Pen and pencil on Stonehenge drawing paper, 5″ x 15″.
unbidden
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n.e.s. #155 of 480
About two years after I was born Isaac Asimov wrote a story called “The Dead Past.” The story centered around an invention that could capture images from long ago (supposedly), and the effect of those images on those who used the invention. When I searched for the story to refresh my memory on when it was written, I noticed that there is a .pdf version of the story. It may be in the public domain, and the curious may be able to read it at no charge.
Twenty years later Damon Knight wrote a story called “I See You.” It had a similar invention, but one that was available to everyone. It too is worth reading, and I am grateful to have read it about 45 years ago, because it was a cautionary tale with a chilling message: Sooner or later EVERYONE will be able to watch EVERYONE ELSE do WHATEVER THEY DID during their ENTIRE LIFE. So it behooves us to act as if we are being watched 24/7.
Alas, my behavior is all too often shameful, and I would be mortified if other parties saw what I had done. But when I am mindful, and because the story has more than started to come true, I am careful what I do and say.
This latest installment in my “n.e.s.” series addresses the issue of surveillance. It was informed by the Asimov and Knight stories mentioned above, but also by daily modern life.
a dysfunctional dynamic
Res ipsa loquitur, I hope. But just in case–in the United States there are some people who cannot bring themselves to say “Black Lives Matter.” In my experience all of them have been white people. They would rather say “All Lives Matter.” They are stubborn, even though many of them have no problem saying “Blue Lives Matter,” meaning the police. If Dr. Seuss were alive, he could have a field day with this. 🙂
I put a smile-emoji in there, but believe me, this is no laughing matter.
Black Lives Matter, Friends.
n.e.s. #154 of 480
Phoenix, Arizona, USA, where I live, has just recorded the hottest July it ever had. And this evening the air conditioner in my apartment decided not to work.
I tried and failed to get a good night’s sleep going, so to distract myself I’ve been spending half the night working on this page. It did a good job of putting the discomfort of the heat at arm’s length, and now my creative August is off to a good start. Stay cool, Friends!
the power the diskie gie us
Disks are not everywhere, but they are manywheres. Most coins are disk-shaped. Before solid-state storage came along, disks held all our computing data. Frisbees, 12-Step medallions, pupils, irises, the Sun and Moon from this distance…it’s Disk-O-Mania.
Long ago Robert Burns took his Scots dialect to this subjunctive couplet:
O wad the power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us…
The dialog I have my sketched characters say in this images comprises two couplets, and they comprise a small poem. It goes like this, and though it’s untitled, it’s all about disks:
sing o muse of a held up earth
of memory and what it’s worth
of need and want that drive our dreams
of nothing being what it seems.
Anyone care to estimate the total number of disks in this image? Don’t forget the red corpuscles coursing through the circulatory systems of the characters, nor the follicles from which the wild-haired dude’s hair springs. 🙂
n.e.s. #153 of 480
Work is more than ditch-digging, even when you’re ditch-digging.
n.e.s. #152 of 480
Light. Camaraderie. Access!
Enigmatism
(First published, sans illustration, on July 7 in Facebook group Poets All Call)
Enigmatism
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They ate me alive yet I live. It’s perplexing
To walk and draw breath though in stomachs digesting
I guess it’s a metaphor pho, sis, and flexing
Reality’s shape just for grins and for cresting.
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Before ’53 I was nutmeg and veiling
Then half of me swam to the other half waiting
And storming the cellular castle assailing
Exploding within for the DNA mating.
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I don’t guess I’ll be here in tangible form
A half century hence, and that gives me the shivers,
But the Universe leaves me to stray from the norm
And I eagerly wait to see what She delivers.
n.e.s. #151 of 480
Rhymes with Trauma…
Are ya ready fa some foot! Ba’al!!?
At top is a drawing exercise–the task I assigned myself was to do foot studies without looking at any feet. As I was working on it the singing voice of Hiram “Hank” Williams Jr. cued up in my mental jukebox, doing his Monday Night Football theme song, which begins, “Are ya ready fa some FOOTBAAL?!” (I have spelled it the way I hear him sing it.)
Then my scattershot memory took me back to Vacation Bible School, where my parents stashed me and my brothers one afternoon long ago as they went off to have some fun with their high school friends, the Olafsons. The Bible reading mentioned Ba’al Peor, one of the “Thou shalt not have other gods before me” gods of the Old Testament. So I did an Internet search on Ba’al Peor, and a fountainhead bust caught my eye. It looked a little like a nuclear bomb had just been detonated in his skull. I sketched from the photo some and then closed the site and let the drawing tell me what to do. Some of it was blind-sidingly unexpected.
One with Clay, Image and Text 