Type Faster

This morning, Facebook coughed up an old memory, a quote:

"What would I do if I had only six months left to live? I'd type faster."
                         —Isaac Assimov

I think I'd also travel. I love travel, how it unleashes language. And photos, the unformed image resonating on the retina, begging for the stasis of the photograph. Line and form.

But the main thing I would focus on, would be to get all my writing organized, online, etc. Books, art, photos, and writing re-homed... A daunting task, at best. I've been nibbling at the concept in one form or another during the past year, and beyond. I still haven't uncovered all my writing from those madcap SSU daze. Only hints here and there resurface. It's like an archaeological dig into the past of one's craft.

I'm also snagging old Facebook memories that pop up daily (mainly from 2009 to 2013), and turning a few of them into blog entries as well—if they merit it, and no, I don't think my aesthetic standards have slipped. Well, not too much, anyway. Facebook offers up old status quotes by the day, not by year. So it's interesting to see what I was doing on July 4, from 2009 to time present. Sometimes the gold's in the comments. Not the post itself.

Funny, I didn't twig that many of my old Facebook posts were also writing worth saving, other than the obvious ones. I am still uneasy with the concept of prose, and tend to shy away from it, as it's a different voice, not like how a poem comes, complete, and unbidden. And so it goes.

NB: Well, I've managed to load the bulk of my nature photos for 2015-2016 up onto Picasa, in two days... A whole lotta editing and culling: 72 folders and counting! I was up until 5 AM, and I hit the keyboard by 8 AM. Still to do Monument Valley and Flagstaff.  It becomes a diary of sorts. What I took photos of. Last year was tough emotionally. My partner went batshit crazy in Febuary, and it peaked in June. I was sleeping on my cousin's couch a lot. Seeking beauty and solace in nature.

I have people/event pix on another Google+ site. To do. Recycled a few bits of old FB fragments in my blog. Picasa's being shelved, deep-sixed, going to the dark net, so it means that some pix will show up on Google+. Not sure of all my kid teaching pix. I may need to rescue them. Or consolidate my two sites. I need to create a new Google+ site for CPITS pix as an archive, so that's a project in the works. I've got some pix and poems from 2015 in Dropbox, But I can see that I'll soon run out of room. Future task. One among many. Trouble is, I hate Google+, and I don't like the photo layout, but storage is now limitless. 



WIKI IS THE NEW OED
Straddling the Continental Divide
ALARMED AND DANGEROUS

Finally found my cellphone

Finally found my cellphone—on the lam since Memorial Day Weekend. Not so sure if I'm glad I found it, or not. It's supposed to buzz and spin on its back like a hissing Hawaiian cockroach, when I call it. Hmmmf. Kafka's dead, I tell you. So much for Metamorphosis. Twigged my neck scooting all over the floor into deep corners, on my stomach, like a very large dustmop. Nursing a headache and a prodigious thirst. Didn't get anything done on my To Do list. Too traumatized. Just forget about any passwords working. Not in the cards. Yesterday the neighbor went on a batshit crazy rampage over rats. Tried to board up OUR crawlspace. I said But what about the 'possom who lives there? I won't mention the black widow nested under the Route 66 thermometer, I was playing toesies with. That's one way to get your kicks. More like kicking and screaming. I seem to have my own personal lowgrade Mercury retrograde techie cloud following me. The gnarliest of which, is that my wireless keyboard has completely lost its bluetoothy mind. Or has exquisite caviar taste in batteries. Stupid brushed al-u-mini-um battery-sucker stalls, stutters, or plain old types unrelated letters. Maddening ghost in the machine. I have to smack it like paddle to get it to work again. (It's holding its own now, small miracle.) No way I'm gonna upgrade the new hard drives in my computers now. Not in this state. I'm all elbows, arseholes, and emotional sinkholes. Make that a black hole. Mateo got my hopes up, told me to freeze my crashed hard drives for an hour, and maybe they'll start. Nope. Dyslexia is having a field day, unchaperoned, with spare change in its pocketses. Think I'll sit in the garden and watch the fennel grow. Maybe set the clock to 5PM. It's 5 o'clock somewhere, right? Maybe on the Yeast Coast. But, yeah, I'm fresh out of milk, which, in this household, is tantamount to a nuclear disaster, and coaxing himself to go get milk requires strategic tactics, I don't have the chops, and I don't dare drive with this techno-cloud hanging over me. The stolen car whose gifts keep on giving: like the new wheel bearings in Willits. I won't mention the quirky ignition tricks. Let's just say, you don't need a key anymore. Parking now requires a S&M steering wheel club and clutch club bondage routine. I can't seem to get anything done, let alone, done right. Spazzykakes crazy. Blame it on NASA's Juno orbiting Jupiter, which, apparently, is a big ball of gas. Juno is searching of an explanation on our humble beginnings, how everything started. 'Splains a lot.

And how was your day, Dearie?

Did You Save?

I can't tell you how many brilliant blogeens and Amazon book reviews I've written, and didn't save them, only to have them evaporate into vaporware. I am not an organized, nor logical writer, I write in the heat of passion, and then go back and plug the holes...layer and substantiate. So I often don't save those first drafts. It is probably a good habit to compose offline and save first. If only my brain worked that way...

Pestocide

Today I made super-pesto with two heads, not cloves, of fresh local garlic. I forgot how hot garlic can get on the Scoville scale. Practically Scotch bonnet hot. Don't think my tongue will recover. Everything tastes of garlic. Even chocolate. Not worried about the garlic, really, it does mellow in a few days, but when pesto is involved, it's hard to wait. Then it's time for pestocide. Meanwhile, I'm hanging out with the dragons and dreaming of pesto pasta, pesto salmon, pesto-garlic bread. I can do a faceplant in a good bowl of fresh pesto. I adore garlic. It doesn't always adore me. My tongue is still committing pestocide.

Father's Day notes

What I don't like about Facebook posts: the plethora of Hallmark memes harping on our collective sentimental heartstrings, asking that we please post a photo of our dearest fathers for Father's Day. The assumptions made. Not all of us had a Leave it to Beaver upbringing. I would gladly post, if I had a father who was actually a father, rather than an absentee stranger who was an ardent supporter of the bar at Mission District's 3300 Club (which burnt down last night), and kept a chilled bottle of Seagram's in the ice box for when the bars were closed. When did it all go so terribly wrong for him? Before I was born. I found these photos after he had died. A life that I knew next to nothing about. No substitute father figure either. But a story of sorts emerged from the photos.

