Random acts of search terms

Sorry, but running low on the fresh pics inventory...and I couldn't resist posting the very unusual ways people end up at this blog. My scattererd links within the list are equally arbitrary, riffing off what came to mind.

Skipping the first twenty search terms, and in descending order of frequency, we have the following...

***

hexagram 30 clinging
tips iron and steel
curly witzel cowboy
audrey flack chanel
drawing ghost flames
eccentric polygon
analyze porch swing in september
welcome english do you have beer?
story 150 words
slender men
buny grafiti
newyear good word
tree energy texas
poems about platonic solids
small town with one road
dan chelotti
gary larson cow hide
edward hirsch lori
blue lacey
implied objects
air books for children
who will know us? gary soto summary
who will know us? analysis gary soto
my dreams my works must wait till after hell
mexican hat asteraceae daves
everyday mottos
everyday motto
define running errands
just hypnotized
fort davis tx indian lodge restaurant menu
learning to love america poem analysis by shirley geok-lin lim
day dock
carl chelf
crush carol ann duffy
compare the silent rose of the sun
monologue for an onion poems
long nose, pencil thin suckerfish
motto about beauty
flip-it! good to use
how to get rid of ipomoea indica
allergies in alpine texas
christmas mur
good word for the new year
silver shut
three bad jacks patches
how to ghost flames
cairn building
salcman poetry
poem about a backache
good word for new year
cosmetology motto
android parts robot
magritte chatoyance
hózhó
who will know us analysis
rooflines
the blind always come as such a surprise by ted kooser analysis
glowing buddhas
chatoyance art studio
chost flames
snow's mail order bbq?
garage apartment photo
thomas campi st michaels maryland
sussuration
learning to love american by shirley geok-lin lim analysis
playing in mud barefoot
hexagram clinging
back ache poem
mayfield park peacocks winter
graffitis de bunny
cell phone charm platonic solid
new year gud words
with ghost flames
murry witzel austin tx
alpine texas bread and breakfast
chatoyance ring
everyday motto
seduction story blogspot
running errands vikipedi
crimes about 300 words
piercing gaze
new year's good words
good words new year
i'm just hypnotized

Almost dusk

"...All had been said,
The unsayable, when your translator joined us,
Our time was up and, brightened, I walked on..."

From "Coevals" by Michael Hamburger

Green blue red

"Think of a line as an edge,
as the edge of a form
that is moving away from you in space.

And I do..."

From "Drawing Lesson: Outline and Edge" by Elizabeth Seydel Morgan

Ornament

"...heads bow, eyes close; the blessings are said.

Here there is good will; here peace
on earth..."

From "Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet" by Anne Caston

***

Happy happy merry merry to all those stopping by, to all my friends known and unknown.

Cute Alert: Felix Navidad!

And, for those who'd like something less sweet for the holidays, here's a heaping helping of Fruitcake Abuse. (Note: there's an advertisement embedded in all but the first...however, it was too much fun to pass 'em by.)

The Texas

It was time, we decided, for a road trip.

My friend had been wrestling with ongoing health challenges, and I'd been wrestling with that feeling I've been running on fumes. We knew what would make us both feel better.

We chose a theme: "Pie - Art - Pie"
We chose a form: Drive to Fort Worth to see at least two museums, and while on the road investigate at least one of the cafes noted here, and eat pie. Pie on the way up, art in the middle, pie on the way back.

It was a grand day!

We left at 7am, driving here through an uncharacteristic thick fog that made everything on the highway mysterious.

I had a poppy-seed kolache and coffee, and she had a sausage kolache and a blueberry cream-cheese kolache and coffee.

Since I've not had much in the way of sweets for some time, I felt the sugar rushing through my blood like fire.

(And yes, there was pivo for sale, and yes, they played this sort of music through their PA system.)

While not pie strictly speaking, the kolaches were yummy!

Miles flew by while we chatted. We discussed what art might be created on a planet where there was no community, only a monad life-form (and since found I should read "Monad Number Two" to learn more). We discussed family schtuff. We talked about school (she's gone back to school too). We talked about ASL, and whether a poem in ASL could be better served in translation to written word or to dance.

We landed in a place where certain Precolumbian terra cotta figures looked lively enough to undo their protective cases (after the guards left for the night, of course) and where I saw something so beautiful I found myself tearing up.

From there, we went here, and had some extra fun watching/hearing little bitty kiddos and their parents making echoes inside this.

An excessively delicious and leisurely lunch in the museum cafe, and then back on the road to Austin with much happy arguing over where to turn to find the freeway.

