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tone in tone

July 7, 2016
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2016-07-07 09.15.46

Last night I finished the design of the cover of the August issue of AMAZING ARIZONA COMICS, meeting my self-imposed deadline of midnight by 20 minutes. Now I can go back to this stuff. [smiles]

This edition of this stuff is in a way a blast from the past. It finishes a drawing I’d begun while still the front desk clerk at Sedona Winds, a year and a half and a lifetime ago. The acrostic poem was created today.

tone in tone

tenacity is sometimes silent
oboes, faint but not pianissimo
nudge silence aside for satisfaction
entreating the listener to drowse

Note that there is the mildest violation of my arbitrary Acrostic rules: the last line does not go through the n of In, the middle acrostic word. The last n of Entreating would have fit perfectly, but the text would have been too squeezed.

On this page I wish my brother Harold a happy 64th birthday. This is a first. “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

WIP II (pronounced “Whippeee”)

July 2, 2016
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Here as promised is the new, improved Work In Progress. I feel I have fulfilled the promise that it be better, in two ways. One, it’s in color and has a fuller range of light-to-dark. Two, the acrostics are done.

But there’s a tradeoff, and it’s been disimproved due to my yet-clumsiness with the oil pastel medium. WIP III will be created as a new image based on this one, with care taken and proper media selected–and an order of magnitude of additional time spent–to present this image/concept as it deserves.

wip ii 020716

planets twinkle

peaish green as i of newt
liquid as ye droppe of dew
angsty as a java’d gui [graphic user interface]
newton law’d and al [albert einstein] sed pfui; in
each ecliptic falls some silk
the mother’s milk of wit and will
sustaining cecil b de mille

stars shine

some hum some hiss
trill yon year ish
age brings satori
rituals overween
stasis, sis, is crystalline

I can promise without reservation, WIP III is NOT coming tomorrow, nor the next day. I have a comic book cover to draw, and a drop-dead deadline of but a few days from now. But WIP III will include image, annotation, and valedictory. Please stay tuned!

abs ORB ent (allotrope burden sailboat)

June 30, 2016
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It is the last day of the month. It is my personal superstition that to do things on the last day of the month is to increase the probability of their occurrence on other days. (This also applies to the first day of the month.) So I have cooked and cleaned a little, and, though my heart wasn’t in it, having received two reminders of things over and done with, I’ve created this minimalist acrostic/image card. Abs is for abdominal muscles; Orb is for that “cold-hearted orb that rules the night;” Ent is for that singular creature of J.R.R. Tolkien’s invention, a humanoid partaking of a tree.

An allotrope is one of at least two arrangements of the same atoms in differing array. A burden is represented here as a pack mule loaded down with another’s possessions. A sailboat is often delightful.

Watson and Crick were the scientists who found that DNA, the stuff of life, was double-helical in form. Even Linus Pauling, supernally brilliant as he was, didn’t deduce that.

photo

I have a feeling of deja vu. Have I done this acrostic before?

 

spoilsport

June 29, 2016
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spoilsport 062916

I hope I haven’t spoiled the sport of the man who’s holding the fish. I would be hypocritical to denounce fishing. I’ve enjoyed fishing myself, though it’s been years. But thoughts occur, and with them seeds for more, such as the many ways Spoilsport might be interpreted. Spoils sport: To the victor go the spoils. Spoil sport: a mutant fish’s putrefaction. I the Spoilsport, tainting a happy moment by taking sides with the fish. The fish the spoilsport, not going along with Survival of the Fittest. The fisherman the spoilsport, ending a creature’s life on a whim. Th’ gods the spoilsports, creating such somebody’s-gotta-lose-here situations.

spoilsport

snag yourself a smallmouth Bass
place its fate within your grasp
oleo a pan with goo
in the cove with boat at moor
LIKE & tweet bon appetit

feather weather

June 23, 2016
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20160623_103233-1

fields epithelial and fallow
elevate onward, windborne
and though unpossessed of persona
there is a seeming d e l i g h t
hopping hastening hopscotch
even a waltz-rhythmed dance
raising the sight of the Viewer

Epithelial cells comprise feathers.

Cold Read

June 22, 2016
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2016-06-22 11.41.58

“Cold Reading” is a method of fakery by purported psychics. The late, great Orson Welles did his share, and here describes both how it is done and how it is dangerous for the cold reader, who starts to believe the power is real:

 

And here are my few words, acrosticizing the subject:

Cast a spell to curl the hair
Oust some devils on a dare
Listen for the lost & bad–a
Daughter’s message 2 her dad

fecund second/spin it minute

June 14, 2016
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Here is an exploration in distillation, minimalism, irony, and association. It’s also another baby step in my quest for proficiency in oil pastel.

The first acrostic, “fecund second,” describes six rich actions that may take place in a single second. The second, “spin it minute,” is of six words, all nouns, that I am 100% sure have never been strung together in this order before. Reading them aloud in their order imparts, at least for me, a sense of a mysterious narrative with a lot left out. The first two words imply chaos; the next two pairs of words, “intersection nosferatu” and “integument testosterone,” have the same number of syllables, implying order. The last pair match stress syllables as well: inTEGument/testOSTerone. With minimalism details like this make a big difference.

fecund second spin it minute

fecund second

facing the Fates
echoing miracle
calibrating the cosmic
unraveling intaglio
nesting in the Moon
defining vagabond


spin it minute

spasm
potpourri
intersection
nosferatu
integument
testosterone

 

hitheryin & yonyang

June 13, 2016
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IMG_20160613_092832

Strange things are on the up. A wrong-headed man has opened fire, his targeted victims members of the LGBT community. He happens to be Muslim. A wrong-headed man running for President accuses his probable opponent of wanting to do away with the Second Amendment, which I will undoubtedly slightly misquote from memory as being, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

Yin and yang. Straight and gay. Gun-toters and gun-law-touters.

Bisexuals are said to “go both ways.” At least one of my best friends on Earth is bisexual. At least one other is homosexual. Any others are keeping a low profile, and who can blame them?

Lassie was a girl-dog whose movie and TV portrayal was often made by a boy-dog. Collies have concealing fur.

The folk song “Did You Ever See a Lassie?” Has another verse, unknown to most nowadays, that starts, “Did you ever see a laddie . . . ?”

My card advocates staying home and traveling afar at the same time via our E-Ticket ride on the Planet Earth. Since the Sun hurtles toward the Sagittarius constellation at 60,000 mph, the pattern the Earth makes through its tiny subsector of the galaxy is a marvelous slinky-shape, enhanced by the subslinky of the gravitational tether of the Moon. YouTube has video of this, and it is a joy to behold.

Here are the words to the messy double acrostic, made, I hope, more sensible via prosification.

Hie thee away to another land. It will be strangely fey and grand. By this time tomorrow Earth will go Headlong through a spiral arc–yes or no? Elliptical pathways in centric array respond to the pull with a hip, hip, hooray. Telemundo, tell Alice, then it gets intriguing: Nest nesting in travel and you will be singing.

temper temper

June 5, 2016
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“Temper, temper,” we say of someone who flies off the handle/gets Pee Oh’d/indulges in rage. But “temper temper” may be advice, when the first Temper means “serve as a neutralizing or counterbalancing force . . .”

temper temper 06052016

temper temper

ten-second counting is the best
emotion checked with time & geste
marshmallow mellow pick & strum
permits this chum not be a chump
emergent calm need not be rare
reject the raging growling bear

. . . or lion. Lamb it up today, Friends!