Train Track Walk

[Click on images to enlarge]

Lost little ice floe, reluctant to melt

Leaf on Ice

_______________________

Photos taken on an early morning walk, April 8, 2013, 

with an Olympus SZ-14 pocket camera.

Words, Hands, Libraries, War Jokes & Spring Geese

On  CNN this morning at the dedication ceremony for Bush 43's mammoth presidential library, Laura Bush was recalling her memories of George's greatest moments.

"My George, who when someone needs a hand, offers them their hands."

She actually said that.
(Could George  have helped with the scriptwriting?)

I'm trying to envision a scene where someone asks for help and you "offer them their hands".

"I can't help you, buddy.   Get to work and find a solution. You got hands.  Use 'em! 

Go  volunteer to clear some brush or something.  

Or better yet, put them together, palm to palm, and pray.  

Stop looking for handouts!"

Watching the verbal blooper made me laugh and shake my head in disbelief.
The more things change, the more they ... don't.
I hesitated posting this.  Simply reporting an observation and/or voicing an impression could appear disrespectful, maybe even snarky.  Thank heavens no one reads these jottings.

[I have one of those stat thingies that tells you how many people visit your blog on a given day, showing first-time visitors and returning ones.  I rarely check it, but this morning for some reason, I did.   It was a little disheartening to see the stats for the past five days -- Sunday, 4 visitors, Monday, 4, Tuesday 5 (all first-timers), yesterday and today, zero.]

Zero! ha ha.  Thirteen people in five days, that's gotta be some kind of record.
(I'm not counting the 38 visits by the Googlebot (commercial) as a real visit.  The Googlebot, which regularly sweeps by to poach photos for its Google Image Page.)  Homeland Security has also visited.  Twice.   A few months ago.   (Was it something I said?)]

No, no, "When you see something, SAY something" doesn't mean tell the commander caterpillar his shoelace is untied! (I imagine an eagle eye boring into the conversation.)  You want to muck up the march with an irrelevancy like that?  Watch your tone, writer.  What's important is to march in step.

This could be a potential comedic play. 

How newsfeeds of the day inspire metaphoric retellings.


Come to think of it, that quote, corrected, still doesn't make sense.

"My George, who when someone needs a hand, offers them their his hands."

Shouldn't that be singular?  (as in, "Give a person a hand?" Not  "Give a person hands").

Semantics.  Quibble-dee-dee, Quibble-dee-doo. 

But seriously, why can't people say what they mean and mean what they say?

Words matter.  Except when you're speechifying.
Or minimalizing death-by-policy-enactment.

"There are weapons of mass destruction."
Oops, no.  I take that back.  There actually weren't any.
Chuckle, chuckle.  Look under the table.  "None here!"  hee hee.
So . . . presidential.

His predecessor follows suit.
Re: Any young boys thinking of dating my daughters, listen up, fellas:
"I have two words for you -- Predator.   Drones.
You will never see it coming.
 You think I'm joking."

Class Act Times Two.  Both instances, at the podium at the White House Annual Correspondents Association Dinner.  Everyone laughed and clapped.  [Source]

How is it presidents can laugh and joke about their policies that have resulted in hundreds or thousands of deaths, and journalists whose job it is to report the truth, laugh and clap, like the words are just words.

A sitting president can joke, in a pretend threat about death by drone to his daughters' potential suitors, and everyone laughs.

A citizen can joke, in a casual conversation among friends, saying the world would be better off without so-and-so as the president, and, should some vigilant other, second citizen who'd "seen/heard something"--actually went and said something -- said loose-lipped first citizen might just find himself suddenly suspected of being a terrorist.
You think I'm joking.

Words can help people /change people / kill people / have unspoken presumptions
 
"Trust me". (You have no choice)
"Yes I can" (but maybe I won't)
"I promise" (depending ...)
"Engage target" (sort of -- it might hit 20 other non-targets, but hey, stuff happens)
"We were wrong" (Stuff happens).

It's been a week of pompous ceremony, memorial celebration/mourning of victims of the chemical blast in West, Texas and the bombing at the Boston marathon.  Lots of fear and tears and thoughts about sudden death and how precious life is.  I thought about that today watching the geese fly by, a winged migration undulating past on their way to who knows where.  That I can't find the words to adequately convey how this simple scene, of which I've never grown tired, inspires, energizes and makes me feel such connection with life.  Words fail.  You would have had to have experienced it, and words only tell the story "after".