Miles later a stop here. Yes, I had a small burger (really good) but we were there for the pie. Pie -- I had buttermilk, she took a piece of chocolate cream to go, and I got a piece of the nutmeg-happy buttermilk for my hubbie. Yes, we did get a little lost on the way back, but I saw the old theater above as a result.

It was all Texas, and all good.

Junk mosaic

"...I hanker for that place beyond the sparrow
Where the wrench beds in mud, the sun-hat hangs
In densest branches, and the book is drowned.
Ah, you have read my mind. ..."

From "The Mind-Reader" by Richard Wilbur

Bunny graffiti

"...to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained..."

From "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts" by Wallace Stevens

Two, strung

"...no through-line exists:

to sink the head of a nail below the surface,
to fix as a distinguishing imprint, sign, or appearance,
to incite..."

From "Streamers" by Arthur Sze

Pressed / shed

"On a wall shadowed by lights from the distance
is the screen. Icons come to it dressed in capes..."

From "The Screen of Distance" by Barbara Guest

***

Class is wrapped for the semester! After a round of defensive driving tomorrow (to offset that speeding ticket I received while returning from a medieval conference) I will have more time to wander with a camera.

Gutted

"...Black cinders, burdock, sumac, Pepsi, cellophane,
Each syllable a filament in the cord
Of a word-net..."

From "City Elegies" by Robert Pinsky

Hit and misc.

"I listen.
I hear nothing. Only
the cow, the cow of such
hollowness..."

From "Another Night in the Ruins" by Galway Kinnell

Garage apartment

"...why no. . . this too is fanciful. . . funny how
hard it is to be slow and delicate in this,
this thing of framing..."

From "My Generation Reading the Newspapers" by Kenneth Patchen

Blue chair

"...Still, there were photos in her camera,
and bright, teasing little captions to say
--so it wouldn't have been a total disaster. ..."

From "Only Then" (see page 20) by Irving Feldman

***

I have heard from friends who knew not that I plotted to eat BBQ at Snow's without 'em, and I am now the target for truck-loads of good-humored resentment.

Those unprintable forms of affection are just part of what I'm thankful for as I count my blessings this weekend. May you and yours be as amply and happily blessed as I feel I am. Happy Thanksgiving, all y'all.

Ghost flames

Too tired to clean a new photo, but my fingers are still itching to post.
So...an impromptu collection of the search terms by which some people recently have landed here:

louis nevelson
electric tree
lori witzel
dyc trucking
reflexive architecture
sussuration
divine chatoyance
crime story 300 words
photography chatoyance
sue standing poem
charity books for africa doris lessing
curly witzel cowboy
regarding art by nazim hikmet
ghost flames
hans hoffman elysium
ipomoea indica hardiness
a lucky penny poem
story about 300 words
porch swing in september by ted kooser analysis
my dreams my works must wait till after hell comments
why did edward hirsch write poor angels
what chatoyance
chatoyance art studio
scripter rud
enmeshed
incandescentdarkness.blogspot.com
louise nevelson picture
the cedar limbs
the pottery of the gallina complex-hibben
on a dock on a rainy day
poem to feel better backache
poem child flying through the air
the force through which the green fuse moves
blue streak lori
in the cedar-limbs
indra's net illustration
ruby chatoyance
chatoyance birds eye
analyze poem the cabbage by ruth stone
track coaching poem
ruota della for
creeley divisions order. order. the bottle contains
backache poem
kokopelli vectored
festival small poem
illustration feet, shoes
famous enjambment
who will know us?-gary soto analysis
quote from louis nevelson
audrey flack chanel
inner beauty poems illustrations photos blog stumbleupon
blake's mind-forg'd manacles
artificial horizon by sue standing
hexagram 30
alpine texas allergies
self sacrifice illustration
eccentric polygons,frank stella
jay-jay johnson self-portrait blogspot
surfaces by kay ryan
eccentric polygon
frank stella eccentric polygons
tree energy in photos
spare part lori
piercing gaze
learning to love america by shirley geok lin lim
smell of orange peels
lori poem
was long gone
lactuca virosa photos
what is a happy color
the why of things
hat spotting
witzels point view
lady bug san gabriel forest
drawing heavy set people
osteopath poems
jose montoya in cursive
biplane rides in austin tx
tree energy electricity
back ache poem
illustration grendel
dan chelotti
photos louis nevelson
48 fleetline for sell
susangelique
campfire smoke chemicals

Rooflines

"...surprise assumes a space
that has first been forgotten..."

From "Upon Discovering My Entire Solution to the Attainment of Immortality Erased from the Blackboard Except the Word 'Save'" by Dobby Gibson

Texas Sno Con

"...they eat
Candies all the way home,
Where there's a dog for each hand..."

