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At last there’s a payoff on the hours I have spent drawing and filling in checkerboard grids. A golf club and a spider’s legs require straight or near-straight lines in the drawing, and I now can draw them quickly and easily, up to a certain length.

This image is entirely faked. Nor golfer nor spider posed for me, and I didn’t do my usual internet image search to remind me of what what I want to draw looks like. I’m sure I’ve made egregious errors in both arachnoidal and human-golfer anatomy, but a) the dymanics of the drawing depend less on anatomical accuracy and more on pattern interplay, and b) the next time I see a spider, or a golfer, I’ll notice what I did wrong this time, and my future drawings of either or both will benefit.

The text on the image is very difficult to read. Here is a transcription:

Solitary critters, both, and two you daren’t bug
Pester either, you may turn a Nancy to a Sluggo
Irritation makes detractors wish they were unlawful
Destiny gave one a web and one a hat to doff
Expertise is gained with practice. Dancers at a barre
Rarely work as hard as they to bring things up to par

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Yesterday all was Sleepless Despair. Today promises to be Restful Serenity, and I will try to help it along with this affirmative page.

Here are the words:

Ruffled dispositions need a welcome cooling breeze
Energizing Solitude may calm that choppy sea
Savored armchair plush & drink & gently rustling trees
Take a soul from rough-milled grit to smooth tranquility

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Friends, it is now 21 May, the Year of Our Lord 2014, 5:10 PM Mountain Standard Time. I am sleep-deprived, owing some to attendance at three scheduled-when-I’m-normally-asleep meetings in four days, owing some to disorganization, owing some to inability to sleep at will. With the sleeplessness is a creeping despair, exemplified by the fact that the original working title of this post was “The Future Futility of Human Existence.”

Usually the moral of the story comes at the end, but here it is now: “Get good sleep, or you will be sorry.”

The above image is a great mashup of The Thrill of Victory and The Agony of Defeat. A still life of plate, chair, spoon, table and floor provides the background. The spine of a triple acrostic is at upper right; of a septuple acrostic, from top midleft to bottom right; of a quintuple acrostic, from bottom left to bottom midright. The crucial middle words of the septuple and the quintuple have been determined, and I know from experience that that’s the hardest part. I know that sooner or later, with patience and some research, I’ll eventually have the poems that will complete the acrostics, and I will have done something that represents the utmost in what I can do in this peculiar genre I’ve plumbed for more than seven years.

But I also “know” even if I expend that effort to the tune of hundreds of hours, draw better than I ever have before for the final incarnation of the image, and dress it in the perfect frame–that it will have been a waste of time.

I put “know” in quotation marks because I suspect that that’s the sleep-deprivation talking.

It’s now 5:27 PM, MST. Time to wrap this up and get as much sleep as I can before clocking in at 11.

Sleep well yourselves, Friends…

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I have a friend now named Suzy Jacobson Cherry. When I met her she was Suzy Jacobson. Here she is with her man.

Today I got an invitation from Suzy to participate in an “Invitation to Take Part in a Collaborative Art Project.” Here are the details:

Below you will find scriptures that describe the life of a character named Sarah.  Please read it with literary/artistic eyes.  Think about the things that affected her, and consider what kind of person she is.  The drawing below is by my friend Cecilia O’Brien.  This is her rendition of Sarah.  Study this drawing, and put together an idea of who Sarah is and what she might be like, what her concerns might be, how she might feel about the things that happen to her and the choices she makes in the story.  Think of her in terms of this ancient past AND today’s world.  THEN, in the comments below, share words and phrases that describe her and/or her world.  Share thoughts of current events in relation to this woman, if anything comes to mind. This is an artistic endeavor, faith tradition should not come into play.  If you choose to take part, have fun and thank you for helping out with this!

And here is what I did:

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What struck me in the story: Sarah (then named Sarai, but that’s another story) was thought to be barren, i.e. unable to have children. She sends her man, Abraham, to conceive a child with the slave girl Hagar. (Sidebar for American comic strip readers: the Horrible? One wonders…) Years pass, Abraham is about 100 years old and Sarah 90, and the Lord God decides it’s time for Sarah to have a baby of her own. “So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?'” Yes, you shall, dear old Sarah, if it be His will.

Here are the words to my triple acrostic “Laugh, Sarah, Laugh”:

Lady pushing 90-plus is laughing fit to howl
As she cuddles ISAAC she just bore–yes, life’s a luau
Unto her nonageneric self–a CHILD!! HA
Gosh, and when much younger she was BARREN as a log
HEY–can’t spell Jehovah without ending with an Ah

LORD, I hope Suzy likes this!

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At the Cottonwood Recreation Center there is a certain subset of gym rats that hangs out in the Free Weights area. For the members of that subset, frequent homage to the Buff Gods is mandatory. One in particular likes to quasi-scream as he cranks out the last of his reps, and when the set is done he lets the free weight free-fall to clang on the rack resoundingly, distracting the entire gym floor.

I don’t like such behavior, but there’s no denying he’s getting results, and I’m envious enough to do a post about it. Lord help me if I’m ever envious enough to act like that, though.

Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

If you’re fitly lifting free, bub
Getting anatomic visa
Off them duds & take a pic
To preserve a build like brick

(“Anatomic” may also be read as “an atomic.” [smiles])

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Last week my friend Bob Kabchef created a feature called Maudlin Monday in the poet’s group we both are in, and I joked that I was working on a dual portrait of Maud Adams and Loretta Lynn for Maud/Lynn Monday, but it would take some time. This week my friend Genevieve Lumbert, another member of our group, reminded us: “POP CALL TO MAUDLIN MONDAY ARCADE.” (Arcade was Bob’s username in the now defunct seniors social site Eons, where we all met.) Spurred by Gen’s nudge, I did the above. Since the index card is a little beat up, it didn’t lay on the scanner flatly, and so I put a CD-R atop it, remembering that there’s a cool prismatic effect when you scan a disk.

Words:

Made their marks with smarts and toil
Anguished; languished; knew true joy
Upped their cred despite their men
Do let’s see them both again

The Shakespeare quote is apt for these two ladies, and for several of the ladies in our poet’s group Poets All Call, including its originator, Socorro Olsen, and Genevieve, and my Sweetheart, Denise.

This morning I bought some more Tracfone phone minutes, and then called my mom to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day and to fact-find and get permission to do an unadorned account of her life as a mother. She cheerfully and at some length reviewed certain of her life events with me, and granted me carte blanche to write what I would.

Here is what I wrote, but not unadorned: atop my account I made a sketch of her.

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Hard to get is Pierrette; less so is Pierrot
Enterprises roll the dice and change the status quo
In the red await the seeds for placement in the loam
Ripened, swollen, injured, with stigmata or with stoma
Less-than-purists come along and…à chacun son goût
Ouch the horse that you rode in on OUCH your puppy too
Obsolescing Nature’s way creates a North untrue
Modify perfection and you miss a rendezvous

What Heirloom Tomatoes are, and why this is therefore a polemic against genetic modification, is left for the reader to explore.