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Conceptual Help Asked For and Received

November 4, 2014
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Yesterday I wrote a poem called “second understanding,” thus:

second understanding

he understood her ONCE
she was not available
but not coy
not hard to get
(paradoxically it was hard to get that she was not being hard to get)

subsequently they meshed
loved
fought
yearned
cried
and
(both feeling misunderstood and both feeling dissatisfied)
separated

now they circle, wary noncombatants
and he realizes
if he could understand her a second time
if he could get her motives and heart’s desire
and the key to her easy-smile lockbox
they would be safe to shore
second understanding
to get her to really get her
to get her again
to get her again

together again

It was posted in my Notes in Facebook. My talented painter friend Rachelle commented favorably, and there was this exchange in the thread:

Me: Thank you so much, dear Rachelle! Wondering if and how to illustrate it. What do you think?
Rachelle: Ooo! Seriously? I’m honored you’d ask me. Give me a couple hours-I’m at work now, but I’ll give it my full attention this evening. Cool beans

True to her word, Rachelle later instant-messaged me. Our exchange is reprinted here with her kindly permission.

Rachelle: Here are my thoughts…
An image of a rubiks cube-
You figured out how to solve it once, but now.. you can only get one side solved. You could take it apart- but it will never work right after that. The joints will be loose and the colored stickers askew.
To solve it again takes an uncomfortable amount of effort but ultimately satisfying result-IF you can ever do it.
I dont know. Prob not helpful but thats the image I got. And burnt orange houndstooth check pattern/feel.
Other than that-I got nuthin

Me: That’s GOOD! I’ll try a sketch. Thanks!!

Rachelle: Really? I was cringing after i hit send lol

This shows two things about Rachelle. She is generous with time and help, and she doesn’t know her own strength. She and I belong to a Facebook arts group where we all create and share what we’re working on. She is unfailingly encouraging and kind in her comments. She’s also great about describing her own works in progress and what she goes through stage by stage from conception to completion.

I liked the idea of a Rubik’s Cube of Love, so close to perfect but impossibly far at the same time. Here’s what I ended up doing, with the thanks to Rachelle built in.

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Relation Ship

October 26, 2014
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Less than an hour ago “In a relationship” became “In a domestic partnership” in my Facebook settings. Some hours earlier my partner, Denise, made a lovely blog post, about our trip to the Pinetop-Lakeside area, in which she referred to “My partner, Gary.” (Here’s a link to that post: http://aintnoninny.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/autumn-in-the-white-mountains-apache-country/ ) So we have made our partnership semi-online-official.

I liked the idea of slicing Relationship into Relation Ship. Sometimes there is a ship to steer, and for sure there will be chopwater, sandbars and squalls to navigate. Much depends on choices of battles or compromises, the rheostat setting of respect, and the prioritization. Denise and I have a long way to go. But we have come a long way together as well, and love is there.

Here are the words to the double acrostic:

Retro-fitting tastes & likes
Efforts, ventures, dips & spikes
Leaves a couple mixed to match
Applesauce with kaffeeklatsch
Tenderness & tetrazzini
Intimacy conjures djinni
Offline lovers loop the loop
Nestled in the Primal Soup

usku

September 10, 2014
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003

Right now, September 10, 2014, I am in the moment of having a Sweetheart about whom I am head over heels. In the wee hours of this morning, thinking of nothing in particular, I did most of this sketch by the seat of my pants. It is full of drawing errors and clumsiness, but it also has life and love.

usku

undoing lifelack
    salvaging hope in the dark
striving i and thou

Desperate But Sequel

June 24, 2014
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Here is something I started over a month ago and invited collaboration (see the post “Seven, Eight–Collaborate”). One brave soul told me there would be a try; that I have not heard from the brave soul since casts no aspersion on said soul. Collaboration is tricky.

Indeed, collaboration ended up being the theme of this, now finished, page:

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And here are the words of the triple-acrostic sonnet:

Desire may ebb when disillusion flows
Endangering stability, which flees
Each time de-Liberation strikes a pose
Some issues turn to Beasts none may appease
Proceed OUTSIDE the box, and P.D.Q.
Example: cure your Beef with B.B.Q.
Rescind your doubt! Do what WILL do for you
And with each therapeutic molecule
Add TLC that’s stubborn as a Mule
The optioned limitation with accrual
Ensures the Trust that leads to Love’s renewal

“Desperate But Sequel” hearkens back to the bad old days of “Separate But Equal.” Alas, Racism is still alive and “well” more than a half-century later. Not much more we can do about that but get our own houses in order (see Avenue Q’s “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”).

The image is a four-shot sequence wherein two people are irritating each other’s stiff backs, then find a synergistic solution when they loosen up a little and rub together. I am ridiculously proud of this metaphor for relational friction. Honest to Goodness, I have no memory of ever seeing this bit of storytelling before–but I suspect I’m not the first…

TO Index Cards, ON an Index Card

May 24, 2014
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Image

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!

