Polyphemus

"Now let's regret things for a while
That you can't read music
That I never learned Classical languages
That we never grew up, never learned to behave
But devoted ourselves to magic..."

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

Sunday in Comfort, Texas

"Love passed me in a blue business suit
and fedora.
His glass cane, hollow and filled with
sharks and whales ...
He wore black
patent leather shoes..."

From "Blue Monday" by Diane Wakoski

***

Long time, no pix...working (as usual) too dang much, reading/writing for school all weekend. But I did get out and wander around on Sunday, so there are more pix to come!

That probably explains it

Indwelling

A catheter, or the holy spirit—both
cannulas (whether fixed in body or soul)
a little reed, the syrinx that channels
something sacred: signs of our wet life,
breath of our unseen transformations.

We turn wine into water, play it out
through that pipe the same way spirit
turns our water to higher proof, distills us:
indwelling, a reverse osmosis of the soul.

***

It's been a busy and crud-filled week. A lousy nasty cold brought me down while I was enmeshed in Giovanni di Paolo's paintings of St. Catherine. (That probably explains the poem.)

Have a good week, all y'all.
I will, once I quit coughing.

Thinking about seeing

Recursive

As in a medieval miniature where space is
tilted and skewed, anchored only by a thread
of ink, a thin rope swelling into snaking patterns
copied from Asiatic silk the color of crushed gems
and beaten gold, the flat screen in front of my hands
tilts and skews, and my thin rope—a thought, that
mayfly of consciousness—flits to pattern again.

The variable pitch and yaw of these buildings
in a Sienese predella panel, the civic landscape
that carries all points of view simultaneously
(the bird’s-eye, the eye-level, the scopic)—I see
myself seeing, wishing for such isometric perspectives
while consumed by my own vanishing points.

Sometimes a poem happens

Inside out

It’s as if I could slip
my fingers through each isarithm
of softwood—cheap paneling
now a matte painting of the wall,
now its memory, now

And on the other side, what I
set in motion: the open field, the low hill,
a crease scored in bent blades of grass
where I forgot the wall stood,
my footsteps blurring as the
grass unbends.

***

Too much going on to wander with a camera, but sometimes a poem happens instead.

Have a lovely week, all y'all.

Vent

"The answer is entropy—how smell works—
little bits of everything—always spinning
off from where they were..."

From "Sublimation Point" by Jason Schneiderman

***

Finished the history class, learned much about Nancy Spero and the paucity of images against war before the Thirty Year's War, and after that 47 page paper and the Ongoing Work Crush, am about to go nose-down on the keyboard.

Don't wake me up, all y'all, at least not until there's fresh coffee...
:-)

Entangled

"...as we fled,
we unbraided our hair from the fan belt of the exhumed engine."

From "The Skyline of a Missing Tooth" by Sherwin Bitsui

***

This week, I finished a short paper on this person's memoirs, among other things.

And you -- how have you been?

Ventana de borrachos

"...that flaw,
that deathward plunge that’s locked inside all form,
till what seems solid floats away, dissolves,
and these poor bastard things, no longer things,
drift back to pure idea."

From "What Light Destroys" by Andrew Hudgins

***

Keeping the energy up. Keeping the lights on. Keeping cool under a white-hot sky. Keeping the questions coming. Keeping one hand on the keyboard, another on a book. Keeping my ideas, day-dreams, options, wishes, and eyes open. Keeping my topic sentences active, and my coffee topped off. Keep well this week, all y'all.

Changing light at 8am

"The lucky trees, to be able
to stand that close. If we talk
too much, we’ll surely miss it."

From "The Delta Parade" by Susan Stewart

***

Sometimes the memory of early morning light, that beaten-gold haze before the heat burns off the air's moisture, is enough to help me through a week.

Glyphs

"How many years did I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart..."

From "Crusoe in England" by Elizabeth Bishop

***

More readin' and ritin' to do on a holiday weekend.
The air is thick, still and humid -- Hurricane Alex's expiring breath moving up from South Texas.
Have a peaceful week, all y'all.

Almost

"Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace..."

From "Paradoxes and Oxymorons" by John Ashbery

***

Almost:
Too tired to post.
Completely covered in cat fur.
Ready to head to bed -- must get some rest before BBQ for breakfast at Snow's!

