SUNRISE: BIG SUR

I could've gone to the writers' convention.
I kept thinking to myself, well maybe I should've.
I'm supposed to be a writer, and all that.
Besides, all my friends are there.
But then, this cliff, this shore
was my view yesterday, all day.
On set for Hand of God at an ungodly hour
we watched dawn's light crawl down Big Sur ridge
and the fogbank retreated to a safe distance.
A roadside chef cracked dozens of eggs
(we ate plein air omlettes right on Hwy 1,
a fencepost with a view for a table).
Such famous beauty before us,
replete with rubberneckers and cyclists,
cavorting whales and curious sea otters.
Between takes, surcease of the sea
breathing beside me. All day long.
I saw sleepy indigo wake to turquoise
and dream itself to pale robin's egg blue
to match the celestial eyes of the sky.

4/3/2016

FIRST CONTACT

Pre dawn call, I was so frazzled they sent me right away to hair and makeup. A woman in curlers at the far end of the trailer was chapping a worker. My hairdresser said: Don't look, don't talk, she doesn't like it if anyone talks. We conspiratorially whispered in code as my hairdresser attempted to tame my unruly mop. The woman stalked to my end of the trailer, and sat down next to me. She looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't quite place her. She glared at me in the mirror and told me to move down a seat as I was in her line of vision. I stared at her point-blank. If looks could turn one to stone. She either needed morning coffee, or was already in character. The hairdressers took it all in stride and carried on as if there was nothing amiss with stars wobbling in rarefied orbits.

4/3/2016

On set: Hand of God

We were standing at the edge of a windy bluff wearing in skimpy clothing, and we nearly froze to death. We were background extras for a memorial scene. That's all we knew. I was assigned to be part of Judge Pernell Harris's family. We practiced our familial grieving stance, as the drone hovered like "Nam. Zoomed in, invaded our space.  

A young woman repeatedly poured ashes over the edge of the cliff. The wind brought it back to us. Ashes in our eyes, in our mouths. Good thing it wasn't a real funeral. Dead man's ashes. Take One,  Take Two....Take Ten... Perhaps it was Portland cement. My eyes burned, the tears were real.

The assistant director, Mario Van Peebles called for a huddle rehearsal, we welcomed group warmth. Mario did an impromptu interstellar poetry rap as an intro to our scene, everyone paled, fell silent. So I juked some words right back at him. We laughed at the cosmic joke as he swung my hands, we were dancing on the edge of the cliff like mad hatters.

We were so in the dark, we didn't even know the name of the show. How cosmic: Hand of God...and it was godlike, all right. We saw whales spuming in the distance, and a curious sea otter came into the cove to see what all the fuss was about. Seagulls and terns below us, seeking right-of-way.

Slowly I learned the actors' names. They still meant nothing. I don't watch TV, I haven't had cable in 30 years. The man in the camelhair coat, Andre Royo, (Robert 'Bobo' Boston), and I joked around. Another co-star, Dana Delany, elegant in a a black cape, and six-inch heels, stumbled up and down the cliff, we caught our breath whenever she caught her heels. Someone said she's in Desperate Housewives of... as if I was supposed to know what show she was referring to. 

We were Ron Perlman's "family" on set, and my mates were floored that I didn't even know who he was—until I saw him.... I got to study the back of Ron's head for a few hours... and watch them turn and leave over and over. I can safely say it was my first up close and personal encounter with Ron. He didn't talk much, but when I lost my mind (easily done) when I saw a whale spout, screaming and jumping up and down like a pogo-stick. He turned around and laughed at me.

When the choreography was right, the stand-ins left us. Then the stars arrived for their close-ups. Why is she familiar? The woman in the trailer. No! Not Faye Dunaway sitting next to me in the hair trailer? Get out! 

Surprise guest star Faye Dunaway (as Valerie Harris) was frail. They kept her safe inside the hive. I kept singing Bonnie and Clyde to myself. And thinking of Chinatown. Looking for Jack. Thinking Mommie Dearist. Wow, an icon. My reaction is to keep away from the famous. Unless she fell on me, which was quite possible, several of us on that cliff together took turns spotting for her.

Dana (as Crystal Harris, Pernell's wife) kept leaving the memorial early. I don't know the story, the backstory, nor the future plot of Hand of God. Operating in the dark. Later I find the grieving widow (Alona Tal as Jocelyn Harris, married to PJ Harris, Jr.), was continuously dumping her husband's ashes at cliff's edge. Guess I'll need to watch the series now. Hope I got everybody's name and character right.

I talked a bit with Andre, and shot some photos of him on the cliffs...he was trying to take a selfie and it was a ways down to the sea. Whoopsie! What a way to lose a principal supporting actor wearing a great camelhair coat. I said, Let me do that. I was talking to everybody, I didn't realize he was part of the cast until later. As background, we're not supposed to talk to the cast. There's an invisible wall. A code of silence.

It's about the paycheck at the end of the day. Not the fame. Background (formerly known as extras) is hard work, and pay is little better than minimum wage for us non-union folks. The work can be gruelling. Standing for hours on end in uncomfortable clothes, then being seemingly carefree, and in character when the camera's rolling. 

Still, I got a vicarious thrill when Brian Cox shook my hand and chatted about my aching feet on the set of Etruscan Smile. Neither Fae nor Ron shook our hands, but Faye did say hello to us on set.

As the widow dumped ashes and sand again and again, another character (whose real name is Eric) read an eulogy poem over and over. They didn't give him a poem to read for the script, so he scribed something right on the spot, in iambic pentameter.  I made him read it to me during a break, as I couldn't hear him from afar. Poor man never got past the fourth line. Cut!  We read poetry to the sea. To the sea. Ah, poetry month. It's a wrap.

