These two efforts, one a month in the making and one reactive and near-instantaneous, complement each other, if not quite complimentarily.
frailty
when a dream shatters
one must be careful not to
step on shards barefoot
I have just finished watching the DVD of the movie LOVING. For me the story was both deeply moving and relatable. I had an interracial relationship in the 70s, and another in the 80s. Of course, I and the two women who blessed my life with their companionship did not endure nearly the hardship that Mildred and Richard Loving did. But there is some resonance.
I hope more people learn this important story. It underscores a sentiment found in every important belief-system that Humanity has ever conceived. In the Bible it is distilled by “. . . the greatest of these is Love.”
Long, long ago, Eric Knight, author of LASSIE COME-HOME, wrote a delightful story called “All Yankees Are Liars.” He began the story with this epigram:
You can always tell the English,
You can always tell the Dutch.
You can always tell a Yankee,
But you cannot tell him much.
What goes around comes around. Donald Trump, now President of the United States, is a chronic, unapologetic liar. His recent ploy to smear former president Barack Obama is a shameful attempt to direct attention away from the wrongdoings of some of his advisors, cabinet appointees, and, of course, himself.
My blog has been seen by people from at least 72 different countries. WordPress tells me I have more than 500 followers. So this goes out to all who see it, worldwide. Citizens of Earth, I and other Americans who are proud of what our country has stood for as represented in its Constitution, but are ashamed of what our country has come to as embodied by our current President and his cohorts, want you to know that we wish, peacefully and legally, to set things aright by ousting this liar, this bad representative of our country.
Thank you for your attention.
In my quest to become the worst pun-cobbler of all time, this morning I crafted “skew Smee,” a skewed, smeary corruption of “‘scuse me.” But that opened a can of worms. Among other things, Walt Disney says something that directly contradicts J. M. Barrie’s assertion in the very first sentence of PETER AND WENDY, whence came Peter Pan. One thing led to another, and another, and that’s how pages like these are born.
Here are the words:
pSychophantic flunkieS
sKilletize the dooM
Even as the upkeEp
Weeps for hellish fumEs
It started at a Redbox. The DVD of THE ACCOUNTANT had just come out, and I was eager to see it. Ben Affleck as the autistic, arsenel-stashing CPA for drug cartel bosses and other criminal bigshots. Also starring Oscar-winning J. K. Simmons. Action, pathos, forensic accounting–yum yum yum!
While I watched the movie I sketched Affleck and co-star Cynthia Addai-Robinson. After I finished watching the movie I posted the sketches on Facebook. To my astonishment, the sketch of Ms. Addai-Robinson was Liked by one Seth Lee. Hey, that’s the name of the young actor who plays Affleck’s younger self . . .
. . . And, Hokey Smokes, it IS the actor, and martial artist, who plays Affleck’s younger self!! He did a fantastic job, too. He is a Natural. Step aside, Bruce, Brandon, Stan and Ang! There’s a new Lee in town, and he does back flips with the greatest of ease.
Here are the words to the double acrostic:
Some who act get early starts
Some are fans of martial arts
Expertise in swim or sync
Elevates to gold from zinc
Triumph teaches–slumps do too
Hack a comeback score a coup
& each fall presages RISE
& another winner’s prize
Friends, keep an eye on this young man. He has definitely got the chops for an outstanding career.
Every Friday my friend Clottee Hammons posts to Facebook a picture of one or more people celebrating Life, and she always captions it “Happy Friday friends.” This Friday it was a guy with a guitar, Chuck Berry I am reasonably sure, in midstride of what appears to be the Duck Walk. I commented: “Think I’ll go out for a Duck Walk today.” And I did do a lot of walking, it being a nice day; but then I came home and did a different walk, thus:
Here are the words:
Do-wop, blues, & Rock & Roll! We saw
Delinquent moves to scoff unwritten law
Upsetting but as smoooth as Yo-Yo Ma
Chuck Berry was wont to reveal
Concussional riffs-so unreel
Kiss Pat Ba-Boone goodbye, and peak
Keep Little Richard on his streak
Jamie Dedes is alive, though she was given but two years to live in a prognosis delivered before the end of the last century. She credits her son and “an extraordinary medical team” for her continued existence. Though I don’t know her well–I don’t even know how many syllables are in her last name, much less how to pronounce it–I would venture to add that Moxie also has something to it.
