There was a moment
I saw myself join myself
a coming together
two halves
became one
jolting me out of
my complacency
in the living moment
a shock of life now
seeing the reality
of myself
in this universe
of time
difficult to stay
wanting to turn away
it felt like
meeting
death
for a moment
In life
or meeting life
in its depth.
Martha Klein Henrickson March 3, 2024
I began to upload an audio file but I see this does not work. I hope to find a place for it. I just found this recording when looking for another image. I must have spoken in 1999 or 2000. It’s a bit long with the sound of the train as I spoke. I have been trying to put my images along with words (spoken) together this is more time consuming to learn but I will keep at it. Once I have one of them completed I will post it as a film with sound on Vimeo or youtube. This piece is unedited and long, I don’t think I can edit it, as I am not sure how it was recorded.
writing from 1966 copy
I will try to copy and paste the rest of it…
I have vague memories of writing this.
1950’s
prying open sticky eyelids mom in the doorway
on early humid mornings as she left for work
qlone I stretch my waking body hear the birds
the sounds of summer mornings
on early humid mornings as she left for work
smell of heated asphalt rising to meet
the sounds of summer mornings
not a breeze heavy underlying quiet
smell of heated asphalt rising to meet
voices carry as workmen shovel
not a breeze heavy underlying quiet
we leave right away, walking, laughing
voices carry as workmen shovel
black canvas bag flung over right shoulder
we leave right away, walking, laughing
sticking to lacquered woven straw BMT seats
black canvas bag flung over right shoulder
running along hot sand jumping on blanket corners
sticking to laquored woven straw BMT seats
barefoot we collect splinters from the boardwalk
running along hot sand jumping on blanket corners
fries hot dogs knishes frozen custard
barefoot we collect splinters from the boardwalk
burning skin feels alive
screaming into the sea
fries hot dogs knishes frozen custard
muscles flexing dancing bluebird tattoos
burning skin feels alive
screaming into the sea
bodies clinging in shadows under the boardwalk
muscles flexing dancing bluebird tattoos
orange shirted Lifeguards bobbing on catamarans
bodies clinging in shadows under the boardwalk
we sing, Sha Boom Sha Boom dayadadayada ya
orange shirted Lifeguards bobbing on catamarans
BMT home filled with suits and high heels
we sing, Sha Boom Sha Boom dayadadayadaya
the sounds of summer mornings
Martha Klein Henrickson 2002
I am posting some ‘historic’ articles of our beginnings in Canada…. We arrived in Montral Canada in April 1968 by train via B.C. from San Francisco where we lived from 1965-68. I will post information as I find it.
1st. June 1977 from Canadian Forum, by Scott Lauder
My grandparents…a year before my mother was born and 6 years before they were divorced.. Sometime around 1900. This is the grandpa who took me to the circus, the one with the long earlobes. Grandma Dora lived with us when I was born, when my sister was 10. The three of us shared a bedroom with two windows facing the court yard from the third floor. I never knew her with dark hair, her hair was very white short and curly. What I remember is standing between her knees in the living room while she brushed my hair and pulled me as she braided it. She wore stockings that were rolled just below her knees and kept a pack of tobacco for rolling her own cigarettes. She was warmand I imagined she read to me but was told later that she could not have as she never learned to read English. Originally from a place called Bialistoc, which I was told was in Russia at the time and maybe later became part of Poland. Grandma Dora came to the United States with many other immigrants sometime in the late 1800’s. I found her name on the ships manifest once, Brody there was her mother who’s name I can’t remember right now, her sister Mary brother Ben and another brother that must have died young because I never heard of him. The stories I heard about her were that she loved to dance and danced with scarves, she had lovers one who is in the box with old photo’s, my mom said they used to call him uncle somebody. Dora and Louie divorced in an age when it was not an everyday occurrence. They lived in Brooklyn, but before that they lived on farm land in Connecticut, my mom remembered it being too cold in the winter. My mom was an avid reader and spend much time in the library as a girl.. When they moved to Brooklyn and the divorce happened Grandma Dora eventually re-married and had two more children. My uncle Jesse and aunt Roz who was ten years younger than my mother , just like me and my sister who is ten years older than me. I don’t know how long they were married, but my mom told stories about growing up with a stepfather who would not even allow her to take an apple from the fruit bowl. She also tole me about having to take streetcars in bad weather to get to her fathers house so she could get some money to buy a pair of stockings. I guess that is why she never finished school but went out into the business world. My mom loved shoes and hats and gloves and all things that she worked for. Wait I am writing about the grandparents..I loved grandma Dora as if she was my mother. She took care of me while my mom went to work from the time she moved in with us..maybe when I was 6 months oldand we moved to a two bedroom apartment on Kingston Avenue. When she died I was about 5and they didn’t tell me. They sent me off to the Steeplechase with our neighbour Molly and her son the day of the funeral. I think I was home when she had a heart attack and was taken away in the ambulance, where she died. I have a memory of someone on the floor in the back foyer..either my mom or grandma and Lily sending me into the kitchen.
