At 11 PM - snow like bright dust

Tonight snow falls, small as dust, a fall that is steady and windless. On the ground, snow crystals catch the eye like tiny sequins, or sandgrain stars in the road ahead.

In this fresh, almost-not-freezing cold we leave tracks that fill quickly. My black dog in her playful mood and I in my black coat- we slide through the clean streets of pale, a washed-out world, gilded with dust that melts on her back and on my shoulders. The dog snorts in a noseful of it, and the air is moist and alive.

I treasure the night and the snow - this quiet, uncomplicated peace.

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Sleeping nymph in various forms

This began its life as a sculpture I made in a class with Alex Shundi at Wooster Community Art Center. I later painted it, photographed in an arrangement with dried leaves and flowers.

.Then I took a digital photo, pulled it up into Corel Painter 10.5 where I softened the focus  then added the greenery. In higher resolution version it looks like you are looking through water and the greenery is in the foreground or floating at the surface. I also added some long locks. I do like the result enough to use it as desktop once in a while.

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Computing misadventures: Leopard & this geek wannabe

Well I had an adventure with my macbook this week.  While I have had a spate of problems with the new operating system Leopard - Apple has released a lot of updates which appear to have settled it down a bit once you get them installed. Of course releasing a 180 to 340 meg update, when one of the difficulties it corrects is connection problems, is a sure method to user frustration.
.

After crashing software update twice - I did get this gigantic monster downloaded and installed.  Then the unthinkable happened --- yes, the dreaded USER STUPIDITY. This stupid user attack occurred this past Saturday afternoon (it's Monday now) as I was blissfully exploring. I highlighted my hard drive icon, and brought up the GET INFO box to check how much free space I had left on the drive.  In this info box, I noted  that I had permission to read and write my drive but was STUNNED to see that EVERYBODY had permission to read it!   I was really indignant - why should everybody have the right to read my hard drive! I changed it to "no access."   No sooner had I closed the box when suddenly everything started hanging up - the rolling beach ball  on every save.(the proper mechamisms to keep other PEOPLE off your drive are the Sharing and the Security preferences panes in system preferences)

.

As usual my simple answer to most things is to either relaunch finder or reboot. So I rebooted.  BUT now my machine wouldn't even start up.  The blue screen would appear,  the spinning star like icon would appear, then the screen would flash like finder was about to start  - but instead of the familiar desktop - the blue screen was back, then the spinning star, the flash, then the blue screen again.  It only took six or seven cycles for the "Loop" light bulb to go off in my head.  Looks like it can't find the startup disk I thought. Hmmm.   Could I have done this?  I wondered.  DUHHH.

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I hooked up the machine to my old G5 and started it in Target mode. (I attached the machines together via their firewire ports with the macbook off.  I started the mac while holding down the T key.)  This went very well. I dragged all my dated onto the old G5, anything and everything I might need including the domain.2site file from iWeb which contains all the data on your sites, and the iphoto and itune libraries.  while they are large - things cook along very fast on a firewire.

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I shut everybody down and went to the Apple store at the mall. NO I DID NOT BRING MY MACBOOK. I have to confess that I have not ever consulted with the Genuses at the  Genus bar. I am way too stubborn for that.  What I did when I got there was saunter around reading the boxes of every disk and repair utility they had in stock. I have a copy of TechTool but on before Intel macs.  I read the cover on a new box of Techtool pro.  But it only listed Tiger on the cover.  None of them seemed to address my problem or to cover the latest version of Leopard.  I also thought the disk must be working just fine, since I was able to read it from the G5.

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As I stood in my perplexity - I spied  "Mac OS X - The Missing Manuel, Leopard edition" by David Pogue.   This is the best $30 I have ever spent.  I would kiss the ground this guy walks on - he saved me zillions of bucks and weeks of delay.  In one weekend I have learned so much about my operating system from this book! IF YOU OWN A MAC WITH LEOPARD AND you are not a very excellent geek - you will find this book very helpful.

.