From "Small Town with One Road" (see page 111) by Gary Soto

* burp *

Left the house at 6:15am in the chill and dark, and saw the big red sun finally poke through low gray-lavender clouds while driving through Thrall.

I had a few minutes of panic when I overshot the not-obvious exit to downtown Lexington and found myself leaving Lexington city limits en route to Giddings. Caught myself before too many miles went by, stumbled into off-the-highway Lexington, and then couldn't figure out where Snow's was.

A nice police officer gave me directions (and a rather bemused glance, since I was there for BBQ at 8am.)

There was a small line. I was the only gal in the line. There was a pro photographer flitting around Tootsie, the pit master, snapping away. The gent two people in front of me looked like he'd slept in a deer blind the night before, and said he had driven in from Fort Worth. (He ordered a combo plate, and $200 of brisket and pork ribs to go.) The gent immediately in front of me was a very large, roly-poly redhead with a thin beard. All the gents in line looked like serious BBQ eaters: big men with ample padding, ruddy skin, camo jackets or slightly worn sweatshirts. No iPods, Blueteeth, Blackberries nor other such trappings.

After drifting into meat heaven courtesy of Snow's two-meat combo plate (yes, Shelly, I did get the brisket, and I got pork ribs -- I stuck to what all those early arrivals were ordering) I was interviewed by a woman who was a stringer for "American Profile" -- she said she just had to come over to interview me, since I looked so happy eating that BBQ.

The BBQ was divine.

I gave thanks to the animals who gave their life to help sustain mine, and to the folks who were non-stop busy behind the counter but still nice as could be, and to Tootsie for her alchemical use of smoke and time on the meat. Sorry S., no pix of the food -- there are others out there who've taken care of that -- but let me tell y'all about it.

The brisket -- it was deeply beefy, touch-tender without being greasy or uneven, had a perfect smoke-induced red ring and a tiny bit of rendered-fat crust. It truly was BBQ apotheosis.

The pork ribs -- oh, my gawd. Possessed of a crisp lacquered smoke-side surface and an ineffably succulent meatiness that melted off the rib-bone. This was the best, the very best, pork I've ever eaten, even folding in NYC downtown Chinese restaurants and my own stuffed pork chops.

Beans were fine -- mixed with bits of sausage and pork, slightly smokey. Coleslaw was a nice counterpoint -- vinegary rather than creamy. Potato salad seemed good too.

But after all that meat, I had a mere spoonful of each side dish.

Since it was clear this was BBQ heaven, I brought home a pound of brisket and a pound of pork ribs -- it's Murry's birthday weekend, and since he has to work I thought he might like the extra treat.

The only thing -- and this may be gilding the lily -- that would make Snow's better would be a good pie or cobbler to finish.

That said, when and if Snow's decides to ship their BBQ, if you can't drive there you really should getcha some.

The quest for BBQ

I am going to try to find this place tomorrow.

They start serving BBQ at 8am, and shut when they sell out -- usually by 9am.

It'll take about an hour and 40 minutes to get there, so I'm leaving before sunrise.

I hope the line's not too long when I get there, and I hope I'll see some nicely rusty things on my way back...wish me luck!

Star-spangled mid-afternoon

"...I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals..."

From "Planetarium" by Adrienne Rich

Street color

"...the lavish wardrobe
of things, the world’s
glaze of appearances..."

From "Favrile" by Mark Doty

***

I set out in search of color this afternoon, and found some.

While driving near here, as I was talking on the phone with my friend Henry, I saw people selling these on the sidewalk.

So I hunted up a parking space; they didn't mind at all if I took some pix.

Sunday late afternoon

"Dear lost sharer
of silences,
I would send a letter..."

From "Eyes Only" by Linda Pastan

***

I may just have to play hooky some this weekend and find more things to catch and share.

Enmeshed

"... I love I love the safety of
small world this door frame back
of me the panes..."

From "Helsinki Window" by Robert Creeley

***

Yay! I'm back home!

A long week, and schoolwork to do this weekend (yes, I'll post some earlier coursework here) but I had an unexpected visitor bring me a smile at the end of the workweek. Although she suffered through an hour waiting to catch a cab, her visit was a delight.

Here and gone

"...I know something now
...about one word that fails
For lack of substance. ..."

From "Far and Away" by Fanny Howe

***

A fresh post, and some questions, can be found here.

And I'll be more gone than here next week, due to this event. But I will come back for more as soon as I can.

No Parking

"...What am I going to do now? And how am I going to sleep tonight?

A peculiar name flickers in the mirror, and then disappears."


