Imagineerium

three poems...

Imagineers

Ocean going tropical fish in a tropical aquarium,
All the colors, all the shapes,
Imagineers in their imagineerium.

Schools and Flocks

Wondering about those who wonder
About schools of fish, about flocks of birds,
About how they move,
How together they can all respond
Quickly in unison,
How they can do it, shoaling,
Like the wind over a high mountain
Deep dark blue lake
Sinuous with silver flashings
As the wind runs in sheets across its surface,
Like wind driven rain I've seen
On night black asphalt pavement,
The rain drops tossed here and there,
City lights sparkling inside them.
The birds, the fish, they fly in sky, swim in sea,
Feel and respond together to wind and current
Neither of which I can see,
And I join those who wonder
About flocks of fish, about schools of birds,
About how they move,
How together I am with them
In school, in flock,
Flying in invisible sky,
Swimming in invisible sea,
I don't really know,
About how,
About why,
But moving.

Seagulls

The parking lot was nearly empty
Expanse all about me
Riding the black bicycle with white wall tires
Rolling sound and the wind
Alone in my ears
Felt cold
Too the seagulls to find warmth were all resting
Thousands and thousands on the afternoon asphalt
I rode aiming at them
They are always reluctant to move when approached
They are stubborn but
One by one then all of them took off
Rising on either side
On either side they settled back down
Like my travel had been a foot track in wet sand
Between the ocean waves
That is how they regarded my bicycling
While I thought riding with my arms outstretched
To orchestrate their flight.

DolphinWords


In trying to figure out how to make a print version of Oranges, I made a little book out of one sheet of 8.5 by 11 paper.  Much forgotten, it is in the scrap box too, and on it's cover is fond memory of the aquarium I had--fresh water--one can see the succor mouth fish and the angel fish.  I think I gave them away to my nephew, but one scat I had, when it perished, I took all the way to the Dana Point tide pools for burial!

I think I may have actually sent the little poem Imagineers to the Disney Imagineering department!  When I worked there (I drove forklifts and delivery trucks in park), employees were encouraged to submit improvement ideas.  "I have an idea!"  this program was called.   I sent in a few, one quite fantastical, rides with fractal like algorithms that would change everything on each ride through!  One practical, oversize pallets that the parade people would load up with tech stuff and awkward large things.  This was adopted!    In return for submissions, for awhile, one got a little "I have an Idea" pin--mickey ears like a light bulb.  Hope I still have that in one of the scrap boxes!  A treasure. 

The 'deep dark blue lake' is a memory of Fourth of July Lake on windy afternoon, but could be any of the thousands of lakes in the Sierra.

Alan Alda did a bit on a science program with small drones, showing how they can be made to fly together  in choreographed unison.  Very cool.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQFlimEZA9Q

     

Oranges

This is cover of the little magazine I had in mind, this back in 1988 or so. 

Uploads are very slow this evening, pics I mean, so I'm doing them one by one, and putting text up after each pic upload.  This is going to take awhile...like old times!

Idea was that each magazine cover would be in the tradition of Orange Crate Labels, which are very cool.

I checked around to see if there was another magazine called Oranges, this in the library, and only found John McPhee's book, Oranges, which is very cool too!

Well, this pic is supposed to be after the cropped pic of the Orange Grove and Saddleback, but the uploaded pics are just landing everywhere, and too hard to move about!  Hmmph.  Very much like old times!  Anyway, for sometime is how I made the HyperCard Stack for Oranges.  Oranges was to have a print version, and an online version, and a floppy disc version.  Online would have been just text on old  GEnie.  The weblogs I had on GEnie are like what I had in mind, and that too is a post for sometime!!  The floppy disc version required a Mac with HyperCard to read the Oranges stack. 