Well, enough of words. Tomorrow, trek-along-the-train-track photos.  Taken when there was still a bit of snow and ice around. Not that long ago, really.  All that snow in the previous posting is gone.

Spring!!!  Yay.

Catpeek

What the heck's that?

(1)  a frightened, tight-lipped bald guy submerged in water, trying to remember how to keep afloat?
(2)  a camel-faced  animal, quietly swimming by in a pond, smiling?.
(3)  the remains of someone's uneaten lunch (burnt pita-bread sandwich that got smooshed)?

Or is it:

 

(4) a fellow sticking his head out of the shower curtain, wondering, "Now where did I put the towel?"

or is it:

(5)  a discarded  scary Halloween mask hanging on a nail in the closet.

Actually, it's a block of gray clay, worked over first like bread dough, then punched into some random shape and placed under a tiny bright lamp in a darkened room.  Our job, as beginning art students, was to draw its lines and shadows.  It was the first time I had ever used a charcoal stick (so there were lots of smudges).   (Did I mention we were timed?)

It wasn't ever intended to "be" anything, except a sketchy rendition of something observed.
The interpretations come later.

My final drawing looks nothing like the original clay blob, because I'd begun playing with "shadowing".   And somewhere during the process of "Draw what you see", I began seeing more than just lines and shadows and angles - I saw what looked like a kind of mask.  I looked again and saw a nervous guy submerged in water, or a goofy animal in a pond. 

Response to any work of art is subjective (justso with poetry and fiction). Not everybody is talented or skilled at the crafting of it.  Sometimes all you want to hear (in the way of feedback) from someone, is "Did you like it or not?  Did it say anything to you?"  (or, if there was an intentional message the artist/writer wanted to convey--"Did you 'get' it?")  But instead, sometimes it gets analyzed to death, "It's too detailed, it looks unfinished, it's clearly been influenced by the X-school,  it's not up to the your usual standard, it's too dark a subject, it's too vague, it's "cute", or--what they say when they don't want to tell you it sucks (because they don't want to hurt your feelings)--"it's .... interesting."   ha ha

This is not "art", it's just a timed, beginning-level,class assignment.But it's good practice in training one to be more observant of a thing's nuances and delightful possibilities..

I see now why sometimes what you start out to create, with a very clear idea of what you intend,  it suddenly starts turning into something totally else.  I find this happens equally in making art, writing poems or stories or  non-fiction or in organizing some project    It's like something grabs your attention during the creative (or putting together) process, a kind of voiceless voice that seems to whisper,  "Hey, why don't you do this, instead of that?"  or "Why not change the focus?" or "Damn, this isn't working.  Let's rethink the whole arrangement".  And you begin looking at the thing in a  completely different way and realize: "Eureka!  That's IT!"

So, vis-a-vis the art class, the "how to" part is important, and the practice essential.You have to pay attention.  It's hard work.  (So much erasing, messing up, starting over!)  But it starts getting more interesting the more you get into it..  You start "seeing" more possibilities.  It gets to be more fun.. You become addicted. 

I'm calling this image  "Clay Blob I, II and II" ( the same drawing, seen from three different viewing positions).

I almost didn't take this course (Art for Beginners) initially, because it meets at night and if you're a  morning person, it means you have to rush through or skip dinner, and you get  hungry, tired and risk dozing off when you should be alert and focused.  Inner rhythm and all that.  So I'm not continuing beyond Spring and will just have to rely on "How To..." books from the library and YouTube videos to get more specialized training.  Visiting artists' blogs, seeing what others are creating, and talking with artists helps enormously.  You get all sorts of wonderful advice ("They'll never tell you this in class but here's a hint about how to ..." etc.).  Invaluable!

Anyway, so that's my art assignment for last week. Only two more sessions and then we're on our own, so to speak.  But it's got me completely hooked,.  Ask me how many hours I could spend in the local art store now, looking at brushes and pens and sketchbooks and tubed oil paints and watercolor kits and charcoal pencils and ink and ......

Paper is not dead

 Amusing little French advert.
 (Only one word is ever spoken, so subtitles not needed.)

 http://vimeo.com/61275290

If You, If I

 My mate got up at 5:30 this morning because Pepe the cat was whining for his breakfast.  When the two of them went downstairs I yawned and stretched out and snuggled back up under the covers.  Ahhhh, I have the whole bed to myself, I thought.

