I had plenty of Pot, some mushrooms and some acid with me. Ate the  psilocybin on the drive up to Chicago, switched to Acid in Minnesota. Saw wheat fields below huge violent storm clouds in South Dakota. Saw the Badlands and more magnificent rain near Wall. And for some reason I stumbled onto Bear Butte. Don't know how I found out about it. I hiked to the top that day and placed a whirligig there as my prayer token. I remember halfway up the mountain, that the acid and the pot had been overpowered by the spiritual energy of the place. I remember a saying by Bo, that Pot is OK for boring things but for exciting, and powerful places, it just takes away from it. He was right. I knew some about the plight of the Plain Indians in 1982. Was deeply moved by all of the prayer bundles on all of the trees. But I was still spiritually and emotional lost and confused. Didn't make me a bad person. Just an artistically flaky guy, who couldn't face his own inadequacies, much less face life on life's terms.

 

Monday, October 15^th, 2007:

 

My brain no longer runs on THC and LSD, but my veins do have caffeine and nicotine in them this morning. I have my own tobacco prayer bundles with me this time. Tony instructed me well on how to make them. 'Use the colors of red, black, white, and yellow,' he said. 'Cut the cloth into two to four inch squares, take a pinch of tobacco and as you place it on the cloth and tie the bundle, pray for a specific person or thing.' That's just what I did last week in my studio.

I'm now in the parking lot at Bear Butte State Park. Round 9 a.m. One other car and no one else. Even the visitors' center is closed for the season. The mountain is mostly naked of trees now. Bad fire came though in 1996, but it's still beautiful. I grab my camera gear, my water and my bundles and head for the trailhead. The summit's obscured with early morning rain clouds. I can put up my hand and feel the power of the place.

Immediately I start seeing prayer bundles. I smile. I bet some folk just don't need to get to the top. 'You go, son,' says the old Cheyenne man with bad hips. 'I'll just tie mine here and wait for you at the truck.' It's very cold, around freezing today. Got the heavy coat, hat and gloves on. I pull the bill down of my cap, to shelter my glasses from the drizzle and press on.

All the way up, I see bundles. Small ones, large ones, long ones, short ones. I fell pulled up the mountain as if by unseen hands. 90% of the trees were destroyed in the fire but that just means that almost every surviving Pine has a prayer bundle or two or twenty tied to its branches. It's pretty easy hiking until I accidentally get off the trail near the top and have to crab it up the final hundred yard of talus rock to get to the summit. But that's fine. A little healthy struggle is a good thing. In no time, I'm 1200 feet above the Great Plains below.

What is it about a spiritual place be it Bear Butte, a holy place for Lakota, Cheyenne and other Indians for hundreds of years, or St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral in Santa Fe, or Norte Dame in Paris or The Standing Stones of Callanish in Scotland. Is it about the place alone? The rocks, the buildings themselves? I don't think so. I think it's the collective prayerful energy over many years that transform a mountain or a church into a deeply holy place. It's the people bringing their energy, day after day, leaving their hopes, sadnesses, joys and fears that makes Bear Butte and other holy places the psychically glowing spots they are. It's the product of a 100,000 prayers by 100,000 people.

Sometimes I just can't speak about what I experienced. The talking just doesn't work. And coming from me, that's saying something, that speech become limited. It's like trying to describe what a Chopin Nocturne sounds like to someone who can't hear. Like attempting to specifically quantitate the chemistry between lovers, and tell someone else who has never felt that passion. It's seems wanting, words do sometimes. Music sometimes can do it. Art, Dance too. Words are far down the line I think, at least to me. Maybe Charles could brew up some phrases, but I'm having a hard time.

So:

I had some experiences on top of Bear Butte. I took some pictures. I have no adequate words.

I can tell you this. This has words.

On the way down, I said to myself, " I want to come back here and hike this peak again, in 25 years, when I'm 77 years old."

Without hesitation, the quiet still voice within and without said, "You keep doing what you are doing, and you ain't going to make it to 77."

I didn't even have to ask but I did.

"You need to quit smoking. Not today, not next week but within a year," it said.