The format, menu buttons on the right, pics and text on the left, is the very same format here in my google blog.  I posted up how to make this little computer book to HyperCard City, a site on old GEnie where HyperCard things were posted up.  The little bit of scripting I did was remarkable.  Not only did I have one of the first blogs on old GEnie, that for sometime, it was a web log on how to write poems!, but this notebook, well, one wonders!  I didn't invent web, but scripts like the one in the notebook above, are what everyone uses.  Google uses.  In the script was a 'global' I think it was called, that everytime one opened and closed the notebook, the menu buttons would refresh, linking whatever new things were added!!  The computers can do this at near light speed, and are refreshing the web, adding changes, from "micro second to micro second" (this a reference to the monster in the movie Forbidden Planet!!").  I remember lamenting in the post to HyperCard city that I didn't know how to make a search feature for the text pages.  Once on a page one could search that page, but not the whole stack, one couldn't google the stack!  Word processing was doing pages,  books, but not multiple books, and what came to be the whole web, like google, yahoo, dogpile, and other search engines.   Now, that global refresh script, is like everywhere!  

quote

"I missed the mark with HyperCard," Atkinson lamented. "I grew up in a box-centric culture at Apple. If I'd grown up in a network-centric culture, like Sun, HyperCard might have been the first Web browser. My blind spot at Apple prevented me from making HyperCard the first Web browser."
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/05/25-years-of-hypercard-the-missing-link-to-the-web/

unquote

LOL!  I thought to google up HyperCard, and found a reminisce much like mine...it's 25 years old soon!



 

 

This was a guideline brochure, how to submit.  Poems and stories, fauna and flora.  I'd forgotten the fauna and flora part, I had in mind way back then poems and stories about plants and animals!  No notion then though of the the digi pics and clips.

This drawing was done on a Mac Plus in HyperCard.  When I got my Mac, which was a bit before, it came bundled with a program named HyperCard.  I didn't open it for several months, being content with McPaint and McWrite, and games!  Finally I loaded it, and studied it, and learned a bit how to write scripts, which are programing code like HTML.
 

Shoes

My hiking boots, low tops, lightweight, 'bout the same as basketball shoes, that I wear most everywhere, don't slide all the way into the bike's strap peddles...because of this, I put off riding the new bike for several days, and looked and looked on line, and rei, for some kinda shoe that would work. 

Long time ago, I had bike shoes for strap peddles, but now all the bike shoes are for clip peddles--bottom of shoe has clip that attaches to top of peddle.

 Bit frustrated, I gave up looking, but a couple days back went to get road bike pants, which have a needed pad in them, at big 5,  and a helmet, and there, on the wall with shoes, was 'new arrival', an indoor soccer shoe made by adidas.  They work perfectly! 

Yesterday evening, I peddled from Moon Park to Talbert Reserve to check on Owl...Owls gone, Owlet all grown up I hopefully imagine!  One can't stay out on the River Trail after dark, so I can't listen and maybe locate Owls.  Kinda haveta depend on mobbing Crows.  Got so engaged on riding the bike that I didn't take pics on the short roll.  Much fun to go quick!

Anyway, I've been rolling over in my thoughts Graves' going on about handmade things...he does this in many of his books, one of his refrains, and in one he connects it with the concept of "Baraka"...a favorite pair of shoes might be said to have Baraka, or at least that was the sense I gathered...a favorite bat, a glove, for a baseball player, etc. 

Meanings I have for words are sometimes out of line with the dictionaries, and checking on Baraka on the web, as I wanted to do to post about Graves' handmade notion, I find the word is more elaborate.

That Baraka is a notion of the Sufis I knew, and I might add it is notion of Hindus too, and maybe all religions.   How it applies to people, saints and such, is afield from what I had in mind, and beyond. 

Oh, Graves references how Scots have very good relations with machines, and why one finds them in the engine rooms of ships.  And on Star Trek Starships, I might add!

I think too Graves' handmade refrain derives  from his having lived through the beginning of the mechanization of warfare--machine guns, airplane bombers, tanks, all introduced in WW1.  He'd seen first hand what soulless machines can do to who they're aimed at, and to who aims them!

In brief, even inorganic things, can become endowed with baraka.   Muir touches on this in the end of his 1000 mile walk story.  It's late, or I'd track that out, which would take a bit.

But, but, when I googled "Baraka def" this page came up, with the shoes being advertised on either side! LOL!!  Another way of laughter indeed!