4/2/2016


Faye Dunaway set to join Amazon's 'Hand Of God' season two

Hand of God (TV series) Created by Ben Watkins (Burn Notice)

O FOOLISH APRIL HAIKU

O foolish April
showers, such sweet succor fails
to baptize our heads.

Welcome Fool, jester
of spring, motley capricious
gamboler awakens.

Green in bud and sap
the trees explode with delight
and the robin choughs.

First bird of spring coughs
complaining of the weather
magnolia blossoms.

Tree's spring laundry, hangs
its smalls for the world to see
magnolia knickers.

Wanton cat grovels
at my feet, I have no cure
for her deepest ache.


4/1/2016

April Poetry Month prompts...

Get your hot off the press red-hot poetry prompts here:

NaPoWriMo 2016

NaHaiWriMo and Haiku writing prompts  OK, I admit I'm guilty of counting syllables, I know Japanese haiku isn't syllabic. See The Discipline of Haiku

2016 April PAD Challenge

The Poetry School

Poetry Prompts

Facebook search for poetry prompt sites

If you're on Facebook, check out Molly Fisk - Poet. She often posts random prompts there on her own page, too.
Molly Fisk's ongoing poetry bootcamps require a secret handshake and small fee to join their Nicenet group.

Check out Poets.org too! A poem a day will be sent to your email box and you can use that poem as a starting point.

Or cannibalize old writing prompts from previous years! I often combine prompts until I find one that juices me. I also collect prompts from other sites in a folder and let them surface in random order.

I have lots of prompts posted in my blog and I've tried to link them, but not always. See writing prompts 

MORE POETRY PROMPTS

PAD poetry prompts 2016 (not used)

April Poetry Month prompts...2016

NaWriPoMo 2015
It's time for April Poem a Day! 2014 

November Poem a Day prompts 2013APRIL POEM A DAY links 2013

NaPoWriMo PADI, Molly Fisk, poem prompts 2013 (not used)

NaPoWriMo poem prompts 2011 (not used) Nov

NaPoWriMo Prompts 2010 (not used)  Apr 

FREE LEONARD HAIKU

FREE LEONARD HAIKU

Old Free Leonard sign
on a road at rush hour clogged
with measured justice.

Sign says Free Leonard
in red paint, old scab wounds
a detour of justice.

Old Free Leonard sign
nailed to a tree, cruciform
a framed reminder.

Decades of vigil
keeping memory alive
Leonard Peltier.

In the minds of few
he lives on, this tree proclaims
his freedom to all.

But who remembers
Wounded Knee, a stigmata
of blood on our hands.

Nothing says freedom
like a clogged road at rush hour
how progress is measured.

NEIGHBOR HAIKU

Old man sneaks a smoke
in his car, thinks he's fooling
the emphysema.

He hides evidence
from his daughter, he lights up
his first cancer stick.

First smoke of the day
greedily he sucks it down
old habits die hard.

LONG-WINDED QUESTION

Filibustering
man verbally develops
his thesis on foot.

Hot air rises up
to the surface and stonewalls
unanswered questions.

What was the question?
Rubber band string theory, an
incredulous weir

of words leading to
nowhere in particular.
Flibusted man.

Remembering Marty Kent

Facebook is like one vast John Guare experiment. Guare wrote the play, Six Degrees of Separation. The idea that we are merely six degrees separated from everyone. Say, Kevin Bacon. Facebook periodically brings that idea home.

Someone posted on a Marin page, a book that she had found, and wanted to know more about it. I was surprised to discover that I knew the poet as I had worked for her family a long, long time ago.

I worked for Roger and Alice Kent during the early 1970s. One of my jobs was running the office for Western Star Press. I remember the name Marty Kent. Still trying to line up a face. I can almost see her.

A floodgate of faces: there was Neili, Kenny Kent's ex-wife... There was Molly Kent & Max, who had two kids. Max was an architect, and turned a squash court into a cool house. And there was Molly's baby sister, Alice, but we called her PeeWee.

So how did Marty fit in? It took a while to place Marty, but by happenstance, somebody told somebody who told somebody who told Marty's daughter about the post, who enlightened us. It turns out Marty was a cousin.

Marty's daughter, Littlest Alice and I struck up a Facebook friendship. It turns out that Alice and I both worked for Western Star Press. We began to swap stories. One thing led to another, and lo! and they've a few copies of Marty's book, and she'll mail me a copy.

How small and lovely the world, that which separates us also brings us together with few degrees of separation.

Splitting Hares and Rabbiting on

A young brown hare, watercolor, 1502, Albrect Dürer —Wiki

A photographer, hoping to sell prints, conflated rabbits with snowshoe hares calling them Easter Bunnies. Augh! For the record, hares are not bunny rabbits. They're not even distant cousins either. They may look alike, but it's convergent evolution. It's a great herbivore model. But they are a very separate species, even more divergent than sheep are to goats. More like gazelles and sheep. Different genus, Genius!

Through I suspect the hare was the mythological pre-Christian role model, the term, Easter Bunny referred to a rabbit, because in the Middle Ages rabbits (not hares) were called cunnys, which rhymes with bunny and hunny. Baby cunnys were called rabbits (or kits), but that word cunny was later changed to coneys, because prostitutes were called... Well, you get the picture. Coney Island. Rabbits, or....?

European cunnys/conejos (Oryctolagus cuniculus) are not native to most of Europe, they came from Iberia, they're not even native to Northern Europe or Britain. Some historians think rabbits were brought to Northern Europe and Britain by the Romans. But the Romans preferred to eat sleepy doormice. So, this speculation is wrong, as “during the Middle Ages, they were regarded as a high-status food and transported across Europe.” —Discover Magazine

Most historians agree that rabbits were introduced to Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. The Normans brought rabbits to Britain and Ireland. And cunnys were easy dinner fixins'. Which led to a population explosion, and some really weird Medieval manuscript drawings of bloodthirsty hares (not bunnies) armed to the teeth with lances, axes, swords, hellbent on harming humans. 

