Monday, September 30, 2013

as the past sinks

as the past sinks
it starts to swim
the fragments bobbing
on the crest of a wave
tumbled to the tideline
along the beach

i really want to write about whales
their breath
the myths
the Biblical past
where Jonah journeyed
within an unnamed friend

whales speak
beneath the surface
but do we hear -
do we sleep better
as their lives decline?
our lives decline,
our existence
undetachable
from theirs

the air outside is stale
so far from the oceans
the sea horses and clams
the marlins and barnacles beckon

Sunday, September 29, 2013

There's a little 'Send feedback' tab in the blogger.com posting system, and I have used it from time to time to describe hitches in the process, or just to say thank you for providing this marvelous tool. Lately, though, my mind runs away, and I imagine sending feedback messages on the hitches in my life, and the hitches in the universe, and day-to-day irritations and soon I imagine the 'Send feedback' staff as a kind of silent 'Dear Abby', or the mute in 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter'. They accept and absorb my feedback on life without complaint, without reply.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

the band

they played their crazy instruments
the drums
the strings
cans of dried beans
and informed the people in the crowds
(an eruption of music
searing soaring sound)
how it is
what words in any language
(english latin polynese)
could not begin
to tell

Friday, September 27, 2013

I was gazing out over my art table this morning when I came up with a line for a sci fi novel:

She looked out the window and brought her cup of coffee to her lips. 'Look, Dahling - things have shifted again.'

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Yesterday morning, in Athens, Alabama, I stood outside our motel, holding a cup of coffee. (When I travel, I carry a cup or mug from home.) Below was another motel, and near the parking lot there, a small tree. I noticed movement, was it birds? Autumn leaves falling? The trees in the area were still green.

It turned out they were sparrows. They rained, plunk, as one, down to the ground. Then they rose back up in such beautiful synchrony, it was like watching a film being played in reverse. Down they dropped again, as though responding to a common prompt. Then, altogether, they rose again to the branches of the little tree. They were mesmerizing to watch.

I walked down to get a closer look, to see what was attracting them. There on the corner of the parking lot surface were a couple of handsful of sunflower and other seeds.

I haven't seen many sparrows of late, and it was a pleasure to see these small characters show up for free breakfast, not so different from us human guests at the motels.

John Lennon's drawings


in the 1990s, I was waiting, waiting in a parking lot, and as I waited, I discovered a small art gallery. I walked in. There was a traveling exhibit of John Lennon's artwork. I knew that, in addition to his gifts as a musician, he had been recognized as a visual artist, but had never seen anything of his up close before. I was surprised to discover, just by chance, so many pieces of his work in the middle of Austin, Texas in a narrow, nondescript location.

What I now recall is that they were mostly of black ink on white paper, simple line drawings. There was a repeated theme, he and his wife Yoko Ono in a large platform bed, sitting side by side. It was as though this were the most pressing subject he could convey.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

happy birthday

the tic tap of keys
the cake at the door,
prose typed tonight
by birthday candle light

Friday, September 20, 2013

Today, I went to the drug store to pick up my dad's prescriptions. I purchased six items, and was handed a computer-generated receipt 3 feet, 4.5 inches long and three inches wide. That's over 120 square inches of paper total, 20 square inches per item. It's a trend. My favorite hardware store has a similar ailment, as does some of the big box stores. I've promised to write a novella on the back of one of these receipts, but haven't gotten it going it yet.

4-D Chess

What would 4-dimensional chess look like? Well, it might be fun to add in the dimension of time. With 2-D, you have a flat, checkerboard surface to play on. 3-D could be a cube, with checkerboard layers and columns. With 4-D, the checkerboards could be in motion, rotating on a spindle. The knight you are trying to capture might not be there by the time your Bishop arrives. Like in real life, whether sitting in a chair on a front porch, or racing in circles in the Indianapolis 500, the players are in motion. Your strategy would have to take into account pieces roving in changing locations.

