Jottings of an AmeriQuebeckian

2012-01-31T15:22:00.000-05:00

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED

One and All

to Open House again at

Salamander Cove

ENTER HERE

Poems by:

          Philip Quinlan (U.K.)
               Larry Sorkin (U.S.)
                    Philip Rowland (Japan)
                         John Levy (U.S.)
                              Bill Knott (U.S.)
Chen-ou Liu (Canada)

                                                         J.S.H. Bjerg (Denmark)
                                                              Grant Hackett (U.S.)
                                                                    Bob Arnold (U.S.)
                                                                          Ifigenija Simonovic (Slovenia)
                                                                               Peter Greene (Canada)
                                                             Irina Moga (Canada)
                                                                                        Kiril Kadiiski (Bulgaria/France)

Artwork by:

                  Janet Brown-Dwehus (Germany)
                                   Lila Lewis Irving (Canada)

Photography by:         John Levy (U.S.)

2012-01-25T13:53:00.002-05:00

Sisyphusal

neighbor's car is stuck in ice
guns the pedal
it won't move

Addapush's all it takes.

Yep.

Games and Stories: A Possible Vignette

2012-01-20T14:58:00.000-05:00

He was eight years old, sitting on the living room floor playing a video war game when he heard his grandfather in the kitchen say the word warriors. Only his grandfather wasn't taking about men at arms, he was remembering the war years, telling the boy's mother how hard it'd been for his parents, they'd nothing to eat, their small farm had been overrun, destroyed. They had to go into hiding. And then of course, came winter and for six months all they had to eat were onions saved from the root cellar. Onion sandwiches, the boy's mom laughed, wincing. The mother hated onions.

POW! POW! the boy's digital soldier snipered the enemy into a spectacular red blotch on the screen (which didn't kill him - it took eight more thumb presses to blast the animation to death), while his mother in the kitchen remarked, "Oh that reminds me of that funny cookbook--the one where the author tells you how to cook in war time"; whereupon she straightened her back, cleared her throat, and began reciting in a faux British accent: "How to Cook a Wolf" ... and laughed some more but the grandfather just stared at her. Its author M.F.K. Fisher was not British and the mother had never read the book, had only heard about it. Perhaps she confused Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher with Julia Child, who wasn't British either but, no matter, the effect was the same: her comical performance made her sound authoritative. Or so she pretended.

The grandfather's memories were subsiding; very few remained of his parents. He kept them alive by repeating their stories - stories to which his American-born children and grandchildren could not relate. Nor could they speak or understand the language he'd been brought up in. He didn't know who to blame for this.

Meanwhile, his electronic army, having now been decimated, the boy became bored, got up and went into the kitchen where he thought he'd heard somebody say something about Irish potatoes or wolf soup, he couldn't be sure. His mother was painting her nails, his grandfather biting into a hunk of cheese, watching an imaginary sack of onions in the corner. "How'd your game go?" his big brother asked, coming down from upstairs. "Reach the next level yet?" The boy squirmed, ducked the question, grabbed a cookie, ran outside.

Me, I hate onions, the mom said. Me too, said the grandfather. They had that, at least, in common. The boy, now sprinting towards his friend's house, wondered what it'd be like to reach that highest game level. One day he'd make it, he'd kill all the enemy and come out on top, be the best. He wanted more than anything, to be the best at something.

________________

I had an onion/sardine sandwich for lunch today and it reminded me of something my late, former father-in-law once told me about his war years in Europe--that they then mostly lived on nothing but onions. One day I decided to try an 'onion-only' sandwich. (It's better if the bread is toasted, a bit of Dijon mustard added. You can't kiss anyone afterwards, of course, they will run from you). Onions (and garlic) in winter do wonders to keep you from getting a cold, so I eat them frequently. Wolf stew, though--I don't think so! I love wolves too much. (The book's wolf referred to in the book above is metaphoric.) If you can still find a copy around anywhere, M.F.K. Fisher's The Art of Eating is a pure delight to read. The title is misleading. It's not just about food. The perfect book to curl up with during the long, cold winter, to take your mind off the long, cold winter. A definite 'keeper'.

I started out to forge a tiny poem about war time food, which slowly morphed into a story about loss, brought on by my reading this morning of some poems written by a Tibetan man in India, registered there as a refugee, who returned to his parents' former home only to be arrested and kicked out. His poems spoke of confused and lost identity - he is a citizen of no country, his parental homeland is no longer a country. This is a recurrent theme in many of Erich Maria Remarque's novels, as I recall - the stateless man: individuals without 'papers', unable to prove who they are. A generation later, how memories fade, how stories begin to unravel, get 'lost', the language forgotten.

My father-in-law's "we lived on onions" story stayed with me for some reason. Present that idea to a child today and he will say "Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww", unable to imagine such a thing. A world in which one has only onion sandwiches to look forward to, all day, every day? No way!! A world without games, though -- now that's even scarier! Ironic ... the 'game' is to survive. But survival is not a game.

This Ever Happen to You?

2012-01-16T13:54:00.045-05:00

In the wee hours of the morning, a brilliant idea

emerges from the netherworld of sleep

into your awakening consciousness

The words tumble forth, try to speak to you:

Hurry Up!! Catch us!! We're important .... Hurry Up!! Catch us!! We're important ... Hurry Up!! Catch us!! We're important
Here we come again. WRITE. US. DOWN ! ... Here we come again. WRITE. US. DOWN ! ... Here we come again. WRITE. US. DOWN ! ...

You reach for your pen

rub the sleep from your eye -

the perfectly crafted poem

now but fragment and blur

(and why is there no ink in this pen, you

filled it just two days ago!!!)

Too late, we're gone now ... Too late, we're gone now ... Too late, we're gone now... Too late, we're gone now

they mock

the ink starts flowing again, but

the words have all

left

and you're left with:

a gpr krd ptuqxs krd ptuqxs lgnvc mmiu piyzf iqbxt iskkj mu zzzmmm a gpr krd ptuqxs lgnvc mmiu piyzf iqbxt iskkj mu zzzm mml gnvc mmiu piyzf iqbxt iskkj mu zzzmmm a gpr krd ptuqxs lgnvc mmiu piyzf iqbxt iskkj mu zzzmmm a gpr krd ptuqxs lgnvc mmiu piyzf iqbxt iskkj mu zzzmmm krd ptuqxs lgnvc mmiu piyzf iqbxt iskkj mu tw iqbxt iskkj mu zzzmmm a gpr krd ptuqxs lgnvc mmiu a gpr krd ptuqxs lgnvc mmiu piyzf iqbxt iskkj mu zzzmm

But it was a brilliant poem.

Honest.

If only I could remember it.

Let there be dark

2012-01-12T14:10:00.000-05:00

Last evening, around 9 p.m., in the process of finalizing a detailed reply to a fellow researcher, the lights suddenly snapped out, all sound disappeared, and everything went completely black. Neighborhood-wide power outage, not the first time that's happened and rarely at night. This one was completely disorienting.

First of all I couldn't see anything, not even my hand or the desk or even the contours of the room. It was complete and total darkness. I stumbled my way to the kitchen to the cabinet that houses the candles, then felt my way across to the drawer where we keep a box of matches. Meanwhile my mate somehow located a mini flashlight, which helped because we'd been knocking things over or stepping on cat tails miscalculating which piece of furniture was exactly where.

"Where are you?"
-- "I'm here, where are you?!"
"Over here."
-- "Where's 'here'?"

ha ha.

Three blocks away I could make out a faint light overhead from a streetlamp over the little baseball field, but apart from the occasional headlights of a passing car there was no light outside Anywhere. I wondered what'd caused it and how long it would take HydroQuebec to fix it. We lit a few candles and sat for a while playing a little film trivia game but after an hour it began getting noticeably colder. No heat, no phone, and if this continued till morning, some stuff in the fridge might have to be thrown out. I put on an extra pair of socks. We brought an extra blanket out, blew out the candles and decided let's go snuggle up in bed and hope the heat comes back on soon.

It did, eventually, and all was well. But initially, more than an hour having passed, the candles having burnt down to half, and nothing having changed, I began thinking how much we take for granted. That energy can be had and maintained indefinitely (how could it not be?) Remembering the big ice storm fourteen years ago, when parts of Quebec were without power for as long as a month, people now joke about it, bringing out their "I survived" T-shirts to prove their resilience.

I remember that storm. It arrived the day I was moving all my belongings, including 25 boxes of books, in a creaky blue van whose driver had a broken foot, from Boston to Vermont. I especially remember the trees, those beautiful, tall, elegantly simple white birch standing like sentinels along the highway, encased in ice, horribly twisted and broken.   Every little village in southern Quebec looked like a war zone. It was devastating. You can still spot, today, some of those broken trees.

So it occurred to me last night, one of those uninvited little mental what-if's: What if the national grid should suddenly permanently malfunction, thanks to a Stuxnet attack, and virtually the entire nation--any nation--were, in effect, "shut down". Hospitals, of course, would have generators. But imagine, being stuck inside an elevator on the 85th floor in a darkened city somewhere, for days, or without heat in the dead of winter for a week or more, grocery stores having to throw out tons of spoiled produce, schools/offices/Everything closed, life as we're used to it, come to a standstill.   I think they call this sort of thing Worst Case Scenario: a possibility, but something we don't think will actually really happen--to us.

It was the sudden, complete disorientation (Darkness. And Silence) that momentarily bolted me out of my complacency, like being zapped into Nothingness, struck momentarily blind and deaf all at once, not knowing where anything IS, every movement a stumble forward, only to be blocked or thrown off balance. Pretend this is not temporary. How would you react? What would you be thinking of? It has all the makings of a possible science fiction thriller (or a 2020 survival guide), when we might have already begun running out of water, arable soil, non-polluted air, sufficient food, available space.

But snap! Just as we're drifting off to sleep wrapped cocoon-like in a layer of blankets, the clock radio starts blinking, forced air begins hissing through the heating vents, a voice from a radio downstairs starts crooning out. Power!!!!! We've got Power!!

And today it's all forgotten, a blip in a day's existence. Except that one little arrested moment that stays lodged in the back of the memory bin: that tiny little uninvited 'what-if' consideration. Okay - stock bigger candles. Get a proper flashlight. Be better prepared 'case it happens again. You get a whole new appreciation for modern-day conveniences. I mean, try reading for hours by candle light - that's what our ancestors did.   Squint, squint. You keep wanting to turn the candle brighter.

Am not saying we should "go back" to those days, just that we maybe get too dependent on certain habits and expectations. Like that there always will be enough water, food or power at our disposal, etc.

A former acquaintance used to be fond of saying, "Never assume anything", and those words have kind of stuck with me. Never assume that love will last, that circumstances can't abruptly change, or that you will find all the answers in the end. But I tell you, that abrupt jolt into silence and darkness, that sudden loss of real (and perceived) power, brought those thoughts to me again, what we're doing to the earth, how we cope when unexpectedly uprooted, so to speak.

It is snowing. The weather channel predicts we'll go from zero to -15 C tomorrow. And then it will snow some more.

Ah, l'hiver. :)

Dance it out

2011-12-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

This is a Tajik Pamir dance. Although it may share similarities with certain other familiar ethnic folk dances I have never seen this particular sequence before. Even the woman's dress dances!

Badakhshan (Persian: ببدخشان, Tajik: Бадахшон) is an historic region comprising parts of what is now northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan.

Tajiks, Uzbeks and Kyrgyzs live there, as well as speakers of several Pamir languages of the Eastern Iranian language group. . . The people of this province have a rich cultural heritage and they have preserved unique ancient forms of music, poetry and dance. [Source]

Sometimes, to calm oneself down--or fire oneself up--or just to express one's sadness, happiness, or amazement at being alive--dance is the perfect vehicle. It has the capacity to induce euphoria, make one forget, for a time, the pain or weariness that existence sometimes brings. And--it costs nothing. You can lose yourself in the music, put your whole being into it. For a brief time, you go somewhere "else".

I sometimes wonder if we are born with certain rhythms carried forth, to which we seem inherently drawn. They may or may not be from the culture we were born into but when we hear them--the beat of an African drum, the haunting urgency of that gypsy violin, the call of an Andean flute, the teasing beckon of a Greek bazouki, the vibrations of distant ancestral voices, something awakens in us, a kind of re-cognition, and we stop to listen.

Feet with a Mind of Their Own:

Sometimes, in a public gathering, when a selection of lively music is being played, I sometimes notice people's feet. People who are sitting down, for example, engaged in conversation, half-listening to the music playing in the background. Some toes start tapping automatically, like unleashed puppies, unable to contain themselves. Other feet remain firmly planted, their owners' arms crossed, like stationed Observers (as opposed to TTIIPs (Toe-Tapping Involuntary Inadvertent Participants).

Then, there are some who just simply cannot stay seated; they immediately jump up and start dancing, oblivious to whether adequate space exists to perform such impulsive rhythmic gyrations. No matter. They compensate by what's known as standing there and dancing-in-place. We all know someone who fits this category. And the worst of it is, they try to get you to join them! (That they invite you in the first place means they think you're one of them. You should consider that a compliment. It means you understand how rhythm operates.) Never refuse to dance with this person, for fear of looking foolish. This ultimate display of courage could open you up to a connection with openness (and fun) you never imagined possible. Don't laugh. Maybe you hear it, too, not just as background noise but a melodic reminder of states of feeling lately absent.

Not only feet respond sometimes without your consciously telling them to -- how many times have you listened to a particular loved classical recording and find your hands sweepingly "directing" along with the conductor, or find yourself humming along when a particular favorite aria flows out from a radio opera, or whistling a decades' old rock tune. All are spontaneous physical responses to rhythmic prompts or periodic replayings of mentally archived sounds whose which acts of engagement nurtures the spirit. The perfect pill for what ails you! Stressed out? It calms you. Stuck in mental inertia? It energizes you. Need to be reminded of something? Its nostalgic recall helps preserve fond memories (or lets you deal with the bittersweet, regretful ones). In short, it's therapeutic.

So anyway, I stumbled on this Pamirian dance this morning, and right away saw a parallel in the graceful sweep of certain of the arm movements to reminiscent of certain Chi Gong positions. Though I practice Tai Chi in silence, I feel its music. Seeing this Pamirian dance reminded me of those forms.

Should we fear dilution?
People who study, teach or choreograph certain traditional dance forms are careful to preserve "authenticity". For example, in some cultures, although everyone does the same basic folk-step, the men are traditionally allowed to be more flamboyant; the women's foot movements, in contrast, are more contained, less pronounced. People learning or doing these dances sometimes append their own personal variations (e.g., you can always tell which ones have had ballet training). As with language or tradition, a nation's dances evolve without compromising their essential character. Its performers may not be native, nor the costumes always "authentic", but one still recognizes that distinctive heartbeat, so to speak. What's fascinating is what each peoples and generation have done with this universal pastime we all share.

Though I enjoy occasional staged performances, I moreso love witnessing little spontaneous eruptions from random people in rhythmic response to "sudden music": Someone in the group pulls out a guitar, and everybody starts singing; one of the older kids plays a Bob Marley song and a younger one begins reggae-ing down the hall; people get together for coffee and music unexpectedly "breaks out". It's a language we all understand, without knowing the words.

All movement is a kind of dance. Kind of like life: Whether you move in lines, or circles, embedded in groups, or off in a corner, alone, we all hear its rhythm, and even when you don't actually hear it, it still plays out in your memory. This can be a definition, for some, of joy.

Once a dancer, always a dancer, I think--even if your ancient feet no longer work and you can't keep up with the pace for fear of passing out. I once saw a paralyzed ex-dancer in a wheelchair, watching, in rapture, a dance performance, her hand poised on her lap, executing the remembered steps with the second and third fingers of her right hand. Like little miniaturized feet, they stepped, kicked, ran, jumped, and swirled. Can you still sing if you've lost your voice? Can you "write" when you can no longer hold a pen? Can you play piano without a piano? Of course it's not the same. (What is anymore?) And yet ...

What a magnificent invention, dancing. It's like a gift.

Speaking of foot tapping: :)

French Canadian/Metis-style foot tapping (taper du pieds) to accompany the fiddle.

If you have ever wanted to learn how to do this, you can get an introductory lesson here. Just watch and imitate. At some point you won't have to count; your feet will just automatically take over. Or so they tell me. :)

poeming the winter solstice

2011-12-22T16:08:00.000-05:00

Winter solstice time again, the shortest day of the year, which means night comes sooner.

Blogger Sandy Brown Jensen, a writing teacher in Eugene, Oregon has restarted a personal tradition this year to write a poem about the winter solstice, because, she says, "It reminds me to be conscious of the season, the coming and going of the light." Her poem was accompanied by an image of a V-shaped line of geese sailing past a crescent moon.

I miss those geese. Kind of like old friends who only show up twice a year, honkily announce their presence, then speed on. A funny kind of visit, so brief, yet looked forward to with such heightened expectation and delight. It never gets old.

