The Regrettable Rise of Arturo Ui: a foretelling

Lately I have been thinking of Bertolt Brecht's 1941 Chicago gangster play, the Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. The iconic Berliner Ensemble produced the parable play at Cal during the summer of 1999. It was the company's swansong, their final curtain call before they disbanded forever.

Brecht never staged, nor saw "Arturo Ui" performed. He wrote the allegorical satire while living in exile. It languished in a drawer for decades. Brecht is better known for The Threepenny Opera, Mother Courage and Her Children and The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Arturo Ui was so riveting, I went back twice to see it. My partner was non-plussed, whereas I had chickenskin—as if it were a foretelling. Alas, the play fits T.rump to a T. The regrettable rise of a gangster where all the world's a stage. And now we are in exile in our own country.

“Therefore learn how to see and not to gape.

To act instead of talking all day long.

The world was almost won by such an ape!

The nations put him where his kind belong.

But don't rejoice too soon at your escape -

The womb he crawled from is still going strong.”

"Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men.

For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again."

Oh, how history repeats itself. The play's the thing.

#resist

The Man with the Van

I went in to Amazing Grace Music on Miracle Mile in San Anselmo for some guitar strings and a smartly dressed older woman with brassy permed hair and long red nails greeted me. She said she was minding the shop for a friend, they had their own music store in Fairfax.

We got to talking and she gave me tea and bikkies —Walker's shortbreads. Then she sat me down for a good natter, while her husband dressed in tweeds from another century, reclined in a chair reading the paper, holding his pipe reverently. 

She asked what I liked to play, I said Irish music. She was quick to tell me that she was Irish too. From the north, she said. I remember being shocked to learn she was from Northern Ireland, as our family was about as southern Irish as you can get, without falling into the Atlantic Ocean. 

I looked for horns, and found only the kindness of her blue-violet eyes, Violet Morrison was well named, I could see that she was once a beauty, with her red  hair and lacquered nails. She said she was once a cabaret singer in Belfast. I told her of my grandmother who raised me, from Bantry, and how she taught me the old Irish rebel songs.

When Violet found out that I had walked all the way from Drake High School to the store to buy strings for my precious Martin, and had no way home, she called up her son to give me a ride out to Forest Knolls as he was living in Inverness. 

I climbed into the battered white van hugging my precious guitar to my chest. I had no idea who he was, this man who was sullen and refused to speak to me the entire way home. Made me feel obliged. Like I was a real bother. I never spoke to him again. 

Later I found out it was Van Morrison. Though I very much like his music, I'm not a fan of Van the Man with the van.

What albums from my teenage years?

The latest silly meme that everyone seems to be indulging in is listing the top ten albums of your teenage years.

Albums from my teenage years? What albums? I didn't collect albums, I was way too poor (my horse's feed and vet bills got first babysitting money dibs—at 25 cents an hour), but Dobie Gray once gave me his 45 hit, "The In-Crowd." My mom shared a flat with him next to the SF Art Institute on Chestnut. I was pretty young. I didn't even own a record player.

When I was ten I liked The Purple People Eater, The Monster Mash. The mashed potatoes song, and that song about the rings of Saturn? Wait, malapropism: White on white, lace on satin... no wonder I was alternatively abled. 

What can I say? I was ten and I had to sneak listen to KFRC...as my grannie didn't approve of rock and roll music. My aunts, uncles, and parents' collections were mostly jazz and Big Band. Johnny Mathis too because one of them went to school with Johnny, and his brother, who was the toll taker on the Golden Gate Bridge. Chances are...

I did buy two albums when I was a teenager, The Monkees, it cost $3.50 at a record store next to Ali Akhbar College of Music in Fairfax (where Ravi Shankar used to visit).

Meanwhile, Peter Tork of The Monkees was often seen staggering down the streets of Fairfax, drunk out of his mind... Cheeky monkey.

And I did buy a KFRC collection with Van the Man Morrison's "G-L-O-R-I-A" recording and The Rolling Stones' "Can't Get No Satisfaction." Van Morrison's parents ran the Caledonia music store in Fairfax.

Otherwise, it was usually live music, listening to Jefferson Starship/Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver, Sons of Champlin, Janis Joplin, Big Brother and The Holding Company, etc., rehearsing.

I witnessed most live music in the San Geronimo Valley from the back of my horse, where I could escape... One time the Greatful Dead and co. played in a Creamery Creek gulch under the bridge across from the Papermill Creek Bar in Forest Knolls...

We had to hitchike home from Sir Francis Drake High School—so we got to know all the musicians. They were the only ones who'd stop and give us a lift. But Jesse Colin Young drove a VW van so it was often a crowded bus. Van the man drove a white van. And Carlos Santana drove a Mercedes with leather seats. Janis had a two-seater Porsche so she'd usually shrug and smile. Flash us a peace symbol.

Lots of live bands in high school too: Clover, Moby Grape, The Tubes.... Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa) was a classmate. Why would I even want to buy albums? We were living in the epicenter of live music.

Ankle biter

I went to the doc to sign up for general massive body invasion types of testing, probing at both ends, and squashing maintenance that one is supposed to routinely do, that I've managed to put off, or avoid, for a decade or two—all this, before my medical coverage dries up under the new political regime.

She asked if there was anything else. So I showed her my ankle that I did a right angle stair-stand on mid-Dec., (trying to protect my knee), she slapped a bandage on, and said keep it elevated above your heart! I giggled at the thought of driving home with my ankle elevated above my heart... I drive a clutch.

And here I thought it was healing nicely. I did all the RICE stuff religiously for two weeks (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation ) but apparently it takes longer than a few weeks to heal soft tissue danage. I thought you were supposed to use a sprained body part ASAP... I thought I WAS healed, now I'm merely unheeled. I guess that's better than being unhinged. It only hurts vaguely. Tingly, more than anything else. I chalked it up to chatty veins.

In the GoDays, I would've used horse liniment... I lean toward the stiff (quivering) upper lip thing. I was the kid that broke her arm and never said a word because I was afraid to tell my granny. Donkey tossed me into a fence. A ditch. Many trees. 

And here I've been stomping around all over town with it, gimping like a pirate, yelling ARRRR, ARRR. And craving plunder, booty, and Advil. But it throbs like a gnarly session with an ankle-biter. Wine is an excellent anti-inflamatory agent. Maybe I should switch to rum? I guess I should be grateful that I got off so light as several other friends are sporting full ankle boots from their holiday misadventures with stairs and trampolines.

The doc didn't like my fake clogs either... She told me to wear proper shoes, with laces— not flip-flops either. Apparently because you curl your toes up to walk, that puts strain on the ankles. But I've a fat ankle with a bandage that won't fit into a shoe. And the boots with the split soles that made me fall in the first place, are the only shoes I can slip on. Sigh. When I injured my knee, I couldn't get down there to even put a shoe on, let alone, tie it, so I wore flip-flops exclusively.