"I figured it was that," I said to the disembodied voice.

"And you also need to get more sleep. That's hurting you too."

"OK, OK!"

"And finally."

"There's more?"

The still voice repeats, "And finally, you need to stop eating so late at night."

"Anything else I need to change?" I was mildly pissed, but mostly amused. I figured the smoking, but I didn't expect a little list of inadequacies.

"That's it. Quit smoking, sleep more, and eat earlier."

I'm smiling but it's a weak grin. I sometimes forget that when you visit a holy place, what God, Goddess or your Gut has to say, will at least half of the time be things you'd rather not hear. But on the flip side, the benefits are greater and magnificent yet difficult to describe.

Like the power of the colorful bundles on Bear Butte.

 

Halloween, 2007:

 

I was inspired by what I saw at Bear Butte. Could see that objects I want to make in my mind's eye. Mentioned the new project to a friend or two. They didn't seem too excited about it, or maybe they were worried about the fallout from the Indian community.

Usually I don't write about art projects before I do them, but it feels right here, or maybe I'm just want validation from the blogosphere. Probably I just need to say it alound and see what hell or heaven transpires.

Well, here goes:

I going to make my own prayer bundles, different from the Plains Indians but similar enough that I'll probably be accused of ripping them off, or different enough that I'll catch shit either way. But again, I've seen them in my mind for days, weeks, while on my trip and after. They're big, long, colorful, made not with tobacco but with lavender flowers. Hung from walls as well as from trees. Hung in homes and in the desert. And they will be both give away also sold. Flame on.

In my defense, the reason I'm moved to make these Lavender Bundles is to make objects that are specifically spiritual, not just implied like in my circle, hoop and spiral photos but explicitly for worship, meditation and prayer. It will give me great joy to see one of these hung in a friend's bedroom or a stranger's hallway, as an object of prayer. I'll take the risk of heat. I'm not using tobacco. I'm not trying to be an Indian. I'm just going where the Muse takes me, and I think it's going to take me to Aqua Vita to buy lavender and Jo-Ann's to buy fabric this weekend.

Stay tuned. We'll see what happens.

And Happy Halloween to you all and Happy Birthday to my mother Mary.

 

 