Jensen's remark about "the coming and going of the light" came to mind when I read teacher/writer Paul Martin's review yesterday of Joan Didion's new book, Blue Nights, about the death of Didion's daughter, Quintana. "The Buddhists tell us that pain, suffering and loss are part of life, and must be accepted as such," he wrote. "Still humans go on and on, raging against the dying of the light, reaching out to hold on for just one more second, the blue light of memory."

Consciousness of light and darkness (physical, emotional, perceived)--their (and our) arrivals, departures; memory; loss; renewal; and seeming constants, like the twice-annual crossing of those geese traversing the sky. The conjunction resonated.

An excerpt from Sandy Brown Jensen's poem:

Now, in the dawn dark, I hear them high

up over the bike path cottonwoods,

coming my way. I imagine

what I cannot see–twenty four wings

beating tip to tip, veed out

like talkative angels. . . .

And I am only afraid when the honkers fly on silent,

intent wings, quieted by some collective

thought too large or moving for even geese

to talk about, even to each other,

in those black hours before the earth creaks

again toward the light, and we can breathe, and speak.

(A reader commented that those "geese inspire my wings to quiver, too." Add me to the list, it inspires me as well, that graceful journey of barky "sky-voicers", sad to see them go in autumn (because that signifies a kind of end); happy to see them return come spring (another beginning).

I don't know if it was the image of that V-shaped crossing under the crescent moon, an awakened consciousness of the comings and goings of light (and darkness), or the reminder of the Sisyphus-like predilection of humankind to "go on and on"-- alternately celebrating--or raging against--life's coming, life's going. If I were to attempt to poem it, it might come out something like:

Solstice Whisperings

'Tis the season we commemorate

light's contract with the world;

mid groans at start of winter's Dark

(here blanketed in white).

For some, a time of inner fire -

peak yin, the muse awakened, lo

behold its quickening.
Illumination reborn, freeing our
quiet, unheard voicings.

Cycles repeating ... ad lucem,

ad opscurum

Retreat, contract,

be re-lit inside.
Expand.

Cradled in life's fragile,
invisible hold, we
become its eternal
thread.

Hmmm.... seems less to do with solstice & ends up being a cryptic pseudo-meditation on cycles. Or existential weaving. And poem is not a verb, last time I checked. No, I have not hit the eggnog a tad early. Am on Day 8 of an annoyingly debilitative seasonal malady, kind of a cross between laryngitis, cold & flu (it can't seem to make up its mind) (flucolarnge? larngclflu? sounds positively Lovecraftian) .

Taking 2 aspirin and going back to bed.

More, less, & just enuff

2011-12-16T11:44:00.002-05:00

Took Chekhov on the trip down to the States last week but no time to read; this rarely happens but on this trip it somehow did. My rideshare driver reminded me it was my ninth trek in the luxurious Phillipemobile (twelfth for Don, aged 77, up in the front seat regaling us with tales of his many travels and unusual adventures). Some border officials, believe it or not, have never heard of rideshare or craigslist, finding it difficult to understand why six or seven unrelated people would all be coming into the country together in the same vehicle, none heading to exactly the same destination, all returning on different dates. But you get there twice as fast at half the cost; a smooth, comfortable ride with interesting people, lively conversations, good music, what more could one ask.

It was wonderful to see the l'il grandbubs again. While there, one night, on our way back from the grocery store, we drove through this quiet neighborhood of gigantic houses with enormous manicured lawns, when this light display suddenly shrieked out in brightness:

My daughter said it had won some kind of local competition. Between the "ohhhhhhs" and "ahhhhhhhs"of passersby, one also heard: "Wonder what their electric bill will look like ..."

And for all those large, overly decorated Christmas trees, real or fake, there're also those scraggly, marked-down leftovers bargained for on Christmas eve, before the tree lot closes, by those who find the only thing they can afford this year is a Charlie Brown special or its scrawny equivalent. Less decoration, more spirit - that'll work!

"Christmas" has become so commercialized, it's sometimes met with dread instead of joy. Joy, joyous, joyful - words we say or sing or write on a card this month that roll out as effortlessly as "Have a nice day.

For some, these holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, winter solstice), are a time of sadness, stress, or creeping indifference. What is there to celebrate? Some parents can't afford to put food on the table, as TV ads remind you how great it would be to be gifted with a diamond, expensive appliance or spiffy new car with a big red ribbon tied 'round it. One is expected to honor family traditions even when it may be impossible to do so. Whatever cheer you might muster could suddenly wash right out of you by the proliferation of political correctness: saying "Happy Holidays", for example, you risk being lectured for not saying "Merry Christmas").

And yet . . . despite all the hype, and angst, and commercial shlock, families try to get together, spirits are lifted, people who wouldn't ordinarily, give. And there's the Peace-on-Earth thing. Which is another way of saying No More War, only quieter.

My dad was Smokey the Bear when I was in high school. He used to go around to local elementary schools dressed as Smokey the Bear to teach kids about safety in the forest. At Christmas time he'd make loaves and loaves of raisin-nut bread (the only thing he enjoyed cooking) and deliver them to certain families in the neighborhood. I remember being impressed by his sheer enthusiasm -- none of my friends' fathers did these things--and regret that I never told him so while he was still alive.

What I like about the end of the year is that it's an End and you can imagine the new, coming year as an opportunity to correct/resolve/expand, whatever -- do things differently, or "better". Which feeling sometimes evaporates as quickly as one's unmet New Year's resolutions, but at no other time of the year does that particular urge seem quite as strong. The older I get, the more inclined I am to just let some things go--habits, for example, that have run their course, worries that are not worth worrying over; and concentrate on those things that are important, or should be moreso. Energy and focus squandered, a depletion you sometimes don't notice till it's too late. I have to remind myself to stop looking at some things as insurmountable obstacles; view them as challenges instead; think of creative ways to arrive at a solution, be more proactive, etc. Yeah, I know, buzzwords (like "Joyous"), but somehow simply waiting, and hoping for the best -- seems too lethargic.

So, onward and otherward 2012. My grandson told me he watched a documentary on the Discovery channel last month which discussed the prediction that the world, as we know it, will end on December 21, 2012, when some catastrophic event will occur and "we'll all disappear". Or not. Living moment by moment begins to take on a whole new meaning, in light of that possibility, though.

Anyway, glad to be back, though I wish I could have brought those Vermont mountains home with me. Seeing them again -- now that was pure heaven!

.

Cat Photo Shoot

2011-12-04T10:16:00.000-05:00

Part 1: Choose subject

"You want me to do WHAT?!!!"

Part 2: Consider asking Nikki

if this is how she wants to be portrayed.

I already know the answer.

What was I thinking?!

She prefers this one.

[The beach ball was unintended.

Not a prop.
It was just there.]

"Okay, enough.

I'm done ..."

she heads back upstairs to snooze again.

Photoshoot Final Report:

1. Never attempt a contrived pose.
2. What's a hug for one, may be a choke for others.
3. Posing should always be voluntary. Ask first.
4. Let sleeping cats be. They'll hear you if you try to sneak a
candid photo. [If they want to be photo hams, of course --
well, that's a different story altogether. Let 'em shine!]

Thanks, Nik, old girl.
You haven't aged a bit.

A Song for the Moon

2011-11-28T10:24:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of Eden Ink Photography

Mi Luna by David LaMotte on Grooveshark

Mi Luna, written by the late Nicaraguan songwriter Salvador Cardenal Barquero. Spanish guitar by Juan Benevides, sung by David LaMotte, harmony vocals by Tish Hinojosa (From David LaMotte's album "Change", which came out in 2006).

Mi luna

ha visto tanto

que cuando le canto su plata me acuna

como a los santos

y los prisioneros, los amantes

los locos errantes y los pordioseros

que amamantamos tu luz.

Cuando no hay amigos, pan ni dinero

solo la poesía que flota en el aire sincero

y en las bancas solas

que hay en los parques

que mueren de frío

esperando amores amanezqueros.

Ay mi luna llena, escucha la pena

cuando un hombre canta

al amor que quiere.

Ay mi luna llena, escucha la pena

cuando un hombre canta

al amor que espera.

Ay mi luna llena. . .

I know about five words in Spanish, and one of them is luna. The music went straight to my heart but I wanted to know what the words meant - so I used the Google Translator. That translation - literal, and lacking - didn't illuminate. How words miscommunicate and how we struggle to make sense of them, even when awkwardly expressed! What does it mean, for example, to "float through the air, sincere"? [poetry, that is.]

My personal interpretation, humbly offered, based on my sense of the verbatim Spanish, and what the feelings the music and that photographic image combined, evoked:

My moon

you've seen so much,

heard the outpourings of saints,

prisoners, lovers, beggars,

wandering madmen -

we're all nurtured by your light.

Friendless, hungry, destitute -

only poetry truly permeates.

Alone on park benches

one can die of the cold,

waiting for love.

Ah, my full moon, hear our pain

when we sing of our yearning, of

love wanted,

love hoped for.

_____________________
*Thanks to Abigail of Eden Ink Photography for her kind permission to share the above photo.

photopoesis

2011-11-16T15:17:00.008-05:00

Photo by John Levy

Announcing my new photoblog, Photopoesis, launched this past weekend, which will function as a photo sharehouse for interesting, unusual and/or compelling photography.

The first installment features the photos of John Levy, poet/writer/lawyer of Tucson, AZ. Special thanks to John for sharing these magnificent images and for his collaborative input that resulted in my finally tackling this photo project I'd often thought about but never quite got around to doing.

Which photos to select, how and in what order to place them, etc., was a fun and intriguing process where size, color, subject, 'theme', shape, texture, angle, shadow, humor, irony, and visual impact all came into play. Each photo tells its own 'story'. For example:

** A newly hatched life says hello to existence.
** A wilted oleander, attack and death in the insect world,
      a skeleton eyeing a passerby, all remind viewers of life's
      cycle of impermanence.
** A spontaneous gesture from a biker in traffic aligns with fence
      shubbery to point in the same direction, in perfect symmetry.
** A wall shadow spreads forth on a sunlit pavement.
** Stains on top a garbage can resemble the map of a distant blue
     world.
** A turtle watches a discarded slice of watermelon float by.
** A hummingbird is immortalized suspended in mid-flight.

Camera-captured moments that beckon and hold us.

Pop by if you've time, and take a peek. They are really worth a look!

Click here to enter the site.

Favorite benches

2011-11-13T09:09:00.001-05:00

leaves gone now
i'm still
there

Show-time, share-time, again!!

2011-11-10T14:19:00.000-05:00

nineteen

                                                                        NEW POEMS
                                                                                                                      up on
                                                                        SALAMANDER

COVE

y
<-- Joel E. Jacobson - Paul Pines - Anna Swanson -->

Meg Bateman
Zoe Skoulding

Alexei Tsvetkov

Sedley Richard Assonne

t r

t o

o j

n a

K M

Bill Alice

ART by Bill Knott
         Anthony Duce
        Jean-Michel Ripaud
                       Néle Azevedo

PHOTOGRAPHY by Jonathan of Beeps & Chirps

Enter HERE

"Let it snow ... "

2011-10-31T10:32:00.000-04:00

"Once it starts snowing, they’ll be gone," I overheard someone predict last week about the Occupy Wall Street encampment.

Like a little snow will dampen spirits and cause cause-motivated occupy [insert name of city] campers to cease, desist and depart.

Check out the determination of the Occupy Albany group:

Power to the Peaceful and Persistent.

[Photos by Sotto Voce]

Stand Up for Tibet

2011-10-30T15:01:00.001-04:00

Why We Should Stand Up For Tibet

From the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night, Tibetans live in fear.

All they are asking is to be able to freely practice their religion, keep their own culture and identity, and be accorded equality and justice in their homeland.

Instead they are:

-forbidden to be educated in their own language
- forbidden to have a photo of the Dalai Lama in their house
- Their women are sterilized without anesthetic.
- They are watched by cameras everywhere
- They are met with soldiers with guns at every crossroads
- They are imprisoned if they speak out about their Chinese occupiers
- They are not allowed to leave the country

Tibet has been calling for freedom for over 50 years.
Their continuous, strong, non-violent screams for help
continue to be ignored by the West.

Tibetans simply want to remain who they are, in their own land.

Last week, in India, Austria, France, England, Italy, Australia, Japan, the U.S and around the world, people stood up for Tibet.

On November 2nd, protests will be happening in 60 Cities in 26 Countries over 5 Continents

You are invited to join, to show support.

To express an opinion or write negatively about the Chinese government government in Tibet, you risk being beaten and imprisoned. The crackdown on human rights has become so severe in Tibet that Tibetan monks and youths are sacrificing their lives rather than continue to live under Chinese rule, signifying a situation of deep desperation..

Tapey, age 20, self-immolated February 26, 2009, shot while being burned.
Phuntsok, age 21, self-immolated on March 16, 2011
Tswang Norbu, age 29, self-immolated on August 15, 2011
Lobsang Kelsang, age 18, self-immolated on Sept. 26, 2011
Lobsang Kunchok, age 18, self-immolated on Sept. 26, 2011
Kelsang Wangchuk, age 17, self-immolated on October 3, 2011
Choepel, age 19, self-immolated on October 7, 2011
Khayang, age 17, self-immolated on October 7, 2011
Norbu Dramdul, age 19, self-immolated on October 15, 2011, beaten & dragged away.

Tenzin Wangmo, age 20, self-immolated on October 20, 2011.
Dawa Tsering, age 38, self-immolated on October 25, 2011.
[Details here]

People around the world last week expressing solidarity with Tibet in their struggle for freedom of religion, language, culture and human rights:

You are invited to sign the pledge here to show your support for global diplomatic intervention for the people of Tibet.

List of Planned Protests Around the World, here.

ATTENTION: POETS AND WRITERS:

The Chinese government has sentenced Tashi Rabten to a 4-year prison term, following a closed-door trial, for writing poetry and essays and editing the banned literary magazine Shar Dungri (Eastern Snow Mountain).

Choepa Lugyal (penname Meycheh), a young Tibetan writer working at the National Publication in Gansu province was arrested by the Public Security Bureau police in Lando (Chinese: Lanzhu) city, Gansu province on 19 October 2011.

100 Thousand Poets for Change is organizing a Global Action Day for Tibet to stand in solidarity with the Tibetan people against oppression from China. Local poets will be reading and passing out poems by Tibetan poets Tenzin Tsundue, Tsoltim N. Shakabpa, Jigme Dorjee DAGYAP, Woeser, and Tsering Dhompa, at the Chinese Consulate on Wednesday, November 2 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. [On Facebook here].

If you cannot be at any of the planned events around the world on this Global Day of Action for Tibet, you can support them by signing the petition, and perhaps mentioning it on your blog. Spread the word!

A voice too good not to share

2011-10-28T10:04:00.000-04:00

"Mutoto"

Singer, songwriter, composer Lokua Kanza, was born in 1958, the eldest of 8 children; his father was a Mongo from the Democratic Republic of Congo, his mother a Tutsi from the mountains of northern Ruwanda. At the age of 13, he decided to become a singer, after hearing a performance by Miriam Makeba.

Grammarspoof

2011-10-26T20:17:00.000-04:00

The Grammar of Lines

A line is a dot out for a walk.
—Paul Klee

Down the Memory Hole

2011-10-24T16:58:00.001-04:00

A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist – even when they do.

Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.

The new proposal – part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice – would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist."

[At Truthout today.]

"Records? What records?"

Not good news for researchers. :(

WAIT. THERE'S MORE.

Seems to be a trend:

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Established by Congress to investigate and expose government waste, the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan has decided to not reveal its volumes of materials to the public for another two decades.

After three years of work, the commission officially shut down last week, having concluded that the U.S. misspent between $31 billion and $60 billion in contracting for services in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it won’t allow its records to be opened for public review at the National Archives until 2031, because some of the documents contain “sensitive information,” according to one official. [1]

Lawsuit Seeks Arrest Against Bush in Canada Today

2011-10-20T22:14:00.000-04:00

Amnesty International has also called on the Canadian government to arrest Bush and either prosecute or extradite him for the torture of prisoners in the so-called "war on terror." Meanwhile, four men who say they were tortured in U.S. prisons under the Bush administration will lodge a private prosecution today against the former president in a Canadian provincial court.

The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Canadian Center for International Justice have already submitted a 69-page draft indictment to Canada’s attorney general, along with more than 4,000 pages of supporting material, that set forth the case against Bush for torture.

Transcript on Democracy Now

Update:

Bush was not arrested.

500 business people paid $599 each to hear George Bush and Bill Clinton speak at the Surrey Regional Economic Summit earlier today.[1] A crowd of about 200 stood outside chanting, "Arrest Bush", holding up signs saying "You are not welcome here."

Bush, who won the Plain English Campaign’s Foot in Mouth lifetime achievement award, has pulled in some $15 million in speaking fees since leaving the Oval Office, a former spokesman told iWatch.[2]

And so it goes.