First I looked up safe mode in the index. As a converted windows user, I am familiar with this mechanism which loads a stripped down version of the operating system from its last successful boot - so you can get in there and undo what ever you or the latest download did that caused the problem....  Pogue notes that APPLE has one of these modes too - you boot while holding the shift key. Valuable info - but it didn't help me this time.  Next under startup problems, the book reminded me I could start via the Leopard install disk while pressing the C key - and then use Disk Utility.  I did so, and it declared my hard drive to be OK.  BUT then I tried to verify the permissions - and this crashed immediately. I  tried to repair the permissions. This crashed immediately too.
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Hmmmm I thought. It can test at a low level - at the level of ones and zeros perhaps -- but it can't read the files headers or the files themselves...... hmmmmm I was pretty sure at this point the culprit was me....  I thought about all the other users who appear in Activity Monitor - like ROOT....

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I tried throwing away my sys preferences file in target mode but this didn't help either. Finally I was pretty sure a reinstall was my only option. Or at least the only one that wouldn't requirea large a tech support bill and enduring scornful looks and snickers too...

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First I tried the install option which preserves the users and files.  This install attempt crashed. When I read the log  - I could see the judge in his white wig pounding down his gavel _"YOU _ YOU idiot YOU Did this to your machine..." The log repeatedly noted it could not open the hard drive directory -- didn't didn't have authority. SIGH.

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At this point I knew I was going to have to make yet another clean erase and  install of leopard. but at least I could laugh because I HAD ALL MY DATA.......   I did the install which in Apple land only takes a two hours - and which chugs away without asking for obscure driver CDs like a window's install does.  Once I had completed the install, before reinstalling any programs or moving back any data,  I used Software update repeatedly and did something Mr. Pogue suggested in his book  there is a menu option in software update to download and SAVE the Package. This avoids another gigantic download in the event of further trouble.

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Anyway the lesson for all you tinkerers out there is - don't ever make this particular mistake.... With luck, logic and a book from the Pogue -  I am back though, happily posting this from my macbook which has all its data in place including the iphoto, itunes, and iweb files, documents etc.  Five stars for David Pogue!!!!

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Nose beans and other foolishness

My father's mother spent a lot of time worrying when Dad was a toddler. The house where Dad was born was a sawmill in the early 1800s. It sat right next to a waterfall that thundered over a dam in the springtime. Beneath the falls was a fast stream which ran only about eight feet from the house, right outside of the kitchen door.

Grandma worried a lot about the possibility of my father falling off the dam onto the stones below or about his drowning in the millpond or the stream. I guess she needn't have worried. My father was busy exploring the cupboards and sticking kidney beans up his nose.

Who would've thought it? He was mostly normal in all other respects. My father claimed one particular bean was struck there for a couple weeks. He couldn't get it out and couldn't tell anyone because he was only three and didn't say much in those days.

After a while, his nose began to swell.

"There's a bean up there, Mrs. Walker," the doctor told my Grandmother gravely, "and the things begun to sprout.'' According to family folk tales, Dad was then subjected to an undignified ritual involving fiendishly long and torturous tweezers.

Yuck.

Now why would a boy put a bean up his nose? I asked Dad that very question once. ``Why did they climb Mount Everest?'' he asked indignantly, looking a little insulted that I had asked.

After that he thought it was only fair to raise another question: At the same tender age of three, why had I put all those roofing nails into the toaster while it was toasting, which sent a shower of sparks into the air and blew a fuse?

``DNA,'' I said grinning a suspiciously similar grin.  Other than that, I have no answer to this question.

NOTE: the photograph is Dad, standing in kitchen door of the house on Saw Mill Hill. Quite some time after my grandparents left, it became the summer house of. Author and tv writer Arthur Arent of New York City .  More recently  newscaster Morton Dean owned it.

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getting a head

This is a picture of another sculpture, a self-portrait I made in Shundi's class at Wooster. At the time I originally posted this on my Gallery blog (which I am slowly merging with this one) this head sat on my desk at the Redding Pilot where it reportedly "creeped out" my fellow reporter Maggie Caldwell (who is now the editor of the Easton Courior). She refered to it as my 'death mask.' Hope not

The picture was taken at my old New Milford apartment, on the third floor. The pattern visible above the head, is formed by white lines in the parking lot below. This photo was featured on the splash page of old version of The Metaphoratorium.

