Weird that we don't say "Verses" ...

Soundjots:

Beat, crushed
béatifique parasitic bohemians
in beards and sandals ...
dégrinateurs

and devils
turned hermit

weird that we don't
say "Verses"

I'm sick of myself
But I'm a good
writer

You tell 'em,
Jack

Boggles the Mind

Having my morning coffee, reading the news and up comes an item that just, well, kind of boggles the mind.

Two, actually, and they both fall under the category of, "Say WHAT??!!!"

Item No. 1:
Meetings were held in a school district in Riverside County, California recently to consider banning the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary because it contains a number of referenced words that were thought to be "age-inappropriate" and which some parents found highly offensive.[1]   After due deliberation, it was finally decided that said dictionary could remain on the shelves and those parents who objected, could  "opt to have their kids use an alternative dictionary...."[2]

Perhaps they should have slapped a warning sticker on that dictionary, saying "For college-age students only" (like the title says, it's a "collegiate" dictionary), alerting users under the age of 18 that:  "This book contains certain words that may be offensive and parental permission is required to consult it."  (I notice it didn't mention any of the offended parties offering to substitute an "alternative" dictionary that did not contain any offending words.)

If they want to ban a dictionary in a school library because it contains the words "oral sex", because those are not  "age-appropriate"  words for an elementary school child, why stop there?  Why not also ban the Bible, which contains words such as "sodomy", "lust" "naked", "whoremongers" "adulterer" and  "harlot", which terms are also not "age-appropriate" for a child? I'm just saying ...

And maybe, by extension, children should not be allowed to attend religious services in which the word "hell" and "damn" (as in, you will be damned to hell if you don't stop sinning) are shouted out from the pulpit.  But that was in context.  You must always take things in context.  A minister can say hell or damn in a sermon but if you're a kid and you try it, chances are you'll get your mouth washed out with soap.  (If you accidently hit your thumb with a hammer, for example, you still can't say hell or damn.  Only adults are allowed to do that.  You have to say heck or dang or gosh.) 

Today dictionaries, tomorrow school textbooks.  Wait, that's already happening ...  Don't like school textbooks teaching your kids about evolution?  Some parents have succeeded in getting those books replaced with 'alternative' ones, more in line with the creationist point of view.   There are alternative views on every subject.  Even documented history is revisable. You can sometimes influence which 'truth' gets promulgated; and you can control how a person--child or adult--perceives a thing, to a certain extent, by limiting access to information that supports or contradicts a particular point of view.  With young children, it's a pre-emptive thing:  in the good sense--you don't want to deliberately expose them to things that will frighten, upset or radically confuse them.  But there's a negative side:  too restrictive a control can also serve to squelch curiosity (or, conversely, fuel it, setting the stage for future rebellion).

Organizations sometimes attempt to control a member's reading choices so as not to lose their membership.  Several decades ago Roman Catholics were forbidden to read certain books appearing on an Index of banned books. Only those officially sanctioned with the nihil obstat (i.e., containing nothing damaging to their faith or morals) were safe to read. Voltaire, Descartes, Galileo, Rousseau, Gide, Pascal--were all on the Church's list of forbidden books. What the Church feared, of course, happened.  Scores of members eventually abandoned their unquestioning adherence to certain previously accepted dogmas and went swimming instead with the dreaded secular fishes. Censorship sometimes backfires.

Item No. 2:
South Carolina now requires 'subversives' to register (and pay a $5 fine) if they intend to overthrow the government.[3]   Failure to comply will result in a fine of up to $25,000 and up to ten years in prison.   (Say what?!!)  I kid you not.  The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State." Good luck with that, guys. 

Take out the "or's" in the above quotation, condense it, and it now reads:   Every person who advocates the necessity of conducting the U.S. government has to register with the Secretary of State. 

Who do they consider subversives? Because they include persons who "reside" or "transact business"  in South Carolina who might, among other unspeakable deeds, "attempt to influence political action by unlawful means".   Somebody better tell the lobbyists and certain corporations and certain politicians used to taking bribes.

 The law here says this doesn't apply to free speech, by the way.   "The terms of this chapter do not apply to any labor union or religious, fraternal or patriotic organization, society or association, or their members, whose objectives and aims do not contemplate the overthrow of the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means" says section 23-29-40.   You're apparently okay if you "do NOT contemplate" overthrowing a political subdivision by unlawful means.   Wait, but are they saying that if you merely "contemplate" (i.e., ponder, think about, etc.) a regime change in the U.S. or South Carolina by "unlawful means" (like manipulation of electronic voting machines), that according to them you are a 'subversive' and must notify the Secretary of State of your contemplations? I mean, that's what the wording says.  (Diebold, are you listening?)

This is hilarious.  No terrorist planning a violent act is going to trot down to City Hall, fork over $5.00 and inform the Secretary of State of South Carolina of their intent.   And no lobbyist or corporation or politican bent on "influencing politics" is going to, either.  Get real.   How, one might ask, would such a law be even enforceable?  It would be interesting to know, since the law's been enacted, just how many subversive entities have actually registered.  Where would one find out that information--or is that, too, a "matter of national security"?

SUBVERSIVES, REGISTER HERE PLEASE $5.00 fee required

Not to harp on this, but one should really pay attention to how a thing is worded, especially new laws that are enacted.  Lawyers do.  Just look at the number of criminals who never get prosecuted because of mere "technicalities." 

Now if you check that South Carolina state website you will find right away a disclaimer stating that the "Subversive Activities Registration Act", a copy of which they have provided there on the web page, is the "unannotated" version.  To read the "official", annotated version you have to go find and read the published volumes.  You probably have to make an appointment to do so.  What's the difference between the unannotated and the annotated version?  Well, just that the annotated version includes a brief summary of the law and demonstrates how it is interpreted and applied. The unannotated version on their web page, does not.  The legislative staff says it won't respond to any questions as to the application of this law to any facts, by the way.  They suggest you retain a lawyer for help with that.

Words are so important and people find them so boring sometimes, they barely notice them. Others obsess over them to the point of unbalanace.  And if there are too many of them--as in this absurdly long posting today on my blog--some readers will have left long before the article is concluded.

Words contained in dictionaries, words embedded in legalese, words that incite, titillate, confuse, threaten, or deceive. Words in tiny print and unfamiliar jargon are particularly uninviting--one barely manages a perfunctory skimming.  People routinely sign contracts without understanding the terms, the interpretation of which is assumed but not ever verified.

If one wants to include something in a contract that if spelled out and thoroughly described would invite further scrutiny and possibly result in cancellation, one might include the words "and for other purposes".  This particular phrase is especially useful if one is later required to justify certain expenses incurred when the contract doesn't specifically mention such items, such as millions of dollars earmarked for one program that finds its way instead into a senator's local pork project, the "other purpose" alluded to but not defined.  Despite attention continually being called to this deceptive practice, it remains alive and popular and well-exercised.

The inclusion--or absence--of a single word or phrase in an official document,  poem, or personal correspondence, can make all the difference in the world.

So these two news items above are making the rounds of the Internet this week, eliciting whoops of incredulity or howls of laughter.  People wanting to ban a dictionary because it contains a few words felt to be morally repugnant; a state enacting a bizarre, ambiguous law that appears ludicrous and unenforceable. I saw these stories in a slightly different light, more akin to the image of an old, familiar tapestry, slowly becoming unravelled, thread by tiny thread. Yeats came to mind:

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold ...
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

Words bandied about, daily, that mean absolutely nothing to the hearers.  Legal loopholes met with a yawn and "business as usual."  "Falcons that cannot hear the falconer".  Maybe this blog posting was, in the end, less about two random news items that initially evoked a chuckle and more about the state of the times in which we live.  I don't know, sometimes it feels like a soap opera:  The Beastly, the Beautiful and the Bizarre.  Poets in chains, babies starving, billionnaire bankers, $700 designer shoes, War is Peace, silence about "the other purposes."

I'll take some peace and beautifuls, you can keep the beasties.  :)

Words! Gotta love 'em!

Orange Sisyphus

Carrying what's inside
on your back

separation inevitable
but only if
you
let
go

Oarless in the Plaza

Mankind owns four things
That are no good at sea:
Rudder, anchor, oars
And the fear of going down

–Antonio Machado (trans. Robert Bly)

Promise was that if you ask

delivery from that yoke you'd find
the answer, just keep going
they say.

Got the vessel, not enough, fear I''ll

end up, stylus lost, sans the will, 

a voiceless bard put out to see,

I-less.

_______________________
*Artwork with the kind permission of  Kinnon Elliott of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  

Whistles from the Elsewhere

returning there it
takes you

in.

I should have been
writing

and yet ...

______________________________

Photo of train coming out of the fog in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, with the kind permission of D. L. Ennis over at  Visual Thoughts Photography, 2007, all rights reserved. 

Trains coming, loves leaving

I love trains.   I grew up in a railroad town.  My father and grandfather worked on the railroad.  I went to sleep each night, for 18 years, to the sound of trains passing through the mountains, train whistles calling in the night,  train wheels clack-clack-clacking along the tracks across the river heading to or coming from the yards. Whenever I hear one today, it's like a song from the past taking root again ... and I get very ... nostalgic.

American songwriter Steve Goodman wrote a song later made famous by Arlo Guthrie, about a train called the "City of New Orleans."  Yeah, you know the one I mean.  :)  They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery.  Singer/songwriter Joe Dassin (son of Jules Dassin the film director), in 1972 took the melody from this song about a train and with the words (in French) of  Richelle Dassin and Claude Lemesle and a new arrangement, turned it into a meloncholic song, in French, about the end of a love affair.  (The couple in the song still love one another, they just weren't meant to live together, and they have things to talk about, say the lyrics.)

I was sitting outside on the patio at a family gathering one evening last summer when--as often happens when all the family gets together--everyone started singing.  One of the songs was "Salut les amoureux".  I didn't know the words but I sure recognized that melody!  This song is enormously popular here in Québec, even after more than 30 years. I say this because anytime it's played, I notice everyone up and starts singing along, and they all know ALL the words. 

Here's Arlo Guthrie, in 1978, in Atlanta, Georgia, performing with Shenandoah (my favorite version):

And now, its French adaptation, as "Salut les amoureux" ("Hello, Lovers", referring to a line in the song where neighbors pass by and call out to the couple, unaware that they are splitting up.)




There are lots of other versions out there, take your pick:  In English, by Steve Goodman, Willie Nelson,  John Denver,  Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, and Jerry Reed ; in German (by Rudi Carrell: "Wann wird's mal wieder richtig"); in Finnish (by Karma: "Huomenta Suomi"), and finally, by a bunch of people at some gathering, singing their hearts out, in French. 

Music transcends borders, it brings people together. We may not always understand the words, but the melodies can be, and frequently are, enjoyed and shared and played, again and again.

For any sing-along buffs out there, here are the respective lyrics: first in English,  then French. Hop the train, pull out your guitar and join in!

THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS

Ridin’ on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors, and twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out of Kankakee
and rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passing trains that have no name
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles

CHORUS:
Good morning, America, how are ya?
Say, don’t ya know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

Dealin’ cards with the old men in the club car,
Penny a point, ain’t no one keepin’ score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle,
Feel the wheels rumblin’ ‘neath the floor.
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their fathers’ magic carpet made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.

CHORUS:
Good morning, America, how are ya?
Say, don’t ya know me? I’m your native son!
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

Night time on the City of New Orleans,
Changin’ cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Halfway home and we’ll be there by morning,
To the Mississippi darkness rolling down to the sea.
But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news.
The conductor sings his songs again,
The passangers will please refrain,
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.

CHORUS:
Good night, America, how are ya?
I say, don’t ya know me, I’m your native son.
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans,
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done. [1]

And now in French:

SALUT LES AMOUREUX

Les matins se suivent et se ressemblent
Quand l'amour fait place au quotidien
On était pas fait pour vivre ensemble
Ça n'suffit pas toujours de s'aimer bien
C'est drôle hier on s'ennuyait
Et c'est à peine si l'on trouvait
Les mots pour se parler du mauvais temps
Et maintenant qu'il faut partir
On a cent milles choses à dire
Qui tiennent trop à coeur pour si peu de temps

CHORUS:
On s'est aimé comme on se quitte
Tout simplement sans penser à demain
A demain qui vient toujours un peu trop vite
Aux adieux qui quelques fois se passent un peu trop bien

On fait c'qu'il faut on tien nos rôles
On se regarde on rit on craint un peu
On a toujours oublié quelques choses
C'est pas facile de se dire adieu
Et l'on sait trop bien que tôt ou tard
Demain peut-être ou même ce soir
On va se dire que tout n'est pas perdu
De ce roman inachevé
On va se faire un conte de fée
Mais on a passé l'âge on n'y croirait plus

CHORUS:
On s'est aimé comme on se quitte
Tout simplement sans penser à demain
A demain qui vient toujours un peu trop vite
Aux adieux qui quelques fois se passent un peu trop bien

Roméo Juliette et tous les autres
Au fond de vos bouquins dormer en paix
Une simple histoire comme la nôtre
Est le seul qu'on écrira jamais
Allons petite il faut partir
Laisser ici nos souvenirs
On va descendre ensemble si tu veux
Et quand elle va nous voir passer
La patronne du café
Elle va encore nous dire salut les amoureux

CHORUS:
On s'est aimé comme on se quitte
Tout simplement sans penser à demain
A demain qui vient toujours un peu trop vite
Aux adieux qui quelques fois se passent un peu trop bien. [2]

For Now, They Stay

Those prayers that should be drifting
up and out
now choked and held by nature's hand.
Once bright and firm, cloth soaked by rain,
the colors fade, in sifting seasons
like the songs from their once land
now choked and held, not lifting up
the heaviness of now.

Every spring they are replaced,
and brighter still until the sky rains down,
again, as if by plan
yet twisted hope
still sends out words that catch the wind,
are carried far and reach beyond
the shadow blocking sun's remembered light.

~ ~ Annie Wyndham

[first publication]

[This one was for you, Tibet.]

_______________________
*Photo by awyn, Jan. 28, 2010, outside my kitchen window.

The Air Around the Butterfly

The Air Around the Butterfly
Въздухът около пеперудата

by Katerina Stoykova

Sofia, Bulgaria: Fakel Express; First edition (August, 2009)

SBN: 978-954-9772-64-7
Size: 6.5" x 8.5", 147 pages
Price: $10.00

Bilingual poetry books are relatively rare today, particularly those where the English text is paired with one in a non-Latin alphabet.  The interesting thing about the above book--the author's first--is that she wrote the poems in English--her second language--and then translated them back into her native Bulgarian.

The 59 poems presented in this book are grouped into three sections, each representing a different period in the poet’s life.  The first section, “My Mother Was Going to War”, is a collection of poetic vignettes: of a mother who was dying; of a grandfather as a young guerrilla; of the first time she tried to leave home while yet a child; of a colonel's heart not yet thawed from the Cold War.  The second section,  “E.T. and I Phone Home” covers the poet's departure from her native Bulgaria to her arrival and settling in America, unsure of what that would entail, but "diving in" nonetheless.  The third section, titled “The Apple Who Wanted to Become a Pinecone”, is a collection of memories, observations and self-reflections where she acknowledges that "Here I've Already Been Lost”, yet she emerges finally, fully at home, as a writer and poet.

What particularly interested me about this book was first, its bilingualality--it introduces me to a language with which I am totally unfamiliar; and second, it offers an intriguing glimpse of the emotional seesaw that results from leaving one's home in one country to spend the rest of your life in another; of the nostalgic reluctance in letting go, coupled with the magnetic pull toward the unknown--and of the need, above all, to be one's Self.

This is reflected quite clearly in the poem  “Sus-toss”, which in the Hopi culture is a word that describes the disease that people suffer when they move to live on new lands.  Here are some excerpts:

Sus-toss is a disease that makes you not want the things you want . . .

It is the disease of living in a walnut shell
and spending all your strength to keep it closed. . .

Sus-toss . . . causes different parts of you to live in different places. . .

It makes you eat cheesecake when all you want is bread. . .

When you have sus-toss you are afraid to be happy.

Sus-toss makes you feel as though you are living somebody else's life.
Somebody ordinary.
Somebody terrified by the thought of not being successful.
Somebody who does not want to care about anything
and is bothered by that.

Sus-toss makes you want proof that it was all worth it.
You can see the rest of your life and predict every day
until the very end.
You feel as though you are sleep-living.

When I first sounded out the word "sus-toss", I had a mental image of people being thrown into the air, landing all twisted and confused, scrambling to unwobble themselves.  "It's us, tossed" was the word equivalent that came to mind, which implies a kind of forced ejection, like mandatory exile.  But deliberately choosing to take oneself out of one land, self-launching permanently toward another also, apparently, subjects a person to "sus-toss."

Katerina Stoykova plunges into her new life in America, still  “Slow Dancing with My Demons", asking the mirror to forget everything it's seen so far and to wipe the slate clean, as she leaps ahead with manifest

Optimism

The space in my heart

intentionally left blank

Some of the poems in the book are three pages long; others, but a single word:

Impatience Kills

quickly

The poems are a mixture of pathos and humor, expectation and disappointment, of having to eat “bitter cookies” and being lost, hanging on to  “The Rope to Nowhere”--yet finding a way to soar,  “still intact, flying elsewhere”.

This poet definitely has a sense of humor. The poem “Reluctance” is about a spare tire who “is constantly afraid/ that one day/ it will be his turn/ to start carrying the weight/ of the car/ in which/ he has been riding.”  He whispers his fears to the windshield wipers but "they just shake their heads."  He longs to be like the wheels, "so confident and groovy."   "Crossing" is a witty poem about an alphabet marching to the border, intent on taking over, to "help people".

In sum, this book is a delightful find. And I've learned a few Bulgarian words as well.

How To Write a Poem

Catch the air
 Around the butterfly

I admit I was a bit puzzled as to the meaning of the above poem, whose phrase "the air around the butterfly" was also chosen as the title for this book.  What does it mean to "catch the air" around a butterfly?  And assuming one can catch it, what then?  How does a poem arise from capturing butterfly air?

When a butterfly is at rest, the air around it is calm.  But when it flies and flaps its wings, it creates a small disturbance in the air. Miniscule, probably.  Chaos theory posits that even the smallest event can have large, widespread consequences, for example, meterologically.  Culturally speaking, its metaphorical equivalent, "the bufferfly effect,"  suggests that seemingly insignificant moments in our lives can alter our history and shape our destinies, depending, of course, on which path we ultimately choose to take (the operative words here being "can" (not "will"), and "choose".  Nothing is set in stone, or 100% predictable, when it comes to an individual life.   Possiblity, and creativity, I think, may trump "fate" in this regard.

An event happens, or a series of events occur, and we consider whether to go forward or to remain right where we are.  (Sometimes one doesn't have a choice.  One of Stoykova's poems describes a ladybug whose feet are stuck in tar:  "You will not come out whole," she warns, "even if you flap your wings/ very, very fast.") But wholeness, like happiness, is a matter of perception.  In immersing herself in "the air around the butterfly," Stoykova has let it gently lead her to the air beyond the air--enabling her to transform this experience into poetry.