What I dislike are the Hallmark knee-jerk memes telling us how we're supposed to feel. Someone, I don't remember who, said to distrust sentimentality (as it led to fascism.). And, on some level, it's true as it creates an illusion, not a true emotion. Edward Abbey took it a step further with "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."

Most of the fathers I saw growing up were also terribly flawed figures. So, I never sought out a father figure. It was a hard-drinking culture during the late 40s, early 50s. Mine left when I was four. He tried to connect a couple of times when I was 16, but by then, it was too late. His idea of taking his daughter out was to take me to bars. His usual haunts.

My father's mother did kill herself. Maybe that's where my father's wounding began... His father died soon after, of TB. He was a SF cop. They lived in Oakland, from what I can glean via birth certificates, then they moved to SF—by way of Boston, when, I don't know. I need to track that backstory down. A mysogenist uncle raised him. (Read into this, an alcoholic uncle?) It sounded like my father might have been better off as an orphan. He looks happy in the young photos.

What my mother's cousin said that he had a a terrible life, whoever was taking care of him was mean is spot on. I think my mom tried to explain his behavior with that story...meaning the uncle who raised him was a bit of a sadist. What saddens me is seeing the stories repeat themselves, generationally—certainly in my extended family.

The same holds true for my mother as well. I knew her well, but am glad she didn't raise me, it was always traumatic. She was manic-depressive. Her father was an alcoholic. All my aunts and uncles married alcoholics as well. My grannie was my salvation, she was both mother and father.

A friend made an interesting observation: "men have been massively victimized by the culture of machismo." And the "streetcorner virility-cripples club" an apt, and funny observation, that also conveys a lot of pain as well.

I found some family photos as we were cleaning out my grandmother's house. My mom's, and two of my aunt's photos (many in sad disrepair), as well as my grandmother's photos. This story emerged from the photos. I posted a memory from last year, that goes into greater depth, of the era of Big Band.

As to the stories that emerge, I am often the last to know how I feel, but by writing, I learn where I need to go. So far, I only had one pan dowdy making a comment about oversharing... I wanted to scream at him, You asshole! I am not seeking sympathy, I'm merely being a Sagge, saying it blunt, like it is... I guess that made Frank Toews uncomfortable. (I eventually unfriended him because of his constant derisive comments.)

I value everyone's stories, so often we sweep under the rug what must not be hidden. Other's stories, they enrich me, and I feel lucky to be able to share stories. Our perception and understanding of each other shifts. And empathy blossoms. we are all connected, I do feel the sadness, but I no longer dwell on it. It's like a tide that washes through me, not grief, but melancholy.
I also dislike how the world treated those of us who were parentless, sometimes as objects of pity, sometimes with derision, as if our unfortunate parental luck would rub off onto them. A shunning. When I confessed my mother was bipolar, the girls in high school literally excluded me, turned their backs on me, but they had the suburban life. They had no skills to comprehend what I was saying. This I learned much later in life."Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." —Albert Camus

That history really doesn't run me, it's merely an old observation. But it also opens up dialogue with many people. so that's a good thing. Not catharsis, merely observation. It's really about the memes, how silly they are, and how everyone goes awwww.... What's really interesting to me is the developing dialogue in this thread. 

And believe it or not, I did get a comment that gave me more information about my father...from my mother's cousin, I had no idea she even knew him. Something that would never have happened if I didn't post this Facebook thread. And I learned some backstory of others, things that I never knew about. Since I didn't know my father, it wasn't so much about repressed emotions, as a void... and many of the fathers I saw while growing up were also fairly flawed. So I was never a fan of Father's Day. My grannie was my mother, so that was less of an issue.

In the end, art was my salvation, what I turned to. (Well, my horse, too.) And later, to writing. Poetry saved me. Poetry was my mother and father.

Who was your father poet? My Father Poet is Pablo Neruda. Possibly WS Merwin, or Galway Kinnell as well.

from a Facebook post. See original thread here.

WORLD CUP

Around the world,
men are collectively screaming
at their TVs in unison,
yelling about the weather as well.
But not doing a damned thing about it.

#soccer

6/6/16

On Finns and Celts

A comment from my Viking-Irish Redhead Gene Myth post turned into a long blog post of its own. So I decided to repost it here. I may or may not get around to fashioning it into a story so these are notes.

Arhi Kuittinen Finnsanity said...
Mother of European culture is Finnic culture.
Blue eyed, blonde and red haired ur-culture. Finnish language is the oldest language in Europe.
"Vikings" were originally Kvens, Kveenit, the biggest Finnish Tribe years 400-1100. Popes robber barons made unholy big crusade to the Finland 1100 and ended the oldest culture in Europe which was called by Greeks Hyberborea. Finland was the last who standed against pope and Vatican.
King word is from Finnish word Kuningas.
Queen is from Kven word, "She is Kven".
Apollo cult hwrote about nordic Hyperborea the home of Greek knowledge and religion.
20 the most old written history text about Europe speaks about Hyperborea.
Blue eyed sea people destroyed Egyptian culture in Ramses III times - Ramsesses and Seth I were red haired Finnic Pharaos.
In China oldest mummies are red haired Finnic - N1C1 genetic line.
Silk road was Finnic project by these white skinned Finnic mummies.
Moscow and every big European city were originally Finnic town and commercial place.
In England there was Finnish names and Towns like Caleva.
Druids were continuing and developing original Finnic rituals but the language changed during 10000 years.
In Stone Henge there is both Moon and Sun ritually respected - that is Finnic cult, holistic feminine cult. "Hengettäret".
In Finland you can found 35 OLDER stone henges' ruins, Jätinkirkko, 5500 years old astronomical temples.
Lord Of The Rings -book is based on Finnic tales "Kalevala", Battle of the warlocks, etc.
Now you know something about the root of the European culture.

Maureen Hurley said...

LOL, Arhi Kuittinen Finnsanity, you've certainly conflated many, many cultures—not to mention time-zones, and millennia (Neolithic Stonehenge to Medieval Vikings), to support your theory, with no sustaining facts whatsoever. But thank you for your close reading, and comments.

