This one still brings a smile to my face. It’s an eight-page booklet you create from a single sheet of paper.
Print it out and see! Just click here for the master copy!
Four short poems of the sea.
~*~
Tag: Poetry
DEGREES OF AMBIGUITY
For a bestseller, or so I’ve read, you need to sharpen the conflict to black or white.
How boring!
All of life, so it seems, happens in the shading in-between. The zone where everything gets interesting. Or at least retains some mystery.
MY BOOKS ON THE SHELF AND SCREEN
I look at the covers assembled and think, This is my life.
Turn by twist by turn, introduction by introduction.
All that didn’t happen, too, or was cut short.
Do I cry? Or laugh?
Are you with me?
~*~
See what’s available at Smashwords and Thistle/Flinch.
REGARDING THE DLQ
Jaya, in Promise, isn’t the only character in my fiction to address a concept I’ve dubbed the DLQ, or Dedicated Laborious Quest. But she does, I’ll argue, come closest to aspiring to an artistic expression for its encounters.
The DLQ, as I envision it, is the long-range discipline of spiritual pursuit, one that can be found in any number of variations in any number of religious, artistic, social activist, or even athletic lines of action. It’s a blending of heart and head, body and soul, awareness and discovery – the poet Gary Snyder refers to something similar as the Real Work, for instance, or maybe simply “daily practice” will touch on it as well.
One of Jaya’s concerns is a search for a fitting vehicle to embody the experience. Essays are too prosaic. Poetry? Sometimes. Drawings or paintings? To a degree. Maps of a kind? Getting closer, I’d hope.
Even so, I’ve wanted to leave the ultimate form she uses open to the imagination.
And then, more recently, I came across something that comes closest. An exhibition of Shaker art and artifacts at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockport, Maine, introduced me to what are called Gift Songs or Gift Drawings or Gift Paintings, which take their name from the faithful artist’s position as a medium receiving the song or design from a deceased member of the sect (that is, given) to be conveyed to another, living member of the sect (also, as given). To be appreciated, these must be seen in the original, full size, since much of the detail gets lost in reproduction. Sometimes the words are in a secret, private language and alphabet. Sometimes they blend. The lines flow, turn upside down, sideways. The works are sprinkled with artwork as well as words. Are they magical? Or simply mysterious?
Whichever, they spring from a tradition and discipline and practice to utter something deep in the heavenly desire and earthly community of a particular recipient.
I can tell you Jaya would have been most impressed. Definitely.
~*~
To turn to my novel, click here.
BASIC TRAVEL
There are many approaches when it comes to travel. Some folks like the big cruise ships. The Jet Set, well, flies off to chic-chic hot spots – and skips everything in between. For more down-to-earth vagabonds, there are camper-trailers and the like, and a whole range of campgrounds geared to their needs. Add to that bus tours and trains or the ol’ family car or even a bicycle or motorcycle.
And the destinations can be just as varied – from big cities, foreign countries, mountains or seaside, resort or casino, dude ranch or nature preserve, family or friends.
That’s even before we throw in factors like snow (either to escape or use for skiing) and sunshine.
My preference leans toward the back pack in one way or another. When I was “on the road” covering 14 states in sales, I used to call my valet bag a businessman’s back pack, for good reason. On my own, I’m likely to be using my sleeping bag, too, so you get the picture.
Maybe now that I’m retired I’ll even get back to some backpacking in the nearby White Mountains. We’ll see. I learned the lessons well as a Boy Scout.
~*~
To go further, click here.
POINT OF TRANSCENDENCE
Curiously, growing up in Ohio, I was nonetheless somehow fascinated by mountains. They arose in my early drawings. On family trips, it didn’t take much for a wooded hill to become a mountain in my mind. An astrologer might argue it has something to do with all the air signs in my chart. Whatever the reasons, a ridge line or summit calls to me.
There were a few tantalizing early encounters in childhood trips to the Great Smokies and eastern Kentucky. My true initiation, however, came at age eleven with a week of backpacking on the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee and North Carolina. It was miserable and magical, and left lessons for a lifetime.
Still, it wasn’t until after my college graduation that I came to fully appreciate mountains – living, by turns, in the Southern Tier of Upstate New York, the Poconos of Pennsylvania, the Cascades and Olympics of the Pacific Northwest, as well as Maryland (with its Catoctins and access to the Shenandoah Valley) and finally New Hampshire.
Many of my poems arise in some of those experiences over the years.