IF YOU, IF I

If you were not here, I could have the whole bed to myself.
(But then there'd be no one to keep me warm these long cold snowy nights.)

If I were not here, you could have the whole bed to yourself
(until the cats come and claim the extra space.)

If you were not here, I'd have no one to fix my computer,
listen to my stories, eat dinner with,  hug me and
make me feel everything will always forever be okay.
If I were not here, you'd probably never eat another vegetable again and
live on peanut butter sandwiches and ice cream and chips
or rice-and-pasta, rice-and-pasta, rice-and-pasta, rice-and-pasta,
and gain 50 pounds.

If you were not here, I'd feel as if a big part of me'd gone missing.
The emptiness would scream out
the absence of You.
If I were not here, I think you'd miss me too.

If you were not here, I would remember your touch and your laugh and your kindness
and always save the last dance for you (even though you don't dance). 
If I were not here you might be lost for a time but the universe will see to it that
you're not alone for too long.  After all, it brought us together,  right?

Two ships in the night that otherwise might not have crossed paths.

And if we both were not here -
       who would feed the cats!?

Thoreau's little house in the woods

Earlier this week I was down in Massachusetts and on Monday after visiting some old friends in Concord, stopped by Walden Woods to see if we could find Henry David Thoreau's little house.  It no longer exists but there's a replica there of the one-room structure in which he lived from July 4, 1845 to September 6, 1847.

The original building stood on a slope overlooking Walden Pond about one-half mile from here [in the photo].  It was possible to create an accurate reproduction of Thoreau's home because he described it in such detail in Walden, the book he later wrote about his two-year-long experiment.  Thoreau built most of the home with his own hands.

The 10' X 15' cottage, as seen from the back

Someone had been there before us.  Footprints going in,
circling the house, coming back out

Walk up and peek into the window at the side

and you see:

a desk and 3 chairs

This is the front of the house.
Looking in at the other side window, you see:

Thoreau's desk, on top of which sits what looks like
a Visitor Book where guests can sign their names.  
 

To the left, Thoreau's fireplace, stove and woodpile;
underneath the opposite window, a single bed

Cost of Materials for Thoreau's House (from Walden)

                                            Boards                                       $8.03 1/2            Mostly shanty boards

                                            Refuse shingles for 

                                            roof and sides                            4.00

                                            Laths                                              1.25

                                            Two second-hand windows

                                            with glass                                     2.43

                                            One thousand old brick          4.00

                                            Two casks of lime                      2.40                  That was high.

                                            Hair                                                 0.31               More than I needed.

                                            Mantle-tree iron                        0.15

                                            Nails                                               3.90

                                            Hinge and screws                      0.14

                                            Latch                                              0.10

                                            Chalk                                              0.01

                                            Transportation                           1.40                  I carried a good part on my back.

    

                                                                                               $28.12  1/2

                                     

Sculpture nearby.

While at Walden, Thoreau chopped wood, cleared land, made bread, grew

vegetables (2 acres of beans), did repairs, and of course, read books and wrote.

He often had visitors (hence, the 2 extra chairs), and regularly trekked into town for news.

I imagine Thoreau walking these woods,
spring, summer, autumn, winter . . .

"Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing ..." 

listening for the birds,
contemplating snow

Thoreau claimed he never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.  Who of us has not at one time or another wanted to get away somewhere, to some island or seashore or cabin in the woods, to be alone to think or write or meditate sans distraction?   And yet he was distracted (by the sound of the passing trains, for example, which irritated him; by visitors, by inclement weather). 

 "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!"  A dead writer's temporary work and living space reproduced repositioned, and preserved for generations to come.  Honoring the writer, remembering his writings. Which most captivates here--the writer, his former dwelling/experience of living alone in these woods, or his words? 

My two most remembered Thoreau quotes:

          If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because
             he hears a different drummer.   Let him step to the music which he hears, 
          however measured or far away.

          It is not what you look at that matters;

          it's what you see. 

My favorite part of these grounds is Walden Pond, one of the absolute best places for swimming in the area [IMHO].  Walks in the woods in the winter, anywhere though, always a pleasure, with or without encountering a reconstructed famous writer's former house.  Unlike Thoreau, though, I love the sound of trains.  And you hear them all the time here, still chugging along the tracks - train whistles and bird tweets and silence: life in these Walden woods.