For what it's worth, Stonehenge predates both the Finns and Celts. It was not built by the Finns (or the Druids, for that matter). Every culture on earth worships, or has worshiped the sun and the moon. And most cultures have created celestial, or astronomical temple calendars. The Finns didn't invent the idea. Whether Stonehenge was built by blue-eyed blonds, is moot.

Lithuanian-American archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas said the pre-Indo-European Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe" were the builders of Stonehenge, etc.

The Greeks were not referring to the Finns when they wrote of Hyberborea. The Hyperboreans were a mythical idyllic people who lived forever, "beyond the North Wind," in a land of eternal spring, where there was no war, or strife. That definition says more about the Greek state of affairs, than it did about Finnic culture.

Whether you read the works of Homer, Pindar, or Herodotus, the Greeks were referring to Hyberborea ,a land north of Thrace, BTW. Roman historian Plutarch connected the Hyperboreans with the Gauls. Hecataeus of Abdera further claimed that Hyperborea was Britain.

Pseudo-Scymnus wrote that the hero Boreas, for whom Hyberborea was named, dwelled at the extremity of Gaulish territory (Britain). Hyperborea was one of several terrae incognito. One of the unknown, unmapped realms.

BTW, during this timeframe there was no such thing as Finland. From the 12th c., onward, Finland was part of Sweden. When Adolf Ivar Arwidsson (1791–1858), proclaimed, "we are no-longer Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, let us therefore be Finns," the idea of Finland was born.

The term "Nordic" does not refer to Finns. As you said, Finns are another culture. Nordic means Norse. As in Norseman. It can refer to five separate countries, from Greenland to Denmark. The word Viking can mean raider or pirate, and it's not a Finnish word. There were viking raiders of many cultures, including the Irish, though the Roman term was Scotii.

The relationship between Finnish and the Indo-European Scandanavian or Celtic languages is scant, as Balto-Finnic is a completely unrelated branch of the Uralic language family. Kuningas is from Proto-Finnic *kuningas, which was borrowed from Proto-Germanic *kuningaz. Finnic, a conservative language, even preserved the Germanic normative singular case.

As to Egypt, there were Celtic mercenaries during the reign of the Ptolemys, who were Greek, not Finnic.

Nor were the Tocharians of the Taklimakan Desert Finnic. Their language, Tocharian A, was Indo-European, not Finnic, it shared many linguistic similarities with Irish, both highly inflected archaic languages.

The specific sheep wool found and the style of plaid twill weaving reflects that of N. Europe, what is now Germany, then a Celtic, or Celto-Germanic region. (We know of this because of placenames, and personal names, as recorded by Tacitus, and others.)

Since you mentioned genetics earlier, by blood, the genetic bond between Finns and Swedes is closer than, say, the Finns and Irish. Haplogroup N1c is found in northeastern Europe, Siberia, and the Far East. It's a descendant of an East Asian macro-haplogroup. Uralic N1c1 is found in Samoyedic (Nganasans, Enets, Nenets and Selkups); and Finno-Ugric (Finno-Permic: Baltic Finnic (Finnish, Karelian, Estonia, etc.); and Permic: (Komi, Udmurt). Saamic (Saami), Volgaic (Mari, Mordvin), Ugric, Hungarian, and Ob-Ugric (Khanty, Masi). The Baltic Finnic branch is related to the migration of the N1c1a1a1 (VL29) group.

As to the Tarim Basin mummies, I don't know where you got your information from. Please cite your sources. The paternal lines of male remains belongs to Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1, and a later Tocharian haplogroup genetic signature is R1b-M343.

You're right that Tolkien used Finnic sources. The Silmarillion is partially based on Finnic tales recorded in the "Kalevala" (which is a 19th c. construct from folkloric fragments from Karelian, Estonian, (Baltic), and Finnish oral folklore and mythology. But it was compiled into epic verse by Elias Lönnrot, who also coined the name, "Kalevala."

Like Scottish poet James Macpherson's Ossian Cycle, so influential in the development of the Romantic movement, the Kalevala is not an authentic, replete tale unto itself. It is a quilt, a pastiche. LOTR was also heavily based on Welsh and other cultural (read Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon) mythologies as well.

The Romantic movement emphasized emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, vs. rational, or Classicist ideals: not inclusive of history, anthropology, nor archaeology. It was the birth of the ideal of the Noble Savage, and epic folk hero—which ironically, stemmed from the ancient Greek writings. Full circle.

Merrie Monarchs madly munching on milkweed (photos)

My not-so-local red and orange milkweed, from Meadow in a Can had three fat monarch caterpillars on it. I've waited three years for this moment. Needless to say, I'm jealously  guarding it.



This fat fellow fell off his milkweed perch, then decided he liked my finger, tickle-tasting it all the way. I felt like a little kid again. Who remembers picking up woolybears, just because? I had a hard time convincing him that he couldn't stay on my finger. Most impractical.



I'm having trouble telling the front end from the back end on these guys, so I don't know whether they're coming or going. I think the short antennae are the front end. Dual suspension pipes, antennae at both ends.



Four, no make that five caterpillars are voraciously eating the milkweed down to the ground. They're huge. Soon, now. Found a new one eating a flower. Never been so happy to have caterpillars destroy my plants.

Think I'll call him Al-Hookah. These ones are only eating milkweed. They won't touch the verbena. Don't think you'd find these guys palatable, not with all that noxious milkweed inside them. 

The swallowtail caterpillar in the front yard is even more amazing, he has orange horns that deliver little poopy stinkums if you disturb him. 

That said, I used to play with woolybears, and hairy tent caterpillars, they're a type of procession caterpillar. They'd crawl up my finger, following each other like a little train. Maybe because I didn't disturb their hairs, but I never got stung. They're amazing critters. Not like the fat green bastards that leveled my kale. They had serious camo, blended right in with the stems.

Here's hoping my monarch caterpillars make it to chrysalis phase. I got mad and sprayed the orange aphids on the flowers with Spick & Span laced with alcohol. Then I discovered the little caterpillars. Oops! So I hosed the bush down and hand-squashed the rest of the bleeping aphids. What a putrid orange mess.

