Tools of the Trade

Shelf-love.

From the Water

Crime novel cover art
or social commentary?

Reading Around

What's-the-Story?

Story: characters in action in a setting through time.

That's how I process everything.

Give me a poem, any poem, and I look for the story in the lines, behind the lines, and/or after the lines. Give me a photo, and where some see a static tablieau, I see dynamism, before-and-after, presence-and-absence. Give me a problem, personal or societal, and I look for the story in the same way.

On the upside, I look for motivation and context and nuance. On the downside, some people think I am wasting my--or their--time with this approach, with my concern for accuracy and understanding of plot, POV, and narrative shading.

I'll be 59 soon, but that mostly means I've had a lot of practice with stories and story-telling; I think I am (still) in tune most of the time. Yet I know I may be wrong in my emphasis in certain circumstances and with certain texts, and that encourages me to be humble, which is always good.

Still, what's the story is my favorite question.

Dreaming About My Father: Two Dreams, Three Years Apart

Dream: May 18, 2020:
Very early this morning, I dreamed that I was driving in an unfamiliar part of SF, couldn't find the right streets to find the on-ramp for the Bay Bridge, and so parked and found some random cafe to get coffee and study a paper map for the proper route. As I am struggling with the worn, torn, and misfolded map, I realize my father is sitting at a table in an enjoining section of the cafe and chatting with one of his old colleagues. There is a pane of glass between us, and he hasn't noticed me. I think dad must have taken mass transit to get here, and I can give him a ride home after he finishes his conversation. I wake then, and I remember after a few moments that my father has been dead for many years.

That was actually a dream that shifted from anxiety and frustration to something rather cheery.

Oddly enough, three years ago on this same day I dreamed about my deceased father, which I had forgotten, but which Facebook Memories delivered to me just now.

A very old shot of the two of us.  

In these dreams, we are both adults.

Dream: May 18, 2017
Quite early this morning I had one of those teaching dreams turn into one of those deceased-parent dreams. I was helping a student, though I didn't have the right handouts on hand, in a lovely office: old wood and sunlit glass, more spacious and less cluttered than my actual office, with French doors to a most lovely rose garden. Anyway, I am helping this student grapple with his research project when my father, many years dead but not in the dream, appears in the doorway. He is dressed in a white shirt and khakis. He gives me the barest of glances, but isn't rude, as he walks through my office to the French doors and out into the garden. I tell the student that's my dad even as I realize--in the dream itself--that my father's dead. 

I wake at that moment, looking through the French doors for my father.


2020 P.S. 
Even earlier this morning, I also had a teaching dream, a positive one about explaining how poetry works, before the deceased-parent dream -- just to increase the paralleling . . . .

Also, panes of glass appear in both 2017 and 2020.

Adonais: Spring Beckons

. . . and time reckons.

Mendocino

As she filled my travel cup, the Mendocino waitress slipped and shifted through a double-handful of funky dance moves and then, after collecting my cash, closed the till with an eloquent twitch of her hips.  All for her own obvious delight in the music coming out of the speakers.  I wish I’d paid some attention to the tune.

Swimming Again

Tomales Bay:
Off Pelican Point.

Introduction to Poetry

Here are the books:
English 43: Introduction to Poetry
CCSF
Spring 2019

What Coyote Wanted

Loki, Coyote:
Those tricksters
Pull me in
They make so much
Sense -- yet a second glance
Guides me, mocks me.
Tricksters make only nonsense
And I am a ranger
Law and order
The lessons of my father
The lessons of my mother
Taught me to follow my conscience
Follow my better self
For the betterment of us all
For the best, for the rest of us.
Follow Intuition
Follow the order
Within that intuition.
Maybe that’s what
Coyote wanted,
What Loki—deep
In his Utgard/Asgard heart—
Wanted.
You know,
The right thing.

Saline Drip

Moya Cannon: "Openings" & "Still Life"

OPENINGS

In my chest a rusted metal door
is creaking open,
the door of a decompression chamber
cranked up on barnacled chains.

The rush of air hurts and hurts
as larks fly
in and out,
in and out
between my bended ribs.

--Moya Cannon

STILL LIFE

Much though we love best
those intersections of time and space
where we are love's playthings,
a sweet anonymity of flesh --
life's blessed rhythm
loving itself through us,
two human bodies tuned
to the whirring stars --

this is almost nothing
without the small, quotidian gifts,
habitual caresses which hinder fears,
the grace of small services rendered --
two bowls of blueberries and yoghurt,
two cups of coffee,
two spoons,
laid out on a wooden table
in October sunlight.

--Moya Cannon

-- from Moya Cannon's Hands,

Carcanet Press Limited,

Manchester, UK, 2011

Drowning Atlantis

I need to swim.

Right now, the water-of-life goes down like water.

When I am swimming regularly, putting in the laps, day after day, I'm not so thirsty.

Right now, I'm trying to drown Atlantis.
And I am.
Drop by drop,
dram by dram,
deluge by deluge.

The King of Atlantis
Fall 2009: Sculpture mix
(glazed with Transparent Brown, Stormy Blue, & Celadon),
copper wire, and hemp.

Shelf-Life

Captain in comfort.

Mental Models

Take your pick, right?

Journey-Charms

Old clay.

Profile Pics: 5 + 6

The Clay Waits

The clay waits
Life-mask
Death-mask
The sculptor can't decide
Drawing ragged breaths
This broken morning
Fixing memory in pieces
Mixing temerity with mortality
. . . .
The clay waits.

There was a crooked man
Who climbed a crooked hill
Who had been a broken child
Bound to a broken will . . . .
. . . .
Pottery unfired
Bowls unthrown . . .
The clay waits.

There is a frayed man
On a frayed course . . .
. . . .
Threadbare nerves
Nightmare curves
Vertiginous horse
Sweltering source
Fevered fear
Galloping near . . .
. . . .
The frayed man wakes . . .

The clay wakes.

--MD

slightly revised: 7/8/18
and again: 3/21/20
and again: 4/13/20

Scottish Folk Music!

My commuting music:
highly recommended.

Warning: You gotta love the fiddle.

Hungry for Story

Hungry for story
I open the book
To any page
And read again
And again and again
Until I feel full
Only to begin
Again and again
The next day
And the next-next
Each day
Every day
Hungry again.

--MD