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search (song)

November 1, 2016
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search-11012016

This morning I started the above image, and got stuck and put it aside. I then had lunch at the Senior Center, got a call from my mother asking for help, went with her to Walgreen’s and then Bashas’ and then back to her house to put away the groceries and then to Dignity Health to visit my ailing brother Brian and then back to Mom’s house, where I left her with her neighbor Jeff, who’s been helping her out as well, and then I walked to Yoshi’s (Have A Rice Day) and had their Spicy California Roll, an eggroll, and a medium Dr Pepper. The George and Dragon was a stroll away and I went there to watch the Chicago Cubs tie their World Series with the Cleveland Indians with their thrilling 9-3 victory, and I had vanilla ice cream topped with the coffee liqueur Kahlúa® to celebrate. Shortly after that I left for the bus stop on Indian School Road that would take me home, and it was there that a strange, slow tune blossomed in my head, and I came up with some words for it, and then some more, and discarded some, and continue to this moment, even after I finished the image with a mind to illustrate the song. Here are the words as of this moment:

search

i’ve searched for you
in time in space
i long to view
your loving face.

i know you’re way
beyond right now
i seem to sway
with you somehow.

some things are felt
before they’re seen
may travel melt
the in between.

may we behold
each other’s gaze
the tale be told
and well amaze.

i’ve searched for you
and we’ll be crowned
with dawn and dew
when we are found.

I just tried singing it, and it is so syrupy sweet it’s embarrassing. It doesn’t matter. It was the catalyst that helped me complete an image, so I’m grateful for the song.

 

bearer of belated gifts

December 29, 2015
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image

Today was a day off from work, and a belated Christmas for the fact that I worked on Christmas and the two days after. I’m still living on a shoestring, so the gifts I had for my daughter, my ex-wife, my mother and my younger brother came mostly from the Family Dollar. I felt bad about, so I did something I almost never do: I gave, not printed copies, but original journal pages, as gifts. The pages I chose for them, all from early 2009, had a particular connection to each of them.

image

This one was for Brian. He and I had marathon sessions playing Risk, a game of global conquest. Whenever I rolled the dice as the attacker, he’d exclaim, “LOSE one!”

image

This was for Joni. It was done when our beloved dog Bill was still alive and well, and the poem concerns the healing power of human-animal companionship.

image

This one was for Kate. One of Kate’s favorite songs is Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Three fewer journal pages for me turns out to be a gain, not a loss. The pages are more valuable as connective tissue than as artifacts.

 

28 July 2015

July 28, 2015
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Nose blockage awoke me just shy of 4 a.m. My alarm was set for 4:45 but rising would enable me to arrive at work an hour earlier than intended, and squeeze in that much more overtime.

The walk was warm and humid, and a sweat-spot began to grow on the top side of my belly, which, though diminished, retains some convexity. I ended up taking off the shirt and waving it around to get some evaporation, and thought a little about the physics behind evaporative cooling.

Work was a pleasure. Despite a lack of sleep I was sharper than usual, and my Quality Assurance output reached an all-time high for one day.

On the walk home there was a dead pigeon. I felt ghoulish taking her picture, but she so reminded me of Rodin’s “Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone.”

golden pigeon

The Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone circa 1880-1, cast 1950 Auguste Rodin 1840-1917 Purchased 1950 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05955

The Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone circa 1880-1, cast 1950 Auguste Rodin 1840-1917 Purchased 1950 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05955

When I got home I fell into exhausted sleep. Not long after I woke my steady girlfriend Joy stopped by on her way home. We talked about her birthday, which is tomorrow, the weird skin-thing on my arm, which she agrees I should keep an eye on, and sewing, among other things. I walked her to her car and after she was gone I got a little money from an ATM and for the first time stopped by The Hideaway, a bar and grille close to where I live now.

hideaway

I’m still there, enjoying their Wi-Fi, eating some fantastic nachos made with super-fresh ingredients, and sipping on a Sprite. I’m up way past my bedtime, but some things are better than sleep.

Socks Paradox/Paradigm/Paramour

May 20, 2013
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This page contemplates both footware socks and the sock-it-to-me socks. Of the former, there seems to be a guiding principle: An inverse proportion exists between sock desirability and sock durability. The pair that looks and feels fantastic is doomed within days: either they will get an inoperable wound, or one of them will be lost to the Laundry Sock-Eater. The ugly, scratchy, falling-down-your-leg pair of socks will last forever. (I finally threw away a pair that were older than this century, though they were still good for several more years at least.)

This is the first acrostic I’ve posted wherein the title is part of the acrostic. I had to try it to know for sure that I didn’t like it.

Here are the words:

STATIONS of the Darned Satrap

Ozone & the jowls of Opar
Oscillate away below par
Corded-sandaled, Ararat
Couldn’t mash the drama flat
Kewpie DAHLS adore a journal
Knotting naughtiness diurnal
SUMMING as an Ogre summeth:
Socks away: the AXMAN cometh

Provenance notes: Line 1 is a variant on “Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar;” Line 5 has a pun on Kewpie Dolls, originally created by Rose O’Neill as an illustration for the Ladies’ Home Journal, later incarnated in ceramic form, one of which is in the time capsule from the 1939 World’s Fair; Line 8 is a nod to Eugene O’Neill and his “The Iceman Cometh.” To my knowledge Rose and Eugene were not related.