From "Picture of Little Letters" by John Koethe

***

As ever, busy and between two whirleds -- work and school. If you, like Marly, would be interested in following along with some of my schoolin' projects, leave a comment here. I may revive this and subvert it for more recent project postings, if there's enough interest.

Doors 1, 2, 3

"...digging up ginseng;

carding wool;

where does matter end and space begin? ..."


From "Before Completion" by Arthur Sze

***

Thanks to you lovely readers who sent me "pink light" and other restorative energy. Some of the dark lowering clouds concerning family, friends, and others have cleared, and I am grateful to you for your care and kindness as I wait for the rest of the metaphorical front to blow through.

Some weeks are tough

"...each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. ..."

From "my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell" by Gwendolyn Brooks

***

Tough stuff happening in a number of busted corners this week. Not to me, directly, but still. Hope your weeks are more tender than tough.

Lo-Tex Welding

"...Words entering almost the sense of touch
Ferreting themselves out of their dark hutch—
‘These things are not secrets but mysteries,’..."

From "Glanmore Sonnets" by Seamus Heaney

A sign, but the building was long gone

"...It is the eights and my name the only name they ever let me
know,
It is the eights, my lantern, my lodestone..."

From "The Eights" by Dan Chelotti

Craquelure

"a poem will out-parcheesi you any day of the week..."

From "LXXI" by Anthony Hawley

***

I'm about as flattened as the perspective in this pic, post-conference. And there's a paper to write this weekend (Congreve? Sheridan? which to chew on?) -- but if my reading time goes well, I'll take a break and see if there's rust to be found.

Panels

"...if you could just rearrange things the right way
you’d find your true life,
the right path, the answer to your questions..."

From "Anagrammer" by Peter Pereira

***

I had a fabulous time among the medievalists and heard I did well, although I picked up a less-than-desirable souvenir on my way home. Tomorrow, another full-time lock on my attention; but I hope to wander with a camera next weekend and see what I can see.

Thanks for coming back, despite my sporadic posting.

Cyclopean

"...And then, in her harum-scarum way,
She left with a passing traveller-man..."

From "Kalamazoo" by Vachel Lindsay

***

Still poky on posting, but I have a couple of good excuses, now including Kalamazoo. (Woo-hoo!)

Busted chairs

"...I’ve been wandering
where the cold tracks of language
collapse..."

From "To the Reader: If You Asked Me" by Chase Twichell

Contrail and shutters

"...There are days when the whole world
feels like somebody else’s collection.
Even your hands. ..."

From "Drifting" by Shirley Kaufman

***

The rehearsal presentation for the paper I am to give in two weeks for these folks went well, and I was glad to hear that my nervousness didn't show.

After, two of my friends and I went out for a post-rehearsal snack. And now, here I sit at the keyboard, thinking about the essay I need to write tomorrow.

Horizon line

"...I’m always racing off,
passing through, as though the present
were a dying town I’d rather flee. ..."

From "Road Report" by Kurt Brown

It's the weather, man

"...Early on, distant relations kept calling.
Now, nothing: sound of water

tippling a seawall. ..."

From "Radio Crackling, Radio Gone" by Lisa Olstein

***

All's fine in Central Texas post-Ike...but not (yet) for my friends in Galveston and Houston. Thanks, all y'all, for your care and concern. Stay dry.

Storm front

"... I hear the vacant rain before it falls.
It's like the murmur of a spiraled shell. ..."

From "The Dowser's Ear" by Wilmer Mills

***

Yes, Hurricane Ike is coming to visit.
I believe we're in for at least some heavy rain and wind in Central Texas.
Please keep my friends and neighbors on the Gulf Coast in your thoughts.
I'll post again once the storm clears.

***

Update 9/13 10:41am

Windy but not badly so, and overcast, here in the Austin area -- see how wide Texas is to get an idea of how large Ike is.

The storm center seems to have nudged further east as it smacked into the coast, so not as much going on in Central Texas as we thought might. No heavy rain, all is well so far.

However, I have friends who left Galveston to stay in Central Texas through Ike, and am hoping their home is not too badly damaged. Will meet them for brunch tomorrow and hear more.

Just FYI, a Twitter feed from a Galveston-based reporter.

International Rock-Flipping Day 2008

Find it.
Things are dry enough here that flipping a wet rock was more likely to uncover some critters.


Flip it.
Hoodwinked! The yellowing foliage tells the tale -- the plants hadn't grown around the rock, the rock had been placed among the plants.


Flip it back.
Oh foo, I couldn't get it in exactly the right place. As I stretched and tried not to slip into the scum, I noticed some glassily invisible fish no bigger than my pinkie-nail, and one very tiny black fish baby, scatter.


