For Better or Worse / Pour le meilleur ou pour le pire / Para bien o para mal / Para melhor ou pior

For better or worse, this body is what it is,
it holds many mysteries, but it has no secrets.
It is the vehicle that will take me to this race's awkward end,
and in the end will be remembered
as a faithful friend.

Pour le meilleur ou pour le pire, ce corps est ce qu'il est,
il possède de nombreux mystères, mais il n'a pas de secrets.
C'est le véhicule qui me mènera à la fin maladroite de cette course,
et à la fin on se souviendra
comme un ami fidèle.

Para bien o para mal, este cuerpo es lo que es,
posee muchos misterios, pero no tiene secretos.
Es el vehículo que me llevará al final incómodo de esta carrera,
y al final será recordado
como un amigo fiel.

Para melhor ou pior, este corpo é o que é,
possui muitos mistérios, mas não tem segredos.
É o veículo que me levará ao fim embaraçoso desta corrida,
e no final será lembrado
como um amigo fiel.

Text and image © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.

ᎤᏰᎸᎭ ᎠᎦᏙᎲᏍᏗ 77 - The Abundance of the Earth / L'abondance de la terre / +many translations

gvwalosvsdo elohi vhnai gayoligase,
nasgi-igvnisisgi aquatseli gvwalosvsdo adanvdo vhnai ase advsv.

ᎬᏩᎶᏒᏍᏙ ᎡᎶᎯ ᎥᎿᎢ ᎦᏲᎵᎦᏎ,
ᎾᏍᎩ-ᎢᎬᏂᏏᏍᎩ ᎠᏆᏤᎵ ᎬᏩᎶᏒᏍᏙ ᎠᏓᏅᏙ ᎥᎿᎢ ᎠᏎ ᎠᏛᏒ.

The abundance of the earth is shrinking,
so our abundance of spirit must grow.

L'abondance de la terre diminue,
donc notre abondance d'esprit doit croître.

A abundância da terra está encolhendo,
então nossa abundância de espírito deve crescer.

L'abbondanza della terra si sta riducendo,
quindi la nostra abbondanza di spirito deve crescere.

La abundancia de la tierra se está reduciendo,
entonces nuestra abundancia de espíritu debe crecer.

שפע האדמה מתכווץ,
כך ששפע הרוח שלנו צריך לגדול.

وفرة الأرض تتقلص ،
لذلك يجب أن تنمو وفرة الروح لدينا.

पृथ्वी की बहुतायत सिकुड़ रही है,
इसलिए हमारी आत्मा की प्रचुरता बढ़नी चाहिए।

地球的丰度正在缩小，
因此，我们必须丰富精神。

地球の豊かさは縮小しています
私たちの豊かな精神は成長しなければなりません。

Обилие земли уменьшается,
поэтому наше изобилие духа должно расти.

Kelimpahan bumi menyusut,
jadi kelimpahan roh kita harus tumbuh.

Ang kasaganaan ng lupa ay lumiliit,
kaya ang ating kasaganaan ng espiritu ay dapat lumago.

Yeryüzünün bolluğu azalıyor,
bu yüzden ruhumuzun bolluğu büyümeli.

지구의 풍요 로움이 줄어들고 있습니다
그러므로 우리의 풍요로운 정신이 커져야합니다.

დედამიწის სიმრავლე მცირდება,
ასე რომ, ჩვენი სულის სიმრავლე უნდა გაიზარდოს.
dedamits’is simravle mtsirdeba,
ase rom, chveni sulis simravle unda gaizardos.

Lurraren ugaritasuna txikitzen ari da,
beraz, gure izpiritu ugaritasuna hazi behar da.

Jordens overflod krymper,
så vår overflod av ånd må vokse.

فراوانی زمین در حال کوچک شدن است ،
به وفور روح ما باید رشد کند.

La abundeco de la tero malpliiĝas,
do nia abundo de spirito devas kreski.

Journal of a Naked Poet - IV

My job search in July 1963 took three weeks. After some false starts, I walked into the Berlitz School of Languages at 26 O'Farrell Street and applied for a job, though none had been advertised. I was hired to man the front desk as a sort of receptionist, schedule the lessons of the students, and so forth. The Directress, Miss Brunhilde Diemand, was on vacation, so in her absence I was hired by the Office Manager, Mrs. Marion George. It was my languages (and my own courage or effrontery) that got me in the door, but they had further plans for me that I did not know about.