For she has Moxie in abundance. She cares enough about poetry and its practitioners to have created and maintained an outstanding resource-blog called THE POET BY DAY, which connects poets via showcased poet exemplars, essays, links to items of interest to poets, her own poems, and on Wednesdays, those springboarding challenges known as prompts, which are invitations to write about a specific thing, or on a certain theme, or some other limiting, focusing factor.
And it was a week ago Wednesday that I responded to one such prompt. This one:
Write a poem, a fiction or a creative nonfiction piece telling us how you envision a feminine God or about the feminine side of God. What might S/he be like? Does/would such a view change the way you feel about yourself and the world? Would it change the world? How? You don’t need to believe in God or in a feminine aspect of God. This is an exercise in imagination not faith. Have fun with the exercise and if you feel comfortable, share the piece or the link to the piece below so that we might all enjoy.
For some reason this prompt struck a chord and got me going. I don’t know if there is a Supreme Being. I have certain feelings but I don’t trust them, being a rationalizer and wishful-thinker. A much more intelligent man than I am, Stephen Hawking, envisions a cosmology that, in the words of Carl Sagan in his introduction to Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, gives “nothing for a Creator to do.” In other words, Hawking’s universe has no need for a Creator.
But if there IS a Supreme Being, it makes sense to me, since the Supreme Being brought us all to be, that since that Being birthed us all, that She be a mother. And so I took a weird word from a conspiracy theory about our 44th President, Barack Obama, for a title, and was off to the races imagining God as Mom:
*****
birther
o god
thou residest betwixt r and t
god s be thy name
birther of us all
mixmistress of galaxies
crecher of clusters
ovulatrix of ylem
thy mother’s care is in the dew
thy admonishment is in the don’t
and when we want to play in the woods of reckless fun
thou respondest “we’ll see”
which almost always means “fat chance”
thy human smartalecks speak of heat death
it is merely a pause
in thy menopause
and soon thou’lt bake us cosmic cookies again
thanks for Ever
y
Thing,
maman
*****
Sure was fun to write, and oddly, bouncily, spiritually uplifting. Things just seemed to naturally occur: the Heat Death of the Universe resonates with the “hot flash” of menopause–hey how bout that, menoPAUSE–perhaps prelusive of the Big Crunch and the next Bang–and double up on “baking us cosmic cookies” with us being some of the cosmic cookies She bakes–and Everything with the y, possibly the Spanish “and,” joining Ever and Thing–and the French word for Mama, maman, slightly hinting at both “amen” and “ma MAN.” Wrote it first, realized it later. Could it be that She helped? Fun to think so.
I posted “birther” in the Comments section of Jamie’s post, and she replied that she loved it and wanted to include it in her following-Tuesday post. I happily agreed, and supplied a photo and my poet’s curriculum vitae at her request. She published my and three other poets’ responses to her prompt last Tuesday, and I was proud and happy enough to be in such august company that I put a link to her post on my Facebook Timeline.
As fate would have it, the next day was Jamie’s Birthday, and it was there I learned about her “Sixty-seven Years on the Razor’s Edge.” You can too, and I think you should. Here is a link: https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/56465423/posts/1350565805
One thing I’d left out of my poet’s biography was the fact that my specialty is Acrostic poetry, i.e. poems where the first and/or last and/or midstream letters of the poem form words. In my gratitude to Jamie, and wanting to show off a little of this weird skill, I composed and illustrated a birthday acrostic for her, thus:
Here are the words of what may be the first birthday-occasion, acrostic, limerickal, end-words-all-rhyme-or-nearly-so poem in human history:
Jamaica may thrill, undenied,
And Nawlins is burstful with pride;
MARVEL at, though, who’s hied
In the clouds with her stride,
Energetically shifting the tides.
Thanks again, Jamie, for Ever y Thing!
Last night I watched the DVD of GUERNICA. It was about the village of that name that was used by the Condor Squad of Hitler’s Luftwaffe to test the effectiveness of Blitzkrieg, “lightning warfare.” The bombing was conducted by a cousin of WWI’s Baron von Richtofen. It was April 26, 1937, and the bombing was called by him “a birthday present for Hitler.”