Hares do not make good pets, they're not domesticated, and share few traits with rabbits. They're solitary creatures, prone to boxing and brawling with potential mates and interlopers alike. The term "mad as a March hare" came from observing their combatative breeding nuptials. (Don't preach to me about the "wrong" use of combatative vs combative. Just. Don't. It's in the OED.) How mad? Go ask Alice.

Lewis Carroll's Alice and the Mad March Hare (a European hare)—Wiki

Mountain hares are smaller than European, or brown hares. The maigheach bhan, or bocaire fasaich, or Scottish mountain hare (Lepus timidus), is a hare of many colors and an astonishing assortment of names: whiddie baudrons, bawtie, cutty, donie, fuddie, lang lugs and maukin. AKA the blue hare, tundra hare, variable hare, the white, snow, or alpine hare (but never an Arctic hare), the mountain hare is big on camo—like ptarmigans and stoats, it turns white in winter—except for the Irish hare (L. t. hibernicus), a separate (sub) species—it prefers to tan the beaches. 

(In Irish mythology, the shapeshifter hare, the giorrea (little deer), is associated with the realm of the Otherworld. To harm a hare carried dire consequences. The warrior Oisín was spirited away to the Otherworld for accidentally wounding a hare with his dart, who was a woman of the Sídhe. Druids used hares in divination and prophesy by catching them, then turning them loose to guise the path of their escape.)

There are hares, and there are even more hares. There are 32 species of hares worldwide, and not one of them can crossbreed with rabbits (they have 48 chromosomes vs. rabbits' 44 chromosomes.) According to an article in LiveScience, “There are … "cryptic species" that appear identical but are genetically distinct.” Probably a good thing too, otherwise we'd have Monty Python killer rabbit-hares running amok armed with swords and whatnot whacking the bushes and our kneecaps.

European explorers were terribly cavalier at identifying Old and New World animals so there were bound to be mix-ups. Take our native North American hares, for example. Jackrabbits are not rabbits. Hares are larger, have longer black-tipped ears, large amber eyes, long hind legs, and are positively antisocial as compared to cuddly wabbits. They also tuck their tails down when they run—and they’re faster too, clocking in at 45MPH.

Despite its confusing common name, a jackrabbit is a hare. Short for jackass-(who looks like a)-rabbit. Got that? Of course, the word “jack” in front of rabbit, sort of like a Cousin Jack reference, as in being distantly related (not Cornish miners), was probably a nod to the fact that the explorers knew the New World creatures were hares. Jacks and Jills refer to hares, not rabbits.

On the other hand, a Belgian hare is not a hare, it's a true rabbit bred to look like a hare. A cottontail, on the other hand, really is a wabbit. Rabbits are social animals and make great pets. Think Peter Rabbit. Not anti-social Jack, or he'll smack the shit outta you. That goes for Jill too. Especially Jill.

According to H. L. Menken, "Zoologically speaking, there are no native rabbits in the United States; they are all hares." I guess he never saw a cottontail. Or perhaps fuzzy logic was involved. What he probably meant was there are no European rabbits (Oryctolagus) vs. native rabbits in America. Which is true as cottontails (Sylvilagus) are a separate species.

Rabbits and hares from the Leporidae family (not its sub-order, Genus), which is a sub-branch of the order Lagomorpha, which includes rabbits, hares and pikas (sometimes called rock hares). Got that? It's a Kings Played Chess On Fine Grain Sand ss moment... Order, Family, Genus, Species: it goes Lagomorpha, Leporidae. And that's where the semblance ends.

North and South American cottontail rabbits Sylvilagus are the ONLY rabbit that doesn't burrow, like the hare. They're sort of a straddle-the-difference species niche. They're not Old World rabbits. They're more rabbitish than rabbity, at this point, I'm probably splitting hares. Sylvilagus xx— (13 species) are not European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus—there can be only one!), starting with its tail, and its habits. But I'm not about to list all the burrowing/ feeding differences, let alone, weird kinetic skull differences. You'll have to look them up yourself hare. 

BTW, since I know you're dying to ask, cottontails (Sylvilagus) cannot interbreed with domestic European (Oryctolagus) rabbits. Though they can do the down and dirty, and even produce embryos, European rabbits have 22 pairs of chromosomes, while native wild cottontails have 21pairs of chromosomes. Score one for DNA! At least that gene pool's clean.

Zebras Spotted Running Loose In East Oakland

Zebras Spotted Running Loose In East Oakland. Spotted zebras? Did they use the zebra crossing on Hegenberger? And they're not escapees from the zoo? Hee-haw. They ran away from a circus. The UniverSoul Circus at Oo Stadium. I didn’t even know the circus was in town. You can’t make this stuff up. But the zebras made a jailbreak, all those stripes and secret spots converging in the concrete jungle. Were they looking for the Oakland Zoo? Eli’s Mile High Club? What would Dr. Parrot say? (Look up Oakland Zoo director's name, I double-dare ya.) Just another day in the Bay Area.

AT THE BOTTOM OF FALLEN LEAF LAKE, rev

AT THE BOTTOM OF FALLEN LEAF LAKE

 
Ancient submerged trees
3000 year-old forest preserved
beneath the surface.

In icy waters
dead trees still reach for the sky
a green blob hiding

between the branches
the last holdout of algae
neolithic bloom.

