Southern Oregon Women's Writers Group, Gourmet Eating Society and Chorus

Remembering Tangren

A small collection of memories of the Southern Oregon Woman Writer's Group, Gourmet Eating Society and Chorus

Donna’s Introduction

Oh, Tangren,

I ache to offer

a sly juxtaposition

to hear you chuckle,

a bit of wit

to hear you laugh,

a line made sensual

to hear you moan.

Every three weeks for the forty years since Tangren and friends began the Southern Oregon Women Writer's Group, Gourmet Eating Society and Chorus, we've gathered. Today, we offer you a taste of it, in Tangren's memory.

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Tangren

Your journal opens on your lap and we begin

Director of our orchestra:

You name us as we sit around the Circle,

You mark the time we each will need to read,

Your pen is your baton

Our music swells.

The First Violin was once the leader of the orchestra.

Does one amongst us hold the bow?

I miss you, Tangren.

Love, Katherine Jensen

6/26/2021

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Tangren’s Stories

You told the story of your Raggedy Ann

… and I giggled,

For the love you felt

Overwhelmed me

You told the story of your love, Deborah Kerr

…. and I wept,

For the beauty of that unrequited love

was so tender.

The circle of women you gathered around you

told stories sad and soulful

as they sang in story circles,

… and I rejoiced.

I learned of your passing

… and I smiled,

for now you will tell all your loving stories

to the angels,

and they will tell them to me when my time comes.

We will soar in a story circle and sing.

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Celestial Mechanics

From the book THE AUTO BIOGRAPHY OF DEBORAH CARR by Pearl Time’sChild. This selection was presented by Mara and Ní Aódagaín.

Tuesday I called the garage to find out the verdict on Deborah. They didn’t have her all apart yet, but this was how things stood: the breakdown was caused by something quite minor, oil on the spark plugs. But in looking for the cause of that they turned up another, unrelated problem: the oil in the crankcase was nearly half gasoline. This can happen when the diaphragm on the fuel pump ruptures. So far there was no real damage, but there would have been soon. She could even have blown up.

So …

Well … I wondered. When Deborah broke down so conveniently, beginning to cough just in time for me to pull off at the last exit, then suddenly becoming quite dramatic about it, as we barely pulled into the station, seeming on the point of dying, sending out a gust of blue smoke (where that came from, I’ll never know), her heart knocking loudly.

… Well, I remembered her last dramatic failure, and I wondered, as we sat there, well, ”Why?” It did seem possible there was again a reason. And so there was.

“… But what is the reason for that?” one might ask. Why have the inner diaphragm on the fuel pump rupture at all?

A. Well, we take on being these bodies, right? Within a certain point of view on the space time continuum we take up residence, be it being a person, made of flesh, or someone made of metal. And if our cylinders show negligible wear, the ones we are being are still a part of time; and wear, and change, and ending, are all a part of what we’ve taken on So there will be dramas with diaphragms breaking, and they will be serious, scary; and something, ultimately, will be the signal of the end.

But we have taken on this perspective of being these fragile, temporal beings for our reasons, I’d guess. And I’d guess that some of them have to do with a love of poignance, with a certain … enhancement that creates.

B. To remind you that this is no ordinary journey, and, as you guess, no ordinary car.

C. So Mom and Dad could come save us like that, and we could all love each other.

D. Now I’m walking. The weather’s been nice. I breathe more, am stronger.

We left our heroine phoning the garage after class. Why was there oil on the spark plugs? “It may be pretty serious,” the mechanic is saying. “We have the head off. Tomorrow we’ll pull the pistons and see whether it can be fixed with new and larger rings, or whether the cylinders will have to be rebored. And, we’ll have to see, the bearings may be gone. There’s no way to say; it could be over a thousand dollars. We’ll know tomorrow.

* * *

Tomorrow, feeling helpless, I ask Dad if he’ll go with me to talk to them. “Let’s go look at it,” he says.

At the garage door I manage, “You know, Dad, I’m really pretty attached to this car. I don’t want to give up on it if at all possible.”

And then, there, among the other cars, is Deborah, looking a little thin, somehow, her hood ahoist, and some of her innards missing.

Before I can take it in, Dad is already feeling the inner walls, saying there’s hardly any wear at all.

Slowly, in wonder, I run my hand down into roundness, along the shining curved surfaces. “…Cylinder,” I find the word. And down below, that must be her crankshaft. I could no more have expected to see these things than I ever expect to see my own heart (at once a theoretical construct, and so intimate in experience).