For the record, I hate shoes. I have narrow heels, and not quite so narrow fronts. Short toes, long arch, so I hate anything touching my arch. My grannie made me go barefoot in summer, and pick up marbles with my toes so I wouldn't get bunions. I have prehensile toes with fine motor skills.

I guess going barefoot's out of the question mid-winter. Maybe I should get some lace up boots. I'm thinking my flamenco boots with their hobnails won't work. I'll just skid on those nails and fall down again. Time to buy new shoes. Or maybe an irate chihuahua.

If the shoe fits....


Stairways to hell

SCREAMING FOR ICE CREAM

 SCREAMING FOR ICE CREAM
 — With thanks to Danny Lynch who overate his Hagen Daas welcome

Give me Chocolate or give me death,
give me Cappuccino, or plain old Coffee.

Make it sweet as Dulce de Leche, 

or give me that new swirly Hagen Daas number

with all three flavors rolled into one heavenly pint,

call it Sweet Cream Coffee Caramel,

with vanilla reining supreme as a beneficent godlet.

Not Strawberry Cheesecake or Blueberry Crumble, 

or some other absurd fruity concoction

like Pineapple Coconut, that non-alcoholic impostor

with a tiny invisible parasol complex on the side,

that leaves you desperate and wanting at the bar.

Not Vanilla Swiss Almond studded with land mines,

nor that raw Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

or Midnight Cookies and Cream, with other odd chunks 

and frozen detritus lying in wait to break my teeth.

And you can forget about that frozen yogurt shit. 

I want full fatted flavors frolicking on my tongue 

until my fillings ache, my tongue goes numb, 

and my brain freezes in kalideoscopic moiréd patterns.

Give me gelato or give me death. 

Make it with chocolate or coffee or caramel.

Make it in a double-wide carton,
make the spoon bigger than my eyes,

and I will certainly scream for more ice cream.

Let me wear it proudly on my hips and thighs.
And may the late-night movie be doubly good too.
Make it so.


1/13/17
rev. 1/16/17

TWELFTH NIGHT

Cloudburst and thunder,
a leonine wind roars with hunger,
followed by a tattoo of hard rain
falling in biblical proportions,
followed by a full Magi moon
and a fierce king tide determined
to reach the Sea of Tranquility.
Soon, we'll be able to deep sea
fish from the Oakland hills.
What would the cormorants say,
those fisher kings with their mad eyes
full of summer promises?

1/12/2017
rev 1/17/2017

KING TIDE

OMG, a king tide and full moon too? 

We'll be able to deep sea fish from the Oakland hills. 

What would the cormorants say 

with their mad eyes full of summer promises?

Thunder on the right

Thunder on the right....cloudburst.
Love the sound of hard rain falling.
Uh-oh, wind roaring like a lion does not bode well.

All-out Eye Exam

Eyeball exam. Check. Cataract/glaucoma test. Clear. Check. Healthy eyes. Check. Prescription for glasses. Nope. Come back next week. Your eyes were caught cheating on the eye exam. They don't play well together. Right eye is a freeloader. A lazybones. A shirker. Gives the world the stinkeye.

Left eye wants to be on top. King of the mountain... Has eagle vision 20/15. Doesn't want to share. Is a loner (vs. a loaner!) I knew a woman with a glass eye...

Apparently I don't fit the patient profile. And my "guess" was right on. I need 150 readers for my left eye, and 175 readers for my right eye. But it's a lazy SOB, and it's probably a brain thing vs ocular.... I had a lazy eye as a kid. It's positively lethargic now.

Binocular specialist it is. Good luck with that, my eyes have never played well together. I can't even use binoculars. Monocular vision times two. Marty Feldman and gOogly eyed. Or maybe gecko-eyed. Think I'll stick with my Dollar Store readers which surprisingly close to the right prescription, more or less. 

My left eye rocks. It makes up for my lazy eye. But then, eye dominance is switched. Left eye/right brain. I wonder if it's related to dyslexia. You know those silly pilot tests, matching color/ shades, or seeing the embedded figure. I always score 100% (unheard of for the color chart). 

So they strapped on both red/green and 3D glasses on me. Apparently I'm using periphery vision to get by. Cheating on an eye test! Imagine. Maybe I need John Lennon glasses. Somehow I don't think prism lenses will work. Like, oh wow....

Driving home in the dark, in the rain, with dilated eyes, was like a bad acid trip. What do they put in those drops? LSD? Atropine is made from deadly nightshade and datura. Then we watched Arrival. OMG! Talk about tweaking out.

Groovy, man.

Here comes the rain again...

Here comes the rain again... The Pineapple Express is never good for California water tables. It melts the snowpack, and then tries to wash us out to sea. We need a stable snowpack in the Sierras so we'll have water in the reservoirs come September... It keeps melting. Not good. We could be in the curious position of drowning in water AND still being in drought mode. It will take years, decades for the Central Valley underground water to recharge. The fat lady is gargling and it ain't over yet.

Rain on top of snow, which is disastrous for our Sierra snowpack, is why California's experiencing a drought (simultaneously while drowning in water). The warm rain is supposed to follow, it's not cold here which means the Pineapple Express has already arrived.

Pineapple Express

Here comes the rain again... The Pineapple Express is never good for California water tables. It melts the snowpack, and then tries to wash us out to sea. There is no downriver or upriver, escape from the ravages of the atmospheric river in the sky. We need a stable snowpack in the Sierras so we'll have water in the reservoirs come September... But with this rain, it keeps melting. Not good. Rain on top of snow is disastrous for our Sierra snowpack, which is why California's experiencing a drought (simultaneously while drowning in water). We could be in the curious position of drowning in water AND still being in drought mode. It will take years, decades even for the Central Valley underground water to recharge. Meanwhile rain is falling in biblical proportions in Healdsburg. Everything is underwater. The fat lady is gargling, not singing. Maybe she’ll need to take up snorkeling. Or kayaking. It ain't over yet. That’s for sure.

See Rain, Rain Everywhere

SIX HOURS INTO THE HEADACHE

 SIX HOURS INTO THE HEADACHE

So I abdicate
the hammer and tong striking
my forehead and pate.

GIVING ME THE ONCE-OVER

Blue-footed boobie 
waved one foot, then the other. 
I had to dance back.






STORM

Thunder on the right

Cloudburst, a hard rain falling

Lion wind roaring.

Stump Spellcheck early and often

You know you're doing something right when you can stump spellcheck twice in one post.

A geology post on the malfic peripheries of the Mammoth Caldera was particularly dry reading, but because there was an interactive map, I explored the caldera, and then got lost in the dendritic patterns of rivers (spellcheck does not like dendritic, let alone, malfic).

Which led me to a random comment on a friend's Facebook page, which led to my Facebook post, which led to a blogeen on watersheds—none of which would've happened if I had not read that rather dry post on Mammoth....

The only reason whey I was even interested in the Mammoth article was because I was awakened by a series of earthquakes that originated in Hawthorne, NV, near Mono Lake. Which is a munitions dump on the periphery of the Mammoth malfic periphery.

You see where this is going.....

