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Algebra & b e t r a y a l

October 2, 2013
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The page begins with the Quadratic Formula, which, in my younger and more phony-baloney days, I tried to impress my then-girlfriend, next-wife, the former Joni Froehling, by deriving, via the “completing the square” trick and other manipulation. She is no longer married to me, and who can blame her?

A masterful Valley of the Sun poet, Jed Allen, gave me a copy of his awe-inspiring chapbook THE FEAR OF ALGEBRA in appreciation of my reading of his poem “Zero Yard” at the Caffeine Corridor poetry event more than a year ago. Ever since, I have wanted to return the favor, and with this page I hope I have.

The words to the acrostic:

Attitude adjustments sometimes end up on a slab
Lose a Johnny Weismuller–or was it Buster Crabbe
Gain a Tarzan wannabe–a grey-stoked stufféd shirt
Err if you must on Caution’s side: man’s slaughter, shy of Murder
But in the diagram above as x is offed by a
Really not the culprit, who will always get away
Alias: The Solver, of manipulative manna
& a wealth of victims whose mystique is drowned in channel

The theme and meaning of the poem and its related ancillary material are left as an exercise for the student. Ironic hint: spelling out a solution murders Mystery. [enigmatic smile; fade to black]

Shoulderscapes, with Good yet Dismaying News

October 1, 2013
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Today was the day of the Orthopedic Consult. In true 21st-century fashion, the patient was weighed, vital-signed and questioned by a personable, computer-entry-savvy assistant, then left to stare at walls for a while. At not-bad length there was hearable conversation outside the door of the assistant bringing the orthopedist up to speed. Swish of chart folder, quick tok=tok knock, and in comes the personable, orthopedics-savvy Orthopedist, M.D., Ph.D. A few more questions for the patient. The good news that the X-Rays look good, with circumstantial evidence indicating no rotator cuff tearing, The dismaying news is that there is age-related stiffness, bursitis, and degeneration typical of a patient the patient’s age.

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Two long-needled shots of cortisone will loosen the shoulder in a couple of days. “It may be a little worse at first.” But the very good news is there doesn’t seem to be any need for an MRI, nor surgery, nor physical therapy. “Just use it a lot.” An appointment is made for four weeks hence, and the orthopedist suggests it be cancelled if the shoulder feels good. The patient admires and appreciates this cost-containment attitude.

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On the way out the patient is given a PIN for his Patient Portal online access–another 21st-century step in the right direction. Information such as this is available with a few mouse clicks:

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(The patient made an image of the document, opened it in Paint, and used a nifty desizing-resizing trick to efface some identifying information.)

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Best of all, the X-ray shoulder views are available, and simple photo-editing software–Paint and Microsoft Office Picture Manager–may be used on the images. Andy Warhol did stuff like this the hard way, back in the day. Longer ago, Robert Rauschenberg had to content himself with light-reactive paper and bright, bright light for some white-on-blue skinscapes of him and his companion. But now–colorizing, brightness&contrast, data compression and many other image-manipulative techniques are easy as pie, funfunfun, and available with the latest operating systems!

So here are four shoulderscapes. If time were not of the essence I would have happily spent another several hours playing with the image; alas, time is scarce. These four, though, demonstrate how color, contrast and cropping of the same subject matter might yield four quite different visual payoffs.

“Shoulder and shoulder and bolder and bolder we grow as we go to the fore.” Give me some Peeps who are Stout-Hearted Peeps! [smiles. fade to white]

Lens Variations

September 30, 2013
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What is a lens? It is a light gatherer or scatterer. It may magnify, it may distort, it may correct. There is a shape of lens that can take ordinary sunlight and concentrate its heat. Do not look into the Sun using such a lens.

An unusually wise or prophetic person is sometimes called a Seer.

LENS KEEPER

Line may catch a break
Lovers oft forsake
Eye peers through a loupe
North of sea & sloop
Seek your vision where
Shards bemourn a pair

LENS KEPT

Like a crater or a yolk
Eyes have foci more than smoke
Needless is a bone or sop
Sight once born may too adopt

lens yens

light & way & TRUTH in synchrony
eyed the fraughtful destiny to be
notice of a loophole’s clearly taken
seed ye drama? here ye’ll find the makin’s

Claythings

September 28, 2013
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This is part of the chess-piece-based series done in the early 2000s. The surface is a faux finish obtained at Ace Hardware. The original was a fountain, including a birdbathy bowl with the same surface treatment, and a small pump, also obtained at Ace. The bowl started to get mineral-deposit funky, and the fountain effect (out of the top of the head) didn’t really add to the piece, so the bowl and the pump were ditched. Amazing, the similarity in facial features to Denise’s, though this was done years and years before we met.

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A few years after the chess series came the tower series. This skyscraperish tower seemed incomplete. I was doing birds at the same time, so I made one to append, with a fond tip of the hat to the classic 30s film KING KONG. The title is “Kingfisher Kong” though the avianesque wallhanger bears little resemblance to any of the Kingfisher clan. If I ever do a remake, the species resemblance will be more true to life.

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Here’s a close-up of “Pterence Dactyl,” making his second appearance in these blog posts.