So how would you play? You could do the math - where would you have to direct your pawn to meet up with the opposing pawn at the same moment. This is doable although complicated. You'd have to know how fast the pieces are going relative to your piece and in what direction. By the time you figure that out, everything might have shifted into a new configuration.

The better players of 4-D might be the lazy, relaxed type. Forget the math. With the boards in motion carrying the chess pieces, a 4-D champ might wander away into the kitchen, water the geranium in the window, grab a soda, and return to move that Bishop at just the moment the knight glides into view.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

3-D Chess



You gradually learn to play the game, everyday chess. You can travel a straight line with a rook or a diagonal with a bishop and even spend some time dancing with the funky gait of a knight. Suddenly, it turns into Star Trekky 3-Dimensional chess with diagonals into space, and where even kings can hip-hop up to another floor. You're queasy now, way out of your realm of experience. Knights are galloping down zig-zag tunnels, and the queen soars above like a jet stream. The only way to finish the game is to step out of your familiar life on the 2-D board and take a leap of faith. You pray. Please don't throw me into 4-Dimensional chess.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Dobie Gillis

The last time I saw Dobie, the hero of the TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, was when I was seven. Then he reappeared in my life last night, half a century later, on a laptop screen via youtube. It was an episode I remembered, mostly intact, in black and white. There was Dobie, still a high school student, sitting in front of a statue of Rodin's The Thinker, contemplating aloud about his latest girlfriend and about his buddy Maynard.

Monday, September 16, 2013

a pecan drops to the ground with a tap
a breeze enters the window -
the curtain rises and falls, caressing the sill
chickens wander in the yard searching for beetles
the lawn mower is rusting beneath the shady oak where
cicadas sing a whirring
call and response
call and response -
it's 1959, and i'm in a dream
rubbing the sleep from my eyes,
scratching the chicken pox scab on my leg
(you're the bee's knees, she says -
the cat's meow
sliced bread
and the cat's pajamas -)

Sunday, September 15, 2013

the fly's eye

One familiar illustration in high school science and biology textbooks was that of the eye of the common housefly. The fly's eye has many facets, multiple lenses that offer visual data with high accuity from many directions at once. This works as a great defense because no matter from what direction that flyswatter or frog's tongue comes from, the fly sees it coming and knows it's time to go. What amazing optics on such a small scale!

Saturday, September 14, 2013

" 'mid oaks and towering pines..."


From sixth thru twelfth grade, I went to a Catholic school nestled among the oaks and pines of previous centuries. The first few years I attended there, it was a gentle, isolated world of its own. The nuns who taught us and administered the school lived there, as did a number of other nuns who were receiving care in their later years. People from the little town nearby, Grand Coteau, worked there. I have no idea how or what people were paid, but I had the sense that the school in some ways belonged to everybody, and people just showed up daily because that's what they did. Drove and maintained the bus, baked huge sheet cakes, polished the old desks and bruised banisters with mildly fragrant oils.

This was the mid 1960s when I started there. You curtsied to the nuns, just a little bob where the knees relaxed for half a moment and the right foot stepped behind the left. Monday mornings was Primes (preems) - Judgment Day for the previous week. You put on a little pair of white fabric gloves that were kept in your desk just for that reason. A council of teachers and nuns and religious hierarchy sat on the stage of the little auditorium. Each class was called in its turn to make a semicircle before this gathering of generally well-meaning, stern-looking school bureaucracy. There was a little clicker that one of the nuns held in her hand. At the sound of the click, our knees folded as one into a communal curtsy. Each of our names was read aloud. You heard one of these labels: Very Good. Good. Indifferent. Unsatisfactory. Being rather mute unless someone asked me a question, without any effort on my part at all I almost always got 'very good', as did a few other girls. I never saw any of my peers do anything particularly bad or wrong. But now I realize, just by being exuberant chatterboxes, they at times earned merely good, or (very bad Monday morning indeed) indifferent. If anyone ever earned unsatisfactory, I think they were out of the school before Monday morning ever showed up and never returned.

