Ghost - ELLA HENDERSON LYRICS

Bringing It All Back Home, Bob Dylan's second Big Bang, 2021

On the last stanza of Dylan's enigmatic showpiece from Bringing It All Back Home, Bob Dylan's second Big Bang

2018

This English translation is based on "Fleuve d'ombres," which is Martine Valette-Hemery's French rendition of the original "陰影的河流" by Taiwanese Chinese poet Chen Li, written in Traditional Chinese.

For Ratula Roy, Marta Bor, and that sliver of hope peeking from every dark moment in our lives.

Pleiades: Literature in Context, 2016

Epilogue from messing with my hair too much, but that's BS. And if she gave a damn-really gave one, not just pretended to-she'd know this, too. I wiggle my banged-up toes in my pointe shoes, swallowing the ball of anxiety in my throat. Via isn't here. Thank you, Marx. Girls torpedo past me, bumping into my shoulders. I feel their giggles in my empty stomach. My duffel bag falls with a thud. My classmates are leaner, longer, and more flexible with rod-straight backs like an exclamation mark. Me? I'm small and muscular like a question mark. Always unsure and on the verge of snapping. My face is not stoic and regal; it's traitorous and unpredictable. Some wear their hearts on their sleeves-I wear mine on my mouth. I smile with my teeth when I'm happy, and when my mom looks at me, I'm always happy. "You should really take gymnastics or cheer, Lovebug. It suits you so much better than ballet." But Mom sometimes says things that dig at my self-esteem. There's a rounded dent on its surface now, the shape of her words, and that's where I keep my anger. Melody Green-Followhill is a former ballerina who broke her leg during her first week at Juilliard when she was eighteen. Ballet has been expected of me since the day I was born. And-just my luck-I happen to be exceptionally bad at it. Enter Via Scully. Also fourteen, Via is everything I strive to be. Taller, blonder, and skinnier. Worst of all, her natural talent makes my dancing look like an insult to leotards all over the world. Three months ago, Via received a letter from the Royal Ballet Academy asking her to audition. Four weeks ago-she did. Her hotshot parents couldn't get the time off work, so my mom jumped at the chance to fly her on a weeklong trip to London. Now the entire class is waiting to hear if Via is going to study at the Royal Ballet Academy. Word around the studio is she has it in the bag. Even the Ukrainian danseur Alexei Petrov-a sixteenyear-old prodigy who is like the Justin Bieber of ballet-posted an IG story with her after the audition. Looking forward to creating magic together. It wouldn't surprise me to learn Via can do magic. She's always been a witch. He's gone. Disoriented, I lean against the trash can, fiddling with the strap of my mother's bag. Five seconds pass before Mom loops her arm around mine out of nowhere and leads me to the Range Rover. My legs fly across the pavement. My head twists back. Blue shirt? Ball cap? Petal lips? Did I imagine the whole thing? "There you are. Thanks for the coffee. What, no iced tea lemonade today?" After I fail to answer, we climb into her vehicle and buckle up. Mom sifts through her Prada bag resting on the center console. "Huh. I swear I took four letters from the mailbox today, not three." And that's when it hits me-she doesn't know. Via got in, and she has no idea the letter came today. Then this guy tore it apart because it upset me… Kismet. Kiss-met. Fate. Dad decided two years ago that he was tired of hearing all three girls in the household moaning, "Oh, my God," so now we have to replace the word God with the word Marx, after Karl Marx, a dude who was apparently into atheism or whatever. I feel like God or Marx-someone-sent this boy to help me. If he were even real. Maybe I made him up in my head to come to terms with what I did. I open a compact mirror and apply some lip gloss, my heart racing. "You're always distracted, Mom. If you dropped a letter, you'd have seen it." Mom pouts, then nods. In the minute it takes her to start the engine, I realize two things: One-she was expecting this letter like her next breath. Two-she is devastated. "Before I forget, Lovebug, I bought you the diary you wanted." Mom produces a thick black-cased leather notebook from her Prada bag and hands it to me. I noticed it before, but I never assume things are for me anymore. She's always distracted, buying Via all types of gifts. As we ride in silence, I have an epiphany. This is where I'll write my sins. This is where I'll bury my tragedies. I snap the mirror shut and tuck my hands into the pockets of my white hoodie, where I find something small and hard. I take it out and stare at it, amazed. The orange sea glass. He gave me the sea glass even though I never accepted it. Save me all your firsts. I close my eyes and let a fat tear roll down my cheek. He was real. Question: Who gives their most precious belonging to a girl they don't know? Answer: This motherfucker right here. Print me an "I'm with stupid" shirt with an arrow pointing straight to my dick. Could've sold the damn thing and topped off Via's cell phone credit. Now that ship's sailed. I can spot it in the distance, sinking quickly. The worst part is that I knew nothing would come