3/20/2016
From a much shorter poem

Fallen Leaf Lake

Avocado vs Squirrel

Mr. Squirrel shows us how to chow down an avocado

Avocado vs Squirrel. Our neighbor's avocados are far too enticing a treat for the street squirrels. All that fat. They know there's a huge nut embedded inside the unripe fruit. No matter that they can't eat that giant mother of nuts, as it contains a potent toxin, persin—when mixed with cornmeal and lard, is used as rat poison in Latin America. Don't know how effective it is.

Squirrel never got the memo that unripe avocados too are toxic, or so the internet says. Horror stories abound—people feeding pet squirrels avocado, rodents croaking within days. No such luck in our urban neck of the woods. Squirrel (who is a non-native redhead) and equally stubborn, tries an avocado each day to see if it's edible. Every day he peels a new avocado. Maybe this time. Sometimes it's a three-avocado day. 

We’ve taken to putting some of his discarded meals in the elongated swan-shaped dish nailed to the fence. He nibbles most delicately on the ripening fruit, peeling the avocados as he goes. He drapes his tail across his back like a feather cloak, shimmies and flicks it to show his pleasure. When he’s done noshing, he strokes his cheek along the enormous avocado nuts, scent-marking them for later. Funny, because avocado means testicle in Nahual, and Mr. Squirrel has some big nuts. He speaks fluent chatter.

Avocados are a bit of an evolutionary anachronism, as the original seed transporting avocado tree’s sole desire, was an extinct megafaunal species, a gomphothere, a snouty elephant-like monster with a shovel mouth and a friendly GI tract. A farmer of the first degree, he gombed down the tasty fruits, and pooped all over the place. Until he became extinct. The avocado didn’t get the message. The Cenozoic nut should’ve gone the way of the dodo, according to a Smithsonian article.

Lately I've been rescuing Squirrel's discarded avocados. They usually split upon impact, but I douse them liberally with lime to prevent oxidation, the squirrel chew marks too, and the avocados usually ripen. Unless they don't. Into the compost they go. Sometimes Squirrel scoots down the tree to balefully stare at me eye-to-eye when I steal his ill-gotten treasure. It's a bit of a standoff. Then he races back up the trunk to pluck another, scolding all the while.
 
Needless to say, we have gleaned his previously taste-tasted avocados. We are swimming in mangled avocados, avocados on the counters, in the fridge door, me, tending them like babies, searching for signs of softness. I'm inventing weird new recipes daily—from the usual guacomole, to fetttuccini primavera with avocado sauce, and avocado key lime pie. 

The neighbors are too lofty to take Squirrel's discards. They toss perfectly good avocados into the trash. And the myth of the poisonous unripe avocado has them flummoxed. Good neighbor deterrent, but Squirrel, himself, is another story.

another squirrel joins us

Junior!

LOST POSITIVES

Is gruntled the opposite of disgruntled?
she grunted, mucking about with language,
making a pig out of a sow's ear.

It made her feel so disconbobulated.
Can one conbobulate, or bobulate?
And who was Bob, anyway?

She couthily worried about
all those lost negative prefixes:
un- im- in- dis- de- non.

It was not (h)eveled and acculate verbage 
she sook in the land of lost positives.
But it was evitable she persed.

3/13/2016
rev 3/21




more on lost positives here.

PET WORDS

Yesterday's small children
petted me like a soft kitten
as we wrote poetry in an inner city school.
I wear 2nd-hand cashmere sweaters
because I am allergic to sheep wool.
(Cashmere is goat). Their petting me,
and its tactile feedback, reminds me
of the difference between their world,
and mine.


3/8/2016



There's a haiku embedded in there somewhere.

What's in a Nickname?

Remembering my childhood name, my cousin Dave posted this photo on my Facebook Wall.

I replied: I am The Baba! It was a name I kept well hidden from my classmates, because they teased me and sang the nursery rhyme.

Baa baa black sheep have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.
One for the master, one for the dame,
One for the little boy who lives down the lane...  

Aside from the fact that I endlessly puzzled over the identity of the little boy who lived down the lane and and wondered why did he need a big bag of black wool? What use was it to him? I'm sure he would've much rather have had coin, or chocolate or a toy sailboat. Besides, I didn't like being compared to a sheep. All that baaa-ing about. I figured out early on I was the black sheep. Trust me, I didn't trust Mother Goose either.

Who knew the nursery rhyme was a complaint against the the Great Wool Tax of 1275? Or that the master who was the evil Plantagenet King—Edward Longshanks, at that, the dame was the greedy church, or that the wool-sack itself was a symbol of power of the Lord Chancellor?

Now do the math—66% went to Church and State, and 33% went to the sheepherder. And if it was black wool, it was more valuable, as it didn't need to be dyed, therefore subject to higher taxation. No wonder there was a rebellion. And now the rhyme has been blacklisted for being politically incorrect. Talk about dyed in the wool. But I digress.

Then there's the meaning of teacher as in a monastic siddha leader, or father. Baba Muktananda, or Neem Karoli Baba. You can imagine what confusion that caused me during the dawn of the New Age.  By 1970 there were more babas out there than I could count. A swami from Miami? No, Marin.

Since one didn't have to be a believer or profess anything to be a follower of Baba, I followed myself. I had no mother, she was off joining communes, and no father either. By that time my own father had slipped truly, madly, deeply into the deep well of Seagram's. None of this I only drink what's in the neck stuff. His middle name was DUI.

I was a self-raised swami baby. Baba means baby in Irish. I was the first grandchild. My grandparents called me Baba.We were a multi-generational family under one roof. Halcyon days. Then my grandfather died. Hell arrived with its hand-basket of tithes. My grannie sold the house and moved to the country with me in tow. And she grieved. That's how I was raised as Baba, wagging my tail behind me.

