Poems and other Animals: March 2008 Archives

There are a lot of tall interesting things in the city, but sometimes it is also important to look down.

I wrote that last night and then discovered I had nothing else to say, and that it was 4 am, and I was so exhausted it took a herculean effort to haul myself off the couch to brush my teeth and proceed bedward.

And now I'm in an absolutely foul mood. I get that way sometimes, though these days it always seems to surprise me when it happens; I guess I've become more accustomed in the last year or so to feeling happyish. I can't say I've missed the depression - it's not a whole heck of a lot of fun, though there are certainly a few things going on right now that would account for it.

I have to both work and do my horrible frightening taxes this weekend, and I haven't yet decided which to do first, or how to arrange them. I am usually better off if I take one day off on a weekend than if I work both days, but this is a lot.

And there is also the fact that I need to bring my bike back to the shop sometime this weekend to get a little more work done on it, and I have a (brand-new! whoopee!) pain going on that is making me think tomorrow would be a better day for that. Which would mean today ought to be the work day, but I don't want today to be the work day. I am exhausted. And working on taxes would definitely push me over the edge of mere rotten grumpiness into dangerous dark despondency and possible fury.

So... I don't know.

Annabelle asked me to write her a poem about transformation, and it came out all fakakta'd (my very bad spelling of a Yiddish word which roughly translates to fracked-up). That is to say, it came out as more of a short story than a poem, but I reproduce it here for the sake of having something else to say other than massive grumbling.

***

All day the wood dreams of being a bird
his soft molten heart unfolds in the sun
watching them dance from branch to branch

One morning he tried to grow wings, one by one
stretching each cellulose fiber
breaking his own bonds in the attempt
But he was still a block of wood

---

One day the eagle saw him basking in the window,
watching the lesser birds flit
Sparrows would come up and chatter
the ravens mocking,
then flapping slowly off
to find treasure

The eagle stood
on the very edge of the sill
preening one long feather
and asked
Why should you wish to be like us?

When you are as stable as the ground
smooth as the sea
and live twice as long as we?

The wood looked into the light
and answered
What is the good of living twice as long
if you cannot bend your nose into the sky?

So the eagle grasped the wood,
one end in each long claw,
and flew him all day about the earth.

The wood saw the purple sea below,
the spiky tops of trees
the blood of antelopes slain on the plain
the dartings of the lesser birds below.

Once the eagle put him down on a stone
while it swept down to eat a rabbit.
When it came back, its claws smelt of blood,
and some seeped into the wood.

Once, they rested in a field,
and the wood was washed in lavender petals.

At the end of the long day,
the eagle asked the wood
where it would like to rest.

Could I live at the top of your nest, Eagle?

Yes, my friend.
You shall guard my chicks and be
the marker for other eagles
to know this den is mine.

---

Every evening when the eagle came in from his hunt,
he would clean his feet
on the wood, and then grip either end
with long claws
- and off they'd fly to hunt bats.

All words and images copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav

I've been having an interesting conversation (or rather, interchange, since there aren't technically voices involved) with Claudia about street photography, as a specific art form. Turns out, there are actually classes on the subject.

I'd never really thought about it as something that one might teach (or take) a class on. It seems so organic to me; you learn by doing, and maybe the streets teach you a thing or two about looking at things, ordinary things, and seeing their magnificence (and/or horror).

I find, for example, that the best shots come from the split-second pics I take without thinking: zap, zzap, zzzap. The faster I go, the more good stuff I seem to get - I think because then it all happens at the level of dreaming. It also helps that I am not burning film, though honestly when I shot more film, I - er - shot more film. I mean, I used to rip right through it, roll after roll after roll, because, you see, I'd already discovered the rule of unconscious genius. The more unconscious the artist, the greater his or her access to her particular genius. Well, that is my theory, anyway, and were I to start a school (a project I occasionally toy with), that would be part of the foundation of its curriculum. Developing the ability to be awake and yet only half-aware (or less) of what one is doing. It's a talent, honestly. Or a skill to be honed.

I don't know why, but I feel there is a connection between love and the unconscious. I think the things we adore, the things that TURN US ON are operating at the same level as art-making. They are tapping into parts of our brain of which we are only (if that) dimly aware, and which are perhaps meant to stay dreamlike.

Mystery is good.

***

The sands flame again
flowers crushed to ash
her feet held aloft
a bird untold
how to begin flight.

When again
he comes over the hill
bearing fruit in his trousers
She can't see the sun behind
his shoulder

That Laurence of Arabia
moment when he smiles
the blinding smile
That look of winter
in his one blue eye
(the other black, a dark
sea, an omen, a bird
she can't touch)

words and images copyright 2008 L. Grav. all rights reserved.

Okay, okay. I'll give you a little more to go on, though, really, I do think that sometimes there are no words needed, especially when one has many many photographs to play with. I am not going to go into gory details, but I have not been having the easiest couple of weeks, and I am not in the mood to discuss it. So let's just leave that by the wayside. Don't be emailing me with sympathetic whathaveyou. It's nice and all, but I don't need it, and I don't really want it. I'm in one of those moods. Everybody who knows that kind of mood, raise your hands and grumble in chorus. Very good! Now let's hear the same thing, only in Swahili this time.

Anyway, the city continues to give me its little difficulties (nothing major on that score; it's not the city's fault) and also its little gifts to try and cheer me up. I got two large boxes of $1 strawberries today. In March. Yes, that is my neighborhood telling me it still loves me. Just ask it.

"I'm gettin' hungry. Peel me a grape!" - if that line doesn't reverberate gorgeously in your chest, you clearly haven't heard Shirley Horn's recording of it.

Again, I seem to be running out of words. There is always the temptation to just shift into the abstract and be a purely visual creature. My friends tend to be artists, so they don't mind when I do that. And we all kind of look at each others' work and dig. But here, as in my professional life, I am expected to sling the Big Big Verbiage, phthwap! onto the page, and make with the grand pronouncements. I guess I just get tired and long for a damn pencil after a while, preferably the colored kind.

But let's see what mundanities I can ply you with. I've been quietly buzzing along on Snow White, though I've reached a point in it where I really need to email the designer and ask her if I can put the increases closer together to allow for my royal shortness of torso, or whether that will Frack the Math.

Speaking of Frack, there are mere weeks until the return of BSG, to which I am looking forward, despite its having jumped the shark to some degree a couple of seasons ago.*

End vhat else? as anyone's Yiddish grandmother might say.

There are no boys to speak of, which is perhaps just as well, since my body is currently far too broken to have much fun with them, had I them available to have much fun with. I am writing lots of poetry, which, now that I think of it, often coincides with a void in the boy department. So there's that. What is bad for the sex life and bad for the blog is good for art. So screw everything else. Art rules.

*Nota bene: Please don't be emailing me correcting my spelling of frack after you've followed the link to the sci fi channel. There should be a goddamned "c" in there.

Later additions...

From Band of Brothers: The tale of the Battle of the Bulge, as it is told today, is of (Gen.) Patton's army coming to the rescue of the encircled 101st Airborne division.

No member of the 101st has ever agreed that the division needed to be rescued.

From the back of my napkin at the bar last Sunday:

In the candle a hand
beat like a heart
and she heard nothing
but the drums
in her eyes
The sand rained
like a scratchy fog

and still the shells
fell, and helmets
ripped like cotton drawers.

In the end his hands were
small brown birds
that she let go.

copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav. all rights reserved. usual threats apply. hey, that goes for the photos, too.