This all seems to relate back to her poem "Sus-Toss", that existential malaise that manifests in a gnawing sense of the loss of connection--between what was left behind, and what has taken its place.  One attempts to live  both "here" and "there", simultaneously, so to speak.  Choosing not to go back doesn't mean  the longing for certain continuities will disappear.  Because this is an abiding interest--the pull between the there and the here, the then and the now--and its effect on those involved (as a phenomenon, rife with fascinating examples), it perhaps held special significance for me, and yet it bespeaks of a certain universality.  

Sometimes, in reading poetry, one hastens to be carried farther, beyond the words, and sometimes one simply prefers to remain still, content to rest with the words on the page and savor the moment.  Such was my reaction to Katerina Stoykova's collection of poems, on a twofold level: first, seeing the words themselves, as words; and second, following their collective story.  

Ms. Stoykova has, in effect, I think, caught the air around the butterfly, became a part of it, and these poems are the result.  In the final poem, an unnamed interviewer asks an apple why it wants to become a pinecone.  Well, for one, it's tired of being "sweet, and round, and rosy" and of having humans "look at it and salivate".  There is more to me than that, it seems to be hinting.  To become a pinecone, it plans to "elongate" and "develop scales," among other things, and finally, to "fall far, far, far from the tree."  Where this became a "story" for me, was in its unspoken echo back to a previous poem suggesting the same theme, i.e., breaking with the past (stretching out, unfolding, "elongating"), bracing oneself for the future, yet not wanting to lose the self in the process. But like the ladybug stuck in the tar, extracting oneself from a place of being stuck, or from one's roots, is never easy.  In the poem "Tree", Stoykova describes the stem of the tree as being the thickest around its hollow, that "if you lay it sideways/ it will look like/ a boa constrictor/ digesting an elephant."  The tree, anchored in the earth by its roots, its stem likened to a boa constrictor that can swallow one whole (i.e., suffocate, bring death)--one understandably would want to get "far, far, far away"  from such a stranglehold.

Perhaps the poet  intended no such correlation, between the desire of the apple to transform itself, break free, and fall "far, far, far away" from the tree to which it was attached, and the reference to the thickest part of the tree as resembling a boa constrictor, a possible harbinger of death. The idea of death of self, though, is also implied in the poem "Loss" where the poet describes, in so many words, what happens when you attempt to be who you are not:

if a butterfly tries to be an ant
if an ant tries to be a butterfly
the world loses an ant
the world loses a butterfly

The apple wanting to be a pinecone plans to "develop scales", while the speaker in the poem "A Dream", glues fish scales to his/her body. (The scales on a pinecone and the scales on a fish function as a  protection, the way a soldier's armor protects him from being killed.)  When asked by a passerby "Why in the world are you doing this?", the narrator in "A Dream" replies, "I open and close/ open and close/ open and close/ my mouth."  In the dream, he/she is without a voice, tries to speak but can only mimic the motion, like a fish out of water, gasping for life.  Likewise, the apple, if  it becomes a pinecone, would open and close its scales, but it, too, would have no real voice.  It would only "dry up and turn brown."  But then along came that butterfly, the one with the intoxicating air around it; the poet somehow "caught its air", and the rest is history.  The poet's voice comes out, loud and clear, in these poems, pairing words from the land from which she came to words in her new language, reconnecting, completing the circle, so to speak, reuniting the there and the here, the then and the now.

An interesting book of poems. I look forward to its sequel, to learn more about what happens when the journey has ended, or if already ended, what garlands of insights have been collected, what new worlds of words she has discovered.

About the poet:

Katerina Stoykova emigrated from Bulgaria to the United States at the age of 24 and worked as an engineer at IBM and Lexmark.  She holds an MFA in poetry from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky and serves as Deputy Editor in Chief of the English language edition of the online magazine Public Republic. She also hosts "Accents", a radio show for literature, art and culture, in Lexington, Kentucky.  Her website can be found here.

Letting Go

like

snow sailing

o'er sea of cedars

no compass needed

dive!

Arty Foodies, Take a Bow

Pomegranate Yogourt

Add 2-3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice

to about 5 whopping tablespoons of plain yogourt.

Swirl together and sprinkle fresh seeds on top.
It will turn pink and taste yummy.

*Optional:  Toss in a few walnuts and/or a bit of granola.

Red Cabbage Frog

Cabbage Smiley with
Carrot Vision

Heart of Cabbage
pulsing purple

Rumbles from the Earth

Rock crushes scissors
Scissors cut paper
Paper covers rock

a children's game
and then it came

Rock crushes bones
Bones break, here take
blanket,
blanket covers dead
pulled from under rock

Nowhere to go
nothing to eat
night falls
they thirst.
Please ...
water.

Quake crushes Haiti
Papers cover crisis
they amputated her leg
without anesthesia

rock in my stomach
cry in my throat
too little too late
for some

Three days now

S.O.S.

__________

Regarding the earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010:

Photos here and here.

How to Help:

Send donations to:
Doctors Without Borders
Medecins sans frontieres
International Committee of the Red Cross in Haiti
Stand with Haiti

Writers Rally for Liu Xiaobo

Fifteen days ago, on December 23, 2009, Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and 2 years' deprivation of political rights for writing some sentences the Chinese authorities felt "incited subversion of state power."   This country seems particularly sensitive to criticism, however factually based.  Its response was to silence, and imprison, the writer.

A week ago, on New Year's Eve, while most of us were enjoying holiday festivities, preparing the family dinner or getting ready for a New Year's Eve party, a small group of writers came together and stood in the falling snow on the steps outside the New York City Public Library, to read the seven sentences for which the writer Liu Xiaobo was sent to prison, and to call for his release.    Some things haven't changed all that much going into the New Year, it seems.  Liu Xiaobo joins 45 other writers now imprisoned in China for, well .... writing.

My New Year's resolution for 2010--which I've already broken, by the way--concerned chocolate and ice cream, among other things.  As of today I am making a new one, one that I'm far more likely to keep, and that is to begin more frequently adding my small voice to the others speaking out for writers like Liu Xiaobo.

What's one more little squawk from an obscure Internet blog? Molly Ivins, may she rest in peace, said we need people "in the streets, banging pots and pans"--like they did in Argentina in 2001--to bring about change.)  At Christmas time people gather on the sidewalk or on neighbors' doorsteps to sing carols--why not writers assembling on non-holidays, in public places, to read out the words of other writers who are no longer able to write? Why not ordinary bloggers occasionally jumping in to voice their support from the sidelines?  You never know who might be listening.

Never underestimate the power of the spoken or written word on a casual reader or passerby--those few words can sometimes change a person's life.  Nearly two decades ago, a  woman doctor whose resume I typed, happened to mention, as she was leaving, that she had just recently adopted a "prisoner of conscience".  "What's that?" I asked.  Her random remark led me to seek out more information about these 'thought prisoners'--and I ended up working with Amnesty International for the next eleven years, where I was privileged to meet former men and women who'd survived years of unbelievably harsh and degrading, dehumanizing treatment--people who had been shackled in prisons, starved, force fed or physically broken in workcamps, put into asylums and drugged, or sent away into exile, merely for expressing their views.  That one little offhand remark by a stranger took me on a path of no return, so to speak.  It compelled me to become less complacent, to not just observe and note, then turn away, but to actually want to join in and try to do something. Life, though, as it always does, intervenes and sometimes I lapse, as my attention is drawn elsewhere--until I'm reminded again--as I was when I saw the above video.

On an official level, governments are still rounding up and punishing people for what they think, what they say, how they say it.  (This occurs on the more personal level, too, albeit less severely, but damaging all the same. People still continue to attack, marginalize, isolate and punish others because of differences in politics, religion or strongly held opinions. While a state can deprive someone of his liberty, one's own family, friends, peers, or even employer can retaliate by withholding support, terminating the friendship, chastising, or firing someone, all because one's beliefs or lifestyle or choices in life embarrass, annoy or clash with their own.  Small intolerances or state-sanctioned repression--some subtle, others blatant--still playing out on the world stage in the never-ending war between the "Usses" and the "Thems".  Evolution, it appears, has yet to occur on this front.

Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years' confinement for writing 224 Chinese characters--for basically saying, for example, that he believes in democracy, and advocating that China discontinue its one-party rule.  The Chinese constitution states that its citizens have freedom of speech and of the press. In practice, however, if you try exercising this freedom, you risk being surveilled, harrassed and searched, arrested and imprisoned. He was also a political activist. The powers that be would prefer that he had stayed silent.

They may have silenced Liu Xiaobo temporarily--but not his words.  Other writers are seeing to it that his situation is made known and that his words don't disappear.  (You can see one of his poems posted today over on Salamander Cove ("Daybreak" under entry #20100107), and a few more on the PEN American Center website, where you can hear them read aloud by writers Paul Auster, Edward Albee, Don DeLillo, and E. L. Doctorow.)

Liu Xiaobo, in his own words:



A little nudge, to remind myself to not slip into such complacency again, to notch my awareness level up a tad or two:

Speaking for the Silenced

Small squeak today by a few,
giant roar tomorrow by the many ...
a little group of writers, standing
in the cold
snow falling, wind blowing words drifting
out
unchaining chains
breaking the
silence

erase one voice, another takes
its place
then another ...
and another

and another
________

*Update:  February 1, 2010:  Liu Xiaobo has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.[1]

2 Favorite People & My Wish for 2010

James Taylor and Yo-Yo Ma, with Edgar Meyer & Mark O'Connor, playing a classic Stephen Foster tune on their 2000 recording "Appalachian Journey", performed live.

Floe

Floe

flowing

like

Time

's frozen memories,

fragmented and released,

breaking free

to drift

in unchartered waters.

In Spring, not a trace

of the

melting of years.

Only the river remembers,

its waters containing

the record of its own

passage

the slow, steady hardening,
the separating of itself
from itself

flowing alongside itself

merging into

itself

like

Time.

___________________
 *First poem of 2010 by Annie Wyndham.  Photo taken last year, with my older camera, during a walk along the St. Lawrence River at the foot of the Sanctuary in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, QC.  

Year's End

Goodbye old year--Hello, new one. I wish I could say something profound or interesting, something other than a cliche, on this, the last day of 2009.  How grateful I am to still be alive, for family and friends and another year to look forward to.  For all the interesting things I've learned and fellow writers I've met, albeit not in person.  Other bloggers, like William Michaelian over at Recently Banned Literature, does it so, so much better!

And, wouldn't you know it, my friend down in the States, the one who gave me the "Write 10 short stories by Christmas" assignment, reminded me this morning that I hadn't made my deadline, and that I should try, before midnight tonight, to crank one out one more, so as not to have left such a dismal record of compliance. And so I did, being "under the gun" so to speak; I just sat down and ... wrote.

What to write about, on such short notice, at the end of the year, when a dozen yet-to-do tasks loom waiting? The state of the world today, our awful economy, gratitude for what one still has ... love in small gestures?? None or All of the above?

At least I can say I spent some minutes of the last morning of the old year ... writing. (Not that that gets me off the hook for my 'assignment'). But I plan to stop procrastinating in the new year. Honest.

So here is my little story. Some of it is semi-autobiographical (the smuggling episode). Some of it is recently factual (the state of my toast this morning). Some of it is based on memories or random observations of human behavior. Most of it, though, is purely imaginary. I call it:

BURNT TOAST

There are, they say, no coincidences in life. An event you might think is accidental is not really accidental. Fate determines where you’re eventually going to end up and though you may try to maneuver things toward a different outcome, circumstances arise, randomly and completely out of your control that put you back on the path to your destiny.

Who IS this mysterious “they” that seem to know what we do not? What if your destiny is, oh  ...  sameness?  How, in heaven's name, do you climb out of everlasting sameness?

Such were the dark thoughts that gathered like a heavy cloud in Dennis’s head this morning, the last day before the beginning of yet another new year.

“So what resolutions did you make for New Year’s?” his wife asked, scraping the burnt toast with a butter knife, sending blackened flecks of toasted ash cascading into the sink.

Dennis was tired of burnt toast every morning for breakfast. He’d fixed the damn toaster eight times and still couldn’t get it to work right. If you pointed the knob to “Light”, the bread came out the same way it went in, slightly tanned but still too soft.  If you selected “Medium”, the toast burnt to a charcoal-black crisp. If you selected "Dark"--well, they never did, after it first started malfunctioning.  If "Medium" could practically incinerate a slice of bread, what might "Dark" do?  He could not even imagine.

“My resolution for the new year,” Dennis replied, “is to buy a new toaster.”

“You know we can’t afford that, honey,” said his wife.

She had to go and remind him, again, how poor they were. Some people replaced their toaster every year, not out of necessity, but simply because they grew tired of its style, or color, or wanted one with more sophisticated and unnecessary gagetry. My fate, thought Dennis, is to have to endure burnt toast for the rest of my natural life.

“No, really,” said his wife. “What are your New Year’s resolutions?”

That, of course, was a trick question on her part. Dennis knew that his wife knew that he broke every resolution made at the beginning of every year, well before the first week had even ended. It was like a game with her, he chuckled.   It’s as if a little alarm goes off in her head at that exact time every year, alerting her: “Hey look, it’s that time of year again. Let’s remind Dennis how little things have changed, how after almost 45 years of couplehood we seem to have gone right back to where we started,still in the same boring little house in the same depressing neighborhood, still eating burnt toast and unable to afford even the smallest of new appliances.” 

It was, of course, not that way at all. Dennis's wife thought no such thing. They certainly could afford to buy a decent toaster.  They were even given one as a gift--twice--by their grown children, but Dennis's wife, unbeknownst to them,  gave them away.  Her reasoning was that they already had a toaster, while their next-door neighbor, and a newly married niece, at the time had none.  Dennis just got defensive from time to time, about his inability to move mountains, which is what it would take to change their economic situation so that buying a new toaster, or a new anything, wouldn't create such a perceived dent in their finances.  Dennis's wife was what they called, a "penny pincher"  Even if they had had the money, she would have balked at spending it.

In the beginning, when they'd first married, he found this quality admirable.  He knew no other woman who-- say if her washing machine broke down and couldn't be fixed or replaced for another month or so--would willingly, and even cheerfully, wash every single item by hand, including the bedding and braided carpets.  But Dennis's wife did, and thought nothing of it. He was impressed, at first.  Then it just got ... tiresome.  If she'd only work less and stop trying to do everything herself, she'd have more time for, well ....him.   

Dennis filled his cup with the dark, steaming coffee, grabbed the plate with the toast, and shuffled off to his chair in the living room to read the paper. Another day, another year, what’s the difference.

His wife, who knew his routines by heart, settled back into her own. She put aside the scraped and now buttered toast, turned on the faucet and rinsed the sink, poured herself some tea, and headed for her favorite chair to resume her knitting. Another day, another year, another wrinkle, another few gray hairs, another age spot on her arthritic hands. She examined the little baby sweater she was knitting for their grandchild, smiling with pride at her expert craftsmanship.  It cost her only a few dollars for the yarn and she had all the time in the world.  Were she so inclined she could have sold it for more than $50 to the Baby Boutique in town, who would have sold it for even more, that's how fine a garment she could make.  But the thought never occurred to her; this was a product of love and her entire heart went into each and  every careful stitch.

“Hey,” called Dennis from the living room, making her lose her train of thought.

“Hey what?” she called back.

“Wanna go take in a movie today?”

“You know we can’t afford the movies,” she reminded him. Dennis’s wife tried to remember when was the last time they had gone to see a movie. She remembered that their daughter, who lived in the city, called movies “films”.

The neighbor across the way was shoveling snow out of his driveway. Sounds of metal scraping against frozen asphalt, a familiar sound that took her back to her childhood, her father scraping snow from the concrete porch, the same sound … scrrrraaape… scrrrraaape … scrrrraaape. She smiled at the memory.

“So,” said Dennis. “You wanna go or not?”

“We have exactly $12 in the cookie jar,” she reminded him.. “And that’s to go for a new toaster, remember?”

“Oh what the hell,” said Dennis, rising from his chair and folding his newspaper. “Why the heck not? Do us good, to see a flick once every coupla years.”  Dennis's wife never heard him call movies "flicks" before.

Another year coming and more likely than not, they would still be eating burnt toast every morning. Dennis was sure of it.  How he managed to convince his wife to go see a movie, he couldn't remember.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the movie theater that afternoon. As they crossed the street, just before they got to the other side, Dennis’s wife spied a shiny object sticking out of a trash can on the upcoming sidewalk. It had a cord dangling from it. She let go of Dennis’s arm and went over to investigate. It seemed to be intact—no rust or dents or noticeable damage. She looked at Dennis. Dennis looked back and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “Well?”

Without saying a word, Dennis’s wife lifted it out of the trashcan and began stuffing the shiny object into her coat (because it would not fit into her  purse) and they proceeded into the theater to buy their tickets for the matinee. When they got inside, the usher, noticing the uneven bulge under her unbuttoned coat, wondered if she might be trying to smuggle a giant bag of home-popped popcorn into the theatre, to avoid buying it at the concession stand, whose prices, in his opinion, were outrageous. He decided to just let it go--his good deed for the year.

The next morning Dennis and his wife slept in, it being New Year’s Day, and when they got up, Dennis’s wife cleaned up the shiny toaster they’d found in the trash, put it on the counter and plugged it in, and placed two pieces of bread inside it.  It was missing a knob so one couldn’t predict the Light/Medium/Dark outcome. They both stood there, in their bathrobes, coffee and tea in hand, in front of the toaster, and waited.

“What if it explodes?” Dennis’s wife suddenly asked, thinking no person in their right mind would ever throw out a good, working toaster. It was thrown into the trash because it didn’t work. What was she thinking, to bring it home with them last night?   Theirs was still perfectly fine.  She imagined an enormous bang and a cloud of black smoke filling her small kitchen, the walls catching on fire, the cubboards melting, all their possessions … gone.

But the toaster didn’t explode. It just emitted a low, mechanical “mmmmmmmmmmmmmm”. “It’s humming,” said Dennis. That means it’s working!

It wasn’t a hum exactly, more like a cat purring.  Dennis’s wife came closer and bent over the toaster and peered inside.  Warm air was coming out of it and the coils were slowly turning red.   She became hopeful. In less than a minute a small, soft "clink” was heard and the two pieces of toast popped into view. Dennis grinned. His wife clapped her hands.

But when they pulled out the toast, they discovered why the toaster had been so readily abandoned. Each piece of toast had a lightly toasted half and a completely burnt half. How very bizarre. They tried it several more times with different types of bread, they turned the toaster upside down and shook it, they even cut the bread into half-pieces, but no matter what they did,  it always came out that two halves would be lightly toasted and the other two halves completely burnt.

Dennis sighed. His wife laughed.

Now, nothing seemed to have changed for these two people. Although Dennis tinkered with the toaster and tried to fix it, the results were still the same.   Sameness prevailed.  And so they made do, just as they had  always done, just as they planned to always do, for however long remained to them upon this earth.