Rain, rain everywhere...

Before the long-term California drought, about 90% of East Bay's water historically came from the Mokelumne watershed in the Sierras.

The Camanche and Pardee Reservoirs, northeast of Stockton, are the primary source of water for the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) where it's piped across the Central Valley via the triple steel pipe Mokelumne Aqueduct to storage reservoirs in the East Bay hills, including the San Pablo Reservoir.

During the drought, EBMUD also siphoned a lot of water from the Central Valley Project) (Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed). In May, 2015, EBMUD declared an end to the drought emergency. BUT...

The New Melones Dam, one river south of the Mokelumne River (Stanislaus River watershed), in Sonora, is the last reservoir to receive water from the Lake Shasta-Central Calley Water Project. For the first time in over six years, the water level is rising ever so slightly in the New Melones Dam.

As of July, the New Melones Reservoir, the fourth largest reservoir in the state, was almost a quarter full. Then it lost about  2000 acre-feet a day during August-October, due to evaporation. 

By comparison Mokelumne watershed reservoirs, Camanche and Pardee Reservoirs are at 70% and 91% (still not 100%), but as of today, the beleaguered New Melones Dam is still only at 26 percent capacity (up from 24%).

Maybe someday soon we will no longer need to save the shower water for the toilet? However, saving water is a good habit, even during the storm. Bail and scoop. Bail and scoop.

Addendum: Some of Alameda County does get its water from the Tuolumne River watershed: the Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir (and by extension, the Don Pedro Dam). There's a water temple in Sunol.

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/reservoirs/RES


Some history of our Northern California dams and the towns that were drowned to create them.
Underwater towns of Northern California

On writing reviews

Dear Peter,

Sorry I wasn't more articulate or indepth, etc., in that book review as it was a "repeat" performance. Then, because you asked me to write a review,  I felt compelled to read the entire collection. Catholic guilt.... LOL.

I slogged over the other stories. I even fell asleep in the middle of a few of them. Then I had mixed feelings about the collection itself. Your story was, by far, the best in the collection. Such a powerful voice. And spare prose. Kudus!

I lost the original note I sent you, and l can never seem to reconstruct lost writing. None of that BS: "well, the next post will be better because you had practice." There is no practice. There is only writing. Each attempt at writing is its own progeny.

In my book, lost writing is lost writing. Whatever that drive is (no matter how mundane), it's always a one-off experience. I'm just along for the ride, holding on for dear life as the writer's voice charges along like a rhino on the randan. That's why I have to grab the "voice" when it comes....full steam ahead.

Here's the odd thing: I like good fantasy writing, but there's so much BAD stuff out there, I avoid it like the plague. I adamantly refuse to take a chance on most new fantasy writers. I'm freakin' bored to death.

If you must know, I once took umbrage with Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogies—the moment of discovery that Na' was Napa—flooded just pissed me off, a cheap bank shot. I never forgave her. Ridiculous, I know.

So I punished that book by using it as a mousepad for ten years. I've got a bad Irish sci-fi book in mousepad hell at present. I probably should do a catch and release with it. Let it go.

Luckily I can't turn bad ebooks into mousepads, otherwise I'd have to get another room to write in.

Amazon Book Review of Susanne O'Leary in Selling Dreams drew ire

LOL, one of my Amazon reviews ruffled an author's feathers. Usually no one ever reads my reviews, so I guess I'm thrilled. Sorta. It garnered me a negative vote from the author, though my review was positive, overall. My original review is posted at the bottom. I think I might have gotten a beta reader job offer from it all!

Suzy says: I am the author. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to read and review my books. Please e-mail me at: contact(at) susanne-oleary.co.uk for further discussions. I feel you make assumptions without knowing my background. I would be interested to know about YOUR expertise in what you call 'Hiberno-English.'

I would've been fine with the first part of her comment. But the gauntlet was thrown down with the use of "YOUR." Apparently I ticked her off. So I wrote back:


Dear Susanne,

I take it that you objected to my review comment:

"I've been following Susanne O'Leary since I stumbled upon Hot Property, set in Ireland. There, the Swedish-born author attempted to capture the Irish-English voice, but her dialogue was often flat, as Hiberno-English is, in essence, O'Leary's third language."

Then I went on to say:

"O'Leary does a far better job of capturing dialogue in her French Riviera Romance series. She seems more comfortable with portraying the south of France, than Ireland." 

And I gave Selling Dreams a solid four-star rating.

How is this a judgmental and unfair assumption? Your storyline is superb, you develop interesting characters. However, your sentence structure, and renditions of idioms are sometimes challenging. I didn't flag them all in Selling Dreams, but I will be sure to make notations in the subsequent books in the series, as it seems you question my observation skills as a reader.

I admire Nabakov, who chose to write novels in English, his third language. But it is difficult to write prose (and almost impossible to write poetry) in a non-native language. And Hiberno-English is in a unique class of its own.

Your Kerry series did not grasp the nuance of language or the music of Kerry, or Dublin English. Some characters, who were supposed to be Irish, sounded too perfunctory on the page. I also noted that when you introduced a French character in your Kerry series, that her dialogue rang true. The same is true for the Dream series. You seem more at home with the language and locale.

From your bio:

"I was born in Sweden.... I have lived all over the world, and finally landed in County Tipperary, Ireland in 2002. I started my writing career.... My globetrotting life has provided me with the settings and characters of my novels, mainly set in France, where I lived for four years, and Ireland, where I live now....We ... bought a holiday cottage on the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry on the west coast of Ireland. I was so inspired by the beautiful landscape and the people there, that I wrote three novels in quick succession, in what would become The Kerry Romance Series...
The French Riviera, where we have spent many enjoyable holidays, is another place to which I like to take my readers.... Selling Dreams, was published in December 2014."

And I found this author interview:

"I'm the Swedish-born, Irish-married author of more than twenty novels, mainly in the romantic fiction genre..... I have been the wife of a diplomat (still am), a fitness teacher and a translator.... Being Swedish, I love a real winter with snow and ice....  I went to a French school in Stockholm, so France has always been part of my growing-up years. This gave me fluent French and a love of that country."

and this:

"My latest book was inspired by my own feelings of confusion about my identity and my roots (being Swedish but living in Ireland)."

From the passages quoted above it is safe to assume that English is not your first language. Or your second language. Perhaps it is French? The Hiberno-English dialect, is certainly your third, or fourth "language."

Some Amazon review quotes on Selling Dreams:

"There is no plot and the storyline is all over the place. Very disappointing."

and

"I didn't have to read any farther than Ms. O'Leary's disparaging remarks about real estate agents telling lies and covering up problems to know this wasn't for me. Since I'm a real estate agent of 32 years I take umbrage with her silly, misleading and just plain wrong remarks."

and

"A slightly believable story easy to read but I still found it hard to believe."

and

"the story itself is a bit too loosely tied. The characters - particularly the major protagonist - do and say things that have me rolling my eyes too often. It just doesn't make sense that someone who has managed a Real Estate Agency for any length of time, would do or say such ridiculous things. It's the bones of the story, but it doesn't hold it up. Ditto for the other players. Everyone is placed for their part, but not always in a natural or believable way. "

and

"Well written however the many mistakes with extra words made me crazy. Are we reading unedited versions or are the proof readers asleep. I wish I had my blue pencil that I could make the corrections."

