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The other day one of my friends told me he visited my blog, “po-atrocity.” Or maybe it was “poe-strosity.”
I love you, too, sweetie.
I was writing a poem recently and used a crayon-colors metaphor, so I went to the crayola website to validate the names of the colors in my memory. The box of 64 used to be the top of the crayone line — the compact box with the built-in sharpener and three tiers of crayons. Now there are containers with 96, 120 and 150. Compulsives like me would love the “twistables” crayons, each with its own auto-sharpener.
There are new gem tone colors (like lapis lazuli), colors that have been retired (bye-bye thistle), and colors that have been renamed (e.g., flesh is now peach (logically, most of the skin color on this planet isn’t that peachy color)). Some of these color names were my first introduction to great words: raw umber, mahogany, burnt sienna, goldenrod, and periwinkle — to name a few.
I may just have to go out and buy myself a crisp, new box.
My idea of how most people use Twitter is to ascertain or disseminate completely useless information, i.e., “where are you?” or “what are you doing?”. Not unlike most of the cell phone conversations I’m forced to endure in public. Anyway….
Twitter haiku is available now on Twiku. Some are a worthwhile read… some, not so much. Still, it’s more poetry moving through the universe, and that is a very good thing.
Yes, it’s April 5th, and it’s snowing here in Wisconsin. Sigh. The bright side points: it’s Sunday, so I don’t have to go out. The view out the window over the laptop is beautiful. The snow makes it a “good writing” day (which is almost as good as a “good hair” day). I have a working furnace, food, and a good novel to read when I’m done writing.
I’m working on a poem about understanding a zen koan — the process and the frustration. In case you don’t know, a koan is “a paradoxical anecdote or a riddle that has no solution; used in Zen Buddhism to show the inadequacy of logical reasoning.” – Wordnet. So, any attempt to understand or solve a koan is tautological. Circumlogical. Impossible? That hasn’t stopped generations of zen practitioners, and it won’t stop me. Contrast a koan with a mondo, which (I think) has the same goal, but uses a question and answer model to elicit an insight. I usually do “get” them or at least gain an insight from them. It takes adding a parallax point-of-view, or widening back, or minding the edges.
A recent entry on my Zen Page-a-Day calendar® was this one — which I still don’t understand: “What is the Way? In a dead tree, the dragon sings.” Thank you, March 17. Arghh.
NPR did a story recently called Six Word Memoirs. based on an exercise that turned into the book, Not Quite What I Was Planning, by Larry Smith. The excerpts provided by NPR are terrific, although none have quite the poignancy of the catalyst, Ernest Hemingway’s, “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
So, sitting in the looming shadow of a writer as skilled as Hemingway, I wrote my own:
Reluncantly less redhead, deliberately less read-head.
Poets & writers magazine is posting a great poem every day in April. There’s nothing like a poem you haven’t read in a long time, or even better — one you’ve never read before. Try it! Better than May flowers.
Things I wish I could write a poem about but can’t. Yet.
what if classic poets had a slumber party?
how I feel during the mandolin part of Maggie Mae
getting stabbed by your underwire
being upside down – beyond our apriopic sensors
women’s bathroom etiquette
dyslexia, but I’m not dyslesxic. I just know quite a few.
jr. high moments v. senior moments (e.g., should I call him? v. why did I pick up the phone?)
If Buddha lived today, would he ride a Harley?
what’s in this container at the back of the fridge?
koan answers
how siblings fight (nuh-uh! uh-huh! Mom!)
princess hair (or mermaid hair)
wave dynamics
stealing Robbie Robertson’s bottle of rain
writing without chocolate
First I’ll say how awesome (!) it was to attend a book signing for one of our own. I get to read Jerry’s work-in-progress almost every week at group, and I know he writes well. It was great to see that skill and work come to fruition: getting his novel published.
While at the signing, I sat next to a man who was blind. I sat next to him mostly because he was sitting on a very cushy-looking settee and, compared to an hour on metal folding chair, there was no contest. (Ok, he was also attractive in a 50-ish, ponytail kind-of way.) We chatted before Jerry spoke and talked about our preferred fiction genres, styles, and authors. I asked him if he could read and how did he read. He smiled and said that he could indeed read, read a lot, and currently used an optical character recognition (OCR) machine for books and OCR software on his computer. He told me how much better it is today compared to when he attended school and college, always requiring a reader (“Not that I don’t greatly appreciate what they did for me…”) and how much easier it is today and how he prefers having more control over his reading instruments.
I asked if the OCR had different voices to choose from and other options; did he prefer a woman’s voice or something like Jerry’s (deep, male, radio voice)? He explained that he did have a preferred voice among the many it had to choose from, and he would not pick a voice like Jerry’s (LOL), but more important to him was his ability to control the speed. Dramatic texture was not nearly as important to him as speed. I found this interesting, as I would have thought voice-acting skill was important.
Now that I’m doing some research on the web on OCR, I realize a couple things. He knows reading his way , and so he calls it reading. Why would he call it anything else? Just because he doesn’t use his eyes the way do — he still receives information from a book or magazine and processes it verbally. I had a bit of a perspective shift. We are so egocentric, aren’t we? The other thing I realized is that my preference for dramatic reading may stem from the choices I have. I have used “books on tape/CD” for long drives, and I have been acutely aware and judgmental of poor readings. For example, Lance Armstrong’s biography recording is done by a professional actor/reader. It’s so well done, that when I heard Lance speak after I finished the bio, I thought he sounded wrong. Contrast that to John Glenn’s biography recording. While he’s certainly lived an interesting life, he’s not a skilled or dramatic reader, and I don’t think he should have read his story himself. I found myself distracted from the content by his wooden delivery. I put books I read myself and recorded books into two different catagories. This is not a distinction this man can make.
Early's Fall by Jerry Peterson
Today is Jerry Peterson’s author event – a book signing at Booked for Murder in Madison for his novel Early’s Fall.
Visit Jerry Peterson Books for information about a great writer and a synopsis of the book.
Twitter away, folks. See you there at 2:00!
Because I don’t go to church or participate in any organized spiritual or fraternal groups, I didn’t think that I performed or was attached to any rituals. Recently, though, I spent a little time lately examining my activities and intentions. Quotidian rituals include making the bed every day, compulsively checking that the garage door is closed (three times check and say, “door’s closed”), brushing and flossing my teeth, and applying eye cream at night. There are certainly activities I wish were daily-without fail and more intentional: walking, meditation, performing acts of charity or kindness, and
(the circumlogical) daily intention.
Examining my activities for rituals showed me less about the ritual and more about my self than I would admit before now. The compulsive activities MUST be done. I experimented a few times — try to leave the bed unmade. One time I got as far as sitting in the car before I went back into the house and made the bed. I’ve driven back from the end of the block if I can’t remember ritually closing the garage door. Deliberately refusing these rituals left me feeling vulnerable and exposed; incomplete and unable to free my attention. Perhaps that’s the real value of ritual. it allows you to bundle your angst or anxieties into a tightly controlled activity — it’s an agreement you make with your psyche for a mechanism to facilitate compartmentalization.
Emma helping me write
I don’t have any rituals for writing. I have some preferences, though. I’ve learned i write better after meditation. I write better by following a thread of thought intuitively. The times I’ve set out with a specific subject or occasion, I’ve struggled greatly. I enjoy Celtic music while writing. Most of the time I write directly on the laptop, though without specific location, but there are times I work from notes I’d written on paper. Sometimes Emma helps, but usually she just purrs moral support.
Poetiosity 