One thing, however, had changed. Dennis began looking forward to his toast in the morning. He, of course, chose the lightly toasted halves of the two slices that came out of the toaster. His wife took the burnt halves and stood over the sink, as she had always done, scraping the blackened flecks into the sink.   Then she'd spread a thick slab of butter on the now well-crusted but still perfectly edible toast, add a dab of orange marmalade, take a sip of tea, and head for her reading chair. Neither her toast nor her routine had significantly changed.  It was, after all, her little ritual, the scrape, scrape, scraping of the toast every morning. And she did not like altering her routines, however weird other people might think them to be.  But she liked going to the movies that time with Dennis.  That was fun.  Perhaps they might do it again.

The $12 in the cookie jar soon climbed to $25, then $50, then $75—more than enough to buy a new, quality toaster, one that would make perfect toast, every time. And in due course, one was purchased, and the old, humming former shiny reject found in the trash can, which had nevertheless served them well for so many months, found a new life--or at least its parts did--at the recycle center.

Another year rolled around, and to all intents and purposes, nothing had really changed. Or had it? Was it this couple’s fate to be forever stuck in their sameness and inability to rise to a higher level of happiness? They didn’t seem to be unhappy—except about the burnt toast, and that was only Dennis, and that situation, as we have seen, eventually resolved itself.

Did Dennis view himself as stuck in sameness?  This thought had once briefly crossed his mind. Their increasing lack of money, brought on by retirement, a reduced income, and an unstable economy, bothered him. But everyone he knew was in the same boat. They had a roof over their heads, they had enough to eat, and the neighborhood, though sometimes boringly predictable, was full of memories and--familiar. Their daughter visited often, they would soon welcome another new grandchild. Dennis had his routine. His wife had hers.  He was okay with things.  The "same", he reflected,  could be both frightening and welcomed.

His wife concurred—or would have, had he asked her. Each of them greeted each new year hoping some things would stay  the same, that there would be no new catastrophes, no new unwelcome surprises, nothing approaching that they could not handle. But they looked forward to some changes. They planned to re-do the kitchen at some point; Dennis's wife talked about their maybe taking a little trip somewhere.


“So," that little voice that picks apart your newly written prose to probe its worth, suddenly whispers in my mind before the ink is even dry.  "And the moral of the story is ....?"

There is no moral to the story.  It’s just a story.
About a man,
and his wife
and their toaster.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL. And I emphasize the word Happy. :)

Word Virus Epidemic and Predatory Metaphors

I watched an interesting film the other day called "Pontypool", based on a book by Tony Burgess.  It's about a mysterious deadly virus that strikes a small town in northern Ontario.  It's advertised as a psychological thriller--but it's also a kind of linguistic zombie flick. 

The strange virus that affects the townspeople is caused by infected words in the English language, so that when certain words are spoken and understood by another, they become contagious. When you become infected, the words gets lodged in your system and you start repeating them obsessively, which, as director of the film Bruce McDonald explains, is possibly your immune system working overtime to try and save you from the virus by trying to destroy their meaning.  You become confused, unable to remember how to string words together. If you want to say, for example, "Let’s go for a coffee" it might come out "Giraffe five eleven." It becomes so intolerable, "you attack somebody and try to chew your way through their mouth. So it goes from repetition to mixing up your words to extreme violence."

The two main characters, Grant and his co-worker Sydney, are holed up in a soundproof room at a small radio station in the basement of a church when a mob of cannibalistic townsfolk begin frantically beating down the doors.  Grant and Sydney's only solution is to not say any words in English. Since they don't know which words are infected, it's better not to speak at all. (They try speaking in French, which the townspeople don't understand, so this buys them a little more time, but not much.)  Then Sydney begins showing signs of having been infected and Grant must figure out a way to stop the progress of the disease.  He realizes that not understanding a word disinfects it and asks himself, "How do you make a word strange?"

Meanwhile Sydney starts chanting "Kill!  Kill!  Kill!" and heads zombie-like towards Grant.  Grant has to convince her that kill does not really mean kill.  "Kill is ... kiss," he says.  Kill doesn't mean kill anymore.  Kill now means Kiss.  He makes her repeat it over and over:  Kill is kiss, kill is kiss, kill is kiss, until she's "cured".

Reviews were mixed about the cinematic worth of the film.  Some, who wanted more gore, thought it boring.  Some simply didn't "get" it.  Others, like myself, found the premise intriguing.  It parallels the breakdown of civilization and our inability to communicate with one another, hints about the deterioration of language and disillusionment and instability.  If the author's intention was to invoke unease in his audience, he certainly succeeded.  It also impresses on you the idea that nowhere you go is really safe, and loved ones and people you have known all your life can suddenly turn on you and viciously attack you.

The author and screenwriter Tony Burgess, in an interview refers to the film as "a chapter that the book imagined or forgot, or couldn't fit in"--as if the book were alive and writing itself.  The book, he says, is "kind of randomly related to itself."  I tried to think of a work of poetry or fiction that I'd read recently of which I could say that it was intentionally or randomly related to itself.

Another intriguing idea he put forth (in the interview) was that the film is "really a metaphor for metaphors that keep hunting you, long after they've been meaningful.  They keep coming at you."  What really interests him, however, is: "Are there figures of speech that become predatory, long after their meaning as figures of speech have left the stage?"

Metaphors that hunt you down, stalk you, come after you ... metaphors that are ... predatory.  Made me think of Jungian archetypes run amuck, for some reason.

I found the concept highly interesting, and the film was unlike any zombie-type horror film I have ever seen.  It didn't need graphic scenes of agonizing torture or bloodied walls or hacked off limbs or severed heads to impart the sense of extreme fear.  As long as you kept quiet and didn't say anything, you would be safe.  But they (Grant and Sydney) were trapped in a radio station and the frenzied mob had entered the building and they needed to announce to the world how to stop the disease.  Except to do so would mean talking, broadcasting over the airwaves, and that would, of course, draw zombie-like townfolk in even greater numbers to them. 

I hated the ending.  I suppose it was inevitable.  I still hated it.  (Have you ever seen a horror flick with a happy ending?)

I generally don't like horror films.  Psychological thrillers, yes.  Mysteries and mind-teasers, definitely.  Torture and dismemberment, no matter how artful or shlocky, for entertainment sake ... I squirm and cover my eyes or leave the room.  Even the "classics" -- Night of the Living Dead, pod people, zombies on the march ... give me nightmares.  But this one, "Pontypool," I couldn't stop watching. 

Ah,  the inadequacy of words, and the sheer power of words -- existing simultaneously from their creation to their combustion to their eventual transformation.  How ironic--that to cure someone of a disease that renders them incapable of remembering how to form intelligible word connections, you had to take a known, familiar word that still had meaning--and recast it as gibberish.  Kill is kiss.  Yellow is crowded.  Girafe five eleven.

Anyway, what an idea!!  A virus caused by words--but only in the English language.  It's not all that farfetched to think of a future scenario where a virus could be specifically designed to attack only those of a certain genetic disposition, dispensed by vaccination for a fictional disease whereby the recipients, when innoculated, would be rendered incapable of creating or bearing offspring. Anihilapop. Or one where the world's food supply has become so contaminated that one is reduced to eating the bark of a tree, boiling one's own manuscripts for soup, or  marinating one's shoelaces.  Now that is scary!!

Click here to see a trailer of the film.

Unning the Uns

too
late, too long
ago for the
unsaid, the
undone

trapped in the chokeholds
of regret
solidified in memory,
the unsaid repeats
what couldn't be voiced,
the undone enacts
what never was

as if one could
resuscitate
unwordings, or
ressurect

unbeing.

~~ Annie Wyndham

_______________________________
* Photo of "Francis", a woodcarving from Vermont, sentinel of the house; he sits at the window, eyes whatever world I happen to be living in at the time, watches till I return, a familiar face in the window, always there, always waiting, keeper of my memories, a mere piece of wood, but named, and an infinite friend.

The Holes between Words

I came across an intriguing essay today by Jordan Benjamin, who had gone to Vilnius, Lithuania in 2006 to learn the language of his great-grandfather.  While there, a friend and fellow-student from Paris tells him of his interest in "the way certain modernist writers use the spaces between words to convey meaning."  He (the friend) is particularly interested in "the way these writers describe the inevitability of falling into the holes between words."  What does that mean, exactly, the "holes between words"?

One tries to reconstruct reality through words but finds them inadequate.  You're left in a kind of limbo waiting for words "to present themselves."  They don't.  So you look outside of language to say what words can't say.  Jordan Benjamin's friend, however, believes that these holes or spaces between words are an essential part of language and that "they constitute half the text."   (The holes themselves--those empty spaces where you wait to find the words--are part of the text?  The missing threads, as it were, haven't yet been woven but are still somehow part of the existing fabric?)

Existence itself as a language, of words and not-words.  Jordan asks himself  "If you believe existence is a language, then what does it mean to fall in love with a language that is dying?”

Good question.  And I have one as well:  Might language inherently contain the seeds of its own demise, where "the space between the words" widens and one falls into the wordless hole lacking the key to close the gap?  Are there spaces or holes within its structure that cannot be filled--even by non-words--and how does that translate into "text"?  Texts can be preserved--up to a point.  But if one can no longer read them, speak them, or interpret them ... then what?


Waiting for Words

Languages that are dying
leaving spaces that morph
into gaps
of unreachability . . .

Poets that struggle
to fill the void
left by words not yet
born

The comings and goings
of logos
into and out of
the spaces
among them
in a swirl of
incomprehension

waiting to be united

or expire
unheard

___________________
*26 Birds -- photo taken by awyn, Winter 2004, in the back yard.

Peace to All

To friends and readers of this blog (all four of you) :) Happy Holidays!!

Peace and everything good in the coming year.

PART DOG

They followed me home
I kept saying shoo
shoo
Go away, go back.
That’s what happens when
you talk to animals.
Like they even understand, he said.
Or maybe it’s that I ran with them
and not to him.

You play like a dog, he said
in that voice that hints of
judgment.
Why do they follow you
Are you
part dog?

~~ awyn

The Giants Among Us

Ramin Pourandarjani

He was a doctor

      who wrote poetry

he told the Truth ...

He died of a car accident.

No wait, it was a heart attack.

Actually, it was suicide.

But it may have been poisoning ...

He was a doctor

he told the Truth.

He was warned ...

Silence the speaker, the voice is
still heard.

Still
heard.

Oh Dear

Received a photo in the mail today from S., which inspired two very different little poems, which shall be titleless:

I

‘Tis the season
to be jolly
make your lists
and hang the holly

Kids are wired
Santa’s tired
looks as if
his wit’s expired

Poor little V.
has missed her nap
doesn’t want
on Santa’s lap

It'll all change
in a little while
when he brings toys--
then see her smile!

 II

even myths eventually
tire of themselves
and yet ...
for some,
the elation stays,
if only
in memory


____________


[They really should make better-fitting beards...      :) ]

Sad Happiness

That seems to be a contradiction, like "soothing pain" or "silent scream" or "lonely crowd".

Polish Poet Adam Zagajewski, in an essay I read recently, describes Rilke's Duino Elegies as "an enchanted forest," and that after a while the reader finds himself resembling "a snowy owl flying silently between the dense spruce branches with the utmost facility … with a kind of sad happiness that is, it seems, a proper response to great poetry."

Zagajewski recounts his initial reaction to first reading the Elegies:

Standing in the street filled with the mediocre din of a lazy Communist afternoon, I read for the first time the magical sentences "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angels' / Orders? And even if one of them pressed me / suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed / in his more potent being. For beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure." The street suddenly disappeared, political systems evaporated, the day became timeless, I met eternity, poetry woke up.

I could relate to that because I had a similar reaction on my first reading of them, where everything ‘disappeared’ … I forgot where I was, and I, too, "met eternity", and for the first time felt real poetry. Those words, those few lines, had the most profound effect on me.  The power of a poet's words, to take you somewhere so far beyond everything you have ever known or experienced, opening up this entire new world of mystery—and understanding.  I remember thinking, at the time:  “I have to tell someone!” 

Tell them what?  And how would I explain it?  "Here—READ this!!"  … and have them look at me with those eyes—you know the kind—and suppose they grab the book from my hands, read a few lines, then shut the pages and hand it back to me, scrunching up their eyebrows and shaking their head, as if I had just showed them an exotic fruit they don’t know what to do with.

How is it that the exact same words that bring such pleasure and meaning to one, for another mean absolutely nothing, like the random, unintelligible scratchings on some unscalable brick wall?

But those words—“sad happiness”—that's like being in an armchair, eyes closed, blocking out everything except the sound of the cello playing music so sad it pulls the being out of your soul.  And yet …  these can represent some of the happiest moments of one’s life, unable to be shared with no one but the shadows of the night, where the very air that surrounds you is one of complete, and utterly undefinable … Happiness.

Sad happiness.  The transcendence of, yet retained envelopment into ... isness.  Where are the words to play that, like the cello plays its musical counterpart?

A Hotel Made of Ice

I can't believe it's ten years already that they've been building the necessarily short-lived Hotel de Glace (Ice Hotel) up near Quebec City.  Made entirely of snow and ice, this unique, 36-room temporary hotel opens again this year on January 4 until April 4, 2010 when it will, of course, have begun to slowly melt.

Here, from around $189 Cdn. (per person) for the basic one-night Nordic Escape to the more elaborate Polar Getaway package (which starts at almost $800 per person), you can experience an adventure few people have ever had--to spend the night sleeping on ice.

It suddenly occurs to me that many a homeless person having to do just that for the entire winter, not as an 'adventure' but for sheer survival, would probably find this ironic--that someone would actually pay for the experience. 

But you've got to admit, it's an interesting idea.  Introduces people to try 'braving the elements', so to speak.  Each suite in the Ice Hotel offers a unique design. (If you're into sports, there is the Hockey Suite, for example.)

You might like to stop off at the ice cafe or visit the ice bar while you're there (pictured to the right--click to enlarge).  Those icycles on that chandelier look like the ones that hang from my roof all winter long, except these are more sculpted and decorative and, unlike the outdoor slicycles, won't sometimes fall on your head when you walk under them.)
 

You will be sleeping on a bed made of a solid block of ice on which sits a wooden box frame with a mattress on top.  The mattress is covered with blankets and you'll will be provided an Arctic sleeping bag designed to withstand temperatures of -30 C (-22 Farenheit).  Not to worry, it won't get that cold.  The temperatures inside the Ice Hotel average around -3 to -5 C (about 26F to 23 F, respectively). Perfectly doable.

Don't want to spend the night but curious to see what it looks like inside?  You can come as a visitor for around $16 adult, $12 children--or if applicable, under the family rate (2 adults + 3 children) for $40.

You can even get married at the Ice Hotel!!  Picture being surrounded by white, with crystals made of ice instead of glass.  How cool is that!

The Ice Hotel is located at Station Duchesnay near Lake St. Joseph, a 30-minute drive from Quebec City.  To see more views of the inside of the Ice Hotel, check out Sandra Bellefoy's photo gallery on flickr (click here).

~ ~ ~
Quebec's annual Winter Carnival is coming--from January 29 to February 14, 2010.  If you have never been to Quebec City, it's well worth a visit then.  There are wonderful (sometimes huge) ice sculptures all over town, and plenty of activities for one and all, such as sled races and snow rafting and dogsledding.

And for the very brave and thermally ready, the Bay Snow Bath! (Some Quebeckers, of course, are rapidly heading down to Florida or Mexico, as I write, ha ha..  Not everyone likes winter, and where some of us actually welcome snow, there probably are many, many more who just shudder at the thought of five whole months of it, without a break.  By May, I admit, I'm ready to start thinking garden again.)

The other day we drove up to St. Anne-de-la-Parade for a doctor's appointment, through fog as thick as paste, and noticed some men out on the river testing the frozenability of the ice.  It's not yet quite thick enough but in a few weeks will start the big event for which the village is known--the emergence of 200 or so little ice-fishing cabins onto the frozen river (plus a little restaurant).  Click here to see our little ice fishing expedition last January, with photos of our "catch".)

And now, to go out and shovel a path for the cats ....

Word Survivers of the Blackout

Writer, cartoonist and artist Austin Kleon has a new book coming out in April, 2010 showcasing his Blackout poems. No, they are not poems composed during a blackout--they are poems made by blacking out words in a newspaper and leaving other ones unblacked out. The unblacked-out ones eventually will constitute the poem(s).

Basically, you're limited to the words appearing on that one page and after choosing the words you want, you  then obliterate everything left on the page by covering over it with a black marker pen.  I decided to try it. But the newspaper we receive here is in French. Does it have to be from a newspaper? I turned to the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of Poets & Writers and opened it up to a random page, and gave it a go.  I also timed myself.

Wouldn't you know it would be a page with three ads, taking up the entire page:  one for Eastern Kentucky University for their Master of Fine Arts program, one for InstantPublisher.com, an on-line print-on-demand outfit, and one for Carpe Articulum, a Literary Review. No sentences on the page, just bulleted blurbs and deadline dates. Hmmm.  This is not going to be easy.  This is what resulted:

Stern universe,
hard, binding...
any man, a brief master.
Easy, the hidden control of
multiple carp, dead.
Lines?  Don't submit.
Leave.

That makes absolutely NO sense.  I think I prefer choosing my own words.  This is too much like those word games "Find the Missing Word" or in this case, Find the Words That'll Mean Something If You Can Figure a Way to String Them Together Poetically.

In the future perhaps we'll have Word Vending Machines where when you insert a coin, out'll come a bag of words that you can then take home and ingest ("Eat my words!"), or you can lay them out on the kitchen table, like a puzzle, and see if you can make a poem out of them.  The advantage over those little magnetic refrigerator-door words is that you can always get a fresh supply of new words. Still, the selections are limited. I can imagine wanting to cheat:  "Ah, if I only had a better adjective!!"  And--"Do the words have to be chronological?  Can I move that word on the bottom back up there to the top?"  That sort of thing...

Austin Kleon's newspaper blackout poems are better. To see his collection of the poems on flikr, click here.

I like that idea of a word machine, though.  Unused words could be redeposited back into the machine for others to use.  But the whole idea of blackening out words ... is a tad too redactionary for my taste.  (Government censors, take note,  if this trend catches on, it might result in a shortage of black markers!)

Inadvertent Mergings

A friend, concerned--and rightly so--that I too often succumb to bouts of undiscipline with regard to keeping to a writing schedule, has issued a bit of a challenge: Write 10 short stories, he said,  before December 25th. That's 10 days from now!!

I should mention, in all fairness, that he assigned me this task way back in November. I am just now getting around to it.

Some people have a tremendous problem with writer's block, and for days sit in front of a blank piece of paper or computer screen, unable to find a subject to write about, much less the words to do so. I have the opposite problem: my head is exploding with words and stories and ideas--but I don't get them out. They stay locked in there while I procrastinate. That will have to be one of my New Year's Resolutions for 2010--start revising those old stories languishing in the desk drawer, get those sentences  and images out of my head and write them down, and establish some kind of regular writing schedule--and stick to it.

Okay, here we go, Story No. 1, nine more to go.  [The writingstyle is intentional--not all the stories will be in this vein.  I was just experimenting.]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

INADVERTENT MERGINGS

Lawrence passed his 62nd birthday alone in his study sorting through his writings and stacks of unpaid bills when the telephone rang. It was his editor, the woman he had hired to transform his pencilled outpourings into readable, grammatical text.  But this time he had an important project that he wanted completed as soon as possible:  he instructed her to compile all the poems he had ever written to a former lover, a certain French woman with whom he had spent a magical summer some decades ago in the South of France, and arrange them into a little booklet that he intended to publish before his death.

