up all that text. Is that a logical reason to make art? (Is this
art?) (It MUST be art, I made it on ARTRAGE!)
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Abstract in Blue and Yellow
up all that text. Is that a logical reason to make art? (Is this
art?) (It MUST be art, I made it on ARTRAGE!)
A Green Sky and a Pearl-handled Derringer
A Green Sky and a Pearl-handled Derringer
I need to tell you about Lonny. Her aneurysm and stroke. I walk toward the store trying to name the colors in the leaves and sky, imagine a photograph with those yellow green orange purple grey leaves against the pink orange blue purple grey sky thinking brilliant thinking clash remembering Biker Buddy saying that if I was going to say that I couldn't name colors I shouldn't name them, but the colors I can't name are the ones where the colors I can name blend together to make new ones. Like feelings, so missed up. Meanwhile, as I notice the sky is turning green and worry about a tornado, a bright red BMW convertible roars up next to me and slides to a stop in the wet leaves. A blond coiffed woman inside picks up a large old-fashioned purse, the kind that unlatches at the top, opens it and reaches in. In the ten to fifteen seconds it takes for this to happen, I image a whole novel in which Biker Buddy is having an affair, his mistress wants to marry him and is going to murder me. She takes a tiny pearl-handled derringer from her purse, lifts it and aims toward me. I'm the only person on the windy sidewalk. But she loses her nerve and drives off, spinning her wheels. Maybe it's the wrong mistress of the wrong man and I'm the wrong woman, I think, as the sky gets greener still, a tornado sky, or maybe she just lost her nerve. A black SUV pulls suddenly up beside me. The sidekick. He's going to do the dirty work.
Wait, I imagine your saying, what does any of this have to do with Lonny? Did I ever tell you about Lonny and me, in Mr. Carbanaro's Zoology class, competing for the highest grade, grabbing our tests from his hand to compare the scores. No, the prognosis isn't good. I forgot to tell you because words, sentences and paragraphs can't even begin to imitate thought and feelings with their many lightning layers. While I was looking at the green sky and the unnamed colors, I was also wondering where you go when you're in a coma. I remembered Lonny at the stumpy barbecue with baby Aliya on her back and imagined her, now, hung above her body in glow of light, ethereal in a place that coincides with and overlaps earth, perhaps another dimension. Does she already know what will happen, or is she waiting like the rest of us, waiting to see if she can recover from the brain damage and return to us. Or if she must go. Die, in other words. Is it heaven, or limbo, or nothing, this place where she waits? People often speak of light they come back from a near-death experiences. Does it last only as long as there is a trace of life in the body? Is it a figment of an imagination grounded in the physical brain?
I remember a game we played, trying to teach children about ecology. We formed a giant web with string tied to everyone in the circle, back and forth, this way and that. If you were a fish and died from water pollution, your string pulled on the bears and the flies and the herons and the kingfishers. Like friendships. They weave in and out of our days, waxing and waning with time and distance but oh the sharpness of worry, love hurting as if it were new. The sky turns dark and I wonder if whatever trick of light that causes the green, whatever meteorological event remains as the blue and black predominate. I cannot focus on the possible threat of tornado without the warning of green. I suddenly remember every friend and relative who has died. But Lonny's still alive. Alive, at least in body. Is she alive, or not? She was so smart, so young. (I hate that "was.") A grandmother, but a young one. I am missing her before she goes. Dies, that is, dies. If she's going to. We all have to die. That tornado might come, even in the greenless night. Everyone we love will die. But not right now, please. Don't shoot Mr. Accomplice in the black SUV. Drive away, I'm the wrong wife.
