I Curse The Sacred Waters

Once a month the maintenance crew for our apartment building turns off our water to perform a mysterious ritual on the building’s water supply. Though I have never been witness to this secret ceremony, I like to imagine many men dressed in greasy hooded work clothes moving in a slow circle around the water system somewhere in the bowels of our building quietly reciting soft incantations and waving great metal tools of salvation while the anointed High Priest of the maintenance crew performs the sacred ritual of purifying the waters.

Though I am sure all the tenants of the apartment building are grateful for these efforts, when the maintenance crew brings the water supply back to life and re-pressurize the pipes so that the sanctified waters will flow once again reinvigorated on their long journey to our seventh floor apartment, when we turn on our faucets we are greeted with a very loud billowing gush of pressurized air.

It scares the living shit out of me every time.

I try to remind myself that this will happen so I wont be startled, and if I’m lucky I might remember when I go to use the kitchen sink or even the toilet that afternoon. But by the end of the day, the odds are very good that I will have forgotten about the day’s water purifying ritual, and when I draw a bath to help quiet the basket of thoughts that have become stuck in my head and are talking all at once, a loud boom of angry air will come shouting into the tub announcing the arrival of the newly sanctified hot water and produce the exact opposite of the calming affect I was seeking.

The last time this happened, I noticed that I curse a certain way depending on what has given me cause to be frightened. For example, if my partner suddenly appears from around the corner of our small apartment while I am day dreaming, I find that my usual response is…

JE-Susfuckingchristalmighty

(that is all one word, with strong emphasis on the JE!-Sus)

…however, when I am REALLY startled, like when the bath tub faucet screams at me, I seem to default to…

JE-Sus…Mary…and mother fuckin’ Joseph

…using a slowly retarding rhythm and a descending inflection in one long drawn out sentence of exasperation while clutching my heart with a free hand and my eyes closed.

***

Being on the 7th floor of our building means we have to waste many gallons of water waiting for the hot water to slowly make its way up to our apartment. California has been several years in a drought, and as good citizens of the state, we have learned how precious water is and what we can do to preserve it: we turn off the water when brushing our teeth, we capture buckets of water while waiting for the hot water to arrive for our shower and dish washing, and we use these buckets the next day to water our thirsty plants.

Dish washing in our apartment complex comes with its own unwritten time table. It seems that when most folks in the apartments below us are home from their day jobs and begin washing their dinner dishes after 7:00pm, we can successfully coax the hot water to continue its climb to our apartment. However, trying to convince the hot water to make a solitary trip to the 7th floor at 2:00pm or 11:00pm is pointless even while we patiently capture buckets of water during the wait. After filling two 3-gallon buckets with cold water, I find that, in exasperation, I give up on the task and swear with a mild cursing of “Son-of-a…” that trails off in a sentence that is not meant to finish. 

This might not seem like a big deal, but if I get too comfortable on the couch after dinner and forget about the allotted time window for doing dinner dishes with hot water, the next thing I know, our nightly movie watching is over, it’s 11:00pm, there’s a sink full of dinner dishes and cocktail glasses, and no hot water. This ends my day with what could be described as an ‘OCD Trigger’; knowing that I am destined to start tomorrow by making coffee in a kitchen full of dirty dishes. As much as this thought causes me grief, I have noticed that, irked with no hot water to finish the last chore of the day, all I can usually muster for a good curse is “Ah-god-damn-it….” as I give up and shuffle off to bed.

***

One day I was awakened from my afternoon nap by what sounded like marbles rolling around inside the pipes of the bedroom toilet. Even though my mind was still returning from a dream state, I knew exactly what had happened (comfortable with the bold theory that no one had actually put marbles in the toilet pipes); the maintenance crew had convened an emergency session of The Sacred Waters Cabal and turned off the water while I slept, and were now re-pressurizing the water pipes at the completion of their ceremony. Sure enough, when I turned on the shower, the pipes screamed in agony with a gush of new air and then produced cold water containing samples of dirt and bits of metal flake that had escaped capture by the maintenance crew (imagining  the water quality of our showers prior to the cleansing ritual does not produce curses, only squinty-eyed crinkled nose winces of disgust). Since I had mentally prepared myself for the possibility of shouting water pipes, I offered no curse when turning on the shower, only a boastful sneer and a nod of pride knowing that this time I had not been fooled.