Lawrence thought of Death often. He felt his was imminent and no amount of reasoned argument could persuade him otherwise.  Although he had occasional bouts of indigestion and struggled with insomnia, he was, in fact, as healthy as a horse.

He was tired that day, though, out of sorts, not wanting to deal with the mechanics of assembling, organizing, arranging and placing the poems in the order he might want them to appear in the booklet.  It required just too much concentration, and though he thought it a necessary and worthy endeavor, he simply couldn't face it, not this morning, when it was all he could do to make the coffee.  So he simply handed the thick folder of old, typewritten poems over to his editor, asking her to see to their final preparation. Now what Lawrence didn't realize, and the editor didn't know, was that there were three particular poems in there that were written for someone other than the French woman to whom the collection was to be dedicated.

One frosty morning a week or so later, the editor came to his house with the completed manuscript.  Lawrence had been unable to sleep and had been up since 4 a.m. A mug of dark, cold espresso sat abandoned on his desk, alongside three chewed-up yellow pencils and a dozen wadded-up balls of paper, evidence of his continuous battle with Blockitis.. 

"It's all finished, Lawrence," said the editor.   "Have a look at it and let me know if there is anything you want changed or added or deleted."

Bleary eyed from lack of sleep and fighting a nasty cold, Lawrence waved her away with a sweep of his hand, as if swatting a fly.   "I'm done with it, I can't think anymore," he said. "I trust your judgment. Go ahead and get it printed up."  The editor left and Lawrence went back to bed, sneezing and coughing.

Lawrence felt that he had already done the hard part--the writing and preserving of the poems. That was, of course, back when his heart was actually into writing. It wasn't anymore. Try as he might, he could never top those first, early poems. It was as if the boldness and intuitiveness, the sensitivity and passion which seemed to come so naturally then had slowly deserted him, until finally, he became nothing more than an old, discarded vessel whose interior cracks ceased to contain even what he deemed the smallest, finest parts of himself. He did not really need to be involved in the tweaking and arranging and formatting and all those other tedious technical specifics of manuscript production. That's what editors are for, right?

In short time the manuscript found its way to a small, local outfit that specialized in publishing poetry on demand. Pods, they called it.  A lifetime of writing and no one asked to see his work anymore.  There was no new work--hadn't been for some time, actually--but that was beside the point.  They still could have asked. Anyway, Lawrence had instructed that 200 copies be printed of the love poems booklet, which he planned to distribute to his family and friends, his writing colleagues, and his alma mater, if nothing else than to remind them he was still there; and he planned to have dozens of copies strategically placed at the three bookstores in town.

One morning about about a week later, his cold now gone, he was sitting in his study, after the first full night of sleep in weeks, rested, alert and ready to work again.  Sipping his piping hot coffee he opened his mail to find a copy of the newly published little poetry booklet that the editor had sent him, and he began thumbing through it, rereading, with high pleasure, each and every poem that he had written those many years before in the throes of his passion for the lovely Marianne in Paris. He liked the way the way the booklet looked, especially that stunning photograph of himself on the cover, in black and white, where he appeared far more sophisticated than he usually saw himself.  He liked the way the little book felt in his hands, the way each page's poem recounted scene after scene after scene of tender memories, revealing the hidden, adoring glances and the shared, magical hours of their impassioned lovemaking.

He was so enthralled with the overall production and so caught up in the memories evoked by the first ten poems that he put the book aside and closed his eyes to allow himself a brief, quiet visit to the past.  Distracted by the barking of a neighbor's dog, he grumbled and picked the book up again, inadvertently skipping a section of the book that, had he noticed, contained some poems that really didn't belong there.  And then he came to the last page--the finest poem of them all, in the editor's opinion--a farewell pleading from Lawrence to his lover, asking her not to ever, ever forget him. Except this particular poem was not written for Marianne Lefournier of Paris, France but to one Isabel Edith Elizabeth Jackson--of Wicita Falls, Texas.

When Lawrence saw the title of the poem, the blood suddenly drained from his face. Tiny beads of sweat

suddenly appeared on his forehead.  He rushed to the phone to call the editor. "How could you

let this happen?!" he blurted into the mouthpiece.  "That last poem should not be in there!"  Pacing the room in circles, he punched the air with the fist of his free hand, as he detailed the poem's history.

"You should have looked the material over more carefully before handing me the folder," scolded the editor. "You said to put ALL the poems into the booklet. How was I to know one of them wasn't meant to be there?"  Neither Lawrence nor his editor, at this point, was aware of the two other misplaced poems that had also been erroneously inserted.

Well, the damage was done. Two hundred books had already been printed and on being distributed. Poor Lawrence had neither the funds nor the energy to have them all recalled, corrected and reprinted. He slumped into his armchair, clutched at his hair and moaned. "What if she sees it?" he wailed into the phone.

"Marianne?" said the editor. "Why, I think she'd be flattered, Lawrence. That last poem was truly beautiful.  And there is no way she could know it was not originally meant for her."

"No, no!" Lawrence cried, "Not Marianne! Isabel!! Isabel Jackson!! I wrote that poem for Isabel Jackson, not Marianne!!  Isabel lives in the next town over! What if she comes over shopping this week and sees it in the bookstore?  We had a wild affair for a few months when I was on sabbatical abroad but I broke it off because she was so violently jealous. She once threatened to kill me, you know, if she ever caught me with another woman."

"I see," said the editor, who then suddenly remembered something.  "Lawrence, uh, we inserted Marianne's name into the opening line of each and every poem in the book, remember?--yes, well, I can see how that might make this Isabel woman a bit miffed, should she read it, that the poem you wrote to her was subsequently altered and recycled addressed to another woman."

"She won't be merely 'miffed'," cried Lawrence. "She'll go ballistic!" He recalled with horror the first days of their courtship when, after an imagined slight, Isabel had shown up at his door at three in the morning, demanding an apology, and when he wouldn't let her in at that hour, she stood on the porch shrieking as she hurled a brick through the living room window, shattering glass and dirt all over his newly purchased Persian rug.

Lawrence shuddered at the memory. He shot up out of the armchair, jammed on his coat and boots and rushed to the bookstores to grab back all the copies of the poetry booklet, before Isabel--should she be in town that day--would discover its existence.

Now while Lawrence was in Bookstore #1, hastily stuffing the booklets into a large vinyl sack he had brought with him, Isabel Jackson was wandering among the shelves of Bookstore #3, examining the newest releases in the Mysteries and Science Fiction division when a thin volume lying on a table nearby caught her eye. It caught her eye because of the photograph on its cover. "Oh my God, that's Lawrence!" she said aloud. She recognized the photo immediately--it was one she herself had taken some years before, when they had gone to the beach one afternoon. Her copy was now in a landfill somewhere, after she had summarily shredded it, not wanting to be reminded of the only man in her life to have ever dumped her.

She looked at the title and blushed. "Love Poems for All Time," it said. She tried to remember the last time

she had seen Lawrence. It must have been, oh fifteen-sixteen years ago or more. Though they lived in adjacent towns they had never, in all that time, bumped into one other, mainly because they frequented different social circles and truth be told, Lawrence was somewhat of a recluse.  Consumed with curiosity, not only by the sudden appearance of this book of poems that she believed were about her, Isabel opened the book and began reading the dedication page. "For my beloved, always and forever my true love, only you, Marianne."

Marianne?! Who the hell is Marianne?!! Isabel was so taken aback, she dropped her bulging handbag, which fell to the floor with a loud clunk, startling a fellow bookbrowser in the next aisle. Her fury mounting, Isabel flipped the pages forward so roughly that a salesperson who happened to be walking by, stopped and frowned at her. "Don't worry," she said, answering his concerned stare with an even stronger glare back, "I'm buying it."

Isabel stopped and sat down, suddenly out of breath. Thank God for those wooden stools they place everywhichwhere in bookstores for people to not have to stand so long.  All that pent-up emotion made her overheated and lightheaded. She loosened the collar of her jacket, took a deep breath, and continued reading. Like the stills from a silent film, page after page of her former lover's infatuation with another woman--a foreign woman!!!--passed visually before her. She felt like an eavesdropper, hiding behind the curtains, shocked and humiliated, but unable to look away. That was bad enough--to discover that he'd loved another woman--but the worst was yet to come. On page 22 was a poem about a tryst at Cafe D'Orsay.

"Wait a minute.  He took ME to that cafe!!!"  she shouted.

"Shhhhhhhhh!" said a voice behind the bookshelves.  Reeling from the realization that Lawrence had not only taken both her and the other woman to the same cafe AND that he sat with this Marianne person in the Exact. Same. Corner table! near the window overlooking the street, Isabel completely, as they say, lost it.

She viciously ripped the page from the book, then felt immediately guilty.  No matter how angry she was at that cad Lawrence, she needn't have taken it out on the book.  She lowered her eyes and attempted to smooth out the cover, now bent and mangled.  Still...   Her blood boiling, she forced herself to keep reading, and on page 39 discovered a poem Lawrence had actually written to her, Isabel, titled "To My Love with the Auburn Hair".  She knew the words of this poem by heart.  They still stayed with her, not so easy to erase as the shredding of his picture had been.  Except now it contained an additional word at the beginning of the first line that she hadn't remembered being there before.  It said "Marianne, my auburn-haired beauty ..." 

Her poem, now addressed to this Marianne person!!  Isabel skipped to the last page.  She had had enough.  More than enough.  But she was curious which poem Lawrence had chosen to end the book with.  Obviously this Marianne woman wasn't currently with Lawrence; Isabel would've heard about it.  People talk.  She still had her sources.  She knew he was alone.  Lawrence, in his later years, gave all his attention to his books.  They were his loves now.  At this stage in his life girlfriends were irrelevant.  Or so she believed.  So let's see, what poem did he end with?  Isabel was about to receive her second big shock when she saw its title.

It was THE poem--the one he'd written especially and exclusively for her, the night after their afternoon at the beach, where he had unabashedly declared his undying love for her (well before the brick-hurtling incident, of course).  And now, without the least compunction or even miniscule sense of decency, it was being dedicated to someone else, this French someone named Marianne.

Isabel had read about fits of apoplexy in novels but never imagined she herself might ever be afflicted with one. "How could he, the absolute ...CAD!" she sputtered, stamping her foot on the bookstore's worn red carpet. "These were my poems!!!

"SHHHHHHHHHH", pleaded the voice from behind the shelves again, only louder.

"This isn't a damn library!" Isabel shouted, hoisting her hefty bag over her shoulder and storming out the doors of the bookstore, leaving the volume she had promised to buy, bent and ripped and discarded in the corner of the aisle.  She headed for ...
_______________

You're wondering what happened next.  Did the aggrieved Isabel eventually track down the dasdardly ex-poet and exact her revenge? Would the French woman Marianne across the ocean ever become aware of the drama involved in the publishing of that obscure little booklet meant solely for her? Did Lawrence fire his editor and abandon the idea of ever again publishing poems written to former lovers? We will never know. Because the word limit has been reached for this particular short story and, well, rules are rules.

_______

Note:  This was a true story, by the way.  And no, he didn't fire me. Names were changed here to protect the innocent, as well as the guilty (the fictional Lawrence's real-life counterpart bravely admits he took both women, in separate years, to the same French cafe. "What was I thinking?" he says), as were locations and nationalities, physical attributes and reported quoted remarks. I have taken liberty not only with the character of the protagonist but totally fabricated any and all events after the inadvertent improper filing of the poems was discovered and publication halted.  Rather than being upset by this revelation, however, the poet in question actually found it amusing.  And we are taking steps to prevent such a frightening scenario as that depicted in this fictional account from ever becoming a reality.

I have asked his kind permission to post this story assignment here on my blog.  I'd initially feared he might be offended, my using certain elements of our professional editor/client project as the idea for my first writing assignment.  To the contrary, he insisted I include it, as another wacky example, I suppose, that "Truth is stranger than Fiction", and so, there it is..

For those who believe in serendipity, in the wildly improbable but easily exampled notion that there are truly no coincidences in life, it makes perfect sense to imagine that that last poem in the story, written to an auburn-haired lover in the heat of a passion that has long since thoroughly evaporated, itself insisted on having the last say in the matter, so to speak, its language being  applicable to either woman, neither of whom currently seems to want to be associated with its author.  The poem is convinced, however, apart from that unfortunate reference to a particular shade of hair, that it speaks of a certain universality.

As for Isabel Edith Elizabeth Jackson (who doesn't actually exist), it was all the proof she needed that men in general, and poets in particular, are indeed fickle, monstrous beings who think nothing of airing their personal affairs as improbable verse just to get their words published. And like spiders fashioning intricate webs, glistening, practical, and deadly, where all manner of creatures could be caught in them unawares, altering their lives forever, they continue to weave these treacherous threads of deceit.  The character Isabel wishes me to state that.  I would never word it in such a way.  Honest.  True to nature, it is this character, Isabel, and not the poem that ends the cruel charade, that wants to have the last, and final, word.  So I let her.

So there it is, Story #1, in which the words exploded out, thereby clearing the way for a cleaner closet, so to speak, hopefully one where its imaginary inhabitants will gush less but say more, i.e., opt for quality rather than sheer quantity.  But ... it's a start.


Story #2 will be about the secret life of a tool shed. And definitely not comedic.
Stay tuned.


_________

Four Little Quoties

There are books in which the footnotes or comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin are more interesting than the text. The world is one of these books.
                       ~~ George Santayanna

What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
                      ~~ Eugene Delacroix

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
                     ~~ Anonymous

Does one really have to fret about enlightenment?   No matter what road I travel I'm going home.
                    ~~  Shinsho


____________________________________
* Photo by awyn.  I don't remember the year it was taken.

Painting One's Mother, Preserving One's Youness

A wonderful little book you might like to read, called The Painting of You, by writer, poet and fellow blogger William Michaelian of Recently Banned Literature.

What can I say about The Painting of You except--go read it!  Once you open it up to the first page you will not be able to put it down.  There is something for everyone here--for poets, writers, mothers and sons, children and parents, caretakers, and readers of memoirs alike.

What's the book about?  It's an autobiographical account of a man caring for his mother who has Alzheimer's Disease; about his and her dreams, their family history, the struggle to maintain communication, the pain of watching a loved one slowly disappear as you become a stranger to them. 

In the book, Michaelian asks, in a poem, how he should paint his mother...

As a puzzled soul
looking out the window,
or a curious girl,
looking in?

And suppose the two
are friends--what then?

Does one begin
where the other ends?

Or must I paint them
both again, one as the other,
each as they have
always been?

The book is also about fatigue and weariness, aching limbs and decades-old dishtowels, and tea stains and powder clouds, "far too little and far too much", and ...  fleeting glimpses of grace.

Imagine a writer--any writer's--happiness at having been able to preserve, and share the moments of those difficult but important years, and to pass them on, as legacy, not only of the time and person written about ...  but the words themselves, as legacies.  Like threads being spun on a loom, each generation a band of connection, as if when one thread becomes tangled, or severed, an invisible hand emerges to find the missing loop, reconnect the link again, so that the whole of the picture remains forever intact.

I thought to write a review of this book but it would be really really difficult to top the one already written by Paul Martin over at The Teacher's View.   Read Paul's review here--he says it so much better than I ever could.

But truly--this is a very special book that one can read again and again.  If you want to get a copy,  information on ordering it in either print copy or as an ebook, can be found here.

In the Neighborhood

I was at the bank the other day and on the counter near the teller was a bowl of red noses.  Well not noses, exactly, but little cardboard replicas of the mascot for Operation Nez Rouge (Operation Red Nose).  Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and with a string attached, sort of like a keychain, the little fellow with the red nose had a message printed on the back.  Translated from the French it says, basically, "Let us (Red Nose) take you home."

Operation Red Nose was started in 1984 in Quebec City by Jean-Marie de Koninck, who wanted to do something about the problem of people driving while intoxicated, which seems to increase around the holidays. He recognized that drivers don't take taxis home after leaving the bars, not because of the cost, but because they don't want to have to go back and get their cars the next day. So his idea was to create a kind of escort service to have someone come and pick the person up and drive them home, in their own car.

Now in its 26th year, the guys (and gals) of Red Nose will be there for you if you've been drinking and aren't fit to get behind the wheel. They work in teams to drive you home in your own car, for free. Given that this will soon be the season of the dreaded black ice, this is a very good service to be available.   Red Nose teams also show up, in costume at office Christmas parties, restaurants and clubs around the holidays to remind people they're available.  They are always given a hearty welcome.(And what a nice idea, to put their calling cards on bank counters and gas stations and grocery checkouts, where people can take one and hang it on the dashboard of their car, "just in case.")

Meanwhile, some other local news:

Kruger is planning to temporarily interrupt production of its Paper Machine No. 3 situated in its Wayagamack plant, a mere 10-minute walk from my house, for a period of two months starting from the 23rd of this month. Trois-Rivières was once known as the pulp-and-paper capital of the world but demand for newsprint has declined throughout North America (90% of the mill's production goes to the U.S.)  Last summer we visited a recycling facility near here, which is struggling to survive because the price customers pay for their recycled paper has gone way down and they are losing money.  The temporary shutdown of Paper Machine No. 3  at Kruger will affect 100 workers. Production will resume on February 23.  At least, for that short time, maybe there will be a little less pollution billowing out from those smokestacks.  Yay.

There are some storefronts in my neighborhood that have been empty for over two or more years.  Our little post office in the shopping strip closed a year or so ago and now to mail a package, unless you want to go all the way downtown, the closest one is the Cinq Etoiles Depanneur (kind of like a 7/11) where, in a corner just past the fresh breads and croissants and pie counter, across from the copy machine is a mini-mini-postal outlet.  Just last week the Animalerie (pet store) around the corner closed down and left.  The place would be perfect for a little coffee shop or used bookstore.  Don't I wish!

Jobs are hard to find here, as are family physicians.  It took me over 5 years to find one who would accept new patients, and that came about only through sheer luck.  Last summer in our sector there was a devastating fire which completely destroyed an entire building, displacing eight families.  Scarcely four months later, the debris has been removed and a new building erected in its place, ready for occupancy.  A gigantic waterfront project is underway and bridge repair is ongoing at Pont Duplessis. So while some parts of the economy are only eeking along, others are slowly picking up.

Anyway that's some of the news from secteur du Cap this week.  L'Accorderie will have a community supper on the 16th.  That's the local service-exchange organization where people are paid in hours instead of cash and the Hour Bank keeps track of hours earned or spent.  Everyone's supposed to bring a plate of food enough to feed four people.  Santa has said he'll show up.

The snows have arrived, and with it the bitter cold.  L'hiver encore....  I love winter, though.  It makes me feel alive.

International Human Rights Day Today

As we celebrate International Human Rights Day today, a little reminder of some folks around the world who aren't exactly celebrating just yet:

Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, has been under house arrest in Burma for almost 14 out of the past 20 years.

Her crime?  She was elected Prime Minister of her country in 1990 with 59% of the vote.  The military junta prevented her from assuming office.