 

Beholders' Eyes

_________________________________________

VALENTINE FOR ERNEST MANN

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

~ ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Red Suitcase, Boa Editions, Ltd., 1994
_____________________________________

Naomi Shihab Nye, winner of the 13^th Annual Robert Creeley Award, reads on
March 6, 2013 at 7:30 PM, at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School auditorium,
36 Charter Road, Acton, Massachusetts.

Trekking with the Sketchers

The "Before" Scribble

this is a drawing I made 2-3 yrs ago
experimenting with an online Paint program
a fictional character invented for a story
that never got written . . .
time to get serious & learn
how to make a proper nose
(not just a hook with dot)
& remember to include the ears next time -
color inside the lines.

so they offered this little course
8 minutes' walk from here
10 weeks for $25
"Drawing for Beginners"
      there are 14 of us
we meet Monday nights for 2 hours
bring our big sketch pads & #2B & #4B pencils
first task was to draw Picasso's Stravinsky upside down
our homework this week is to
sketch electrical outlets & objects with angled corners & household appliances

fascinating so far,
the left-brain/right-brain thing -
consider the above drawing an old, hasty, "Before" rendition
to be compared, at the end of the course,
with a hopefully more realistic version.

hard work, lots of mistakes but
who knew it could be so addictive
&
fun

Obama's early poems

I was checking Ebay this morning for a particular poetry book and happened upon an auction for a 1981 Occidental College publication that contains two of then-19-year-old Barack Obama's poems.

Here are the two poems, "Pop" and "Underground", which renowned literary scholar Harold Bloom, "probably the most celebrated literary critic in the U.S." analyzed back in 2007.

Bidding starts at $500.

Winter fun

                      
                       At the Parc des Chenaux the other day, some boys from the nearby elementary school,
                       out playing hockey with their phys. ed. instructor, Eric.   Video & photos taken with
                       my new Olympus pocket camera.  A freezing-cold day, but the kids didn't seem to mind. 

                       Today it's -26 C (about -11 F) without the wind  chill factored in.   And a brilliant blue
                       sky overhead again.
                    
               

                        
                         The previous night there were about 16 skaters out skating here, the very
                         young to the very old.   In spring the ducks  come back to claim the pond.                                 

   Very slippery that morning.  Quite a few tumbles.

Priorities

                                                                                1%  -  Food
                                                                                2%  -  Transportation
                                                                                2%  -  Labor
                                                                                3%  -  Science
                                                                                3%  -  Energy & Environment
                                                                                4%  -  International Affairs
                                                                                5%  -  Health
                                                                                5%  -  Veterans' Benefits
                                                                                6%  -  Housing & Comminity
                                                                                6%  -  Government
                                                                                6%  -  Education
 

                                                                               57% - Military

Being like a Cloud, Embracing the Tiger

The performer is Gao Jiamin.  According to Kungfu Magazine (July 2000 issue) she was born in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China June 26, 1966. At the time of the article she had "won 32 gold medals, a record that has never been achieved by any other competitor". She is (or was) a chief instructor at "US Wushu Center" in Portland, OR.

T'ai Chi is like a slow, beautiful dance where your hands can wave like a cloud, lift water, repulse a monkey, part a wild horse's mane, grasp a sparrow's tail, or embrace a tiger --all names of actual T'ai Chi positions.  There are 108 of them.  I have so far managed to master only the first 16.  The forms themselves are not difficult - it's remembering the entire sequence that's challenging.  It looks so easy, but each body placement and movement is precisely intended.  Our instructor's teacher spent six months perfecting a single form.  This no longer seems a strange thing to me. 

Is it True what they say, about the energy?

On a trip to Buffalo last year there sat next to me on the bus a young ex-professional hockey  player traveling from Canada to the U.S. to visit his girlfriend.  He'd been forced to reconsider his career options after a bout of devastating injuries which required immediate surgery, leaving him with an unexpected, long-term disability.  He took up yoga, one might say with a vengeance, determined to "fix" himself.  One year later his doctors were amazed.  He was now stronger and in better health than he'd been before the accident, and no longer limited in what he could do.  It was a wake-up call for him, he told me, which changed his life. 

He told me more about yoga. I told him what little I know about T'ai Chi.  We've both, apparently, at one time or another, experienced the "prana", or universal energy they all talk about.  I used to think this was all just "New Age" talk, till I actually experienced it.  I can't speak for others but since then, I find I don't get tired, rarely get sick (except a minor cold), and have none of the aches and pains and maladies most people my age seem to routinely suffer from, that require medication.  Unlike gulping down a Red Bull energy drink or caffeinated coffee where you're temporarily jolted into "reboot", this energy is a quieter, more sustained infusion. It lasts longer.  And you can access it  by practicing yoga, chi gong and t'ai chi.