Our study hall desks faced a mural of Mater who was Mother Mary as a girl robed in pink and cream, seated with a spindle and a book at her side. We sang a lot at school, and processed, even sometimes to classes, in order of height. On holy days, or special school days, there might be a Holy Mass in the chapel. You always wore a head covering back then if you were female and inside a Catholic church. So, at school, we wore matching veils. They were stored in heavy manila envelopes and handed out just before the event at hand. Each veil had a tiny comb attached to it so that it would stay on your head. (No, I never heard of anyone getting lice at school.) There were everyday veils of black lace - the fabric was mostly durable tulle. There were formal somber veils of more elaborate black lace. Then, there were dress veils for celebrations - these were of white lace. There was one event each year where boxes of large plastic lilies were taken out, and each of us carried a lily, but I don't remember what the occasion was.

The mid 1960s ran into the late 1960s. Having formerly called the teaching nuns 'Mother', we were now to call them 'Sister.' The curtsies and veils faded, as did Monday morning Primes, and the school became more integrated with the outside world.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

correction

When I wrote yesterday's post on banana blooms, I had some difficulty recreating in my mind the colors of the large banana blooms. Not sure why I wrote 'ruby reds' - the colors were creamy and pale in contrast to the hot pinks of the smaller upright blooms.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

banana blooms

As fall approached last year, the yard maintenance crews were cutting back crepe myrtles and oaks and banana trees. Throughout the neighborhood, banana trees were thinned and cut short. I was told not to worry, they come back after winter.

And so they did, with their broad youthful leaves, yellows, greens - some with burgundy undersides.

Many banana trees had little blooms, four to six inches, a deep pink, that grew upward, unfolded, and with time lost their petals as flowers are wont to do.

The banana trees, though, had two kinds of blooms, the ones I just mentioned and other, larger buds. I've only seen two of the latter in the year I've lived here, the great blooms, rich in ruby colors, that hang down glowing like a lantern, on a stalk that bears row after row of fruit, above my reach. The one I was able to see on the tree was lasting longer than the small blooms and attracted curious flies and bugs who seemed to find cover beneath the curled fringe at the top. I no longer have access to the photos I took, but there was a magical quality to the interaction between the little critters and the blooms. The stalk was big and thick with evidence of bananas or plantains produced in the past, and others in progress. This tree, nestled within a cluster of banana trees, was perhaps thirty feet or more high, and look to have been left untampered with over many years.

The first great bloom I saw, perhaps a foot long, I photographed over a week in time. Day to day, it would shift in appearance, but not open. One morning, I saw the big bloom had been severed, only the stump of the stem was to be found.

The second great bloom I found was on a street curb, also last fall, with the rest of the remains of a very large banana tree, waiting for the truck that collects yard debris. I picked up the bloom - with the stalk it may have weighed a good fifteen pounds or more. Though there are a number of banana trees (some neighbors call them 'banana plants') in the neighborhood, I've seen no more of the grand, lantern-like blooms.

I haven't seen this second type of bloom on younger plants. I've wondered whether these are just different varieties of banana trees, or if perhaps some banana trees have complex maturational stages. Perhaps the great living blooms do not appear until the tree has matured fully over many years, without interference with its development.
'I had this lumpy alien under my skin. It didn't talk or anything, but it was there all the time. It worried me something fierce. Then one day, it went away, and now I miss it terribly.'

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

instead of friends and gardens, instead of love, happiness, we have cable tv, and recliner chairs.
idk if this is true, but it's worth considering as a hypothesis -

Monday, September 9, 2013

Greyhound Bus 1974

There is no sign
no crossroad.
There are no buildings.
Prairie grasses stretch around us
shimmering into the distance
and to the north
a low silhouette of hills
at the horizon.
The bus driver
in his grey brown brimmed hat
and grey brown uniform
leans back, listening.
He pulls to the side of the road.
The man behind him
grabs the shining pole
at the exit door
and swings down the two steps
and out into the field.