She was taken forcibly to detention, where she remains today.  She is denied visitors.

IN TIBET:  

A young Tibetan writer and university student, Tashi Rabten (pen-name Te’urang), the editor of the banned literary magazine the Shar Dungri (Eastern Snow Mountain) on the 2008 protests in Tibet, is feared missing, according to Tibetan bloggers. He was a student of Northwest Minorities University in Lanzhou and has not been seen since July 26, when the university closed for summer holiday. Tashi also authored a collection of work called “Written in Blood”. [1]


According to the Washington based International Campaign for Tibet, there are fears for his safety because his recent book is being dealt with as a “political matter”. A Tibetan source told ICT that Tashi has been under surveillance for some time.

Sangpo, a 30-year-old monk from Lhora Monastery, was arrested on August 8th after a surprise raid in his residence, after Chinese police found a scroll painting of the Dalai Lama and a a half sack full of Video CDs of Dalai Lama’s speech in his room.

He was taken away and his present whereabouts remain unknown.  Imagine that. In Tibet today you can suddenly disappear, without a trace, simply by having a CD of the Dalai Lama in your house.

Tibetan nun Yangkyi Dolma, from Kardze, arrested on 24 March this year, died four days ago,

on December 6th, in the early morning at Chengdu hospital, according to confirmed information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.  What caused this young woman to die while being detained?

On 6 June 2008, three monks, Tsewang Drakpa, Thupten Gyatso and Gyatso Nyima staged a peaceful protest in Drango County, Kardze,calling for more freedom and human rights for the Tibetan people. Within minutes of their protest they were arrested and are now being held in Chengdu city detention center.  Visitation rights have been denied to their families. You are not allowed to protest peacefully in today's Tibet.

 

Kunga Tsayang, a Tibetan monk of Amdo Labrang Tashikyil Monastery, who wrote under a pen name "sun of snowland" (Tib: Gang-Nyi) was an amateur photographer,  passionate writer, essayist, and chronicler of the new Tibetan generation.  He was arrested last March 17th for allegedly posting political essays on an internet website and sentenced last week, in a closed-door trial, to five years in prison.[2]

Tenzin Choedak, a Tibetan returnee from India, was sentenced to 15 years of  imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 Yuan in September following his participation in last year’s spring uprising in Lhasa, according to reliable information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. The protests that began on March 14, 2008 in Lhasa spread across many parts of Tibet.  Choedak was arrested after his image was caught on CCTV footage, showing him protesting in the streets.

In mid-2008, monks at Pangsa Monastery staged a peaceful march against  China's crackdown of the March 14 protest in Lhasa and other peaceful protests that year.  Eleven of those monks have gone missing, their whereabouts unknown.  Their names are: Khenpo, Thupten Lungrig, Nyima Tenzin, Lobsang Tendar, Pema, Lhakpa Tserin, Tenpa Thinlay, Lhakpa, Kangtsu, Thupten Nyima, and Gyatso Kalsang. Engage in a peaceful protest in Tibet, and you can 'disappear'.

IN CHINA there is harassment, surveillance and unlawful house arrest for signers of Charter 08, persecution of human rights lawyers and practioners of Falun Gong, as well as incarceration of over 1,200 religious and political prisoners.

 Human rights lawyer Wang Yonghang has been sentenced to seven years' imprisonment in connection with his work representing Falun Gong practitioners and for publishing articles on internet sites outside of China.

Human rights activist Huang Qi, who was critical of the government's response to the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province and who gave legal advice to its victims has been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment following an unfair trial. 

IN THE MIDDLE EAST: On 27 December, as 2008 drew to a close, Israeli jets launched an aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, where 1.5million Palestinians live, crowded into one of the most densely populated areas of the planet. In the following three weeks,more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including some 300 children, and some 5,000 were wounded. Israeli forces repeatedly breached the laws of war, including by carrying out direct attacks on civilians and civilian buildings and attacks targeting Palestinian militants that caused a disproportionate toll among civilians.


IN AFRICA:  On 24 November, three prominent Sudanese human rights defenders were arrested by the NISS in Khartoum. Amir Suleiman, Abdel Monim Elgak and Osman Humeida were arrested and tortured in custody before being released.

The conflict in Darfur continues unabated with increased attacks and violations of international humanitarian law: rape, murder and destruction of dwelling places leading to mass evacuation and homelessness.

IN MEXICO:  Serious human rights violations committed by members of the military and police including unlawful killings, excessive use of force, torture and arbitrary detention. Several journalists killed, human rights defenders threatened.


IN UZBEKISTAN: a mere seven years ago  34-year-old Muzafar Avazov, then being held in Jaslyk Prison, had his fingernails ripped out and was boiled alive [3] It's now 2009; has there been any improvement in this country's human rights record? Nope. According to Amnesty International, "There was little improvement in freedom of expression and assembly. Human rights defenders, activists and independent journalists continued to be targeted for their work. Widespread torture or other ill-treatment of detainees and prisoners, including human rights defenders and government critics, continued to be reported." Government officials of countries that do not immerse prisoners in boiling water continue to express concern.  But that's as far as it goes. 


IN THE U.S.A.: Continued reports of police brutality and ill-treatment in prisons, jails and immigration detention facilities. Fifty-nine people died after being shocked with Tasers, bringing to 346 the number of such deaths since 2001.  Prisoners held without trial, indefinitely, in Guatanamo Bay.


AND EVERYWHERE:
Women the world over are still being subjected to rape, beatings and murder by husbands, soldiers, and strangers.

For Amnesty International's State of the World's Human Rights Report 2009, click here.

 ~ ~ ~ ~

I began this posting intending to include but a few examples, and leave it at that.  But I soon became overwhelmed with the sheer number of reports of arrest and detention, torture and abuse, violence and extreme measures toward people without regard to their basic human rights.  The stories are endless; names and photographs of people suddenly taken away, missing, dead.  The victims' plight is noted, catalogued, and except for their families and small pockets of concerned and dedicated activists, the incidents are soon forgotten by the majority of us, busy with our own lives.

But for today, for this one day, December 10, the day set aside for Human Rights, let's call attention to them.  That it's still continuing.  That this blatant, malicious mistreatment and abuse of a fellow human being by means of intimidation and force, just because one can--is not going unnoticed.  We should not remain silent. We will not remain silent.

Imagine a year without all these stories not coming in, week after week after week.
Imagine a world where one doesn't feel it necessary to beat someone to a pulp just to prove a point,
where laws are not routinely circumvented or ignored and lawbreakers are held accountable and made to face the consequences. Imagine it one day not being all about Control--control of one human being,  or of a whole group of human beings, or of an entire country, by entities who simply want to be ...  in control.

Perhaps, in future, a more substantial effort to change this situation can be made, not by merely voicing perfunctory official "expressions of concern" and turning a blind eye because one doesn't want to anger one's economic partners in international trade or one's politial allies in some joint endeavor, but by attention to the matter and meaningful action.  This is more than a game of the dance of diplomacy.  These are people's lives at stake.

Every human has the right to be.  To just ... Be.  Not just some, but all.  All, equally.

If only words in the Declaration of Human Rights we sign and proclaim ... would amount to more than just words.


 ____________
Sources:  Amnesty International, Tibetan Center for Rights and Democracy, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights reports, International Campaign for Tibet

Men on Camels

Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar

they may have come by camel, or horse, or on foot

but most scenes depict them as riding in on camels

they came, bearing gifts

to honor an infant

who would grow up to promote Peace

and an end to violence and hatred

 

Three weeks ago in South Darfur

300 armed men on camels attacked two villages, killing 11

they come, bearing arms

to rape, murder, pillage,

spread violence, instill fear.

Only 18 more days left till Christmas.
Parties, carols ... shopping ... gifts ... family
300 armed men on camels

_________________________________________________

According to the UN, Sudan has blocked peacekeeping patrols in Darfur on 42 separate occasions this year amid fears of a new conflict in the region. Around three million Darfuris have been displaced by government forces and allied janjaweed militia since 2003.  In Darfur, over 300,000 have died since the conflict began in 2003.

Six humanitarian aid organizations including the International Committee of the Red Cross and French group Doctors Without Borders have suspended work in eastern Chad after Laurent Maurice, an agronomist for the ICRC and his five Chadian colleagues were abducted near the Sudanese border. [1]

Three UN peacekeepers were killed in Darfur on Friday, three UN peacekeepers were killed on Saturday.  [2]

Peace on Earth
Goodwill to men

when?
when will there be
peace

Rip out the seams, let words go

WHISPERS FROM THE ANCIENTS -
TEA LEAF READING ON TREMONT STREET

the walls of the empire are
chipped and sagging, waters

rise as vultures circle,
all law gone, emaciated

children left by war
choke on deadly vapors, we’re

in the grip of Kali Yuga
waiting to be dissolved

into Time, you
will meet the

man of your dreams,
in three months

a change in your life
beware false friends

does the color green mean
anything to you

someone you know
with the initial D

will bring you a gift
take it

-- Annie Wyndham

________________
* Photo of frog that emerged from earth in process of preparing for spring garden, April 17, 2006.  He did not especially like being disturbed, glared at me, then hopped away.  Had I known he were there, I'd have moved on.  But when what looks like a stone begins moving, you approach with deep caution.  He later took up residence in the crawl space beneath the cellar window--or it was one of his relatives.  I call them all "Freddy."  They come, they go ....  Good to know they survive the winters.

Pullings

Spoons clack clack clacking
on a knee
feet stomping to a tune
whose words he has
forgotten.
Everyone's into it,
and he sits quiet.

He’s suddenly nine years old again,
the all of it being absorbed,
compartmentalized,
stored away, to be eventually
disgarded.

It dares to drag him back,
is met with a heartbeat of
recognition
behind that self-built wall.

Deny all you want, it teases.
Your eyes stay hard
but your toes ...
your toes are tapping underneath
the table.

Dead giveaway,
mon frère.

-- Annie Wyndham

________________
*Photo by awyn

Despair as a form of hope

On November 11, Veteran's Day, The Rumpus Net reprinted an essay by Steve Almond, Boston-area writer, recounting his experience attending a talk some years ago by Kurt Vonnegut at the Connecticut Forum. Here are some excerpts from that essay (quoted portions in red):

Our citizens aren’t used to having their fantasies punctured. We don’t mind watching guys like Jon Stewart josh around about that silly war in Iraq, or global warming. But when someone actually points out that our species is goose-stepping toward extinction – without a comforting laugh line at the end – things get uncomfortable...

He [Vonnegut] had spent his entire life writing stories and essays and novels in the naked hope that he might redeem his readers. As grim and dystopic as some of those books were, every one was written under the assumption that human beings were capable of a greater decency. And not because of God’s will, that tired old crutch. But because of their simple duty to others of their kind.

Now, in the shadow of his own death, he was facing the incontrovertible evidence that his life’s work had been for naught. Right before his eyes, Americans had regressed to a state of infantile omnipotence. They drove SUVs and cheered for wars on TV and worshipped the beautiful and ignorant and despised the poor and brushed aside the science of their own doom. They had lost interest in their own consciences, and declined to make the sacrifices that might spare their very own grandchildren.

A woman at that gathering tells Steve Almond that she shared a cigarette-smoking session with Vonnegut--in a revolving door.

“I followed him, you know. Every time he went to have a cigarette. I just followed him and bummed a cigarette and we sat there talking. He was totally cool, too. Totally on top of it. They wouldn’t let us smoke inside and it was too cold outside, so you know what we did? We got in one of those things, those doors that spin around—”

“A revolving door?”

“Yeah. We got in one of the compartments and he pushed it around till there was just a crack. It was pretty warm in there and we could just blow the smoke outside.”

Almond found himself later focusing on that image--Vonnegut and the pretty young girl "puffing away like a couple of truants".

It helped me feel a little less hopeless. This made no sense. Vonnegut has been killing himself for years, or trying to, with those unfiltered Pall Malls.

But something occurred to me ... something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness.

At certain moments, it is reason enough to live.

~ ~ ~ ~

To read Steve Almond's essay in its entirety (and I can't recommend it highly enough), click here.

Can't find your copy of Kurt's Man Without a Country? Click here for a lengthy sample.

Some Vonnegut quoties:

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. ~~ Sirens of Titan.

Here is what I think truth is.  We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. ~~ Cold Turkey.

And my favorite:

All time is all time. It does not change.  It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations.  It simply is.  Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. ~~ Slaughterhouse Five.

Click here for a video tribute to Kurt Vonnegut (with a scene from his talk at the Connecticut Forum, where he says he has a message for future generations, i.e., "Please accept our apologies").

Who, I wonder, will be the Kurt Vonneguts of the coming generation?

Glibbly ironic or ironically glib?

A few days ago I posted some musings on this blog asking if three sentences consitutes a story. From one-line poems, to three-line stories, to one-line essays--brevity, it seems, is difinitely "in"!

In case you haven't seen it, here's Dinty Moore's brief "essay" recently published in Mississippi Review Online


"I have a tendency toward glibness."


That's it--that's the entire "essay".

Moore is the editor of Brevity, which for more than a decade has been publishing "well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or less) essay form," and whose site averages 6,000 visits per month.

I'm not the only reader scratching my head and wondering, in effect, "eh?" Mike Scalise also expressed confusion, and asked if others out there in bloggerland were also perplexed. Commenters' attempt at explaining and analyzing Moore's "essay" were as intriguing and amusing as the question which prompted the exchange in the first place, sometimes answering the question--with another question:

"My immediate gut-level reaction is .. that it's a definition of the essay."
"Is glibness what the 'essay' is conveying, or is it irony?"
"It TELLS glibness but SHOWS irony."

"It seems like Moore could’ve re-written his 'essay' to be even more brief, if brevity is the point. 'Tendency toward glibness' would seem even more glib of a statement, implying that the narrator is so glib that he has stopped bothering with (believing in) complete sentences... I don’t make an immediate connection between glibness and brevity."

The phrase "tendency toward glibness" is not unique to Dinty Moore. Joseph Epstein, in his book A Line Out for a Walk (1998), on page 85, states:

"Often behind what I have called 'the happy knack'-—my old tendency toward glibness is still intact, I see--is a great deal of effort; and careful writing is, after all, the best evidence going for having ... a lucid mind."

Amen.

Another Literary Print Journal Shutting Down

Wolf Moon Journal in Maine announced this week that it is reluctantly ceasing production of its print journal, due to decreasing subscriptions and rising costs, and that it will now be going electronic.

It seems to be a rising trend.

Returned Peace Corp volunteer John Givens discusses the decline of literary journal print publishing, worth checking out (click here) for the many invaluable links he provides, including the Top Fifty Literary Magazines and International List of Online Journals.

Thanksgiving 2009

I am thankful
to be alive.

For good health
(knock on wood).

For my mother
for giving me her sense of humor
and love of reading.

For my father
for his initiative and ingenuity
and love of dancing.

For their love.

For my sisters,
always there for me
no matter what.

For all the family
aunts and uncles,
cousins,
inlaws
passed on
and still here.

For our pets,
for their companonship.

For my wonderful mate,
friend and lover,
sharer of my dreams,
the kindest person I have
ever known.

For my children,
forever in my mind and heart,
even beyond forever.

For the grandbubs,
who stole my heart
the minute I met them.

For the friends no longer here,
leaving memories to cherish

and those near and far
for their friendship.

For the unexpected insights
that changed my life.

For the hard times,
that helped me grow,
and learn.

For music, that lifts me up
that makes me remember,
that soothes my soul.

For dancing, that lifelong urge
so impossible to contain.

For mountains to roam in,
and waters to swim in
afloat, alone
with silence and sky.

For the strength to keep going
when I sometimes don't want to.

For words and books and poems.

For the gift of imagination
from the universe.

For espresso
and ice cream
and ... chocolate.

For snow!!!

For it all --

I give thanks.

A Tour of les Forges

Sunday afternoon we took a drive out to the Forges. It's about 13 kilometers, or roughly 8 miles, from Trois Rivières. Apart from being an interesting national landmark, it's a wonderful place to spend the day:  kite-flying, picnicking or walking the winding trails through the forest along the Saint Maurice River.

Trois-Rivières was founded as a trading post in 1634 in what then came to be known as "New France."  Almost a century later, in 1730,  Les Forges du Saint-Maurice was built, which marked the start of Canada's iron industry.  It also led to the creation of the country's first industrial community.

Hundreds of workers lived and worked here at the blast furnace and two forges, turning out iron for shipyards, cannons and cannon balls for the military, building railways and producing goods for the domestic market, such as iron stoves and axes. The whole thing shut down in 1883, after more than 150 years of operation.  Today it's a popular walking place because of its spacious grounds and wooded hills along the Saint Maurice River.

 The road leading to les Forges is flanked by 
the ever-gracious birch, sentinals of welcome

The Ironmaster's House.  This grande maison has been
 completely rebuilt and is now a Welcoming Center.

Go behind the house and
you can begin a walking tour ...

These steps take you down to a path that winds
 through the forest and eventually comes out at
the Saint Maurice River.

This is what it looks like from the bottom, looking up.
It's always easier going down, than coming back up again!

You quickly become surrounded by trees.   Occasionally,
 you'll find a sign, warning you to be on the lookout for
bears. We found raspberry bushes, ancient trunks of felled
trees, and  squirrels, and birds.   But no bears.  I think the
bears are busy hunkering down for the winter.

A view from a walking path down to the river. It's
 quite steep in some places; you can take a shortcut
straight down, but it is not advised.

If you stop and look straight up, this is what you'll see.
Sunlight filters through the branches, and scatters itself
on the trails below.

The Saint Maurice River.

All that's left of the original ironworkers' settlement.

Blast furnaces, house foundations from centuries ago.

En route to the river.

 At the river's shore

Le fontaine du diable--the "Devil's Fountain"--a pocket
 of ground where natural gas escapes, producing an eternal flame.

Another boardwalk portion of the trail,
leading  into the forest

This would be fun on roller skates

 

 At the top of the stairs--the Ironmaster's house again

Site of the waterwheel, and small museum

Click here for a large photo of the original worksite, and here to see the forges' waterwheel, as well as to find information about visiting Les Forges should you ever be in the Mauricie region of Québec.

An elderly couple, walking the grounds.
Still holding hands, after all these years.

Cats!!

"Jack"

He's gone. A haunting silence whispers his absence. No more early morning playtime, waking us up with the sound of tiny feet chasing a yarn ball across the kitchen floor.

What happens when you start feeding one homeless cat--she tells all her friends. Soon after, they begin arriving, in shifts, one by one,  morning and night, like clockwork.  They start hanging out in the yard, sit near the garden, watching, while you pull weeds, or they climb up on the bench in the morning, taking the sun.  Sometimes they bring their offspring, and leave them.

 "Pepé" (the day we found him; he's one of ours now)

It is illegal here to have more than four domestic animals living in one household. We’ve reached our limit.