The caterpillars are toxic, but only if you eat them. For the most part, you might get a rash. The hairs on wooly caterpillars do spell DANGER! Avoid me. These guys are as smooth-bottomed as Alice in Wonderland's friend.

I've been staked out in the front garden with camera at the ready waiting to see if I can find any swallowtail caterpillars on my fennel bush. Mom swallowtail has been hovering a lot lately. Especially since I trimmed the fennel. I did check for eggs and critters. So far, nada. 

Hard part is to trick the camera into focusing on the right spot. Most are slightly out of focus. I wind up overshooting to compensate and throw at least half of them away.

A friend said that the milkweed I have (Asclepias curassavica) is not as good one for monarchs because it doesn't have as many toxins as native milkweeds. I got it from the California native species variety of Meadow in a Can (was supposed to be a CA species), and had no idea what it was until it flowered last year, I wasn't even sure it was a milkweed until I found the caterpillars on it. I'm wondering why it would've even been included with CA native species.

There are more than 100 different species of milkweed, and they are not all created equally.  

Asclepias curassavica, tropical milkweed, is native to the American tropics.Common names include bloodflower , cotton bush, hierba de la cucaracha, Mexican butterfly weed, redhead, scarlet milkweed, and wild ipecacuanha.

Not much I can do if it's not the right species now, other than pull it up, and it has visitors. So I'm going to leave it for now. Maybe I can find a slip of the right one for next year. If these three make it to adulthood, their colors alone will keep the birds away. The mimic queen butterfly banks on it.

I wanted to make an avant garden, but found the idea was already taken.

A Mexican poet I met in Rotterdam in the 1990s, Homero Aradjis started a foundation to save butterflies. This is an open letter call to action to President Barack Obama signed by the poets of the world, many of whom are my friends.

Shelley was right: Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world..

Resurrected and revised from a Facebook post. Lots of great links on monarchs posted there. added 6/2017.

Yet Another Migraine Day

I need to finish my final kid-book of poetry, but that blasted migraine just won't let go of me...just try reading with a migraine...Advil takes forever to kick in, and does as little as possible. Lazy sloth.

Not to malign sloths. I think they're adorable, especially when they snack on hibiscus flowers, or try and cross a road, clinging to the pavement with those long arms, like that time I got right smashed in Dougie McLean's pub, the Taybank in Dunkeld, and had to crawl down the humped bridge over the River Tay...  

Dunkeld, Dùn Chailleann means Fort of the Caledonii. They exacted a strange revenge. Or was it tribute? As we sat in the beer garden overlooking the River Tay, I also didn't factor in how long the gloaming lasted that far north. What seemed like minutes, was probably hours.

Great Birnam Wood, with its dark secrets, was to my right. People still leave flower offerings in the hole in the trunk of a massive oak reputed to be one of the last original big trees, but that would make it a thousand years old! The three witches told Macbeth he'd be safe until Birnam wood reached his castle at Dunsinane, some 13 miles away. He figured he had it covered. Across from Birnam Wood, was Beatrix Potter's beloved Eastwood House, where she was inspired to write her tales of Peter Rabbit. Odd juxtaposition of history.

Old Tree in Birnam Wood c 1880

THIRD APPARITION
Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him. —Macbeth, Act 4, scene 1

The Birnam Oak?

Och aye, I was the chicken crossing the road, and high Dunsinane Hill was upstream. Or was that the bridge? Oh puddleducks! I remember a hump in the middle. I admired the stop sign with its cryptic "Look" painted on the road pointing to Birnam Wood (were the trees on the move? Or was it an Ent crossing?), replete with white zebra zigzags that glowed like fangs— on all fours. Scottish beer seemed to be a tad stronger than American beer. I bet the next morning wasn't a pretty sight.

I'm thinking of sacking it. The Advil, that is, not the sloth, the beer, nor the puddleduck. Today I did manage to hand-calligraph 30-something Poetic Licenses for the kidlets. First names will have to do, I'm afraid. I can't focus long enough to decipher their last names.

OK, I've got a book title. Let's get on with it, shall we? Done with the final fiddly-bits, art work plugged in! Now to hobble over to the school in my stolen car that I can't clean up until the adjuster sees it, and the starter's permanently stuck in the ON position, so you can start it with just about anything. a nickel, a pen, your big toe.

When I got to school, I literally couldn't focus, all that bright light, spectacles were useless. So the teacher had to set up the copy machine for me....I banged out 40 kid-books, it looks lovely. I couldn't read my intro either, so here's hoping it'll pass muster, or my name's Grey Poupon.

WHAT THE CAMERA SEES

What I see,
and what the camera sees
are not necessarily the same thing.
The camera is always post aha!
An afterthought.

6/4/16

Tomales Bay (photo)

Tomales Bay from Inverness Park, New Year's Eve. The last gasps of a dying camera. This was the day my camera went south, the photos came out incredibly dark, and the imager had developed several black reflection spots. I was so discouraged that I didn't edit them. My skills weren't up to the rescue job.

Lightening the image up enough to see the trees turned the hill a ridiculous noisy blue. Cropping the sky close got rid of some of the splotches, and by playing with the levels, I was able to salvage some of the photos. I had to clone the black spots out of the water and sky. 

The worst sunspots eventually healed/faded on the imager, and I did a factory reset on it to partially restore light functions, but it's still shooting way too dark. And depth of field is not what it was. I can't trust it, now it only works on autofocus mode. I got a new camera in Feb. It was a long 2.5 months sans working camera.

Sadly those are also my last photos of the famous beached boat, the Point Reyes, before some asshole photographers burnt it down by using a wool spinner strobe light on it.

Wildfire on 580, photo

Astounding how fast this wildfire on Hwy 580 near Grand Ave., Oakland, exploded and leapt tree high within minutes. Despite last week's rain, the trees and bushes are already bone-dry. I did not have my camera when it erupted, by the time I ran in to grab it, and up to the overpass for a view, the firemen managed to arrive on the scene and put it out in record time. We were all glad it was white smoke. Grassfire vs. industrial fire. I was shocked to see the flames erupt like that. Very nearly an explosion. Combustion at work. And so tall, tall as those trees.

