These Are the Words That the Voice Was Repeating

This year's edition of the traditional post. Here, what I write (odometer updated) every year:

Fifty-six today, this guy (link updated at his joint for this year's birthday, so click, yo). When we met in 5th grade forty-seven years ago neither of us predicted the weirdest year of our lives would be 2016.

Always, this: twenty-three years ago Landru was the first human not Earthgirl or me or a doctor/nurse to hold Planet.

   
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And especially

Best Giftmas Present Ever

Hand-painted by Planet, 8x8 acrylic: Fleabus, Jess, Olive, Rosie, Stanley.
 

 
 

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These Are the Words That the Voice Was Repeating

This year's edition of the traditional post. Here, what I write (odometer updated) every year:

Fifty-four today, this guy. When we met in 5th grade forty-six years ago neither of us predicted the weirdest year of our lives would be 2015.

So this year it's been forty-six years since we met, and this year makes last year look normal, though as always, this: twenty-two years ago Landru was the first human not Earthgirl or me or a doctor or a nurse to hold Planet.

   
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And especially

Drives One through Ten

The photos don't do justice to Planet's artshow - photos can't make out the details of the multiple photographs in each they are cut from, though in one of them you can see the building I work in. She did that for me. The pieces are hung in a room dark but for the light illuminating each piece from below so that the shadows are part of the piece. Here's Planet (my daughter, for those of you who don't know) describing the project:

Ever since I was a young girl, taking long drives with my parents has been one of my methods for coping with anxiety. For many, anxiety is an ever-consuming entity that becomes part of everyday life. It can be paralyzing, numbing, chaotic, and overwhelming: it shuts me down. However, these feelings slowly disappear with car rides as the motion of the road permits me a gentle access back into reality. This experience of anxiety and relief become the inspiration for my work.

These sculptural photographic pieces are created with cutout shapes of abstract drawings I have made using the swaying motion of the car while I am taking a drive with friends or family. With images of highways and roadways cut into the shape of the drawings, eventually only a few details of the photograph make it into the final piece. By combining and layering these cutouts into complex shapes, these pieces become a blend of the confusing and overwhelming nature of anxiety with glimpses and trails of reality. With the addition of light to create intricate shadows that disrupt the already fragmented imagery, I attempt to push the disorienting and disruptive nature of anxiety and how coping mechanisms sometimes offer only brief moments of clarity before one might become lost in the chaos of panic once again.
 
By using black and white photographs instead of plain paper as the base of my cutouts, I am able to give the sense of reality in the final pieces so it becomes harder to just see them as sculptures but as a narrative. For some, these pieces might capture the tightening feeling of anxiety and how it separates them from reality; others might read these as liberating and a return to reality; there is no right answer, but the use of photographs grounds these pieces as abstractions of the real world, allowing them to be read any way the viewer desires. Using photography also allows me to push the boundaries of what photography is traditionally known to do by taking a 2D form and transforming it into 3D sculpture. Additionally, projections from the spotlights onto these abstracted photographs allows for shadows to become an entity of their own. The shadows create new and oppressive shapes beyond the sculptural image on the wall, therefore further pushing the overwhelming and disorienting concept of anxiety in these pieces.

The experience of creating these pieces has allowed me the opportunity to reclaim anxiety. No longer is it an abstracted feeling inside of me, but a visual form that I can manipulate and control. My hopes are that the audience views these pieces as an opportunity to reflect on their own understandings and experiences with anxiety, as seeing anxiety in a form we can all control can be both comforting and liberating.

A Dark Fruitcake Sleep

New paintings from Earthgirl. Here's why I am not a painter. The above was going to be my birthday present unless it sold at the MOCO Art Festival this weekend. It sold at the MOCO Art Festival this weekend. So did this one, you can't tell from the photo, it is only approx 4x6 inches (and won her first place):

CORSON'S INLET

A.R. Ammons

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning

to the sea,

then turned right along

   the surf

                         rounded a naked headland

                         and returned

   along the inlet shore:

it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,   

crisp in the running sand,

       some breakthroughs of sun

   but after a bit

continuous overcast:

the walk liberating, I was released from forms,   

from the perpendiculars,

      straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

of thought

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends   

               of sight:

                         I allow myself eddies of meaning:   

yield to a direction of significance

running

like a stream through the geography of my work:   

   you can find

in my sayings

                         swerves of action

                         like the inlet’s cutting edge:

               there are dunes of motion,

organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance   

in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:

but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events

I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting

beyond the account:

in nature there are few sharp lines: there are areas of   

primrose

       more or less dispersed;

disorderly orders of bayberry; between the rows

of dunes,

irregular swamps of reeds,

though not reeds alone, but grass, bayberry, yarrow, all ...

predominantly reeds:

I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries,   

shutting out and shutting in, separating inside

          from outside: I have

          drawn no lines:

          as

manifold events of sand

change the dune’s shape that will not be the same shape   

tomorrow,

so I am willing to go along, to accept   

the becoming

thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends, establish   

         no walls:

by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek   

to undercreek: but there are no lines, though

       change in that transition is clear

       as any sharpness: but “sharpness” spread out,   

allowed to occur over a wider range

than mental lines can keep:

the moon was full last night: today, low tide was low:   

black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk

of air

and, earlier, of sun,

waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact,   

caught always in the event of change:   

       a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals

       and ate

to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab,   

picked out the entrails, swallowed the soft-shelled legs, a ruddy

turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits:

risk is full: every living thing in

siege: the demand is life, to keep life: the small

white blacklegged egret, how beautiful, quietly stalks and spears

               the shallows, darts to shore

                            to stab—what? I couldn’t

       see against the black mudflats—a frightened

       fiddler crab?

               the news to my left over the dunes and

reeds and bayberry clumps was

               fall: thousands of tree swallows

               gathering for flight:

               an order held

               in constant change: a congregation

rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable

          as one event,

                      not chaos: preparations for

flight from winter,

cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, wings rifling the green clumps,

beaks

at the bayberries

    a perception full of wind, flight, curve,

    sound:

    the possibility of rule as the sum of rulelessness:

the “field” of action

with moving, incalculable center:

in the smaller view, order tight with shape:

blue tiny flowers on a leafless weed: carapace of crab:

snail shell:

            pulsations of order

            in the bellies of minnows: orders swallowed,   

broken down, transferred through membranes

to strengthen larger orders: but in the large view, no

lines or changeless shapes: the working in and out, together   

            and against, of millions of events: this,

                         so that I make

                         no form of

                         formlessness:

orders as summaries, as outcomes of actions override   

or in some way result, not predictably (seeing me gain   

the top of a dune,

the swallows

could take flight—some other fields of bayberry   

            could enter fall

            berryless) and there is serenity:

            no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,

or thought:

no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:

terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities   

of escape open: no route shut, except in   

   the sudden loss of all routes:

            I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will   

not run to that easy victory:

            still around the looser, wider forces work:

            I will try

       to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening   

scope, but enjoying the freedom that

Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,   

that I have perceived nothing completely,

that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

THE EARTHWOMAN AND THE WATERWOMAN

Denise Levertov

The earthwoman by her oven
                           tends her cakes of good grain.
The waterwoman's children
are spindle thin.
                              The earthwoman
                  has oaktree arms. Her children
full of blood and milk
          stamp through the woods shouting.
                 The waterwoman
          sings gay songs in a sad voice
                        with her moonshine children.
When the earthwoman
has had her fill of the good day
            she curls to sleep in her warm hut
            a dark fruitcake sleep
but the waterwoman
                   goes dancing in the misty lit-up town
          in dragonfly dresses and blue shoes.

Confirming Existence for Loved Ones Who Worry

We're fine. Happy day yesterday. Abandonment of Planet in two hours. Return of Planet Poem tonight. More tomorrow, or not.

These Are the Words That the Voice Was Repeating

This year's edition of the traditional post. Here what I wrote last year:

Fifty-three today, this guy. When we met in 5th grade forty-four years ago neither of us predicted the weirdest year of our lives would be 2013.

So this year it's been forty-five years since we met, and this year makes last year look normal, though I'll add this reminder this year: Landru was the first human not Earthgirl not me not a doctor or nurse to hold Planet.

   
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Prick of the Thistle, Queen of the Weeds

Loved ones, there is an Earthgirl story I'd love for Earthgirl to tell you from last night, ask her, it's not my story to tell. Today is 25 years, 300 days. I need post the gif more than once a year.









IN PERPETUAL SPRING

Amy Gerstler

Gardens are also good places

to sulk. You pass beds of

spiky voodoo lilies   

and trip over the roots   

of a sweet gum tree,   

in search of medieval   

plants whose leaves,   

when they drop off   

turn into birds

if they fall on land,

and colored carp if they   

plop into water.

Suddenly the archetypal   

human desire for peace   

with every other species   

wells up in you. The lion   

and the lamb cuddling up.

The snake and the snail, kissing.

Even the prick of the thistle,   

queen of the weeds, revives   

your secret belief

in perpetual spring,

your faith that for every hurt   

there is a leaf to cure it.

Waking You at One A.M. to Say the Hamster Is Back

• Happy Birthday, Hamster! Pick a cool concert - any format - and I'll buy the tickets.
• Neko Case's Flaming Hamster Wheel of Panic About Publicly Discussing Poetry in This Respected Forum.
• Hamster's Birthday card from Landru. Not sure if the title is an intentional Pixie's allusion but regardless it put this in my head.

YOU CAN'T HAVE IT ALL

Barbara Ras

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

Steven Jackson

My former colleague and still friend and good guy Steven Jackson posted that photo Monday (and you can see many of his amazing photos here) and he died yesterday morning of a heart attack. It needs noting here. He wouldn't mind if I stole another photo. Both are the best desk backgrounds ever.