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Warp Wrap

September 13, 2019
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2019 0913 warp wrap

The English language is dynamic, and some words and idiomatic phrases enjoy usage for which almost all English speakers have forgotten origins and even meanings. The phrase “sticks in my craw” means more to farmers and ornithologists than it does to millennials.

When I was thinking along these lines, somehow the acrostic “warp wrap” came to mind. “Warp” means both Distortion and Parallel Threads In Fabric (sort of), and “Wrap” means both Enshroud and Conclude.

We have the word Asea. Why not Aland? Because the English language is large, it contains multitudes, and so it has a way of Whitmanesquedly contradicting itself. It is a citizen in the Quantum Universe, which also contradicts itself, of necessity for existence.

The spot illustrations for this page border on the wretched. The worst is the “Top Drawer” illustration, with which I attempted to do a visual Bad Pun by sticking it in the word Craw. I tried to make it work, but it seems too distractive for the payoff.

Warp Wrap

What IS a craw?
And WHAT is [so desirable about] TOP DRAWER?
RAW sewage or COOKED? ASEA
Precludes ALAND’s GDP.

GDP is economese for Gross Domestic Product. It is a benchmark of how well a given land is doing. Sewage is one of the grosser domestic products. English is large; it contains multitudes. Why do we not wish to have our geese cooked?

Imp Act Crater (DRAFT ONLY)

September 11, 2019
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2019 0911 imp act crater

Eighteen years ago today, airplanes were weaponized by terrorists in an attack on my country, and the course of our history veered. Living in that history has been to some extent a nightmare. And so the metaphor that occurred to me is a crater formed by the act of an imp, a minion of Evil Incarnate: Imp Act Crater.

I want to do a much more polished and wordsmithed version of the page above, so I pseudo-rubber-stamped it “DRAFT.” (I hope I will find, acquire or make a real DRAFT rubber stamp soon; I can use it!) Meanwhile there is this.

Imp Act Crater (DRAFT)

It’s stake time now for Joan of Arc
Moloch’s malarkey leaves a scar
Pandemics are a panacea
As coup d’etat meets death by fiat
Catastrophe by rock & flare
Takes precedence o’er thought & prayer

Extractive Capitalism

September 10, 2019
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2019 0910 extractive capitalism

This post owes its existence to my friend of many years, designer Terry Irwin. She pointed her Facebook readers to an article in The Nation about Wendell Berry, perhaps the closest thing to a latter-day Thoreau that these times have produced. The article included the phrase “extractive capitalism,” which I have used as the acrostic.

What is Extractive Capitalism? It is exploitation without reciprocity. It is taking advantage and not giving back. Clearcutting and fracking and unsafe offshore drilling are examples, but the practice does not limit itself to Earthly riches: during the housing crisis in the late 2000s, Extractive Capitalism extracted dollars from middle-classers and gave it to banking executives and stockbrokers.

Wendell Berry’s wisdom may be found in this passage from the article: “The time is past when it was enough merely to elect our officials,” [Berry] argued in 1972 concerning the fight against strip mining. “We will have to elect them and then go and watch them and keep our hands on them, the way the coal companies do.”

Another valuable phrase in the article sums this wisdom up: “Participatory democracy.”

In my country the concept of Socialism is being demonized by the current administration. It is painted as Big Government taking and doling out, with hordes of parasites with their hands out. But true, RESPONSIBLE Socialism, where each individual seeks the best fit of meaningful endeavor and fair exchange as a participating member of the state, will be what saves us from climate change, corruption and waste, I think.

Here is my poem, with the acrostic aspect disregarded for clarity, and a word or two changed because of the freedom from stricture:

Extractive Capitalism

ENGULF! Be meteoric
Extend hegemony
A trawler-drag historic
Uproots anemone
I acey-deucey dare ya
It cash-enriches molders
A test run of malaria
Will Instashare the holders
I venture we’ll do Chasms
Enable Cash Orgasms

 

Next Echo

September 9, 2019
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2019 0909 next echo

