It rained a mirror
and a firmament shone underfoot,
looking up at itself,
blue and white,
above and below
the indolent leaves,
their rhythmless drips
like driblets of dreams,
afterthoughts
of the night rain,
mizzlings
on the morning glass.
.
Monthly Archives: August 2018
Disconnections: August 28.18
I maintain it cannot be
this baby girl hovers over me?
In clinical proof we’re head to head
but the photographer shoots
our feet instead.
Begrudged thanks to sneaky photographer, S.W. Berg.
Disconnections: August 26.18
Evening white
kin to the moon
snowy ember
Delphic rune.
Disconnections: August 25.18
When morning sparkles
nothing is finer
than breakfast al fresco
at the pondside diner.
Disconnections: August 20.18
The chase and the catch, continued from yesterday.
You see “In search of story” at the top of my blog. For me, trying to write a story is like trying to enjoy a root canal. But I listen to others in an effort to learn about story. And this is what bothers me about the machines: they yield the tidy catch, thereby rendering the messy chase obsolete and attendant stories extinct.
My Grandma Mauck and her siblings would fight to the verbal death about who was born when. With them, it was all about the chase. If they’d had Smartphones to consult, our Thanksgivings might have been quieter, but I wouldn’t have learned about their internecine wars and I’d have been deluded into thinking all my relatives were rational.
My Grandma O’Hern would celebrate summer, no matter how icky hot, with a mountain of pierogi; family and chairs would appear magically and morph into a small city around the table. If they’d had iPads, would I have heard the accounts of how Baby Edna had to walk because Grandpa’s hootch rode in the baby carriage?
How can I hope to develop any story-telling abilities at this point in my life when people are nose-dived into their gadgets, and mind only the catch?
It is arguable that if I don’t know how to tell a story by now I never will. I guess I am stuck in my own messy chase, trying to catch the skill of story-telling, dodging the thumbs of the world.
Disconnections: August 19.18
Recently I posted a photo of a blissful Jack Russell (one Lulu by name) with her slimy ball. The question posed was this: which is more fun, the chase or the catch? Chasing and catching had been on my mind.
It used to be that when someone asked a question in a group the others would offer answers based on what they knew (or thought they knew). A hodgepodge formed and grew: bits of memory, stories, irrelevancies, maybe even an argument or a snippet of song. Various voices could be heard.
A lively chase would have been run.
Now the response to a question in a group is silence. Eyes are down, thumbs fly. In half a trice there’s an answer. The catch is caught. Quick, straightforward, efficient. Also sterile.
I think this is not merely the grumping of an old curmudgeon; I think this is the plaintive cry of the writer. What is lost if memory isn’t tapped, stories aren’t told, if no one is wrong, when the path goes straight to the answer, no detours and no curves and no dead ends?
I accord technology the wonder due it, but I’m uncertain about what happens when we don’t dive into our own personal data banks and goofy lives to try to find answers. I’ve been dismayed at how often people dive into their clouds instead.
I grant there’s a place in life for efficiency. Sometimes the best way is the fast way. But I think the writer in me wants the chase and feels rebuffed in some way by the mere catch.
There’s another part to this. Another post, another day.
Disconnections: August 14.18
Zinnias in tatters
petals all strewn
who done the deed?
what marauding poltroon?
When I glimpsed the bright sneak
I recanted my whine
my old friends have found me!
the garden’s more mine.
Please pardon the slight haze, dear reader. I had to nab this shot through the window.
Disconnections: August 10.18
When your plumbing’s contrary
your car’s in the shop
the travails of the world
are over the top
you’re always on hold
and a half-inch behind
words and your keys
keep slipping your mind
the robocalls pester
the outlook is dour,
call a time-out
and go watch a flower.
I do realize that not all life’s problems are so easily airbrushed, and not everyone has a flower to watch, and I wish it were otherwise. But the other day this happened to me. I was utterly out of patience and stormed out to the back, and there was this gorgeous, tranquil little being, totally absorbed in the zinnias. Imagine being hit so hard by calm.
Disconnections: August 9.18
The day closes in layers —
palimpsest first
awaiting tomorrow’s script
inscribed by sandal and toe —
next water, rocking itself
in heavy-lidded blues,
slowing, nodding —
then birds, pulling cloud blanket
tucking in
a yawning world
dimming voices
on edge of dream —
atop, where wisps of day
linger like talcum
a so-distant moon
calls the stars.
Thanks yet again to photographer S.W. Berg.
Disconnections: August 7.18
If I,
adorned in silver filigree
and fine-cut lapis lazuli,
could cast
so delicate a shadow,
I too
would deign
to be admired.
Oddments 