I had only been at Berlitz for a month when, in August, I began to manage their San Mateo branch. While there, I also began to teach English, by the same direct method that we used for all languages. I also sold language courses, and I was extremely good at it, because I believed in the product that I was selling.

So, I was able to pay my share of the rent for the five-room flat on Andover Street. That location was on the south side of Bernal Heights. At the top of the hill (this was before they built the telephone microwave relay station), there was a famous area where young people went to park and "watch the submarine races." We liked to refer to it as Carnal Heights. I never parked there myself, perhaps because I didn't have a car.

I was becoming close with Cheryl (she whose mother had that apartment on Chestnut St. in the Marina). She was into Israeli folk music, taught me some of the dances, and then we went together to a folk dance group called Rikud Am (Dance of the People), which people tended to pronounce very Ashkenazically as "rick-a-dom." It was fun, and I loved the music.

Every day I took a SamTrans commuter bus down to San Mateo and did my stuff at Berlitz. On a Friday in November, Mrs. Belland, who worked in the office, called me from home (it was her day off), and said, "Beg, borrow, or steal a radio; the President has been shot." I hurried down to a drugstore and bought a cheap transistor radio. By the time I got back to the office, they were just beginning to announce that President Kennedy was dead. The news was stunning.

I made an executive decision that I really shouldn't have made without calling San Francisco, and closed the school for the rest of the day. On the SamTrans bus, the high school students from Millbrae, who had been let out early, got on the bus quietly, for the first time ever. In the city, I walked down Market Street, and everyone was silent. I had never seen it like that, not even close.

Being young, there was only so much of funeral music and caissons that we could take. We defended ourselves emotionally by buying 33-1/3 LP albums of Motown music, by Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and someone else. We played those albums all weekend, while radio and TV played funeral music.

The following Thursday was Thanksgiving, which Cheryl had kindly invited me to spend with her family. All of the conversation at the table was, of course, about the JFK assassination and the other killings that quickly followed. We didn't have much to be thankful for, except each other.

(to be continued)

He Has Seen the Highs and Lows of Decades / Il a vu les hauts et les bas des décennies / +es, pt

He has seen the highs and lows of decades,
history's brilliance and history's stains.
Centuries too, perhaps he knows,
from the little that remains.
What he sees, he does not say,
but saves it for another day.

Il a vu les hauts et les bas des décennies,
l'éclat de l'histoire et les taches de l'histoire.
Des siècles aussi, peut-être qu'il connait,
du peu qui reste.
Ce qu'il voit, il ne le dit pas,
mais le garde pour un autre jour.

Ha visto los altibajos de décadas,
El brillo de la historia y las manchas de la historia.
Siglos también, tal vez él conoce,
de lo poco que queda.
Lo que ve, no dice,
pero lo guarda para otro día.

Ele viu os altos e baixos de décadas,
brilho da história e manchas da história.
Séculos também, talvez ele saiba,
do pouco que resta.
O que ele vê, ele não diz,
mas mantém-lo para outro dia.

Text and image © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.

Journal of a Naked Poet - III

After leaving the seminary, I remember reading the book I LEAP OVER THE WALL, by Monica Baldwin. Our cases were very different, since she had been in for 35 years, and I for a few months, but I related strongly to her story. I remember her saying that she still recited the Divine Office (Latin Psalms of the Breviarium Romanum) every day. I could easily understand and appreciate that. Reentering the secular world is a big adjustment. I gave myself a semester to readjust, and then entered San Diego City College.

SDCC (the old, downtown campus) was like a big, concrete playpen. My parents could not afford to put me through college, but they wanted me to live with them while I went. It was my habit to arrive early and attend daily Mass before my first class. I had a couple of PhDs among my teachers, among them the unforgettable Theodore Bardacke. I knew that I was fortunate. To cover my expenses, I worked as a playground supervisor and camp counselor for a Catholic charity. My grades were good, especially since I always kept a foreign language in the mix, and I only got straight As in those.

As the semesters rolled by, I focused less on my classes, and more on social life, Friday TGIFs, and drinking parties. It was largely about music, dancing (I was an excellent dancer, having taken dancing classes in lieu of gym or P. E.), and chasing girls. As to the girls, I wouldn't have known what to do with them if I had caught them.

My mother made the common motherly mistake of trying too hard to control my life, with the result that living at home became intolerable. In June of 1963 I left San Diego for San Francisco. I was traveling in a car with four school friends. We drove all night, arriving early the next morning. To me, coming from San Diego, the air felt like Alaska. We drove up to the top of Telegraph Hill, and looked down at the piers and the Bay. As I looked, I said to myself, "I'm never going back," That turned out not to be true, but I had a real adventure ahead of me.