Earless Cat at San Juan Bautista Mission

At the San Juan Bautista mission, after hours, outwaiting traffic, we sneaked in through the back garden gate where I was greeted by a cat who was born without ears, and for our trespass fee, she wanted a belly rub. Pronto! She had a  nice thick coat but was in need of grooming. She doesn't get a lot of pets from what I can gather.

She was a sweetheart. Earless kitty, no scar tissue, the outer fur made a nice fat lip. Perhaps she had cancer of the ears, she is a white cat. But they didn't look malformed. And she twitched her stumps. I never realized how much I depend upon their ears to read their emotions. I didn't want to get chomped for rubbing her belly....but she really wanted a belly rub and a head scratch. So I obliged.

She's not a Scottish fold cat, as their ears are bent over. I don't know if it's a weird mutation or a new breed. She has a little igloo nest with a foam pillow and a blankie, her nest is surrounded by statues of saints... clearly she is loved. Ears, or no ears.

Someone stole my Honda again

Someone stole my red Honda Civic hatchback again. Neil parked it on the street, sans club, and forgot about it. I thought it was in the garage where it usually is. Since I had just returned from Alexander Valley, all my teaching art supplies and light table were in the car too.

May 29: So far, no good... But Facebook helpfully posted my memory from two year ago, where I got my car back.... Got me all excited for nothing when I read the date.

Does anyone have an older car they could sell, lease, or rent to me? I prefer stickshift & clutch.Yep, probably the same thief as last time. I think it's a girl tweaker. She's broken into the car before.

June 10: Good news: I got it back. Bad news, it needs a starter, and possibly more. More bad news, my insurance company wrote it off as a total loss.... what to do now?  So, Insurance will only pay me $450 for my car after deductible. Then I have to jump through many, many hoops (and pay salvage title fees) if I buy back my car from the insurance company. It will costs about $350 for a new starter, plus mirrors from the junkyard, $100+.Think I'll just keep the car. Do it myself. I think I will kiss the insurance portion goodbye. and not make a claim.

Bad news: I had to pay for towing fee, and storage. Neil never once even apologized, nor stepped up to the plate to pay for the towing fee, though it was his fault it got stolen to begin with.

This is not the first time either. He left my little red Honda SI, Lil Rix, on the street and it got stolen twice, the last time it never came back. No club. Because he lost the club key and had to hacksaw it off the steering wheel. Asking him to replace the club fell on deaf ears.

To replace the jimmied starter is over $350. Luckily I can still drive it, I just can't turn it off into locked position. Neil's latest mistake will cost me $700. Not a peep. Not one fucking peep. Even a casual "sorry" would've sufficed.

Odd news: the thief was a white guy living in the flats on 66th, near International Blvd. He left his car keys (about 30 of them), a Phillip's toothbrush (sans brush, to jiggle the starter lock and start the car), and a bench warrant for his arrest in San Jose. Not. Very. Smart. Oh, and a shiv. I turned it all over to the Oakland Police. They looked into it, but it was inconclusive. Chain of evidence.

Not only did he take most of my art supplies, including 36 4x6" portrait mirrors I use to teach self-portraits to kids, (no way to replace them), he took most of my car clothes, some cool pillows I had gotten for Peggy Maddock as a thank you present for letting me stay at her house while teaching, a sleeping bag (but not the mate), all my toiletries and make-up, my EpiPen, tools, chargers, etc. And a bag full of toiletry kits I had made up for homeless women. And my front window screen! Grrrr. Doubly fucked, I am.

The thief missed the wine stashed under the passenger seat... Think I need a drink.

Teaching poetry at Alexander Valley School

2.5 classes' worth of kid poetry journals read; 1.5 more to go. I'm flagging. Time for a Kahlúa smoothie. Then onto typing up final poems for all four classes, getting ready for the poetry book. Yep.

I have to change locale and/or jobs every 45 minutes or so, replete with treats, or I become a narcaleptic reader. The cookie didn't do it. My boat done cinq. Or maybe it's a raft, and that's the problem.

Well... deep subject....that went well, not only am I off the clock, I'm off the rez too. Note to self: maybe less Kahlúa next time. The instant coffee and cocoa powder was a great addition, it cut the sweetness. 

Will I be able to love my pillow tonight truly madly deeply? A nap is in order. Alexander Valley is, well, chardonnay valley. Every once and a while I get paid in wine.

One more class to go...then onto typing. Uh, saving the best for last. Will read them tomorrow AM. Done! A long day's worth of typing kid poems for their annual  anthology. Corrected proofs are pasted onto the back of their journals. 

They have one more chance to get another typed poem for the book tomorrow. I aim for three poems per child...Friday, art and book assembly. Monday Open House! I took a productivity powder this afternoon...quagmire of molasses...

The kids at Alexander Valley School are such great writers, and so fun to be around, it's all play. I've been teaching poetry there each spring for decades. In fact, one of my former AVS students, Lucy Carroll will be reading with Dana Gioia at The Shed May 19. So proud!

"Healdsburg High School sophomore Lucy Carroll will share the spotlight with internationally known literary figure Dana Gioia at Shed on Thursday, May 19 starting at 7 p.m. Gioia, California Poet Laureate and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, will talk about the transformative power of literature, and read from his works, including his new “99 Poems New and Selected.”

He will also introduce Lucy Carroll and Melissa Lozano, the winner of the county-wide Poetry Out Loud competition."  —Healdsburg Tribune

IN THE OPPRESSOR'S TONGUE

Caernarfon Castle,
built by the enemy,
a sign of oppression,
as we spoke glowingly
in the oppressor's tongue.

5.23.16

Farewell To Spring Photo

Clarkia, Farewell to spring, One of my favorite flowers. Our lower hillside in Forest Knolls was covered with them. Farther up the hill in the canyon, Chinese houses/pagodas.  

These beauties were blooming on Loma Alta ridge, near Big Rock, Marin. There were also scads of globe gilia, Itherial's spears, and brodiaea nearby, aka blue dicks... If I had included the blue dicks in the photo, added a little rock and roll music, it would've been the Dick Clarkia 5. OK, the Dave Clarkia 5. Ya gotta roll with the punches.

I love "crawling" inside a flower like that with a camera. See that ant?