Now it's a sharp nostalgic sensation, a whiplash to the past when someone calls me Baba now, as it's such an old name, known only by family and close friends. But it is the only name I answered to for ages.

Maureen usually meant I was in deep trouble. Or at school. Or both. At the same time. Guess that's why I grew to like the nickname Mo... A name where I was not in trouble, or about to get into trouble, or be called on for the right answer in class that I didn't know, or did know, but was too shy to answer. So much pain associated with a given name, my mother's name, she who was crazy and unpredictable right up to the very end. Enough to drive one to drink. Did I mention I'm allergic to wool?

• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

The Mighty Mo

I am The Baba! A name I kept well hidden from my classmates, because they teased me and sang the nursery rhyme. It's nostalgic when someone calls me Baba now, as it's such an old name, known only by family and close friends. But it is the only name I answered to for ages. Maureen usually meant I was in deep trouble. Or at school. Or both. Guess that's why I like Mo... Not in trouble, or about to get in trouble, or be called on for the answer in class that I didn't know, or was too shy to answer. So much pain associated with a name, also my mother's name, Big Maureen, whose nickname was More, she, who was crazy and unpredictable. Always asking for more. I am the Baba, but I am also the Mighty Mo.

• This morphed into a much longer piece about the nursery rhyme.
• What's in a Nickname?
• Changing my Facebook name It took me two more years to own my nickname
• from a facebook post
• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

YESTERDAY'S CHILDREN

Yesterday's children petted me like a soft kitten
as we wrote poetry in an inner city school.
I wear the castoff cashmere sweaters of the affluent
because I am allergic to sheep wool, but not goat.
Their petting me, and the tactile feedback,
reminds me of the differences
between their world, and mine.

3/6/16




There's a haiku embedded in there, somewhere.

On the set of Etruscan Smile

 

It looks like The Etruscan Smile will be released in 2018. Here's hoping all my scenes haven't been cut out (story of my life—the cutting room floor.)

March 2016. On set for Etruscan Smile. Role: power elite background at 4AM, Day 2, and drop-dead tired. The wine is fake. Alas. The hair is not, alas. They tried to tame it, Waspify it, or maybe even Trumpify it. They tried to straighten my Medusine mop before a rainstorm, LOL. 

I could have taken swimming lessons in the dress, or used it as a tent—replete with mosquito netting— I'm fully clothed underneath it all.  Camera, cellphone & spectacles all shoved down my cleavage. No pocketses. An iPad shoved down the back of my jeans. I was prepared. Albeit barefoot, if the Big One struck.

My feet were killing me so I was barefoot in City Hall which was doubling as a museum. It was then that the star of the film, Scottish actor, Brian Cox, came over to introduce himself and to shake my hand. I scrambled to attention in my tent of black chiffon and he laughed at my bare feet.

Uncle Argyle (Brian Cox), was laughing at my abandoned heels and bare feet. And said it must be murder.  Ah, the cool marble floor chilled my aching feet.

Trackpad Woes

I'm so thrilled to have my laptop trackpad working again, thanks to Apple Bar Genius, Jax. The senile trackpad was having a secret inner life of its own, spontaneously loading web pages, ordering things from Amazon, and executing all manner of odd right mouse click commands, from lassoing everything on the desktop, highlighting everything on web pages, to spontaneous trash runs.

Everything was confounded and compounded by no working right or left click bar (button) as well. It's fixed. Done. No more hammering on my trackpad with fist to get it to let go of the lassoed folders. No more ghost in the machine. No more secret life of Walter Mitty.

Sure, I need a new trackpad, and yes, we tried to adjust it several times over. I even took the little adjustment screw all the way out at one point. Nothing worked. I had to turn on the advanced tap click option when the clicker failed completely. There are some things you can't do if you don't have a clicker. Like choose which user you are upon restart. Or lasso and drag text on some webpages. Needless to say, I had many strange workarounds. But now it clicks like a champ.

A friend asked what my trackbad was buying. Mostly ebooks. It made a valiant attempt at some computer electronics cables. I was able to thwart it. But I was smacking it around, slugging the keyboard with my fist, trying to stop it, and it kept on spending. The ebooks were supposed to be samples...imagine my surprise when I found out that I bought them for real. One-click buying is lethal when your trackpad's gone clean mad. I managed to either cancel or return them all. Some web pages and ads are still spontaneously loading but I can live with that.

Maureen Hurley Reading at California College of the Arts

Maureen Hurley Reading
Wednesday, February 24, 7:30 pm
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
A2 Cafe, Oakland Campus
Free and open to the public
5212 Broadway (at College Avenue)
Contact: 510.597.3709 or humblepie@cca.edu

Poet and artist Maureen Hurley has won grants, awards, and fellowships for her poetry including eight California Arts Council grants and two KQED SPARK artist grants. As an artist in residence, she teaches Bay Area kids poetry and art through California Poets in the Schools.

Hurley holds an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. 

She grew up in the wilds of west Marin and currently lives in Oakland.

Light refreshments provided.

"Olympic Pride, American Prejudice" documentary includes Archie Williams.

My ab-fab foundations of algebra teacher, the late, great Archie Williams was a real Olympic champion. Archie won the 400-meter race. I got to hold his Olympic gold medal. I sucked at math, but Archie was the kindest, gentlest mentor I ever had. Not his fault that math didn't take. Oh, but the stories he told us, of winning the Olympics, of running with Jesse Owens, and meeting Hitler.

At 13, we hardly knew who Hitler was, but we held that same gold medal that Hitler bequeathed to Archie. Archie was a a man who broke world records, and race barriers.