Just out of curiosity, Susanne, did you also take those Amazon reviewers to task, challenge their credentials?

As a reader, or Amazon reviewer, I do not need to defend my literary background, but suffice to say, I am well versed in the vagaries of language. Four stars is a stellar rating. In good faith, I could not give Selling Dreams a five-star rating as there were too many errors. And mixing up one character for another (Flora/Daisy), is sloppy writing (in any language) that a good editor should have caught. It was never my intent to hurt your feelings, and for that I do apologize.

Athbhliain faoi mhaise duit!

Nice website BTW.



Suzy says:

Gosh, I didn't mean to question your reviews.I think you're terrific to take such interest in my work! It was only your comments about my knowledge of Irish English that rankled. I have been married to an Irishman most of my adult life. English is certainly not my third language, but I believe by now my first. I could never write these books either in Swedish or French, even though I speak those languages fluently My children are Irish, as most of my friends.My Irish readers have mostly commented positively on my Irish books,and our Kerry neighbours have told me I got Kerry 'spot-on.' Equally, my Tipperary readers. Also, I found it difficult to place my novels with English publishers, as they said my English was 'too Irish.'

My characters speak the way I hear people around me, with, yes,an accent but with a reasonably educated vocabulary. I didn't want to make it too colloquial, as that would be hard to understand by many readers around the world.

But, sure 'tis all in the eye of the beholder, to be sure, to be sure... (sorry, couldn't resist a little joke).

To finish, yes I have Swedish roots but the top of the plant has Irish blooms. I love Ireland and I do believe my stories are true to my adopted country.

Happy New Year! Many thanks for your interest in my books. ETA, and of course the stars!

Susanne

P.S My editor for both the Kerry series and the Selling Dream series is English, but I recently hired an American editor , who seems better suited to my writing


MoHurley says:

RE: "I recently hired an American editor, who seems better suited to my writing."

Good on you! Work him hard to the bone.

And yes, I am that kind of pernickity OCD reader, as I have dyslexia so I need to work harder than the average bear.

But I beg to disagree with your readers/editors who say your English was too Irish in the Kerry series. It wasn't over the top. It just didn't always ring true. Your instinct was right to not make it too colloquial. As my Irish teacher would've said, "We'll have none o' that fookin' shamrockery 'round here." But he was from Mullingar, not Dunquin. It begins to ring truer in your Tipperary series.

One's own native language is alway lurking in the background, which is both a blessing and a curse. My favorite Russian malapropism is Invisible lunaticsâ€"from Out of sight, out of mind.


Suzy says:

My daughter-in-law is from Mullingar. Here's a thought, maybe you'd like to beta read my next book? Let me know. Good beta readers are worth gold.


MoHurley says:

LOL! I'll think on it!

Cheers!






Amazon Customer Review


0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Two loosely connected stories weave a tapestry of love and hope, December 31, 2016
By MoHurley
This review is from: Selling Dreams (The Riviera Romance Series Book 1) (Kindle Edition)

Selling Dreams is two separate stories loosely connected; the characters are fairly well developed. If you persevere, the two stories will mesh. Upon second reading (in order to review it), I enjoyed it more as I now have a better understanding of the central characters.

Chantal owns a shady real estate agency in Antibes, and Flora left an agency in Ireland to join the team. Chantal disappears from the scene after her husband, suffering from dementia, is hospitalized, leaving Flora to navigate the vagaries of selling real estate in France, with her co-workers, Daisy and Iris.

Meanwhile Chantal is having an affair with a painter, and many of the prospective buyers, and locals of Antibes are willing to offer solace to the girls who are looking for love in all the wrong places.

I've been following Susanne O'Leary since I stumbled upon Hot Property, set in Ireland. There, the Swedish-born author attempted to capture the Irish-English voice, but her dialogue was often flat, as Hiberno-English is, in essence, O'Leary's third language.

O'Leary does a far better job of capturing dialogue in her French Riviera Romance series. She seems more comfortable with portraying the south of France, than Ireland. She does not attempt to imitate French speakers speaking English, or Irish speakers speaking French, TG.

It's not easy to overlook the odd grammar, or the conflation of characters' names: Flora is about to go out, solo, to show a house to a client. "Daisy stiffened. "What? Me?" The problem is that Daisy is still asleep at home. Flora is speaking to Iris.

Chantal, worried about making ends meet, thinks the "money will be a welcome boost to our economy." Economy is the wrong word. Perhaps income?
"They were younger and more clued up." Clued up is a malapropism, reminding me that English is not O'Leary's first language. Perhaps clued-in, or in tune?

I do like the way O'Leary economically recycles her characters introduced at the beginning, in her later episodic novels. If you read them in sequence, the layering and detail really builds and fleshes out the characters, making them memorable figures.

Riviera Romance series:
Selling Dreams
Borrowed Dreams
Forgotten Dreams
Marianne's Christmas

Duty Free is set in Paris, and Villa Caramel is set on the Riviera, but they are from a different, earlier series.

BTW, the first three books in the Irish Romance series, The Kerry Romance Box Set, Hot Property, Hot Gossip, and Hot Pursuit, are free on Kindle right now. The fourth book is Hot Wishes. I enjoyed them, but I liked The Blow-In from the Tipperary series better.

NYE

Someone fired off a gun last night and I wondered if the bullet could hypothetically crash through our stucco walls. When Obama was first elected, people shot handguns off the balcony of the apartments next door, which was a crackhouse at the time. Guns. Not fireworks. Different sound/percussive impact.

What I heard NYE sounded like that. There were lots of fireworks, etc., too. Apparently East Oakland outdid itself NYE with various and sundry explosives! Mortars, anyone?

When I was a child, I was sitting outside near our road, in the setting sun, and a bullet zinged by me landing within six feet of me. It was deer season, and someone on Mt. Barnabe was hunting, that bullet traveled far! Where I grew up in West Marin, everyone had guns, so I do know the different sounds. Most boys had .22s. I knew the sounds.
 

MoHurley's Amazon Book Reviews 2016

I began writing Amazon Reviews in 2013 after reading a Kindle ebook that was so awful, I was distraught. My cousin suggested that I write an Amazon Review. And so I did. I'm over a hundred reviews, total. I haven't written many reviews this year. My goal was a minimum of 25 reviews, I got 24 done; the last one didn't make the midnight cutoff date.

It takes considerable time and thought to write (and rewrite) reviews. I don't take the process lightly. I look for a believable plot, good storyline, and figurative language that doesn't intrude, and subtle intellect. Novels stem from the oral tradition. They should entertain (as well as enlighten). It's not all about the escape fiction part.