Words, too, energize, heal.

To each his own.  One person's passionate pursuit is another's yawnful non-interest.  But a person's single, scratched-out line in a penciled scribbling contemptuously discarded, unexpectedly unnearthed decades later,  random words or a single line in a book--could be the impetus to change a random reader/hearer's entire life. This, too, is a kind of  energy.  It happens.  What is it, this invisible 'life' force they talk about, that no one can see, much less adequately define?  History shows us that a single word,  idea, or image, can effect monumental changes.  Hidden energies manifest in language and the creative impulse, that starts the ball rolling, whereby a connection is made and one's reality suddenly changes.  Behind everything, Consciousness.

The Difference Between Doing it and Being it

The quotation (from the person who posted the video to YouTube) describes it as a "performance".  As did I, above.  Performance can be perfected, such that it becomes as natural as say, breathing.  You don't even think about it, you just begin, until you end.  Sometimes during the doing, however, you transcend the fact of doing, and enter a place beyond the self-in-the-act-of-doing and become pure [what's the word here? Rhythm? Energy? Being?] It's not Automatonville from force of habit, nor out-of-body, -  I can list a dozen things it's not.  It's less loss of consciousness of self than total,  joyful immersion into what one might call the "dance of Life."  Even those who can't dance can see it. 

Peace Prize Prez - "For War"?

inadvertent subliminal?

"The polices adopted by the Obama administration just over the last couple of years leave no doubt that they are accelerating, not winding down, the war apparatus that has been relentlessly strengthened over the last decade. In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has:

diluted decades-old Miranda warnings;
codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil;
plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois;
increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp;
minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens;
renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years,
as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform;
and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees.

"... one can say for certain is that there is zero reason for US officials to want an end to the war on terror, and numerous and significant reasons why they would want it to continue. . .

"If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? That would be the worst thing that could happen. It's that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.

"Just this week, a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration need not respond to the New York Times and the ACLU's mere request to disclose the government's legal rationale for why the President believes he can target US citizens for assassination without due process. Even while recognizing how perverse her own ruling was - 'The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me' and it imposes 'a veritable Catch-22' - the federal judge nonetheless explained that federal courts have constructed such a protective shield around the US government in the name of terrorism that it amounts to an unfettered license to violate even the most basic rights: 'I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret' (emphasis added)."

"Why would anyone in the US government or its owners have any interest in putting an end to this sham bonanza of power and profit called 'the war on terror'?  . . .

" . . . the US government is even entertaining putting an end to any of this is a pipe dream, and the belief that they even want to is fantasy. They're preparing for more endless war; their actions are fueling that war; and they continue to reap untold benefits from its continuation. Only outside compulsion, from citizens, can make an end to all of this possible."

[Source]  Glenn Greenwald: "The war on terror - by design - can never end".

Leaving one's island

Written and sung by Daniel Lavoie

We leave
     we come back
           we go
                  we stay
                       we're all little islands,
                              anchored,          
                                       afloat.
            

J'ai quitté mon île

J'ai quitté mon île quand on m'a envoyée
L'ai quittée tranquille sans chanter ou pleurer
Un beau matin vous verrez les voiles de mon voilier
Prendre le large vers les îles

J'ai quitté mon arbre on est venu le couper
J'ai trouvé les sables rien n'y était plus semé
Un beau matin vous verrez les voiles de mon voilier
Prendre le large vers les îles

J'ai quitté ma terre on a voulu l'ach'ter
On n'achète pas la terre
La terre c'est moé pis toé
Un beau matin vous verrez les flammes de ma fusée
Prendre le ciel vers mon île

{Musique}

Un beau matin vous verrez les voiles de mon voilier
Prendre le large vers les îles
J'ai quitté mon île {2x}



A beautiful song, in a beautiful language, for a snowy, sunny first day of the year.

Goodbye 2012, Hello new year

Photo by Luis L. Tijerina - Taken in Burlington, Vermont last night

 
What December Said to January

Let the record
show I did
not go willingly.

Nor am I impressed
by the ruse you
call “The First,”
which you use
to hide the fact
I passed this way.