He was a pioneer on several counts, not just the Olympics. After he injured his leg, he reinvented himself and became one of the first African American fighter pilots, and flight instructor, an engineer, and a computer teacher, when computers were young.

He was one of the few teachers that cared about each of us, it was not just about learning math, or passing the class. I learned to collect multitudes of stories from him. I probably failed math miserably but a much larger life lesson was the answer to the equation.

My friend Ken Bullock wrote: "Archie was a very special guy. He was a family friend, and frequently played golf with my dad. His son, Archie Junior was a good friend of mine as well. Archie was on the podium with Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics, but he had only one gold medal to Jesse's 3, so Jesse got most of the press. Archie wasn't one to feel slighted though. He became a flight instructor, and taught the famous "Red Tails", the Tuskegee Airmen to fly in combat. He was, what almost every student in Drake High School would say, the best teacher and person ever! "

"Olympic Pride, American Prejudice," a documentary set to premiere later this year including Archie Williams.

"Jesse Owens Was Brave. So Were These 17 Other Black Olympians.
Their stories are rarely told.

People often remember the 1936 Olympics in Berlin for track and field legend Jesse Owens taking home four gold medals, essentially triumphing over Adolf Hitler’s hateful ideologies in his own backyard. At the time, Americans considered Owens to be representative of how the mighty U.S.A. was superior to Hitler and Germany.
But Owens was just one of 18 black athletes on the U.S. Olympic team brave enough to attend the games in Nazi Germany. This summer marks the 80th anniversary of those games, and the athletes’ accomplishments are perhaps even more significant all these years later.
"—read the full story and photos  at Huff Post

"Archie Williams went on to become a Tuskegee airman. He was a trained pilot while he was at [the University of California, Berkeley] and he was a mechanical engineering major so he became a Tuskegee airman.

"According to Williams, despite the Nazi racial policies already in effect in Germany in 1936, he and the other African-American athletes were treated very well by ordinary Germans. In fact, they were treated better than they were used to in the United States. As Williams noted, in Germany, "none of us had to ride in the back of the bus." He was, however, well aware of Adolf Hitler's antipathy for blacks and Jews, and found it a bit disturbing when he had what the called the "dubious honor" of standing less than 50 feet from Hitler during the Opening Ceremonies." SB Nation

See more photos of Archie here.

part of my memory was written 3/25/15, but  I never did anything with it.
RIP Harry Roche
Segregation Games (Archie Williams)

ANTS IN THE SUGARBOWL

Argentine ants orgiastically burrowed
beneath sweet sugar crystals in the cut glass sugar bowl
only to find the end of it in a scalding mug of tea
studded with  tea leaves.

Linguistics segue on Celts and Albanians (raw notes)

This is a placeholder for lost notes. I will probably never get back to it. I was in the midst of discussing Albanian linguistic origins on an Indo European language post when Facebook completely spazzed out and took off. And everything I wrote was lost. I had posted that the Albanian word for fish was too similar to Welsh—in Irish it’s iasc, and in Welsh, it’s pysc. I can’t remember the Albanian. Thanks to Facebook, I’ve lost the Albanian word. 

The upshot is that the word for fish is probably not a Latin loanword... (Why do people assume Latin is always the Ur language for other IE languages, when the PIE word is the model at hand?) O bhuel, perhaps someone will take offense at my post and then I'll be able find it again and finish my thought. (Didn’t happen.

What I'm intrigued by is that this Smithsonian article does not challenge format of the model, which should be in question, it's an example of the historicity of the mapping of IE, with all its (unconscious) biases. If you watch the map, note that German follows modern political borders... and I don't think it was that widespread. And does it predate Celtic? I think not. It's pure supposition.

Oh look, they even forgot to include Celtic in its original homeland, in what is now Austria. Oopise. Celtic had much larger range, and yet gauging by the Smithsonian Magazine map, it's depicted as less than half its original range. Iberia isn't even included. From what I could tell Iberian Gaulish was similar to Gaulish, but there were also similarities to Irish...mainly hard 'c" vs "p."

And then there's are semantic gaffs, "Ancient Turkey..." etc.; clearly the writer has a poor grasp on the subject matter (and history)...the article should've been edited. Also, look to the animated mapmaker. Since when is Business Insider in the linguistics business?

And of course, the out of Anatolia theory is but one model. Gawd, I loved those accidental lessons in linguistics, when I took Old Irish. I was not a good student, in way over my head, but I took a year if it. And I worked hard at it every single day. A classmate was taking Hittite at the same time so I got a peek into Hittite as well.

Got the original Smithsonian Page
See also how I E languages expanded.

Charolais love

© Maureen Hurley 2016

At cousin Katie's ranch for Sinead's birthday BBQ. Kicked off two items on my bucket list. Another view of Elephant Mountain (really I want to go up it, but this will do). And going along the old railroad bed from McIsaac' s Ranch to Pt. Reyes Station, we did almost the entire middle route. I'm over the moon. The cows were very glad to see us. They thought we brought hay. But they have an entire hillside of grass to eat. Katie's new Charolais is about to give birth at the foot of Elephant Mountain. Very friendly. She wanted to lay her head in my lap. I was in the back of a four-wheeler. Isn't she a beauty? And she has grey eyes!

Brand new camera!

Letter to Pat Conroy

Ah no! Well, first, Happy 70th Birthday, and second, thank you for the process of trying to discover yourself through the process of writing, your novels have changed me, and third, you'll give the Big C a good fight, and a run for its money. I will keep you in my thoughts. (As my argument with organized prayer, or maybe it's the word itself, is about as epic as your argument with family and society...) I suspect the act of writing is my paeon, my homage to the concept of prayer, so I will write for you. I will write. True. And fearless. Because that's all I know how to do in the face of adversity. You have lived life fully, left no metaphorical stone unexamined, and you will continue to live life to its fullest. And that in, and of itself, is a prayer, and affirmation to life. And you will be fearless in your fight as well. Godspeed, O King of Tides. Your work and vision have sustained so many of us. Given us the courage to examine our own lives.