Our role as tenants in The Cleansing of The Waters ritual comes with only two tasks of responsibility:  1) try to remember about screaming pipes when you turn the water back on, and 2) let the water run for a few minutes after you summon it to the 7th floor. A lapse in either of these duties could summon either a chill of disgust or a spectacular curse even Je-Suschrist would appreciate.

Ken Owen   Van Niddy Press

February 2022

Walking A Small Child

The vigilant dog
Keeping the neighborhood safe,
Walking a small child.

The blistering sun
Shows the way to a shade tree,
Walking a small child.

The colorful kite
On a blustery blue day,
Walking a small child.

The billowing wind
Sends all quickly on their way,
Walking a small child.

The guardian moon
Makes safe the room for sleeping,
Walking a small child.

The brilliant stars
Guiding the way for dreaming,
Walking a small child.

Ken Owen   January 2022

Van Niddy Press

 

When Thought Takes Wing

                                                                            Photograph by Dianne Woods

Before he could return to the room 

with pen and paper to capture 

the newborn thought 

that appeared in a spark of brilliance 

boasting of its potential 

and demanding it be documented 

immediately for posterity 

the thought 

grew impatient

        jumped up

        sprouted wings 

and learning to fly 

took a few test flights 

around the room 

then it hung in the air for a brief moment 

tilting its head slightly while 

looking down in amusement 

and flew quickly towards him

giving the impression it might land

right on the tip of his tongue 

and lovingly peck at his forehead 

so to loosen things up 

as if shaking the branch 

of the tree from where it was born 

might deliver him the golden thought 

but the thought never landed

and stayed enticingly just out of reach

as if to gift him the lesson

of lost potential

but before it left

it winked at him as if to say

“Faster next time” 

and flew away

leaving him to wonder

if all his escaped thoughts

were landing in the same stark field

somewhere in the night

many miles away.

He quickly wrote that down.

Ken Owen     Van Niddy Press

January 2022

The Banquet

Each day begins a great battle 

to establish a hierarchy of power 

determining rank and privileges 

for places at the banquet 

as all combatants strive to capture 

the highest position with fewest above them 

while those at the summit decide 

who may attend and for how long.

As the strong wage attacks

in great flurries of action 

and shows of strength to 

fiercely guard their position 

the weak sit below patiently waiting 

for an opening at the banquet 

while scavenging discarded bits tossed aside 

from those with no regard for wasting.

This conflict might easily be avoided 

if those bestowed with the smallest measure 

of consciousness could make time for a 

quiet moment of reflection 

that they may realize our bountiful harvest 

could sustain everyone regardless of position 

and the battle against nature’s instinct 

stamped internal across all species 

need not rage on.

-inspired while watching the garden bird feeder

Ken Owen   Van Niddy Press

January 2022

Strengthen The Core

 A New Year’s Wish

Rather than allowing those who choose 

the extreme fringes of our political spectrum 

to pull us further apart by highlighting our differences, 

let us use civil debate and compromise 

to identify and strengthen the core 

of our common goals and concerns.

Rather than doing battle 

from the outer edges of our conflicts 

to conquer the middle, let us begin our dialogs 

from the place where values are shared by all 

so that we may strengthen the core 

of those beliefs and devalue our differences.

Rather than dividing ourselves 

into smaller and smaller factions while demanding 

the focus be on our uniqueness, 

let us strengthen the core of the ideals 

that reach across all of humanity 

that they may bind us together. 

We laugh, we cry, 

we love, we mourn. 

Start there. 

Quiet reflection

     harvests bountiful blessings,

till the new year's field.