Dawn, Mt. St. Helena, Photo

Dawn, Mt. St. Helena, Soda Rock Lane. Maureen Carden asks: Okay, how did you get the extremely bright sunset and the shadowed but clearly visible landscape in the foreground, together in the same shot?

I aim camera at the sky to set the imager to get the most color saturation for the photo (point lens to sky, hold shutter partially down to lock lighting setting, then drop camera lower to reframe photo, and click. 

I'm a minimalist. I try and do as little as possible to my photos, other than hit the auto contrast button. Then in Picasa, I lightened the mid ranges a bit, and used the sky filter to keep sky value. It's like a windowshade pulled down on the top of the photo, it helps restore the color.

I also use several settings, distance, sunset, night, until I find the one I like. Truth be known, I mostly use distance straight up, no sunset filter, as I don't like the color range. I also ruin all my cameras with sunspots....

FLOATING WORLD

I once believed the world was flat.
I thought that if I went beyond the barbed-wire fence
where the milk box nested by the side of the road,
that I might fall through an invisible wall,
a well into a parallel world where it was dark,
but similar to this one. A reverse image.
But I also knew there was no way back up
no latter, no rope—nothing. I'd be stranded.
How would my grandmother find me?
The sun rose towards its zenith and azimuth,
until it cooked the milk, I wouldn't fetch it,
I couldn't—not even for my grandmother.
It was a seemingly simple request,
how could she know it fraught with demons?
So the glass quarts sat in the milk box
until they curdled and separated
into parallel floating worlds
of curds and clouds.

5/12/2016

Notes on Haiku, Tanka, and Rengu

As I pasted some haiku notes below a poem I wrote in March, it got out of hand, and I realized what I wrote should have its own blog page. After all, this is cyberspace. There's plenty of it.

This morning I was explaining to a Facebook friend, a Facebook memory I had posted from May 14, 2010

Seen on a Richmond overpass: Free Leonard. 
Made me sad. How long has Leonard been in prison?

Which led to a lively discussion on Leonard. I posted a note on how I wrote my Free Leonard Peltier haiku, back in March, and she asked if she could share the poems. Which led to momentary panic. OMG, they're not very good, I need to rewrite them, or at least write something about the process... I must deflect, deflect. The gift of the gob at work.

This was the poem that kicked off my counting jag: a neighbor sat in his car smoking as I pulled out the driveway. I'd finished that thought, realized there were more poems coming and that I needed to write them down. No way I was going to remember that many haiku all at once. It was a traffic jam of haiku stacking up. Then I saw one Leonard sign on an overpass, and another wedged in a tree.

I was stuck in a colossal traffic jam at the Richmond Bridge, so I kept calm and carried on, but I was betrayed by my fingers madly counting syllables on the steering wheel to pass the time. And then I saw the third Leonard Peltier sign.

It got me thinking of Leonard in prison counting the days, 40 years of endless days. That's 14,600 days he's been in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Please, Obama, do the right thing: please pardon Leonard, who was a scapegoat to appease the FBI's wrath. And so the poems tumbled out, written fast and furiously, my fingers thrumming in time.  FREE LEONARD HAIKU 

But I want to explore the form—if only as a reminder to myself to try a new poetic art form. I feel guilty about my writing, and certainly for what passes as haiku. I keep thinking I really should learn to write tanka, instead of my loosely linked 5-stanza linked poems in quasi-haiku format. You know, real writing.

I must admit I do feel a bit like like Rain Man madly counting away when I compose them, but once I start counting syllables, I can't seem to stop. The poemettes come nearly intact, and unbidden, especially when I'm driving. So it's some sort of a rhythmic mind game. Maybe haiku is the poet's sudoku.  As Rainman said: Fart. Definitely, fart.

Monte Rio poet Pat Nolan was always trying to get me to join in on his renga games. Pat was the grand poobah and illustrious founder of The Miner School of Haikai Poets. A renga is a linked pass-around chain poem. I participated a few times, but I always got off kilter, endlessly stuck in that 5-7-5 format. I couldn't seem to play nicely with the other poets. Always missing deadlines.

Also, in those days, you had to type the pass-around poem on a manual typewriter (onion skin paper), then snail mail it onto the next poet. The poem traveled to Oakland, Santa Rosa, Sonoma, Pacific Grove, Montreal, Monte Rio. And if you missed the 24-hour deadline, you held up all the other poets. They got pissy. Sadly, it was a a missed opportunity. They carried on without me. I probably have several starving half-finished group poems buried in my old papers.

I lacked confidence, and it stymied me, freezing my words, mid-mind. I became mute. I'm trying to remember who was in the renga group: Keith Abbott, Michael Sowl, Maureen Owen—and maybe also Steve LaVioie, David Gitin, Phil Coturri, come to mind....  It was an avalanche of poems arriving daily in the mail, I got confused. One poem line bled into the next arriving poem, and I was all in a muddle.


Then, there's Renku, a bawdy form of linked verse.....maybe it was a really a renku group... We were a bawdy bunch of poets singing euphonies, and all. But I stubbornly stuck to my linked haiku, counting 5-7-5.


Bawdy poets send
renga verse tersely written—
golden onion skins

Sauteeing their words
sizzling in olive oil—
wilted syllables 

For the next poet
to puzzle over their lines—
waiting for the end

Of the line, last word
pulsing for a rebuttal—
a full glottal stop. 

Lick that final stamp
and put the poem to bed—
incestuous words.

5/15/2016 


Some standard definitions:

"Traditional haiku consist of 17 on (also known as morae though often loosely translated as "syllables"), in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on respectively. A kigo (seasonal reference), usually drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but defined list of such words.  The essence of haiku is "cutting" (kiru). This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji ("cutting word") between them, a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation and colors the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related. A kireji fills a role somewhat analogous to a caesura. In English, since kireji have no direct equivalent, poets sometimes use punctuation such as a dash or ellipsis...." —Wiki

Got it. OK. Three phrases, like brush strokes, one line should contain a seasonal reference, and the Aha! the cutting word—a pivotal juxtaposition where the poem turns on itself.  That's were I often flail. Haiku not about counting syllables. Besides, Japanese packs a lot more information into its ideagrams than we can possibly do with our sound-based Latin alphabet.