Mary Stebbins Taitt, 081008-2205-1
I need to tell you about Lonny. Her aneurysm and stroke. I walk toward the store trying to name the colors in the leaves and sky, imagine a photograph with those yellow green orange purple grey leaves against the pink orange blue purple grey sky thinking brilliant thinking clash remembering Biker Buddy saying that if I was going to say that I couldn't name colors I shouldn't name them, but the colors I can't name are the ones where the colors I can name blend together to make new ones. Like feelings, so missed up. Meanwhile, as I notice the sky is turning green and worry about a tornado, a bright red BMW convertible roars up next to me and slides to a stop in the wet leaves. A blond coiffed woman inside picks up a large old-fashioned purse, the kind that unlatches at the top, opens it and reaches in. In the ten to fifteen seconds it takes for this to happen, I image a whole novel in which Biker Buddy is having an affair, his mistress wants to marry him and is going to murder me. She takes a tiny pearl-handled derringer from her purse, lifts it and aims toward me. I'm the only person on the windy sidewalk. But she loses her nerve and drives off, spinning her wheels. Maybe it's the wrong mistress of the wrong man and I'm the wrong woman, I think, as the sky gets greener still, a tornado sky, or maybe she just lost her nerve. A black SUV pulls suddenly up beside me. The sidekick. He's going to do the dirty work.
Wait, I imagine your saying, what does any of this have to do with Lonny? Did I ever tell you about Lonny and me, in Mr. Carbanaro's Zoology class, competing for the highest grade, grabbing our tests from his hand to compare the scores. No, the prognosis isn't good. I forgot to tell you because words, sentences and paragraphs can't even begin to imitate thought and feelings with their many lightning layers. While I was looking at the green sky and the unnamed colors, I was also wondering where you go when you're in a coma. I remembered Lonny at the stumpy barbecue with baby Aliya on her back and imagined her, now, hung above her body in glow of light, ethereal in a place that coincides with and overlaps earth, perhaps another dimension. Does she already know what will happen, or is she waiting like the rest of us, waiting to see if she can recover from the brain damage and return to us. Or if she must go. Die, in other words. Is it heaven, or limbo, or nothing, this place where she waits? People often speak of light they come back from a near-death experiences. Does it last only as long as there is a trace of life in the body? Is it a figment of an imagination grounded in the physical brain?
I remember a game we played, trying to teach children about ecology. We formed a giant web with string tied to everyone in the circle, back and forth, this way and that. If you were a fish and died from water pollution, your string pulled on the bears and the flies and the herons and the kingfishers. Like friendships. They weave in and out of our days, waxing and waning with time and distance but oh the sharpness of worry, love hurting as if it were new. The sky turns dark and I wonder if whatever trick of light that causes the green, whatever meteorological event remains as the blue and black predominate. I cannot focus on the possible threat of tornado without the warning of green. I suddenly remember every friend and relative who has died. But Lonny's still alive. Alive, at least in body. Is she alive, or not? She was so smart, so young. (I hate that "was.") A grandmother, but a young one. I am missing her before she goes. Dies, that is, dies. If she's going to. We all have to die. That tornado might come, even in the greenless night. Everyone we love will die. But not right now, please. Don't shoot Mr. Accomplice in the black SUV. Drive away, I'm the wrong wife.
Mary Stebbins Taitt, 081008-2205-1
After (Storm Song)
After (Storm Song)
Trees sing and sing. They flutter, shake
and flap, stand up, on tiptoes, stretch
their wings toward the south, toward
barely a memory of sun. They chatter,
lean toward one another, and release
a million wings in a triumph of multicolored
flight, of hungry splendor. Each wing
whispers one word of a story, finally told,
but nothing stops the clangor of their need.
Fly, fly, the winds command. Trees rattle
their bones, toss up their fallen wings, shake
the earth from their roots and dance.
When the storms come, the last warmth
of wings and song depart. Trees, dancing
naked in the wind, uprooted by yearning,
stumble. Crash, clatter, shake the earth, lie
like giant pick-up sticks, like bones in an
elephant graveyard, lie in the damp fading
shivers of their fallen light and wings, weep
and into the dark earth, they begin to journey
.
