The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir

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Many thanks to Simon J. Ortiz, great poet and guest editor, and to all the people at The Kenyon Review for the lovely color images of Lord Chapulin and the story of his portrait in the special issue devoted to work by North American Indigenous Authors, Winter 2010.

Mil gracias to the Matias family, Teresa, Alfonso, and their sons, and to the wonderful staff at Teresa’s Mosaic Cafe who fed me while I worked on this book. Their red chile chicken enchiladas and “cadillac” margaritas were essential to the writing of this book.

I was born in 1948, the year of the supernova in the Mixed Spiral galaxy. My friend Joy Harjo, poet and astrologer, charted a triple triune for the afternoon of March 5, 1948 in Albuquerque, but dark planets rule my First House.

1948 is the Year of the Rat. We rats seldom make lasting friendships. We let the correspondence lapse and don’t return phone calls.

A great deal of what I call “memories” are bits and pieces I recall vividly; but the process we call “memory,” even recent memory, involves imagination. We learn to ignore the discrepancies between our memory of an event and a sister’s memory. We can’t be certain of anything.

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