Emerson and Muir

quote

To best understand John Muir, it’s best perhaps to reflect on those people who most influenced him.

http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/muir-influences.htm

unquote

Yesterday, my tenant/roommate was out front watering the plants--I could hear this and her talking with friends through the window near my right ear.  On my left, my small portable television was playing CNN's  retrospective of the Sixties, and this particular show was showing old footage of the war in the Vietnam.  My tenant is Vietnamese.  In front and above me, is my large lcd television attached to some plastic shelving with bungee chords, this at the foot of my bunk, and, with my earphones on, I was playing World of Warcraft, and listening to the sound effects.  And inside my head, I was trying to think up a post about the Sufis, as in the news of the war in Iraq, Sufis were being mentioned as being involved, and as allied with the violent sorts marching on Baghdad in very horde like fashion.

Here's link to page that goes over this:
http://mideasti.blogspot.com/2014/06/stange-bedfellows-izzat-ibrahim.html

At the very outset of the Iraq war, I wondered how the Sufis would fare.  My google searches back then found that over history, Sufis had engaged in warfare, and it's savagery, with the same enthusiasm as everyone,  which was a disappointment, as I had a kinda fondness for what I thought was a peaceable bunch.  And even a kinda hope that there was a tradition being carried forth by the Sufis that was to the good.  Here's link to page that expresses this sentiment, and with the same lament!

quote

Mystical power

Why Sufi Muslims, for centuries the most ferocious soldiers of Islam, could be our most valuable allies in the fight against extremism

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/25/mystical_power/?page=full

unquote

Sufism is taught, as it is explained, by a master to a disciple.  Wax on Wax off!http://www.etonline.com/movies/147639_the_karate_kid_30th_anniversary/  The easiest way to understand this, in the West, is consider the relation between coaches and players in sports.  In the East, for centuries, what passed for sports, was religion.  And, sad to say, religion is military discipline.  Martial arts.  War. 

I'm not one for religious arguments, but the general view of Sufism is that is an effort to set aside the affairs of this world through various exercises.  And that these exercises are laid out in the Koran, but right here, an argument ensues, as some claim that Sufism predates the Koran, which is where I happened on Sufism in the writing of Robert Graves.  He re-translated with the help of Omar Ali Shah the Rubaiyat of Omar Kayahm, and then wrote the introduction to Idries Shah's The Sufis. Graves's take on Sufism is that it is self similar to the English language tradition of poetry.  Insomuch as I was studying English lit and poetry at the time, I just thought, oh, this is the tradition of poets in Arabia.  Graves goes on in his writing to connect poetry with the stone age, which in America isn't that far back.  Kerouac writes somewhere that Americans wont really get a grip until they fathom Native Americans.

Well, I am of the mind that Sufism, religion, poetry, all have origins in the long ago, and the exercises happen quite naturally enough.  While seated at a booth at Denny's, I took note of a large family in the  corner booth, and thought of the father, "What a task you have, and no braver or nobler undertaking!"  I looked away, back to my own musings, and as the family got up to leave, I was taken aback to see that one child was in a wheel chair sorta thing, and was crippled.   My eyes met for a moment with the father's, and seeing my wan smile of hello and acknowledgement, he smiled too.

Myself, I can't follow the sense of Sufis, or the sense of much that goes on in the news, especially cnn and fox and such!  But I'm not tasked with that.   Of late, I don't seem to be tasked with much of anything!

Commentators on Emerson point out his being influenced by Eastern thinkers, but tracking out just what influences him, and just how he influenced others, is daunting, as he spoke of many things and to many people!  But he has about him that master to disciple tradition, coach to player, wax on wax off, and when he visited Muir in the Valley, the two of them hit it off...

quote

In 1871, Transcendentalist-thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson saw Yosemite, which reminded the New Englander of White Mountain Notch. Upon meeting, Muir showed Emerson his hundreds of pencil sketches of peaks and valleys. They visited the Mariposa Grove, guided by Galen Clark, who publicized the sequoia stand in 1857. Muir said to Emerson in the grove: “You are yourself a sequoia. Stop and get acquainted with your big brethren.” Emerson called Muir a “new kind of Thoreau” who gazed at sequoias of the Sierra instead of scrub oaks of Concord.

and this:

Le Conte said of Muir: “Mr. Muir gazes and gazes and cannot get his fill. … Plants and flowers and forests, and sky and clouds and mountains seem actually to haunt his imagination.”

http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/muir-influences.htm

unquote

To all who sleep on the ground:
I've always had a soft bed and roof,
And you envy me...
I envy you.