Neighborhood scenes

2011-10-18T14:09:00.001-04:00

On my way back from tai chi this morning, ran into a pumpkin man, getting ready for Halloween I presume. He had wires running out of him and there was a mini speaker hooked up to the porch roof. I can only imagine what he has planned for little ghosties and goblins coming 'round for trick or treat next weekend. (That is a leaf blower, not a wood chipper at his side, right?) A second before I clicked to take the photo, the black cat appeared out of nowhere and got caught in the scene. [insert soundtrack from the Twilight Zone, ha ha]

How autumn leaves are like people -

Some go out in a blaze of glory, notably transformed.

Some stay the same as they ever were, unchanged.

All get scattered, equal.

Tree cycles, recycles, leaf cycles, life cycles

they, we

Speaking of scattered . . .


Last leaf, standing

This is Maurice, our baby (now pre-adolescent) yellow birch tree, originally the size of one of those twiggy limb sprouts. As of yesterday there were 17 leaves left on him. (I counted them.) This morning -- one left.

It's not yet cold enough but I smell snow in the air. We had snow before Halloween last year. Out walking I took four deep, long breaths, as if trying to absorb a music sensed but not yet heard. There is something life-enervating about the air in late Fall and winter. Like gas to a car, or a window out of complacency, it's like energy rushing through again, can't explain it.

People here groan once the foliage passes and frost sets in. Quite a few head for Florida. Five months of snow/cold/longing for spring, etc., something to escape from, complain about, endure. Once the geese leave (and they have already, weeks ago), the air changes. You can smell snow coming. Even when the weatherman says it won't, you can tell when you breathe in outside, he's wrong. Is this an inherited thing, or something you acquire through affinity? In any case, it's always invigorating, that first felt hint of arrival. Not the fact of it, but what it awakens, vis-a-vis consciousness. Hard to explain but without it, certain fires inside would just plumb go . . . out.

Chat with a Poet

2011-10-17T16:00:00.000-04:00

Samuel Menashe (from Life is IMMENSE) from Neil Astley on Vimeo.

A short 2009 film by Pamela Robertson-Pearce. Here Neil Astley visits Menashe in the tiny New York apartment where Menashe lived for 55 years, from age 31 to 84. He could still recite every one of his poems by heart. He died on August 22 this year at the age of 85. [Obit/review].

Duped!

2011-10-15T07:21:00.001-04:00

Where are you, V – you hide from
me you make me look I can’t discern
if that is you it sounds like you but then
it’s not - I can’t decide which you is which, of
course just when I stake my claim and take
the plunge you re-emerge, you mock and say
well looky that, a different tune but it won’t fit you
know it won’t so why don’t you come back, you just
can’t just leave me you’d be voiceless, so said V.

Side of Le Lupin resto, au centre ville last week

An Art-Official Flower

Their violetness drew me –
such perfect alignment
that day – where the wind was wreaking havoc,
ripping fragile petals from pansy stems
sending street grit into my eyes.

I realize (they’re so discrete, these lavender gems –
peeking mavericks at play!)
I must rescind this counterfeit sign sent.
Their fakeness knew me.

Bled Dry, Oh My

Inkless pen :: wordrust

______________
*V = voice

Ten Days of Poetry

2011-10-12T12:14:00.001-04:00

The 27th annual International Festival of Poetry

Trois-Rivières, Sept. 30-Oct. 9, 2011

Ten days of poetry, all day, every day, from 9 a.m. to midnight.

93 invited poets, from 5 continents

              320 separate events, taking place in
                     cafés, restaurants, theaters, schools, art galleries,
                            museums, libraries, bookstores, the park

Strung across from tree to tree, sheets of poems

from regional & national poets, school children, senior citizens.
[click on photos to enlarge]

Winner of the $15,000 Grand prix Quebecor this year was poet Louise Dupré ; a $1,000 top prize was given to a teacher for innovation in teaching poetry; $2,000 prize to an unpublished poet, $1,000 for best poem from a senior citizen, & other cash prizes. One is encouraged not just to come hear other poets but to participate and submit poems as well. A woman [not in the photo] looking for her poem among the hundreds hanging in the park, told me over 400 were submitted in her particular category alone. I was especially moved by a 7-line poem from an unnamed 12-year old child, who wrote of realizing, for the first time . . . that "life is not eternal".

Park bench sitters commenting on one of the poems

Parc Champlain, a veritable garden of words last week. Each poem was encased in a transparent waterproof pouch, in case it rained, which it did the first few days.

Continuing on with the virtual tour -

If you visit downtown Trois-Rivières you will see these permanent little plaques all over the place - 300 of them to be exact, outside of restaurants, in walkways, on walls of buildings--even the sides of houses--extracts of poems by Quebecois poets, as well as 100 poems in 21 languages on the Poetry Walk down near the port.

This one, by poet Anne Hébert, says:
"You and me, island in the city,
under the rain, into the world . . ."

"Into the
world . . ."

as in:

Four wall poems hanging out together, their only audience that day: the three waiting bicycles [below].

A slim little 100-page booklet with details of all the reading events was available for free at local libraries, shops and restaurants. One poet told me, on Friday, that she'd given 26 readings so far and was having the time of her life meeting and spending time with other poets, townfolk and poetry lovers.

With so many events going on simultaneously, it's sometimes the case where you'd go to a scheduled reading and find 5 poets lined up to read but only three people in the audience. If you happened to be one of those three, you'd then have had a chance to sit and talk, individually, with each of the poets, from as far away as Russia or Japan or Argentina, whom you might've otherwise never gotten an opportunity to meet.

Muffins et poésie at Café Morgane inside the Clément Morin bookstore, a rainy Sunday morning at 11:00 - U.S. poet/translator/publisher Andrea Moorhead (seen here with Gérald Gaudet) - reading and discussing all things poetry. Especially interesting to me was the discourse on the difficulties (and joy of discovery vis-a-vis nuance in language) encountered in the process of translating poetry. Andrea publishes a journal called Osiris, out of Deerfield, Massachusetts, which features international poetry in original language and English translation.

Wednesday morning poetry breakfast at resto Le Sacristain, with poets Marius Daniel Popescu (Romania/Switzerland); Nathalie Handal (Palestine/U.S.); Rei Berroa (Dominican Republic/U.S.) and Sedley Richard Assonne (Mauritius Island). I will be posting some of their work at the cove in the near future.

At noon, Diner-poèsie in the foyer of the Maison de la culture - with Dmitry Legeza, Olga Khokhlova (Russia), Felipe Garcia Quintero (Colombia), and François Guerrette (Québec). This was a "Bring-Your-Own-Lunch" affair.

On the way back to the terminal to catch a bus home I passed Le Lupin restaurant where yet another reading was taking place upstairs - and through the open windows on the top floor, poetry floated out onto the street below. Ahead of me, a puzzled passerby stopped, looking up at the sky, searching for where that melodic voice was coming from.

Six poets reciting poèmes en langue anglaise at St. James Episcopal Church on Friday. Left to right: Nela Rio (Argentina/New Brunswick), Christine De Luca (Scotland), David Musgrave (Australia), James Norcliffe (New Zealand), Alice Major (Alberta), and Anna Swanson (British Columbia).

Christine De Luca read poems in a Shetland Island dialect; one of Nela Rio's poems was an imagined dialogue with 16th-century poet Leonor de Ovando; James Norcliffe entertained us with an animated recitation of Yippee!, about a bunch of escaped podiatrists who can teach one something about frustration/ irony/ scorn/ . . . and hate. Poems from Alice Major and Anna Swanson will appear in an upcoming Salamander Cove posting.

I also went to diner-poèsie at Le Manoir and heard poets Coral Bracho (Mexico) and Jean-Phillippe Bergeron (Québec). My only regret is that I did not have the time or opportunity to get to more events this time around. Of course there is always next year, different poets but same times, same places, same ten whole days and nights of poetry; you just have to choose (and plan ahead!).

A small sampling:

Sedley Richard Assonne,
"Madame Eugene" read/sung in Creole

Rei Berroa

Marius Daniel Popescu

François Guerrette

Alice Major

Some photos - taken while walking from one poetry reading to another:

A sidewalk mural as part of a peace exhibit

at the Museum of Popular Culture

sign at top: "Justice for All"

October leaves blown & scattered:

gathering, unnoticed

TreeSplash

Water from the park fountain, bursting by

Alleyway graffiti

Up close and personal

Monument to the unknown poet, in homage to poets worldwide -
in the plaza outside Le Bibliothèque Gatien-Lapointe

Reaching to the sky

"Open - Prison". There are no inmates incarcerated there--this refers to an historic building that once housed Trois-Rivières' criminals in the 1960s and '70s. The guides who give the tours and answer visitors' questions are former inmates. Originally built in 1822 to hold around 40 prisoners, it was sometimes packed with over a hundred. When it closed in 1986, it was the oldest functional corrections establishment in Canada.

You are invited, should this be of interest, to experience a one-night sentence behind bars: You get booked, spend a night in a cell, and receive breakfast fit for a prisoner. (You can go in a group of 15 to 39 others if you'd rather not do this alone.)

La vielle prison de Trois-Rivieres

Before you leave, you get a discharge paper with your fingerprints and mug shot (to take as a souvenir). At least that's what happened when I took this tour some years ago (though I didn't do the overnight-behind-bars part of it). I did, however, step into the dark and dismal dungeon, and hear some very harrowing tales about what it was like to have been a prisoner back in the 1800s. Just imagine, you could be sent to prison then for inadvertent impious utterances or swearing on the street.

rue des Ursulines

A bit of house history
[for the white house in photo above]

Outside St. James, en route to yet another poetry reading

Inside St. James church, at the baptismal font, this sculpted bird descends from the ceiling on a kind of pulley when the font is opened. Erected in 1764,this Anglican church served as a garrison chapel, a hospital, a court and a prison. Today services are conducted there in both French and English. Across the street is an Ursuline convent built in the late 1600s. Down one street and over a hill takes you to the port.

Three minutes away by foot,

a shady grove with dancing sun shadows

Earlier, at Végétarien, autumn squashes!

Tree-limb Rorschach on pine needles

Scene from last year's poetry festival

A fine week, all in all. [A belated happy birthday to Sedley A., we would have toasted you on the Friday at table had we known!]

____________________

*street photos © awyn photography

Real and Not Real, Voices, and the Layers in Between

2011-10-06T09:39:00.001-04:00

In a brief conversation with a poet recently, the subject came up of the poems and stories we write as creative imaginings versus those based on things personally experienced. "A lot of my poems are made up," he told me. "Sometimes the ones made up seem real, and the real ones seem made up." Getting fired from an ice-cream factory for bleeding on the fudgsicles, for example, actually happened; a poem about his father dying--which elicited condolences--was entirely fictional.

Speaking of the real and the imagined in our writing, here on my desk sits fellow blogger William Michaelian's recently published novel, A Listening Thing, of which I have copy #84--of the Tenth Anniversary Authorized Print Edition. "I am Stephen Monroe: a fictional character," says Michaelian in the Preface. "And yet I'm also Stephen's creator, and the author of his harrowing introspective tale."

The Afterword repeats this affirmation quoted in the Preface: "I am Stephen Monroe" (with the "I" italicized), and is signed "Stephen Monroe."   (Me, not that Michaelian dude, I felt his italicized "I" insisting. As if to imply: Well, he might've created me but he's not me! I'm me. I am Stephen Monroe.) If you've ever read any of Michaelian's reported dreams you will not find this sort of situation unusual. He has many faces, and his writings, like his artistic renderings, keep evolving. This first novel is ample proof.

The book is by and about Stephen Monroe, as he reflects on himself and his life past and present. Above and beyond the story itself there's a pocketful of insights about those things we sometimes wonder about but can never quite figure out--such as the possibility that "Everything that is, isn't" and "Everything that isn't, is."

Truth to tell, I have known people like Stephen Monroe--lonely, unhappy individuals holding tenaciously to a particular remembered time/place/relationship, unable to stop looking at it, mentally re-living it, feeling it important to preserve, describe and explain, wishing it could be reprogrammed for a different outcome in the now. "It is in speaking, that I am able to figure things out", Stephen says on page 133. His marriage has failed; his wife, and the world, have moved on but he remains stuck in a memory warp, unable to let go.   ("Are you coming to bed?" his ex-wife Mary (who'd left three years before) beckons, in a familiar scene still playing out in his mind.)

"If this isn't real, then nothing is," says Stephen. "And if I am real, everything is." It's true, though, I thought as I read that. We construct our own 'realities.' The past is an integral part of Stephen's reality and his identity as well. "It would be healthier," he admits, "to let go" of it. But he can't. Stephen, like his mother with whom he visits on a weekend described in the book, feels "obliged to take care of things"--the way his father did, and the imagined loss of the family home, as with his loss of Mary, to him signified "there would be no meaningful place left to go." Home, family, one's traditions and memorabilia and routine, are everything. You lose that, and you become unanchored, the "I" part of you suddenly severed from the "we" or "us" that's been dissolved or taken away.

I found in this novel unexpectedly significant little nuggets of perception vis-a-vis universal parallels above and beyond the confines of the narrative, echoing what Tim Hinshaw (the author Michaelian's friend who died last year), noted about the book's "insight into the human condition." How many of us attempt to understand, much less reflect on why we "always do" what we always do, or question who we really are. "You failed, son", Stephen imagines his father saying; "You always put your foot in your mouth", an everybody's grandmother scolds; "You always say it's your fault", says his ex-wife. Always, in all ways, that "always" part exudes. Everyone screws up at one time or another - who can not-relate to that? We disappoint and hurt people, without intending to. Stephen struggles with a sense of failure and the need to make things okay again. Unlike his parents' house ("a tight little ship that could weather any storm"), his is on shaky ground. And Stephen is sometimes his own worst enemy, it seems, because his own brain "instinctively ridicules" his efforts. "Think before you speak!" he reminds himself.

I had to laugh at Mary's habit of piling stacks of Readers Digests next to the toilet. My mother did the exact same thing! Reading Stephen's hilarious account of his dread of visiting the bathroom because of those hated magazines and his playful accusations that Mary just did that to annoy him made me think of the idiosyncracies we lovingly tolerate in our loved ones--and those habits we can no longer abide, and in ourselves as well. In Stephen's and Mary's case it resulted in what Stephen calls "an intellectual divorce."

Mary chose to leave; Stephen chose not to let her go, even though he couldn't prevent it. The novel also illustrates something we all recognize but which brings little consolation when returning to an empty life: the fact that both parties still love one another, that it may be nobody's fault, doesn't change anything. Some things can't be worked out, "fixed", or ever solved. That, too, is part of life. All we can do, as human beings, is "muddle through, the best we can." For some this means changing course; for others, staying put, even if staying put means mostly "Stuck"; and comes a time when we might get tired of words like muddle through, which grip like a verbal harness we wish could be replaced by images of flow or glide or soar. Can one just decide not to be miserable? Stephen asks. (Is chronic sadness or clinical depression a choice?) His reflections elicit even more reflections.

Just as there's more to the problem of depression than one of attitude, so is there more to reluctant but necessary departures to escape what amounts to an emotional vacuum. I love you but I can't help you. And he loves her but he can't help being who he is. Stephen confesses to not understanding what "love" is. Upon which an image of Tina Turner singing "What's love got to do with it?" immediately began ringing in my mind--and here came another unexpected idea--that maybe, if both parties still love one another, maybe it's not really about love but about . . . self preservation.

What makes A Listening Thing something which its author says we should read? Because, he explains, "we need an honest look at ourselves, and the freedom of a second chance."   Michaelian took an honest look at himself--and wove a story around it. It's not autobiographical, he states, but "the personal experiences and past events related by Stephen are really my own." ("Life is fiction and fiction is life." )

Michaelian and Stephen Monroe invite us to listen as they tell his story, cautioning that if you think you know the answers, well, you're to be pitied. You don't. This is said with love. (Psycho-nibbler-babblers, take note: Stephen Monroe is not a psychological "project", as he was, for years, to his ex-wife. He's simply a man explaining who he is. He's brutally frank about it, and intends to devote his life to exploring and maintaining that sense of self and to his writing. "I am Stephen Monroe. I am Stephen Monroe!")

Longing for a second chance free of failure and depression, he harbors hope, though neither one is going to cancel out the other. Which made me think of the sheer duality of all that is, hinted at in this passage where Stephen is reminiscing about "Uncle Leo":

Poor Uncle Leo. Poor everyone. Not a happy thing exists that is untouched by sorrow. And yet, there isn't a sad thing we know that isn't sweetened by laughter and light. Triumph and downfall . . . Love and hate. Confusion and enlightenment. Jealousy and serenity.

Included at the end of this passage is the word Possibility, italicized. ("Possibility. Dear Uncle Leo. Dear Everyone.") Stephen admits he has trouble maintaining optimism, but the mere entertainment of the possibility of Possibility trumps pessimism, one would think. So too, even with Stephen's daily struggle with depression as a down/up, up/down, down/up, up/down affair; its eradication is graspable.