Mary Taitt
081006-1644-1c
--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary
Trees sing and sing. They flutter, shake
and flap, stand up, on tiptoes, stretch
their wings toward the south, toward
barely a memory of sun. They chatter,
lean toward one another, and release
a million wings in a triumph of multicolored
flight, of hungry splendor. Each wing
whispers one word of a story, finally told,
but nothing stops the clangor of their need.
Fly, fly, the winds command. Trees rattle
their bones, toss up their fallen wings, shake
the earth from their roots and dance.
When the storms come, the last warmth
of wings and song depart. Trees, dancing
naked in the wind, uprooted by yearning,
stumble. Crash, clatter, shake the earth, lie
like giant pick-up sticks, like bones in an
elephant graveyard, lie in the damp fading
shivers of their fallen light and wings, weep
and into the dark earth, they begin to journey
.
Mary Taitt
081006-1644-1c
--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary
Gathering Eggs (How Geraldine Remembers Ricky) [Quiet]
OK, here is the next draft of gathering Eggs. I gotta dash and pack etc because I am leaving for a writing retreat tomorrow--so much to do to get ready. These changes aren't huge since yesterday. Dunno if I'll be able to post again or not before I get back on Monday or Tuesday.
Gathering Eggs (How Geraldine Remembers Ricky) [Quiet]
Geraldine wears sandals so she can count on her toes
as well as her fingers. Twenty hens lay twenty eggs. Some to eat
and enough to sell. But it's hard to count so high and still remember
from one egg to the next. Each time, she starts
again. One, she says, two, three, touching the fingers
of the free hand to the fingers of the hand holding the basket. One hand
is right and one is left. The left one is left behind when she catches
a ball, but when one hand holds the egg basket, she can't
remember which can catch. An egg is a ball, stretched a little,
or squashed. Or broken. Geraldine sees eggs dropping: broken
shells, a pool of thick water, the round yellow eye staring inside.
Too many times, her mother yelled. Got red with hollering.
No, throwing and catching eggs is not a good idea.
She gathers the ones in the pen nest boxes first, the ones she can see.
Eleven of them, all her fingers and a toe. She finds five more
behind the door. A whole foot's worth. One between the hay bales.
One under Peg-leg's favorite bush. One in the cat's dish—that
would be Penny's. And Bobo, Bobo dances in her nest box,
clucking and singing. Geraldine laughs out loud. Bobo looks up,
as if to say, "nothing funny here." Geraldine bends, and clucking softly
to the chicken, slides her hand under its hot belly to retrieve the egg.
Ah, here it is, the last egg. Hot under the hot belly, round and smooth
And hot. Hotter even than her armpits.
Geraldine slides the egg out, cradles it between her breasts. Sits
on a hay bale, basket beside her, and touches the hot egg. The shape
feels good. Smooth, round, and hot. Sun dances though the chicken coop
window, golden, visible in slanting columns against the shadowed
walls of the henhouse. She caresses the egg. Smells the hay, the sun,
and the chicken droppings. Bobo stops for a snack of corn
and a drink and joins the other chickens in the yard.
Geraldine strokes her egg gently, rubs it on her cheek,
and watches the chickens peck at the grass and dirt. At little insects.
The egg will soon join the others in the basket, but now,
it feels a little like happiness, a little like love.
Mary Stebbins Taitt
-----The line above, and everything below it, is not part of this poem----
081008- 1505-2a; 081007-2305-1c, for Dawn's assignment, Quiet, due Monday October 13, 2008
Gathering Eggs (How Geraldine Remembers Ricky) [Quiet]
Geraldine wears sandals so she can count on her toes
as well as her fingers. Twenty hens lay twenty eggs. Some to eat
and enough to sell. But it's hard to count so high and still remember
from one egg to the next. Each time, she starts
again. One, she says, two, three, touching the fingers
of the free hand to the fingers of the hand holding the basket. One hand
is right and one is left. The left one is left behind when she catches
a ball, but when one hand holds the egg basket, she can't
remember which can catch. An egg is a ball, stretched a little,
or squashed. Or broken. Geraldine sees eggs dropping: broken
shells, a pool of thick water, the round yellow eye staring inside.