My favourite story was always The Little Match Girl, and for years I thought my grandmother read it to me..but when my mom was dyingand we ha time to talk without her running off to do something else, she said ‘no!’ your grandmother could not read English, I read it to you every night, it was the only story you wanted for a long time.
That was the first time I understood why I liked that story so much, it was the scene with the last match and the glow of it and the wish to be with her dear dead grandmother. That was when I saw that grandma Dora ‘s death was as if my mother died. As I was growing up I was always afraid my mother would dye, when her hair started to turn grey I asked her if it meant she would die soon, that was when she first dyed her hair..
The flag was still hanging limp with rain,, while the trees surrounding and beyond had the freedom of swaying with each passing breeze, swaying with droplets falling from each pine needle..so alive. Clair watched from inside, her chilled hands caressing each other for warmth. It wasn’t really cold, not winter cold, not icy blue cold, but one of those damp mornings when putting a few logs onto the fire would crackle everything back to life. This was their home before the desert winds blew the life out of everything green. When there were still a few elecric cars. Before the bay became a body of water not full of life but full of the silence of a dead lake. That this rich land could become a desert was not predictable. There was much change and it was constant, no time to become accustomed to something as it may not be there tomorrow. Sometimes the only constant were memories, and those moments of quiet, when she would but Elton’s hair in the afternoon. Not when the seasons changed as was the impulse in their history, but after sundown or before sunrise outdoors when the cowl was withdrawn so they could see the sky as the night crept over them. Things had changed so in this world, putting a log onto the fire was an extravagance, something for a special occasion or a deep freeze. This was an ordinary day, a once a week Tuesday morning.
One of their neighbours just left perhaps heading south before winter, but no this is a spring rain. It had become more and more difficult to distinguish one season from another. Weather patterns shifting so swiftly all over the globe. You may find yourself out in shirt sleeves during mid February or shovelling snow in June. Going out on a warm summer morning meant taking along a small shrink pack, consisting of gloves, folding boots, a scarf, took and a jacket, all designed from a special material that compresses into the shrink pack, no larger than an old-fashioned cell phone Sort of like those sea mermaids in old comic books that kids would send away for ..just add water and they expand.
She remembered there was a calendar on the wall, held up by a red push-pin. It was such an ordinary thing, the calendar with pen marks for appointments, birthdays, holidays, things crossed out and changed. Folding over each month and seeing a new picture, maybe a bear or a photo of the grand canyon. We don’t have calendars anymore. They eventually vanished as it was too much waste, who needs that when you can have all your stuff neatly tucked into your device. The one that you insert into the clip on your wrist.
The children were grown now, Sam living out in the desert where they had grown up. He was committed to continuing their work with the cactus transformations. So many people had left once it had become so intolerable to live under these conditions of extreme dry winds and sand storms. They were still discovering new ways to transform energy by multiplying.
Kal their daughter was off in a more remote part of the planet working with children left behind during the mass exodus of the early part of the century. These children were learning how to bring natural agriculture into a form that could also generate physical endurance for humanity.
Part II is missing at the moment somewhere in a pile of papers or lost in a computer.
Years have moved ahead and the struggle for survival has become the norm. Perhaps is has always been this way, each generation believes that it’s time is the most challenging…she wondered if there was ever, since the beginning of time ,an era that was not challenging or interesting.
Clair watched as she lived her life, she watched the star patterns begin to change. the slow creeping of sand farther into the towns, the fewer familiar birds and insects.
The crops that were being grown in the farmed grow areas were all sheltered from the elements, the cowl covering were now part of everyday life…and many underground passages were dug deep into the earth. They had air channels that allowed air to be filtered in without the use of any energy other than the force of the air itself shifting through the many thin tubes made of a fibre from another type of cactus. The lighting was also channelled in through openings above that were made of the cowl material allowing in light in a soft pattern along the tunnelled walls. These underground channels were connections to many communities. Each community was started by a group of friends or family that had contained their creative and learned knowledge of a particular form. The food growers had each developed ony one or two specialties, this allowed for many people to access their needs by trading.
The re-training of many young people took many years, as most of the skills that had been taken for granted a generation before were lost during the surge of artificial intelligence and technology. This was the reason for it’s being here in the first place. Humanity being so absorbed in its own belief that humans were really capable of developing this mass technology on our own, really not ever questioning the validity of human accomplishment, never thinking once that it was from somewhere else that this sudden impact so quickly taken on as if it were always here. Taking to it all too easily like breathing, and that too, breathing, we took credit for as our own.
As technology for communication became more and more available for everyone, and other means of communication became tiresom, too complicated, too exhausting, the abbreviated forms of texting became the mode for each new generation. Speech became lessened, writing slowly vanished along with the ability to actually read full ideas. If it was sung into the ears through little inserts with musical vibrations tat was all the was going on.
When it all stopped, when the plug was pulled the planet was at the mercy of our captors…
Martha Klein Henrickson sometime between 1999 and 2012
cactus and glacier…
marcharhenwritesitdown 