NaPoWriMo Poem Pair for April 31, 2014

April 23, 2014
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tableau vivant

taxes levied leveled Levi
blimey barney’s stoned but viva
eager beamers roar & win
ukuleles sound like mint

TAB LOW/WE WANT

The candidate survived the peer review
And then her father died, as if on cue
Bulimia & travel left her raw

LOVE set her world aright & flipt her shwa
Obsessing over Style & cred & thin
Will make us OVERLOOK a crucial hint

I don’t want to clutter up the post with annotation, but I will say that Bulimia and Depression seem highly correlative. Also: I think the image has good potential for snap/crackle/poppery that has not yet been realized. I did two other scan/edits that were even less successful:

001

002

 

NaPoWriMo Poem for April 30

April 22, 2014
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With this poem the requirement of a poem per day for National Poetry Writing Month will be fulfilled. Bonus/extra poetry will appear under “NaPoWriMo Poem for April 31,” “NaPoWriMo Poem for April 32,” etc. We’ll see if I can get to April 50 before the end of the month. [smiles]

not a love letter to a dead dog or two, but it might as well be

he was my best friend
and his name courtesy of my daughter
was william doglas bowers.

that’s not a typo. it’s d-o-g-l-a-s.
i haven’t seen him in nigh on five years,
because that’s when he died.

i harbor no illusions that he’s smiling down at me from dog heaven;
even if there was one, he’d have far better things to do;
but no, my sad surmise is that when he got the big sleep
courtesy of the strong drug intravenously applied
that smacked him so hard his eyes never closed
he was completely extinguished,

and that,
given the joy he gave me and the rest of his family,
defines tragedy better than any play or headline.

i so hope i am wrong.
some quantum physicists are now bruiting about the continuity of consciousness
via transport of the energy state/configurations in “brain microtubules,”
but i think even the smartest of us are desperate enough
to indulge in creative wishful thinking.
i am glad that they think so, though,
especially since they are smarter than me.

if bill does indeed continue,
and if further he’s free of the dysplasia and other physical woes he wore,
then that undoubtedly means that cowboy,
dog of my childhood,
has persisted.
they may even meet and exchange that-stupid-gary stories.
they may romp,
with bill mocking his dysplasia as romplstiltskin,
and cowboy might then reenact his epic encounter with the horse in the meadow,
or the skunk at camp geronimo,
but all of this has a probability vanishingly small.

i wish i could tell bill
about this other bill
who is only vaguely doglike,
and that only in the fact that he does amazing tricks,
only they’re with words.

i wish i could tell cowboy
that that line in the song “mister bojangles” is an understatement.
“after twenty years he still grieves.”
twenty years?
chicken feed…

Hand Held

April 9, 2014
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Image

Here is something that was thought out in advance, but executed while not feeling well. The show must go on, and I wanted to post today, but the impatience and shakiness that comes with minor illness is right there on the page. Perhaps I’ll do a do-over after I’m well. I really like the way “hand held” has come to mean something electronic, though it’s still connotative of relaxed love.

Here are the words to the double acrostic:

Holographic novelty is not quite in the flesh
And in vitro is a workaround if you’ve no crèche
NEED is forging our tomorrows but we may forestall
Datamining pseudojoy if we walk parasoled

NaPoWriMo Poem for April First

April 1, 2014
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Sift

It had a handle
With an embedded squeezable subhandle
And squeezing would make it make noise

It was called a sifter
Turned coarse flour fine
Employed handheld use of the milling concept

Some beaches have coarse sand
Some fine some unfiltered with sharpedged little shells
(The ocean’s milling has caprice)

Some life events are grainy
Some slide through the strait of the hourglass
With rollercoasteringly dismaying ease

Lapidary work makes for smoother rocks
Wax for a slidey floor
(Wearing socks has been known to cause an involuntary split)

But the hard life facts have unsmoothable grit to them
Though we swap deludings and call it ‘enabling’
(The grittiest fact  is cessation)

Smiles are smoothers
Friendships sifters
Love confectionary (sugar)

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GB + DH (True Love)

February 14, 2014
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Happy Valentine’s Day to my dear Girlfriend, Denise. Denise, I custom-created this for you while watching the very romantic movies WOMAN OF THE YEAR and PRIDE OF THE YANKEES. Hope you like it!Image

Sorry about the crappy-phone-camera photo quality, Darling. I’m Scannerless right now.

Here are the words, from me to you:

Get kisses right before we sleep: all very well and good
Great chemistry as surely as mahogany is wood
But thorough bliss is unfulfilled unless a savored wish
Be shared be sought be striven for be Had–we DO? Delish!

Love,
Gary