Unfortunately many reviews are viewed as a popularity contest. Not. It is my hope that some authors will take the time to correct their typos and upload revised books so that we all benefit. Hey, free copy editing! 

Unfortunately, negative reviews also garner a lot of negative points. Please mosey on over and LIKE some of my reviews. Amazon's all about Like, just like LIKE on Facebook. Except, like, the buttons are, like, different.

My older reviews are buried deep. So I tried to include the direct links whenever possible here as well. Go to MoHurley's Amazon Reviews click on the comments section under my review and that will take you to the review where you can like it.

TO READ MORE REVIEWS, PLEASE VISIT:

MoHurley's Amazon Book Reviews 2017 
MoHurley's Amazon Book Reviews 2016
MoHurley's Amazon Book Reviews 2015

My Amazon Book Reviews 2014
My Amazon Book Reviews 2013

End of year writing stats 2016, Scanning crusades 2014-2016, and beyond

Two years ago, as we began to clear out my grandmother's house, which was my home for the first 24 years of my life,  in order to sell it, I was heartbroken. So much memorabilia. Memory loosened by random bits of paper. And things. I expected to write lots, because, well, unearthing the past... Instead, I was numb. Profoundly depressed. Useless.

So I collected small trinkets from my childhood, and began to create archives. Then, in order to save them, I began a scanning project. It started out small. The first year I scanned old family photos, then I created a large family photo archive on Dropbox. It's now a monster folder pushing seven gigabytes. But the entire extended family now has access to those photos. (Except for the stolen ones.)

I scanned a fair amount of odd flotsam and memorabilia from that era as well (still lots more to do). Some of the detritus of the past found its way to my blog by way of illustration. My story on Christian Burkhardt: Almost Amish, for example. 

Some of it gave credence to old memories that I've transcribed in this blog. Biggest mindblower was finding a photo of my mother and Lloyd Bridges for The Student Prince at Sacramento's Music Circus. I wrote a blog piece about Lloyd in Guys and Dolls.

This year, I focused primarily on scanning my own extensive travel photos, I am nearly done scanning them (I just finished scanning the USSR—monstrous pile o pix), and will add some photos to this blog when I process them.

I began scanning chronologically with photos from the 1970s. Of course, as I scanned photos, I began to remember all the missing ones. Sometimes I'd get lucky. Somebody would unearth a photo from a lost era. See, I was the family chronicler. All events and parties, I was behind the camera recording, recording. Now scanning.

Still to do are all my black and white negatives from the 1980s and 1990s, but I need a good film scanner for that project. Since they are mostly of poets, I've been in conversation with Carolyn Forché who was my mentor at the Napa Valley Poetry conferences in the early 1980s, to bring them into the digital age. Her husband, Harry Matthison, too is culling and scanning his extensive archive of photos from when he was a war photographer-correspondent with Magnum. At least he'll get four coffee table books for his efforst. I still don't have a forever home for most of my work.

Carolyn asked how we can fund these photo archives. I thought the National Endowment for the Humanities might be a place to start. I need to create a GoFundMe account to raise enough money to get the scanner I need. And look into a grant to fund my time. On the 2017 To Do List.

This year, I've also been also scanning my paper/poetry archives, and fluffing up this blog with old poems and memorabilia. (I'm up to 2002 published posts! Nearly 1k posts added this year.)

As I rounded out the blog posts for the early years (1980s-1990s), it became a numbers game. Did I have enough strong work from the old days to bump up my meager collection of posts from the 1980s—before computers! It's strange to relive the past via poetry, but now it's a timeline of sorts. Prepping for the Alzheimer daze...

My goal is to post 52 blog pieces of writing a year. One for each week of the year. Every year. Seems reasonable. Most years I did not meet my minimum goal, so I lowered my standards to 25+ pieces a year. There was some fudging of numbers as I expanded my idea of what I wanted to include in this blog. Posters of readings, and poetry awards were added, for example. Some random doodles from my poetry journals. Letters. There will be letters.

A few of the old yearly collections do meet my arbitrary criteria of 52 posts per year. (PPY). Nearly all of them meet the 25+ PPY criteria (finally), and then some— but I still harbor hope to fluff up those anemic years.

Then, there are the years where I wonder what the fuck happened. I have not scanned all my old poetry journals, so the ranks still might swell. These years listed below are seriously in arrears. I have hope, but I'm also running out of material to scan. Letters and memorabilia from poets will swell the ranks somewhat. Letters. There will be letters. I already said that.

What's in Hawthorne, NV, and why is it shaking and rolling? (Why did Google flag this blog entry as a server error?)

I was abruptly awakened at 3:21AM. Two big 5.7 quakes (one quake was upgraded to 5.8), and a 5.0, with several swarms, in Hawthorne, NV. So that's why I'm now wide awake... It seems something woke me around 12:45ish. I was in a deep sleep so it may have been earlier. And then I thought it was morning, time to get up. Must've been the bed shaking. Hawthorn, NV? Can we even feel that in the Bay Area? Apparently so. Wow. What's in Hawthorne?

Wow, a 5.8    it took me a while to find the old USGS Did You Feel It? map. Which is invaluable to see where it was felt. I really wasn't imaging things. I do NOT like the new USGS website. The old one was much better. 

I noticed there's an Aurora Crater right below Hawthorne. Hmmm? This was a volcano field. Hundreds of miles of them. The valley is a caldera. There are old ash cones all around the edges. Must be indigestion. Wait, the whole valley is a caldera? Not a sinkhole/playa? It was upgraded to 5.8. Aurora Crater is rumbling?

WTF is in Hawthorne, NV??? It's a sinkhole on the backside of the Sierras, between Walker Lake and Mono Lake, near Bodie, fergawdsakes... Not even on a faultline. I thought I was imagining things until someone posted it on FB. Well, the Sierras are still growing. Must be growing pains. One quake at Bridgeport too, that entire area above Mono Lake is loaded with geothermal activity. There are a whole bunch of little unnamed faults south of the basin, running east/west... two sets leading into Mono Lake.

There are quite a few unnamed east/west faults below it, near Mono Lake.

And of course, below Mono Lake is Long Valley, and Mammoth Caldera...maybe a new fault rupture to the Big Bulge. If Mammoth ever blows... It blows my mind that I felt the big quakes in Oakland. Sleep? What's that? 5.8, 5.7, 5.5, 5.3, 4.1, 4.0, ....more than 70 quakes between Hawthorne and Bridgeport. Talk about a swarm.

No faults are listed where the swarm is located, but the area is a vast volcanic field, and it's close enough to Mammoth to give pause... that whole area is riddled with geothermal activity. Yes, the Sierras are young mountains still growing, so it could be merely tectonic growing pains...

Joyce Simmons, who lives near there, said the epicenter was near Lucky Boy grade. The underground bomb tests used to set off swarms.

Geologist Garry Hayes said: Quakes are probably tectonic related rather than volcanic. First motion diagrams indicate strike-slip (lateral) motion. Sensation of shaking is stronger on surfaces underlain by sediments. People I know in the Sierra didn't feel anything while lots of folks in the Central Valley did.