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Gould's* Contingency (from Inverse Origami)

Just questions, and like Damocles,
the point is over our heads, spinning
like roulette, wedges of color and number blur,
when the odds favor the house and its hordes.

Dalmatian cubes tumble in twos
Old Snake "I"s writhing-down,
the double helix hissing "There's a world
outside this garden, aren't you curious?"

Clever Snake Integral, the atomic wait
of putty sings in your "I"s.
Give us the rest of the apple and a helmet
before the next twist in the chain.

---

- Feb. 16, 1996 ...
* Stephen Jay Gould, the late evolutionary biologist

Custom digital drawing by the poet, and the poem, appeared on page 8 of Inverse Origami

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

/

POEM: Tattoo Me (from Inverse Origami)

Went to the parlor.
Studied steel needles under neon.
Shaved my head
and the burly guy began to make
tiny holes into which he injected
three and a half gallons of windshield washer fluid
so I could see what was already tattooed there.

Look! The internet directory
lawn clippings from Walt Whitman
the TV GUIDE
the golden rule
ma's one hundred thirteen
favorite rules of thumb
the law of the jungle
the Khama Sutra
the Windows help index!
(Boy have I got a headache.)

I expected roses
but here I am in a downpour
waving a torn baggie
which only moments ago
encircled a half-pint of blue fluid and a goldfish.

Suddenly my blond mopís matted, slippery
the world, a fish-eye-hubcap reflection.
And I am only beginning to breath/see/hear.

When I complained about the mess
the burly guy
pointed to a disclaimer on the wall
noting that birth may involve screaming
and that the midwife may NOT cut the curls of self-reflexive cord
which loop back for generations
through thickets of abandoned fishbowls.

This act you must own for yourself.
For this act, you own your self
For stealing fire you get to lay on the mountain
and offer up your liver daily at dawn

Each night in fecund darkness
you grow another.

---

- Mar (Mistryel Walker
pg 12 & 13 Inverse Origami, the art of unfolding 1998, Out-of-the-Mist Press

this poem was also published in the original print version of the CT Poet Newsletter

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

/

POEM: Busybody (from Inverse Origami)

Poems curl to a pointlike skunk cabbage in the mind

pungent purple and green verse,

smooth lines speckled with rhyme.

Poets dawdle

over jack-in-the-pulpit in deep shade

assist the variegated wood snipe

in its wordy den.

We poke at the blood root,

saucy ramps and sticky milkweed

and snoop (just a little)

in the fungi of ambitious men.

We note the lichen creeping over ideology

as the ferns uncurl

and the spores fly without apology.

We watch the turkey vultures lurk,

count crows at the roadkill tent

of social-jurisprudence, chaos

and manís manipulative bent.

Oh yes,

we watch the world like poets:

meadow-lulling, rhyming nags

content to meter out the observations

to which these nosy lines are lent.

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998

Poetry poster based on a sculpture

This post was originally made on my Gallery blog on 2/3/07:


A few years ago, I took a sculpture class from the eccentric artist Alex Shundi at the Wooster Community Art Center.

The sculpture to the left was my project or one of my projects in class, and was done from a live model. On the right  is a poster for the Wednesday Night Poetry Series created entirely in Painter Essentials 3 from this same photo of the sculpture. The poster is really a digital collage. The materials are the WNPS logo (the chair) photos of the poet and his various books, etc. A lot of changes were obviously made to the photo. After arranging the collage materials, I did a bit of drawing over them to create the over all effect.

This is the first poster in that series that was created entirely by digital means. Early posters were a long series of hand-glued collage, drawing, then scanning printing, drawing more with digital effects also applied. The poster was for a reading (several years ago) by poet Charles Rafferty at the Wednesday Night Poetry Series.
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Valentine Postmortem

 My odd little marriage began strangely - on Halloween. So, why I did I marry my future "ex" on Halloween? You may be wondering, or not in a million years wondering...

"Hey -- do you want to get married on Halloween?" my ex said blandly as we were driving down Route Seven in the fall of 1974. Notice he didn't say "Want to get Married?" What he said was "Want to get married on Halloween?" The date was not negotiable.

