Stanford Arts Grant Projects

Hi friends-

I just finished translating/transcribing interviews and stories, so now it is major writing time. It's taken me a bit to get into re-writing stories (I've been only into poetry and non-fiction for a while now), but here is one example of a longer rewritten ancestor story (still in drafting mode, keep in mind, so comments are welcome!). Also is a poem and a quote from an interview to show you guys the different types of writing/editing I'm working on. Cool. Everybody's project looks fantastic and I'm stoked for October...
cheers- Christa

1) How Coconuts came to Karkar
Sun glowed from behind a thin layer of fog as it approached dusk, a circle of orange that could be looked at straight on, though their mother told them never to try. The sun didn’t like to be stared at, the sun was naked and it was indecent to stare at something so round and beautiful.
So Peter and Malek, as they paddled toward the center of the channel, looked forward or down to the light reflected in the small waves which built with every hour. Their paddles and canoe, made out of the dame diwai (tree) when their grandfather was Peter’s age, held and moved the ocean well.
When they reached the deepest point they knew of, the water was smoother with current and they knew that by sundown they would have drifted halfway around Karkar. With motions betraying instinct, the older brother, Malek, slipped pieces of abus (meat) onto rusted and voluptuous hooks, which Peter hopped toward the bow of the canoe and cast.
It was the kind of day where seagulls descend in giddy non-formations toward the froth of the upsurging schools of fish. Peter hardly had time to cast a line into the melee before a silver-shriek uplifted the water and swallowed their hooks whole. Malek, his feet swimming in fish scales that made the bottom of the boat squiggle in translucence, bit the heads of the fish quickly, their tail drop, their fins fold, the brain crushed under the practiced weight of his incisors. It was that kind of day. It was that day.
When the boat was cramped with creatures, the two pulled in their last line. The fish, a large tuna, when flung into the canoe, was half a fish. Her tail had been bitten off. Her eyes already rolled to a stop. It was then Peter and Malek felt the boat jolt.
They knew from stories their grandfather told. Soon enough, Malek pointed to a shark fin the size of his head part the water a few feet from their stern. The shark’s shadow dwarfed their little canoe, and as he swam toward their boat again, a wake formed around the top of his massive forehead. The boat tipped, some fish slid over the side and into the waiting jaws of the shark.
This gave Malek an idea. He told Peter to paddle as fast as he could as he threw the fish out, far away, to distract the shark. One fish, 5 meters toward shore. Two fish, 10 meters toward shore, 3 fish, 15 meters toward shore.
The shark kept coming back and back. The froth behind him was bloodied and shimmering with scales, his teeth buai stained red, like the boys’ own. The shark came back and back until Malek threw the last fish in the water and they were still 50 meters from shore. Malek thought for a moment, for only the space between two of Peter’s oars, and said,
“Because you are younger, you haven’t experienced so much about this life, i will give you the chance to live. You cut every piece from my body and feed the shark and keep paddling.”
Peter would not. He looked into his brother’s face and kept paddling, but said nothing, and did nothing. He would not. So Malek pulled the knife from his belt, cut off his left hand, and without a wince, threw it behind him. Before passing out, he handed his knife to his brother, and then closed his eyes.
So the elder brother gave himself up and every time the shark came to the boat, Peter cut off some part of the elder brother’s body to feed the shark. He kept paddling. His brother’s foot. He kept paddling. His brother’s arm. He kept paddling. His brother’s stomach. He kept paddling. The shark kept returning until all of Malek was gone and only his head remained, rolling on the floor of the canoe, luminous with fishscales. It was then that the canoe ran aground on the beach and the shark, kept at bay by the waves of the shallow reef, could not follow.
Peter put his hands around the head of his elder brother and carried him against his chest, onto the beach. Weeping until he washed all of the blood away, Peter dug a hole and buried the head of Malek.
Every day from then on, Peter would come to the beach and lay his cheek against the ground and cry, until one time, he came to visit the grave and found something strange. A small, green shoot growing above the sand. Peter came back, at dawn when the seabirds would scratch it away, or at night when the other kids would trample it playing in the surf. He looked after the shoot for one year, then two years, on and on through his marriage and child and mother’s death and the building of a small dock from the curve of the beach.
After a very long time, the shoot became a tree, and the tree bore fruit, and after Peter saw the first fruit fall off, he took it in his hands and he removed the cover of it and found the inside part of it and saw the two eyes and mouth, and said, this, this is my brother’s head. The village people came and took the dry fruits and drank them and ate them and called them coconuts, and to this day they sustain Karkar Island. So when you look at the coconuts now, you can see the eyes and the mouth and that is the head of the elder brother, Malek, who gave his life.

2) The bats left Madang town

Migration

And every time Susan says it in Tok pisin
No gut bats. No sawe bats stap lo where?
No one knows where the bats went.
Not the elders who saw the volcano
Birth the island, Not the university
Dwellers who sent their electrodes into
The trees not even Susan not even me.
The plague? Heat wave? Tsunami?
Stomach knocks into a stone, I’m not
Superstitious, not at all, but the bats fled
like too many soldiers filing out to battle.
The bush hut settles into a strange silence;
What God means
When he talks about warnings.
You should have known! He says
You should have had faith in my creatures
As if I could see a migratory anomaly to mean
I was sinful, needed to obey the holy ghost,
Practice abstinence and repent, repent, repent.

Exodus

Lucy fled to the highlands
Roger stayed Australian put
Susan prayed, Selfi shrugged
Her shoulders, like, God loves
Me, no worries, chill out, little
White girl with the nervous face on.
But I know nothing about faith
And resign myself to apocalypse,
Which may be the same thing.

Diaspora

When the bats sink toward the Sepik, believers
May curl into our own colonies, curl the messengers
Into our untrembled elbows and rinse ourselves in the din

The safe surrounding of galip nut-sized brains,
Who still hear the earth shudder and take her seriously
I will remove parts of my cerebellum

Until I return to instinct, or belief, or both, or
Whichever comes first. Remember how to
fight or flight and learn how to flock in formation

The white girl left with the flying foxes they would say
Grow black leather wings from my triceps and armpits,
Toenails long enough to grip, a taste for overripeness and
Exoskeletons.

Ghost Town

Trees black coral spires
Against midnight.
Outside crickets
Howl lonely,
Insects flutter
In glee. Fruit
Left rotting
The island smells
Sweet and dead
Already.

3)PNG time

PNG (Papua New Guinea) time is phrase to describe a conditioned behavior pattern that has just erupted because of the laziness of the person to understand the Western system that was in place. In traditional times before the first white man came, Papua New Guinea used to live a lazier life, a nobody cares life, like everything that I have is right in front of me and I take life as simply as I can. Move the way I like, sleep whenever I like, and eat whatever I like. When the first white man came, they introduced health solutions, this education system, and eventually this government system with us, hoping that it would be better for us to adopt these styles. I don't know. Maybe, but I don't know.
-Jared