"Bullock Hotel, Deadwood, South Dakota" (c) 2007

"Bullock Hotel, Deadwood, South Dakota" © 2007 Stu Jenks

            David Milch's HBO Series "Deadwood" is easily my favorite show to ever be on TV. I own all three seasons on DVD and just this last weekend I watched a few hours of Season Two while waiting for the windshield repairman to arrive. I think I drove through the town of Deadwood in 1982 but I can't be sure. I sort of remember Lead, its sister city, that just up the hill but not Deadwood.
            I wasn't completely blindsided to the changes in Deadwood. I'd checked out their town's website and it looked a bit touristy. But as Gregory Bateson once said, 'The map is not the territory,' nor is a website the place either.
            I drove up the road to Deadwood at sunset, Dylan playing in the CD changer, a big smile of my face. Wounded Knee had been very moving, saw some prairie dogs in the Badlands on the way, and finally, the skies had cleared and I was seeing sunshine for the first time all day. I was very excited.
I entered town and quickly saw that Deadwood was just Tombstone on Steroids. (Tombstone is a two-bit tourist trap an hour plus south of Tucson. It's got its cheesy gunfight, got its Chinese souvenirs, got it tourist bars disguised as dives.) Or like a Bisbee that did not die. (Bisbee, Arizona is a cooper mining town, south of Tombstone, that died in the 1920's, was reborn in the 1960's as a hippie artist enclave and is now trying for another Renaissance, another rebirth, that never seem to take.) Someone has sunk a shitload of money into Deadwood you could tell. There's gambling but I quickly found out that it's just chicken shit gambling: Video Poker and Slots. No table games. No craps. No roulette. Nothing real. At least Ely, Nevada had blackjack and craps in its old hotel. A new Holiday Inn had taken up a whole corner of old downtown, and the fake knickknacks were ubiquitous.
            I drove around the block and settled on staying at the Bullock Hotel, a recent reasonably authentic restoration of Seth's old place. Seems that it was a dive hotel until being gutted and overhauled 10 years ago. I got to admit, for $70, the room was quite nice. Thick red pile carpet that you don't see in the vast majority of hotels and motels. A comfy bed and a nice bath too.
            After I'd settled in I decide to go for a walk around town. After a quick recon of the faux Western bars on Main Street, I took a hike up the hill to see Bill Hickok and Jane Cannery's graves. It was a steep climb but it felt good. The sun had just set and it was getting dark fast. Little gingerbread houses lined my way up the hill. Looked that a cemetery visit cost real money during the day but not now. It was too dark to read the stones and I didn't have my flashlight with me and there was no Moon. Would love to have found Seth Bullock's or Sol Star's grave but I settled for Jane's and that was just fine. Whitetail Deer ate dinner among the stones. A family of four, Mom, Dad and two young kids walked by. Very quiet on top of that hill. I found Bill's and Jane's graves quickly, big sign announced where they were. Too much fuss, Bill would say but Jane would liked that Bill got all of that attention. Since I cuss a lot, I left a penny at Jane's grave. I walked down the hill another way, thinking I should turn in soon, for I have an early appointment at Bear Butte. That is the real reason I drove two days north, after all. Deadwood was just a bonus and a place to stay the night.
            I stopped at the bar in Bullock's, before turning in, and filled up on free Buffalo Wings and Diet Coke. A middle aged white couple behind me turned their noses up at the wings. I had about 10 of them. It was just that couple, the bartender and I, on that Sunday night. I tipped the barkeep a few bucks for the freebies. Just seemed like the right thing to do, this being Deadwood and all. I finished my Coke, then when upstairs, watched some TV and went to sleep. And for the first time since I left Tucson, I felt lonely.
            [Postscript: After Bear Butte on Monday, I drove back through Deadwood for two reasons: One, I promised Annie I get her a glass and Two, other than the Interstate, the only way back to Wyoming was pretty much through Deadwood. I did a bit more driving around the neighborhood and rediscovered Lead, South Dakota (pronounced Leed). Lead is just upstream of Deadwood, a couple three miles I suppose. But in between is George Hearst's Homestake Mine, the mining property that was primary to the storyline in Season Three of HBO's Deadwood. George Hearst was a bad man. A very bad man. The mine was the deepest mine in all of the United States, and it was very profitable for a very long time. It just closed for good in 2002. Lead isn't a tourist town, just a western mining community with workingmen's homes, the coffee shops I longed for down the hill, a real grocery and a church or two. Lead is the real thing. Deadwood today is simply an electrified fake, to entertain overweight white folk in Ford Expeditions and biker wannabees partying in Sturgis. Then again, the tradition lives on of, helping fools part with their money in Deadwood. Hookers are replaced with tight slots, and I bet the whiskey is just as watered down in 2007 as it was in 1877. For some reason, that makes me very happy.]

 

 

"Raining at Wounded Knee" (c) 2007

"Raining at Wounded Knee" © 2007 Stu Jenks

 

       Never been to Nebraska before. Northwest Nebraska is a pretty place. Rivers, some hills, and acres and acres of farmland. Saw a field of Sunflowers, ready for harvest, that wasn't just acres-big, but sections-large. No yellow petals but hundred of thousands of seed-heads stretching to the western horizon. Very impressive. I saw a cattle ranch named Stuart's, advertising 'Bulls and Females'. I laughed loud, thinking that's what I'll call my next CD, 'Stuart's Bulls and Females'. I stopped and shot an image of a long-closed service station that had the pattern of a Star Quilt painted on two of its doors. That was in the small town of Crawford, Nebraska. People going and coming from church. Sunday in October in rural Nebraska. I liked what I saw of the state. But I was sad too, for Buffalo where once all over these plains, back in the day. Not now, though. I could feel the ghosts of those Buffalos everywhere. The cattle and the crops don't fill the void with me at all. (And that feeling of No Buffalo was with me for a whole week, while I drove through South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.)