Have a good week, everyone.
Here's hoping I find some nice rusty things for pix.

Drive-by

"In the future, I imitate an imagined trumpet sound
Or the brilliant purple words of a man or woman I haven’t met yet..."

From "Very Strong February" by Bernadette Mayer

***

One big fat dream last night, of myself and a friend bobbing in the middle of the Pacific ocean, nothing to see except water and incredibly tall waves that never crested. We rode the waves up, then down into the troughs, and finally saw a tiny island, an atoll really, far off.

The waves pushed us there, and the island was not much bigger than a small room.
But the very few people on it were friendly.

I hope your week was a good one; I hope this week brings you lots of brilliant purple words and large, benign waves.

Behind Ginny's Little Longhorn

"Wires and pipes, snapped off at the roots, quiver.

Well, that is what life does. I stare
A moment longer..."

From "An Urban Convalescence" by James Merrill

***

I feel a little like this truck. Or is it that I feel more like those clouds? Difficult to say, but I will say this about James Merrill.

A number of years ago, when I lived in New York City, I heard that James Merrill was going to read some of his poems someplace downtown, I can't recall where. Of course I was going -- there was no way I was NOT going.

I was waiting for the bus that would take me downtown when two young men came near. One of them began talking to me and handed me an invitation to a church. He urged me to go to their service that night. I told him I couldn't -- I needed to see and hear a poet read some poems, thank you very much. Besides, wasn't art a form of church?

He got a little huffy, and waved towards the crowd of rush-hour working folks crossing the street, an inimitably world-weary hustle and flow:
"Do those people look happy? They need God to be happy, not art!"

"Ah," I said, "their problem is that they have too little art -- if they only read more poetry and looked at more paintings, they'd all be much happier!"

My unnamed accoster snorted in scorn while his partner-in-proselytization could barely stifle his giggles. The bus pulled up, and I said, "Last chance -- I'll go to your church with you both tonight, but you have to go to the poetry reading with me now!"

I got on the bus; they stayed on the pavement.

Merrill was splendid, magical -- he arrived swathed in an elegant red-lined cape and read his beautiful, ormolu verse in a voice that made them seem the most natural things in the world to say.

And when I left...I was happy.

I hope you're happy. And if not, let's meet here and look for more art.

Low heaven

"Extravagant
ailanthus, the courtyard’s poverty tree is spike
and wing, slate-blue..."

From "Ornithology" by Lynda Hull

***

Reading for work, then reading for class...from the changing interface of sales and marketing to the Prague Spring to thinking about Spero's helicopters.

Thank goodness there's a cat asleep next to me.

Have a good week, all y'all.

ei8ht

"Certain words and images
or parts of images

have been chipped away..."

From "Disclosures" by Michael Palmer

***

Looking at much work now that the semester is starting up, so back to posting about once a week. But I was so happy to get out and snag some pixels!

Have a wonderful week, all y'all.

Flammable

"I did it, I burned away every last trace, I left nothing, nothing
of any kind whatever."

From "In Order To" by Kenneth Patchen

Rosa rugosa

"No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma."

From "Soneto XVII" by Pablo Neruda

***

It's summer in Central Texas. Slant cumulus clouds and supercells.

Off to the farmer's market tomorrow; maybe fresh eggs and hopefully wandering with a camera Sunday.

As for the rest, petting cats and teasing The Mur, and of course reading for school.

Cab / clouds

"...she asks him to tell her about that place.
She sits facing him.
Waiting for the first vocalic, non-stops,
the push of air from his lips.
He tells her of the place where clouds are formed."

From "The Place Where Clouds Are Formed" by Ofelia Zepeda

Nubby

"The wrought planes and hinges of things
Strange, held-off symmetry, axis of waterline
rubbed, smeared, edge-shifted
What is real then made more so..."

From "Winter Journal: Fish Rises, Dark Brown Muscle Turns Over" by Emily Wilson

There it was

"...a bearded comet moved across the room
breeding no omens, tearing no major kingdoms
into small provinces, but there it was..."

From "The Stars and the Moon" by Grace Schulman

Marquee

"...the heat inside the small towns
of their bodies,
for which they have no words;
obedient to the voice inside which tells them,
'Now. Steal Pleasure.'"

From "Summer in a Small Town" by Tony Hoagland

¡Vamanos!

