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Spoon Salon (Five Numinous Words)

December 17, 2013
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Here as promised is a better spoon than the spoon I posted and promised to do a better one than. As for the double word acrostic, I decided on single-word lines for simplicity’s sake and then went shopping in the enormous dictionary near the front desk where I work at work. I’d never encountered the word “supposititious” before, and was delighted to find it could mean either Fraudulent or Hypothetical. Once I had Supposititious, I knew I wanted more words that were spooky-special. The last, Necronomicon, is a tip of the hat to H.P. Lovecraft and his disciples.

“Onomatopoetical” yields a squiggly red line when typed, but “Onomatopoetic” does not. Chalk it up to poetical license, and another hat-tip to a literary gent, this one Charles Dickens, who wrote “The Poetical Young Gentleman.”

“Obbligato” according to the dictionary is that part of a musical performance that is absolutely essential and must not be omitted.

“Phenomena” is the plural of Phenomenon. It is amazing how many newscasters think “phenomena” is singular. –Actually, it IS singular in the sense of Uniqueness; that it can be both Singular and Plural heterodynes its singularity.

These, then, are five of the most numinous words I could find. As for “Numinous,” it means “having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.”

Willie Nelson If You Squint, and Other Sketches

April 21, 2013
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Yesterday I worked the two-to-six shift at the Village Gallery, the artist’s cooperative where my ceramic work is displayed. (All members are required to put in two shifts per month.) It was a slow afternoon, and though I was working alone, I had a lot of time on my hands. With Willie Nelson playing on the CD I made this page:

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Sorry about that, Willie. Doesn’t look much like you unless you squint; and the words imply rocky relations. Such is the nature of acrostic, rhyme, meter restricted poetry.

Oddly, the back of this page had a previously drawn panel array with a near-Willie in it:

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I had started this the day before, intending to flesh it out with eraser and more pencil. I may well leave it as is. It’s nice and mysterious with what’s left unsaid.

Here are some more sketches I made during my shift:

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Note that one of the sketches is all words. That’s OK–Charles Dickens did some sketches that were all words, compiled in SKETCHES BY BOZ. “The Poetical Young Gentleman” is a must-read for poets who don’t want to make fools of themselves.

Most of these sketches are exemplary of the way one of my pages gets started. I just think out loud on paper (that isn’t loud at all, is it?), and sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t. (Note the drawing problem of the fellow starting up the stairs, for instance.)

But the sketch that I feel best about was left at the gallery, in the folder of Husain Abdul-Alim, an artist who with his spouse has purchased a couple of my ceramic creations. He does carved-wood masks, mostly intended for hanging on a wall. I did a calligraphed thank-you note that included sketches of three of his masks. I hope he likes it!