After the cairn-building

"...The nisus of cairn-building, rock-piling, mortaring stone..."

From "Jeffers" by Mark Jarman

Get in

"...Neither he nor Os

can walk. Anymore. They both love wheels
and feel them fasten on like flesh. ..."

From "Driving in Circles with the Blind" by Sandra McPherson

The "pause" button

10:30pm return from class, 7:00am meeting this morning -- and so I'll hit the "pause" button and post more tomorrow.

(Wish it were the "snooze" button.)

Awaiting pollination

"...a thousand shades of white, I think.
Eggshell, oyster, parchment, flax. ..."

From "Burning the Fields" by Linda Bierds

Granny J. asked...

...via a tag, about my tips for bloggers.

Yikes!

I'm meme-averse, but Granny J. really is curious about my thoughts.

So, GJ, here are thoughts that may not be tips, but might at least have something useful to offer.

1. Be prepared to be surprised, if not dragged further afield than you'd ever imagined, by the act of blogging. I started mine in response to a post-your-poems dare, never imagining I'd stumble into digital photography.

2. Images build bridges across language and culture that writing can't -- I count among my joys exchanges with the delightful PMBC and Mauricio, both of whom have joined me for visual play despite the language gap.

3. The virtual world may lead to the 3D world. Through my online activity, I've met Rachel Barenblat and Laura of Laurelines, and we had lots of fun extending the connection.

I hope that shed a little light, even if these weren't tips.

Interviewees bubbling up for a New Book of Hours

Some fresh info's posted about interviewees bubbling up for the New Book of Hours project.

If you have thoughts about others I might interview, leave a comment and I'll get in touch!

Old green Caddy

"...stared at her
Reflection for a while, then looked up at me
And said, Jordan, I think that I must be
Like a pool of water in a cave that sometimes
She steps into..."

From "Los Angeles, 1954" by David St. John

(Click on the poem's title to see the real linebreaks...)

Pentimemento

"...keeping a steady hand
as we flew beyond the bounds of the artificial horizon."

From "Artificial Horizon" by Sue Standing

(And a little lagniappe.)

Crepuscular air

Stop and listen a bit.

Angle of repose

"...the white-knuckled lover
of broken machines. ..."

From "The Field" by Michael McGriff

More, Thursday

It's another very busy week -- and so I will post new things this Thursday.

Here's an excerpt from a poem by César Vallejo, translated by Robert Bly, to mark the time:

"...It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down
these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on
wrong..."

Wait five minutes

Under a cloud...



...and five minutes later, in slant sunlight.

No answers

"...This ? has trouble in mind: do not ask
why the wind broods, why the light is so unclean. ..."

From "?" by Randall Mann

Sago and ribbed pots

"...as blurred green summer, lifted
to its apex, succumbed to gravity and fell..."

From "Blur" by Andrew Hudgins

What do you think?

I think I found a potter whose work fits for my class art analysis.


Photograph by Sally Martinez.

Alice Cling is a Navajo potter, and her work just stopped me when I saw it.

And given the tension/resonance around old methods/tradition and new simplicity/markets, between the persistence of fired clay over time and the fragility of the whole pot, I think there's a lot to dig into in her work.

Damselfly paused

"Then I came to an edge of very calm
But couldn’t stay there. ..."

From "And water lies plainly" by Laurie Sheck

End of the season

"...time now for the soft vibrations of moths..."

From "Porch Swing in September" by Ted Kooser

Gilding and double-headed nail

"...one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet..."

From "On Living" by Nazim Hikmet
Translated by Mutlu Konuk and Randy Blasing

A leg up, a leg to stand on

Unfolding myself off the airport floor, I dropped my sketchpad and purse. !@#$%^!



As I fleshed out one leg, the other moved, then she's gone.

*****

And I need a leg up on a class assignment. As usual, I'm having trouble making up my mind.

The assignment? A critical analysis of a work of art having some connection to the topic "Time."

I keep wanting to do something with contemporary ceramics (and yes, I'm pretty drawn to Robert Arneson's self-portraits) because of the fun of a supposedly minor art's relative indestructability over time but...what do you think?

Chains and shards

"...anything
can ferment, given opportunity, given terra cotta..."

From "In Antigua" by Kerri Webster

Back door and panes

"...this sky in the dream
I'm having of meeting you..."