This is turning out to be far more detailed than I'd intended. Like the fictional Stephen Monroe, it is in writing, that I am able to figure things out (although he actually said "speaking", not writing). When a reader listens, not just to the story but to the thoughts that arrive while reading the story, connections can be made, parallels discovered, differences noted--in short, there is engagement on a second level corresponding to the fictional character's own introspections. A very wordy way to simply say that much of what Michaelian wrote (in the voice of Stephen Monroe) soundly resonated.

So, three things I took away from reading this book: (1) a reminder of what it's like to have been Stuck in a "harrowing" situation, unable to change things no matter how hard one tried; (2) that things don't go well when you are prevented from, chastised for, or not accepted as . . . being who you truly are (and no amount of compromise or suppression or denial will keep that self from resurfacing); and (3) who you seem to be--even to yourself--as Stephen Monroe pondered, may have nothing to do with who you really are. He likens this to "an identity comprised of layers pretty much all the same"--like an onion!--whose skin you have to peel, one fragile piece at a time, to get to the inside. And depending on how close you get, what's there might make you cry.

Michaelian's novel made me aware that choosing to be who you are can be revolutionary--and life altering, not only for you but for others. Whoever said life was easy. "Life itself is a work in progress." Stephen Monroe's story is just one example.   But somewhere in the process of listening to the listening things, whispers of connections to something larger emerged, kind of like hidden voices beyond the written voice, threading through to make themselves heard. I'm not saying if you read A Listening Thing you will start hearing voices.   But reading is a form of hearing, no? Words on a page are like songs to the eyes.

Wait, wait, I hear a voice from behind the fig tree:

"I will go on singing"

William Michaelian - July 24, 2011

I rest my case, ha ha.

By the way, there's an excellent interview at the end of the book worthy of its own special mention, of particular interest to writers - of William Michaelian in conversation with Paul L. Martin, teacher and writer, whose excellent 'observations on literature, culture and the life of the mind' can be found over at The Teacher's View.

Hear ye Hear ye

2011-10-02T20:38:00.000-04:00

Simon Bridges

Philip Dacey
Rick Daddario

Margaret Eddershaw

Grant Hackett
Dave King

Charles P. Ries

Alaka Yeravadekar

Vassilis Zambaras

Nine poets, 13 newly posted poems up at

Salamander Cove

today

October the First is Too Late

2011-10-01T10:36:00.001-04:00

More years ago than I care to count, a friend gave me this book to read. When I awoke this morning the first thing that came into my consciousness was its title. I still have the paperback.

Written 45 years ago, this little science fiction story that explores the nature of time and the fate of mankind--prophetic, disturbing, sobering--oddly enough, contains passages that've paralleled my own thinking in weeks past watching my birth country, the environment, and the world in general, on so many levels, seemingly imploding.

Is it, really, too late.

Click on title below to read an excerpt:

October the First is Too Late

Day-of, Week-of -- Reminders, & an old Photo

2011-09-24T16:52:00.000-04:00

September 24 (today)

100,000 Poets for Change

September 17 - 25 (last day: tomorrow)
Adopt a Less-Adoptable Pet Week

September 24 - October 1 -- Banned Books Week (starts today)

[Banned Books List 2011]

On my way back to the homeplace once
my rider stopped for gas.
I'd fallen asleep and woke up to discover -
there really is a Promised Land

WONDER-Full

2011-09-23T10:55:00.001-04:00

To view in full screen, click here.

Have you ever seen something that absolutely renders you
speechless - that reaches inside and grips you, and makes
all the crap and pain and nonsense disappear - instantly

Little penguin families, being penguins - My sister sent me this
this morning - A day in the life of a penguin colony.
Another cute video about penguins - I love penguins. Okay. I'll watch.

Baby animals--being groomed, fed, taught, by their parent(s);
penguins playing, preening, being totally themselves - especially
with accompanying pretty music, warms the heart, makes us go
"awwwwwwww," with a warm smile spread across the face.

I was not prepared, however - in this one - for the overwhelming
depth of feeling it evoked - filling me with the most incredible
sense of - AWE . . . and sheer appreciation -
for Life

Thank you, Sis
How can I not share this

Addressing Reasonable Doubts

2011-09-22T17:19:00.000-04:00

Troy Davis

1968-2011

The State of Georgia executed Troy Davis last night at 11:08 PM by lethal injection. He had been convicted of killing a policeman working as a security guard 22 years ago. To his last breath Davis continually maintained his innocence. There seems to be no physical evidence proving he did the crime, seven of nine witnesses later recanted their testimony, saying they'd been coerced by police, and three jurors have since retracted their "guilty" verdicts. Plus another person was said to have confessed to the crime.

Thousands of people worldwide, including, Amnesty International, the Pope, former President Jimmy Carter, a former GA Supreme Court Justice, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 51 members of Congress, and even death penalty supporters, including former FBI Director William S. Sessions, as well as many more called for Troy Davis to be spared the death sentence. Over 660,000 petitions were delivered calling for the Powers-That-Be to spare his life. Around 500 protesters stood outside the prison entrance last night, waiting for a decision from the members of the Supreme Court of the United States, which refused to grant a stay of execution.[1]

In a court of law, you often hear these words: "Innocent until proven guilty" and "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt." There seems to be no concrete proof that Troy Davis committed that particular crime and more than enough strong doubts, to suggest that this man may have been innocent. In the end, it didn't matter.

"Justice is done", say the family of the murdered policeman. But was it justice?

I don't know whether Troy Davis committed the crime as charged, or whether he was, as he steadfastly maintained, for 22 years, truly innocent. What bothers me is that someone can be put to death when grave doubts continue to remain as to his innocence, and that because of legal technicalities, possible incompetency, willful neglect, or sheer indifference important information can be and is often disregarded or suppressed.

When the decision is made to deliberately end someone's life, wouldn't it serve "justice" to make absolutely sure all questions about his/her guilt or innocence have been thoroughly addressed and/or resolved?   That facts later coming to light that contradict those presented at trial as evidence may be reason to reconsider the terms of punishment?   In the case of Troy Davis serious questions still remained. Testimonies at trial were later recanted, some jurors' guilty verdicts retracted, report of another person confessing to the same crime for which Troy Davis was convicted. It was decided this was not sufficient to overturn the original verdict or rescind the sentence of death.

I was once called for jury duty at a murder trial. One of the questions they asked me, in choosing who was to be on the jury, was: "Do you believe in the death penalty?" A fellow prospective juror, who'd apparently been called before to serve on juries, later told me as we were exiting the building, neither of us having been chosen as jurors, "If you ever want to get out of serving on a jury at a murder trial, just tell them you're against the death penalty." I took that to mean that people who sit on juries voting to decide whether or not a person is innocent or guilty, where the punishment may be death, are not considered good choices in a jury selection, because they would have difficulty accepting the idea that a proper punishment for killing is to then kill the killer.   An eye for an eye comes to mind.

How powerful are words and how many meanings pop up around the word 'justice'. Jurors are supposed to listen and observe at trial, and based on each side's presentation and argument (prosecutor and defense attorneys') decide the truth of someone's innocence or guilt. Too much doubt results in delayed decisions; "hung juries" can result in a mistrial; mistrials can mean a criminal goes free. But jurors are not allowed to simply raise their hand during trial and ask a question when they feel a lawyer has not asked a question of a witness that the juror believes is pertinent. It's annoying to be told, "After everything you've heard today, you MUST come to the conclusion that ...." (meaning the particular lawyer's interpretation), etc. Uh, no, let us make our own interpretations, please.

Only the judge can allow or suppress a particular line of inquiry. If you've ever read trial transcripts, you can readily see sometimes, where the focus is being strategically directed (towards or away from certain areas) more for the benefit of the jury than to actually unearth the truth, often resulting in a distorted (or skillfully projected) perception. Some lawyers are better at jury persuasion than others. The judge must abide by the jury's decision as to guilt or innocence but only the judge has the power to say how the convicted person is going to be punished: "You're going to jail" or "You're going to die."

The Double Jeopardy provision of the Fifth Amendment prohibits a person from being tried twice for the same offense, unless required by the interests of justice. But even then, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, if I understand it correctly, bars second and successive petitions and limits the power of federal judges to grant relief. So there's not a whole lot of hope, even with a dedicated lawyer calling for a new investigation or massive public outcry for a reversal of the death sentence, that you will succeed. And as we've seen with Troy Davis, even the Supreme Court can decide your case ultimately has no merit and you will lose.

It seems to me there is something terribly wrong, though, with a system that allows someone like Luis Posada, a former CIA agent who admitted involvement in a string of bombings in 1997, and for which evidence of his role in the mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 people aboard, "is strong", to go free--yet executes Troy Davis, for killing a policeman, though the evidence against him remains questionable. For example, the statement of one witness (that Davis confessed to the crime) is accepted as an indication of guilt but when the witness later recants, it's discounted; and the testimony of another witness (declaring that someone *else* admitted to committing the crime) is disregarded based on a technicality. That other person was never put on the stand. I say, you say, we all say hear-say, now swear under oath that ... (except one of the witnesses, who was illiterate, was asked to sign a statement he couldn't read, which should have made it invalid).

Both Posada and Davis were judged by a jury of peers--one was found innocent, the other guilty. "Although he [Posada] has never been convicted for his various acts of violence, Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive has referred to him as "one of the most dangerous terrorists in recent history." But apparently to the anti-Cuban exile community in Miami, Posada is a hero.   So, an admitted terrorist gets aquitted; a man proclaiming his innocence gets convicted and awarded the death penalty. I keep hearing those words, "Justice and mercy for all" but in this case it sounds like "Justice and mercy for some, depending ...." Depending on the jurors, the lawyers, the judges, the system--and of course, who you are or are not. It is this aspect of the justice system that seems to need tweaking, in my humble opinion.

I honestly don't know whether or not Troy Davis really did what he'd been convicted of or not--my mental jury's still out on that one. But I'm not ignorant of what sometimes happens in a courtroom vis-a-vis prosecution and defense presentations and the politics and manipulation of perception that comes into play. Too, Judges are powerful beings: they can ship you back to your country of origin where you risk being tortured or killed, denying your request for political asylum; they can give you a second chance to turn your life around and get some help; or they can send you to be lethally disposed of. If Troy Davis was innocent, as so many believe he was, may this injustice be righted. May the truth some day come out, not just about this but about other past investigations still being questioned, years after the fact, for which the public still would like answers.. Beyond a reasonable doubt. So that true justice, not revenge or payback, can be accomplished.

Just because the world is changing, getting darker and scarier by the minute, doesn't, I think, mean that we should change with it and react by ourselves becoming scarier. Rule of law: innocent until proven guilty. Allow all sides to be heard. Sounds fair. If information comes in later that radically contradicts an earlier investigation's report, examine it. Take the time to get it right. Correct it. Set 'the record' straight. The bottom line shouldn't be speed it up to get a conviction, imposing impossible-to-meet deadlines or restricting access to or sharing of information just to one-up the other side or as part of some turf war or just because you can.

In a perfect world, perhaps. I'm still in International Day of Peace mode, I guess (yesterday was International Day of Peace). But I don't get the prevailing mindset in some quarters sometimes: That it's okay to kill in certain circumstances, but not in others. That killers must be punished by killing them to show it is wrong to kill. That innocent children who happen to be family members of someone "suspected" of "insurgency" in a foreign land can be sacrificed as collateral damage, so long as the bad guy gets 'taken out.'. "Thou shalt not kill" . . . except (list the exceptions). All's fair in love and war (they say). Drone on.   Kill or (maybe) be killed. When in doubt, pre-empt. Shoot first and ask questions later. Better yet: Stop asking questions.

Uh, I'm not gonna go there. This just in: I heard on CNN where somewhere in Mexico a drug cartel pulled up in the afternoon in front of a busy shopping area and dumped 35 dead bodies on the pavement, as a warning, I guess. No one stopped them, apparently, or pursued, much less was able to arrest them. They've done that kind of thing before, leaving headless bodies in public, to show that they 'can'.   That's what having power does. No one can touch you. The word lawless floats in a bubble inside my mind. Kind of like what they used to call frontier towns in the old West where bandits just rode in and shot people and rode out again: lawless. The modern version I guess is drive-by shootings, individually or in bunches, only the shooters get younger and younger. We have laws but this still keeps happening. But even in lawful (full of Laws) societies, and even though scores of people (thousands and thousands, to be exact) are behind bars today, justice has not solved the problem, nor is real justice necessarily a given. Define 'justice' -- shooter-type justice, or innocent-type justice.

What is one to make of the news anymore. So many conflicting reports, misleading stories. People still hungering for . . . the truth. As if knowing it would change anything. But it might. If the truth were known, "justice" could be served. And if injustice is being intentionally ignored, allowed or perpetrated, that could be corrected.   In a perfect world. But since we're not . . .

No reason not to not care though. Media overload and it can all just pass over one, in one big blur, occupation here, terrorist attack there, governments in crisis, this one bankrupt, that one starving, failed schools, infrastructure crumbling, earth being raped, execution last night, news at 11. It's enough to make you . . . tune out and stop listening. Turn the observation meter off a bit, redirect it. Or go take a nap.

Not everyone's asleep, though. Granted, even with the whole world watching, atrocities continue to happen, regularly; injustice continues. I'd hate to have to live as an empath, you know, those people who absorb and carry around the pain and suffering of the world on their backs, so to speak. I've known people like that, who've sacrificed any sort of personal life to go help others--not just volunteer here and there or send money, but actually leave home and go off somewhere for years, putting their lives on the line, because they care. No naps for them. I like that you can't stifle that kind of awareness, that even when it's mocked, defunded or physically crushed, it doesn't stop. Maybe for some. But not all. Which seems a good thing to know.

As for doubting, all thinking beings do that at one time or another. Well, most, anyway. Sometimes you're encouraged to question things, other times you're told to just accept what is for what it is and don't trouble yourself about the details. Leave the details up to the experts. Both sides have merit. Troy Davis won't have to worry about things like that anymore. In a week's time other news will fill the airwaves and the 'justice system' will plog on, everyone will go back to their everyday lives, doing whatever it is they do every day. It is amazing to me, how many supporters Troy Davis had. How many spoke out in his behalf, how many abhor the idea of capital punishment.

Perhaps those laws that permit us to kill, as punishment, are more and more raising reasonable doubts as to their, well . . . reasonableness.

Peace for All. If Only!

2011-09-21T06:47:00.001-04:00

          The Peace of Wild Things

          When despair for the world grows in me
          and I wake in the night at the least sound
          in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
          I go and lie down where the wood drake rests
          in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds.
          I come into the peace of wild things
          who do not tax their lives with forethought
          of grief. I come into the presence of still water
          and feel above me the day-blind stars
          waiting with their light. For a time
          I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

          ~ ~ Excerpt from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry,
                Northpoint Press, 1998.

A Bee, Being

2011-09-19T20:19:00.005-04:00

bee on

bee at

bee in

___________________________

Photos taken in my garden, Summer 2004

*Actually, it's a wasp. But 'bee, being' sounded better than 'wasp, wasping'. When I was a child we used to catch bees in our hands and run around with them closed inside our fists yelling "Bzzzzzzzzz, Bzzzzzzzz!" , then let them go. Did this dozens, hundreds of times, and never got stung. The next door neighbor boys told us "Yellow heads sting--but whiteheads don't"--whiteheads being a much lighter shade than the deep yellow of the yellowheads. So it must be true. Or else we were just lucky. I just looked it up on line and apparently the ones they called whiteheads were actually male carpenter bees that may seem aggressive but are not able to sting. We girls just accepted, after observing four or five demonstrations of "See! It didn't sting me!" that what Lloyd and Rollie next door said was true. They also taught us which of the "monkey vines" on the hillside were safe to swing from and which would break off and land you on your butt if you tried swinging from it. Ah, childhood!

Lifemarks, unanticipated

2011-09-18T21:21:00.000-04:00

Harm

not

______________________

So I'm not getting any better at Mr. Doob's Harmony Drawing Program but I find it interesting what emerges when the intended sketch takes an unexpected turn and an entirely different subject appears. This started out to be a young girl reaching for the stars, but morphed into a sad man with a scarred face and an elongated chin. I gave him some hair and a high-necked sweater but must have pushed a wrong button somewhere because Harmony saved the drawing before I had finished correcting it. The face reminded me I'd forgotten its ears and eyebrows and positively detested the hairdo I'd chosen, complaining it looked more like a woman's ill-fitting wig. This happens sometimes, a different entity emerges from the one you'd intended, wanting to say its say. So I let it.

Thank you, poets

2011-09-17T11:43:00.001-04:00

I've been in kind of a creative writing slump lately, wishing I could weave words like the ones I read sometimes from others, that make the world stop and get my attention, that make me see something I never considered before, bestow an insight, or resonate so deeply it stuns.

Three poets got my attention this morning--two that've been interviewed by SmartishPace, the other sharing on his blog the words of a favorite poet. In an imaginary get-together I sat in the back of an imaginary room and took mental notes. I've extracted and am quoting liberally from what was said, addressing specific points that speak to my own oft unspoken wonderings.