Last night I had a sensation in my chest that was identical to one that sent me to the Emergency Room a couple of years back. Then as (most likely) now, electrocardiogram was normal. Nevertheless, they referred me to a cardiologist, who recommended a CT scan with contrast, which the insurance company denied, and we appealed to no avail, so they gave me a “nuclear stress test” instead, which disclosed that my heart’s “profusion”–blood-pumping action–was on the high end of the Normal range, and so they pronounced me Normal. That didn’t reassure me any too much, because “normal” people with a history of cardiac disease in their families (my dad died in 1983 at the age of 49 from “massive myocardial infarction”) are walking time bombs, despite all efforts at weight control (I’m a whopping 218 pounds now, or, to be euphemistic, “less than a hundred kilos”) and avoidance of contraindicated activity such as smoking (I don’t smoke, but sometimes succumb to the Gamblin’ Fool urge, and hang out in one of the local casinos, where smoking is not only permitted, but with the ubiquitous ashtrays, encouraged) and healthy diet (I am eating more yogurt and using more olive oil lately). So every day is a blessing, and every sign that all will be taken from me in a non-heartbeat is a curse. And last night I was Accursed.

What to do? Distraction to the rescue! I set myself a challenge at the stroke of 10:15: go from Blank Card to Completed Acrostic Poem with Image as FAST AS POSSIBLE. And when I finished, including signature and date, I looked at my watch and it said 10:35. And my chest had quieted down.

The above card, therefore, and to be the Drama Queen I undeniably am, May Well Have Saved My Life. That’s my Spin and I’m sticking to it.

And–the poetry is pretty darn good for so few words, and the image illustrates the poem serviceably, if not all that eye-pleasingly. Two people, one a stereotypical Busty Blonde and the other a stereotypical Busty-Blonde-Ogler, are both wearing X-Ray Spex, a novelty item which through light diffraction gives the illusion that the viewer can see through things, especially clothing. Both are dismayed that their Spex do not actually let them see through things, and they feel as if they have been suckered. Meanwhile tanks (and I had to rely on my memory as a 6th-grader sketching a tank from a big, thick book entitled Weapons, which I had to get special permission from Mrs. Bailey to check out) rumble in the background.

It’s a fairly nifty synopsis of the toxic absurdity that passes for Current Events today, what with all the saber-rattling and distraction and fakeness and accusation of fakeness–almost Biblical in the “wars, and rumors of wars” aspect–whoops, Friends, that’s the Drama Queen talking again…

…or is it? Faced with a personal crisis, my “distraction” seems to have been a focus on a more dire, impersonal, global crisis. I may be a Drama Queen, but the Bureau of Atomic Scientists DID quite recently move the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” one minute closer to midnight.

“Courage is our greatest present need,” my friends.

Next Echo

Now a ROBIN may be Thicke
Entertain with Vid or Pic
X-RAY SPEX were full of Pooh
Tanks & Silicone are too

blissy kissed

September 8, 2019
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2019 0908 blissy kissed

Something happened at work that was so delightful it must be recorded, yet professionalism demands that I walk a tightrope of discretion. So this account will contain Truth, but not the Whole truth. As for “Nothing but the Truth,” my honesty is up to that, but my spotty specific-memory isn’t, so some of this will be inexact.

Three exuberant ladies stepped up to the host stand. We will call them 4, 5 and 6, based on the number of letters in their first names. One of them, either 4 or 5, said that they had been here before, and they were back because they had gotten crushes on me from last time, because I’d given them a poem. (I sometimes offer a poem or a joke for parties waiting for tables, by way of distraction through light entertainment.) I smiled and seated them at one of the most popular tables, a four-top with phone-charging capability and plenty of elbow room.

While I continued hosting, I started composing a limerick. No one watching me work would have suspected I was multitasking, nor was I shirking: I was getting people seated and bussing tables without missing a beat. But at a lull I passed the ladies’ table and caught an eye. “Hey, I have a limerick for you, [4],” I told her and them.

“Oh, let’s hear it!”

“There once was a lady named [4]
Who made her regard for me plain
As she dined in plain view
Of her cast and her crew
She was gracious and kind, in the main.”

Then I quickly said, “GEEZ, that’s lame,” and at that they laughed.

More tables, more diners, then a lull. I wandered by the fateful table. “Got one for [5].” “Good!”

“A fine-dining person named [5]
Is mostly a dignified lady,
She sings like a bird,
And does fine Spoken Word,
But she discoes like it’s 1980.”

I do not exaggerate when I describe their response as a Burst of Laughter. They had been polite the last time, but at most mildly amused. I think I made up for it with this one.

