Thanks to my friend of 50 years, Martin Klass, for permission to use his lyrics.
Entropic Self-Portrait
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Batter UP/HEY Batta Batta Batta
Half a day or so ago I watched a rebroadcast of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks versus the Colorado Rockies. Going into the eighth inning the D-Backs were down 8 to 5. But soon the bases were loaded, a walk was forced in, and then Paul Edward Goldschmidt, affectionately known as “Goldy,” lanced a three-run double down the third baseline, and the tide was turned.
To anyone unfamiliar with the esoterica of baseball, the preceding sentence is full of gibberish, as is this commemorative page. But I hope the page and its cadences work as metaphor and visual engagement for those unfamiliar with baseball.
“Batter Up,” said by the umpire, is the traditional way to start a half-inning. “HEY Batta Batta Batta,” said by the catcher and various of his teammates, is classic “pepper,” chattery words said to disconcert the batsman. Alas, modern professional baseball seems to lack this particular spice.
Batter UP
Buy a ticket, go, and then U
Are where Food Courts apprehend U
There’s a T-Bone on the menu
Tip your cup your hand your cap
Easy does it–loll and yap
Righteous Game is on the map
HEY Batta Batta Batta
Hurler squints and grips the orb
Hitter, in the moment, Zorba
Here the pitch comes–SWING–he hits it
Hammered, but the shortstop gets it
Elegance and s t a m i n a
Errors happen: WHAM and flub
Earned Run Averages rise–a
Eulogy for wild/crazed guys–it
Engineers a Bullpen dance–it
Ends the run extravaganza
You warble till you lose your Warb
You soak up fun–as you absorb, a
Youngness is, with which you’re kist
You add GRIN to your All-Done list
You see again the skyback vista
Passion/Fashion/Clasher
I don’t know much about fashion, so I wonder how different my image would be if I did. I would love to hear from fashionistas about this one. Is it true, for instance, as I imply in the last line, that Halston and Dior are dated and/or obsolete? I just don’t know.
As for the clothing I drew, I wasn’t using any photo sources, so it’s all out of my head. The young woman with her back to us in full embrace is wearing my version of capri pants. The runway type in the middle is wearing a slit-thigh dress that is probably backless to boot; that’s the way (uh huh, uh huh) I like ’em. The fencers are wearing functional clothing; they’re fencing, not fashionizing. (And the embracers are passionizing; I just like capri pants.)
Here are the words to the triple acrostic:
Parting’s sweet, sorrowful dustup’s like talc
And it’s oft Tearful be you guy or gal
Slip on your soft shoes to slide to a salsa
Sex ups the salesmanship though it be crass
Iridesced I N D I G O gives it some dash
Overstocked, undersold fates are in store
Now for old Halston and older-yet Dior
do tell
“And if you love somebody
tell them.”
–Rod McKuen, “Atlas”
words:
divinations sink or float
dealing with an asymptote
odd: the doom we may forestall
owning up with wherewithal
Blog Post #500
It is a day like many others. Denise and I went to pick up her Bountiful Basket order and then we went to the gym nearby and then we went to restaurant nearby and then we went home. She took the recycling to the recycling bins on Camino Real and I worked on five-minute portraiture. Ultimately we went to our respective caves to work on art and Art. She has published her latest post, “Mandalas,” and I am working on mine, “Blog Post #500.” The software is taking forever to upload my image, though it is a mere 150K or so.
So I’ll save this in draft after finishing the text, which includes this transcription of the post’s eponymous triple acrostic:
Bedeviled by the Telescum–perhaps they have my number
But here’s a fine true path to keep to boast a most high number
Loose fingers take me to a parlor shopping for a new five
Let’s do licentiousness 4 times–God knows you cannot do five
O do not look for Rhyme nor Rules: for you will find here zero
Got Truth? Got lots, good friend, but Hitting Home I put near zero
Later: opened the saved draft; used “Add Media” to upload the image, which seems a bit blurred but that’s OK; added tags that included “truth,” “rhyme,” “creative process,” and “blog posting,” but not “Telescum,” for that is a word I made up, though it may already have been created unbeknownst to me. Will now post this historic piece, Share it on Twitter and Facebook, and then invite my dear Denise to celebrate life and love.
Pet Ownership/Owned Pettership
The great majority of pet owners are owned by their pets. This is usually a satisfactory arrangement.
For a change and for the sake of a less busy composition, I excluded most of the text of my two acrostic poems from the image, but the complete poems are here:
Pet Ownership
Pooches, kitties, even ferrets make a home ho-ho
Periwinkle dusks are calmed with Spot or Puff in tow
Presents are less tense and savor comes with what is sown
Easy does a daily stroll that helps two hearts cohere
Equanimity and trust–a modicum of cheer
Elegance of passing time and quell of mortal fears
There’s a wordless closeness that’s surprising in its depth
Tantalizing glimpses of a heaven’s stair to step–I
Thank the Cosmos for these beasties of contagious pep
Owned Pettership
Owlish eyes of impish cat watch for a treat to drop
Oven-baked or rawly sliced or purchased in a Shoppe
Wistful calf-rub, raucous meow but dignity intact
Waitlessness will yield a softie’s morsel–that’s a fact
Now it’s time for dinner and perhaps some scraps to share
Nighttime brings a shed of clothing down to underwear
Early morning wants a meal that need not be foie gras
Ecstasy is wet food but the dry is strictly blah
Dressiness is optional: Milady goes capri
Dare she sit? Mifurry wants her Lap–L-E-A-P
Tensile Voltage in the Graphite Continuum
Here are two scrap-paper sketches and the very top of a third, done last night as “what can this pencil do?” exercises.
Thrice Retold Untold Golden Secret
“It was meant not to convince but to confound.” –Rex Stout
The new druggist needs
His two atenolol w/juice
Roger settled w/Vic
In his goodbye letter
Clay is illegally sane
Earth’s oddness its gift
Blast from the Past of a Blast from the Past
Here’s one from my very early art-journaling days, more than seven years ago. I was using a Sharpie Ultrafine (or was it Microfine?) on a notebook my sweet daughter Kate gave me for Christmas. Note the smiley-face shield in the middle.
Here are the words to the single acrostic:
The ship and crew were viking
A stiff wind stretched the sail
The weather to their liking
The gleam of shield and mail.
Eyes squinting, tearing, blinking red,
Rows blister hands, moans tell of dread,
Still gladly wayward, and not dead.
TO Index Cards, ON an Index Card
I just love Index Cards, so much so that I think of them as friends, as benevolent messengers, as the Type O Blood of information conveyance. They go in pockets, on refrigerators, in those nifty little metal boxes with the cute dividers. They are big enough to contain the hugest ideas. Write small enough and you can put a decent-sized short story on one. They’re great for five-minute portraiture, ten-minute dream capture, fifteen-minute landscapes, sixty-minute meeting minutes. For reminders, Valentines, plot outlines, and affirmations they are hard to beat. So here’s to ’em:
It’s RED WHITE & BLUE on one side–the other blanc
N is for NOTES or NOTIONS or NOSTALGIA
Dreams need not fade if this & a pencil serve as recorder
Edifying, talking points, & love may be conveyed
Xylophone music written & drawn with gravitic graphitic pyrotechnics
Special thanks and manifold gratitude to my Sweetheart, Denise, for not only introducing me to the Index Card Project but also for giving me a pack of 100 cards, one of which I used for this post. Sweetheart, special as they are, the entire pack of cards could not thoroughly describe your wonderfulness!
One with Clay, Image and Text 