Over on a bench are her pistons, rods, and bearings. And her rings, not rubber, after all, but gleaming metal. … Amazing. “And all in good shape,” Dad says, though the mechanic insists “they’ve been very hot” and should be replaced. He admits the wear on the cylinders is “negligible.”

We agree on a course of action, including new valve guides, for as Dad and I had suspected for years, that was the source of the oil on the spark plugs. For years I had tried to explain that to the mechanics. They wouldn’t listen, insisted it must be the cylinders.

“Well, now you don’t have to get a divorce from your car,” Dad said as we drove home; and I still managed to get up the nerve to refer to her as “her” once or twice

Walked to school, downtown, home again, up the back road as the sun slid early behind the ridge,

walked and felt the rhythm of my feet, and felt the muscles moving, and the tightness in my pelvis sliding into striding energy,

walked

and thought about her four beautiful soft grey cylinders, hardly worn at all and her shining bearings.

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Portrait of a Lady

for Tangren at 60

Selene Aiken presented this poem written by Helen Laurence

tears flow as I listen to your enticing words

your decades of passion shared

for women real and ideal

you write yourself into awareness:

hers, mine, yours, ours…

your special gift of startling honesty

allowing myself to admit

all the varieties of love

of longing

drawn by your rare blend

of innocence, intellect, wisdom…

by your playfulness

calling forth my own

I weep for all our calls unmet

yet rejoice for laughter answered

in our friendship

for understanding sparkling

as raindrops caught on pine needles

in the sun streaks

after gentle showers

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Excerpt from “Vigil” by Hawk Madrone

(Holly Hertel presented this piece written by Hawk Madrone)

. . . So Tangren walks in the door. Her mother has died, this part of the story is finished. As she puts her things down she looks at me and says slowly, ponderously: “It sure is a rite of passage when your mother dies.” Pause. Her eyes look childlike and yet impish. “I feel more grown-up.” The combination of innocence and imp set me laughing, and laughing, until I am wide open with uncontrollable laughter, Tangren right with me. Both our vigils have reached their climax and the denouement flips us momentarily from sadness to hilarity. Our laughter ebbs as she comes around behind my chair, sits on the adjacent couch and leans to me; reaches around my shoulders to place her hands on mine on my chest, lays her head on my shoulder, and we breathe together, slow and deep, slow and deep.

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The Omniscient Voice

(Susanne Peterman presented this piece written by Tangren at a “Flight of the Mind Women Writers’ Workshop” led by Ursula LeGuin)

I am not only omniscient. I am omnipotent.
I am benevolent, too. No matter what I do
to the characters. Killing off Beth, for instance,
from scarlet fever. Beth, who, like Peter Pan, wanted
to never grow up, never did.
To the end she was faithful to dolls.
And Jo loved her, and poured out her heart in a poem
to the sister passing from her.
. . .Jo lived, to tell the story. Of life among women.
Of love.

And thousands, maybe millions, of girls
(Sure I know exactly, but why should I tell you?)
girls who wanted not to grow up, have wept
over Beth's death until they couldn't see the pages,
and made Jo's choice, have lived to be old women,
sometimes even authoresses.
...It is sweet to be an old woman.
It is sad to die young.
But anyone can see that Little Women
could never be the book it is if Beth had not died, that Jo,
crying, and poking the fire, and fighting herself for acceptance Beth is dying, and writing her poem

– is some of the best stuff,

right up there with Jo in the attic, mad with invention,
munching apples, smudging ink.

So, Beth dies. And so does everyone else, sometime.
For roughly similar reasons.
Except Me, of course. The All-Knower.
The One who knows Everything, Always.
And for whom every moment is Now.

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For Tangren's Celebration of Life

Once I asked Tangren whether she thought I should build my house on top of a steep hill, as planned. The walk would be daunting.

“OH YES!” she said. “Oh yes, build it on top!” I understood. It was The Pilgrim, The Seeker who spoke. The one who would do whatever it took to reach Vision, Insight, Revelation.

The Priestess of Marijuana.

She retired from her rituals in the year before her death, but for ever so long, come what may, she was a devotee in service to the vapors of Inspiration.

For some years, she grew pot in a cleverly designed grow-room. She experimented with devices that would soften and aerate the smoke.

How peaceful she would become. How deeply relaxed. Seated at the altar of Brilliant Thought. Snuggled up to enter the Dream World -- where magical creatures and famous people, beloved friends, mythic characters, profound conversations filled her with wonder.

Her reportage from those regions was fascinating. Fascination. That was the prize, the lure, the passion of this woman who shared the treasures of her imagination with us, with the world -- how we laughed, how we murmured, how we marveled, how we learned --

how we loved you, dear Tangren.