-New Years 2021 - 2022

Ken Owen
Van Niddy Press  

In Search of Inspiration

(The Quietest Room in the House)

After a protracted period 

of reading uninspiring books which 

could not seem to spark any fires 

in my smoldering imagination 

I was excited to see a new book 

from a famous author who

I had been told long ago 

had a style of writing that I seemed to mirror

though I remember having to admit 

I had never heard of the man

and would only realize much later 

the great honor in the comparison.

Rushing home with his new book, 

I went directly to the quietest room in the house

where I knew I could quickly absorb his first few chapters 

while flushing away all recently uninspiring poetry.

And so it began:

a beautiful cover, a touching dedication,

and a poem by the author as prolog; an interesting concept,

but the poem was two stanzas 

about eating his morning’s breakfast 

while staring out the kitchen window,

and it seemed undeserving 

of its special page numbering 

in lower case Roman numerals

and I thought

“Why would you start your book with something 

that will disappoint everyone

before you get to the real numbers?”

Without an answer, 

I continued.

First poem - 

on pages starting with modern numbers 

so as to stem the confusion and declare the real beginning - 

was about his old dog

 

and I thought

“Well now, here’s something I can relate to”,

yet all he could muster was a nice simile 

about his old dog’s snout being as white as a marshmallow

 

and even that felt like a cheap hit 

slapped into right field on a pitch that years ago 

would have been turned into a majestic home run 

from one of the deadliest hitters in the game.

Overwhelmed with the realization 

that the student would no longer find 

inspiration from the teacher,

I left the quietest room in the house

and tried to disarm my disappointment 

by remembering how his wonderful past works 

had taught me the possibilities of the craft,

but I could not shake the image 

that my hero had joined the rest of us 

and become just another dazed poet

staggering to the breakfast table

in search of inspiration.

-sadly inspired by a former U. S. Poet Laureate

Ken Owen    December 2021
Van Niddy Press

Too Much Time in Chinatown: The Video

In May 2014 my friend Katie Guthorn enlisted myself, John Seabury, and Alex Baum as actors in an independent film.  Katie, who was playing the role of a singer in a nightclub, was asked by the producers if she could recommend any local musicians that "looked like sleazy old jazz guys." We were excited to be recommended (but perhaps a little less when we gave it a bit more thought as to why we got the part).

The film crew had turned the basement of a restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown into a speakeasy night club. We set up our equipment, only then to be told we would be playing along to a recorded track and not making any live music. Though our expectations were dwindling away - "stand there and look questionable" - it seemed we were the right men for the job. 

Over the three days of being 'on set', we quickly realized that most of our time would be spent waiting to be called for a scene. After a while, we went from waiting on the stage, to waiting outside the restaurant on the sidewalk, to me giving my cell phone number to a stage hand and telling him to text me when they needed us; I had found the band a remote office around the corner where we could spend our time: Lei Po's Lounge.

While we waited between takes, we watched the ball game, talked with actors and stage hands (they quickly took to my 'remote office' idea), we ate wonderful chinese food for lunch, and I wrote a few poems. The one that documented our experience was called "Too Much Time in Chinatown."

I recently watched the final season of the series Goliath on HBO which was set in San Francisco with many scenes shot in Chinatown. It quickly reminded me of our experience there and the poem I wrote about it, so I decided to try my hand at producing a spoken word recital of the poem with a soundtrack of drums and effects. My initial attempts came out fine for the percussion loop and sound effects, but I learned in a one take that my voice was as far away from sounding like James Earl Jones as humanly possible. Luckily, I was able to enlist a dear old friend who is a professional voice-over actor to recite the poem, and his performance sounds magnificent. The final touch was to tie all the pieces together with an attempt at some visuals. The video is called 'Too Much Time in Chinatown'. I hope you enjoy it.

Update, 12/27: I created a new version of the video by removing the drum loops and replacing them with an acoustic bass performance by Alex Baum. 

YouTube Link: Too Much Time in Chinatown; Jazz Coffee House Version

YouTube Link:  Too Much Time in Chinatown: version 1

For Katie, Alex, and John.

-Ken Owen     Van Niddy Press

Winter 2021