Lucid dreamers PROUD
Instantiate an area
Vividness in NOW
Evens odd centarian
Happy Birthday, Denise!
ICAD xxxvi: Live Dawn
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icad xxxv: aloe vera ness/Steve Allen
Steve Allen invented the television talk show, says a capsule biography I just watched. He was also a songwriter, an actor, a father, and the author of 44 books.
This card is a sort of Allenesque variety show. It includes an encrypted quote from Descartes that is familiar to most philosophy students.
As for Aloe Vera, Friends–it’s good for what ails ya.
ICAD xxxiv: Liberty, Justice, Freedom
From the heart of a citizen of the world and of the United States of America, on the occasion of my country’s Independence Day, may you have a peaceful and glorious 4th of July.
icad xxxiii: grim deed
grim deed
grave gets dug and later filled
rites intoned for them who came
into earth and out of game
marker placed for whom he killed
ICAD xxxii: Space Brace
“Space is curved,” they tell us in school. Forgive a bad pun, but it’s hard to wrap your mind around that. Space is a shifty word. It’s the Final Frontier. It’s a place to do your thing, as in Art Space. It’s spooky woo-woo, as in Space Case.
Words don’t come anywhere near Reality, but they’re what we have to approximate it. The specific definition for the space that is curved is approximately “everything and all the nothing in between and beyond.” Really hard to get down to brass tacks, isn’t it?
But if we start simple, imagining a Universe with only two chrome spheres in it, fifty feet apart, motionless relative to each other, each with a mass of one kilogram, we can get a glimmer. They instantly cease being fifty feet apart. They move toward each other. As they get closer the attraction increases. Soon they make contact.
Add more objects and the Universe gets more interesting. The more massive an object, the more attractive it is. (Except for bachelors like me.)
Space Brace
Sustenance IS the J*O*B
Paparazzo IS a star
Andalucia and a pea
Craft a plotted story arc
Excellence is never free
There’s a lot more to say, especially to make the poem more comprehensible, but a) Mystery makes Life delightful b) I am on a bus and soon to get off. Two lines should strike a good balance. “Paparazxo” IS a star.” Paparazzo is Observer. If not for Observers, the Universe would not be self-aware, and would effectively cease to exist. “Andalucia and a pea/Craft a plotted story arc.” Though one is large, the other small, they still interact; they attract each other. That’s how it works, my friends.
icad xxxi: wise eyes
wise eyes
watched the bees at Innisfree
ivy crept so languidly
sons of robins in a breeze
ever shifting Mysteries
Dog gie
I have done more than a dozen portraits of my co-workers at Matt’s Big Breakfast. A couple of weeks ago I approached yet another. She declined, but offered to send me a photo of her beloved and now deceased dog instead. I would rather have done hers, but I do love dogs, so I told her to go ahead.
“Gie” is a genuine word. It is Scottish dialect for Give. The poet Robert Burns famously coupleted
“O wad the power the giftie gie us
Tae see oursels as others see us.”
Burns also famously coupled, fathering many children out of wedlock, but that is another story.
Dog gie. “O wad the power a guid dog gie us/Tae help us truly, truly BE us.” I was best friends with such a dog. His revered name was William Doglas Bowers, known colloquially as Bill. We lost him ten years ago. A thought of him draws an eagle’s feather over my heart now and then.
dog gie
dalmation shepherd boxer pug
domestic bliss requires no drug.
old english sheepdog shih tzu corgi
of grins and snuggles is an orgi.
great dane alsatian malamute
Got Ugly? even so, Got Cute.
ICAD xxx: SUB DIV IDE
My faulty memory tells me the story of the Tower of Babel went like this: Once upon a time many people got together to construct a tower that would go all the way to Heaven. This cooperative effort went swimmingly until God took notice and was displeased. God foiled the effort by turning one language into many, amongst the workers; unable to communicate with each other, they quickly abandoned their efforts.
I just don’t think anything like the Tower of Babel story happened in real life. Construction workers the world over helped build New York City, and many of them never learned English nor any other language but their own. You don’t need much language to wield a hammer or install a window. I would think the Babel crew would have been frustrated with the weird new situation but would have found comfort in continuing the construction, and meanwhile they would learn the languages of their friends.
But the story has a point: it is hard to unite people if they all have different agendas.
What I have done with this index card is confound simple English by subdividing words into phonetically similar, smaller words. The words (and one crucial phrase) I did this with, and their equivalents, top to bottom and left to right, are
Sacrilege (sack real edge)
Energetic (N urge eh tick)
Sacrosanct (sac rose ankh’d)
Due Process (dupe raw cess)
Malachi (Ma lack ai)
Underplay (un derp lei)
Invested (inn fest Ed)
Bivalve (buy valve)
On the surface this may seem an arbitrary thing to do. But before we hear words we hear syllables; then we unite them into words; then we unite the words with the next words spoken and synthesize meaning by processing all those syllables.
Consider the market names of such drugs as Wellbutrin, Celebrex, Alleve, Claratin. Not hard to see that the drug-makers want you to think that use of the drug will help you get Well, let you Celebrate being alive, with your symptoms Alleviated and your breathing more Clear. (In the case of Wellbutrin, the name proved disastrously wrong.) Why do the drug-makers make up these names? Because it works; people buy into it.
“Words are not magic,” said an English professor of mine, long ago. “They are but crude approximations of Reality.”
But Reality for individuals is whatever they Think it is.
mid○sum○mer
My friend Suzy wrote on Facebook that she wanted Midsummer poems for her newsletter. Here is what I gave her.
And here it what it says:
Marvel at the Solstice steam
It is wondrous in the scheme
Ice your plectrum for the flare
Dazzlin’ Sol’s most debonair
I was glad to to this for Suzy. She is a deeply spiritual and honorable person whose entire life has been a poetic journey, setting huge challenges for herself and meeting them. She both literally and figuratively walks the labyrinth.
Roses 4 Sonia
One Saturday last winter there was a slim woman in a long blue coat waiting for the 32nd Street bus that I take to work. I am normally too shy to initiate conversation with fellow passengers, but as I approached I found myself saying “Good morning.” And she shy-smiled and said “Good morning” as well. I had just met Sonia.
For the next dozen or so Saturdays, Sonia and I exchanged pleasant light conversation before the bus arrived. I learned that she was from eastern Europe and she lived with her daughter, who sometimes drove her to work. She learned that I had a daughter as well, and that I was a restaurant host and cashier at Matt’s Big Breakfast, which had a 32nd Street/Camelback location. Somewhere in there I suggested it might be pleasant if we had breakfast there sometime, if we could find a mutual day off where neither of us were too busy.
Then one Saturday she didn’t show. And the next, and the next. I figured her schedule had changed. Sighed a little. She was so nice.
But months later, yesterday, I was waiting for the bus and who should walk up but Sonia! Wow, was it good to see her. “What’s your favorite flower, Sonia?” “Ummm…roses.” “I’m gonna draw some roses for you.” And I did. And I gave her the drawing this morning, on the condition that she pose with it. Here they are!
One with Clay, Image and Text 