No trail, no markers
the grasses
pale gold in the rippling sunlight
he strides north
a slight unsteadiness
his blue denim figure
growing smaller with each step.
The driver turns back to the wheel
and we're on our way again.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

one characteristic of many songs from the 1960s and early 70s is the interweaving of eastern instruments, harmonies, with western music and lyrics. I'm not particularly informed on this topic - but I do remember the newness of sounds that perhaps were from India or Tibet or Iran, the sitars and jingling percussions, the curious, sweet, wandering melodies. Derek & the Dominos, the Beatles, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young all used elements from the east, a kind of cohesive underlayer. Around the same time, incense was popular among young adults, and inexpensive fabrics, bedspreads from India decorated many an apartment wall or sofa. But it's the joining of rock and popular music with the holy fragrances and exotic sounds of distant lands that anchor memories from that time -

Friday, September 6, 2013

Siskel and Ebert

A couple of fellows from Chicago became two of the most well known movie critics in the US when they took to the television screen in 1982 through the late 1990s. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were quite a team. They recognized a great film. Their comments educated about what contributes to a movie's success, and what kinds of problems can take away its power and beauty. Their faces lit up, their voices became animated, when they could discuss a movie that truly satisfied them. Siskel could become lyrical when speaking of movies that moved him.

Their hearts were in their work; they were hardly ever cruel about a film they were reviewing. They loved movies and appreciated the kind of effort and talent that filmmakers and actors put into creating a work that engages its audience.

Their back-and-forth exchanges enlightened the viewers, both about the movie at hand, and life in general. Plain-spoken, they were honest about what they thought was good or effective, and what they thought was not. They were civil to each other, but could get quickly heated when they disagreed about whether a scene was effective. Ebert could get snippy and irritable when his opinion was countered, and Siskel might push a button or two more before becoming the angelic peacemaker. No matter what, they kept showing up for the next program.

Viewers came away with useful info about which movies coming up might best interest them. They were pleasurably entertained by two knowledgeable, articulate reviewers. And they got to watch two people share an enthusiasm and work out differences week after week, year after year. A number of their videotaped reviews can be found via youtube.com .

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Vegetable Lamb of Tartary



Image via Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vegetable_lamb_%28Lee,_1887%29.jpg (H. Lee, 1887)


Well, I was unable to access any material on the hurricanes of various years tonight, so then I looked up beryl, glass, The Graduate, and eventually, cotton. In the article on cotton in Wikipedia, I found a link to the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. What the heck is that? I got there pretty quick and found a thorough, well-researched but somewhat muddled article, replete with quotes and sketches from medieval poets and naturalists.

This must be a hoax - playful and humorous. Here is a link to the Vegetable Lamb article, just for grins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_Lamb_of_Tartary

Monday, September 2, 2013



Image (1959 poster for Sleeping Beauty) available via Wikimedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sleeping_beauty_disney.jpg


Last night, I searched through youtube.com , desiring to see clips of the animated movies produced by Walt Disney that were so popular in my early childhood and before i was born. These are works of brilliance, intensive labor, and much love.

I watched 'Zip a dee doo dah' from Songs of the Old South, and bits from Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp, and Fantasia. I also looked at scenes from later films such as The Jungle Book, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (produced by Disney's company after his demise). While the clips show signs of fading and editing, there is still richness in the sparkling effects, music, and humor. Little birds and mice appear in these works, and there are the marvelous intricacies of forests and architecture. (Sleeping Beauty reportedly benefited from a lot of research on Renaissance era art and structures). The foreboding cliffs, twisted rose vines, and smoke and thunder of scary scenes are a thrilling pleasure too. You can't help feeling like a kid watching animals and humans interacting at knee-high level, where grownups might miss the merriment and drama among the flora and fauna entirely. Having never seen Alice in Wonderland, I'm cheered to discover Alice learning from a couple of bespectacled little mammals behind steaming teapots that there are 364 Happy Unbirthdays to celebrate every year.