             Had breakfast in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Eat an Everything Omelet and drank some weak coffee. Then back on the road and drove in the snow for a while. Snow turned to drizzle, then back to snow. Good tires and 4 x 4 if I needed it. No worries.

       Made the decision to hit Wounded Knee before Deadwood, hence the drive into Nebraska.

       Crossed into South Dakota and into Pine Ridge Reservation. I've heard talk of the abject poverty of Pine Ridge for decades. Mile after mile passed, little town after little town and I'm not that shocked. Lots of government housing, some rusted cars, plenty of open prairie and many low ridges with Pine trees snaking across them. It's poor but it doesn't feel destitute, nor hopeless. No different than Navajo town of Tuba City or the Tohono O'Odham town of Sells in Arizona. I felt like home, their home. They have been here for way over a hundred years. Sometimes, I wonder if all the hoopla doesn't come from an Urban East Coast prejudice, of middle class and rick folk who don't ever drive through the working class neighborhoods of their own hometowns, and only see poor and working class people when they are on vacation while making their tours of Indian Reservations in the West.

       The rain is steady but light. The sky's gray but the clouds are high, leaving lots of space overhead. Big sky even when it rains.

       I find the crossroads of Wounded Knew but am confused. My map is ambiguous. I see a Pine Ridge Lakota policeman in his SUV, parked near me. He begins to drive away, but I flag him down.

       "Excuse me. Can you tell me where the Memorial is?"

       He is a young cop, with a soul patch on his chin. He smiles and pointed toward what looks like a church on a hill, just a couple hundred yards away.

       "It's over there," he says.

       "Over there?"

       "Yep," he says.

       "Thanks. By the way, how's your day?" I say.

       "Long,"

       "Well, I hope it ends soon."

       "Me too."

       "Well, have a good day, officer."

       "You too." He has a light in his eyes, everyone is home. No fear and bluster like Officer Ercole D'Ercole in Trinidad, Colorado last night. Another story, but I bet Ercole D'Ercole still get teased about his name, even though he is  a officer of the law.

       I get back in my truck and the Lakota Policeman drives away. I look at my map. I look at where the cop pointed. Doesn't seem right. Looks like just a church, not a memorial to one of the worst Indian Massacre in history. I look at the map again. Maybe down that road. I put the truck in gear and leave the crossroads.
       After five miles of driving on a very well maintained but very muddy reservation road, I begin to have doubt about what I'm doing and begin to have less doubts about what the cop was telling me. I turn around.

       I get back to where I began, where I talked with the cop and I find a rough two-lane track that heads up the hill toward the church. As soon as I crest the hill, I realize that it's not a church but a cemetery. The cop was right. Well, I guess he would be. He does live here you know. Jeez. I shake my head. So much for listening to others.

       It's still misting. An old white couple's walking between the stones in the cemetery. A black marble obelisk with all the names killed on that Winter day stands near the middle of the graveyard. Stones and crosses, new and ancient are here and there. It's the town of Wounded Knee's graveyard now it seems. I nod my head. I take some shots, and look for a place to leave a prayer bundle of my own (Tony, a Navajo friend, instructed me on how to make a prayer bundle. I have a number of individual ones and three short strings of prayer bundles with me. Mostly I've made the bundles for Bear Butte tomorrow, but I have plenty of extras.)

       I thought I'd feel sadder but I don't. I just feel cold. I just think about the Lakotas living here today, hoping that they don't hold onto too much resentment about what was done to them a hundred plus years ago. I know some of my Southern brethren are still pissed off about The War Between The States, and it doesn't seem to do them any good. I know I have some old resentments that I still carry, and they just seems to cloud my view of the Path I'm on.

       No, I'm just hoping for the Lakotas, and for all of us really, Red, White, Yellow, Black and Brown, that we just be ourselves, know ourselves and be the best we can be. Advice mostly for myself, that for any unknown Indians near by. But I still pray for a lifting of resentment and an atmosphere of forgiveness for all of us. Just kind of how I'm built these days.

      I get back in the truck, and head down the muddy two track to the wet two lane and drive North. I hope to get to Deadwood by dark.