Too many times, her mother yelled. Got red with hollering.
No, throwing and catching eggs is not a good idea.
She gathers the ones in the pen nest boxes first, the ones she can see.
Eleven of them, all her fingers and a toe. She finds five more
behind the door. A whole foot's worth. One between the hay bales.
One under Peg-leg's favorite bush. One in the cat's dish—that
would be Penny's. And Bobo, Bobo dances in her nest box,
clucking and singing. Geraldine laughs out loud. Bobo looks up,
as if to say, "nothing funny here." Geraldine bends, and clucking softly
to the chicken, slides her hand under its hot belly to retrieve the egg.
Ah, here it is, the last egg. Hot under the hot belly, round and smooth
And hot. Hotter even than her armpits.
Geraldine slides the egg out, cradles it between her breasts. Sits
on a hay bale, basket beside her, and touches the hot egg. The shape
feels good. Smooth, round, and hot. Sun dances though the chicken coop
window, golden, visible in slanting columns against the shadowed
walls of the henhouse. She caresses the egg. Smells the hay, the sun,
and the chicken droppings. Bobo stops for a snack of corn
and a drink and joins the other chickens in the yard.
Geraldine strokes her egg gently, rubs it on her cheek,
and watches the chickens peck at the grass and dirt. At little insects.
The egg will soon join the others in the basket, but now,
it feels a little like happiness, a little like love.
Mary Stebbins Taitt
-----The line above, and everything below it, is not part of this poem----
081008- 1505-2a; 081007-2305-1c, for Dawn's assignment, Quiet, due Monday October 13, 2008
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Gathering Eggs
Gathering Eggs (How Geraldine Remembers Ricky) [Quiet]
Geraldine wears sandals so she can count on all her fingers
and all her toes. Twenty hens mean twenty eggs. It's hard to count
that high and remember from one egg to the next. She starts over
again each time. One, she says, two, three, touching the fingers
of the free hand to the fingers of the hand holding the basket. One hand
is right and one is left. She knows that the left one is left behind
when she catches a ball, but when one hand holds the egg basket, she can't
remember which can catch. An egg is like a ball, but stretched a little,
or squashed, and breakable. Geraldine remembers dropping eggs: the broken
shells, the pool of thick water, the round yellow eye staring inside.
Too many times, her mother yelled, got red.
No, throwing and catching eggs is not a good idea.
She gathers the ones in the nest boxes first, the ones she can see.
Eleven of them, ten fingers and one toe. She finds five more
behind the door. A whole foot's worth. One between the hay bales.
One under Peg-leg's favorite bush. One in the cat's dish—that
would be Penny's. And Bobo, Bobo dances in her nest box,
clucking and singing. Geraldine laughs out loud. Bobo looks up,
as if to say, "nothing funny here." Geraldine bends, and clucking softly
to the chicken, slides her hand under its hot belly to retrieve the egg.
Ah, here it is, the last egg. Hot under the hot belly, round and smooth
And hot. Hotter even than inside her own armpits.
Geraldine slides the egg out, cradles it between her breasts. She sits
on a hay bale, basket beside her, and touches the hot egg. The shape
feels good. Smooth, round, and hot. Sun dances though the coop
window, golden, visible in slanting columns against the shadowed
walls of the hen house. She caresses the egg. Smells the hay, the sun,
and the chicken dropping. Bobo stops for a snack of corn
and a drink and joins the other chickens in the yard.
Geraldine strokes her egg gently, rubs it on her cheek,
and watches the chickens peck at the grass and dirt.
The egg will soon join the others in the basket, but now,
it feels a little like happiness, a little like love.
