This is posted in haste on a borrowed laptop. It shows a woman warrior grappling with Death. The woman is derived from Cordwainer Smith’s D’Joan from his amazing story “The Dead Lady of Clown Town.” Smith derived D’Joan from Jeanne d’Arc, better known to people like me as Joan of Arc.
I may come back and add a transcription and/or annotation, but I felt a need to post NOW, but I have to leave for work in TWO MINUTES OR SO. Hope this pleases…
This is my mother, today, one day after her 79th Birthday. I drove down to Phoenix to deliver the gift she’s holding up, which is a mini-portfolio of original pencil drawings of mine, all done over the past year. My conservative valuation of this invaluable collection is $1,000.00. If you want a second opinion, feel free to ask Mom. [smiles]
I took her to The Good Egg for brunch and Harkins Theatres, where we saw AMERICAN HUSTLE, after.
She’s been officially Jewish for about 30 years now, joining her second husband, Marty, in creed as well as in souls. How many of my mom does it take to change a light bulb? None. “Never mind me–I’ll be fine in the dark…” [smile of a loving son]
On December 21st I put the finishing touches on a portrait of a musician I have never met. It is based on a photograph taken by one of the residents of the retirement community I work for, which she gave gracious permission to use as a photo source, taken by her during one of his gratis, heart-warming performances at our community. (The photographer prefers to be uncredited.) Armed with the photo and the musician’s first name and the fact that he’s based in the Quad-Cities area, I found him and his Facebook page on the Internet, and wrote him for permission to post my portrait. Then my laptop died.
The laptop is still dead. Its replacement is due to arrive in two days. Yesterday my Sweetheart, Denise, offered the use of her computer, chiefly to Facebook-post my regular column “Title Tuesday” for the poetry group Poets All Call. In doing so I found the response of the musician Eric to my portrait-posting request:
Hello Gary, Your sketch is wonderful; I’m honored. Yes you can post it in your blog thank you very much. Eric
I can’t think of a better way to kick off the New Year than by posting my portrait of this kindly and supremely talented gentleman, and urge whoever reads this to do an Internet search on Eric, the musician who plays in Sedona. I won’t deprive my readers of the thrill of the search, which will yield delightful results both on Facebook and on YouTube; but on request I’ll provide a YouTube link.
Eric, thanks for helping this New Year of mine get off to a good start!
Here is a remake in pencil of a page I did more than six years ago using an ultrafine Sharpie and Faber-Castell colored pens. You will see when comparing to the below original page that I changed a few of the words, and that I distilled the design elements to the essential and magic-realismed the girl into self-illumination.
I THINK the remake is a significant improvement, but since I finished it less than an hour ago I might be too close to it to be objective enough to judge. I KNOW I can do better, and would have had I more time. Can’t wait to retire! [smiles]
The Further Adventures of Denise and Gary has been going on for some months, taking the form of a Facebook status update. Some of the Adventures cleave fairly closely to the truth; some are more fanciful; some bear only the faintest echo of the reality that inspired them.
This one, the first illustrated version of FAOD&G, is what I am pretty sure would have happened if I’d provided my half of the proceedings. It is also a delivery system for two Groaner-grade puns.
I could not post it without showing it to Denise and getting her go-ahead. I am glad to report that she deemed it cute and gave her gracious permission.
Revealed at long last, the REAL message on the back of the $1 Bill: “Tat Me One, Doll.”
Again, Friends: Happy Holidays!
Here as promised is a better spoon than the spoon I posted and promised to do a better one than. As for the double word acrostic, I decided on single-word lines for simplicity’s sake and then went shopping in the enormous dictionary near the front desk where I work at work. I’d never encountered the word “supposititious” before, and was delighted to find it could mean either Fraudulent or Hypothetical. Once I had Supposititious, I knew I wanted more words that were spooky-special. The last, Necronomicon, is a tip of the hat to H.P. Lovecraft and his disciples.
“Onomatopoetical” yields a squiggly red line when typed, but “Onomatopoetic” does not. Chalk it up to poetical license, and another hat-tip to a literary gent, this one Charles Dickens, who wrote “The Poetical Young Gentleman.”
“Obbligato” according to the dictionary is that part of a musical performance that is absolutely essential and must not be omitted.
“Phenomena” is the plural of Phenomenon. It is amazing how many newscasters think “phenomena” is singular. –Actually, it IS singular in the sense of Uniqueness; that it can be both Singular and Plural heterodynes its singularity.
These, then, are five of the most numinous words I could find. As for “Numinous,” it means “having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.”
My image is silly but I hope fun. My real intention is to wish a Happy Birthday to three creatures the Universe has graced us with.
My superb friend Karen and her superb boyfriend Ed capture sea life on camera when they scuba-dive. Karen took the photo from which my drawing was derived. I have her gracious permission to use it; and it will get further use below in its reproduction to illustrate the difference between Art and Life:
Four years ago I kicked off my “Lives of the Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix” with two of my favorite Valley Poets. One was Victoria Hoyt, with whom I’m co-featuring at the April 2014 edition of Balboa House Poetry. The other is the man I depicted above, Mr. Bill Campana, who, since George Carlin has passed, I am reasonably certain is the Funniest Man on Earth. Today is Bill’s birthday, and I wish him all the best.
Words:
Bluff, and stand-up-comical, and full of manic manna
It’s a wonder he’s still local–catch him if you can
Laudably SELF-AMPLIFIED: you will hear from this man
Las Vegas @ the Palace or perhaps the Tropicana
Bill commissioned a coffee mug from me, and says of my posted birthday wish for him, “thanks, gary. it’s muggier when i drink out of your coffee mug.” He uses lower case in his online communications, so as further tribute to him the title of this post is in lower case.
Last time I saw Bill was at the home of Julie Elefante and Robert Lee, and I took this picture of him:
Again–Happy Birthday, Bill!
One with Clay, Image and Text 