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Tag Archives: ownership

Lonership

February 5, 2022
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2022 0205 lonership ownership

A few days ago, on Facebook, I posted a photo of some chicken bones I had arranged in a pattern similar to the ones drawn above. I spoke about an art class I’d had long ago whose teacher, Darlene Goto, had me doing bone drawings. People inferred that my photo was not a photo but a drawing I’d made, and they were impressed by the photorealism. Despite my assertion that it was a photo, the notion that it was a drawing persisted. So here I’ve done a drawing, and when people see it on Facebook, they will know how different my drawings of bones look from my photos of bones.

As for the words, they serve to meet a challenge I set myself, using the acrostics “Lonership/Ownership” and “Boned/Owned.” Both acrostics are two sets of two words per line. With the first, the words on the left are nouns, describing something variable. (The bottom word “P” may be found in the dictionary as “the sixteenth letter of the alphabet,” but in mathematics P means Pressure.) The words on the right are specific cities.

The “Boned/Owned” acrostic has colloquial or slang words on the left, and what those words might be interpreted to mean on the right.

Does that seem silly? It does to me, now; but when I was constructing these arrays, I looked at them as exercises that may make me a better acrostic poet. It’s also like a Ouija board in that maybe, just maybe, certain words come out a certain way for a reason, if only to better understand our own motivations.

The acrostics themselves are more straightforward. If you are in a state of Lonership, you completely own your behavior and your circumstances. If you are unhappy with either, the more you own them, the more you are in a position to improve them. As for “Boned/Owned,” I acquired the chicken bones I photoed and drew from a chicken that I bought and ate. I owned the chicken carcass, and so own my carnivorousness, my callousness in lack of empathy for the chicken, my enhanced nutritional health as a result of eating that chicken, and all intellectual property, including the page above, that I derive from the use of the chicken bones as subject matter.

Lastly, the parody of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” so familiar to watchers of Walt Disney’s Sunday TV show when I was growing up, was done both to fill space and as an oblique protest/statement. It is not enough to wish for something without action. But there is substance to a saying I remember from reading What Color Is Your Parachute? in 1991, when I was out of work and seeking guidance on how to find some. “Pray, as if it were all up to God, then work, as if it were all up to you.” No matter what I believe or disbelieve, I have found that piece of advice invaluable. 

candidacy

December 30, 2021
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2021 1230 candidacy
NOTE: A version of this poem appeared in Facebook, earlier in December, 2021. The poem was altered, partly to better suit the illustration.)

candidacy
(to Nina Pak)
[pause]

–God?
—yeah?

[pause]

–am i talking to God now, or to myself?
—what’s the difference? i am everything. i am you too.
–got it. i think. can i ask you a favor?
—i dunno–CAN you? –sorry. sure, ask away. why should you be different from the billions of people who tell me what to do? BLESS this. DAMN that. and those laundry-list prayers!! –sorry. fire away.
–i am lonely. i want a Special Someone in my life.
—what, another one? you have oodles of Special Someones in your life.
–cmon, God, You know what i mean.
—of course I do. but I’m not going to let you get away with anything. it’s for your own good. –okay, you want someone in your life that is not only special but half of a couple, with you as the other half, yes?
–yeah.
—do you have a preferred gender?
–as if you didn–sorry. female.
—okay. that narrows the field by almost half.
–almost??
—right now there are more female than male humans on earth. they live longer, and have a slightly higher birth rate. age preference?
–ideally, my age or older. realistically, over 43 but under 82.
—racial preference?

[pause]

–no.
—why did you pause?
–i had to think about it.
—why?
–because i thought it would be best to review my history. and i have. and race was never an issue.
—but most of your involvements have been with white women.
–so?
—point taken. any deal-breakers?
–no tobacco smokers please. no active alcoholics, please. no hard druggers. [pause] no active gamblers. or if they’re active, nonaddicted.
—that’s a good one. hypocrite.
–hey, i’ve sworn off. [brief pause] look at my record. gave it up for a special someone once, for more than two years.
—stipulated. any other dealbreakers?
–no non-poets.
—everyone is a poet.
–no non-my-kind-of-poets.
—there’s only one of them, and that’s you. and you are not female.
–forget it then. [pause] she should be healthy enough to have another five years in her. she should be strong-willed, but not so much so that she regards me as a fix-and-flip project. she should have, or be willing to acquire, healthy eating habits.
—good to know what you want. you haven’t mentioned tits yet.
–i don’t care about tits.
—liar.
–hey, I’ve evolved. at least two of the most attractive women i’ve known have had double mastectomies. one of them refused reconstructive surgery. am i lying?
—no, aside from some mental gymnastics. sport, there are still thousands of candidates, but in terms of percentage, you’re headed for the one-in-a-million range. anything else?
–god, let’s cut to the chase. You KNOW me. how many suitable candidates ARE there?
[pause]
—none.