But now I had a problem. The third member of the trio had a brain-buster of a name to come up with two limerick-rhyme words for. I could cheat and not end the line with her name, but a) cheating b) inconsistent with the other two c) how fine it would be to MEET that challenge. As I took dishes to the Dish Pit I got Rhymeword #1. As I seated a party of six I got Rhymeword #2. As the ladies waited for their bill to be generated by the server I approached their table.

“Well, I didn’t want [6] to feel left out…”

They beamed.

“I know of a lass named [6].
Don’t EVER suggest she’s a Playa,
For at that very notion
She’ll rage like the ocean,
And you’d better BACK OFF–or she’ll Slay ya.”

And by golly, the response at the last was best of all, with not only hearty laughter but NODS–I inferred that I had stumbled on some Truth.

Most important for me was feeling that I had turned my gratitude for being the reason for their return to Matt’s into a reward in the form of…more Poetry. I walked on air all the rest of my shift.

And I hope they’ll be back. They are The Three Graces to me. My little card above would fully reveal my regard for them, if all the words could be read.

Razor Sharp

August 12, 2019
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20190812_205057

I have been advised by several of my friends that my facial hair imparts a sinister quality to my face. Consequently I shave every workday, and often on my days off. But I envy people for whom facial hair is a good enhancement.

Razor Sharp

Rumpled, stilled skin–let it pass
A clear-cut Face is full of flash
ZAP goes the Beard Burn; time 4 mash–a
Once-a-Lifetime thunderclap, or
RIGHT that Wrong–should be a snap

Note that there is a seeming irony in that this image/poem/page is not “razor sharp” at all. It is crude and slapdash. It could be that my creativity “razor blade” needs sharpening, or changing.

But no apologies nor apologia, Friends. I won’t lay the “I meant to do it that way” line on you, because I didn’t; it just came out that way. Time will tell if it’s worthy of doing a remake, with photorealistic illustration and crisp calligraphy. Intuition says it would have to wait in line behind hundreds of other images I wish I’d done more finessedly.

cockatiel

August 11, 2019
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20190811_101229

This Sunday morning, August 11, 2019, I am the houseguest of my aunt Diane Norrbom and her roommate Priscilla. Another resident is their cockatiel Bunny.

Bunny and I have been whistle-talking to each other through the cage bars. Sometimes Bunny likes what I say and comes closer. Other times Bunny scuttles away, using talons and beak to grapple along the inside of the cage the way Tom Cruise geckoed on the outside glass of that Dubai skyscraper in one of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies.

And once  Bunny responded to my whistle with his plumage rising and falling like a bellows, or gills, then unloaded some digestive endproduct onto the newspaper below. Translation: STFU. So I stopped whistling and started drawing.

cockatiel

crank your plumage mon petit

own your cage of staid ennui

cackle grandly make a sale

knowing that you cannot fail

 

thought balloon

August 9, 2019
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2019 0809 thought balloon

thought balloon

theory leads from a to b
hurricanes from gulf to sea
observations dig a well
ugliness has tales to tell
greek to us as tau or rho
halting notion sis boom bro
then comes fine Concepción

Speaking of Greek, the word Logos is alternately translated as “word” or “idea” according to something I read once. And Idea is a subset of Thought.

And Conception may mean both the starting of a Child or the starting of an Idea.

Just a thought, Friends. 🙂

magnetic resonance imaging: final image

August 5, 2019
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2019 0805 mri finish

At long last “magnetic resonance imaging” is at that stage of completion where any further work on it would be as likely to do harm as good.

I am proud to have seen this tricky, demanding image/poem to its appropriate destination, but not so proud as to ignore its defects. It doesn’t have the visual impact that it could, if I’d done it in a larger scale than 7 inches by 10. (Would the two weeks or so be worth the finer polish I could put to it if I redid it at 20 inches by 30? Undoubtedly. Would I be willing to do it? Not for its own sake. I could make at least 10 new images in the same amount of time, and use the Idea part of my brain and not the Reporter part of my brain. I vastly prefer using the latter. But if I had a guaranteed sale at $2 per square inch,  which is what my friend Vivian Andersen was charging when we were gallery-space partners, that would be $1200 US gross, and good practice to boot. So, yes, if I were incentivized by a sure sale, I would get right to it, and it would be a bargain for the buyer at twice the price, because this is one of the more important image/ideas within my capability. (Friends, I am high now, not on drugs nor alcohol, but on having finished this ungainly thing, so forgive, please, my delusion of grandeur.)