"...knowing I had everything I wanted,
but like Midas was silent and stiff with the gold I had touched,
felt always as if I had been buried under a ton of diamonds,
still feel the dust of them glinting on me as I drive across country..."

From "The Hitchhikers" by Diane Wakoski

Bamboozled

"...hooked themselves—bamboo diviner
Bent their way
Vigorously nodding
Encouragement..."

From "The Pier: Under Pisces" by James Merrill

***

Hi, everyone!
Slept almost all day.
One more road trip (this week, to Kalamazoo) and then a less intense schedule, or so I hope.

Tiny Hubble

"...causing great sections
of his nervous system—distant galaxies hitherto unsuspected (now
added to International Galactic Catalog)—to LIGHT UP."

From "The Preface" by Philip Whalen

(un)bound

"...she loved worms,
blackening the moon of her nails
with mud and slugs,
root gnawing grubs,
and the wing case of beetles."

From "The Woman Who Loved Worms" by Colette Inez

***

The. Semester. Is. Over.
Am off in San Jose at a trade show, the Mur abides, the cats need more petting.
But beauty is walking in the world...

Dreaming

"For such a man, art is an act of faith:
Prayer the study of it, as Blake says,
And praise the practice; nor does he divide
Making from teaching, or from theory.
The three are one, and in his hours of art
There shines a happiness through darkest themes,
As though spirit and sense were not at odds."

From "The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House" by Howard Nemerov

***

The cat naps, but I can't yet.

Finished (for now) with Preziosi, up to my eyeballs in Poussin's Seven Sacraments, leaving for a business trip tomorrow at 5am, and traveling to work conferences about every other week through late May.

I have until the end of April to write my final research paper, and digest/recall canonical works of art from the Renaissance on until the present moment.

I then have a scholarly conference in May, and need to get that presentation into shape.

So through until at least the beginning of June, my weekends and weeknights are spent studying/looking at paintings and trying to think, and then trying to write; my weekdays and weeknights are spent wrangling business doings.

I miss my playtime, I look forward to time to dream.

Interstitial

"...snow

melts midair
to rain.
Abbreviated..."

From "The Months" by Linda Pastan

***

Well.
I'm slightly back, and I definitely need more play time.
I decided to grab five minutes just outside our front porch to catch the small trees, and I need hours more like that.

School? The professor seemed to think my historiography journal redo was sufficient, as was my last journal entry, although I have no confidence that will continue to be the case. So I continue to split the logs of others' thinking with my dull axe and write/chop cordage as best I can. Michel Foucault has been reduced to firewood; Craig Owens is in progress.

Work? Well, here's a synopsis of March:
Go to Atlanta to work an industry trade show.
The next week go to London and manage a conference for my company.
And somehow get caught up on work and schoolwork when, the week after, I go to Corpus Christi to present a paper on Donatello's Penitent Magdalen.

The Mur is still not quite back to feeling right, but "the Dude abides".
And he is making pot roast for Valentine's Day, that sweetheart.

Okay, time to get back at that pile of logs I need to chop...

The wind died down

"...we stroked to her bones a cadenced droning,
and took back from her absence, our
amber, half-literal method of sight."

From "Windows" by Linda Bierds

***

Distractions from my pixel-catcher include:
1. Work (lots, oh my)
2. Schoolwork (a massive pile o' reading and writing; but my first essay is done, set sailing into my professor's inbox)
3. The Mur (non-trivial surgery again, later this week)

All reasonable distractions, but I'm not feeling very reasonable.
Go and have some fun for me, would you?

***

A brief update, for all y'all (and apologies for the lolcat fiesta, but sometimes lolcats happen):
1. Lather, rinse, repeat.
2. After spending every weekend since I got the course syllabus working on my first essay, upon my first meeting with my professor I was told "no, that's not what I assigned". Surprise! :-( I asked for permission to do it over, which was given, and validated what (I hope) my professor wants. I spent the last week sweating through Kant, Hegel et al again (lather, drink from the firehose, repeat), hopefully to serve up what will be accepted. And, after burning every spare minute I could find on the task, I lobbed my fresh 40+ pages of reading-the-assigned-text-with-my-comments into the professor's inbox tonight -- wish me luck.
3. The Mur is on the mend, but not quite spunky yet.