See THE BEST REVENGE, RIGHT?

SOLO DANCE

Day 5 of not enough sleep.
Stress is taking its toll
on an overdrawn account.
Flannel-eyed, I am.
Note to self: Try not to dance
on the rim of that mug of tea,
forgotten on the floor.
There is no graceful recovery mode.

2/14/2016
added 1/22/2017


Day 5 of not enough sleep is taking its toll. Flannel-eyed, I am. Note to self: Try not to dance on the rim of that mug of tea, forgotten on the floor. There is no graceful recovery mode.

Bleeding Hearts (photo)

Bleeding hearts; 40 years ago, I fell down a scree embankment above the creek and dislodged these bleeding hearts. Feeling sorry for them, I took them home and they took root. So they're about 40 years old (and a whole lot older than that in the larger scheme of things). They bloom faithfully every year. My valentines.

I got a new camera yesterday. I toasted mine on NYE, taking pix of Pt. Reyes. It got its sensor burnt at Schooner Creek, by reflections. And then light meter went to the dark side. I found I could coax it along by bracketing, but what's the point? And the camera I had my eye on was the next model up Panasonic w/ the Leica lens. AND the price had dropped by $160! Over the moon. Zoom isn't as good as it could be, but I can control F-stop, shutter, etc...lots of features. We'll see.

added 2/2017

the prose behind SOLO DANCE

Day 5 of not enough sleep is taking its toll. Flannel-eyed, I am. Note to self: Try not to dance on the rim of that mug of tea, forgotten on the floor. There is no graceful recovery mode. Someone sayys: Just wait til they get to the denim stage.

Ah stress. Was working on the Poetry Out Loud event, and there were problems, so I was up all hours the night before, then it became a pattern. Once I get off my sleep cycle, and if I'm stressed, then I go to sleep late and wake up early, tooo early. Slept last night for the first time in a week. Ah, blessed sleep. You are not overrated.

I read an interesting article on sleep deficit:

Is Your Sleep Account Overdrawn?: Interview with Dr John O’Neill, MRC Laboratory For Molecular Biology, 5th Feb 2016, on the Naked Scientists.

Coffee, chocolate, tea—even sugar will keep me awake. 

To sleep, perchance to dream. There's the ticket.

added 2/17

SUPERBLOOM

A Desert Five-spot mallow bleeds in the gravel,
a rare Valentine amid the Gravel Ghosts.
The Funeral Mountains are giddily dressed
in alluvial skirts spangled with Desert Gold,
Phacelia, Poppy and Purple Mat. 

After that last Biblical deluge,
the saltpan was scoured white as snow.
Decades of dustorms had blanketed it
against the elements.

I remember following a dry streambed
from Badwater to the far side of Death Valley
to see the pupfish. The streambed was white,
and satin-smooth, like a bolt of silk,
I lay down on it like a lover, caressing its skin.

It meandered like a shining ribbon
through the jagged knife-dark hell
of the Devil's Golf Course
with its labyrinth of salt spires.

I walked barefoot on that path for miles,
soft plodding of feet against saltpan
like two fish flopping in a mirage of water.
But they thirsted for sweetwater
in an otherwise arid landscape.


2/14/2016
rev. 3/21

DANGEROUS NIGHTS

Sometimes when my late-to-bed self
meets my early-to-rise self,
when the candle burns at both ends,
it's the the middle of the night
that's in danger.

2/11/2016


from a Facebook thread with Al Young

UnKind Energy Bars are for the Birds

Is it just me, or does an upscale energy health bar that retails for more than a buck apiece tastes like sweetened birdseed? Millet and really raw quinoa. I can still taste the bitterness of the husk long after I've swallowed it. How unKind. Give me granola or give me muesli. Give me horse oats, any day.

Besides, energy bars are merely an excuse to eat candy bars masquerading as health bars. The energy boost comes from the sugar, not the raw grains. Said unKind bar had millet, amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat (like pea gravel) and oats, all raw. Most of which, we probably can't even digest raw. All of which, at one point or another, I have eaten raw. Yep.

And yes, I did eat birdseed (millet) as a kid. Agnes fed Chi-chi the canary millet to make him sing. Speck McAuliffe's green parrot bit my finger when I stole his sunflower seeds.

I also ate horse oats, the sweet ones were the best, and I even ate dog biscuits on a dare!  What can I say, I was gullible? Milkbones were awful, but a classmate loved them. So you know I had to try them. Lucky we didn't have a dog. Kitty kibble is not good. I have it on the cats' authority.

Trader Joe's was giving away packets of what looked like oyster crackers.... I stuffed a couple of packet in my pocket, and when I was particularly peckish, I munched on some. Phwatt! Horrid, with bits of calcium, that is bone bits. I had very clean teeth afterwards. Clean teeth and a shiny coat. Fresh breath. Woof. (Note to self: next time, read the label first, before eating.)

But seriously, sweet horse oats were covered in blackstrap molasses. And they tasted far better than my unKind bar. Way cheaper too. When I was a kid, a hundred pound sack cost me $3.50 ( 6.5 hours' worth of babysitting money), and a gunnysack-ful would've lasted me a decade to two. The horses, ponies and donkeys routinely broke out of the corral to break into the garbage can where I kept the oats. The mice and birds too. It was an ongoing battle of wits to keep the oats safe.