We could collect them as “By Gully,” playing off Louis Ulrich’s vow to climb Ulrich Couloir to the summit of Mount Stuart (9,415-foot elevation) one final time – “my gully,” as he referred to the trajectory more than four decades after he and two partners established the now basic mountaineering route in July 1933. A climber explores a slope, recognizes the avalanche chutes along the higher crests, approaches summits themselves via passes, gaps, or notches, usually following a streambed. The connection of gullies and mountains is established. By Gully.
Yet that is only half of the equation. Mysticism, as I’ve known it, keeps a foot to the ground, and often a hand or the butt, too. The spiritual journey leads to the mountaintop and back – if you don’t run ahead of your Guide.
~*~
It’s the background for some of my novels and poetry now appearing at Thistle/Flinch editions. To read more, click here.
SIGNS OF STATUS
I learned to backpack as a Boy Scout. Our troop was big on primitive camping using homemade trail tents.
When you successfully passed the requirements for the Second Class rank (twice – ours was a strict troop), you got to construct your own pack frame. When we went camping, you had everything tied tight to it – inside your sleeping bag, which was rolled into the trail tent.
When you were awarded the First Class rank, you were privileged to weave and stain a rectangular basket that was then bolted to the frame. Your sleeping bag would be rolled up in the tent and tied to the top of the basket, while the rest of your goods went into the basket itself – a much more convenient arrangement.
You couldn’t buy a backpack like that anywhere except, maybe, a very expensive outfitter’s.
What I learned along the way was equally priceless.
The pack on the cover of my poetry volume is a more traditional design, but it still stirs the memories.
~*~
To see more, click here.
TRIANGULATIONS
As I said at the time …
So you’re moving out – congratulations! For one thing, it puts you on much firmer ground when you do commit to a live-in relationship – rather than jumping from your parents’ care into the care of another. Yes, your parents are much more liberal than mine were, but I too was forced to spend my first year-and-a-half of college at a local commuter school (fortunately, it had an excellent English department) and to live at home – something that deeply stunted my emotional growth. Getting away to Bloomington was a lifesaver, even if I wound up in political science and urban studies instead.
Well, I have another reading coming up Tuesday, same venue. This time, plan to read one poem – a longpoem in thirty-seven sections. Should take just under an hour. A piece that was nearly published by a highly regarded press twenty years ago – and was withdrawn because of deep cutbacks in federal funding for the arts. When I began to submit sections to journals a couple of years back, acceptances quickly followed. Now, to get the full piece out!
So here I am, wishing you could be with me in that smoke-filled room – have you on as the next reader, in fact, unless I gallantly step aside to let you wow them with an extended reading of your own. Or, more intriguing yet, share the stage, alternating pieces. Yes, I like that!
Oh, yes, you start to apologize about talking so much about him and that love poison. But I wonder, unless we are blessed enough to have a fulfilling life with our initial childhood sweetheart, whether a great deal about any current affair is actually an attempt to work out the failings of the previous hot fling. For one thing, we really do become attuned to the other person’s touch, timing, interests, movement – everything that makes him or her distinct. Nicolas Mosley, an English novelist, has argued that every coupling is actually a triangle – or more accurately, two triangles, with each partner having a side affair, a past, a demanding career, or whatever attached here. I’d agree.
Now, if you decide to hop on that bus and head off to some escape, what can I do to lure you here? (Just phone ahead, to make sure I’m not seriously involved with a very jealous girlfriend by then.) As I was saying, how do you like your coffee? Ever gone contradancing or English country dancing? And you wouldn’t be the only person in this neck of the woods dressed in black and stainless steel or exhibiting striking jewelry piercings, unlike New Orleans. In fact, a number of years ago, Donald Hall once wrote that there’s something Gothic about New England. I was living in the desert of Washington State when I read that, and it intrigued. Even more so, now that I’m living here. But that’s another conversation.
Well, it’s my turn to be up way too late – and to write disjointed stuff. Hope it makes sense. Now, for me, off to engage in, hopefully, some sensual and sensational dreams of my own. Care to bet if you’re starring?
Keep sizzling!
~*~
For a free copy of the complete American Olympus, click here.
THE BIG TREES
I still miss the Douglas firs and the Western red cedars. In their maturity, they stand tall – not quite to redwood stature but still impressive, especially when they’re massed together or the clouds roll through the branches.
Close your eyes and let the aroma present another unforgettable impression.
Maybe off in the distance of night you’ll hear the singing.
~*~
For more, click here.
NATIVE INSPIRATION
Dwelling at the edge of a large Indian reservation, I found it impossible to ignore a vibration in the earth itself of their spirit.
Had I remained there a few more years, I no doubt would have collected turquoise-and-silver jewelry, the work of many Native masters.
Sometimes I still see their inspiration in the stars, though. Especially on a clear night. A very clear night, at that.
~*~
To see how it’s inspired my collection of poems, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 