Here's hoping it's not clandestine injection wells, or fracking related. Or underground bomb tests! 

Can I please go back to sleep now, dear Earth?

Art has always been my first language

Art has always been my first language, grief-struck, after Tiananmen Square (a poet friend, Bei Dao, escaping to the west), all I could do was draw. I sat on the floor of CA Museum of Art (LBC, Santa Rosa—Marsha Connell and I were teaching an art class to kids), and I drew vast images of rows of trees, over and over. That was all I could do. That, or cry. And I couldn't do that in front of the kids. The trees became receptacles for my tears. A floodgate of leaves. Not words.

Stairways to hell

I've been laid up since the 17th as I managed to fall down two steps into Cormac's sunken living room, splitting the difference by folding my left ankle down to the next step and bending my right knee up at unnatural angles to hold the pose. A reindeer could've bolted between my bowed legs. 

But I had one more stair to navigate. Then, whump, I went down on my butt, hard—so freakin elegant. The edge of my outside boot caught on the steps (the sole split), as I was going down sideways. Facing forward, I would've been a real goner, or broke my nose (again). But I didn't spill my wine. Miracle of miracles.

The cardinal rule: always RICE right after you fall. I had some wine in me (anti-inflamatory agent), so I took Advil, and religiously iced my elevated ankle and knees the rest of the week.

I hate stairs. I have missed the bottom stair more than a few times.  I remember when I was somewhere between the ages of three and four, I took a tumble off the top of the stairs, and made it around the curve, only to have the home stretch open all the way down to the bottom, headfirst. The scenery jarring and bumping as my head hit each step. I was too surprised to cry. No one ever knew.

I did it once off a ladder, backwards, while painting a mural... A long step down, the jarring pain and lots of little bird stars tweeted in my head...

I won't mention the hikes, where stairs and I have parted company. How I ever made it over the Andes, with its thousands upon thousands of stairs for miles on end, was a major miracle. I was not so lucky on the glacial moraine on the Continental Divide.  My nose took a suckerpunch from a rock.

Another time Galway Kinnell called me on the phone to set up a reading, and I was so dazed, I walked out my front door, and promptly fell down my one front step. One step! Twisted my ankle but good. He wanted to know why I was whuffling like a buffalo.
  
One time I did the splitz down a long flight of attic stairs... My flip flops lost traction slipped, and down I went, like a grass toboggan ride. I had no idea I was that limber. Or that I could bend like that. 

Crotch rugburn was the least of my worries. I had to tie a bandana around my left knee to raise and lift it in order to shift the clutch—for a month....

Boxing Day ceilidh at Indu Kline’s, Tom Savell on the fiddle

Boxing Day, at Indu Kline’s for a fantastic feast, followed by a little ceilidh; with the great Tom Savell on fiddle,  playing Moody Blues' “Nights in White Satin,” (one of my all-time favorite songs, ever), Sherry Benson on keyboards, Neil O'Neill on guitar. Not the best recording but Tom brings it alive.  And gives us a chord progression lesson too. 

I heard Moody Blues play this song live at the Oakland Coliseum, when they played this melody, the stage was enveloped in a magical dry ice fog. Stephanie Stone and I were right up front. It was the anthem of an era.

Boxing Day Ceilidh, continued: David LaFlamme's classic “White Bird,” another all-time favorite of mine. Tom Savell on fiddle, and Sherry Benson on keyboards. I am so not a video fan, but these were too good to not record.

I remember David LaFlamme living in Guerneville, destitute, in the early 1980s, pumping gas for a living at the Flying A gas station at the Gurneville Bridge. And all I could think of, was his hands, his poor hands—a world class violinist reduced to manual labor....

And to close with  “Feliz Navidad.”

Hard sauce

My grannie made fruitcake every year. She started early in the fall, assembling the fruit and nuts, gathered all the spices, then she made the glacé and candied the citron, assembled the batter, mixed and packed the cakes, and then steamed them for six hours (not baked). When it was cooled, the fruitcake was swaddled in cheesecloth like an infant, and required a weekly baptismal dressing in whiskey, up until it it was served, well aged, with real hard sauce, tea, and more whiskey in the hand. But I couldn't eat it. Eventually she quit making fruitcake. An old tradition that died hard. It was the Christmas ritual that mattered, not the cake. I wish I had been kinder as a child.

Drought-breaker Day

It's been raining so hard, you practically need a snorkel out there. Most of the roads in San Rafael, Richmond and Oakland are canals. It's beginning to look a bit like Holland. The underside of my car is very, very clean. As are my brakes. Squeaky clean. And they are also not working. Soft brakes is really upping the ante. But the show must go on. We’re singing for the elders at the San Rafael Whistlestop Christmas luncheon for Bread and Roses today. We’re braving the storm with duck feet and nae knickers. At least Neil is, as he’s wearing his kilt.

In San Rafael, the water is all the way up to 2nd Street ramp by noon, and the San Rafael exit, near the canal, was a duck's infinity pool. Water birds were churning all over the place. Seriously partying down. Luckily we veered to the left side of the exit, and drove on the shoulder as the water was up to the bridge, and was at least a foot deep on the roadbed. The force of the water slowed us down quick. No need for brakes.

Of course we were late for our carol performance at Whistlestop Wheels. But at least we had an excuse. The parking lot was under two inches of water, and my boots decided to split their soles at that moment. It was a packed house. They had to wait for us, as Neil was singing the finale, Auld Lang Syne, solo. We sang extra hard to make up for being late. It was almost toast for us just getting there.

Driving home was another adventure. Hwy 580 northbound to the Richmond Bridge was closed. Probably an accident. Luckily we're going the other way. In Richmond, the Gerrard exit was completely underwater at 4 PM. One guy drove down the meridian to avoid the puddle. More like a pond or inland sea by the train tracks, reminding us this was all once marshlands. Kind of exciting at Golden Gate Fields/Gilman exit too. There were actual waves surging across the intersection. I swear I saw Nessie frolicking by the racetrack.

I think the drought has been thoroughly trounced. All that praying for rain is ganging up on us. Now we're dancing and praying just to get to the car without drowning. And Yahoo Weather must be seriously out of practice, as it predicted ZERO chance of rain today. And to think it was sunny this AM. Right.

It's a deluge, practically Biblical. The epicenter seems to be south of here. In San Jose, of all places. It just got a half a year’s worth if rain all at once. Flash flood warnings for the entire Bay Area, and massive flooding inland. The Sacramento has stormed its banks, ditto that with the Truckee. Some places got 7-8 inches of rain all at once. More than a cloudburst. Yes, the Truckee has leaped its banks too. We’re talking rain falling in biblical proportions—falling on the snowpack! The Pineapple Express has arrived decked up in full monsoon garb. Literally sheets of rain. There goes the snowpack, which means, pradoxically, we'll be back in drought mode, come summer.