out of it. At fourteen, I've only kissed two girls. They both had enormous tongues and too much saliva. This girl looked like her tongue would be small, so I couldn't pass up trying. But the minute my lips touched hers, I just couldn't do it. She looked kind of manic. Sad. Clingy? I don't fucking know. Maybe I just didn't have the balls. Maybe watching her three times a week from afar paralyzed me. Hey, how do you turn off your own mind? It needs to shut up. Now. My friend Kannon passes me the joint on my front porch. That's the one perk of having your mom live with her drug-dealing boyfriend. Free pot. And since food is scarce these days, I'll take whatever is on the table. A bunch of wannabe gangsters in red bandanas cross our side of the street with their pit bulls and a boom box playing angry Spanish rap. The dogs bark, yanking on their chains. Kannon barks right back at them. He's so high his head might hit a fucking plane. I take a hit, then hand Camilo the joint. "I'll lend you fifty so you can make the call." Camilo coughs. He is huge and tan and already has impressive facial hair. He looks like someone's Mexican dad. "We don't need to call anyone!" my twin sister yells from the grass next to us. She is lying face down, sobbing into the yellow lawn. I think she is hoping the sun will burn her into the ground. "Are y'all deaf or something?! I didn't get in!" "We'll take the money." I ignore her. We have to call the ballet place. Via can't stay here. It ain't safe. "I love you, Penn, but you're a pain in the ass." She hiccups, plucking blades of grass and throwing them in our direction without lifting her head. She'll thank me later. When she is famous and rich-do ballerinas get rich?-and I'm still sitting here with my dumb friends smoking pot and salivating over lemon-haired Todos Santos girls. Maybe I won't have to stand on street corners and deal. I'm good at shit. Sports and fighting mainly. Coach says I need to eat more protein for muscle and more carbs to get some body fat, but that's not happening anytime soon because most of my money is spent buying Via's bus tickets to her ballet classes. I tag along because I'm hella worried about her riding on that bus alone. Especially in winter when it gets dark early. "I thought you said your sister's good? How come she didn't get in?" Kannon yawns, moving his hand over his long dreads. The sides of his head are shaved, creating a black man-bun. I punch his arm so hard he collapses back on the rocking chair with a silent scream, clutching his bicep, still hardy-har-harring. "I think a demonstration is in order. Chop-chop, Via. Show us your moves." Cam puts "Milkshake" by Kelis on his phone, balling a gum wrapper in his hand and throwing it at the back of her head. Her sobs stop, replaced with catatonic silence. I turn around, scrubbing my chin before twisting back to Camilo and swinging a fist at his jaw. I hear it unlock from its usual place and him harrumphing. Darting up from the grass, Via runs into the house and slams the door behind her. I'm not sure what business she has sitting in the living room when Rhett is home, griping about being tired and hungry. She will probably get into a screaming match with him and return to the porch with her tail between her legs. My mom is too high to interfere, but even when she does, she chooses her boyfriend's side. Even when he uses Via's leotards, which her teacher buys for her, to shine his shoes. He does that often to get a rise out of her. On days she shows up to class in her torn leggings and hand-me-down shirts, she spends the bus ride sobbing. Those are usually the days when I rub his briefs on the public toilet seats in Liberty Park. It's incredibly therapeutic. "Hand me the fifty." I open my palm and turn to Cam, who slaps the bill into my hand obediently. I'm going to buy myself and Via burgers the size of my face, then top the credit on her phone so she can call Mrs. Followhill. I charge down my street to InN Out , Camilo and Kannon trailing me like the wind. Cracked concrete and murals of dead teenagers wearing halos line the street. Our palm trees seem to hunch down from the burden of poverty, leaning over buildings that are short and yellow like bad teeth. But twenty minutes later, the satisfaction of clutching a paper bag filled with greasy burgers and fries is overwhelming. Via's gonna forget all about her meltdown when she sees it. I push the door to my house open, and the first thing I see makes me drop the food to the floor. My mother's boyfriend is straddling my sister on the couch, his jiggling belly pouring out on her chest. He pummels her face, his sweaty, hairy chest glistening and his arm flexing every time he does. His ripped jeans are unbuttoned, and his zipper is all the way down. She is wheezing and coughing, trying to breathe. Without thinking, I dash toward them and unplaster him from her. Her face is bloody, and she's croaking out weak protests, telling him that he's a cheap bastard, and he keeps yelling that she is a thieving whore. I grab Rhett by the collar of his shirt and pull him from her. He swings with the momentum, falling on the floor. I punch his face so hard, the sound of his jaw cracking echoes around the room. He whips his head...