How many have come and gone over the years. Pluffy: from his first days this tough little gray mastered surviving the frigid, bitter cold and frequent winter storms outside. Too skitterish to be approached, too independent to domesticate, too elusive to catch; we watched him grow from infancy to adulthood.  Two years ago someone shot him with a BB gun; was it man or animal that then gashed his skin in symmetrical swipes producing a gaping wound where his insides showed. Even then he would not let us help, knew what was happening, and scampered off somewhere to die. Blackie, the neighborhood casanova--never missing a meal, not once in three years--one day mysteriously disappeared. The abandoned white female with the pretty face, another long-time visitor, suddenly disappeared as well, in the same week. The two yellows, occasional visitors, abruptly stopped coming.

Perhaps someone is catching, collecting or killing them. Or they may have simply moved on to another supportive neighbor gravy-train. One leaves, two more arrive.  Where are they all coming from?!!

We built a shelter under the cedar trees, of straw and wood and tarp, for when the snowbank reaches five feet in the back;  and shovel paths down over the wooded hill so they don't get stuck when the blinding drifts make passage treacherous.  Every year you say:   Enough. No more. And then one or two little ones arrive again, without their mother. Fit in the palm of your hand, fix you with those big, innocent eyes. You’re smitten.

It costs about $65 to spay a cat here. If we could catch the mother and “fix” her, or find a home for her, that would help.  But she has been outside too long, distrusts humans; no one would take her.  Or try to catch and neuter the father. We know who he is--the last two litters all looked remarkably like him, same color and type fur, same face, same eyes.


Yesterday afternoon we took wee Jack and his little twin to the SPCA, who will put them up for adoption.  Leaving off a beloved pet when you can no longer care for it is difficult enough. Rescuing and dropping off random orphan kittens is no less easy.  We opted not to take a tour of the cages in the back, housing unwanted, abandoned and/or abused animals.  It's enough to make you cry.  It is a very big problem, though--Everywhere--there are just too many of them. 

Many of the animals have been there for months, still waiting to be placed.  Luckily this SPCA has enough room to house them all.  They post their pictures on their website, with little blurbs of introduction:  "I am a shy cat but can adapt myself well to your family. I am curious, affectionate and calm," says one. "I am nervous and will need a period of adjustment," says another. They make known their preferences.  Not everyone likes being held.  "I prefer to be on the ground," says one named Jake, "than in the arms." 

Meanwhile what to do about Li and Lou (Jack's older brothers, who are about five months old and roughly about the same size now as Li-Lou, their mother).

I'm really a dog person.  I never much liked cats (except for tiny kittens) and was actually allergic to them.  I would love to have a dog, but things don't always turn out how you imagine.  I have overcome the allergies and learned to appreciate the feline personality, and now know far more about these delightful creatures than I ever did before.  My mate (you guessed it!) is a cat person.  Our cats are all ones that we found abandoned and on their own, or in need of rescuing.  The photo above shows four of a gang of five that we sheltered for a time and adopted out two years ago.  They lived for a month in our garden shed.  I joked the other day that we should be living on a farm somewhere out in the country--it would be so much easier!

But we don't.  And there you have it.  What is one to do.

Kittens, anyone? Anyone???      

Hanging Out in the Sun

It appears that in some places, it's against the law to hang your clothes on a line to dry outside, "in public." A woman in Southeast Pennsylvania received a telephone call from a town official asking her to stop drying her clothes in the sun.  Her neighbors left anonymous notes complaining that they didn't want to "see her underwear flapping about", likening the sight of such "unmentionables" to trailer trash. 

Almost all the houses around here have clotheslines and people use them, even if they have dryers, from early Spring to late October but there are some who continue to hang their clothes outside all winter long.  I tried that once one November. The sun was out, the air was brisk and since the neighbor over on rue St. Jean-Baptiste had her clothes hanging out, I figured heck, why not.  Everything froze, of course.  At the end of the afternoon I unclipped them, stacked them up, stiff as a board, and brought them inside.  It took two days to dry, but only because they needed thawing out first. 

Why would anyone use a clothesline when they have a dryer?  Habit, for one thing.  Trying to conserve energy and use less electricity, for another--or a combination of both.  I actually like hanging clothes.  When I lived in Boston I had an upstairs neighbor from Ethiopia.  Though there were coin-operated laundry machines in the basement, my neighbor washed her clothes by hand and hung them draped over the iron balcony.  Sometimes an article of clothing blew away or dislodged and landed in the courtyard below.  No one ever approached her about discontinuing this practice.

No quirky poems about neglected summer clothespins,  no long boring blah-blahs today--am just playing with colored pencils doing little sketches on the kitchen table.  On a scale of one to ten, it's right up there with hot French roast coffee and a buttery croissant at 6 a.m. before the day begins.

Less is More

Nearly everyone is familiar with Ernest Hemingway’s six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Do six words constitute a story, though?

Robert Swartwood asked that very question in a posting last Spring on Flash Fiction Chronicles.  And "what about those really, really, really, really, REALLY short stories?" he wondered.  "The, you know, six-word stories.  Are they considered flash fiction?  If not, what should we call them?"

Swartwood decided to coin a term for those "very, very, very, VERY short stories":  They should be called Hint Fiction, he says "because that’s all the reader is ever given.  Just a hint.  Not a scene, or a setting, or even a character sketch.  They are given a hint, nothing more, and are asked — nay, forced — to fill in the blanks"  And having defined it, he proceeded to establish the word limit:  "It cannot be anything more than 25 words."

Swartwood started a Hint Fiction Contest and over the course of the month of August received 2,463 submissions.  Here's a sample of one that received honorable mention:

PEANUT BUTTER
by Camille Esses

He was allergic.
She pretended not to know.

The fever has apparently caught on.  Commenters on Swartwood's posting at Flash Fiction Chronicles in April announcing the birth of Hint Fiction immediately chimed in with their abbreviated "stories":

A BRIEF PARADOX

by Joseph Grant

One day, I met my future self. He had a gun. I shot him first. Wonder what I did to piss myself off so much.

I don't know about you but when I sit down to read a story, I kind of want more than just a "hint".  Literary teasers, okay.  Everyone loves a mystery, myself included.  But presenting the writing itself as something of actual substance seems, well ... a tad fraudulent.  I feel cheated.  "Where's the beef?!" as they say.  It sounds more like a vague idea for a story that one doesn't apparently have the time nor inclination to flesh out and actually write.  The reader's just going to have to figure it out from the hints given.  In other words, Hint Fiction merely provides an outline.  You have to write the story for yourself from there.

It sounds cool and trendy but Hint Fiction seems to me more like a bunch of orphaned blurbs out there looking for a blurbologist, to get proper placement--less "hinties" in search of a story than writers in search of   inspiration.  But what a concept!  Think how you could impress people, saying you've read a hundred stories this week ("hint" stories, that is); and then meet friends' incredulous gasp of disbelief with the disclaimer:  "Some of them were only one line long!"

That got me thinking, for some reason about one-liners--poems, specifically, that consist of a single line.   How many one-line poems are there out there?  This one came immediately to mind--Joe Hutchison's "Artichoke" (Windflower Press, 1979), which I've seen quoted a number of times.

ARTICHOKE

O heart weighed down by so many wings.

What if you break that into separate lines?  Make it a three-line haiku, for instance? Placement of words, spacing, punctuation, all allow for a range of interpretations for the reader to arrive at a different meaning from that which the poet intended. Which brings me to consider how much form matters sometimes, both in how we determine to present a thing and the degree of  comprehension or appreciation we experience as a reader based on that presentation.  

What's even more interesting, though, is that the words themselves sometimes manage to shake off these often arbitrary restrictions and float directly to the consciousness regardless of their packaging.  I think the words in Hutchison's poem do that.  (And I'm not just saying that 'cause I adore eating artichokes--that slow, delightful process one has to go through, one delicious pluck at a time, to get to the pièce de résistance, its exquisite core.  To those who have never indulged in this pleasure, put off by what seems more like barnacles than 'wings', all I can say is, You don't know what you're missing!)

In general, are writers slowly migrating from one form of writing to another, their writings becoming increasingly shorter?  Steve Almond in Boston told Doug Holder recently that he recycled many "failed poems" into 500-words-or-less short short stories. Steve chose to publish his latest book, This Won't Take but a Minute, Honey, using Harvard Book Store's Espresso Book Machine. Audience members at his upcoming reading on December 2nd will be able to buy their own special editions of the book—to be printed up during the reading.  How's that for convenience!  So it seems not only is writing being 'downsized' but it's being churned out faster than ever before.

Is it really that far-fetched to imagine that we may one day soon have, on sidewalks everywhere, card-operated literary vending machines where you insert your card, and out drops a piece of fiction or poem. Just select a category:  Flash Fiction.  Hint Fiction. Flarf. CellStories, Prose Poems. Haiku. Long Novel. Short Novel. Essay.  Aphorisms.... They come in all flavors because the texts are edible.  (Otherwise the vending machine people would see little profit.) 

Reducing writing to its absolute minimum: are there any poems out there consisting of a single word, I wondered.

The answer is Yes.

"Picture the word 'tundra' slightly below center in an otherwise completely blank page, as it was presented in Cor van den Heuvel's book the window-washer's pail (New York: Chantpress, 1963). The poem also appears, similarly, in the first edition of his Haiku Anthology, 1974, p. 163.".[1]

Condensed, compacted, reduced-to-the-mimum writing is both easy and hard to execute.  It's easy to spew out a quirky mini-synopsis of a never-to-be-written, potentially longer story, and call it Hint Fiction; it's damn hard to write really good haiku.  Creative writing takes hard work.  The insight can be instantaneous, the intended imagery brilliant, the idea or concept innovative.  Now comes the hard part:  how to put all that into words.  And not just any 'ol words.  The choice of a single word can be the key to accessing the meaning--or the ruination of any desire to continue reading because of that little dose of suspected mediocrity.

The act of writing a poem and the act of reading it are two different animals.  And then there's ... the words themselves, swimming around in a nether world apart from both writer and reader, defying categorization-- though they are endlessly categorized, described, analyzed, taken apart and restructured, elevated, spit upon, stretched to their breaking point, vomited out unassembled, or paintstakingly condensed to a single syllable.

First there was Flash Fiction.  Then came CellStories. And now we have Hint Fiction.  Here's my Hint Fiction endeavor for the day.  Two poems.  (The rule says it can't be more than 25 words; it didn't say "no less than X words"). I'm going into extreme-writing-mode now and condensing, not to a one-liner, but to a one-worder (first poem) and--you know it's eventually going to come to this, don't you--creative writing stripped down to a single letter (second poem).  Okay here goes:

UNTITLED #1


Four.

UNTITLED #2


I*

___________
* this is not a Roman numeral 

    

                                                 



"Hey, Fred!  Check out my new wallet-sized book: 1000 Hint Stories for the Chronically Rushed, selections of which will be coming out in keychain size in time for the Christmas shopping season."
_______________________________________________



--Apologies to Hint Fction writers everywhere.  It just isn't everyone's, er, cup of teaspecks.

Does Poetry Matter Anymore?

What is the significance of poetry today?

I wondered that very thing when I stumbled on a poetic review website this morning, only to find the sad announcement, dated from Summer 2008, that it was closing down "due to overwhelming lack of interest."  I assume the reviewer was referring to his readers and not himself here.

I continued on with another morning task and lo and behold, discovered a surprising instance of quite the opposite—not only has poetry engendered in some a growing, passionate interest but a lifelong devotion, as, for example, evidenced in the overwhelming response to being asked: “What’s your favourite poem and why?

An astounding number of people offered to share their answers—-18,000, to be exact--Americans from ages 5 to 97.   A glassblower from Seattle, a songwriter in the Bronx, a bakery owner in Connecticut, a bookkeeper in California, an office worker in Georgia, a research analyst in D.C., a salesman, financial consultant, retired anthropologist, nun, anesthesiologist, teacher, student, novelist, poet, military officer, ex-president of the U.S., an eleven-year-old girl--all had been profoundly affected by a single poem, and agreed to share their story.

The My Favorite Poem Project has collected 27 videos of people from all walks of life talking about and reading their favourite poem. An Armenian, opera-singing professor of cognitive science talks about how a single poem by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova spoke directly to her. (A brother returns home from Vietnam, changed forever, "dead inside", unable to find his way again--it was as if Akhmatov knew what this woman and her brother were going through emotionally.)

I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—

An emigrant librarian in New Jersey reads a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, in the language of Bengali, explaining how it helped  her in her quest for identity.

Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit...

 Listening to which poems are people’s favourites-—and why—-can be very instructive for poets and writers in general. Certain sentiments kept being repeated:

“It [the poem] resonated with me.”
“I felt like I had something in common with the poet—there was a connection.”
“I felt a connection.”
“It had a personal meaning for me.”
“I felt she [the poet] understood what it [my own personal experience] was like.”
"There were certain lines that caught me ..."

A 34-year-old construction worker for a gas company in Massachusetts acknowleges that "poetry was definitely intimidating initially."  To him "it just looked like a lot of words that were out of order and out of place and did not belong together."  Nevertheless he continued reading, and found, in the last lines of "Song of Myself", that "Walt Whitman tells you what you're thinking."  His connection to Walt Whitman was not due to the fact that the poet talks about physical labor and working outside, he says--there's something else, something more universal, that roped him in:  he enjoyed it for its "upliftingness", its ability to "inspire" him and "see things in life and in everyday existence that I hadn't noticed before."

In one case, the favourite poem was one discovered over 30 years ago—the 45-year-old lawyer still carries its words around in his pocket, still reads them to anyone who'll listen.

So, is there a disconnect, I wondered, between the appalling lack of interest today among people in many quarters re:  the very subject of poetry, and the lifelong attachment by scores of other people in scattered corners of everywhere, to a particular poem, or to poetry in general?

I think it’s like going somewhere to a place you have never been before, where you know absolutely no one, trying to establish a new  life for yourself. There could be, say, a hundred people in your locale with whom you don’t particularly identify personally, politically, professionally or spiritually, and only 20 or so with whom you might, if you could find them, feel any sort of real connection. Like attracts like—or so they say. Nine times out of ten, within a short time, you will run into someone from that group of 20 (and by extension, get to know the others)--or they will find you.

Of particular interest to me was how people first came to poetry.  Was it at school?  Did they stumble on it accidentally?  Kiyoshi Houston of San Diego says it's because when he was a baby, his mother read tanka to him--in fact, she started before he was even born, while he was still in her womb. 

Is poetry still relevant today?  Out of a hundred people perhaps only five will even ever bother to look into it.  A majority may find it of no particular use or interest. But there are a few who will pass a poem along to someone who will pass it along to someone else, or be intrigued enough to search out other poems.

It'll be like a spider web painstakingly being developed, rendered jagged or partially dismantled from time to time by accident or intent--but its threads survive, the invisible effort of countless acts of creative construction, innovative applications, intent on survival, rarely noticed except when exposed in sunlight, glistening forth like a jewel of intricate dimension, from which you are absolutely unable to withdraw your gaze.  If you have ever watched a spider weave a web, up close, for fifteen minutes, you will know what I mean.

I imagine it must be like that for some, when the words of that one poem reach into their very core, to remain lodged for all time. 

The main message I got from watching some of these “Favorite Poem” videos this morning was this:  that

Poetry still matters.

____________________
 *Photo by awyn, taken along St. Lawrence River, Québec in October, 2009.  People come here to walk along the river path, practice Tai Chi, picnic, fly kites, sit on benches and read, or like this gentleman, simply sit on the stones and watch the swooping seagulls, barges and huge boats coming from the Atlantic heading down to the port at Trois-Rivières.  It is a favorite place to go, just to, as they say here, "prendre l'air" (take the air).  It is sometimes, however, impassable in winter (depending on the height of your boots and your general stamina).

Mauricie, c'est ça

It was a year ago

or was it two

an afternoon at the Moulin.

I tried to reach the sky

The woolspinner wasn't home

"By appointment only"

So we visited next door

Mirror, mirror let me fall

into the depths of you

and see

Pond walk strewn with leaves

Quiet hovers

Eye of Birch

Impenetrable

Kaleidescopic mirage
A not hereness

*Photos by awyn, taken in Pointe-du-Lac and Sainte-Geneviève-de-Batiscan (region of Mauricie, Québec) during an afternoon outing.

What is Poetry? I'll tell you for $47.80

"Write a paper, due next week, answering the question "What is Poetry?"

Suppose you're a college student  and the deadline's approaching and you don't have a clue on where to start.  You could go to the library but you don't have time, so you surf the net for information.  You google "What is Poetry" and it spits back answers such as:

"Poetry is many things to many people..."
"Poetry really has no one set definition..."
"Poetry, when it is really such, is truth; and fiction also, if it is good for anything, is truth: but they are different truths."[1]

Panic sets in.  All these different definitions, viewpoints, sources that have to be mined to provide examples!  You become desperate and look for an online term-paper mill to help you out.  These are sites from which you can buy an already-written term paper, "to use as reference material only."  Right.  There are a slew of them out there and they all contain that disclaimer:  "For reference only."

A lot of people associate the term "term-paper mill" with the word "plagiarism."  So the term-paper-mill people are quick to point out (completely missing the point) that the paper you are about to buy is "plagiarism-free"--i.e., it is an original text written by someone they hired to do so.  If you want to go ahead and hand it in to your professor and pretend it was written by you (i.e., plagiarize it), well, what you do with the content is your responsibility, they are not accountable.

Let's see what they have to offer on the topic of "What is Poetry?" Ah, here's one with that exact same title!

Term Paper #12688
4 pages.
$47.80 

This describes the essence and development of poetry. This paper presents considerations in regards to poetic themes, styles, and similar development that is present in this vastly diverse literary format. The writer stresses the concise nature of poetic structures and presents two poets, Emily Dickinson and Ogden Nash, as examples of individuals who both successfully display ‘poetic brevity.' Bibliography lists several sources."

Well okay then!  But will this particular paper meet your professor's expectations?  Not to worry.  Not only will the term-paper mill sell you a paper that's already been written, they will write one specifically for you. 

In case you did not find what you are looking for at our database, we can provide you with a custom term paper to perfectly suite [sic] your needs. Just send us your request and we'll write a new term paper for you. We are working with the best and most gifted writers on the internet. We can write any term paper, on almost any subject. Our gifted writers will provide you with premier quality paper.[sic]

As in, 100% cotton rag, 20 lb. white stock, suitable for copying.  Oh wait.  Were they talking about the content of the paper here?  It wasn't clear. (I can loan them an "a" if they want to insert it in there between the words "with" and "premier" so that it reads "Our gifted writers will provide you with a premier quality paper."  Will that help?)  Just so we're clear, this is not about paper stock.  

They guarantee "a plagiarism free test test", whatever that is. (It's a test test, right?  You know, when you have a test to test the test.)  Oh.


They charge $47.80 for four pages for an English-assignment paper, but only $20 for an 89-page paper under the category "Theses/Dissertations",  which is a kind of longer type of term paper:

Term Paper #898598954

Published in 2006,  for a Linguistics course, discusses “the Japanese technique which makes of gorgeous and relaxed trees shrank and depressed miniatures, all from a linguistic perspective.” (Come again?)

Abstract:
Soundness of the phonetic translation and a protest against the Japanese technique of Bonsai.