DolphinWords

Goslings

When I picked up the Bike I was handed a helmet and asked to give it a test ride...feeling a bit timid, as I haven't rode a drop handle for a long time, I hopped on, sorta, the seat is very high, maybe too, and my feet didn't recall how to get in and out of the pedal straps, and I thought to brake with the pedals, thinking I was on the beach cruiser, and leaned forward in a hurry to grab the handbrakes, which I discovered at home after puzzling how to shift, are the shifters--one pushes them sideways--actually there are two shifting levers on each side, two are the brake handles themselves, and each handle has a small shifter too. The seat doesn't have a quick release, and before next pedal I've got to find the hex tool for it. Finally pedaled around the block at home this morning--it's very light and goes very fast! This in contrast to the plodding beach cruiser, and even the Specialty, which was never very swift. I went to rei to buy helmet and shoes, but found myself at the check out waiting, no one there yet, and considered the prices, and reconsidered! I could easily double the price of the bike with accessories! I do have a helmet, strap clip missing, that I can fix, and, and I better wear it when pushing this bike! Normally I just wear a floppy sun hat, and go so slow an over the handle bars header isn't likely. Bike looks so cool I'd be content to just hang it on the wall like a painting!

 Pics up: Goslings at the Donut Shop Pond--this group has grown fast, the second is missing, cats I think; Sparrow, Tern, Egret, Redbill, at Bolsa Chica; Woodpecker at Talbert;  Bike: Giant Defy 5. Last Monday I tried to roll out to the Local Mountains, and it was a test to see if Silver's DW was gone--it isn't. Wobbled off the freeway in Corona, and found myself on Martin Luther King Street again. Studied the maps for back roads, and after some missing turns, found myself at Hidden Valley again! Very odd. Finally reached 74, and pretty freeway frustrated, and with the choice to take 74 to San Jacinto, or 74 to Capistrano, and it being like 3:30, I sighed and headed back to the Beach, which when I reached Dana Point still had a little overcast, and was cool. For awhile I needs must be content with roll outs to the Ocean, but miss sitting atop a picnic bench with Ponderosa Pines about!

Le Conte Canyon

Le Conte Canyon

 

 

 

Fishing for trout with a pole and spinning reel,

Fly and transparent bobber,

The fly tied on below the float.

Water rushed by falling over

The obstacle rocks and fallen trees

Making  eddies and currents.

I cast across the stream

And pulled the fly and bobber back across,

Baiting the trout,

Invisible in their beautiful camouflage

Where they station themselves near the stream bottom,

The most fortunate place to wait for insects,

Dart to the surface,

And return.

They are very hard to see,

Sometimes I noticed the fish shaped shadows

And from them I could find the trout.

After a long day looking

Into the sparkling sunlight on the water,

I finished fishing.

Kneeling near the stream I untied my bait,

And while intent on this

A sense of the stream's movement came over me,

Like after skating,

Or after spinning in circles.

I smiled to myself and looked at the water,

It was bright and had made my head hurt a little.

I closed my eyes and was surprised to be looking

Close up at a trout head on,

At its open mouth, and its eyes.

 

Mosquitoes

 

 

In the evening when the mountain hides the sun

And everything is shadowed,

I would go to the stream edge

And sit down comfortably on a sloping rock.

I looked up and down the open area in the forest

Made by the stream

And saw the mosquitoes flying.

As they flew they reminded me

Of small white glowing thistles from a dandelion

Floating in the air.

I wore a long sleeved shirt

And insect repellant on my hands and face

To protect my skin against their bites.

The mosquitoes are food in the evening

For the rainbow trout

And small round grey birds

With dark freckles on their breasts.

