Scribble and Strum

Eager winter is meager autumn
Get your gloves on if you've got 'em
Leaves are turning, don't you fret
They're turning into something wet

Sitting still at a time before night
When even the dimmest glow seems bright
Orange windows, a yellow streetlight
Compete with the glow of a sunset

Each skybus lumbers a dinosaur
Roaring and rolling 'til skyward they soar
Jewel water shifts as a tread made for war
Traced by the air's design

A frigid quilt for a tired sun
Seeps into the layer I have on
The skin is thin, but I'm not done
I gird with another green cloth

Behind me, on rise: springtime silhouettes
Of children's joy and the tinny breaths
Of a tin can train, dwarfed by these jets --
Dragons across the bay

And there sits Boston: cherry tipped-dominoes
Distant and silent, shapes in a puppet show,
A shade of permanence, a place from which to go
Nothing, just darkness and light

Stars emerge as grains of sand slung
Farther than archer has ever flung
Toward an indigo dome, pushed and then hung
Like tacks in a bulletin board

The sun now sleeps as the bay implies,
But life still looms in bold white eyes
Panwater, a roost for steel that flies
With wings, and skin, and fire

Look what you did! You stepped on it!
My moon! My moon! Now what will I do?
Who will guide me? That's not a who!
Now that's a that! Now it's a there,
A place! What's next? What who, which whom
Will you discover, disect, crush flat?
My moon! My moon! You took my moon!
It lived in my pocket. It lived! It smiled!
There was a man in it, in her! She's gone!
I heard she had a rabbit hutch!
My moon! My moon! Now what will I do?
Next you'll make this an egg, just dye and die!

1

Why, captain?
You'd sailed us
Northly,
Swiftly,
No doubt
Ingenuously,
On innocent notions
Of birth and buildings, when

That wind whipped
Wildly upon us,
Walloped
We willows as
Witches would,
Wherewithal an
Explosive zephyr--
Abortion and collapse.

2

It's silly, what I saw.
That jacket Willy wore
Was thicker than he'd told.
Wicked thick; it's wicked cold!
The wind will whip around,
Blow through you in this town.
Remind me, what's the thrill
Of living with this chill?

I didn't plan to draw this week's Illustration Friday, but when I saw the word I suddenly felt inspired. And righteous! This one's to set the record straight--popular media has often depicted the polar bear and the penguin hangin' out together. T'aint true. Polar bears are North Arctic, penguins South Arctic. They only meet in zoos and Tex Avery cartoons.

I like how this one came out. Next mission: Cavemen and dinosaurs! :)

 
Watching snow fall.
I think someday this
may not be so profound.

Perhaps that's a warning
to a young reader who
may happen upon this.

The piano is pretty.
I think it is. It is.
Is it pretty because

it's played?

It is pretty because
it is pretty. Those notes
could have been keyed

to a computer staff,
but it is still pretty
because the music

because the music
because the music
because the music

is what it is.

Flakes on phonewires,
placed by chance;
That's a staff, that's a melody.

It is still pretty
because the music
because the music

because the music
because the music
is what it is.
 

Godfather's revolution
Is guided by his family--
Loyal, bound soundly,
Apogees tease infinity.

Set, Sun, Slow

Tonight, Boston's summery autumn sunset was grand, intense, and inspiring--hopefully to more than just this monkey. It made me very glad I didn't have a camera with me. How often has a beautiful moment been abbreviated, and inspiration circumvented, by a quick snapshot? I think what a lot of art is, whatever medium, is an attempt to capture the essence of moment--a feeling--and that takes time and patience. Taking an amateur photograph (the kind I'm an expert at taking) would have prevented me from pondering and digging a little deeper into what the event meant to me, then putting that meaning into words and a sketch. Now, it seems to me that artistic photographers (like Ansel Adams, Alex Wilson, and Jake Dobkin) ruminate on their experiences, use ensuing inspirations, and carefully set up their shots to evoke those moments' essences; that's what makes art-photography art.

Opinions? I'd love to read them.I don't mean to insult the amateur or non-artist. I'm musing intent and attention, here. Photography, of course, is a medium. Do with it what you will. Some make art with it, some don't. If a photo brings memories of something to the surface, that's a wonderful purpose right there. But I wouldn't call that art. That's just mnemonic stimulation.