But I still can't stop counting. And I rarely remember to add the kireji, or in my case, the use of the long em line—. Besides, it's so easy to cheat at haiku with those pesky articles and particles. We're so attached to making sense in English, it's a leap of faith to leave out those conjunctions.

古池や蛙飛び込む水の音

Old mossy pond
Frog jump!
Water sound.
     —Basho

(I'm trying to remember how this translation came about, was I working with Bob Hass at the time? Anyway, it was group boardwork, distilling something down to its primal essence. It's the translation I prefer.)

What: Invoke a hoku (a stand alone line) 

use one or more of the senses—often a memory from the past,  

Where: a sense of place—use images from nature

When: include a kogu, a seasonal reference (or a signal word)

No "I" should inhabit the poem. Think epigrams, three snapshots or telegrams reduced down to a bare minimum of words. "Little drops of poetic essence," as Sir George Sansom called them. Then there's the hidden dualism: the idea of near and far, foreground/background, then and now, past and present, sound and silence, temporalness and infinity.  

Two Haiku for Poetry Month
—MH 4/21/2009

Counting syllables

is silly; Japanese count

words, not syllables.
 

Anglo Saxon words

paint a much broader canvas

than Latinate ones.    

Polysyllabic

words too cumbersome to count

English albatross.

11/13/14

from HAIKU HAIHU

I have more haiku buried in this blog. This haiku link will list the most recent 18-20 entries in a search format (I'm up to 38 linked haiku entries). It's a problem with Blogger's search format, it only displays one page, newest first. You will have to dig month by month for older work. I always use CAPS for poems, and I try to put HAIKU in title as well.

OK, more standard definitions.

"The Tanka poem is very similar to haiku but Tanka poems have more syllables and it uses simile, metaphor and personification. There are five lines in a Tanka poem. Tanks poems are written about nature, seasons, love, sadness and other strong emotions. This form of poetry dates back almost 1200 years ago."  (Check out the chart)  5-7-5-7-7   —How to write a Tanka poem

"Renga (連歌, collaborative poetry) is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry. A renga consists of at least two ku (句 ) or stanzas. The opening stanza of the renga, called the hokku (発句 ), became the basis for the modern haiku form of poetry." —Wiki

"Renku (連句, "linked verses"), or haikai no renga is a Japanese form of popular collaborative linked verse poetry. It is a development of the older Japanese poetic tradition of ushin renga, or orthodox collaborative linked verse. At renku gatherings participating poets take turns providing alternating verses of 17 and 14 morae. Initially haikai no renga distinguished itself through vulgarity and coarseness of wit, before growing into a legitimate artistic tradition, and eventually giving birth to the haiku form of Japanese poetry."—Wiki

Then there's Haibun, a combination of prose and haiku, often autobiographical or written in the form of a travel journal. Sort of like this journey.

In class writing, Alexander Valley School

Demo acrostic/conceptual noun personification exercise board poem for the kids at Alexander Valley School. What usually happens, is that we write a phrase on the board, then they're off writing their own poems, but I've got a fragment on the board. So I freewrite them, finish them off in class, modeling the process.  We were reading Emily Dickinson's Hope is a Thing with Feathers.

Joy is a daisy
   dancing in the wind
on the horizon of hope
   it sings of
your heart and soul.

5/13/2016


Hope is a bluejay
inside your heart
dancing to its own beat
a blue heart blushes,
it burns with love.

5/13/2016
4th Grade class


Hope is a white bird
flying through the starry night
Hope is a swan of many colors
as quiet as fireflies in the clouds.

5/13/2016
3rd Grade class


Joy is the birds
   singing so hard
   the lemon tree shakes
   like a dancer
on the moon, where
   coyotes serenade the stars
Yonder, in an empty field
   owls drift down like petals.

5/13/2016
2nd Grade class


Once I was the flames of the head
I became the ice of fire
I was the river of ice
I dreamed of love in the sea
I will become the sun shining on the earth.

5/12/2016
3rd Grade class


Once I believed the world was flat
I thought that if I went past the fence
where the milk box was
that I would fall
through an invisible wall
a well into another world
where it was dark, but similar
and there was no way back up
no latter, no rope.
Even though the sun rose,
and heated the milk
I wouldn't get it and it sat in the box
until it curdled and separated
a floating world
of curds and clouds.

5/12/2016
4th Grade class
This is from the I used to believe...early memory exercise.
I started revising it here, so I moved it to a new page
FLOATING WORLD

Fiction vs facts

Overheard today at Cleveland Elementary School while I was copying student poems for a 4th grade class: Young Chinese teacher to her young mostly Chinese charges in a remedial reading group. What's the difference between fiction and other books? In unison they all shouted: it doesn't have any facts.

I was so startled, I tuned and blurted out: That's not even remotely true. There was an acute moment of silence as they all stared at me as if I was a zombie. I slunk away thinking of War and Peace.

We hadn't even gotten to the truth stage, whether or not fiction contained facts! I learned to love Russia through War and Peace, and Dr. Zhivago. That was how I learned Russian history. Not beforehand. And yes, deeper truths were embedded.

 I brought a copy of Zhivago to the USSR, and it was snatched from me, students exclaiming, in wonderment, touching it as if it were the grail, saying: I have heard of this book... Some deeper truths were had that day.

Alas, a gentle correction was not possible. I was too pissed off to be gentle. Wide mouth frog, or foot in mouth syndrome at work. What I should have said instead of undermining the teacher: There are many kinds of fiction. Fiction is not all facts but may contain many facts.  I expect the teacher won't teach that sound byte again.

How would she explain away yellow journalism, or gonzo journalism as fictionalized non-fiction. What about the social commentary of Vidal, Mailer, Wolfe and Thompson? How would she view poetry?

Ironically I tend to stick to facts when writing poetry, or what I know to be true...rarely do I bend truth or fictionalize. Not much need... but then there's imagined truth as well. But truth and facts are not the same. As Mark Adler said: …as if fiction doesn't contain some of the deepest truths. Wonder if I awoke some natural critical -thinking skills in those tiny students?

added 5/17

Be strong, I whisper to my coffee

Be strong, I whisper to my coffee.
Be still, I whisper to my racing heart.
Let's just leave the bowels outta this, OK?

'Possum Wrangler

I'm hiding under the desk. Mouse traps don't bodda me.