The birds fascinated me,

I sat a long time and watched them,

So long and still the nerves in my legs went numb.

There was a log jamb nearby,

The tangle of old barkless white pieces of trees

Was where the birds would sit, and hop about,

And make short fluttering forays into the air

To catch mosquitoes.

On the stream trout were breaking the surface,

Making circling ripples and

Sometimes leaping free of the water.

Looking down the stream

As far as I could see in either direction,

The little brown birds were darting into the air

From the stream's edge and the forest trees

To catch the glowing white mosquitoes.

 

 

Bats

 

 

A few bats in the sky enchanted my thoughts.

I watched them fly above and among the pines.

In the distance, the mountain walls

Receded in succession down the canyon.

They were colored many shades of gray

And reminded my strongly of old Chinese landscape paintings,

So strongly that I wondered if I would ever to be able

To look at them and not think of that resemblance.

 

 

Twilight bats dive and turnabout

Directed by sounds silent to my ears

Like airborne baseball gloves

Swooping in the night

To catch winged bugs

With their leather webs.

 

 

I wrote that a long time ago

After having seen a film on bats

Showing them in slow motion.

Above the canyon a half moon and a few stars.

Yesterday, like a lizard on its rock,

I lay in the sunlight beside the stream.

I shaded my eyes to look

Up into the blue sky and bright mountains.

Near the top of one I saw a large bird,

A hawk, an eagle, soaring with the rising air current.

Its wings never flapped as I watched it glide

Across the mountain face until it came to a saddle

Where there was a waterfall, and trees, and disappeared.

 

Dolphinwords

 

 

Le Conte Canyon is often compared to the Valley, but it is very narrow, and only accessable on foot.  It could be a day hike from South Lake, though very strenuous!  Up over Bishop Pass, and then back up and up from the Canyon.  I backpacked, twice, first time I stayed right where the trail first reaches the stream, the location of the poem, and the second time I stayed one night there, and then continued north and came out at North Lake--a great loop hike!  Prior to these two hikes, I had hiked once before in the Sierra, from Tahoe to Tuolumne, and that was all!   This to say my times in the Sierra were not very long...oh, wait, I worked for three months in Giant Forest. 

 

Anyway, I wrote this poem up back then, 1987 or so, and like it very much, as it takes me right back!   My writing, I've been thinking lately, is somewhere between purple prose, and rhymed poetry.  (oh wait...I checked meaning of purple prose, and it's not quite what I mean by it...my thought is that I come up with a lot of near rhymes, which in journalism get edited out...and alliteration is what I mean, see wiki link),  Purple prose (alliteration!) as I have a knack for that, and between because I just don't work things out to make the rhymes at line ends, which is fun to do, and often, I don't know, makes the poem too...one wonders what else is there that rhyme schemes can bring.  In transcribing it for posting, I find my poem like a dream recollection.

 

The little gray birds must have been Black Phoebes, and I must, if I can, go back and check!  I say if I can as I don't know if I can go back and forth to the Canyon over Bishop Pass.  I could go to the Health Club and workout on the step machines and walkers, oh but I really don't want to be stationary moving!  Today, I ordered up a drop handle road bike, Giant Defy 5.  The beach cruiser on any long roll will wreck my knees, and give me saddle sores!  But it will remain good for short rolls, as it is very comfortable.  I'm thinking with the road bike I can go places like the East Side along 395 in the Fall.  395 has nice wide shoulders thereabout. 

 

Red and Black 

 

"Do you ride much?" the salesgirl asked.

"A bit, I had a Specialty, cost about the same, but just five gears, and it was swiped...   I was in the mountains, and went for walks, but there's no walking much here..."

"Ohhh..." she said in sympathy. 

I flapped my arms.

"What size?" she asked.

"Large.."

We looked about, bikes in rows, very expensive bikes!  One was the right model, but too small...

"Maybe this one..."

I hadn't looked up, bikes hanging from the ceiling...

"No, too small..." she went to check, and returned, "we have one in back, needs to be assembled...it's red and black."

"Oh!, that's fine, you have a sale!"

 

DolphinWords

 

Pick it up tomorrowmorrow...