We are singing for water and for the protectors of earth's waters. We sing for water, the element all life on earth needs to exist and thrive. Long-legged birds stand at the edges of lakes and rivers to watch for fish, their nests hidden in the rushes. A doe crosses land and stands guard as her little one drinks. All our brother and sister animals follow their worn paths to needed waters. Trees and plants subsist with the rain, snow, and groundwater in a place where living earth supported large herds of bison for thousands of years. As for us, we were water beings from the beginning. We rained from the broken waters of our mothers to enter this world. We drank from our mothers to thrive. Water is our life-blood and like all creations on this blue planet, we were born to its currents and passages. So we sing for those who pray to protect the wide, long Missouri River on its elemental journey. Near the Cannonball River, a place of chokecherries, Indiangrass, and other plants, thousands of people are camped. They know that by legal treaty rights the Missouri River and the land of this region belong to the Standing Rock Sioux. Water flows beneath the skin of this earth body and vast clear aquifers lie deeper in the near ground, with rivers and tributaries beneath and on the earth surface. The " Plains " may be the wrong word to use for places existing in the midst of all the ground water and watersheds that support life here; animals, birds, food and medicine plants, expanses of wildflowers in the spring and then the harsh, cold seasons of winter. The tall grasses live because of waters from snow and rain. My own nation, The Chicaza lived with the Mississippi River throughout much of our long history. We called that wide rush of water, The Long Person. She was our Grandmother and supplied everything we needed to survive. With great sorrow, we were removed from our homeland in 1837, and we left in order to avoid future genocide. The U.S. government planned to place all of the tribes into Indian Territory and build a wall around it, opening the rest of the country to settlers. Large numbers of Native peoples were chased toward what is now Oklahoma, but many of the plains nations managed to remain, avoid

face didn't look mean or bullish, it didn't look ghoulish or grotesque, not like the no-good kids; no, hers was soft and sullen. And she didn't graffi ti that letter either, she painted it as if the 'E' were an act of compassion-a different kind of rebellion altogether. And the very next morning, the strangest thing occurred, the 'E' came to life. His name was Harrold, and Harrold had no idea, not only that he was a letter painted on a wall, but also that he was the last letter in the ugliest word in the world-HATE. "What a beautiful world," said Harrold, looking out at the halcyon river, the noble & majestic tree, and the quaint wooden bench, etched with the initials of besotted lovers. Each seemed to have its place. They all seemed to belong. He wondered then, what was his place and where did he belong? And though he had only just come to life, poor sweet Harrold was struck with but one question, one that would never let him rest. 'Who am I?' All Harrold knew of the world and the possibility of what could be, was from what he could see. The whole entire world was, in fact, this quiet and wonderful street. "Am I a halcyon river? Am I a noble & majestic tree? Am I a quaint wooden bench? Am I as wonderful and beautiful as thee? Who am I?" That afternoon, when the sun was almost about to set, Harrold watched as an old lady, one whose husband had only recently passed, stood by the halcyon river in quiet contemplation as her thoughts and worries were swept far far away. Her face looked so calm and peaceful in spite of all her grief. Harrold wondered, "Who am I? Am I a halcyon river? When the old lady looks at me, will her face be calm and peaceful too? Will that be proof that I am the river? I do hope so. I cannot wait until she looks at me. I cannot wait to know who I am." Next, he watched as a family made their picnic beneath the noble & majestic tree. The mother and father sat dotingly as their children climbed the thick branches and swung from them like playful monkeys, their faces enveloped with joy.

Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Kaupapa Kai Tahu), 2021