But go read the original interviews and entire Rumi poem referenced (the links are embedded in each of the three poets' names--just click on the name). Interesting . . . and for me, very helpful. Especially--and in another context--after reading all the horrible world news lately. ("Find the antidote in the venom" -- Thanks, Don and Rumi! How can a single sentence like that . . . have such a dramatic, yet positive, impact. How the words that we read wake us up, enlighten, motivate and energize us.)

Rae Armantrout:

On writing poetry:
Don’t write about what you think, or what you think you know, write about what puzzles you.

On language poetry:
Anything that will make us all stop and do a double take on what we hear (and see) instead of accepting it as natural is a positive exercise.

On not "getting" a poet's meaning in a poem:
For the Reader: If you have spent a good bit of time with the poems already and you still don’t get anything from them, I suggest you give up. You aren’t required to like everything!

For the Poet: As to whether people will get it, you can’t think about things like that while you’re writing. It would be too inhibiting.

On writer's block:
After about two weeks, if no writing has surfaced, I start to feel nervous. Then I go looking for it. I do that really by just maintaining a certain state of alertness. I’ll read things that might get me going. I’ll sit outside somewhere with a notebook . . . make notes on the things I see. I find that, if I keep at it long enough, something will emerge. I take notes in my journal not knowing whether those notes will end up in a poem or not.

The notes will be jotted down on different days in different places. At some point, I’ll notice that several of these notes have an affinity for one another. They seem to establish a kind of dialogue. So I’ll put them together and edit. If the poem still doesn’t feel finished, I will wait for more material to appear. By then, I have at least a vague idea of what I’m looking for – still, I won’t recognize it until I see it. Things have to come to me from elsewhere.

On the risk of being a poet:
Most people in America really see poetry as a joke or a sign of childish narcissism. I am still reluctant to tell a stranger that I’m a poet. I can see that it makes them uncomfortable. So first you have to be willing to be ridiculous. . . You won't make any money directly from poetry – or at least not much. You have to find some other sort of work. And you may tend to resent your day job because it takes up time that you could spend writing.

Stephen Dunn:

On the state of poetry today:
The under appreciation of poetry in the U.S. frees the poet to do whatever he wants. In another sense, he can do what he wants because what he does doesn't matter. No Mandelstam-like repercussions here for writing an important anti-government poem. But it's important for me to write AS IF everything I write matters. And AS IF I have a concerned, intelligent audience. To not turn my back on the willing, intelligent reader as much as contemporary poetry has. The poet needs to make gestures to the willing intelligent reader. That same reader must make serious gestures of attentiveness to the poem.

On all the published poems out there:
At any given time in any culture most of the poems in print will be mediocre. Don't worry about it, it's a given. Just keep an eye out for what's wonderful.

On writing poetry:
Write the poems that you need to write. All other concerns are tertiary.

Advice to young poets:
Take your enterprise as seriously as other would-be artists do. No short cuts. Try to be as engaged and as disciplined as, say, a violinist or a dancer would.

Don Wentworth, after reading Rumi:

On not giving up:
Find the antidote in the venom. The secret is in plain sight. Open your eyes. Light up. Smile until you can't smile anymore. And keep smiling. Find the antidote in the venom.

Jottings that escape while you're not looking

2011-09-15T14:14:00.000-04:00

A damp, chilly day
rain-splattered windows, having a mug of
tea made from hawthorne leaves & berries.
Not the windows, dummy, windows don't drink tea
okay Miss Grammarchek, where was i ...

oh yes, listening to an ancient, now departed
voice, from 1978, recalling the escape from Vienna and
the Nazis, she loses her train of thought at the podium.
I like transcribing oral histories, so many scenes
you never imagine, absent from the history
books. Speaking of, my notebook is empty, the pen out
of ink, the writing warehouse filled to bursting, why do
you procrastinate, why?

Only one cat showed up to eat this morning, our
oldest visiting stray, name of Blackie. The house is too
too silent. It needs music, not the klack-klack-klacking
of a keyboard mindful of deadline. This
is not a poem, just an impulsive wordtrain
sneaking in whilst I'm sipping tea and
eyeing rain on window, cut it out, get back to work, you

. . .

2011-09-11T11:11:00.000-04:00

Caption this photo

2011-09-08T16:54:00.002-04:00

"State of the Union"

"The retirement age will now be raised to 84"

"Obama has OK'd the Keystone XL-pipeline"*

"The computer just crashed and lost all your

unbacked-up files containing all your writings"

I met the charming gentleman above in an aisle of the pharmacy this morning and his face expressed how I feel sometimes, reading the latest "Can-things-get-ANY-WORSE-in-the-world?" news. He was propped up next to a witch having a bad hair day on his left.

Him I understood. Her--frankly, she gave me the creeps. Those maliciously malevolent red eyes and blackened, clawey fingernails were enough to scare the bejesus out of anyone, though even kids are so inured to frightful images these days, most just laugh. (Not the little babies, though--they haven't quite reached the age where they can distinguish fake from real. One little glance and that witch's beady red eyes could return, let loose in a nightmare.)

Over at the Dollar Store they were stocking rubber severed limbs with dye-bloodied red gashes, gigantic decorative spider webs, and of course, glow-in-the-dark skeleton keyrings. (Did I mention the edible gelatin eyeballs?)

It's not even Halloween for another month and a half yet, and the shelves are already being cleared and racks of expensive hobo, princess, dragon, devil, witch, Hulk and zombie costumes put into place. When I was a kid we rummaged in our grandma's attic for things to dress up as, and we'd get more apples than chocolate sometimes, in our little trick-or-treat bags. Now it's a retailer's heaven--a fun thing commercialized to death.

Once a year we get to spread phoney Fear and celebrate Greed. (Zombies!! Zombies!! Run for your life!!! Buy your jumbo size, orange candy bucket NOW, kids--before they run out!!! Hey Moms--sale in Aisle Four on chocolate Count Draculas, shipped straight from China. Flashlights, purple hair dye, wigs, teeth and fake blood in Aisle Six!

A man, unable to afford to buy candy for little Halloweeners potentially knocking at the door, embarrassed and ashamed, turns his porch light off and watches behind the curtain at his window, smiling, as a gaggle of little ones trudge past on the sidewalk: a Batman, a Spongebob, a fairy, and a bumblebee with an umbrella. He could be the man in the photo, in his reflective moments, mutely screaming at how he's forced to have to decide whether to buy food this winter, or get heat. "Let's see," you can almost hear him thinking: $4.69 for a bag of mini Hersey bars or marshmellow tarantulas; a handful of change to split for a package of Ramon noodles for him and a can of cat food for his cat. He wishes he could buy the candy. He wishes he had an apple to give them instead. This story is made up. But it's also not, for many people. I look at that store manikin's face and I imagine stories like this. I only went to the pharmacy this morning to buy toilet paper and look what happens, ha ha. It took me by surprise. A look that haunts, reminds. I've screamed inside like he's screaming. Haven't we all sometimes. I hear ya, bud.

The kid in me still loves Halloween. I once saw a ghost riding the bus, an adult probably going to a party, but it was so comical at the time (20 people's heads visible from the bus windows--plus a guy wearing a white sheet--all sitting there riding along, no one thinking it odd.) Okay, you had to have been there. I cracked up laughing and that scene still makes me smile.

Well before Thanksgiving this and other stores will probably begin displaying plastic Santas and reindeer. You begin thinking you're in a time warp. "Can't I just enjoy NOW now?" (Now, now, the robed wizard in Aisle 2 hushes me). (Monk costumes were very "in" last year, too, I forgot to add.) I can't believe I'm posting all this stuff about Halloween a month and a half before it even gets here, making fun of merchants who drag out all their Halloween merchandise a month and a half before it even gets here.

Wait. My new gentleman friend is trying to get my attention:

"Help!! I'm stuck in this photo!! Get me outta here!!!!!"

__________________
*[Over 500 people were arrested during a week-long protest in front of the White House asking President Obama to reconsider and not allow the massive XL-pipeline to transport unrefined oil from the Alberta tar sands in Canada down to Texas, which could result in an environmental catastrophe and which oil will likely not be for the U.S. but sold elsewhere). Asked about the protest, Obama said he hadn't been aware this week-long sit-in took place.]

*photos by awyn

Seeing a Thing with New Eyes

2011-09-02T12:36:00.000-04:00

Well, now, who'd 've thought?

2011-08-29T13:53:00.000-04:00

Monsanto Corn Under Attack by Superbug

Widely grown corn plants that Monsanto Co. genetically modified to thwart a voracious bug are falling prey to that very pest in a few Iowa fields, the first time a major Midwest scourge has developed resistance to a genetically modified crop.

The discovery raises concerns that the way some farmers are using biotech crops could spawn superbugs.

Monsanto's "seeds made it so convenient for farmers to spray Roundup that many farmers stopped using other weedkillers. As a result, say many scientists, superweeds immune to Roundup have spread to millions of acres in more than 20 states in the South and Midwest."[1]

[Monsanto generated $4.26 billion in sales worldwide from corn seed and biotechnology traits, about 40% of its overall sales, in its last full year.]

Conversation on the Steps

2011-08-27T08:31:00.001-04:00

Two little ones

talking about their mom

R.I.P. Jack Layton

2011-08-22T18:54:00.010-04:00

Jack Layton
July 18, 1950 – August 22, 2011

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear.

Optimism is better than despair."

An excerpt from "Dear Friends" -- a letter to Canadians from Jack Layton, who died at 4:45 this morning, of cancer.

2011-08-21T11:22:00.008-04:00

At the pool yesterday

last swim of the summer

Places

2011-08-20T11:31:00.002-04:00

Found something interesting this morning I'd like to share. Tuscaloosa Runs This, a 184-page online collection of poems, essays and fiction about Tuscaloosa, Alabama by writers in, from, and reminiscing about that town.

An entire book about a particular place. A place I could say I've never had the slightest desire to visit, mostly because of the heat and humidity, in which I can't function (and frequent tornandoes) but thanks to this online gem of a collection from Tuscaloosa writers I can do so vicariously, and enjoy some extraordinarily good writing in the process.

It's not just about Tuscaloosa, it seems to me; it's also about place. How we look at it, fit (or don't fit) into it, what draws us to it, keeps us there, gnaws at us in its absence, drives us maddingly from it; what makes us love and hate it at the same time.

We all have some place we carry with us, think and sometimes write about, named or unnamed, reminded of through words or images or happenstance. The actual place may even no longer exist--it could even be imaginary. But we (and readers) can go there, absorb ourselves in the landscape, recognize experienced parallels . . . remember. These Tuscaloosa writers--their words took me there immediately.

"Heat, like a needle driving straight for the vein . . ."

-- MC Hyland, "Tuscaloosa Notebooks", p. 178

You yawning stretch of sky
pressing flat these houses.
Absence rooted in your soil
grows down until plowed.

Town like gasp of damp air
flung across bloated river . . .

-- Pia Simone Garber, "To Tuscaloosa", p. 65

This mess is masterpiece, this shiver;

wool of wood-burning moon scarved

around lace rock and cobwebbed arch,

the branches of dream walking . . .

-- Pia Simone Garber, "Late Harvest", p. 66

Tornadoes happen there; but rubble is universal, as is loss:

idleness a function of power

time a sum of everywhere you can help

ours is the fourth rubble on the left

at the magnolia lying across the road . . .

         -- Juan Carlos Reyes, "The Bama Bolero", p. 37

Of frustration with incomprehension, that has unusual consequences (e.g., for the over- or under-used comma):

What one thing that you have learned in this course has proven most useful? . . . one thing . . . be specific: one word.

This is how I make a difference. . . What if--I gave them a word they could use to compare things--? It could pry open their perspectives, cause them to view, to consider, two things at once."

          -- Jennifer Gravley, in "Statement of Philosophy", p. 80.

And of comings and goings:

I want to tell you how to leave
this place for the last time.

I want to tell you: leave
the chipped red bowl
beneath the crack in the drywall.

Or the rain next month will drown
                      all this room has to offer
                      its new family.
. . .

what is it to leave a place
for the last time? . . .

          -- Brooke Parks, "Residual", p. 130.

Thank you, writers of Tuscaloosa, for a very enjoyable read.

You can read Tuscaloosa Runs This online here. And download as a pdf file (with a larger font) here.

Sharing rides, languages, music, soap

2011-08-17T16:10:00.000-04:00

Scene from the front seat of the Philippemobile (fellow Montréal-Boston rideshare peeps will know to which car this refers), heading south, approaching the mountains of Vermont, two weeks ago. Thanks to people like Philippe, for giving us an alternative to long, boring, expensive bus rides, for less than half the cost, with great music, lively conversation, and we get there 2 hours quicker (even with 4 stops and an unexpected 20-minute delay at the border).

Saw recently that the city of Burlington, VT (which is an hour from the border with Québec), in an effort to welcome tourists from la belle province (and encourage bilingualism) has passed a resolution recommending that 'everything from highway signs to restaurant menus' be in both English and French. [1]. There are, unfortunately, no funds to support this symbolic gesture but it does indicate a stated openness toward publicly acknowledging and warmly welcoming languages other than one's own.

Would that the greeters at the U.S./Québec border at Highgate Springs take the hint and make available some border agents who at least understand a bit of French. I've been traveling this particular border for 15 years and it's downright embarrassing that an agent checking the documentation of incoming bus passengers traveling to the U.S. from Québec has to publicly ask the assembled group "Does anybody here speak French? Can anyone translate?" Yes, that actually happened, and a young bi-lingual Québecker cheerfully unslung her backpack and stepped forward to assist. (Over on the Canadian side, practically everyone at their border station is bi-lingual.) I once heard a U.S. border agent scold an elderly foreign passenger whose accent he could not understand, "Why are you coming to the U.S. when you can't speak the language?!" Never once have I encountered that attitude at the opposite border; or in Québec in general, where they go out of their way to accommodate you if you're struggling with, or have no knowledge of, their language. This is not just my experience--ask any several dozen other travelers who've traversed this particular border, about each side's 'attitude' toward incoming visitors.) It occurs to me there are plenty of French-speakers in Vermont--one wonders why this border station hasn't tapped into this resource, rather than having to ask travelers themselves to perform translation duties because no one on staff seems available who understands French. Maybe they lack the funds for a full-time bi-lingual person. Who knows. But it's a frequent topic that comes up in border-crossing stories (along with examples, of course, about "attitudes".) Speaking of attitudes, you would do well to not bring this up while actually crossing the border, by the way. It may be perceived as antagonistic. BDO'S (Behavior Detection Officers) and Homeland Security personnel are trained to spot facial expressions registering discontent, which may be misinterpreted. I'm just saying.

While in Cambridge, I got a chance to go to a Boston Chamber Music Society concert at Longy with a 94-year-old friend, where we heard these particular pieces by Beethoven, Dvořák, and Walter Piston. It's been a very (very) long time since I've been to a concert. This was a much appreciated, unexpected delight. (Thank you, S.)

Standing on a small wooden bridge in a neighborhood park

watching the brook (and rabbits, squirrels and birds) while

walking with the youngest little granddaughter

And guess what I found! The pine tar soap I searched for but couldn't locate on the Pennsylvania trip. (You can buy it at Cambridge Naturals in Porter Square.)

[click on pic to enlarge]

Okay, this dark, brown-colored, strong-smelling bar might not be everyone's idea of a favorite bath product, but it is, by far, the best shampoo-soap you will ever find (in my humble opinion) [even better than Dr. Bronner's soap (with which you can also brush your teeth--the Peppermint one's the best for that)]. Grandpa's pine tar soap wins hands down over Dr. Bronner's for me in this respect: it leaves your hair squeaky clean and fresh. (No, I am not getting paid to say this.)

A bit of a warning: Its smell has been likened to a lumberyard, a campfire, "wet-wood charcoal and railroad ties", and "burned wood juice", to name but a few. This soap has been around since 1876 and people still like and use it. It has stood, so to speak, the test of time. Read the glowing accolades from sufferers of acne, eczema, rashes, itching, fungus, etc. I just assumed I'd find it in my hometown again when I visited (no longer true); but apparently Amazon carries it. A tad expensive ($5.50 plus postage). I'm starting to sound like all the other people over on the Amazon review page praising this soap, ha ha. "I'd do a commercial for pine tar soap ... in a heartbeat," says one. (I think I just did one without intending to.)

What a happy surprise, in my absence the garden has multiplied, and then some! Tomatoes, especially. A handful of fresh raspberries at breakfast time; bigger, bushier kale & chard waving from the back-garden, a few new cucumbers begging to be picked and eaten--what a thing. I now know what it means to "jump for joy". (If you could call the excited little running around the veggie plots to see what's transpired, "jumping".)

Back to work . . . Good to be back.