Our goal was the Berkeley Folk Festival at the University of California. Some of us could afford to go in, but the rest, including me, had to hang around the fountain in Sproul Plaza, and hear what music we could from outside. Two of us, myself and another guy, would be staying on in SF after the Festival. I had only sixty-four dollars in my pocket, which I could not spend on non-necessities.

For a couple of days we stayed at the Chestnut Street apartment of our friend Cheryl and her mother. Then the other guy who was staying, Emil, and I got a room in a skid row hotel for two dollars a night. It reminded me of another book I had read, DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON, by George Orwell. After a week there, our friend Orion would be arriving, and we would all look for an apartment..

As it turned out, we took a nice, furnished five-room flat in the Outer Mission, for $98 a month. That was about $32.50 each, but I had arrived with only $64, and would have to spend something on food, so I'd have to get a job, and fast. I did.

(to be continued)

75,000 Visits to This Blog

As I write this, we are crossing the threshold of 75,000 visits in this poetry / photography blog. Looking back to October 2016, when I started the blog, I must say that I would not have expected such a response. There are now loyal readers in many countries and on every continent except Antarctica (I'm hoping for that one, too).

The blog is still mainly poems with illustrations from my own photography. Over the years it has included disquisitions on nudity, lessons in the Udugi language, and writings on the Synoptic Problem, along with various other ruminations. Recently though, something new has appeared: my own memoirs.

Several of my friends have asked me to write memoirs (while there is still time to do so). For some years I've been resistant, just not wanting to focus on my own personal life. Now though, it seems that something has changed. Perhaps greater age has given me more perspective. Also, having lost many friends, I am increasingly aware of my own mortality. I will, therefore, pursue this project as far as I can, and I'll do it here, in this blog.

As always, I would like to thank you all for your continued interest and enthusiasm. I will try to live up to your expectations, Thank you, merci, gracias, obrigado, wadó, ꮹꮩ.

Text and image © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.

Journal of a Naked Poet - II

My first historical memory is the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I was two and a half years old, and did not know what death was. I've written about it in several poems. My father was away, fighting in the "Pacific theater," as the military euphemistically called it. I asked my mother where Daddy was, and she told me he was fighting "the Japs." I asked her what a "Jap" was, and she showed me a monstrous figure that she had drawn with colored chalks on a small chalkboard. The casualties of war are not only the bodies of young men and women; they include the minds, the attitudes, the hearts of civilians.

I remember the rainy night in a Navy housing project in Chula Vista, California, when my father came home from the war. I have written about it in a poem or two. My parents had to shyly get reacquainted with each other. I guess they did, because after Patricia and myself, six more children were born.

There was a terrible housing shortage in 1946, and for a while my parents and my sister and I lived in a one-room converted garage. I think it was there that I experienced what I now interpret as a reincarnational flash, involving an old man in a skullcap, working with plant essences. It was the first of many, and I've written about that, too.

One day, while we were living in that garage, my mother sat cross-legged on the foot of my little bed, and started telling me about God. Of course, since she was an Irish Catholic, it was her version. At first I was excited, as she started out with "Long ago, so long ago that you can't imagine it . . . ," but when she got to the Christ part, I clearly remember thinking, "Oh no, not that old story again," and was quite disappointed. When my father came home from work and asked her what she was doing, she was singing Tantum Ergo to me (a thirteenth-century Benediction hymn by Thomas Aquinas, written in complex and erudite Latin that is difficult even for me, now). I'm sure my mother had no idea what it meant, but the melody, when combined with incense and a golden monstrance, is quite compelling. My father, who had not yet converted to Catholicism, was, I'm sure, baffled by the whole thing.

Religion, or rather spirituality, took on increasing importance in my life.  In 1953, when Stalin died, the nuns in my Catholic school told us to pray for him, because "he was a very bad man, and was surely going to hell." I dutifully did so. By the seventh or eighth grade I had developed an infatuation with the simple life of poverty of Saint Francis of Assisi. Poverty was something that I could understand: we had plenty of it.

In high school, when I became literate in Spanish, I became enamored of the mystical writings of Teresa of Ávila. I read the Imitation of Christ in Latin (my copy had belonged to San Diego's Bishop Buddy, and I still, miraculously, have it). Then, straight out of high school, I entered a Jesuit novitiate. I lasted two and a half months.

(to be continued)

Text and image © 2020 by Donald Jacobson Traxler.