Back up.
Well. A typical beige limestone-flat scum; what is that plant, I wonder?


Back way up.
No more flippin' flipping -- people wandering around. As the couple off in the distance passed by, I could hear them discussing her finances. Their dog was listening to the mockingbirds instead.

***

"Maybe no one can distinguish which voice
Is god’s voice sounding in a summer dusk
Because he calls with the same rising frequency,
The same rasp and rattling rustle the cicadas use..."

From "The Creation of the Inaudible" by Pattiann Rogers


***

Learn more about it all here.

Links to other Rock Flippers below:

Pohanginapete (Pohangina Valley, Aotearoa/New Zealand)

Blaugustine (London, England)

Nature Remains (Ohio, USA)

Pensacola Daily Photo (Florida, USA)

KatDoc’s World (Ohio, USA)

Notes from the Cloud Messenger (Ontario, Canada)

Brittle Road (Texas [?])

Sherry Chandler (Kentucky, USA)

osage + orange (Illinois, USA)

Rock Paper Lizard (British Columbia, Canada)

The Crafty H (Virginia, USA)

Chicken Spaghetti (Connecticut, USA)

A Passion for Nature (New York, USA)

The Dog Geek (Virginia, USA)

Blue Ridge blog (North Carolina, USA)

Bug Girl’s Blog (Midwestern US)

Riverside Rambles (Missouri, USA)

Pines Above Snow(Maryland, USA)

Beth’s stories (Maine, USA)

A Honey of an Anklet (Virginia, USA)

But wait! There's more!

Wanderin’ Weeta (British Columbia, Canada)

Fate, Felicity, or Fluke (Oregon, USA)

The Northwest Nature Nut (Oregon, USA)

Roundrock Journal (Missouri, USA)

The New Dharma Bums (California, USA)

The Marvelous in Nature (Ontario, Canada)

Via Negativa (Pennsylvania, USA)

Mrs. Gray’s class, Beatty-Warren Middle School (Pennsylvania, USA)

Cicero Sings (British Columbia, Canada)

Pocahontas County Fair (West Virginia, USA)

Message and no bottle

"...A paradise of absence,
the dreamed of freed
from the dreamer..."

From "24/7" by Alan Shapiro


***

Also: In praise of disambiguation which doesn't.

Inside, out

"...We elide to nothing: ice to mist, fist to dust.
Praise this then:
that long undoing maps our single perfect act."

From "In the Kingdom of Perpetual Repair" by Kevin Stein

At the Oatmeal Festival

"...my senses have caught up with my body
my breath with the air it swallows..."

From "Learning to Love America" by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim

Depth of field

"...From
every corner there was perspective. ..."

From "Shiver & You Have Weather" by Matthea Harvey

***

Things are at full-tilt in the workin' whirled as well as in the learnin' whirled.

Not much respite in sight, so I'm shimming in a tiny bit of art as I can between the press of commerce and the rhizome-laden groves of academe.

Through the roof

"...Suppose we were the first to begin
Living forever. Let's start
Right now. ..."

From "The Slop Barrel: Slices of the Paideuma for All Sentient Beings" by Philip Whalen

Among the barrels

"...And what attractive
force is this?
Coincidence,
et cetera..."

From "Physics" by Richard Kenney

Iron ornament

"...There should have been a greeting or a sign,
the smile of a stranger, something beyond
the soft refusals of the summer air..."

From "Equations of the Light" by Dana Gioia

Mid-August

"...white grass crackling
all the way to the well shed,
the burning that must
have been coming from me."

From "Messenger" by R. T. Smith

***

Workload's increased, school's about to start, art history paper's in progress, and thus poky posting. No worries -- I still have rust to share.

Hat trick

"... how wonderful the light!
It lit up table, room, and street,
the neighboring houses and the sky..."

From "By The Well of Living and Seeing" by Charles Reznikoff

Charred

"...I would ask the absolute night to dispose of my sleep in whatever way might make you happiest. ..."

From "The Lichens" by René Char
Translated by Susanne Dubroff

These particular trees

"...I was all the same then,
Walking repeatedly past this or that remote place,
Carrying my particular scenery on my back."

From "Scenery" by Lu De-An

Break it down/up

"...because of the wreck
that was expected (and metal given velocity
and heft to assure it)—
we became adepts..."

From "'Wreck' and 'rise above'" by Eleanor Wilner
(Please see the poem link for correct linebreaks and spacing.)

Historic building

"...the remains of strange picnics,
Replications of old selves, a cacophony of changes
Like a room crowded with chairs..."

From "To Live with a Landscape" by Constance Urdang