Oh, and my new camera died today—a good soaking did not improve things. A lens malfunction—it's not even a year old. Ditto that with the one it replaced. I’m having a serious run of bad luck with short-lived cameras. But I do love the quality of the Panasonic Leica lens. And so I can’t even take photos. I used to cry when my cameras died, so much of my identity is tied up with cameras. an extension of my eye, but it’s how I process things, really. Still, a camera a year?

So I’m bearing witness with words today. Tears would only add to the flood. And to boot, my clutch is failing. Every time we have to stop, I wonder if it's gonna be the end. (We later swing by Mike’s Garage. Car is fixed, it’s not the clutch, but a leak in the hydraulic system. Next time, check the fluids.) The camera, however, is toast. Four years of praying for rain is catching up on us all at once. I guess the drought is officially over for a while. At least in the Bay Area. But tonight there's the full moon and the king tides....

rev 1/22/2017, and 2020

from a Facebook post.

Power outage

Power's out, rain, rain, and more rain. And now Neil's babbling on about generators and St Mirren's soccer score. He's not handling being cut off from the internet very well. I made soup and cornbread.  Thank God for gas stoves. At least you can carry on. The power used to go out often in Forest Knolls, so I just went into hillbilly survival mode. Break out the candles, booze, and food. After  hours of no juice, we're back online. The hall light was our Judas light. Let it shine.

Godspeed, John Glenn, back to stardust

I was startled awake by something before 7 AM. I didn't realize it was an earthquake. Getting the news. More death. All our cultural icons shuffling off this mortal coil in 2016. Do you think they knew something we didn't? It's a mass exodus.

Now John Glenn. Godspeed, back to stardust. Somebody said it must be the Rapture, another said, Yep, 23 more days to go. Who's next? We're no longer talking in multiples of threes here, but scores of threes.

It's been a rough harvest: David Bowie to Leonard Cohen. and now Mercury Seven's John Glenn. Glenn became the youngest and first American to orbit the Earth, aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962, he was the third American in space, and the fifth human being in space.

Zero G, and I feel fine.
— Glenn's first words on becoming weightless upon reaching orbit, February 20, 1962

 I once taught an Elderhostel class at Silverpenny Farm, in Petaluma, and one of my students was a NASA engineer that put the astronauts on the moon. He brought a piece of moon-rock to class. I held a piece of the moon in my hands. Basalt! I realize astronaut William Anders took the photo Earthrise, in 1968, but when I see it, I will always think of Glenn and Man on the Moon.

Not only was Glenn the youngest American to go into orbit. He returned to space on the Space Shuttle in 1998, and, at age 77, he held the title of being the oldest person to go into space. Glenn "won his seat on the Shuttle flight by lobbying NASA for two years to fly as a human guinea pig for geriatric studies."

My friend Rebecca Morrison said: "My uncle in Colorado was John's best friend and was the best man at his wedding. My father was an astronomer so my uncle got glossy first-hand photos of the moon from John and mailed them to my father."
 
And friend Miceál Francis O'Hurley siad: "John got me transferred to the House for a stint where I worked to get Vladimir Titov on the STS-63 mission. This is the flag and crew patch they flew for me in space. Eileen Collins piloted the Shuttle Discovery on this mission. I owe much to John Glenn."
Miceál sent me this:

When I was in the Ukraine, I got to see many exhibits of USSR cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov. And there's an exhibit of some of the space capsules on the Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet, docked in Alameda. There's a space museum aboard the ship with NASA Apollo artifacts. The Hornet was the recovery ship for the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 moon missions in 1969. The Apollo command module is so tiny, it's boggling.

Time to watch The Right Stuff, Brigadier General Chuck Yeager, USAF (Ret) plays Fred, the bartender at Pancho's saloon. Scott Beach as Head German Scientist based on Wernher von Braun.
 
Scott' Beach's most famous line ever was: It's White Flower Days at Macy's! We'd all nag him to say it again in that basso profundo voice. Loved that guy. He was part of The Committee, with Mimi Fariña, they did a lot of street theater in SF/Bay Area. He was also a popular DJ.

I first met Scott, in high school, at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Black Point in Novato. Scott was the Lord Mayor of the Shire. George Lucas liked his voice so much he used him in THX 1138. Beach also appeared as Mr. Gordon in American Graffiti, and was an uncredited stormtrooper voice in Star Wars. 

How Jerry Brown earned the moniker Governor Moonbeam; see the 2nd segment, on CA being an independent country, with its own LANsats. Priceless.

rev.12/7/17

More meanderings on Hiraeth/Saudade

A friend, Slim Russell, noted the similarity between the Welsh hiraeth and Portuguese saudade, not knowing the linguistic relationship. These are from some notes I wrote to her.

Well, it's not so strange a connection in that Portuguese/Galego (Galician) and Welsh are related, both stemming from the same Gaulish-Celtic ancestor...and that strange melancholia was a noted trait among the Celts.

I discovered that the Welsh hiraeth, Breton hiraezh, Cornish hyreth, and Irish sireacht (shiracht), all stem from the Celtic root word, siros, from Proto-Celtic *sīr-axto-, akin to Gaulish siraxta (“longing”) which is related to Latin serus—which evolved into Portuguese/Galician via Iberian Celtic speakers, full circle to Saudade. Galicians also use morriña, that's extreme saudade on steroids. But someone pointed out that it probably came from the classical Latin solitās, Makes more sense but I’m not up to deconstructing that last paragraph.

Portuguese/Galician Gaulish had many similarities to Irish (Q-Celtic) vs Gaulish, from which Welsh (P-Celtic) stems. Of course Portuguese/Galician evolved from Iberian, or Atlantic Celts trying to speak Latin, language of the conquerors.

"Hiraeth is a Welsh word for which there is no direct English translation: homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past.

Hiraeth bears considerable similarities with the Portuguese concept of saudade (a key theme in Fado music), Brazilian Portuguese banzo (more related to homesickness), Galician morriña, Romanian dor, Russian toska and Ethiopian tizita."  —Wiki

"Saudade is a word in Portuguese and Galician (from which it entered Spanish) that claims no direct translation in English. ...Saudade is also associated with Galicia, where it is used similarly to the word morriña (longingness). Yet, morriña often implies a deeper stage of saudade, a "saudade so strong it can even kill," as the Galician saying goes. Morriña was a term often used by emigrant Galicians when talking about the Galician motherland they left behind. Although saudade is also a Galician word, the meaning of longing for something that might return is generally associated with morriña. A literary example showing the understanding of the difference and the use of both words is the song Un canto a Galicia by Julio Iglesias."   —Wiki

One of my favorite songs of Cesária Evora, is Sodade. (Cape Verde spelling.)
Y un canto a Galicia, desde Julio Iglesias, who is Galician.

It's Pearl Harbor Day, a good a day as any to suffer from a case of saudade or hiraeth.


Longing/Saudade/Hiraeth  A blog I wrote on saudade/hiraeth.

and another on Hiraeth.

DELETING THE DEAD FROM FACEBOOK

DELETING THE DEAD FROM FACEBOOK

I can't bring myself to delete 

the accounts of dead in Facebook.
I still have Kathleene West's page. 