Opaque

"Late in the cold night wakened, and heard wind,
And lay with eyes closed and silent, knowing
These words how bodiless they are..."

From "Night Images" by Robert Fitzgerald

***

I dreamt there was a tornado coming, one so large I couldn't see it except for its effects -- the beautiful spectrum-laced cloud top, ice-crystal cloud tails making arcs in the stratosphere. My family was visiting, and of course I could not find, and then could not start, my car.

Mini-mes

"I am imagining this world but I’m inviting you in
So I can join you."

From "Museums" by Dan Beachy-Quick

***

It was windy, cold day when I saw that wreath on the storefront. And it is a windy, cold day today.

I'm going out to get gingerbread pancakes -- then back to trying to braid Kant, Hegel, Preziosi, tiny images of enormous Assyrian figures, and Peter Greenaway (among others) into a net within which I can catch my thoughts.

There's much going on, too much to type up here.
But I am glad you stopped by, glad for the invisible company -- I hope you have a wonderful, happy New Year.

Gifts

"I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give."

From "I Am Offering this Poem" by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Back-roads Christmas

"A small pine tree in the red soil
is all the company I have."

From "Mythistorema" by George Seferis

Nameless

"...these are rotten — I ask their pardon —
And we've the sun on rock and garden..."

From "Queens" by J. M. Synge

***

Starting into the next semester's reading.

In the first two weeks, I'm time-traveling from 30,000 BCE to 337 CE while digesting Winckelmann, Kant, Baxandall and Hegel among others.

*burp!*

Let's just call it "the turducken semester" -- hope I have enough Tums on hand.

Cinderblocked

"It seems like nothing
could change its color although
we couldn’t tell what color it was..."

From "He Said Turn Here" by Dean Young

Patched

"...times I can taste the iron in the air, the gray wash like exhaust, smell the burn-off,
my eyes begin to tear..."

From "The Foundry Garden" by Stanley Plumly

Leftovers

"I looked around, I thought of the lower wisdom,
spirit held by matter..."

From "Little Furnace" by Brenda Hillman

***

I have a few more tasty pixels left over from the Thanksgiving weekend to share, like the one above. Again, time-crunched until next weekend -- am heading out to work another conference tomorrow. But next weekend...ah, maybe more wandering.

I did meet with my next Directed Study professor, and am anticipating a groaning board of tasty art-related readings and much writing next semester.

Roped in

"...it is too easy to get lost in abstraction,
as if smoke, and dream, and quantum ersatz-states
are our proper environment..."

From "Stomackes" by Albert Goldbarth


***

Back to making more fruitcakes today (how could I have run out of butter?) and the regular chores and stuff.

No more wandering for pixels until next weekend -- I need to keep an edge on that appetite.

Master lock

"A lock of hair from a famous seventeenth-century poet.
The disintegrating bible wishing it was another book."

From "Adult" by Ray Gonzalez

Hill Country enso

"... It’s not that the angle
of reflection equals the angle of incidence,
but there’s exultation, pleasure, distress, death, love. ..."

From "Streamers" by Arthur Sze

***

And how to translate a few hours spent wandering here, picking up some goodness to take home after sitting elbow-to-elbow with happy, red-cheeked strangers at a shrine to smoked and honored meat?

No real way to do so, except to share a little of what I saw: above, and to come.

Thanksgiving

"...Leon Battista Alberti says,
Some lights are from stars, some from the sun
And moon, and other lights are from fires.
The light from the stars makes the shadow equal to the body. ..."

From "A Short History of the Shadow" by Charles Wright

***

Hey, all y'all! I'm back, sort of!
Happy Thanksgiving for those who are celebrating.
I have a lot to be thankful for, including you.

Here's what I've been doing:
* Too much work-work -- multiple conferences with significant time commitments and more work after.
* In all my spare time, school-work -- I'm now saturated with Nicholas Hilliard and the circle of poets around Sir Philip Sidney; I am in the finishing/polishing stages on the big paper, and made what I think is a pretty interesting case. However, others will be the judge of that.
* Lining up the next independent study -- am hopeful it will be on art historiography (try to say that three times fast!)

Had to give up Italian lessons for now. Just not enough time to study as much as I'd need amid plumbing mishaps, a random virus or two, and the Press of Commerce.