[pause]

—yet.
–WHAT??!
—sonny, the real answer is not how many candidates meet your criteria. there are either 942 or 28 or 119 of those, depending on what happens between now and the end of the year. but the problem is YOU. you do not meet all of THEIR criteria. you’re too short for some of them, too irreverant for some of them, not irreverent enough for a few of them, too fat for a lot of them, too lean for three of them. etcetera. and your politics! jeezus meezus!
[pause, with quiet weeping]
–so, am i going to be lonely forever?
—no. yes. depends.
–on me, right? i need to shape up?
–yes. you’re starting to get it. you need to be more Healthy.
–okay. i will.
—and you need to be patient.
–right.
—but you also need to be IMpatient.

[pause]

–always am.
—most of all you need to be Enthusiastic.
–“God within me.” i’ll try to remember.

[pause]

—let’s have some wine. I have some left over from a Wedding.

[wine and two wineglasses materialize]

—to Enthusiasm.
–amen!

[they drink]

—and forget about Me watching. YOU’LL be watching.
[sketchy smile]
Note: There’s a book out there called CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD. I have not read it, despite my friend Melissa recommending it to me long ago. (At least I think I haven’t read it. I have memory issues.) But I imagine I’m in the same (approximate) garden that the author of CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD was tending. It will be interesting to read that book and see if there is overlap.

Success

September 23, 2019
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2019 0923 success

There’s a movie out now: Ad Astra. In Miss Maegene Nelson’s Latin class in 1968 I learned not only that “ad astra” meant “to the stars,” but that it was part of the larger phrase “per aspera ad astra,” which meant “through difficulty to the stars.” You can’t get to the stars without difficulty, nor should you. The difficulty, and your growth in overcoming it, and the knowledge you gain about what it took to get there, all define Success.

Success is not always getting to the stars. Sometimes it’s getting through a day without doing something you know you shouldn’t. Or helping someone else do so. Or earning the grudging admiration of a rival. Clocking in on time. Being the fifth caller and answering the question correctly and getting concert tickets. Putting on sunblock before golfing.

The most successful moment in my life may well have been October 6, 1971. It was that evening that I held hands with the most beautiful girl in the Universe. We had kissed before, but that was a birthday kiss. Ahead of us lay about seven years of serious involvement, and a full spectrum of happiness and sadness, of bliss and anger, of diminishing laughter and rising discontent, cycles, pendulum swings, breakups and attempted reconciliations. A thousand successes; an ultimate failure. I bear enormous guilt about that to this day, and enormous regret for what might have been.

Part of success and failure in Life is weaving a failed relationship into the tapestry of the present and the future. We are always going to school but we are not always learning. And especially in these modern, instant-communication times, we may be skeptical about what is true and what is either marketing or manipulation or “the Devil in disguise.” Success, REAL success, will come to those with an abundance of love and an absence of hatred toward any living creature.

If you must hate, and we must, for to be human is to contain a certain amount of darkness, please hate IDEAS and not the people who have and practice them. Fight tooth and nail against bad IDEAS like exploitation of the weak and indecency and destruction of the environment. Do it with optimism and determination to remain decent and cause no harm. If you fail, own your failure.

Whoops–getting preachy in here. I once got results of an aptitude test that said I might want to pursue a career as a priest. No. Not unless they change the rules. 🙂 Sorry about the sermon.

As for the image, it is my attempt to non-objectively represent Success. So there’s an array of busy, blocky triangles being aligned upward by a celestial force in the form of a sort of overarching field. I hope it’s at least a good-looking doodle.

Indecisiveness and Ownership

May 24, 2017
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We are well into the days of 100-plus degrees Fahrenheit, here in the Valley of the Sun. Consequently, after I walk home the half mile or so from the bus stop after a workday of being on my feet from early morning to midafternoon, my usual action upon arriving home is to get down to my underthings and fall down on the mattress on my bedroom floor. More often than not there will be fitful napping.

Another consequence, I hope a temporary one, is a falling-off of creative production. This is the first blog post in several days.

The images presented in this post reflect these consequences, and the frustration on not having my creative engine on the high idle I like. But the second image hints that the pendulum may be on the upswing.

20170524_144833

This is “Indecisiveness.” There is a manifold panel of unwritten possibilities that impedes vision and action.

20170524_142309

This is “Ownership.” The figure on the right may be the owner, or the figure on the left may be owning a dysfunctional scenario, or the dwellinglike structure in the middle may be imposing its insensate ownership on its occupants–or the artist may be owning up to something in his murky past. The drawing began with the middle structure, using a carpenter’s pencil that enabled checkerboarding in single strokes.