In this paper, we define the meaning of PHONETICS SOUNDNESS by similarity to the mathematical soundness. We wish to state that there is some sort of possible relationship in an abstract way once we have proven they are very different in scope and it is impossible to place what is complementary to the World of Maths in terms of Language inside of its scope in it.  However, soundness is a higher-order concept and, as such, belongs to the scope of Philosophy, which ultimately could be suitable to Language if it falls still inside of that territory in common between Philosophy and Language.  But the main point is really writing against the Japanese Bonsai technique and defending the main Bible's principle (in our opinion): do not do to other beings what you do not wish done to yourself!

Introduction:

BOM SAI could easily be a Brazilian Portuguese allurement to Bonsai, that is, phonetically sound in Portuguese. If phonetically soundness ever counts in translation, there it is a really good one. BOM SAI, in Portuguese, could easily mean `Good is gone', `Bom sai'. Interesting enough, it is the only Language of the World which seems to grasp the meaning of it. 

Conclusion: 
It is an actual truth that the Good is gone out of the plant once someone makes of it a Bonsai. With all respect of the World for the Japanese culture, this is definitely not a good thing for the plant.If we do devote any sort of respect to other beings at all as we should devote to our own species, bonsai is definitely something to be banned from human activities. Let's save the other beings any sort of extra unnecessary cruelty, please.


There is much to chew on here.  "Soundness" as a higher-order concept, in that strange, indescribable territory in the no-man's land between Philosophy and Language, where the Portuguese language "allures" to bonsai,  etc.  But seriously, this is what they call a "quality paper?!!"

Out of curiosity I checked another of their listed categories:  "Women Issues" [sic].  How many papers do they have in stock for women issues, I wonder?  The answer is 562.

I once knew a fellow, always short on cash, who wrote term papers for a fellow student.  He saw nothing wrong in this.  He knew the subject well; the other student didn't.  It helped the other student get good grades and graduate--which was all that was important to him. (The ironic thing was, both were students from another country; English was not their first language.)

Now imagine that student, graduated and out in the workplace, having been hired on the assumption that his diploma meant something. Sometimes, apparently, it does--and sometimes, it doesn't.  How many people bluff their way through life, pretending to be who they aren't.  And get away with it.

Curious to see what other of these term-paper-writing-mills were offering, I checked out one which offers "a term paper completey [sic] Plagiarism free - Custom written for every customer."

"Completey"?   Gee, you'd think they'd use a spellcheck on their main page at least!   This group will give you "thesis and dissertations with a complete pease [sic] of mind and money back guarantee"  and they offer  unlimited revisions--"until you aren't [sic] satisfied with your term papers."  (I think you mean "are" here, no?)  They encourage you to "avail our services", "insuring optimum utility of your money", and claim to be Trust worty [sic].  I wonder if they can afford avail a proofreader for their web page.  Nah.  No one'll notice.

So many paper mills, all so eager to offer their services.  Here's one that provides a sample of a history paper they can sell you, under the topic "A Nation is Born", which cites a Hollywood actor as one of its literary sources:

At the beginning of the 19^th century, the United States was looking for it’s [sic] own identity now that they had their own nation.  People started to move westward, causing the removal of Indians from their lands. ( Sources cited:  “A People’s History, Howard Zinn, Chapter 7 and Coster, Kevin, Producer and Host, 500 Nations video"). [2]
 
Kevin Coster--oh yeah, wasn't he the actor in that movie "Dances with Wolves"?  I thought he spelled his name Costner, though--Coster with an "n" in it.   I googled it just in case, and sure enough, they're talking about the same guy.  But hold on--a couple Google items down on the same page--whaddya know, there's that exact same history paper, word for word, on another site's term-paper mill posting.  (Does the same person own both sites?  Or are these "plagiarism-free" essays being recycled among multiple marketers?  Inquiring minds want to know.)

Another term-paper mill offers a  13-page paper on Wallace Stevens' poetry for a mere $97.95, and for those in a real crunch, yet another offers to write you an essay in 8 hours, at $31.57 per page.

Enter  the Fram Squad Detectors  (random people who spend countless hours unearthing scams and fraud on the Internet).  They check the business phone number on Reverse Lookup and come up with "No information.  This is an unlisted, private number."  One diligent fram-squadder claimed to have found proof of connections among three different term-paper mill sites all linked back to a fellow from Karachi, Pakistan. A few trips into Google and I came upon similar information.  How prevalent is this practice?  There was mention in one of the online forums of a Ukrainian fraudster who owned 185 internet domains! 

Tracking down just who these people are, however, is not easy.  Dilligent fram-squadders can ID a suspected site's IP to get the domain's owner's listed address (and phone), only to discover it's also being used by dozens of other small web-hosted businesses, who pay to be listed under a fake address and phone just to ward off unwanted spam (or anyone wanting to know who they really are.)  This is a boon for scam artists, as they hide behind the same fake address as legitimate businesses do.

How can you tell if a paper that's been handed in has come from a term-paper mill?  Professors can check with Turnitin ("Turn it in").  
They  have the ability to crawl and archive over 12 billion web pages, 100 million student papers, 80,000 major newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals, as well as thousands of books, including literary classics, to give you a side-by-side comparison. Students can also check their own original papers, for instances of "accidental" plagiarism.  (And they can go to a site where they can get tips on prevention of plagiarism, as well.)

Anyway, that was my fun trip for the day, so to speak--checking out the "quality writing" from various term-paper mills.  (I neglected to mention that these people not only sell ready-made essays and term papers, they also actively solicit writers to produce new ones.  (ad on one site:  "I made $600 this month writing term-papers!")

Back to our original question:  "What is Poetry?"  To quote one of the term paper samples above, it's a "diverse literary format."   Poetry is a format.  In the style of "It's a bird!  It's a plane! It's ... it's ....  SUPERMAN!!", I give you my two original--only marginally plagiarized--poems for the day:

Poetry is truth!
Poetry is fiction!
It's ... it's ... a FORMAT!!!

In the World of Maths,
immune to its different-scoped
bonsai allurement,
Emily and Ogden, 
in  biblical karmic peasefullness
exchange brief moments of soundness.


(That'll be $2.35 cents, please. We accept PayPal.)

Poeming!

Random Acts of Poetry, a project of the Victoria READ Society, began its sixth year of poeming this past October 5-11. They’re a non-profit literary organization funded by the Canadian Council for the Arts. During that week, 31 acclaimed poets across Canada, from Victoria, British Columbia read poetry to strangers and gave them their books.

This is the first time I’ve ever come across the word “poeming”. 

What exactly is “poeming”? In the context of the above project it would seem to mean randomly approaching people and reading poetry to them, as poemer Domenico Capilongo is doing here, where he’s apparently got the captive attention of a window washer, who has even apparently agreed to be photographed holding up a sign documenting the event.

I wasn't sure all of the poemings were entirely random, however. Standing on a sidewalk and poeming at  passersby is ‘random’.  (How often, though, does one randomly run into the mayor or  an officer of the RCMP, for example?)   But random doesn't just mean having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective.  It can also mean "not expected."  These poemers had a purpose:  to invite people to celebrate and to nourish literacy and to treat anyone who cared to listen, to an unexpected reading of poetry.  Having a poet suddenly appear and read poetry to you can be a surprising gift and is indeed, a rare treat. 

Of course, as in all noteworthy projects—and make no mistake, this is a very worthwhile one--humor inserts itself.   Not only did these poemers read in donut shops and to the homeless under bridges, they even went out to the countryside to poem to farmers where the captive audience also consisted of some sheep and a miniature horse!.

Never mind the how’s and the where’s—the point is, these poets have found a very effective way of getting the word out, so to speak, in promoting the reading of poetry. Kudos to the Victoria READ Society for making poeming an annual event.

The folks at this literary organization use the word "poeming" to mean reading poetry out loud to random local listeners.  Others on the internet use it to mean the writing of poetry ("I started poeming this because ....", etc.).  People have aslo used it as an adjective ("The poeming class will meet tomorrow."). 

So, I learned some new words today--or rather, one new word with a myriad of possible amusing derivatives.

Poeming (n.): – the act of a poemer who goes out poeming pedestrians and other people to introduce them to poetizations by published poetizers, inviting all to partake of the poemifying elixir of poetic poeminessence.  [This definition is an extreme example of pompous pollut-alliteration].

Exercise for the day: Create an imaginary scenario incorporating the various possible permutations of the word “poeming” in the context of a parody of the world of modern advertising, and include some reference to why poetry still matters.  Ouff!

Here goes:

Conversation between a Marketing Agent and a Potential Client (Poetry).

Poetry (the client) comes in and says, “Not enough people are investing in me. After all these centuries I’m still neither widely known nor fully appreciated, except by people in the field, and even then, there’s disagreement as to my quality and/or usefulness. How can I get more people to buy into me?”

“Well,” says the ad agent, “you could begin by dispensing a few freebies. The way Proctor & Gamble used to do years ago when they were introducing a new laundry product—you'd find a sample packet of detergent delivered to your door so you could try it out before buying it.  If your product is of superior quality, it should sell itself.  ANYone will try something if it’s for free.”

Poetry scratches its head. “I dunno…. In these uncertain economic times … it sounds kind of expensive. Besides, there're lots of samples already out there, all you need do is look.  Most people, alas, don't.

“Well then,” the marketer counters, “how about we conduct a vigorous campaign of poeming? Poem the people stuck in traffic, poem window washers on their coffee breaks, poem students, politicians, musicians, plumbers, shoe salesmen. Go poeming on the freeway, the subway, at the mall, at restaurants, tennis courts and pubs; poem everybody everywhere. It’s called saturation. Be like Pepsi or Coke. Make yourself a household word.”

Poetry isn’t sure this will work, however. "Mass poeming strategies aside," he pontificates, "people are fickle: they only stick with a thing if it's a real necessity--if they feel they cannot live without it.  What would entice someone to stay with me, in spite of the ups and downs brought about by my many warring factions with their endless obsessional internal squabbles, the constant change in my form and style, and the embarassing lack of quality in the work of some of my practitioners?"

"No problemo," chirps the ad guy.  "The answer is image.  You gotta change your image.  We're adept here at marketing images.  We can make you trendy, 'cool' even."

"No, no," protests Poetry petulantly.  "You miss the point. Never mind the gimmicky come-on's—that’s fairly easy. You can rope people in with any number of clever attention grabbers. It’s keeping them after the trend has passed, it's getting them to invest in me long-term--that’s the problem.

“So what you're saying," frowns the ad guy, cocking an eyebrow, " is, that we gotta find out why some people devote their life to you, while others only occasionally dabble. Okay, okay, let's go with that.  [He paces back and forth, restlessly ruminating.]  Okay, what is it about you that makes you irresistible?  In other words, what would convince people that you’re--what's the word--necessary?"

Poetry attempts to answer: “Because without me, life would be …” [insert long pause.]

The ad agent, unused to verbal renderings not condensed to 30-second sound-bites, completes the sentence for his potential client: “would be boring.”

"I beg your pardon?" says Poetry.

"Life without Poetry would be boring!" says the ad guy, though he doesn't really believe that.  He personally finds Poetry insufferable, and has done so since he was first exposed to it in the third grade.  "You must alter yourself to fit readers' expectations.  We have to make you not boring," he beams, as if uttering an epiphany.   His eyes light up as he flits about the room, pulling ideas out of his now jump-started mental cloud.  "Yes, yes, that's it!!  Boring is bad.  Entertaining, good.  You have to be more entertaining, Poetry."

But it is Poetry who is now bored by the whole ridiculous exchange. The ad agent has never obviously sampled its wares though they are available in abundance in every conceivable variety. Wait, Poetry thinks.  My existence is not at stake. My place in history is well established and there will never be a lack of practitioners. Ever.  There's obviously something inherent in me that somehow guarantees that that will continue to be the case--that there'll always be an audience for what I have to say. [Poetry acknowledges a certain bias in this assumption.]

"So what if I'm distorted from time to time," Poetry says to the fly on the wall. "So what if I remain, for some partakers, completely unintelligible. So what if five hundred million people now and in the future may never be exposed to me. I will still be capable of reaching receptive eyes and ears.   There will always be persons who will intentionally seek me out.  I’ll be discussed and deciphered, explained and kept and cherished and shared for eons to come." [The invisible choir immediately behind Poetry, poemingly united, concurs.]

So Poetry abandons the idea of the poemification of its poemignacity, ignores the pernicious postulations of those who howl about its irrelevancy, and goes about doing what it has always done (and always will do) with respect to its inherent poemingness:  inspire new poemings.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Words are so interesting. They’re like potato chips. Someone puts a bowl in front of you, and you can’t just take one.  You want to scoop up them all!    More, I say.  Gimme more!   First thing you know, it's a habit.

_____________________

*Do you think there's a special room in Limbo reserved for those who spend more time writing about poetry--what it is and what it isn't, about who's winning prizes and who's copping out and what the latest movement is; spending more time on reviewing and critiquing, praising and grumbling, and playing with words as distracton--making of procrastination an art as fine as the art of Poetry itself, which one delays practicing because one takes such delight in these absurdly addictive little side trips?  Just wondering ...  


As to this poeming post today:  The other two members of Word Addicts Anonymous are pretending not to know me...

Quagmire Pudding

Last Thursday, Oct. 29, a U.S. think tank (RAND) sponsored a discussion in a senate office building, about what to do about Afghanistan.  Zbigniew Brzezinski was chosen to keynote the proceedings, in which he disclosed that he had advised the Bush/Cheney administration to invade Afghanistan in 2001. His recommendation at last Thursday's meeting: Withdrawal is "not in the range of policy options."[1]

Some believe that Obama's not going to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan because he fears a revolt from the military. It's Vietnam all over again. "Victory is not possible and President Obama knows it," says Daniel Ellsberg. "But he will go against his own instincts as to what's best for the country and do what's best for him ... in the short run facing elections, and cave in to General McCrystal's request for 40,000 more troops to prevent the military from accusing him of being weak, unmanly, indecisive and weak on terrorism."[2]

Er, what about all those Afghan troops we've been training now for eight years?  "Eight more years, 80 more years, will not provide the motivation to fight offensively against their own countrymen ... for a foreign power. And we are a foreign power in Afghanistan," says Ellsberg.[3]

Ellsberg--wasn't he the one who leaked the Pentagon Papers back in '65?  Gosh he's aged. And still out there trying to stir up the pot, still The Most Dangerous Man Alive.

Never mind Ellsberg, what about the U.S.-backed current President of Afghanistan, Harmid Karzai? The one we're funding to get things going again in that war-pocked country--Karzai, who just got, er, circumstantially self elected, again.  How's he doing bringing Afghanistan into the 21st century?

Well, last March he signed off on the Shiite Personal Status Law, which legalizes marital rape "by authorizing a husband to withhold food from a wife who fails to provide sexual service at least once every four days."

It also denies or severely limits women's rights to inherit, divorce or have guardianship of their own children; legalizes marriage to and rape of minors and gives men control of all their female relatives; denies women the right to leave home except for 'legitimate purposes' and in effect gives men the power to deny women access to work, education, healthcare, and voting; and treats women as property. 

"Such barbaric laws were supposed to have been relegated to the past with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, yet Karzai has revived them and given them his official stamp of approval," according to observations by a Human Rights Watch director.  No American official said a word.[4]

But we're okay with that, I guess. The fact that Afghani girls as young as 13 are being forced to marry men four  times their age whose other wives or family beat or starve them, and who later set themselves on fire as the only means to escape their dire circumstances ... well but it's their culture; who are we to impose our Western morality?

President Karzai's brother [allegedly on the payroll of the CIA] told activist Zarghuna Kakar, a member of the Kandahar Provincial Council forced to leave Afghanistan after she and her family were attacked and her husband killed, that she "should have thought about what may happen" before she stood for election. [5]

We're okay with that, too, I guess.  "If you can't stand the heat--stay out of the kitchen." 

Perhaps, in addition to the ever-louder push for increased 'boots on the ground', the powers that be might benefit from hearing from more people who actually lived and worked there, who have seen things first-hand, who speak the language.  Like Ann Jones?  But wait, she's a woman, and she criticizes the government. (This reviewer of her book Kabul in Winter dismisses Jones's well researched, carefully presented accounts as a "furious polemic", likening them to the overly emotional spoutings of an angry, screeching banchee, calling it "a diatribe, a barely coherent rant directed at President Bush and a host of other actors, both domestic and international."  Wow.

The reviewer feels it necessary to warn the prospective reader:   "Ms. Jones views the United States as an imperialist power bent on shaping the world to its narrow interests, and with malice aforethought, imposing free-market economics on the oppressed peoples of the world.  She considers the hunt for Mr. Bin Laden a foolish adventure and, although she does not say so outright, seems to regard his criticisms of American foreign policy as quite sensible."  (Do they actually mention, much less actively look for Bin Laden anymore?).  The reviewer ends by patronising her:  But look, she [Ms. Jones] has "compassion for the plight of Afghan women" and seeks to make their voice known. (Pay no mind to what she says about American foreign policy, though--she's just ... "ranting" there.)

I read Winter in Kabul  last year and did not find Jones's observations and comments 'rantful' (if there is such a word).  Concerned, yes; upset, definitely; and yes, angry--about what she saw taking place in Afghanistan, on all sides.  Who wouldn't be, documenting some of the abuse and horrors to which she bore witness?  But "ranting?"  (Definition of "ranting":   To utter or express with violence ... (ex. a dictator who ranted his vitriol); high-sounding language, without importance or dignity of thought; boisterous, empty declamation; bombast; as, the rant of fanatics.) [emphasis mine] 

Maybe Ann Jones is merely saying what many people are thinking but might not care, for whatever reason, to articulate. An equal number of people on the other side of the Us/Them divide will react to her criticisms, whether implied or baldly stated (even if later proven to be true) by mounting an immediate ad hominem attack.  Nothing to see here, folks.  She's obviously ranting.  Ah, labels.  Whatever would we do without them.

That poor country--Afghanistan--has been at war for what seems like Forever.  But in the 1960s and '70s, as Ann Jones reminds us, before the Soviet invasion:  "Half the country's doctors, more than half the civil servants and three-quarters of the teachers were women."  Compare that with today.  "What changed all that was not only the violence of war but the accession to power of the most backward men in the country: first the Taliban, now the mullahs and mujahedeen of the fraudulent, corrupt, Western-designed government that stands in opposition to 'normal life' as it is lived in the developed world and was once lived in their own country." 

As to sending in more troops and more money for training:

Afghans do not think or act like Americans. Yet Americans in power refuse to grasp that inconvenient point. These impoverished men in a country without work have joined the Afghan National Army for what they can get out of it (and keep or sell) -- and that doesn't include democracy or glory.[6]

How big is the Afgan army again?  By rough estimate there's about 70,000 U.S. troops over there right now (100,000 if you count NATO and allies).  If  40,000 more are sent, it will bring the total to 140,000.  Add to that the 90,000 Afghan troops already there--let's see, that would make 230,000 'military' in place, all out actively fighting the Taliban--and the Taliban's still winning. 