There and Back, and Off Again

2011-08-04T18:13:00.000-04:00

Fifteen hours to get there; sixteen coming back. We used to swim in this river; climb into an inner-tube and float down under the bridge that no longer exists. Water's way too low this time though; you can literally walk from one shore to the other. The rocks on the bottom are covered with thick brown crud, very slippery; hard on the feet because some are also sharp. A foamy bubbly residue sometimes floats by. Further on up river by the eddies, swimming was happening, where you can still find the odd, deep (up to or over the shoulder) swim hole. We used to be able to dive for fish hooks, could open your eyes underwater and see every fish and pebble, clearly. Notsomuch anymore.

The area badly needs rain. It was hot, humid, and basically a drought. Not good news for the gas drillers up on top the mountain. Fracking takes an enormous amount of water.

In the early morning a fog descends and the quiet is deafening. I was watching the river, from a third-floor window, and it was absolutely STILL. Not a breath of a ripple, current, or movement of any kind but of course that can't be true. Rivers don't just sit there; they "flow". It did, but so slowly you could barely detect it.

Growing up here, I used to wonder what was on the other side of these mountains. They totally surround/enclose the town. To some it's a protective feeling; to others, claustrophobic. Answer to what's on the other side of the mountains: only more mountains. You come, you go, you take them with you, they pull you back . . . that morning fog, and the train whistle . . . memories.

I was not prepared for the shock of changes. My grandparents' old house, boarded up, its bricks falling inward into empty space; the other grandparents' graves in danger of sliding down the mountainside (the church can no longer afford to keep up the grounds). Caravans of trucks going up and down the mountain on steep, narrow, winding roads hauling sand & equipment; three families report their chickens have died; a farmer in another county, his cows all died after a leak from the drilling operations seeped into his property. Lost his entire dairy farm business. Folks here have mixed feelings about the gas drilling, worry about their water supply, etc.

You used to be able to buy pine tar soap here; looked all over, none to be found. They still sell teaberry ice cream, though. Wonderful to see the family & all the cousins again. Megabussed back with dozens of other weary travelers and am off again tomorrow, this time south, to Beantown with the rideshare peeps. Parts of my garden have turned into a mini-jungle since my absence, or so it seems. Thinking about all the projects/research/reading/writing, etc. waiting when I get back. All of which I'm looking forward to. And to Boston as well. The summer's passing too quickly. It's as if time's been fastforwarded and am still collecting impressions, not yet ready to unpack.

August already, jeepers.

On the road again ...

2011-07-27T14:37:00.000-04:00

trip to the mountains
it's time

been 2 years already

Heat wave

2011-07-23T11:12:00.000-04:00

smothering heat humidity scorched grass

burning sun total fatigue brain mush

this is an image from a square kitchen plate I

got at a discount store it's above the sink so that when I do

dishes I don't have to look at the wall this is not a poem it's just

that seering fiery digital redness parallels the effect of heat today

i close my eyes and dream of

snow

Basket of Poems

2011-07-19T16:53:00.000-04:00

    *    * *
*                        *
   *                                *
*                                      *
                  *                                          *
                  Bill Knott ****** Ed Baker
                    Paul Pines ** Art Durkee
                        robert    d.      wilson
                           Don Wentworth
   Alexei   Tsvetkov
                   Juan   Gelman
                               Tom Montag


                  Today! Over at Salamander Cove.

Million, billion, trillion, kazillion disconnect

2011-07-19T10:02:00.001-04:00

29 companies had more cash than the U.S. government as of July 13

[Source: Think Progress.]

In the first half of July alone, Treasury cash balances were depleted from $130 billion to just $39 billion.[1]

Lost and Reported Stolen - $6.6 billion of U.S. taxpayers' money earmarked for Iraq reconstruction, reported on June 14, 2011 by Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen who called it "the largest theft of funds in national history." [2] Last known holder of the $6.6 billion lost: the U.S. government.

U.S. Annual Air-Conditioning Cost in Iraq and Afghanistan - $20.2 billion [3]

Spent on Iraq War FY 2003 - FY 2010 = $801.9 billion.[4]

2012 Budget Request & Mandatory Spending re: Department of Defense: $707.5 Billion[5]

The total dollar cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far exceeds $1.171 trillion.

All told, U.S. military spending in 2011 will exceed $700 billion — the most since World War II. That amounts to more than half of all government discretionary spending. It represents 35% of total military spending on the planet.[6]

A billion here

a trillion there

(. . . got some food

that you can spare?)

Ants and Spiders and poems and Life

2011-07-08T09:51:00.000-04:00

Saw on Ron Silliman's blog yesterday a reference to a review of Don Wentworth's recently published book Past All Traps, Wentworth's first published collection of poems. The article's mention of Wentworth's "spiders yes, ants no" behavior made me smile. Because I do the exact same thing--rescue spiders and gently transport them outdoors, but stomp on ants.

I sometimes feel guilty about this because I'm generally with Buddha on the "no harm to sentient beings" thing. But here's the thing: It is what it is. And that's what the below-quoted poem addresses (without being explicit) re: our conscious attempts to be who we think we should be, only to be reminded that we are, after all, only human:

Wentworth continues to find those moments that describe a brief truth of our existence -- whether we like it or not.

Past all traps / my shame revealed -- / September ant.

"I capture spiders and take them outdoors," says Wentworth. "But ants? I'm setting traps. And that's part of who we are, too. This isn't all about being good. It's about being."

Carl Mayfield wrote that what drew him to this book "is the poet's incredible ability to pay very close attention to his discoveries, yet not say anything." [1] But this poet's words say a lot--the words don't merely present an idea/scene/emotion, they invite you to experience it up close (or remind you that you already have and elicit a sudden wave of understanding that has formerly eluded you).

Don Wentworth is resident in chief over at Issa's Untidy Hut, the poetry blog for Lilliput Review.. You can order his new book there.

Desktop Travelers

2011-06-29T15:25:00.000-04:00

They say you should be careful what you wish for. A while back I expressed a silent plea to the universe to send me more work--not the tedious, mind-numbing data input kind but something I actually enjoy--like transcription work. A few weeks ago a client found a box of old cassette tapes of conferences from 30 and 40 years ago, converted them to CDs and has been sending them, small batches at a time, ever since.

Today a new client queried about my doing a lengthy, two-part interview, to be transmitted by a DSS file. And so I'm spending a lot of time at the computer listening to voices and keyboarding speeches, dialogues, anecdotes, historical reports, ruminations, etc. It's a mezmerizing world, where time passes so quickly: one minute you sit down with a morning cup of coffee, to begin; next thing you know it's supper time and you've somehow missed lunch. I have to remind myself to go outside and, as they say here, "take the air". Get some sun. Walk or bike the stiffness off.

In the meantime, I've been doing a bit of traveling--vicariously, that is. Yesterday I was at the beach. It was deserted and the sky and water and sand were just right. I have no idea where it was. I downloaded its image from the Google Images page and set it as my monitor's "wallpaper".

Today I'm in the little town of Llandudno in North Wales. I'm changing my visual wallpaper every week or so now. I have always wanted to go to Wales. This is probably the only way I will ever be able to do so, seeing as how even wild horses couldn't drag me onto an airplane, nor could I afford the ticket. I thank whoever it was who gave me the gift of unrelenting imagination, though. That you can look at a digital image and mentally put yourself there, be in the scene, not just observing the landscape but imagine feeling the brisk air, warmth of the sun, hear the sound of the rainfall on a tin roof, people talking in a language I can't understand. That you can go anywhere, into the past, even.

This happens also, from reading words in a book, or pulling some cherished memory out of the place it's stored in your head, and re-living it. What I find amazing is that it's sometimes so vivid, you almost don't want to 'come back.'

Meanwhile, back to the grind, so to speak. Voices from the machine are calling. Keystrokes to go before I sleep (apologies to Frost).

Reconciliation before Annihilation

2011-06-25T08:09:00.000-04:00

The Big Snit (1985) written and directed by Richard Condie and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

From the wonderfully wacky imagination of Winnipeg animator Richard Condie comes this tale of two simultaneous conflicts – the macrocosm of global nuclear war and the microcosm of a domestic quarrel – and how each is resolved.

The Big Snit won seventeen international awards, including the Grand Prize at the Montreal World Film Festival and a Genie Award for Animated Short Film. It was also nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Animated Short. [1]

Yesterday, out walking

2011-06-20T23:11:00.000-04:00

Half sun-half cloud day, we decided to take a walk
down by the waterfront.

I had seen this sign outside the library downtown Friday night. Which is why we went yesterday - to check out the Festival de Contes et Légendes Traditionnel, a 3-day event celebrating the tradition of oral storytelling. [Those panels in the distance behind are part of an outdoor art exhibit in front of the library, titled "Code 7".]

This painting was on one of the panels,

by Québec artist Fontaine Leriche

In the lobby of the entrance to the library,

suspended from the ceiling by near-invisible wires,

dozens of dancing stones

[click to enlarge]

A short walk down Boulevard de Forges

and you're at the Parc Portuaire.

Come on in, he says.

Making a carpet, the old-fashioned way, by hand.

Along the side (not in the picture), a row of animal skins

amid authentic artifacts from periods long past.

Sunglasses a modern addition to the costume.

How to hang a skin

Baking bread in an ancient (by today's standards) oven

What's a festival without cookies!

"I recommend these."

No, this is not a mini guillotine.
It's a kind of public stockade. This gentleman opted to try it out.

As did this one, except I saw his wife walking away, laughing.

You can't, of course, get out of this thing by yourself.

I think she came back. But not right away. :)

His little rug finished, he's now sculpting an axe handle.

Charlatans, vagabonds, and sinners alike,

a place just for them.

This transported portable 'confessional' (minus the priest) was next to a coffin being tended by this fellow, who said his name was "Baptist" (followed by four other family names I can no longer remember). I asked him to pose inside the box, if he would be so kind, and he responded with an actor's flair, promptly kneeling, staff in hand (it was actually a broom), exhibiting an air of feigned remorse (and not a little pretended fright -- at what penance the invisible priest might dole out). But these confession boxes are hardly a relic of the past. They still exist.

A storyteller, spinning a tale.

She brought her drum to accompany her stories.

Going back out the way we'd come in,
exiting the entrance.
(like 'up-the-down-staircase' people. :)

At the far end of the dock

Dinner-cruisers on the St. Lawrence

On the way back to the car we spotted a new (to us) restaurant (formerly a church) called Le Sachristain. It was closed. We stopped to have a peak at the menu. They have a combo soup/salad/sandwich called "The Trinity." Very reasonable prices. They even share their recipes (on their blog, such as for Spanish tortilla tapas and the "perfect" rhubarb pie. Inside was a cosey dining room, a book-filled bookcase to the side by the window. Have made a mental note to return, when it's open.

Near the big central post office, where we parked --
this statue. I snapped the picture before I realized there's
something stuck to the soldier's gun.

I didn't have my glasses at the time, so couldn't read the sign but noted the FTQ in the upper left-hand corner (Fédération des travailleurs du Québec, representing the workers' union. Canada Post is in lockdown after a series of strikes by postal workers. We passed a mailbox on our way back; it was bolted shut. Who knows when mail delivery will resume.

Heading home . . .

another statue

I don't know why but when I passed this alleyway, it drew my attention. It wasn't the building, it was the 'scene': that brilliant patch of sky juxtaposed between the the wall of windows looking down on a rather drab, concrete passageway. Apart from the dancing stones at the library, I like this photo best.

Anyway, that was our Sunday afternoon at the port. If you want to experience an aerial passover of the port (to the music of Bach), check out the video below.

(And this (below) is what it's like in the winter: Mentally hang-glide along (without wind or frostbite!) as you 'fly over' looking down:

In winter you can go ice skating there [see the skate path, at 2:03], as the long walkway is frozen smooth, traffic-free, prepared specifically for that very purpose. Even at the coldest, bleakest part of the year, people regularly go and walk here, or sit on a bench and watch the ships come and go, the ice floes floating by, the skaters skating.

It's a wonderful place, just you and the seagulls, the fresh air, the river. I don't know, there's something about big rivers, and silence, and the 'air' of the north . . . The way some people go on and on about hot sunny beaches or climbing to the top of a mountain or taking the highway on their motorcycle--we all have our favorite things. This place, in the quiet early morning hours especially, is one of mine.

Fathers and Sons (and Daughters)

2011-06-19T08:26:00.002-04:00

This was recorded a long, long while ago. Yusuf Islam
[formerly Cat Stevens] is a grandfather now himself.

To my Dad:
Thanks, too late to let you know.
Know that I understand now
and those traits you've passed on to me,
they've stood me well.

To my son:
Happy First Father's Day!!!!!!!

To my little grandsons:
Be who you are -- and pass on the love,
if and when you get to be fathers someday.

To all fathers everywhere, past, present, soon-to-be and future ones; stepdads, adoptive fathers, foster fathers and temporary fathers:

Happy Dad's Day!

New poems up today on Salamander Cove, for, on, by, and about "Fathers".

Fun with Harmony #6

2011-06-16T21:46:00.001-04:00

Ghost Faces, running out of space

[click to enlarge]

Goofing off again with Mr. Doob's Harmony Drawing Program.

Challenging, yes. It's hard to draw with a mouse. Noses come out deformed, color leaps from hair to face. You can't erase your mistakes: a chin gone wrong becomes a scarf. Art this is not--but it's fun . . . and relaxing.

It started out to be James Dean (but looks more like a bad attempt at a Dean Martin caricature). His shoulders seemed off a bit--so I made them into the hair of two girls. That gave me the idea to make it into a bunch of faces. The ones in the front could all be watching a movie. Hanky-panky going on in the back seat to the left, a conversation at the right, a mercenary keeping guard at the rear. The poor frightened girl with what looks like a beard--it's not a beard. Three tries at attempting a chin and I gave up and gave her a brown veil instead. Her hair is supposed to be yellow. (You call this yellow, Mr. Doob?!) If that's what yellow comes out like, what must flesh-colored (for the faces) look like? (You don't want to know.)

The faces are too white. They look ghastly. Ghostly. So I'm calling this Ghost Faces.

No more mail

2011-06-16T16:28:00.000-04:00

Canada Post is in lockdown. Mail service has been suspended nationwide, after 12 days of rotating strikes from Canada Postal Union Workers. In response, Canada Post has shut the system down.

--All post offices staffed by CUPW members are closed.
--All mail processing plants and letter carrier depots are closed.
--Mailboxes have been sealed to prevent mail from being deposited.
--Mail Delivery is suspended.
--Effective immediately, all service guarantees are suspended.
--Canada Post cannot predict how long the current situation will last.

I'm trying to imagine a future without libraries, bookstores, and now, house-to-house mail delivery. Doctors used to visit patients at home. Now you have to make an appointment, in advance, and you have to go to them. They won't come to you.

Imagine no more home mail delivery where everyone is forced to rent a metal box in some big building downtown where you have to go every day just to get your mail. Email is making personal correspondence by letter ("Who does *that* anymore!?") obsolete. Some people complain they get 300 emails a day. You can't just delete junk mail delivered to your door, though. More fodder for the recycle bin. What a waste of a tree's life.

I miss getting mail, though. And I guess I can forget about sending out those packages already taped and ready to ship out. Wonder where they're storing all the mail till someone gives the go-ahead to go ahead and start delivering it again. I pity our poor mailman. He will need a bigger carry-bag. A little wagon, maybe.

Please--just don't lock down the Internet yet. I can't imagine being communicationless for a week. But with LulzSec, Stuxnet and Anonymous all creating havoc everywhere else in cyberdom, who knows what might happen next.

Meanwhile . . . the nation waits. Our mail is . . . somewhere.

Impasse.

Timewarp

2011-06-10T16:30:00.011-04:00

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

Trapped in the chokehold of regret
we try re-editing the reel
solidified in memory,
so
unsaids reveal,
undones get enacted

. . . as if one could
ressurect unwordings,
resuscitate
unbeing.

___________________

*poem draft, unearthed
Artwork by my son, when he was in high school

The Power of Persuasion

2011-06-04T10:36:00.000-04:00

When my kids were growing up we had two little dogs named Harry and Zoe. They went for their grooming to The Barking Lot--or should I say The Barking Lot came to them. Although this name has apparently also been chosen for various dog-grooming services across the U.S. and Canada, this particular mobile pet-grooming van, equipped with a tub and all the fixings, was local and would arrive at our door and park outside the house. The owner, Jimmy, was very good with animals and he had what they call 'the gift of gab', talking as he worked, before, after and during. He recounted a story that today still stays with me, as an inspiration for those times when you may need to--but are unable to--persuade someone of something.

Jimmy was a busy guy--besides running his own little mobile pet-grooming business he worked with the local SPCA to try to find new owners for the more 'unadoptable' dogs--dogs nobody seemed interested in taking home with them: older, fatter mutts, handicapped or with an offputting personality. He appeared, once a week, on a local TV channel with one of these desperate-to-be-adopted creatures and gave his sales pitch. By the following week someone would have usually called in to adopt the animal.

There was one little dog, however, whom nobody seemed to want. Try as he might, Jimmy couldn't convince anyone to take her. I don't remember the breed but it was a small, yappy type that wasn't particularly cuddly. By the third week, not a taker in sight, the director of the TV program called Jimmy into her office. "You need to start showing another dog," she told him.