And so, finally, happily, I got out with my camera today. Snagged eight images and then the !@#$%! battery ran down, and my spare was devoid of juice. I took it as metaphor: Nature's way of telling me to go home, nap some more, and get teased by the hubbie for not checking my gear before I went.

More to come...

Was here

"...fold
and turn the paper,
guiding the scissors with care..."

From "Four and a Half Dancing Men" by Anne Stevenson

Slow posting again

The Excuses for No New Pix:

1. The Business Trip -- Two and one-half full days in San Mateo; productive, but not of art.
2. The Plumbing Excitement -- Just before The Business Trip, my bare feet told me our carpeting was wet. Fortunately, the good new plumbers we found helped quickly, but still.
3. The Press of Commerce -- Work work work work work.
4. The Academic Path -- Writing, researching and getting prepped for presentations at TEMA and Kalamazoo (woo-hoo!!!)
5. The Italian lessons -- troppo studio.
6. And so, no time out for wandering.

Ajar

"...The late afternoon tugs
At a gold thread you can hear fraying
When you close your eyes..."

From "Angels Grieving over the Dead Christ" by Gjertrud Schnackenberg


***

Random bits: First, still getting energy back post-surgery, but recovery has been fine and on track, as are my Italian lessons. Last, thanks for stopping by.

Burn ban

"...those hitchhikers,
burning by the side of the road,
burning
like the berries of the beautiful mountain ash..."

From "The Hitchhikers" by Diane Wakoski

Vault

"...And at the still center
of summer it starts; cowboys ride out out
of another life, old cars get up
from the dead and dance
like cripples hired out for a tent meeting. ..."

From "The Delta Parade" by Susan Stewart

Frostie

"...All night I wander alone, searching in vain for the irretrievable.

In the night I will drink from a cup of ashes and yellow paint. ..."

From "Nights on Planet Earth" by Campbell McGrath

***

First full week back at the office (whew), and now need to get caught up on schoolwork. Oh yes, also reaching out for Italian tutoring, among other bits of trouble-making.

If I'm not too punk tomorrow, will wander some with a camera in hand. (Yay! Fresh pixels!)

Worn ol' sun

"All our stones like as much sun as possible.
Along their joints run both solar access and decline
In equal splendor..."

From "Forecast" by Josephine Miles

Behind the shed

"...The opera of. Hummingbirds. MOVE,
an optimum crow and spider sparkle newly. ..."

From "Many Colored Squares" by Philip Whalen

***

Move? A little slow and difficult post-surgery, but we do what we can. Hope all y'all like the free stuff I found.

Dreams with bees

"...The last memory I have
Is of a flower that cannot be touched,

Through the bloom of which, all day,
Fly crazed, missing bees. ..."

From "Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock" by Galway Kinnell

***

I have had at least two recent dreams with bees in them.
I'm going in for some surgery Tuesday, and will come back and post as soon as I can. Stay well and happy, and thanks for stopping by!

Flower ladder

"...Nor do I like the mathematicians who tell me
I cannot say, 'The zinnias are counting on their
fingers'..."

From "My Dog Practices Geometry" by Cathryn Essinger

Mid-summer

"...isn’t it so
we’re merely vessels given in grace, in mystery,
just a little while, our fleet streaked moments?..."

From "Rivers into Seas" by Lynda Hull

Support

"...Somewhere in Oceania they added mermaid elves."

From "Finnish Opera" by Barbara Guest

Bardo

Artwork by Max Gimblett
Australia by Moonlight, 2004
22 x 30"
Pencil, acrylic polymer, Swiss gold leaf / Arches watercolor paper

***

Resorted to someone else's creative energy since I am flat out of fresh pix and running on fumes.

In this in-between-seeing-and-catching time, here's what's on my preoccupied mind:
Hubbie's post-surgical recovery.
The subject of my Fall schoolwork.
Tattoos, and tattoos that aren't tattoos.
Work work, and being behind thereof.
Hopefully visiting a New York friend who has a song by these guys for a ring-tone.
My upcoming surgery.

If all is well at Chez Witzel today, I may go wander tomorrow. Meanwhile, we're all going back down for naps.

P.S.: A shout-out to those krazy kids who've posted Birthday Greetings on my seldom-seen Facebook Wall. You all made me smile!