Mary Stebbins Taitt
-----The line above, and everything below it, is not part of this poem----
081007-1347-1b, for Dawn's assignment, Quiet, due Monday October 13, 2008
I am taking a poetry class from MFA at Vermont classmate Dawn McDuffie at the Scarab Club in Detroit across from the DIA. Detroit Institute of Arts. AND I just got a partial scholarship to the Springfed Artists retreat in Harbor Spring Michigan next weekend. YAY! I am VERY excited!! WAHOO! Fun fun!
I am hoping to also enjoy fall color driving back and forth.
The poem above is a brand new poem that I wrote JUST now, wrote the first draft and one revision, which is posted above. The assignment was "Quiet." Geraldine, the protagonist of my manuscript, is a brain-damaged young woman (in this poem), and I felt that her solo gathering of eggs and appreciating them was a quiet moment in her life. Ricky is her boyfriend and lover, who she hasn't seen since it was detected she was pregnant.
I have a bunch more new poems, but have not had time to post them. AK! And will not prolly, til after I return and get settled in (Just got back from the Dodge poetry festival in NJ!)
I see that the lines are too long and that the line breaks are messed up as a result of that.
Geraldine wears sandals so she can count on all her fingers
and all her toes. Twenty hens mean twenty eggs. It's hard to count
that high and remember from one egg to the next. She starts over
again each time. One, she says, two, three, touching the fingers
of the free hand to the fingers of the hand holding the basket. One hand
is right and one is left. She knows that the left one is left behind
when she catches a ball, but when one hand holds the egg basket, she can't
remember which can catch. An egg is like a ball, but stretched a little,
or squashed, and breakable. Geraldine remembers dropping eggs: the broken
shells, the pool of thick water, the round yellow eye staring inside.
Too many times, her mother yelled, got red.
No, throwing and catching eggs is not a good idea.
She gathers the ones in the nest boxes first, the ones she can see.
Eleven of them, ten fingers and one toe. She finds five more
behind the door. A whole foot's worth. One between the hay bales.
One under Peg-leg's favorite bush. One in the cat's dish—that
would be Penny's. And Bobo, Bobo dances in her nest box,
clucking and singing. Geraldine laughs out loud. Bobo looks up,
as if to say, "nothing funny here." Geraldine bends, and clucking softly
to the chicken, slides her hand under its hot belly to retrieve the egg.
Ah, here it is, the last egg. Hot under the hot belly, round and smooth
And hot. Hotter even than inside her own armpits.
Geraldine slides the egg out, cradles it between her breasts. She sits
on a hay bale, basket beside her, and touches the hot egg. The shape
feels good. Smooth, round, and hot. Sun dances though the coop
window, golden, visible in slanting columns against the shadowed
walls of the hen house. She caresses the egg. Smells the hay, the sun,
and the chicken dropping. Bobo stops for a snack of corn
and a drink and joins the other chickens in the yard.
Geraldine strokes her egg gently, rubs it on her cheek,
and watches the chickens peck at the grass and dirt.
The egg will soon join the others in the basket, but now,
it feels a little like happiness, a little like love.
Mary Stebbins Taitt
-----The line above, and everything below it, is not part of this poem----
081007-1347-1b, for Dawn's assignment, Quiet, due Monday October 13, 2008
I am taking a poetry class from MFA at Vermont classmate Dawn McDuffie at the Scarab Club in Detroit across from the DIA. Detroit Institute of Arts. AND I just got a partial scholarship to the Springfed Artists retreat in Harbor Spring Michigan next weekend. YAY! I am VERY excited!! WAHOO! Fun fun!
I am hoping to also enjoy fall color driving back and forth.
The poem above is a brand new poem that I wrote JUST now, wrote the first draft and one revision, which is posted above. The assignment was "Quiet." Geraldine, the protagonist of my manuscript, is a brain-damaged young woman (in this poem), and I felt that her solo gathering of eggs and appreciating them was a quiet moment in her life. Ricky is her boyfriend and lover, who she hasn't seen since it was detected she was pregnant.