Jimmy was devastated. They keeps dogs in the pound only so long, and if they're not adoptable ... Animal shelters shelter an animal, they can't become their permanent home. The little dog's space there was needed for one of the constantly arriving new abandoned, mistreated, rescued or 'donated' animals found or formerly owned. Jimmy was at his wit's end. He tried everything he could to find her a home.

They had reached an impasse. Jimmy wasn't willing to just give up on the poor critter. He looked at the director, noticed her wavy, well-coiffeured, chestnut-colored hair. It was not a color one saw often on a woman her age when the strands of white begin multiplying exponentially. He looked back at the dog, then back at the director, and it came to him.

"You know," he said, "you two have exactly the same color hair!!!"

It was true. The hair on the dog and the hair on top the woman's head were an exact match. The director stared at the dog. "You're right," she laughed.

I don't know what Jimmy said to her to convince her that she should be the one to adopt the dog. Perhaps their personalities matched as well, hers and the dog's, and there was a moment of recognition there. Perhaps she sympathized with Jimmy's plight and made this magnanimous gesture out of respect for what he was trying to do and in support of the program. Who knows. But she ended up agreeing to take the dog.

Jimmy had the dream to one day start a program to train inner-city youth to become dog groomers like himself. It was a thriving business and there weren't a lot of mobile pet-grooming outfits around, which would give them an advantage. He tried to get funding for such an enterprise. I don't know if he was ever able to persuade the dispensers of state grants to support this endeavor, as this was a long, long time ago, but I like to think it eventually happened.

One often hears that phrase, "the power of persuasion". Marketers sometimes focus on your perceived benefits from buying a certain product. But what benefit would a yappy dog with a difficult personality be to anyone, regardless of its having the same color hair as you? I don't think "power" was the element at play here. Nor simply resonance ("That animal and I share a common feature" , whether hair color or personality). Maybe it was the gift of empathy (as in, not everyone is born with it; when not 'learned', just automatically "having" it, is a gift).

I've seen this before. Someone resolutely, absolutely feels strongly about a certain thing: they hate dancing, they don't care for opera, they don't drink tea, they don't like children, for example. And then something happens to make them change their mind, that allows them to see a thing from a different perspective, so to speak. "Children in general are noisy, energetic, demanding little humans but THIS one, this one child might prove the exception; all operas suck, just a bunch of fat women screeching on a stage, but this one aria, absolutely transfixes me, gives me goosebumps it's so beautiful; even if I have wooden feet and can't dance if my life depended on it, I would try, even pretend, for my beloved; decaffeinated green tea's supposedly healthier than coffee, maybe I could learn to switch..."--are all examples of little moments that whisper: take another look-see, allow another perspective in, another way to look at a thing.

Maybe the one person who could make that chestnut-haired dog toe the line, so to speak, would have been the director. I got the impression from Jimmy that it was a success story. What was it that ultimately did the trick, I wonder--to get her to actually agree to adopt the contentious little dog? Was it really his "power of persuasion"? Or her sense of humor and empathy that finally sealed the deal?

Some things are harder to persuade people about, even coming from themselves.. They'd like to do something, but can't (they say). Quitting smoking or drinking, for example. Physiological (and behavioral) addictions are harder to overcome, as is, sometimes, irrational thinking. You acknowledge the benefit of something but are unable, for whatever reason, to do what's necessary to achieve it. Why does that phrase "Do what I say, not what I do" pop into my head right now, ha ha (recalling nurses or medical practitioners I have known who tell you to do (or not do) something related to your health, advice which they themselves totally ignore).

Anyway, back to Jimmy at The Barking Lot and unadoptable animals, and people who are somehow persuaded to suddenly do something totally out of character for them (like the director), which may ultimately change their lives. Penetrating the perceived rigidity of a mindset, where light can still get through. This little 'Jimmy story' for me echoes another oft-repeated saying from an old friend from many years ago, that reminds me that even in the most depressing or horrific of circumstances that keeping the mind open to other perceptions/possibilities will be the ticket out of it. "You never know", he would always smile and say. (The equivalent, to me, of "Never give up.") You "never know" unless you try. You never know what you are capable of when you allow yourself to step out of the box of set-in-stone thinking.

I myself would not have taken that dog. I knew a "difficult" dog once. Not only difficult but vicious. Her name was "Princess" and she lived a few blocks from me then. She would come out of nowhere and chase after and bite at the ankles of passersby, growling and nipping and tearing at their trouser cuffs. I was absolutely terrified of that little dog. I tried to think of how I might persuade someone, were the situation reversed and Princess was the dog poor Jimmy had to find a home for, how I might convince someone to take her. I come up with a complete blank. I wouldn't wish this dog on my worst enemy, as the saying goes. So maybe there's more at play here than persuasion and openness: those sometimes impossible situations for which there is no answer.

In the film "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" there's a scene in traffic where a car passes by of which its occupants, a woman and her dog, resemble one another. Apparently it's not all that uncommon:

This random memory--the Jimmy-of-The-Barking-Lot story--arrived in my head upon waking this morning--I have no idea where it came from, or why--along with the word "persuasion", compelling me to wonder what it is I might be trying to persuade myself of, ha ha. Or maybe it's me telling me to hang in there, there is a way out of this or that particular dilemma, I must not give up, because ... "You never know." It's funny how the words one hears, or believes, can form the basis of an 'outlook', a suggested way of being. And I find myself repeating that "You never know" expression, by way of encouragement, not only to self but others. (Perhaps the title of this posting should have been "The Power of Possibility".)

There are four of my canine buddies now at the local SPCA in urgent need of adoption: Fantôme, Oupsy, Willow and Nutella. (That's Nutella over at the right.) Fantôme has been living at the shelter since January. Someone tied Willow to a tree and then abandoned him. He doesn't do well, being confined to a cage, continually trying to get out, sometimes injuring himself. Oupsy, loveable clutz, always getting tangled in her leash, is the most affectionate creature. She hadn't quite got the hang of ball-gets-thrown-you're-supposed-to-chase-after-it-not-just-stand-there-watching game, what a goof, but she's positively delightful; I can't imagine why no one's taken her yet. And poor old Nutella, placed on the "urgent adoption" list now as she's not tolerating "life in a cage" too well lately.

I know, I know, getting emotionally involved with strange animals can sometimes be a curse. One can't save them all. Still ... they have so much to teach us, they're such great fun sometimes. Annoying, too but hey, so are humans. Today they're having a big garage-sale fundraiser at the SPCA where visitors can tour the premises and see what they do there, met the staff (and animals) and perhaps increase their awareness of how hard it is to take care of and try to place these unfortunate animals.

My jury's still out (about the reincarnation thing) but I wonder, if that were true, what would happen if I "came back" as a dog. ("Oh Lord, a St. Bernard, I mean really. I would have preferred being a Husky. Do you know how much it would cost someone to FEED me? And with all this hair--summers would be unbearable!") Assuming one had a choice in such things, ha ha. I think what, where and who you come back as is supposed to teach you a life lesson you didn't manage to learn the first time around, so maybe that'd be my karma--to be a St. Bernard and have to go save people lost in snowdrifts, to make up for all the times I maybe could have helped someone, and didn't. Who knows.

"You never know."

Gettin' Scary out there

2011-06-01T19:17:00.000-04:00

"If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks."

The US government is rewriting its military rule book to make cyber-attacks a possible act of war, giving commanders the option of launching retaliatory military strikes against hackers backed by hostile foreign powers.

The Pentagon has concluded that the laws of armed conflict can be widened to embrace cyberwarfare in order to allow the US to respond with the use of force against aggressive assaults on its computer and IT infrastructure.

The move, to be unveiled in a US department of defence strategy document next month, is a significant step towards the militarisation of cyberspace, with huge implications for international law.

[Source: The Guardian, May 31, 2011]

" ... except for a brief period between the fall of Saigon and the Iranian revolution, the United States has been engaged in constant warfare somewhere in the world since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. That's seventy years of perpetual war that does not appear to be ending any time soon. At present the United States Military is engaged in ongoing armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya." [1]

The Pentagon has developed a list of cyber-weapons and -tools, including viruses that can sabotage an adversary’s critical networks, to streamline how the United States engages in computer warfare.
The classified list of capabilities has been in use for several months and has been approved by other agencies, including the CIA, said military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive program. The list forms part of the Pentagon’s set of approved weapons or “fires” that can be employed against an enemy. [Source: The Washington Post, May 31, 2011]

Bats, Fish, Wearable Words & Recycled Duds

2011-05-31T16:34:00.000-04:00

[click to enlarge]

The last time I was down in the States, my daughter and I stopped by the Garment District in East Cambridge (Mass.), a funky clothing establishment where, on Fridays, you can get gently worn apparel at $1 a pound. I came back with this gray T-shirt from Barnstable Bat Company, which sports a codfish in its logo. The town of Barnstable (pronounced "BARN-stbbl"), is on Cape Cod, so that would explain the codfish--but the image that first popped into my head at the words "bat company" ... was of a large, winged bat. (My mate thought the logo indicated a fish market. We were both wrong. The company makes wooden baseball bats.)

I once inherited a T-shirt with the black dog on it. I say "the" black dog, because most everyone on the Cape would recognize it as the dog from the Black Dog Tavern, a Martha's Vineyard island icon, no need to add identifying words.

A couple of years ago it seemed a trend hereabouts to wear clothing covered with words from seam to seam, as part of the design. The words--from long quotations to strings of random phrases--could be in any language and they didn't have to make any sense. I saw one in Latin once, in Gothic script trailing up the sleeves from cuff to shoulder and continuing across the back; and one frilly top that contained nothing but action verbs.

Putting words and images on clothing as messages (or "art"), though, is nothing new. Words or symbols attached to or printed on items (not just clothing) that compels us, consciously or subconsciously, to buy, wear or use them, or as expressions of who we think we are.

Somewhere along the line, in looking to heighten brand-name identification, corporations must have noted the invisibility factor of labels sewn into the inside of a garment and decided to be more in-your-face about letting everyone know just whose product that piece of clothing you happen to be wearing, is. ("Let's put our name (or company logo) on the outside!" I can imagine them saying.) A marketer's dream: "Ah," someone notes unconsciously, encountering the worded garment being walked down the street, "she shops at [insert name of department store]." The wearer, in effect, has become a human billboard for that particular clothing corporation.

Then came the T-shirt phenomenon, where words and symbols exploded as messages of hope ("Yes We Can!"), anger ("No More War!"), concern ("Save the Whale!", "Free Tibet", etc.), as a way of parading one's status, personal beliefs, academic or political affiliation, or attitude.

This propensity to wear the words and symbols with which we identify is not just limited to clothing. We also like stenciling them into our own bodies, by way of a tattoo needle. Unlike the branding of cattle--which for the animal is involuntary--the marking of one's own body as a wearable word or symbol is an example of, I think, the all-too-human desire to "say" something about ourselves, to express something that's inside (by wearing it on the outside).

They're so pervasive nowadays, these worded garments, though, that people barely notice anymore. Nor does anyone necessarily know or even care what they mean, these mass-produced words or symbols copied, spread, worn--as "decoration".   (I'm pretending I'm an alien from another planet, looking down on Planet Earth and wondering: "Why do they have this peculiar need to want to enhance everything--with text, or more color, or accessorization?" ha ha.)

I once was putting something away in my closet and noticed that practically everything in there was of a solid color (mainly Navy blue, black, or earth colors). Only the occasional delightful cobalt blue, vivid red, dreamy bluish-green, or soft lavender. I can't wear white or gray--the color immediately drains from my eyes with the former, and I look literally half dead with the latter. I never buy anything orange, kelly green, yellow, or pink, because they're not me. Stripes (depending in which direction, and rarely), plaid (never!), polka dots, kazillians of tiny little (or large, flashy) flowers (styles a bit on the too-"busy" side), or fabric that looks like a kitchen curtain were also not to be found in that closet    And nothing with words on the front, back, pocket, hood, or sleeves. Does that make me a fashionista dinosaur, I wonder.

I do not spend a lot of money on clothing, and I recycle them frequently. Knowing where somebody's clothing comes from or having a preconceived notion about certain 'types' of clothing can heighten (or lower) one's perception of the wearer of that clothing. You see this in newspaper articles sometimes; for example, when the reporter finds it necessary to include a deatailed description of what the subject is wearing ("Mr. X, wearing a black leather jacket and chain lecklace"; Miss Y, dressed in a peasant-type skirt and black tights..."; Mr. Z, impeccably attired in a pin-striped suit and tie...", etc.), to imply something about the subject's character.

About clothing other than the 'store-bought' kind, it's not that you cant find well-fitting, quality-made or even originally outrageously expensive "brand-name" apparel at local thrift shops. You can, and I have. It's amusing though, some people would never dream of wearing a shirt or jacket formerly owned by some stranger (it must be new, straight from the manufacturer, unowned by anyone before). Wearing your dad's old hunting shirt or cousin Sally's former prom dress or an older sibling's hand-me-downs is okay, though, 'cuz they're "family.". Yes, says my imaginary alien, "You humans are certainly weird."

Yes, we are. Some of us, anyway. We come in many varieties. No one mold fits us all. And today nobody really considers the proliferation of words and symbols on the fabric in which we clothe ourselves as anything unusual. We do, however, have somewhat standard ideas about fashion, having to do with what goes with what and what doesn't. Wearing a short blue sock on one foot and a long purple sock on the other, for instance, is something no human would ever do, intentionally. Socks HAVE to match. That's just a given.

It might have something to do with the symmetricality of humans having two (matching) eyes, two (same-length) arms, two (pretty much identical) hands, legs, feet, etc. Cultural, regional or generational fashion proclivities aside, no one considers you weird for following your particular 'clan'. (They might find your clan strange but it's an acknowledged difference. You as an individual representing that clan or group fit into a knowable, identifiable category. A person deliberately going about wearing one short blue sock and one long purple sock, however, fits no easy category you can place him into. Does he fit the category of People-Who-Don't-Know-the-Rules? or the category of Somebody-Who-Doesn't-Know-Any-Better? Or maybe he's one of those People-Deliberately-Trying-to-Get-Attention type persons. The point is, wearing socks that don't match is something people notice. It calls attention to its being an anomaly. That's not the way the unspoken rule of fashion operates. Everybody knows socks have to match. It's a given.

Ditto for gender-based "rules". In most of the civilized world, men don't wear skirts. Scottish kilts, the robes worn by priests, etc, and the many-medalled military jackets of retired generals are a sort of costume put on for special occasions, not usually worn in everyday life. As are the outfits we wear in performing certain type employment such as medical, social, military, and security-related jobs. Even without identifying words, most people recognize the 'uniform.'

Like a culture's costumes hundreds or thousands of years ago, the type and style of clothing we wear is merely a reflection of who we were or are. Who knows in 50 or 100 years from now (if Planet Earth survives till then), what humans will be wearing. (Hopefully not those one-style-fits-all androgynous outfits worn by the crew of the Starship "Enterprise", samples of which I've seen go for over $2,000, as a "collectible".) ( I wonder if my Barnstable Codfish Bat T-shirt will one day be a collectible.)

For now, the codbat (as I've begun to think of it) functions as my garden shirt, upgraded from its former duty as a pajama top. I must not let those words (and that fish image) go to waste though. I must start wearing it out in public! Like to the supermarket, that when I approach the fish counter, might prompt a fellow shopper to inquire as to its meaning. (And then I can wax specific about the beaches of Cape Cod, how wonderful it is riding on a bike down some little road past those pretty cottages with flower boxed windows, the smell of the ocean air wafting past, the quiet lap of the waves, and . . .

"Really," says my fictional alien visitor, "you earth people are truly strange."

_______________________________

*Disclaimer. A person actually did go out the front door once having on one blue sock and one brown sock. Me. It was not intentional, however. This happened many years ago and I was shocked--shocked, I say--that I had not noticed. I immediately remedied the situation, of course, relieved that no one had seen. It was then the notion first came to me--this idea of the unspoken "rules" one accepts to live by, regarding choice, type and style, of wearing apparel.   I was looking on the situation from the outside, as it were, and found the whole thing hilarious. What strange creatures we are, I remember thinking (meaning us, humans) (as if I wasn't human).

Hence the fictional alien above has some precedence. Color, style and texture are important in clothes. Words? I'm not so sure about the latter. If clothes define us (as many perceive they do), then clothes carrying words also say something about us. Or not. It's that aspect of the phenomenon that strikes me as most interesting, that words themselves, once confined merely to the printed page and directional/locational signifiers (buildings, roadways, rooms of education) escaped, as it were, and infiltrated our duds, so thoroughly, and so completely, that no one even notices anymore. It's just part of the scene.

But don't take my word for it. Try this little experiment. Wear a T-shirt with some words on it--any words--and go walk down the street. Note how many people actually LOOK at it, read what it says. Now go back home and put on one short (any color) sock, and one long (different color) sock and go sit somewhere at a bus stop, at the mall, in a waiting room or at a friend's house somewhere, where they can see your socks. Note the reactions. I'm just saying.