It was a good movie, with personal stories of love, heartbreak, betrayal and loss. I kept getting distracted by the costumes, hairstyles, and vintage automobiles, though, and soon froze the frame for a sketch, and kept freezing it for an interesting expression, explosion, or other eye candy. Consequently it took the better part of five hours to see a two-hour movie.
Today is Valentine’s Day Eve. On Facebook, I posted this message to my timeline:
Heads up, young-at-heart lovers everywhere. The only decent way to send a Valentine that isn’t hand-delivered or messengered is by snail mail. The only hope of it arriving tomorrow is if you send it today, early as possible. Even if it doesn’t arrive on Valentine’s Day, the postmark will prove timeliness–and what a pleasant surprise it will be!
Sound like a lot of trouble? That’s the point! She is worth it. He is worth it. You are worth it.
As for me, one Valentine is written and will be signed and sealed and mailboxed before noon today. She is worth it.
Since the post the Valentine has been signed and sealed, and stamped with a Forever stamp. After we’re done here I will drop it in a mailbox.
The image above is the substrate of the Valentine. It is dated and badly signed. The photo was taken before the Valentine was written in its interstices. The signature was corrected.
It goes to a very special lady who lives hundreds of miles away. Long ago she expressed a fondness for my more non-objective, abstractive artwork, so the substrate drawing was made especially for her. I’ve also put a few other pen sketches in the envelope.
I hope she will not object to my using this substrate as a funny Valentine for all those special someones who read this and know they have touched my life. Is that you, dear reader? Not necessarily. Due to the miracle of today’s instant, disseminative communication, some of you who read this don’t know me, and there’s a possibility that some who do will not want a Valentine from me. That is okay. That’s life! It’s humbling and character-building to know that we cannot connect with everyone, try though we might.
But if you, singular YOU, read this and know you have made a good difference in my life, this funny bloggy Valentine is for you, with my heart-filled thanks. You also get the hugs and kisses, two each if you look carefully, found in the heart. A joyous and Happy Valentine’s Day to you. And one of you gets two Valentines–this one, and the one that will soon be in the mail.
Love,
Gary
Like many oft-untold tales, this one begins with Guilt.
I was supposed to meet Magali, whom we at the Devonshire Senior Center call Maggie, at breakfast at the Center this morning. I was not up to it. I had had a rough night. So I stayed home till she called me, put on my not-faking-much Sick voice, and told dear Maggie I wasn’t feeling well. She was nice about it.
Hours went by and I Facebooked and loafed, and ended up feeling better. But the nagging guilt of not having a Spanish lesson from Maggie got to me. Sloth of the day added to the guilt. So about one PM or so I walked to the Hideaway Lounge, where I knew it was Taco Tuesday, and had their $3 special and a small pitcher of Budweiser for my beverage. A sign said “Mystery Shot $2.00” so after I ate I had that. The barista asked me if I wanted another pitcher and I replied No, I Am Tipsy, You Better Cut Me Off, This’ll Be The First Time Ever I’ve Been Cut Off. She was thrilled to be a footnote in my history of Barfly-dom.
Catty-corner to the Hideaway is the Hispanic supermarket known as El Super. I had never been in there before. Somehow I thought it would balance my karmic books if I transacted business there and spoke only Spanish. So I went to the butcher’s counter and drew number 46. When I heard a number with “seis” at the end I waved and pointed to a pile of thin-cut steaks and said “uno.” The butcher lady wrapped my Bistec Sin Hueso and I got some other things and went to the counter and when the cashier lady said “Hi, how are you doing?” I said, “Bien, gracias” and she apologized, took my money, and gave me change.
Next to El Super is a Fry’s. They are like alternate-universe versions of each other. I’d been in Fry’s before, but not this time, opting instead for the Redbox next to it, where I rent DVDs. Got “The Accountant” starring Ben Affleck, gathered the grocery bags in one hand, and headed for home, a mile away.
The way an oldish man walks home with a good 25 pounds of groceries involves a constant shifting of the burden. First it is left-hand dead weight, then it is slung over the left shoulder, then let down and switched to the right hand, then slung over the.right shoulder. Four sets of muscles. “Teamwork makes the Dream work,” I am told.