The unKind health bar was so bloody awful, I nearly spit it out. Blows my mind that people actually buy them. Not the generic over-sweetened granola bars, mind you, but the organic "health store" variety. I did eat it, I needed to eat something. But it was not pleasurable. If I wasn't so hungry...there wasn't another option.

I just needed to get something in my gullet and it was free. My shark fin was up and in danger of impaling the air and I had to eat something then and there. An old boyfriend used to carry peanuts when he saw the fin of hunger rise up. He knew the signs. Cranky doesn't even begin to cover it.


Awful, awful. I'd rather eat horse oats with molasses any day. I don't care about the calories but you can be sure, no more unKind bars will cross my tongue. Phwatt and ptooey. I was still cranky after I ate that bar. And I sure couldn't sing like a canary. But I do feel a little whinny coming on. Or is that a sneeze? Maybe it's a desert canary song—a hee-haw arpeggio in Bflat.

Give me horse oats. Give me chocolate, or give me death. Well, maybe some wine too. But never give me an unKind millet bar again.

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes (photo)

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Nothing like Shrove, or Fat Tuesday pancakes for dinner, My grannie always made pancakes for dinner. We were so excited. It was Sunday morning verging on Tuesday night. No funny papers. But even still, it was exciting.

My grannie made everything from scratch. Not even Bisquick snoozed in our pantry. But you can use any quick-bread, or pancake mix and adulterate it. I like buckwheat pancake mix, if I can find it. Make some pancakes using buttermilk, oil and pancake mix, and then add way too many eggs.

If the recipe asks for one egg, add three or more eggs. You can also add a little seltzer water, or ginger ale, or anything bubbly to add a delicate airiness to the pancakes. If you're short on flour, a little added cornstarch will make crispy pancakes. 

Batter should be runny, let it sit a half-hour, or longer, to thicken up. If you’re organized, make your batter the night before. Never happens in my house. I inexplicably get the urge for pancakes at 6 pm, nearly too late. Sometimes I don’t even realize it’s Shrove Tuesday, but I have the instincts of a homing pigeon when it comes to eating authorized pancakes for dinner.

Grease a big pan with unsalted butter, let it get nutty brown for maximum favor impact, spread the pancake batter thin, like crêpes. I use a soup ladle. First one is for the kitchen god. Stack 'em up on a warm plate. You'll need to add butter to the pan for each pancake. Half a pat. Salted butter is too much. Ruins the delicate flavor.

Filling: mix cottage cheese and Greek yogurt, or sour cream, vanilla sugar, zest and juice of one lemon, OK, so spike it with maple syrup too. Spread on pancake and roll it up like a cigar and smoke it.

One year I went wild with flavored Wensleydale cheeses, studded with dried apricots, and lemon rind. They were divinely delicious, but way too heavy and boggily filling. Stick with cottage cheese and tart it up. Your waistline will thank you.

Filling no. 2: spread pancake with creme fraich or Mexican extra fat sour cream (it has a much better flavor than American sour cream) on a pancake, then smear it with good raspberry preserves. I like seedless preserves vs raspberry jam. (I abhor blueberries, but that could be a hit. Or huckleberry jam if you can find it). Roll it up. Sprinkle with vanilla sugar. Oui. Olé!

Filling no. 3: spread pancake with butter, really good marmalade or jam. Eat.

Deluxe edition. Drink one glass champagne, or spumante between each step, and don't forget to take a sip or two as you liberate each pancake from the pan, of course. By the time you have enough for a meal, you won't care what day of the week it is. It’s a good luck tradition to flip the pancakes sans spatula. Good luck.

Shrove it Jack!

Landforms moving into dance (photo)

Elephant Mountain, Gallagher Ranch, Point Reyes © Maureen Hurley 2015

Whenever I see the West Marin hills align in wedges as we thread our way along the back road from Nicasio to Point Reyes., my hands begin to sweep and caress the vast swaths of land, as I spontaneously paint and gesture with my arms, my art and photography move into dance. I always want to walk barefoot down those smooth dirt roads in summer. Nothing like the pad of bare feet in cornstarch soft dust between the toes, heading down to the creek. Beauty is twice beauty when it comes to the hills of West Marin.

rev.1/18

Writing Process: Keyboard vs Longhand

I like keeping a little distance from my writing, so I write propped up in my bed with a big LCD monitor at the foot, and I use a wireless keyboard and mouse. I've a headless MacBookPro running the tiny empire (a friend poured a nice big glass of Chardonnay on the keyboard, thus killing the screen, and she gave it to me).

Old back injury precludes traditional desk and chair—not that I EVER liked sitting at a desk, ever, I hurt sitting in chairs, and get spasms... I hated CRT monitors, and always tried to get as far away from them as I possibly could. So laptops are my preferred pen. It's an evolutionary process. And now that my eyes are older (sigh), they too like the six-foot distance from the monitor as well. But I have to make the typography huge in order to read it.

I used to write in journals, but after a second car accident, the physics of writing was challenging (I had PTSD), but keyboarding wasn't threatening and I could fix my wild typos. Besides, I'm a messy writer, constantly revising, so the keyboard process is kinder to dyslexics than paper. That said, I do miss the scribing process. You think different in longhand. Something savagely soothing about writing in cursive.

Hiraeth

Hiraeth is a Cymraeg (Welsh) word which doesn't translate well into English. Hiraeth, and the Cornish hireth are co-equivalents to the Portuguese saudade. It is a deep longing for home, but it's not mere homesickness. It's a deep, abiding bond one feels with homeland, tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed, or the past. It is an admixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, and desire. A lump that begins in the back of the throat, straddling both the real, and imagined past, both coming and going simultaneously as you stand there, at one with the eternal moment that is always now.

2/2/2016


 This is probably the origin of this post.
Longing/Saudade/Hiraeth