Defective or not, delusion of grandeur or not, this acrostic image is a success. I fit an array of meaningful words into the straitjacket I’d built in its early stage, and it is definitely about both the Brain and the Soul, and for a bonus, its parsing and slicing is superbly analogous to Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Please see my previous work-in-progress post for notes on the first four lines. As for the last four, three elements might need clarification, but I will point rather than blather on and on. “Dendritic” refers to Dendrites, and there is an excellent discussion of their form and function in Wikipedia. “Electrochemic nets” capture our thoughts and memories, per our current understanding of brainwork. And “bands for Gideon” refers (metaphorically) to Gideon’s Band, loyal stalwarts that may be found in the Bible. Many hotel rooms have had Bibles placed in them by a group of proselytizers known as…the Gideons.

Finally, the last three panels at lower right were done without looking at the MRI photo sources, but rather relying on my memory of them. When I reviewed the images, I saw that with a little exaggeration, a top-down view of the centermost cross-section of the brain could be made to resemble the stylized heart shape we use to symbolize Love.  I also remembered that one of the “with contrast” images had flared contrast-wings remindful of a butterfly. Brain, Butterfly, Heart: that is the best of us.

magnetic resonance imaging

mazes, spark plugs, forests, thruways make us cognoscenti
an arabesque or two or four comprise an idiom
gendarmic membranes won’t enshroud nor would they be placenta
nor would they glad participate in telepathic gleaning
eloquences wax dendritic make a foe effendi
then electrochemic nets bind bands for gideon
it’s all subject to indecency like stroke-lost meaning
confectionary at its best, though–to Divine we’re leaning

magnetic resonance imaging w.i.p. iii

August 4, 2019
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2019 0804 magresimg

With the meter/rhyme scheme established, but not too rigidly enforced, the construction of the poem is becoming easier. Here is how what has been written reads:

Mazes, spark plugs, forests, thruways make us cognoscenti
An arabesque or two or four comprise an idiom
Gendarmic membranes won’t enshroud nor would they be placenta
Nor would they glad participate in telepathic gleaning

It is kindasorta iambic septameter, but the first line is trochaic. Sonnets will sometimes tack a syllable on the end of a line, and if you do that, you are being “non-heroic” because landing right on the correct last syllable is called “heroic.” (Similarly, quantum physicists use terms like “charm” and “strange” and “spin.” Words ALWAYS fail, to some degree, to echo Reality.)

Line 1: the “mazes, spark plugs, forests, thruways” referred to are failing-badly approximations of brain structures. Probably the best of this sad lot is “spark plugs,” which analogizes the superstructure of the synapse.

Line 2: from the Merriam-Webster definition of Arabesque: “1 : an ornament or style that employs flower, foliage, or fruit and sometimes animal and figural outlines to produce an intricate pattern of interlaced lines. 2 : a posture (as in ballet) in which the body is bent forward from the hip on one leg with one arm extended forward and the other arm and leg backward.” Line 2 crudely describes brain-embroidery in the imagining of a more advanced form of expression than the starkly descriptive.

Line 3: I owe “Gendarmic” to Robert Heinlein: in his apocalyptic story “The Year of the Jackpot” he has Potiphar Breen refer to big rock pillars on a mountain as Gendarmes. Gendarme is a French noun meaning Guard. And the corpus callosum, the separator of the brain hemispheres, may be viewed as a guardian of electrical activity between the hemispheres. (I hope I’m not being TOTALLY inaccurate here, but I’m certain my analogy is off the mark to some degree. Poetic License!!)

Line 4 mentions Telepathy, a probably mythical phenomenon in the literal sense. It means Mind-Reading, that is, the ability to listen to thoughts. Some people can read body language so well that they have an idea of what a person is thinking, but there is no hard evidence that telepathy exists. Certainly there is a wealth of anecdotal accounts of alleged telepathy, but I for one don’t believe it exists.

Since all the principal drawing for this page has been done, all that remains before final cleanup is to finish the poem. It’s quite likely that the next stage will be the finished page. We can hope! 🙂