From "To the Reader: Polaroids" by Chase Twichell

After reading Shelly's Friday Sept. 21 post

The junkyard

I think I get it now: persona not chassis, not even
much more than a paint job, that beautiful glossy
surface we spent centuries of childhood assembling
as if the self were a prized model car, lacquer and dope
finally sanded down by time to show the surprise—
base gold—beneath. Listen: our toy trannies mewling
as the gears wear to smooth circles, our gilded pinstripes
unraveling with a hiss to run off like garden snakes in
the junkyard, molting in rust, grass-green in new skin.

*****

Thanks for the inspiration, Shelly.

We have class project, and blog, lift-off.

Remember the bunch of ideas I had for my Liberal Arts Perspectives class final project?

I now have an okay from my professor to pursue one of them, and I'll blog about the work in progress here.

Take a look, and if you can join me in the process I'd be delighted!

A sequence of moments

Harsh light, tired people, and one bouncy curly little girl.



People moving through a hotel lobby, currents and flow reminding me of water simmering.



Too tired to draw but trying anyway -- strong Georges de La Tour light, hands cupping a PDA.

Through the brush...

...a clearing, but I'm not out of the mudflats yet.

"Wish I were here"

"...Sending these postcards to the self at home:
Sunlight on pouring water..."

From "The View at Pisgah" by Howard Nemerov

(Off to sojourn in the workin' whirled, will post more Friday the 21st, will comment as I can.)

2 Much

A little 2 much going on with work and such to share more goodness right now.
And thus I'm a bit blue.

I'm about to lift off and travel for business, but if you have time, find me poems with colors of blue, and scatter URL trails of breadcrumbs in the comments.

That way, we'll all enjoy another kind of (happy) blue, and I'll comment back as I can!

(Sporadic posting until next Friday, but you know I can't stay away for long.)

Foley artistry

"Foley" was scrawled on the pole, so I went wandering in search of another Foley artist.

Fluorescence

"...Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song. ..."

From "Why Regret?" by Galway Kinnell

Yesterday's news

"...I've seen it for myself, their genius—
how they transform the useless..."

From "Darwin's Finches" by Deborah Digges

Wrappered

"...or speak in cabbage
language of the meanings within meanings..."

From "The Cabbage" by Ruth Stone

Remembering warmer seas

"...composites of limestone calculated down to the animal
that laid upon it and quietly died..."

From "Koi" by Katie Ford

Submerged

"Into the laterals and faults of strata
Whose linear seams are like memory,
Water wades its way..."

From "Two Views" by Wyatt Prunty

Sketchy thoughts, sketchy scribbles

I'm about to embark on My First Class in Grad School, and I'm awash in ideas for a final class project. Since I can't make up my mind, I thought I'd ask all y'all's thoughts.

But first, a sketch.



There.
People, and breakfast, and ballpoint pens!

And now, if you're so moved, please read on about my ideas and feel free to weigh in.

*****

The course I'm taking is called Liberal Arts Perspectives.
I could do a research project, but I'm drawn to the creative effort option.

Here's the bare-bones criteria:
The Creative Effort must add to a communal understanding of Time, and needs to be accompanied by an 8-10 minute presentation that furthers my classmates' understanding of the project and its relevance/significance regarding Time.

Some of the ideas I've spawned to date:
Sculptural/Conceptual
1. Building a Never-Ending Hourglass (Some sort of Klein Bottle turned into an hourglass)
2. Making ephemeral sheets of edible gelatin "printed" with edible inks and imagery related to Time (Time as something delicate, consumable; a slight parody of art photography's gelatin print technique)
3. Reconstructing a deliberately broken bottle, then inserting and launching trackable messages, possibly including a group's imagery from their typical day (Time in a bottle, adrift)
4. Creating an "ur-candle" by melting many different ritual candles -- church votives, used candles from the local Zen Center, synagogue Sabbath candles, etc. -- and reforming them into one super-large pile of enormous candle-ness

Flat Art/Conceptual
5. Temporal maps (Using a version of topographic maps -- "steep" contour lines where Time seems to move fast, "gentle" contour lines where Time seems to move slowly)
6. A Map of Timelessness (Using others' software, map the incidence of the word "timeless" across a period of time on specific Web sites)
7. A new Book of Hours (A hand-made book containing hand-written interviews with local religious practitioners on their daily practices, with accompanying sketches of the interviewees -- and of course a blog to make the work accessible to all those I interview)
8. A small group photo-project: facilitate others' responses via digital cameras or cell phone cameras to a short series of questions, all images of which must be photographed in one 24-hour period

Writing
9. Mystically-focused, time-paradoxical poem(s)
10. Short story -- Salvador Dali meets a watchmaker who makes wax timepieces

So far I'm most drawn to the possibilities within Idea 7.
That said...what do y'all think?