Hmm. Hmm-hmm-hmm.

Art, among other things, is an attempt to get at time's marrow.

I love this windy, cool weather we're having. Preview weather. osito71 said it best in a conversation last night--I can smell it. "It" is fall and winter. Summer's slowly trickling away, but I've got a feeling there will be at least one more ninety-degree-er before October begins. Mmm, fall and winter. These seasons have always put me in the "cannibalistic creative state". The inspiration blasts forth in autumn, keeps me warm, but then winter brings solitude. A bleak, grey outside leads to exhausting introspective searches for color. Then, by spring I'm there again. It's a beautiful little cycle, really. My winters have traditionally coincided with depression, but I've been on a very positive, self-sustained roll this year and hope to maintain that through this iteration(,doctor. Ha.)

We'll see what this cold season fuels.
Here are some seasonally inspired leaves and flakes:

Just now
To Trip to Tom
Autumn is emerging nigh,
and soon we will bask in
the cacoscopy of nature's colorful yawn.

~

Old poem, wintry
February 10, 2003
Gust!
Bluster!
Hyah hyah hyah!

Frenzied foils whip,
Flinging color into icy currents!
Leaves, like little magic carpets,
Soar crispily and mosh mosh!

Those that cling linger,
Channeling sun like stained glass
Sliding hues away from vernal
Contrasting blue sky

With neon reds
And peon golds
A freon wind smells of snow
And grants my skin texture

Hyah! Hyah! Hyah!
A nighttime day!
Hot, cold life!

Shadow chills
Sun heats up my sweater
I wish I were naked in the out

~

Lyrics to a song which persistently asks to be recorded
Fires of Autumn
It flows through the fingers
I'll follow my heroes
I'll swallow the echoes
'Til hollow is handled
'Til hollow is gone

It's found in the inklings
Then grown from the soul,
The bosom comes whole
To show them it's handled
To show them it's on...

*In fires of autumn,
Bellows blow cold
Alive in stories untold
Alive in stories untold

In your scattered paper
And wiring unwound
Desire's in rebound
Admiring the handle
Admiring the sound

*

+
So simple so sacred
Keep all what you need
Every universe begins with a seed
Just one seed

There's something in nothing

Now to get out in it.

Mmm...we're having another late night thunderstorm.

#$*! <--click here
for Language Log's "Call me...unpronouncable."
A f***ing interesting post about orthagraphs and obscenicons.

I do not speak, said the cloud~
Your gilded boot of innocent skin
Will only pass through me.

And why I weep your trees may teach,
Your stones may echo in seeming tones of
Steel and filtered sun, but

I do not speak. I rumble, I boom,
And you can only try to understand
By sand and salty fear.

I have not seen your children thrive,
I have no eye. I am tears and shadow
Carried, shaped, by wind.

As yours was the sea, mine is
The sky. I did not know and do not try
To fathom or imagine why.

Wow--that certainly gets the gears turning. It's amazing to me that we can really only see this shape o' nature with man-made equipment.

How cool is this?: Hualapai Indians are going to have a 60-foot transparent glass bridge built over some small part of the Grand Canyon to give visitors a 4,000-foot view straight down... Wow. The Canyon is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been--I saw it on my cross-country trip to move here last October. I think it's something everyone (and especially every North American) should see before they die. I remember sitting on its rim with Jess, utterly at peace and waiting for sunset...

Grand Canyon
These words are so small
So much is so small
Pictures spend paint
Like tired river, run dry
I found my mountain,
My sunset seat
Waitt's Mount's asleep
Out north, up east
She would be jealous
If she felt me here

If she could feel,
If she could feel

The rim's the bait,
A tall fool's trap
A small fool step
A chance at flight
Infinite, endless flight
Infinite, endless flight
Here I look down at birds
Like an old toga'd god

Sunset at last
Alive at the Canyon
Grand grand grand
Will the hole close up
As night pours in?

I really need to go again. Wend through the Rockies... Slow roads through Utah... Arches Park was amazing... Damn, this is a beautiful world.