Notebook

Present-Present, The Slipperiness of Time;
Or Becoming a Bird–the Work of P.K. Page:
A Few Personal Notes

The young Cree and Shoshone poet, Sarain Stump, who drowned in Mexico in 1975, made his home in Eden Valley, not far from where P.K. grew up in Calgary, Alberta. So perhaps it isn't as unlikely, as it may first appear, that the closest in words I've come to a description of what she's up to, should be his. "I liked to sit by him, on the ground. He would then come to me with his mind and gently carry me out of time, wordlessly starting a conversation about that other part of us, more delicate and yet indestructible." *1 This is what it feels like to be with P.K, both in conversation and reading her poems. In and out and all through the words, and their beautiful structures–part of the structures, but maintaining their independence–there are other conversations being carried on: these work at great depth and with delicacy and have the feeling of being both music and water.

Sarain's line drawings, and his simple poems–

He Goes Away.
Very Far away.
Without Anybody On His Tail
Teeth Of Snake, Bird's Wings
The Shaman Goes Very Far Away *2

also give me the sense of outward movement, vital energy–of flying!–that is P.K.
Half the time you expect her to lift off in front of you. The poems do–they take on various disguises, they evoke transparencies–things seen within, in ascending and descending scale, interpenetrating worlds, the slipperiness of time, the 'present-present' so intense that the emotions of beauty, loss, the sense of emotional reaching can be at times almost unbearable. The intellectual rigor and formal mastery of P.K.'s work is light years away from what Sarain was able to attain in his brief lifetime, but I think they are on the same wavelength. Waves of air and light, waves of energy and time. For Sarain, it is the Shaman who 'goes away': I think 'going away' is also what P.K. does, but she is grounded in pattern, in gardens, in simple tasks, in the fineness of work–how things are touched and how they 'touch' back and are both domestic and mythic. This is play up and down the earth and all over heaven. If the Shaman has bird's wings, the Shaman is of no use unless he comes back.

"Becoming a bird, oneself, indicates the capacity, while still alive, to undertake the ecstatic journey to the sky and the beyond." *3

Over the years, in a vain attempt to communicate some of these things I don't know how to say, I've given P.K. little drawings, or cards, or 'creatures'. They look, most of them, if not already flying, as if they're about to. "This is you!" and "Look where I found it this time!" is, I guess, the message. I keep waiting for her to say, "Yes, of course." But she usually says, in that P.K. way–that could mean anything–"How extraordinary!" and leaves it at that. What I admire, is the constant reaching out, the stretch from the personal, the perception that sees–all at once–of course!– the unity of the material and immaterial worlds. How do you do that? I've wondered many times. Well, perhaps I know, but have only found a way to approach it since discovering the work of the Inuit carver, Karoo Ashevak.

Ashevak was a Netsilik from Spence Bay, N.W.T. He worked in bone and carved as directly, I suppose, as one could, out of his spiritual culture. He portrayed very few animals and mostly birds and human-like spirits. Often these have special eyes of different sizes and shapes, and they may protrude; the spirits may have parts that can do things or be played with–extremities that can be moved about, teeth to pull, pegs so that the head can look different ways, food to put in the mouth or take out, and so on. The only Ashevak sculpture I've handled is titled, "Shaman" (created ca. 1973) *3 It has thin bone legs, ivory and stone eyes–one prominent, the other small–and an elongated head with exaggerated mouth and nostrils. What is the Shaman up to? Well, seeing (in different directions) for one thing. The Shaman raises his upper body by pushing up on his hands. Pushing off from the ground? It affected me as objects of power are bound to: with the feeling that I might not know this reality, but it knew me. Maybe I'd take off too, if I held on long enough. Ashevak slips in a little humour, just so you don't die of fright–those very skinny legs. One of my favourite Ashevak sculptures – seen, unfortunately–just in catalogue–is a 'spirit' version of a Hoover upright vacuum cleaner.

Once again, the movement out, the detailed observation evident in the work, the fineness and originality of perception and execution, and above all, the connectedness with 'away' made me think of P.K. So that's what she's up to! I said to myself, and resisted the impulse to send her a score of Ashevak photos. Wings and movement, wide-open eyes–but also fear, and also terrible aloneness.

That 'stretch' out, the taking of perceptual risks, the flying into the spirit world of the Shaman, in P.K., may contain fear and aloneness–sometimes I think it does–but it is surrounded, always, with the pre-eminence of love. It is love that interpenetrates the human and Divine, the material and immaterial. Love is the active principle, the support through beauty and terror. Those 'stripped to the bone' in P.K's "Love's Pavilion" *6 – like the Shaman who is a "durable skeleton, devoid of flesh and blood, so that helping spirits might consider it worthwhile to come to him'' *5. – "rise again". And "love shall not" be lost ("Though lovers be lost")... "This is the sub-text of all art."

There you are!

Notes:
1. Sarain Stump, from unpublished holograph in the author's collection.
2. Sarain Stump, from "There Is My People Sleeping", Gray's Publishing, Sydney, B.C.,
1970.
3. From the introduction to a catalogue of Karoo Ashevak's work, in the collection of Gordon and Helen Jones, St. John's, Newfoundland.
4. In the private collection of Gordon and Helen Jones, St. John's Newfoundland.
5. See #3, above.
6.. 'Love's Pavilion,' from "Hologram" by P.K. Page, Brick Books, London, Ont., 1994.