P.S. I'll probably recycle the 'codbat' come autumn. It cost $18 new. I got it at a Dollar-a-Pound for pennies. Who knows how old it is. I wonder who its next 'owner' will be and what its fate may eventually become: a cloth to wash the car with, maybe. Some orphanage in a third-world country. Cut up and shredded for scrap. Or hanging in a place of honor in some collector's closet, as a cherished Collectible. I wish for it the latter. No, wait. It should go to the orphanage, live a purposeful life, instead of just hanging there, taking up space. In the meantime, it lives with all my other duds, a true equal, albeit boasting somewhat of being an anomaly, being as it's the only one with (washable!!) words.

Speaking of words, ha ha.   Good grief.

Fun with Harmony #5

2011-05-28T22:29:00.001-04:00

Red Drop, Dancing

War, Up Front and Personal

3as1

_______________________________________________________

*Experimenting again with Mr. Doob's Harmony Drawing Program

Poets, Prizes and Ponderings

2011-05-28T10:57:00.000-04:00

How did I miss this announcement during National Poetry Month in April? A new poetry contest has emerged, intending to be "the world's largest poetry competition". The Montreal International Poetry Prize will not only award $50,000 for the best poem but publish the top 50 finalists in a "first-of-its-kind annual global poetry anthology."

The prize money was made possible anonymously, with the hope that this will become "an annual means of raising funds for promoting and supporting poetry around the world, including direct financial support for poets and the creation of a dynamic global poetry centre."

The ten international poets on the Editorial Board (which will change every year) will read the submissions and choose the 50 best poems for the anthology, which will be published in print and in e-formats by Montreal’s Véhicule Press in the autumn of 2011. They intend to eventually then publish the next best 100 of the poems submitted, in a second, separate anthology.

Final deadline is July 8, in case anyone is interested in sending in a previously unpublished poem. All entries will be selected and judged anonymously. The winner will be announced in December.

I like the 'direct-financial-support-for-poets' part of the equation. :) Imagine, being paid for writing poetry! Granted, there are a lot of poets who are paid to teach poetry (as their day job), which could be both a stimulus and a deterrent vis-a-vis one's own creative writing, but imagine just receiving a windfall, out of the blue, for poetry you've already written.

It must be nice to receive $50,000 for your poetry. One poet recently was awarded double that amount. David Ferry, 87, was "thunderstruck" to discover he was chosen as the 2011 recipient of the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize this spring. He accepted the honor of this organization's "recognition of an extraordinary lifetime accomplishment for a living U.S. poet"--but as to the prize money, he says: "I'm giving it all away." It will go to "various social-service organizations he has supported in the past." (Ferry, "who has volunteered for about 30 years at a Boston soup kitchen," says "It's like a great windfall," but believes that "a windfall should be used, if possible, not as if it were your income.") [1]

In an interview with Tess Taylor, Ferry describes how he first came to poetry, talks about translating poetry, about poetry that just "comes up", and the element of "happenstance":

"It’s all about happenstance, but then it also happens to connect up. The things that happen to you seem to happen by accident but, because you’re you, they seem to connect to other things."

The money prize is only one motivation for submitting one's poems to contests; the desire for recognition a significant part of it as well. What fascinates me (endlessly) are poets themselves, what they write, why they write, how they write, poets who translate other poets; but even more than that ... Poetry itself. As to financial recompense: "Do what you love and the money will follow" does not always follow. And recognition? How many poets' work is only discovered, accidentally, decades after they've left the earth. And the life of the poem itself: ones stand the test of time to become 'classics'; words in any poem that literally change your life.

Anyway ...

Organizations and their prizes

poets and their writing and their poems

recognitions, obscurity, aspirations, generosity

the written word connecting . . .

all of a piece

a Saturday morning's
tiny musings

They caught my eye

2011-05-15T22:45:00.000-04:00

rainwater of a Sunday afternoon

brief shadow lands

before sky went dark

My garden buddha lost his arm.

(Like that's gonna deter him from slug patrol!)

The bees love him, land on his head.
Been with us five years now, refuses to retire.

Every spring, in the exact same spot

a single tulip

Hallowed-out section of
a tree stump

Lost and Found

2011-05-14T11:13:00.000-04:00

What a wonderful posting yesterday on Paul Martin's blog, The Teacher's View. Not only is he a wonderful and engaging writer (meaning it is difficult to tear yourself away from the words once you start reading) but he echoes thoughts, imaginings and musings so familiar it's as if looking in a mirror.

He describes what it's like being in a well-loved reading spot, with its vaulted ceilings and view of the Pacific Ocean. "This is where I belong, my home," he writes. But I took it in the larger sense, referring not to the stacks of that particular, well-loved library but in general, simply being among books--because though I, too, have "favorite library" memories, the feelings he talks about can come from being in one's own little corner of stacked books, or briefly, in the nook of a bookshop, lost in a world of exploration, finding the joy in discovery--a 'home' that's not rooted to a physical place but to the mental world in which one chooses to reside. In that sense, home can be anywhere--or nowhere--depending on the availability of books and those quiet moments necessary for reflection.

Yesterday, while sorting clothes in my reading room to give away to a local clothing drive, a ragged tome from several decades ago caught my eye and I paused to open it up and thumb through it again. And putting it back onto the shelf led me to its neighbor, another book I hadn't read in many years, and ... you know where this is going ... the clothes-sorting task now abandoned, I became lost in the very world described so aptly by Paul on his blog yesterday. A five-minute 'break' that can turn into an hour and 45 minutes--such is the power of words on a page.

Thank you, Paul for such beautiful writing, for reminding me how wonderful is the world of stories and ideas and memories found in books, for reminding me that, for me, too, "This is where I belong, my home", the one you take with you no matter where you actually land in life.

What makes the engine go ... longing for the dance

2011-05-09T14:47:00.001-04:00

                                              TOUCH ME

                                             Summer is late, my heart.
                                             Words plucked out of the air
                                             some forty years ago
                                             when I was wild with love
                                             and torn almost in two
                                             scatter like leaves this night
                                             of whistling wind and rain.
                                             It is my heart that's late,

it is my song that's flown.

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down,

I kneeled to the crickets trilling

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.

What makes the engine go?

Desire, desire, desire.

The longing for the dance

stirs in the buried life.

                                             One season only, and it's done.
                                             So let the battered old willow
                                         thrash against the windowpanes
                                             and the house timbers creak.
                                   Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

In an interview in in The Brooklyn Rail (July/August 2005), as he was approaching his 100th year, poet Stanley Kunitz was asked if he could live forever would he translate poems into every language--and if so, what would make it worth it? Kunitz replied: "All those poems!!"

[Photo by Matt Valentine, with permission.]

In the interview, poet/translator Farnoosh Fathi spoke with Kunitz and his literary assistant, poet Genine Lentine, about his life-long devotion to poetry. Kunitz had a full life as a poet, editor, teacher, activist and leader, and he loved working in his garden.

How many of us could hope to live to the age of 100 (or might even want to)? Is the writing of poetry a lifelong thing? or does the flame die out for some, somewhere along the years, the interest and passion periodically waning, the presence of the muse no longer felt?

Do the poems one pens in one's youth speak more honestly than those brought forth in later years; is there a common theme one keeps going back to, again and again? Do we promote or eschew the poetry of our time, wearily succumbing, passionately resisting--or simply not caring one way or the other?

The poetry we write will outlive us, but only comes to life again when read, or spoken, spread, or thought about. Like flowers in a garden, some words need replanting to ensure visibility; others seem to arrive of themselves, in unlikely corners, waiting for someone to notice. Finding these gems may be not so much a case of where we look but that we look--it's as if life in all its absurdities still succeeds in pulling us towards its poetic 'dance'--in nature, in song, and in words.

When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you have to think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgement of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself. And I think the world tends to forget that this is the ultimate significance of the body of work each artist produces. It is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude for the gift of life.

~ ~ Stanley Kunitz [The Wild Braid, W.W. Norton, 2005]

Some other quotes of Stanley Kunitz, particularly helpful for poets or writers:

"You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin."

"In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: 'Live in the layers, not on the litter.' Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes."

"Be what you are. Give what is yours to give. Have style. Dare."

(Interesting reflection: One's life as a "book of transformation"; poetry as a testament to what changes in us, what remains the same, and how and why we're driven to express it.

Thanks, Stanley. Your poems, like the perennials in my garden ... still erupting, still singing life.

Buds on Blue

2011-05-06T16:06:00.001-04:00

From our walk in the Sanctuary park last Sunday afternoon:

Two leaves conversing

______________

[Click on tree to enlarge :) ]

A Researcher's Caution to the Curious

2011-05-05T16:49:00.002-04:00

So, more than a number of people, it seems, aren't buying the Osama bin Laden death story. This is, after all, the third (or is it the fourth?) time he's been reported dead. Remembering all those questionable photos, recordings and videos that kept surfacing, time after time, which later analysis showed to be photoshopped or digitally altered, regularly being discovered by the same terrorist-hunter organization again and again, straining credibility, and now--he dies yet again. One simply doesn't know what to believe anymore.

My gut reaction to this startling new event reported on Monday was one of a nagging ... disbelief. Maybe it was the timing, certain seemingly staged 'spontaneous' eruptions (hordes of people suddenly showing up at midnight near the White House wearing patriotic T-shirts and waving flags? where'd all the flags come from?), the often cringeworthy rhetoric that's followed, the predictable lively Internet outpourings from both celebrators and questioners; but most perplexing the discrepancies in details, the changing, conflicting narrative as reports are hastily revised. I wonder if we'll ever learn the whole story; how much of the story was fact, how much a "story."

We are asked to believe that the assault/killing, "taking custody" of the corpse, search and gathering of material on site, destruction of the 'malfunctioning' [a neighborhood guy claimed it was shot down] helicoptor, flight to Afghanistan, DNA test [usually takes 3-7 days; a rush job normally 72 hours] confirming his identity [shoot first, confirm later?], flight to the USS Carl Vinson, preparation for and burial at sea all took place within 10 hours; that though footage of the bloody aftermath was quickly shown on TV, there was a 25-minute-blackout "during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off." [CIA director says they "really didn't know just exactly what was going on... we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself."] The US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden, not the president.["But according to Pakistani authorities one of bin Laden’s daughters, who was present during the raid, claimed that her father was captured alive before he was killed."] ???   [And, depending on which source you believe, the Pakistanis were or were not aware of bin Laden's presence in the compound.][1]

Others have better articulated this Lie-or-Truth?-bafflement, providing yet more examples of discrepancies and changing narrative. [Note the comment from the spouse of a sailor aboard the USS Carl Vinson re: the alleged burial at sea.]

And they wonder why people keep asking, "What actually happened? Did this really happen? Where's the body? A film, a photo ... something! Where's the proof?"   Trying to sort out the rapidly emerging different stories, I can't say I blame them. Each explanation elicits only more questions, each new question yet another version.

Moving on ... as one must. (The head boggles otherwise! :)   CNN yesterday warned that al Qaeda "will want revenge". Still celebrating bin Laden's death, they hasten to re-insert the FEAR factor. I don't like the timing on this. Is something about to happen for which we should all be prepared?

I see that there's another one of those massive national TOPOFF exercises (National Level Exercise 2011), scheduled to take place May 16-20, "to prepare for catastrophic crises ranging from terrorism to natural disasters."   Kind of like what happened during 9/11, when an excerise practicing response to an attack by terrorists occurred the same time as an actual attack by terrorists was occurring, the latter which certain officials mistook for a drill. The focus of the upcoming NLE-2011 will be on scenarios based on a possible massive earthquake along the New Madrid fault line [check out the seismic activity in that area of Arkansas over the past several months; coinkydinkly omininous]. Last month's other gigantic public preparedness event in the mid-West was called "The Great Shakeout", practicing for a similar scenario. What happened in Japan recently has us all spooked, wondering about fault lines, etc. According to a participant in one of the preparation workshops, this NLE-2011 exercise is a "big deal," with 8 states in 4 different FEMA areas actively participating.

Interesting: The scenario calls for "a total systems failure for at least the first 24 hours." I'm trying to imagine what might occur during a "total systems failure" for 24 hours, simultaneously in eight states, and the panic that might ensue among citizens who don't realize this is a planned event to test preparedness. Are they going to merely simulate a Big Blackout or actually conduct one in real time? Just curious, in light of that warning about a possible al Qaeda attack as revenge on the U.S, for killing bin Laden--what if the big castrophic cyberattack professional hacker-watchers are concerned about were to actually occur at the same time as this national preparedness excercise? (The dreaded Stuxnet comes to mind.)

Nah, that's just false-flag conspiracy talk.

And yet ... as with any sensational news, five days later it's still being played out, the Osama death has taken on a life of its own, so many different interpretations, it gets morphed into what you want it to mean. A monumental ... distraction, right after the 24/7 coverage of the Royal Wedding, a lesser distraction. A compelling interest rapidly turned to weary confusion--too many loose ends, weird coincidences, ever-evolving new explanations. Noting that people even mildly suspicious of the Osama bin Laden death news are quickly and systematically ridiculed, berated for being Unpatriotic, or dismissed as raving conspiracy theorists, still--even for the slightly. skeptical or inherently curious, sometimes it's best not to go there. Curiosity can have consequences.

Can't say that I wasn't forewarned. Am aware, for example, that hackers love huge, highly sensational events like this, because it draws people in droves to the Internet to get more information, fueled especially by increased chatter of Twitterers, Facebookers, MySpacers, Bingers, etc. on the social networking scene. Not only have gruesome fake corpse photos rapidly been making the rounds (for those who like looking at such things) but bogus websites have been instantly created simply to lure you into clicking on the URLs--a bonanza, I'm told, for data fishers. Sadly, even legitimate sites may have been tampered with as well, certain items curiously absent or unavailable. (One Pakistani newspaper search function, for example, omitted the month of May in its searchable archived articles. The column listing months of the year, somehow forgot to include the 5th month). I avoided clicking on certain links, concentrating mostly on online legitimate news sites.

Maybe it was the terms I used when googling, who knows? But shortly after my little search for more information on the Osama bin Laden death this week, a large ominous WARNING!! box suddenly appeared on my screen, announcing that my computer had been infected with 38 separate malware infiltrations. (38!!!). In all my years of Internetting, this has happened only perhaps two or three times, with only one or two 'attacks' being noted, easily traced and promptly removed, no real damage done. This one was different.

Normally I don't click on the portion of the warning message that offers to remove the viruses [Just click on "Remove", it suggests] because the announcement itself could be a virus. (Clever buggers, relying on the initial panic where you might respond without thinking, and hit their Remove button.) I was, however, prevented from employing my own available anti-virus programs or downloading alternate trusted sources to excise the malware because my computer this time, with the mere appearance of the Warning, instantly CRASHED.

I am using a spare portable laptop now. My mate, a computer technician, managed to erase the majority of the viruses yesterday but despite all the professional equipment at his disposal, was unable to locate, much less eradicate, this one remaining, deeply devious, nasty intruder. Dagnabbit! The entire hard drive must now be 'cleaned', reconfigured, files all restored, programs re-installed. Arrrrgggggg.

[Update on my 'puter's prognosis as of noon: They're still trying to debug it. Be careful what you search for--not just where but what --the terms you use in googling are also gathered and archived somewhere in a big invisible data cloud. I know this because they've sometimes been later repeated back to me verbatim, on sites partnered with Google to increase the advertising potential. (My "browsing history" on Amazon.com, for example, knew word-for-word an oddly-worded phrase I had keyboarded in a Google search for information re: a particular historical period; and Target's on-line department store knew I had recently been googling info about toaster ovens around Christmas time a few years ago. (Both companies have contracted with Google to share Internet users' interests.) Google, of course, regularly sweeps by our blogs and poaches personal photos and images for its Images page. (Not as scary, however, as once when emailing a family member through a gmail account I mentioned my mom always having wanted to go to Hawaii but never did, then all of a sudden ads from travel agencies featuring Hawaii start popping up on a number of sites I next happen to visit. Para-noid-i-a, ha ha. I blame it on the cookies.)

I like the new laptop. Took a while to get used to it. A renewed interest in wanting to play with some art programs, learn how to design and publish books, figure out a way to maybe expand my freelance business. Much as I like this new little laptop, I miss my (fast-becoming-obsolete) specially-ordered favorite square monitor. These wider screens a bit hard to get used to, too much white space. Love the keyboard though. And that I can see the grandbubs with the embedded videocam when I talk to them on Skype. Ah, the wonders of technology. This, from someone who fought tooth and nail to hang onto the electric typewriter!

I feel the need to go read something poetic. Or dig in warm garden dirt. De-verbosify with a haiku. Engagement with Bloggerville, however generally looked forward to, today bequeaths me staggering overload.

Shut eyes. Take deep breath. "Ommmmmm...."

A cat purrs alongside me, curious.

_________

5:20 PM Update: It's fixed!!!! :) Virus is gone!!!