this is not a pipe; nor might it be a post

So, I haven't written for a while. I've still been working like mad on my Beckett paper. Alas, the 'void.'

But for your viewing pleasure, may I present Rene Margritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."

Enjoy.

poetry: in response, agreed.

should poetry be soft and warm and full of buttery hallmarky goodness? a fluffy pillow? a humorous stitch in your side, a curve of lip in amused whimsy?

or should it stick in your gut like too much greasy pizza hut pizza and warm fizzy soda on a hot day, heavy like a block of cheap cheddar left on the counter too long, sweaty and beaded?

like black fire ants crawling just beneath the skin?

how should poetry strike the reader? like a soothing massage, cucumbers laid green and moist on the eyes?

or a dull thump, a wedge of sorrow and guilt in the throat right above the lungs? a red handprint across the cheek? the moist lips of a lover no longer felt, the smell and fog of rain spreading wide like a hand, pushing the dry heat of the desert out and down like dough under a rolling pin?

an easy to digest, easy to distance from paper of somebody else’s words? or, an in-your-face-I-am-now-part-of-you-I-am-inside-of-you voice, a living thing breathing?

a color inside the lines Thomas Kincaid? or...

cures what ails you

This afternoon when I logged onto the net, I discovered, thanks to Yahoo, yet again another cure to what might in the future ail me; tangerine peels, my dear friends, could help us all in "the fight against cancer": "Tangerine peel could help in the fight against certain cancers, researchers said on Wednesday." (London, Reuters)

Awesome. I think a few weeks ago it was caffeine, and a while before that something green...spinach or avocado, and before that, chocolate. I don't know, but I find it funny this obsession. It's all good, it could be true, and part of what I find amusing is Yahoo's prominence as a "trustworthy newsource." But this might be a whole other rant.

But this is still sweet, I think this might be my whole new motto, I'll say it about everything. These beautiful windows full of sunlight...yes, you'll find happiness there, just don't absorb too much sun, though you'll get your healthy fill of vitamin D, those happy cells might freeze into a cancerous mess. but that's okay, drink a cup of coffee and eat a tangerine peel for good measure. Have a good dose of extra cocoa rich chocolate.

Or, read this book, it'll change your life, mmm...poetry, will save your soul. How about some delicious life on the side? Ah, yahoo, you wonderful beast of truth, I'll never need my sweet Blake, or Wordsworth, or Darjeling tea for my discontents. Oh, sweet magic eight-ball that is Yahoo, tell me what to think, what I should know.

and then there were eight

This should look familiar (eh, Clayton?). I find this image striking; their reverent bodies, shoulder bent to carry the weight, but so used to the weight are these eight that their bodies aren't strained so much as subsumed. Our eyes are probably (at least in their minds) supposed to float up the striking figure above, a king, our heads, though looking up, still below his awesome body; thus, though standing, we bodily are lower, bowed in upward stare. However, we notice the eight men first, their draped and worn cloaks, then their shoulders bent, then the heavy weight, and somewhere in between or after noticing they carry something and that something might be their sacred burden, their king, we notice their shields. Anonymous in their burden, in their combined subservience, yet a shield, a crest to distinguish who this wilted body is. Not a face, a symbol.

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I find this sculpture striking also because of writing and the weight of silence we often feel when confronting the page, canvas, or stone. I think it’s easy for us to assume the artist, poet, painter has a set plan; knows already the curves, the bend of body, the deep reds of oil brushstrokes. The whitespace is formidable. But I find it harder still when there is so much to be written, so much to say, but the words are not yet words. Not yet flesh.

beckett, mallarme, sartre

a living room

I've taken over the living room, as I expected.

a rock garden: in response

A possible rock garden; might it also have to do from which point we perceive the garden, the rocks strewn, whether so much more quicksand, or so much lined beach confined in black box (a rock or two centered, for easy meditation).

or, a wet black expanse of sea pulled back, the few remainder stones with skirts of wet sand pulled up thickly to their round thighs.

or, the craggy downward curved stone cliffs; so small we see them as forever stones; we wade but we drown easily; we sit in wide boats but sink more small the larger their scale up close.

but we write, we piece together and order and reorder our stones, these scars, these things we bury in sand, in depths as great, as muddy. we collect, even the broken shells the sea gulls puncture with their hard beaks and leave as so much scrap of white husk; these shells we live in. these skins of stone.