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Here’s some miscellany standing guard in the garage. A couple of things using the plaster cast of my life mask; some functional pottery; a Status of Liberty and an Eiffel Tower from Jan Peterson’s “Draw from the Hat” qucik-sculpt assignments; another from the Tower series, and two survivors of the “Some Assembly Required” series, wherein I made vases, sliced them up with a fettling knife, and slipped and scored and reassembled them in non-functional arrays.

Fettling knife–slipping and scoring–roulettes, batts, banding wheels, double-bellied, slab roller, extruder, pug mill–I love the language of Ceramics!

 

Radiance/Heat

September 26, 2013
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This one looks like a work in progress, but it may well be finished. Something told the artist to stop–that to “finish” it would be to lose something. The artist stopped. The poet may well take over the well-begun acrostic, but if so, the poem will be written and spoken words and not a design element. The viewer is invited to print & play with collaboration.

Rectangle Redemption

September 26, 2013
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We human beings must love rectangles. We make so many of them! Plate glass, envelopes, stamps on envelopes, sheets of paper to stuff in envelopes, cross-sections of containers, garage doors, non-garage doors, dominoes, playing cards, and on and on. Thinking outside the box is also thinking beyond the rectangle.

But rectangles, or near-rectangles, do occur in nature: cell formation, muscle striations, constellations, fault-slipped rock formations, and on and on. Some eye sockets are more rectangular than circular.

When I was a kid my mom collected S&H Green Stamps, filling in rectangular arrays with the rectangles-with-punched-out-semicircles of the stamps. When she turned them in for merchandise, it was a form of rectangle redemption; thus does my seemingly-random acrostic have some basis in fact.  But it’s a tenuous stretch. Luckily, when you stretch a rectangle, it remains a rectangle…

Here are the words:

Romance wears her nylons sheer
Eco-Friendly’s more austere
Creature comforts may be weird
Take an object choose a theme
Tell a truth that makes us beam
Any shape provides a step
Necessarily adept
Given one who wears a kepi
Leaps & bounds’ll come & go
Even-keelers use the known

 

it was alien possession, i tell you

September 24, 2013
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on a froth of comet tail
the solar-wind-borne
misadventure
began:
the diatomaceous
thought-harvesting array
cast its sub-etheric net
randomly
and struck analoguic gold:
in the northern-by-western quadrant
of a planet circling its star
at a distance of 105.5 starwidths
came a sense/memory impression
of such indulgent delight
that the array took possession
of the creature who’d forged the memory
and force it to re-enact the event
whence the memory had sprung.

thus it was, my dear,
that i had no choice
but to buy and eat
a second candy bar
from the vending machine
last night.

thank goodness
i wasn’t thinking
about women,
eh?

where are you going?

Morning Fritter, 2008

September 24, 2013
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Here’s one whose words seem to have stood up well. Some day this will be read at an open mic.

My laptop’s a distraction–90 proof
Migoodness it is hard to stay Aloof
MHO is that too much time goes >poof<

O I’m just saying what I want to hear
OutRAGEOUS waste-o-time stand up & cheer
O stay the course PROduction-wise–don’t veer

Right now we love Escape more than Houdini
Rock on, O Comfort Food–deepfried linguini
Remember, Pudding’s gold–like a Cellini

No! STOP that, fella–focus on intent
Now stick to Straight&NARROW–be unbent
No argument–that’s where some Time-chunks went

INTEGRITY is demonstrated best
Intensely and with quietude–if blest
In Reticence you may well pass the Test

No need to feel you’ve GOT to Move&Shake
Not much but your Well-being is at stake
Now PAY that sleep debt to be wide awake

Get up get dressed get fed get what you’re after
Get Who’s On First on YouTube–you need laughter
Get–stuck AGAIN! The Devil’s quite the Crafter

On this blog at least four Devil-mentioning posts have been made, and that’s not counting “Molybdenum Demon,” the as-yet-unposted best of the lot. Stay tuned…

No Words But These; or, The All-Important Title

September 23, 2013
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This is one image. It might be a thousand different works of art, in a quality range from squalid to splendid, without changing a pixel. It all depends on what I call it.

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asked. “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” But it does matter. Soldiers will fight wholeheartedly for Operation Just Cause; they may balk at putting their lives on the line for Operation Extensive Collateral Damage or Operation Get People To Hate Us.

A person goes to the art museum, sees something like the above image hanging on the wall, ten feet high and eight wide, and needs a clue. The first place to look for a clue is the title card down and to the right (though the REAL first place to look is the Artist’s Statement, if any). “Moon and Sea.” Ah, that helps. “The Battle Over White Sands.” Okay–got it: visually similar to contrails. “Behold! A Distant Star!” –If this were the title, much would depend on whether the viewer was a fan of Silver Age Marvel Comics in general, and Fantastic Four #37 in particular. If a fan, the image will be enhanced by the memory of the sinister Skrulls softened by the admonishing Anelle. (Alliteration inspired by Stan “The Man” Lee, natch. ‘Nuff said!)

“Tendrils Yearning.” “Tonal Delicacy #937.” “Blue, 1998.” “The Deconstructed Ant.” Give me a day and I’ll give you a thousand titles, and a thousand different experiences. But the two titles at the end of that long list will demand much of you:

“Call It What You Will”

“Untitled”