I am offended,
not ended.

Do not forget,
I have frozen ponds
and cast blood-red berries
to the ground; I have
blotted out the sun.

You have crocuses,
I’ll grant you that;
but I have summoned them;
the rest you leave for
spring to solve.

My advice to you?

Take pride in what you do
and never follow suit;
your days are numbered;
be true to them.
________________________________________

From Poems, Slightly Used, by William Michaelian.    I posted this same poem here in 2009 (with William's kind permission) and thought I'd include it again.

End of year thanks to the many fellow writers/poets/bloggers who've inspired, shared and generously given of their time, talent, and encouragement when approached by the Salamander for poems, photos or art work, or queries about poetry, translation or writing in general, some of whom have since become treasured friends.

HAPPY NEW YEAR ONE AND ALL!

Receivings and Takings Away

Holiday Gifts Received:  

-a new camera. Yay.
-a pair of NukNuuk slippers, footware so comfortable another owner actually wrote an ode to them.
-a gigantic white, scented candle
-a tall glass vase crammed with apricots soaked in amaretto-liquor
-a yellow tablecloth with a red rooster motif
-microwavable teatowels
-a crate of imported Moroccan clementines
-lavender hand cream and lime-colored liquid hand soap
-green dangly earrings (from me to me)
-two poems,  by email, from a haiku poet acquaintance, out of the blue
-a hand-painted Christmas card
-a friend's recently published book
-our cat Nikki, in my lap, her final gesture of affection, touch of paw extended
  before the unexpected, unwanted--devastatingly difficult for us--Relinquishment
                  and
 -Consciousnesses,  too detailed and/or impossible to articulate

~ ~   ~ ~   ~ ~

Some photos I'd like to share:

Bike path, Burlington, VT, first snowfall, two days ago (photos by Luis L.Tijerina)

Lake Champlain waterfront, Burlington VT

Burlap again, a favorite remembered walkpath

my neighborhood (T-R, Quebec), yesterday

~ ~   ~ ~   ~ ~

Note:

she is not a footnote
some things take time to
talk about:
_______________________________________________________

BYE, NIKKI

 

"Nikita" a/k/a Nikki  2001-2012

Des bons souvenirs:

See ya, Nik.


_________________________________

It's not fair

I got to hold her one last time &
you didn't.

Our Nikki

here for years and then suddenly

not.

The new normal

SPMCs ["simply persistent multiple contrails"]

Blue sky.

They scoot by.

Spray stays,

gridifies.

Bye bye 

blue sky.

The urge to respond

Vingt

This tragedy, that -
20 innocents murdered in a classroom in Connecticut
10 young girls blown to bits gathering firewood in Afghanistan,
this number colatterally damaged by drones last month,
that number killed in this or that war, today,
another veteran suicide (do the dates matter?)
Depending on the proximity
      calamity  / enormity,
its effect on you personally,
out pours the grief,
    tears,
          outrage/ stunned silence; the
words, they come Later - as
newspeople go media it
      photographers go photograph it
          bloggers go blog & twitterers go tweet it -

artists go paint it
      writers go write it,and
               poets go poem it:
Impact/ Reaction/ Expression/ Analysis/ Catharsis

I can't find words
this time. It's not working.
Word-working the fact or penning an emotion;
      draped in this format, seems
simply a comment,
trying hard to be other.

The urge to respond; Some have
with money / wreaths / care/
candles/ food baskets/ a teddy bear/
tears/ hugs/ call for action/ more security,
words & more words
or just plain numbed
thereness.

How does one paint silence?
Or word speechlessness?
   how do you convey a felt unpunched punch in the gut, you're left to
dig into the mind's Word-Bin and
all that comes out is
dumb-sounding
      numb-pounded
   (wholly inadequate)
wordcrumbed, scatterworded
af-fect (after the fact).

So compelling, that urge to respond - how ever
Because  you're alive, and can
(albeit remotely,
        ineffectively) ...
while they - those 20 small ones -

can't.

___________________

*Re:   the attempted black/red/white artwork - 20 birds ascending/ transcending/ out of the raw memory of bloodbath/ darkness. I am not an artist but this image of the children as small birds flying together kept coming to me. Despite the spatial dominance/symbolism of the jagged red streaks, when I re-look at this picture, I'm taken past the red and see only those wings, 20 little white birds in a night sky, almost like stars, forever twinkling.  It is how I would like to remember them- together, at peace, happy, free.