Ann Jones wonders what there is to show for "all our remarkably expensive training:

Although in Washington they may talk about the 90,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army, no one has reported actually seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan. When 4,000 U.S. Marines were sent into Helmand Province in July to take on the Taliban in what is considered one of its strongholds, accompanying them were only about 600 Afghan security forces, some of whom were police.  Why, you might ask, didn't the ANA, 90,000 strong after eight years of training and mentoring, handle Helmand on its own? No explanation has been offered. American and NATO officers often complain that Afghan army units are simply not ready to "operate independently," but no one ever speaks to the simple question: Where are they?[7]

She does not believe such an army even exists.  Granted, many Afghan men may gone through the basic warrior training "90,000 times or more".  But when she lived in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006 she knew men who repeatedly went through training just to get a Kalashnikov and get paid.  They'd go home for a while "and return some weeks later to enlist again under a different name."  How many commanders were (are?) collecting pay for 'phantom' soldiers: one's who have deserted or been killed?  Who is keeping track of that?

Jones cites circumstances on the ground from more than three years ago.  Is that still the case?  Is it true that 60% of the Afghan police force are on drugs?  That "no amount of American training, mentoring, or cash will determine what Afghans will fight for, if indeed they fight at all"?  Where are the voices of more investigative reporters?  We have only the word of the generals, who are are not always consistent or unbiased, some of whom are being paid handsomely by TV stations for expressing their opinions.

Sober reading, and my apologies for quoting at such great length.  It's been my experience that casual readers seldom click on footnotes to access an original source.  Who has the time?  Or interest, even, in an obscure personal blog presenting questions or expressing a viewpoint--other than a few friends or colleagues.  So consider me talking to myself here.  But what Ann Jones says makes sense.  At least to me.  No one likes to admit failure.  Or be reminded of Vietnam.  My brother in law is still struggling with flashbacks.  Wars that keep on giving ...  Trying to "do it right this time" shouldn't include following the exact same game plan, expecting different results.  It didn't work then; it won't work now.  (Don't these people study history?!!)
 

 Quagmire Pudding

I liken the quagmire in Afghanistan and Iraq to a recipe for a pudding.  Everybody wants it to come out, not only the chef (for his or her reputation is at stake), but the people who are going to be eating it.  Will they be able to digest it?  It's already unpalatable.  It leaves partakers with a bad taste in their mouth.  Too many toxic ingredients are mucking up the process.  What to do?  Adding more of the same  won't make it better.  Chucking the whole project and starting all over from scratch won't either because the bakers insist on following the exact same recipe.(i.e., re-baking the Vietnam Pudding, which you remember was a complete disaster).

The thing's been tried and retried so many times we've all got indigestion now.  Some of us are seriously ill, to be quite frank.  Not to mention the people who don't necessarily even like pudding in the first place being forced to ingest it against their will, and in some cases without being forewarned  (white phosporus, anyone?). 

I wonder which way Obama will go.

I wonder into which century these war-as-longterm-investments because of a country's strategic location or its enviable natural resources will continue, under the guise of bringing democracy.

I came across some interesting wording on a Tibetan prayer flag recently.  The little rain-faded ones flying over my garden shed contain the standard mantras and invocations to bring happiness, long life and prosperity, but I've never seen one addressed specifically on the subject of war:

"May the terrible weapons of modern warfare--nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and so forth--that threaten to destroy the Earth--and all our ill fortune leading to great wars and armed conflict, be utterly pacified, and may the world enjoy happiness similar to that of the golden age." -- Kamala Radza Dvipa.

Peace, harmony, stability and prosperity.  Add "health" and "happiness" and it sounds like something you'd find on a New Year's greeting card. Just my personal opinion but, I think there are too many cooks in the kitchen, all trying to direct how the pudding comes out.   People should have a say as to whether they get to eat experimental pudding or, say, uncontaminated veggies.  They should have a choice.  Maybe pudding, in the long run, will prove detrimental to their health. And it shouldn't be about the reputation of the cook, or the grumblings of those who think their recipe is more authentic, can be more forcefully executed, or would be more widely accepted. Chefs come and go. The damage to the kitchen when fires start erupting daily, when equipment is lost or stolen or rendered inoperable, or when too much smoke and cacophony interferes with the chef's ability to make decisions, clouding his/her management of the kitchen--cannot be alleviated by sending in 50 more eager but inexperienced young potato peelers or expert grill specialists.  (Are you listening, Obama?).

Stretching this metaphor to the breaking point.  Snnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaappppppppppppppp!

They probably won't listen to Ann Jones-- 'cause she's a woman.  (She "rants".)  What do women know about war?  Only a military strategist, like the retired generals they trot out from time to time on CNN, can enlighten us to what's happening "over there", except more often than not it consists mostly of pep talks and platitudes, devoid of substance. The public isn't privileged to hear the real information.  Meanwhile, back at the homefront ... more of our young lads are being recruited up for the mission.  (Remind me again:  What IS the mission?)

Rant rant.  Rant.  rant.... rant ....  rant...    

I wonder what it's like to live in a so-called "Golden Age".  But what are you gonna do--we live in the now.  It is what it is.  Doesn't mean we have to buy the pudding, though, just 'cause it's the flavor of the year (or in this case, decade).

I'm just saying ...

_________________

*I learned this afternoon about the mass shooting at the base at Fort Hood, TX.  The shooter, a mental health professional, was about to be sent for duty overseas.  My condolences to the families and friends of those who were killed.


 

I said yes this time ...

Not all paths require climbing up. There are frequently easier ways to arrive at where you want to go.

Some paths, though, invite you--and though at the time you might hesitate (the climb is too steep, it was not in "the plan", it's probably a waste of time, and it may not, in the end, be worth it)--when you do accept, as I did last week, on my walk through Sanctuary park testing out my new digital camera--important pieces of the puzzle sometimes fall into place that might otherwise have taken hours or days or weeks or even decades to assemble, in that mosaic we try to construct to understand, well, "life".

The treasures I found!!!  My eyes were immediately drawn to Down instead of Up, as I ascended the stone stairs, though the view all around was much more compelling.  Surprisingly more enjoyable than reaching my particular destination was the journey itself, slowly, step by step, one tiny visual connection at a time. 

My camera didn't just capture a cascade of leaf-littered stairs up a steep grass embankment--it recorded  images made by water, on granite, that I saw as ghosts of beings or scenes of life:  a man fishing on a boat as a whale watches;  a farmer with his scythe, clearing his land; the ruins of a bombed out city; a citadel announcing its importance to the surrounding mountains; a traveler walking in the evening, under a stormy sky; an impertinent duck chuckling at the antics of a fox; a wolf watching over its cubs at play--reminding me, like those once-brilliant, scattered autumn leaves--that all things pass, but that they come back again ...and again and again ... and again ... different but the same, resurrected and reborn throughout the life cycle, in more ways than we can imagine.

"It's just a bunch of steps!" for crying out loud.  [my inner voice]

And yet ... if you look ... there are a dozen poems hiding in those crevices; a hundred hidden stories; a thousand memories of the universe, waiting to be untapped.  If only someone stopped and looked.

Of course, as with Rorschach ink blots, not everyone sees the same things--in a watermark, or the pattern of fallen leaves, for example.  But whatever it is you see, or think you see--it has specific relevance to you.  And paying attention to what it means to you, however absurd or mysterious it may seem to others, is a recognition, it seems to me, of one of the ways the universe responds to our sometimes exasperated questionings.  The answer comes, not as we expect, as an answer.  Sometimes it's just a picture, an image--or a word--but we are somehow able to make the connection.

Not all those who wander are lost.  [Who said that?]  Not every decision is always made based on logic.  And for those times we postpone "getting there" to stop and enjoy the now, those times we deviate from 'the plan' as a temporary reprieve from the urgency of getting to the substance of a thing--sometimes there's a hidden bonus:  we advance more rapidly than we ever might have imagined, not to where we thought was most important--but to somewhere ... better.

I would love to be able to say this in a story, or a poem.  Or a photograph.

That is the problem:  How to say a thing, that maybe can't be said. Without sounding phony--or worse, "preachy". 

"I see a butterfly."
"I see a rat."
"I see a bunch of random, blobby watermarks.  It says nothing to me.  What are you babbling about?!!"

About those stone steps ... you would have had to have been there.

Halloween on Rue Cartier

Shivering little goblin on my porch
with her little brother, a bumblebee

“TrickerTREEEEET!”

I drop candy in their bag.

As they climb the steps
to the house next door

a smile still resting
on my face.

Together, Even After

Meditating, at Sunrise

I came upon this photograph while searching for something else on the Internet yesterday morning and couldn't stop looking at it.  I wanted to be there, on that wall with those people, meditating, watching the sun rise.  Where was it taken, in what country, and who were these people?

I tracked down the photographer, who was apparently not only an observer but a participant. This photo was taken in early 2008 at Neyur Dam in Kerala, India not far from the Sivananda Ashram.  The photographer, Rishi O., said he used to swim in that lake, "maybe an hour a day."  Rishi blogs from San Francisco (when he's not out taking photos in his photomobile or trekking about India, on projects). 

My armchair travel yesterday morning took me then--thanks to Rishi--to India, where I  watched--through a musically enhanced photographic slideshow on my computer screen--a yoga group in session.  Check it out, it's incredibly enervating, you'll be a 'young soul' again.  Though I am thoroughly unused to such muscle-stretching, body bending exercises, I know and practice a few poses, such as the Salute to the Sun, which I would like to start doing regularly to replace the coffee-and-croissant-first-thing-in-the-morning-while-reading-the-news routine, as a way to start the day. 

Here are some more of Rishi's photos:

Walking into the Ocean

Man wearing one sandal, one shoe.

Two Dancers

Click here for photos of life at the ashram, and here to see a photographic slide show of Indian dancers to the music of  "Dheem Ta Dare".

I also perused some of Rishi's infrequent text postings (the blog is mostly to highlight his splendid photographs).  "I never ask a kid to smile," he says re: taking commissioned pictures of children.  "I like them the way they are."  The photographs he treasures are ones that "capture who you are and not who you want to be."


In one such posting he shares a letter from someone named "Otto" dispensing information about, among other things, healthy eating.  I was amazed to discover that many of Otto's recommendations were things I had already discovered elsewhere, time and again, from numerous sources dating back decades, and in some cases, centuries.  So there must be something to it. 

For example:

The beneficial effect of turmeric; ginger as an anti-carcinogenic [I first learned of this from an African healer from the Congo]; that Type II diabetes has been linked to processed meat and lack of omega-3, severe periodontal disease, lack of exercise, and (of course) being overweight.

My favorite of Otto's suggestions: "Spinach and blueberries preserve the brain." (Likely someone will someday come up with the idea of combining them as an 'energy smoothie', or adding them to tea, as a 'health drink'.  (But as practitioners of food combining will remind you, ha ha,  fruit should be eaten alone.)

Meditating on a wall at sunrise--or at sunset, or at any other time of the day or night--on a beach, on a park bench, sitting crosslegged on a pillow in your living room, or out on the porch before bedtime standing in the night air underneath the stars:  not everyone who meditates joins an ashram or practices yoga or necessarily ascribes to the mindset commonly perceived as associated with the word 'meditation.' 

Sometimes you just fall into it, accidentally.  You're in a doctor's office waiting your turn, you're on a bus stuck in traffic, you're at your kitchen table looking out the window, and you shut your eyes, get very still, block out everything around you.  You begin to become aware of your breathing, you sense the 'self' emptying out of you, and that you're slowly entering into ... nothingness.  This was my introduction to meditation, before I had a name for it, before I learned that millions of people all over the world do this exact same thing, not just accidentally but intentionally; and not just occasionally, but routinely, and reap enormous benefits from it.  I have to thank Rishi O., again, for reminding me, through his photograph of those people on that wall, just how universal is this need to connect with the life forces of the universe.

Images that ... draw you like a magnet, that elicit forgotten memories, that hold you, just for a moment, frozen in time and space.  This photograph did that for me.  As did the one with the woman walking "into" the ocean.  (Notice it's not walking "to" the ocean--Rishi labeled it walking "into" the ocean, as if she's intending to become one with it.)

Well, glad to have met you, Rishi, if only thru the Internets [sic intended].  :)  And thank you for allowing me to share your photographs on this blog.  And for reminding me what it feels like to be on a stone wall in the wee, early hours of the morning, waiting for the sun to pop up behind the mountains, breathing in the fresh, brisk air, meditating (in this case it was Vermont, many years ago, and there was only one other person on the wall, instead of 20).

One of the tangible benefits I neglected to mention, of such endeavors:  unexplained ... happiness.

Sunday Morning

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair ...[1]

Except it's afternoon ... and it's a bulky sweater ... and tea ... and a pear
but sun, yes, there's still sun ...

Nine little punch-yourself-awake reminders from Joe Bageant (writing from Mexico last week) in his take on the state of the U.S. today:

• We burn the grain supplies of starving nations in our vehicles.  

• Skilled American construction workers now unemployed drive their big trucks into town and knock at my door asking to rake my leaves for ten bucks. There is nothing ironic in this to their minds. 
  

• Energy prices are predicted to stabilize because we intend to burn the state of West Virginia in our power plants. 

• The corpses of our young people are still being unloaded from cargo planes at Dover Delaware, but from two fronts now. 

•  Mortgage foreclosures are expected to double before they slacken.

• Unions have been neutered and taught to beg.

• We have established a permanent underclass and deindustrialized the country in favor of low wage service industries here and dirt cheap labor from abroad. 

• We've managed to harden the education and income gap into something an American oligarch can take pride in. 

• We are the very products and property of these people and their institutions.

"The fiesta is over," says Joe.  "The economy as we knew it is dead."  

He's convinced that "Somewhere in the smoking wreckage lie the solutions" but they won't be tried because Big Money not only calls the shots but is "constitutionally protected."

Kinda makes you want to scream.

As for hoping for "change" -- Joe Bageant isn't terribly optimistic.  He's not alone. Rants and outrage pour out from scattered corners of the country seeping frequently into print or the blogosphere, but little comes of it.  Powerlessness is rampant.  I am optimistic ... but even from outside its borders I feel the collective powerlessness.

Words are sometimes not enough.  People have to care enough to act; and uncertainty, fear and/or apathy prevent most of us from doing anything--even those who most ardently want to.  (Do what, exactly?  If  "it takes a village to raise a child, "[2] what would it take to raise the consciousness of enough beings to work together long enough and hard enough to ensure that a nation--any nation--not collapse upon itself and disintegrate into something no longer recognizable, no longer sustainable, or even livable?)

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.[3]

Meanwhile, back on the tube:  "Balloon Boy Dad Confesses to Hoax."  News at Eleven.

Went out and raked the leaves.  Took a walk.   Made more tea. Things will arrange themselves.  All in good time.

Perhaps ...

One Foot, Walking

Marking our passage

in snow that's

here today

gone tomorrow

like

us

____________________________________________________________
Photo by awyn, taken during afternoon walk on rue Notre Dame Est, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Oct. 23, 2009

Bits and Pieces ....

There was a layer of snow on the ground this morning and now the sky is spitting down more of it.  Dark and cold and dreary.

George W. Bush was down in Montreal today.  The Chamber of Commerce paid him $100,000 to share the highlights of his presidency, "a period of great consequence" (you can say that again).   The talk was by invitation only, where for $400 you could sit and listen to him ruminate on his "eight momentous years in the White House and discuss the challenges facing us in the 21st century."

Some Canadians weren't too happy at Mr. Bush's visit and crowds of protesters lined up to greet him, calling for his arrest as a war criminal.  It's going to cost Canadian taxpayers over half a million dollars this year to protect His Irrelevancy from the rowdy masses.[1]  (His speech was at the Montreal hotel made famous by John "Give Peace a Chance" Lennon and Yoko Ono during those other turbulent years.)  CNN won't waste too much footage (if at all) on Bush's vociferous welcoming committee dans la rue because they've still got three or four days to stretch out the Balloon Boy story (they haven't yet interviewed the hoax family's dentist).

Speaking of peace, doesn't anyone find it the least bit ironic that President Obama, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, backed down[2] from meeting with the Dalai Lama, another recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, because "it might discombobulate a delicate international order."[3]  Musn't upset China.  What would we do without all that imported plastic merchandise headed for Wal-Mart or Dollarama around Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas time?

As for Halloween, now fast upon us, Target and Walgreens had to pull their ads for their illegal alien costume (alien figure wearing an orange jumpsuit, holding a U.S. "green card").[4] Politics!--even the children's arena is not safe from it.

Meanwhile, my inner voice reminds me this is still "Everything About Gypsies" week here on this blog, and I've run fresh out of material.  (Truth be told, there was actually too much and I ended up taking a kazillion little side trips into the cavernous world of informationland, waylaid by exciting finds having nothing whatsoever to do with gypsies.)  But since I started the theme, I can at least post a few amateur attempts at gypsy art.

These are, in case you're wondering, designs for a gypsy headband--that cloth thing one wears around the head to hold the hair in place and out of the eyes. These headbands are created entirely out of various words for 'gypsy' in different languages.  I purposely chose non-Latin alphabets, to make it more interesting. (It was also easier, graphics wise.) 

So this is the first one: a design for a headband using the word for 'gypsy in:

ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิป
  کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی کولی
ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิปซี ยิป ซียิป

Thai and Persian

ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער

ジプシージプシージプシージプシージプシージプシージプシージプシー

 ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער ציגיינער

Yiddish and Japanese

And--my contribution to peace in the Middle East:

لغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر الغجر
 צועני צועני צועני צועני צועני צועני צועני צועני צועני צועני צועני צועני

 צועני لغجر צועני لغجر צועני لغجر צועני لغجر צועני لغجر צועני لغجر צועני

Arabic and Hebrew, coexisting together.

______________________

Irrelevant aside:

Last night I brought home a giant pumpkin from the supermarket, for a ridiculously low price. Not to cut a face into and put out on the doorstep with a candle inside to attract the wee Halloweeners (simply leaving the light on, on the porch will suffice), but to eat it.  Not an easy job, 'peeling' this thing ('hack' is more like it), but if you scoop out the seeds and cut it into dozens of cubes or squares, bake and serve it with melted butter, it makes the most delicious meal. (Of course, part will go for pumpkin pie!)

My mate was having trouble pronouncing 'pumpkin' last night, especially the "mpk" part.  Native French speakers find English words that start with "th" difficult (he says 'bird day' for birthday; 'turd' for third, etc.) and Native English speakers find certain "el" combinations impossible to pronounce in French (I stumble over the words "oeil" (eye) and "Longueuil" (a suburb of Montreal), for instance.  (You would have to hear it in person to appreciate how tortured is my effort to pronounce these sounds correctly.  It's kind of like the Russian "L" ( л ) when followed by the soft-sign (-ль) which adds a slight 'y' sound to the L sound (hear here ). In any case, I simply can't get my tongue to cooperate so I have no right to chuckle at my husband's attempts to say pumpkin:

pun-kin...  pumppp-in....   pum-kpin....  punpkin.... puckim....   pummm....     LOL.   (Just kidding, darling.    It was the funniest moment and you laughed as well.  Frustrating, but hilarious.  It'll rank as one of my most favorite memories!)   I think I like Pump-kpin the best, especially the "kpin" part.  It could be the name of a character in a children's story.

Found some terrific poems yesterday and hoping the authors will give me permission to share them.

I can't believe Massachusetts got snow before we did this year.  Theirs didn't stay.  Ours won't go away till next April.