      





DolphinWords

Top pic is the sand removal work in the River near mile 3...note book page is one of my poems, and the Old Egyptian Text is from this book:

The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day Paperback

by Raymond Faulkner (Author), Ogden Goelet (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Egyptian-Book-Dead-Going-Forth/dp/0811807673/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402093776&sr=1-5&keywords=egyptian+book+of+the+dead

 

I un stacked some of the plastic storage boxes covered with garage dust in the closet to get at a poem about Le Conte Canyon, and on the top of that box, when I opened it, was the Egypt book, and under that, the first poem I happened on, was Radio, which I've since retitled The Yellow Truck, and which I have memorized and always have with me!, unlike the Le Conte poem, which is long, and for sometime!

 

Beneath Radio was the business license for Dolphin Word Desktop Publishing...it was supposed to be DolphinWords...and at the time, which wasn't so long ago, 1990...or maybe that is a long time ago!...anyway...my thought then was to use my Mac computer and laser printer to make a small magazine called Oranges, and I'd been trying to lay the groundwork, but got diverted...back then I had been posting to the old online service GEnie (those posts are in another box!) and had come to the thought that I could just publish to the net, my magazine, my own poems, and didn't need the laser printer....I saw blogs coming!...then, there wasn't video, music, color pics, on the net, yet, so I just kinda set everything aside, and waited...hmmph...I anticipated the 'avatars' too, like in World of Warcraft...GEnie had chat, and I could see that posters could link up and browse  around together  to various sites, though then I don't think anyone had quite seen that possibility yet!...even now, the potential of the 'avatars', 'toons', has only been touched...but it is  extensive in the games...players link to play the games, but also incidentally visit with one another...lol...once waiting at the Stormwind dock to go to Darkshore, a toon came by named Katy Perry, and my heart skipped a beat!...that youTube of her first New Year's Eve singing is knockdown...but of course the toon I saw could be anyone, which is an aspect of toons--one can be anyone...but most usually toons' connections with their, what to call them?, us?...'masters' I guess, is trustworthy...

 

DolphinWords is, seeing how I have introduced the toons here, is my 'toon' from a long while back...I had a little room near 19th street at the beach, monthly rent 60 dollars, and was reading John Lilly in Mind in the Waters (there is some thought now that the Waters are a Mind!), and thought that maybe I could somehow link telepathically with Dolphins, and so speak for them...one of Muir's quotes is  about speaking for animals that can't speak for themselves...at least in English, I'd add!...speaking up for those who can't speak for themselves is one of my refrains...carping about my co workers not getting their breaks being a recent dust up!...which is a problem with speaking up--dust ups...and why many are quiet...thinking on this reminds me of the trial scene in the Dr. Doolittle movie, which is very good, and a post for sometime!

 

Finished, my poems look okay, but the making of them is pretty desultory, oh, just plain sloppy, the scribblings of a layabout, so along with the notebook page I post some of the writing from the Egypt book, as example of hard work!...it's neatness I envy much, the artistry I mean...one doesn't need to know what it is all about to appreciate the care and attention of the craftsman....craft, things made by hand, wins out over all things, I'd say, and agree with Graves...

 

quote

 

At various times during the following interview, he was setting the table, correcting a manuscript, checking references, cutting his nails with an enormous pair of scissors, picking carrots, singing folk songs, and slicing beans. He was not an easy man to keep up with.

ROBERT GRAVES

Do you notice anything strange about this room?

INTERVIEWER

No.

GRAVES

Well, everything is made by hand—with one exception: this nasty plastic triple file which was given me as a present. I've put it here out of politeness for two or three weeks, then it will disappear. Almost everything else is made by hand. Oh yes, the books have been printed, but many have been printed by hand—in fact some I printed myself. Apart from the electric light fixtures, everything else is handmade; nowadays very few people live in houses where anything at all is made by hand.

INTERVIEWER

Does this bear directly on your creative work?