Slack, pinned

"...tourbillions in Time made
By the strong pulling of her bladed mind..."

From "On Portents" by Robert Graves

(And...I learn something new every day!)

Stopped

" '...that's just what
I've gone and done.' "

From "Hay for the Horses" by Gary Snyder

Flip it! Flip it good!

It's International Rock-Flipping Day!

Click above to learn more (and go flip a rock NOW) -- or click here to read the update.

If you decide to share your own rock-flipping exploits, Dave Bonta has graciously offered to be Rock-Flipping Central.

Dave wrote, "I’m willing to act as coordinator and send out a list of links that evening or the next morning, with all the HTML tags in place for people to copy and paste. Send your links to me as soon as you post: bontasaurus (at) yahoo (dot) com, with 'Rock Flipping' in the subject line."

*****

Rock-Flipping Day Tercets



A: Right-Side Up
I turn myself over in my mind,
reveal the delicate thready roots
that lace the surface of deeper ground.




B: Upside-Down
A new way to play rock-paper-scissors:
rock sings the muse, paper scrawls poems,
scissors edits then rusts under rock.




C: Right-Side Up Again
Calciferous blanket pulled up tight
to the chins of chitinous millipedes tucked in
the cool dark, dreaming of leaf-mould and puffballs.

International Rock-Flipping Day

Just a friendly reminder: tomorrow is International Rock-Flipping Day.

Click the link to learn more, and be careful out there if you live in snake country!

Throughput

"...I ran when doorways spoke..."

From "At Thirty" by Lynda Hull

Smilax and duende

"...after long balance
of what there is against what might or might never be,
the never-was has dared to love me back. ..."

From "Outliving the Lyric Moment" by Leslie Adrienne Miller

Hexagram 30: The Clinging

"...I have seen leaves desist
from moving..."

From "Credo" by Andrew Zawacki

*****

And one more little bit about the fire within water.

Husks

"I don't mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body..."

From "Monologue for an Onion" by Suji Kwock Kim

Enjambment

The feather of proof

An age-wide thicket of seconds nudge
me, snag me, slow me: I’m burning back
dream-chaparral from the country of days, smudge
sun-up and sundown with this shaman’s sack
as we smoke out what’s unchanging from time.
Mirror, metal, glass and spark cache infinite
kindling—every surface, texture, rhyme,
the hot-carbon bone-baked elegy of minutes
ticking and cooling, snap-crackle-pop RGB
coals cleared from yesterday’s soot
by a gust of chained moments blown free,
pixels drifting around time’s buried root—
look: as the winged iris shutters and tracks
unsequenced grace, where nothing lacks.

Late August

"...River mist, mudbanks, and rushes mediate the dark matter
Between two tomorrows..."

From "Light By Which I Read" by Eric Pankey

Oh dear!

"...I am lost, I am
beset by literalists and narratives of the beginning and middle
and end, help me. ..."

From "inside gertrude stein" by Lynn Emanuel

N 34 / Bisectioned

"There is something dense, united, settled in the depths,
repeating its number..."

From "Unity" by Pablo Neruda
Translated by Clayton Eshleman

A divine knock-knock joke

"... O LEAVE BEHIND THE FEATHER OF PROOF!

You overestimate us. I at least have
Longed for that feather on occasion, knowing
Deep down that one must never ask for it. ..."

From "The Changing Light at Sandover" by James Merrill

Creek's edge

Where I wandered.

*****

"...What’s green will unravel..."

From "Green" by J. C. Todd

Phaseolus magic

"...a bean, captive forever
Perhaps..."

From "Happily" by Lyn Hejinian

Topology, plus flies

"Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
I flit from one thing to the next."

To see the linebreaks and read the whole, go to:
"After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard" by Charles Wright

Near the visitors' parking

"...making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees."

From "Looking Around, Believing" by Gary Soto