Apparently I have a new job title: baby 'possum* wrangler.

I was cleaning up outside, and I must've disturbed this little nocturnal fellow, who hiked up the steps and took refuge in the bedroom. (I had wakened him from his nap.)  Of all the places in the house, he chose the bedroom. Smart feller. Neil heard something rustling and freaked out, thinking it was a mouse in the trap, or worse, a huge rat. (He saw it from behind, tail first.) Luckily he didn't do the coup de grease on the little critter.

As designated rescuer of all creatures great and small, I was automatically elected for the job of getting him out from behind the desk. Easier said than done. He squeezed behind the desk and the wall; he had wedged himself in a crevice, with mouth open wide, hissing like a cottonmouth. I knew it was all for show, but he had a lot of sharp teeth. So with ski glove in hand, I managed to roll him with my finger onto his feet. I carefully pulled him out from behind the desk, holding him (the 'possum, not Neil) by the scruff of the neck, like a kitten. He went limp as a biscuit.

I'm playing possum in the dirty laundry. Nice and stinky.

I wrapped him in a pair of Neil's knickers that were on the floor. He went into full death mode and said: "I'm dead, Jim. Really, really dead. See? Well, maybe I'm only a teeny bit dead." He didn't quite have his "I'm really dead" schtick down. He kept peeking at us. Especially after I began to pet his cheek with a gloved finger. He seemed to like it. But he wouldn't eat the foot scraps I offered.

I'm so dead, I'm so dead. I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead.

He feigned death, or fainted, a few times, but when he saw we weren't buying his act, he sat up like the baby he was. All the world may be a stage, but I told him he needed to keep his day job. He looked insulted. Then he waddled off into the undergrowth snuffling for bugs. Fleas poinging off him like a cartoon.

Yes, opossums really do play dead. They also open their mouths and drool and hiss like snakes when threatened, but they're extremely docile. When I used a towel to try & pick him up, he didn't even attempt to bite it. Weirdly, they have 13 nipples. I bet you wanted to know that.

If he hadn't been such a dirtbag, I would've tested his prehensile tail. Taken it out for a spin. But his fleas were abandoning ship, so all I could think of was to get him to move along after he recovered from his fainting spells. Their temperature is low for a mammal, 94 to 97°.  My body temperature is 97.8°, so I was a logical new host.

What, you're still here? Well maybe only a little bit dead. It comes and goes.

It's too bad they're such flea-ridden tick magnets. Luckily they also love to eat ticks, and are probably our best defense against Lyme disease. They do carry fleaborne diseases, so don't handle them if you can help it. But they never carry rabies. They just show their teeth (and they have a lot of them),  they froth at the mouth and drool alarmingly when threatened. They also have stink glands like a skunk, but Junior wasn't big enough to know how to use his. Or maybe he thought Neil's knickers were stinky enough.

Aren't I cute?

They may look ugly (when full-grown), they can't help that, but they're good critters to have in the garden. They eat bugs, slugs and snails, rats and mice, and your compost, too, if you leave it out. The stinkier, the better.

Who loves ya baby? yeah, yeah, yeah.

I never saw 'possums in growing up in West Marin during the 1950s-70s, but I did have a clumsy guest when I lived in Forestville, Sonoma County, during the 1980s-90s. They're not native to the west coast, introduced to San Jose in 1910. Why, I don't know. Someone homesick for 'possum stew? (Tastes like chicken.)

I'm just glad he was a baby, and not a full-grown football-sized 'possum. I might not have been so opossumably brave.

*We have opossums in North America, emphasis on the big O. Australia has possums, not the same critter, though both are marsupials. Drives the Aussies freakin' wild that we call our opossums "possum" too. Their possums are way cuter, BTW. And it's Dame Edna's favorite term of endearment. It's spelled 'possom, here, if you must shorten it. Just don't write it o'possum. Got that, Possums? Good.

May Day, Kentfield, CA, 1909 photo

May Day, Kentfield, CA, 1909

My stories on Mayday

Lá Fhéile Bealtaine shona daoibh

 

Posting old Photos & Facebook Memories

Facebook got me on a roll with those Memory posts, I've been going back and filling in some blanks in my blog, with old Facebook posts. Most are photos, some are poems in the rough, but it is interesting to add them to the chronology.

I'm focusing on photos (and comments) that are relevant to the blog and to writing, and performances, vs random photos. Trouble is, I don't know the dates on some of those old photos. Then there's the tracking down of supporting memorabilia (posters and programs), alas, not all in one place. Some of the extra material is scattered across several hard drives, some of it still isn't scanned.

Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be writing poems for Poetry Month. I petered out at 15 new poems, I really need to get back on the horse. I was seeking inspiration from the Memory posts. So instead, I'm fleshing out the past. Some of the past includes poems, but they were written in the past and in the past they shall remain. Not part of this year's poetry count.

I'm still feeling weird from the virus. But I managed to clean the house. Maybe this is sort of a house-cleaning attempt as well. You know, post taxes. More interesting than collecting receipts.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I was supposed to be mining old journals and papers for more of my old MIA work and post it as well, but I fell off the wagon. I grew weary. I grew bored. Got burnt out after documenting several years' worth of journals....then my iPad crashed (where I had those pdfs of my old journals stored—there was no way to get them OFF my iPad). I'm still hoping to resurrect it as I'm not entirely convinced that I've backups of all that archival work I did a few months ago. Rather depressing.

I need to revisit most of these new posts and add details when I find my notes, and supporting material. I got the first entries from Facebook memories on Earth Day. They still need editing (as to most of the others....but that takes time, and multiple visits,  so I don't catch all the typos the first few times around. A few of these posts were added in 2015, but I didn't think to copy links, and now I can't find them. Hard to revisit them if I can't find them. Duh. It comes down to logistics: poems need to be filed by year, offline, as well. I don't have hard copies of most of my work—especially the prose. Sometimes that makes me shudder.)

Poetry month tally

Clearly I've failed poetry month as I've only managed to write 15, maybe 17 poems, most of them, questionable, at that. Or 30 posts if you count all the prose and linked haiku individually. Curiously I didn't use any poetry prompts, though I collected them. These were all spontaneous emissions, kind of like poetic farts.