I have a bunch more new poems, but have not had time to post them. AK! And will not prolly, til after I return and get settled in (Just got back from the Dodge poetry festival in NJ!)
I see that the lines are too long and that the line breaks are messed up as a result of that.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Process: The Memory Filter
I laid down paint from the tubes in artrage, used a pallet knife to
spread them, layered them over yellow material and a pattern, and
added a juvenalia self portrait.
Process, Grad Predjama
the computer.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Predjama Castle, unfinished
It's from a photo taken in Slovenia last June.
If you click on the image , you can see a larger version of it and thus see the details.Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Not Lasagna
A brand new poem, written in a plain voice.
Not Lasagna
When my mother married an Italian, she had never
eaten lasagna. My father had never eaten a turnip.
My mother ate turnips and Irish stew. She took cooking
lessons from Nicolina, who spoke a difficult English.
My mother learned how to make lasagna. And pizza,
which back then was thick and had on it whatever
was left in the icebox. About then, I came along,
to Irish stew and fat pizza. Grandma taught Mom
to make stuffed shells. Manicotti. And "gloves,"
cookies draped over the hand and deep fried. My mother
and I learned a few words of Italian. My grandmother's
English got a little better. She was fat, always wore
an apron and smelled like squished tomato worm
caterpillars. Wore hair braided over her head.
Grew tomatoes, peas, pole beans, and eggplants.
Didn't have much lap for me. Too much belly. But she was soft
and made me cookies, farina with skin and girlie clothes
which I always hated. I was a tomboy. She cooked octopus,
too, which tasted like lasagna but was chewy as a rubber ball.
We all learned to make stuffed eggplant. My mother
became famous for her lasagna, and then, so did I.
And my manicotti. OH! My manicotti. But I got sick, allergic
to cheese. No more lasagna or manicotti. I traded octopus
for squid. Squid is tender, like my Grandma and my Mom.
I'm not tender. I guess I'm a turnip. I don't eat them,
but the man I married likes turnips. Full circle.
Mary Stebbins Taitt,
080910-1047-1
When I am ready with it, I hope to submit it to Forklift Ohio, www.forkliftohio.com
Please visit me at my daily photo blog, my art blog, or my personal blog. I also have a poetry blog.
When my mother married an Italian, she had never
eaten lasagna. My father had never eaten a turnip.
My mother ate turnips and Irish stew. She took cooking
lessons from Nicolina, who spoke a difficult English.
My mother learned how to make lasagna. And pizza,
which back then was thick and had on it whatever
was left in the icebox. About then, I came along,
to Irish stew and fat pizza. Grandma taught Mom
to make stuffed shells. Manicotti. And "gloves,"
cookies draped over the hand and deep fried. My mother
and I learned a few words of Italian. My grandmother's
English got a little better. She was fat, always wore
an apron and smelled like squished tomato worm
caterpillars. Wore hair braided over her head.
Grew tomatoes, peas, pole beans, and eggplants.
Didn't have much lap for me. Too much belly. But she was soft
and made me cookies, farina with skin and girlie clothes
which I always hated. I was a tomboy. She cooked octopus,
too, which tasted like lasagna but was chewy as a rubber ball.
We all learned to make stuffed eggplant. My mother
became famous for her lasagna, and then, so did I.
And my manicotti. OH! My manicotti. But I got sick, allergic
to cheese. No more lasagna or manicotti. I traded octopus
for squid. Squid is tender, like my Grandma and my Mom.
I'm not tender. I guess I'm a turnip. I don't eat them,
but the man I married likes turnips. Full circle.
Mary Stebbins Taitt,
080910-1047-1
When I am ready with it, I hope to submit it to Forklift Ohio, www.forkliftohio.com
Please visit me at my daily photo blog, my art blog, or my personal blog. I also have a poetry blog.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
birches
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