Away from my home, with sketchpad and Verizon pad, I send a finally finished page. Desperation to get it done played hob with petal anatomy and lyrical clarity but did wonders for uniqueness.
Definitely Daffodils
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grasp of air/Three With Background
Double Feature day, Friends! First a poem:
grasp of air
the air touches and pushes against my hand
but will not be held by it
eludes my desperate grasp
and the same odd silly desperation obtains
when i try to hold time stiller than one second per second
time pushes against and touches my life
but will not be held by it
instead it mocks with the irony
that i was drooling
and dazed and clueless
a few weeks out of the starting gate
and will be drooling
and dazed and cashing in my last clue
a few weeks before the finish line
it is sixtwentytwofourteen twelvefiftyfourayem
it is sixtwentytwofourteen twelvefiftyfiveayem
seize the day? good luck with that
forge memories? yes you can
some of them will mock you with their irrepetition
some of them will sting you with a new context
some of them will settle you down
some of them will undissolve you
don’t grasp air with your hand
grasp it with your lungs
make memories your art form
your mind the lungs that grasp time
it is sixtwentytwofourteen oneohtwoayem
over but not out for it is and isn’t was
Completing the double feature is the image “Three With Background”:
Boolean (Bowling) Far (for) Doll Hearse (Dollars)
Sketch for an upcoming 22" x 30" graphite drawing.
Flatscreen Voyeur
A conventional-but-not 21st-Century flatscreen-owning young man voyeuristically eyes a conventional-but-not topless-but-not beachbunny-but-not. Popcorn is involved until it's gone.
Desperate But Sequel
Here is something I started over a month ago and invited collaboration (see the post “Seven, Eight–Collaborate”). One brave soul told me there would be a try; that I have not heard from the brave soul since casts no aspersion on said soul. Collaboration is tricky.
Indeed, collaboration ended up being the theme of this, now finished, page:
And here are the words of the triple-acrostic sonnet:
Desire may ebb when disillusion flows
Endangering stability, which flees
Each time de-Liberation strikes a pose
Some issues turn to Beasts none may appease
Proceed OUTSIDE the box, and P.D.Q.
Example: cure your Beef with B.B.Q.
Rescind your doubt! Do what WILL do for you
And with each therapeutic molecule
Add TLC that’s stubborn as a Mule
The optioned limitation with accrual
Ensures the Trust that leads to Love’s renewal
“Desperate But Sequel” hearkens back to the bad old days of “Separate But Equal.” Alas, Racism is still alive and “well” more than a half-century later. Not much more we can do about that but get our own houses in order (see Avenue Q’s “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”).
The image is a four-shot sequence wherein two people are irritating each other’s stiff backs, then find a synergistic solution when they loosen up a little and rub together. I am ridiculously proud of this metaphor for relational friction. Honest to Goodness, I have no memory of ever seeing this bit of storytelling before–but I suspect I’m not the first…
tragicomedy masks
The late Martin L. Stoneman loved comedy and tragedy masks. On the offchance that his consciousness is still attentive to the Earthly folk he left behind, I did these for his possible entertainment. He well knew that Life is never as cut and dried as comedy Here and tragedy There. Now, “if the accident will,” he has that illustrated.
Seen From Next Weak Show
One unfortunate thing about growing up in the early 60s is that the phenomenon of Television Syndication was first getting real–and they started with Lassie and continued with Leave It To Beaver. Supposedly there are seven or so basic stories in the human story grab-bag, but Lassie and Beaver only used one each. The Lassie story: Little Her-Name-Here is trapped under a lean-to in the woods, and she doesn’t have her medicine. Lassie finds her, barks his/her heinie off to the nearest first responder, who finally gets the message and follows Lassie just in time to rescue the stricken child. Then Lassie goes back to June Lockhart and the rest of the family, only to find Timmie stirring his uneaten food around with his fork because he’s afraid Lassie will never return. O joy that Lassie is back safe and sound–till the next episode. (After a few years, the townspeople rescued by Lassie outnumbered those who hadn’t been.)
The Leave It To Beaver story: Beaver and his pals talk about doing something really neat, but they’ll get in trouble if they do it. They all agree to do it the next day. Only Beaver does it, and he gets in trouble. Ward gives him a good talking to, and Beaver learns a valuable lesson–which he promptly UNlearns in time for the next episode. (Oliver Sacks should have studied him and his short-term memory loss.)
My Three Sons, I Love Lucy, My Friend Flicka, Sky King–all had basic stories, not well told, flogged to death. So I have decided to tell a NEW story. It is at most eighteen words long, but there are pictures. It relates to the discussion above, but obliquely. The reader will have seven puzzles to solve. Five of them are pretty easy: How do the pictures illustrate the five acrostic words? The sixth is only a little harder: Which one of the acrostic words illustrates the picture illustrating it, and why? But the seventh one can take from half an hour to forever: What story can be told that will logically link all of the illustrations? Solving THAT one, dear Reader, will make you a better storyteller.
Here’s the image/story/quintuple acrostic:
RIP Casey Kasem
“Today I Get To Be A Lazy Bum” Day
Nothing new but this all-too-candid photo, Folks. It’s Father’s Day, and I celebrate.
But here’s something I DID work hard to make, back in aught-eight:
Sorry: I’m too lazy today to transcribe, or even resize.
Finally, here is one of my favorite pictures of the two of us:
For the Love of a Pooch
It has been more than five years since Bill, great-souled dog of the Family Bowers, breathed his last. Here’s to him.
Fate took us to the shelter, not any agenda
Forces beyond our control, but benign, and a plethora
Of circumstantial oddity eased our leap
Over into not-really “ownership” in one Swell Foop
Remembered times: a lovely fugue in allegro
This is a noble BEAST with an urge to GO
He is brave in the face of Danger and of high ethic
He is patient even though he loves to be manic
He has a sweet disposition–his empathic
Ego is healthy and his FIDELITY is top-notch
Every woof and boof of his is music of his worth
Credit is due my sweet-natured former wife Joni for coining the word ‘boof,’ which rhymes with ‘woof’ and describes the sort of stifled, dewlap-muffled bark Bill would issue, priming his barkmaker for Full Bark Mode. Joni also loved Bill with all her heart, as did Kate.