She sold me her cellphone for dirtcheap 

right before she committed suicide, 

and it was haunting to find her photos 

on the memory card after she had gone...
Jane Elsdon and Ann Menebroker 

are up to something, I know it...
I can hear Steve Kowit laughing 

maniacally in the other room.
Juanita Musson's cooking 

up a great feast in a washpan.
Speaking of Old Sausalito, 

Brite Bonnier's still painting somewhere.
And what about Pagan Neil?
Tom Hayden's dusting off his book, 

saying Poets don't pay. Ever.
And Norton Buffalo sometimes still visits 

from beyond the earthly Paradise, 

via fan photos. He fills the page.
Chris Caswell's ghost harp 

still plays in the wind.
Whitman McGowan's just stepped out 

of the room for a moment. Perhaps for a pint.

So many gone, so little time left.
No, I can't delete them. No, no, not yet.

12/6/2016

Oakland

Michael Rothenberg (100Thousand Poets for Change) wrote that he was deleting dead friends on his Facebook page. My reply to him was a poem of sorts.

SODA ROCK LANE

California quail on the fence rail
in front of Diebenkorn's old place
balanced on the whitewashed boards
like teacups tottering on the drainboard,
they chuckled nervously as I stopped the car
to watch them catching the morning sun.

12/4

Solving picture math equations

Everybody's going crazy over this math problem. Who knew I was supposed to Multiply or Divide before you Add or Subtract. Whoa. Definitely never learned that rule. Ever. I learned to always go from left to right. Like the way we read in this hemisphere.

All this time I've been doing picture math wrong. I didn't know about the bait and switch part (do multiplication first even if there are no huggy-armed parentheses to hold you in a huddle). 

I was told that we couldn't mix apples and oranges in math—ever—so why is this mixup ok? Is this new math? We're adding coke and fries and burgers, here. What about the apples an oranges? 

Who knew that even WITHOUT parentheses, you still solve it as if there was invisible parentheses there? Why even write it that way? Because someone forgot to add parentheses? Seems like a bait and switch. Or somebody was slovenly. Lazy bastard. Who all agreed to this formality? No wonder people don't like math. I want a hug.

And then there's the trick drawing, as if I wasn't already stressed out. I missed that there was only one pack of fries for the final equation. And McDonald's? Ugh. That explains all the empty calories. And a profound lack of clarity. Too many golden arches. Not a happy meal.

First equation, three cokes, means a a pitstop. Second and third equations with burgers and fries in various configurations means a powerful thirst, and quite possibly indigestion. All those burgers had cheese. Why didn't anyone share their fries? 

Next time, I want to tell the mathematician, choose In-n-Out Burgers. They use real potatoes. Much more straightforward. No hidden ingredients. Do the math. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it.

Now, would you like an apple or an orange?

"The Lady With the Umbrella" —after Sargeant

The Lady With the Umbrella John Singer Sargent, 1911

Rose-Marie's sprawled back against the feather pillows. A momentary respite, escaping the confines of her corset. As if she'd just flopped back after a large lunch. She's bundled up against wind and weather. A hat, a scarf, a parasol. Did she forget her gloves? The red and blue accents on her midi-blouse suggest she was boating, or perhaps a game of lawn tennis is in progress. Her hips are canted towards the artist, her skirt is a field of snow. Damp grass threatens to stain her voluminous white petticoats. She's watching him paint her. She wishes he'd hurry up. He says: One more minute. Five. He is in love with all that diffuse light, and the undertone of lake reflections. But her eyes have traveled beyond the confines of the frame to another time. And the score is love or nothing.

12/2/2016

Fallow Deer

Why does everyone assume white deer are albinos? Old Man Ottinger had a herd of fallow deer, they were leucistic, white against the moonlight. But the National Park Service came and killed them all. That was long after the murder. I was there the night the ranger was slain. I was camping illegally. I saw the poachers enter, heard the shots out near Limantour. Saw them leave. I was so afraid, I curled into the arms of the old pine. Fear was drumming a naked tattoo in my heart. A staccato of hooves on pavement. Blue Eyes is indeed beautiful. If she was albino, her eyes would be red. Maybe not so pretty then. Other images might come to mind. Then she could see between worlds when the poachers come.


An accidental prompt from June Hopper Hymass' blog
The Memory Thread,  At Dusk 
write a 10 to 12 line prose poem that tells a story and has some philosophy in it, too.

In the Pygmy Forest

Late in the season we went huckleberrying in the Pygmy Forest at Jughandle Creek. The bushes were so laden, the berries hung like grapes. In no time at all, I had 25 pounds of berries weighting me down, but it was getting late—twilight, the color of crushed berries. A false light. No real direction of home. We circled and came back to the same copse of pygmy trees. Three times. The only time I ever got us lost. The lichen encrusted cypresses were not much taller than us, and maddenly thin, like broomhandles, so you couldn't climb them to see where you were. We were trapped in a thick fairytale forest of venerable age. No glimpse of the ocean to orient myself. The temperature plummeted. We left our sweaters in the car. Think, don't follow your instinct. I found the lip of of the marine terrace, and from there, fighting against the surety of instinct, I worked my way backwards to the parking lot. Suddenly I understood how people who lose their way in the forest, always circled back to the starting point. Like gyrating dreidels. I ate humble pie. My granny never knew I had gotten us lost. I never said a word either. At Pat & Betty's cabin in Fort Bragg, we unloaded our bounty. And the pies we made afterward were made of twilight. That night our dreams were the color of midnight and studded with stars.

Death by Earwig

My grandmother used to hang the laundry out to dry. Extra clothes that didn't fit on the clothesline were draped over the bushes. I loved the odor of sage, rosemary or lavender invading my clothes. I grabbed some clothes and took off for the weekend to visit my boyfriend. It was a scorcher. I wiggled into my damp cutoffs grateful for their coolness. At a complicated 5-way stoplight in downtown San Jose, an earwig, or nipper, as my grannie called them, crawled out of the seam of my jeans and angrily began to pinch me. I screamed, and tried to rip off my shorts— while driving, running a red light in the process. Horns blaring, cars careening. I finally bashed it into my hip. And I smeared the sucker. Luckily I also didn't get smeared in the process. Death by earwig would be so very hard to explain.

11/23

THE OLD WRINGER

I was feeding the wringer a washcloth, 
and it nipped, then latched onto my fingers, 
then it swallowed my hand, a delicate crunching,
as the rubber rollers, like the maw of a hungry python
gulped at my tender flesh. I struggled and screamed, 
in anguish, my grandmother came running 
as the wringer inexorably ground its way
up to my arm, to the elbow. The gears gnashing.
I feared for my shoulder, and my head.
Would my entire body pass through the wringer? 
Would I be wrung out flat as a pancake, 
and slide into the tub for my final rinse?
Would she hang me out on the line to dry 
with the rest of the laundry, 
or would she drape me over the rosemary bush 
like the sheets, for remembrance?

11/23/2016