GRAVES

Yes: one secret of being able to think is to have as little as possible around you that is not made by hand.

from Paris Review interview

end quote

Presently my room's walls are decorated with photos of critters and my travels, very much in my disheveled fashion, but it's home, my burrow, my place to think....I do that a lot, and while outwardly seem one of the elephant seal colony on the beach, inwardly, well, I talk to the animals!...and I lament I lack the craft (and hard work!) to speak as well as I'd like!

The Yellow Truck

In the yellow truck, when I turn the radio on,
It's likely I'll hear a love song,
Yes, it's the truth,
Everywhere I've traveled,
I've listened to the music of the pointed towers.

In between though, every hour or so,
The news is broadcast,
Pains and sorrows,
Yes, it is the truth,
Everywhere I've traveled.

And money then, advertisements,
In between the love words,
I've listened,  and while singing one song's refrain,
Anticipated the next,
Looking, changing the channel,
Wanting the little radio world
To sing my love for you,
Yes, it is the truth,
Everywhere I've traveled.

DolphinWords

 

 

Four Corners

Pic is from google satellite view...I often have Breakfast thereabout at Denny's, and have sighted Hawk, Redtail, three times thereabout...Four Corners is a name I've thought up for another blog, not new so much, a kinda spin off from the old Tree in the Door...name isn't from the famous Four Corners...but I've been there, and have a pic, somewhere, of holding my sister's dog, Goldie, with one paw in each state!...and, just now, on doing google search to check on something, (one of the states, Colorado, having gone off the reservation a bit) I find, lol!, that a brand of a seeds is called Four Corners!...sheesh..whattodo whattodo...I've been mulling over a blog called Four Corners for several months...thought is to illustrate with satellite views of street intersections that I happen on in my travels...I'm finding it very tough to find my way into the urbanscape with photos or art or writing...I've never been very good at it, and ten years in the Sierra has pretty much tipped me into eccentricity!...but I want to write about my town, and the towns I travel through, and what "intersects" into my thoughts and musings..."musings" I guess is what I have in mind...I sit in the booths by the big windows, as I often did at Last Chance... having finished eating, and finishing my coffee and ice water, I go over things in my thoughts, a kinda first meal of the day routine...sometimes my reveries are such that I'm startled with "Do you want more coffee?"...and I smile, "no...'s okay, thanks!", and, sigh, maybe "Four Corners" as the blog's name is okay!...while at break once, talking about the mental state of  artists with the A Rooms piano player, they noted of my rambling talk that, "You are always there!"..."there" being that spaced out state of my generation's flower children!, and artists and such...in Sedona on the Texas trip I took note of all the "vortex" ads--a kinda congregation of sorts...and in the google search I took note that three of the four states are off the reservation!

I was about the web 'till daybreak last night, and some more this afternoon, trying to get squared away on that old post, Pocket Pair (yesterday's post up)...part of the post was an encouragement to google search "shrapnel Iraqi children", and I took my own advise, and did that again, adding 2014 to the search string....it's grim...both sides, all sides, the respective audiences I mean, citizenry in each country, are all just beset...I was thinking the world has become even more Orwellian than Orwell imagined it might, and as it happened, happened on a quote from Orwell...lemesee if I can relocate that!...brb...

quote

"As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me."

"They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are 'only doing their duty', as the saying goes. Most of them would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil."

end quote

quote is from wiki page that begins:

quote
"England Your England" is an essay written by the British author George Orwell during The Blitz of 1941 as bombers of Nazi Germany flew overhead. It is his attempt to define British culture and the British people for the rest of the world as he fears that it might soon be wiped from earth by the Nazi armies. He also states that England would not change into a fascist state and cannot unless she is thoroughly broken.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_Your_England

end quote

here's essay...
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye

 Awhile back, I happened on a youTube of a German  modelers' giant radio controlled model of a B-25....the sound it makes is remarkably true to life, and the sheer glee of everyone at it's maiden flight, remarkably German!...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b8XhpYBkZo

It's called "Apachi Princess", which reminds me of a famous Russell Painting...brb...


https://cmrussell.org/

That's link to the Russell museum, which I'd very much like to hop on a plane and visit...airfares are very much cheaper than gasoline road trips!











oh...and this from wiki...

