Here is a page both finished and not. While I was doing the acrostic I heard her voice asking me to stop–so I stopped. Readers curious about her may find her in Wikipedia and on YouTube.
My latest journal page is topped with “NOTE: If you can figure out what the letters stand for, this page may make sense.” Below that is a series of panels, each with a set of letters and something the letters are illustrating; and below that, in acrostic array, are these words:
Bees sting; scars form — it’s sad
Be strong they say — too bad
Right wrong/go stop/cop plea
Ruled out/on task/at sea
It’s tough to mend w/cheer
In times of melting fear
Gethsemane was stark
Gardena leaves a mark
How we best cope is known
Here ’tis: DON’T roll your own
Take givens in their stride
Toss acorns Far & Wide
Empathic ENTITIES
Need need’s array — it frees
One other word in square brackets, [also], is there.
Below the acrostic is my signature and date.
I so hope someone in the Blogoverse figures out what the letters stand for!
Ten minutes ago it was Yesterday, when I did a journal page on the Bar-Tailed Godwit, a bird with an incredible non-stop migratory range. Here is the page:
Earlier, my lovely and lively Girlfriend, Denise, and I stopped by the Village Gallery, where my work is on display. I dusted, rearranged, and added a bowl and an odd tiny relief sculpture of a warped clothespin. Here I am standing beside my humble rack of wares, dustcloth in hand:
It was a good, restful day. Hope yours is the same!
My path to acrostic poetry began when I was twelve years old, and a Dell Crossword Puzzles book cost thirty-five cents. The book wasn’t all crossword puzzles. My favorite feature was Solicross, where they gave you a nine-by-nine grid and put a circle in one of the squares, blacked out three others, put point values on the rest, gave you a letter list, and let you go to town. It is quite similar to Scrabble, but a Scrabble grid is 15 by 15.
So here’s to Solicross (property of Dell), and to Scrabble (property of Hasbro). Long may they wave!
Yesterday I attempted portraiture of Anne Hathaway and was not too successful, in my own estimation. As a portraitist I have my good days and not so muches. But “try, try again” I shall, just as I did with James Baldwin on two way back when occasions:
For over a week, ever since I saw Les Misérables, Anne Hathaway has been singing “I Dreamed a Dream” OVER and OVER in my head. Yesterday I got desperate and decided on exorcism via journal-page. It didn’t work. The page is done, but she’s STILL singing in my head. Somehow this proves that she will win an Oscar for her stirring performance as Fantine.
Last night in bed my acrostic subconscious tossed me the fact that Fini can mean “The End” and “Shed” can mean “Get rid of” and together they spell FINISHED. I then went to restless sleep. Up at 6am, I drew FINI on one side of the page and SHED on the other. Then I looked at the YouTube of the first hydrogen bomb testing, which was sixty years and two months ago, and scanned the YouTube comments, wishing I could read Arabic. Clicked the “Show more” and read “The new truly scary one is the thermobaric weapon. Could flatten a 400 mile radius.”
Some old Jackson Browne lyrics came to mind, from his “The Road and the Sky”:
Now can you see those dark clouds gathering up ahead?
They’re going to wash this planet clean like the Bible said
Now you can hold on steady and try to be ready
But everybody’s gonna get wet
Don’t think it won’t happen just because it hasn’t happened yet.
Then I FiniShed my page.
I have spent much of the first three hours of this New Year creating a new page. I wanted to celebrate the new year by doing a renewal-themed page. The ultimate celebration of renewal to my mind is a brass-tacks look at what actually happens to perpetuate Life. I had to leave out stuff like the exploding supernovae that make heavier elements occur in the first place, the absolutely essential floatiness of solid water, a.k.a. ice, and many other factors known and unknown. I stuck to the Nitrogen Cycle, and an obscenely simplified rendering at that, but I invite readers to do a web search on “nitrogen cycle” and find out what Life is REALLY all about, and why we would never exist without Lightning. Happy New Year, friends!
PS: “Theta-funk” is a horrible corruption of “Theta functions,” essential to the mathematics of string theory. Once William Buckley was asked why he used the word “irenic” instead of “peaceful.” He replied, “Madame, I desired the extra syllable.” Well, messieurs et mesdames, I desired Theta-funk. 🙂
It is natural on New Year’s Eve to reassess, evaluate, and resolve to change certain things. It’s less conventional to do it on the 10th of May, but that’s what happened in 2008 for me, as pictured above. Back in May of 08 my journal pages featured the date more prominently. Later that same year, as seen below, the date became a footnote to my signature. Judging from the message of the page, it must’ve been a bleak November…
But 2012 has been far from bleak. I leave it in better health than I entered it, and with love and light abounding, and 2013 promises yet more transcendence. Reader, may your 2013 be your best year yet.
Dorothy Parker thought “Excuse My Dust” would be a fine epitaph. Had her spirit persisted after her death, and hung around Earth to see what happened to her Earthly remains, I think she would have howled to see that her Earthly remains somehow ended up in a filing cabinet for seventeen years.
She had an incomparable wit. I am sorry to have never met her. I pay my respects by paging her with a sonnet.
One with Clay, Image and Text 