In folk magic and mythology, crossroads may represent a location "between the worlds" and, as such, a site where supernatural spirits can be contacted and paranormal events can take place. Symbolically, it can mean a locality where two realms touch and therefore represents liminality, a place literally "neither here nor there", "betwixt and between".

DavidDavid
GG

On Reading Blogs

It's my expectation that blogs come and go, they're not that easy to do, and when ones I follow, which is only like a half dozen, trail off, I feel a bit sad, but understand that the problematicness of blogging takes a toll.  

Tree in the Door Fauna and Flora started up a bit after I started Tree in the Door, and both were posted to almost everyday for a year, a task, along with working in the Valley, and just dealing with the Valley, well, I just don't think it will ever be done again, by anyone.  Fauna and Flora took all I could do after awhile, and Tree in the Door, had a conclusion, sorta.... I just made an update to one of the posts.   I don't revisit it very often, but it could probably use a lot of update.  Tree in the Door actually has a beginning that progresses to an ending, though I'm quite certain no one has ever read it from beginning to end, though, I cant tell that for certain!  Blogs are like that.  It is just very awkward to happen on a blog, and try to read it all from start.  Doing Fauna and Flora I take note of this, each post is a stand alone, one doesn't need to know what went before, or after!  But Tree in the Door too took into consideration that posts would be happened on without much regard to what was before or after.  Tree in the Door is very long, and my memory being what it has always been, lousy, I cant recall off the top of my head what I wrote!  It comes back, when I revisit a post.  I don't know if professional writers have this happen to them, and if I was one, I'd have to be wary of talking with my readers, who may well have all the things I wrote about at the tip of their tongue like trekkies do Star Trek lore.  I was thinking tonight to look at the first posts of both Fauna and Flora and Tree in the Door, and see if I'm still connected, and I think I am, in fact, I have a remarkable continuity between my blogs, over time, over subjects and themes, and it stretches back decades into things I wrote a long while ago.  I mention this, as I'm trying to find my footing, and square away to dig out things from those scrap boxes of mine, and start a few other blogs.  Anyway, here's a couple things from early posts to Tree in the Door...

On Reading Blogs

I had one of the first, but it resides somewhere forgotten, bit dusty,
But what to make of them now like countless stars in Cyberspace?
Oh, I know, they are like dream visits,
The Halloween journeys of sleepy heads,
We slip and slide inside one another like amnesiacs
Until we log off, awake, and feel safe at home behind walls of bone.

DolphinWords
DavidDavid
Yosemite
January 27, 2007

Don't know but I could work my World of Warcraft "dream visits" into that!  And here is old early Tree in the Door post using the sense of audience I've just been going on about!

Pocket Pair

2am and Jennifer Tilly is playing poker wearing sunglasses.
I’ll fall asleep soon along with all the television audience.
In our dreams we'll be transfixed, least we walk about or fall out of bed,
A dread paralysis when dream monsters attack.
Poker faced the players study their cards.
Earlier Jennifer was so talkative on the late night talk show,
And now so quiet. The game brings people’s personalities out.
All across America the audience focuses on the turn of the cards,
Chance and good or bad fortune.
Bad fortune for the two Iraqi kids pictured in the news.
They were sprayed by shrapnel from a bomb explosion,
Afterwards photographed wounded sitting together, their faces in tears.
America, put this picture in your wallet.
Asked, What have you got in your wallet?
You can show this picture of a pair of Iraqi kids sitting together in tears.
The poker game is back after a commercial break,
Jennifer loses a close big pot and laughs and talks to relieve the stress.
An audience cant say much, applause, cheers, a startled OHHH!,
Maybe a few individual whistles and devoted expressions.
It’s a bit like being dream transfixed. Jennifer is lovely when she is talking,
Poker isn’t her forte. She could gather those kids to her and dry their tears.
But then, we should all be sitting together everyday in tears transfixed.
Transfixed in another fashion indeed we are,
And we channel surf about when these two kids are all that should matter,
And we are in our seats, an American audience,
Not about to walkabout, or fall out of bed.

DolphinWords
DavidDavid
April 8, 2007
Yosemite