It wasn't one of your more romantic proposals. Especially followed by the pathetic statement "I'd get $180 more //OR SOME NUMBER I AM NOT RECALLING WHAT NUMBER// a month from the Veterans Administration if we were married instead of just living together." Now where's the romance in that? No mention of love anywhere, only money. But then we had been living together for two years which is quite enough familiarity to beat the crap out of your average romance. But heck, it was the mid 70's and we were idiots.

I had a lot of things to consider. My mother had developed a physiological response to our living in sin arrangement. She had mysterious gall bladder attacks following each of our visits. There could only be one answer to his wretched proposal. "Okay," I said flatly with a tightening knot in my stomach. I was 23 and didn't know any better. He might never ask again, and I loved him, I thought.

On the day of our ill-fated union, we both went to work as usual. We came home and had a terrible fight. He wouldn't allow my parents to come to the ceremony because that would mean his parents would have to come too. Now, I am an only daughter and this faux paux of exclusion cast him in a bad light with an entire array of aunts, uncles and cousins for years to come. Some still haven't forgiven him though we have been happily divorced for two decades .

"I'm not marrying your parents. I am marrying you," he said bluntly. He wouldn't even allow mom and dad to take us to dinner afterwards. So we went to Val's Pizza and each ate a slice in icy silence. Then we went shopping at a discount store, like it was just another day. Finally we visited married friends whose babies screamed in the background while they fought and needled each other. Inside my head the regrets had already begun: I've promised to spend my life with this man - I thought to myself in horror. What have I done?
Perhaps those who wield hearts, flowers and hand-trucks full of valentines know something we didn't know then, something we failed to learn during our five-year marriage. "Oh to be young and in love," people say. Well at this point in my journey, I wouldn't go back for all the chocolate in a mall Godiva store! I'll leave that to all the rest of you. So get busy young lovers, in only a few short decades you'll be fully vested old fools like me, trying to recall the debacles of your youth.



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The Blush, a drawing with pastel

This is very early drawing of mine in ink and pastel. I think the degree of embarrassment is quite evident. I was thinking of the look of John Lennon with the granny glasses and sixties haircut -check out that hair!

Unfortunately I never matted nor dry-mounted this piece and now there are two creases in the paper that run all the way across it horizontally. It's not enough to create a work - you have figure out how to put it use and preserve it too.

When I was web mistress for the Wed Night Poetry Series I used this for several years on the web listings and emails for their Erotic Exotic Neurotic Valentines event.

Poetic license

As a medium, oil pastel offers a lot of possibility. This is a none-too-flattering, not particularly accurate self-portrait of the puzzled dragon at the easel. This was just after I came back from Maine when I lived in the attic of the house where I grew up. I like the crazy colors. The curtains were really white but that wasn't that interesting somehow. My hair is not really green either. haha.

WRITING NOTE: Writing fiction or poetry is a lot like that - the details can be altered to good effect on the bottomline of the story. Non-fiction has another standard - but the filter is still the writer's, reflected in what comes first, what details are included, what items had follow up research, etc etc.
 

Valentine's Post Script

Valentine's Day. Whew. So many flower ads, and ads for diamonds and chocolate -- I might have to sue Hallmark for demensia sentamentalis!

After watching all the heart-warming Valentines Day TV specials, I've been reminiscing. And it seem to me that Lover's Lane was always full of potholes and paved with self-deceit. Maybe I only feel that way because I had a brief, odd marriage that began on a truly appropriate holiday - Halloween. To add to the charm of the occasion we were married in a funeral home, by a mortician who was also a justice of the peace. We didn't know just who was being laid out at the time, but they had some really spectacular flower arrangements.

Why Halloween? It's a lot better day to begin a marriage than Pearl Harbor Day when some friends of ours were wed. (I have a poem called Ceremony on this very topic.) After all, a masquerade is safer than a war. Besides, don't most starry-eyed couples clutch their masks tightly, as well as their delusions about the true nature of their beloveds?

Ghouls aside, removing our masks is the stuff of true intimacy, the thing that separates infatuation from love. So, what could be more appropriate for a marriage than Halloween when one puts on a mask only to remove it later?

This leaves the nagging question - just what is Valentines Day appropriate for? Staying home and drawing the blinds has always worked well for me....

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Short poem with digital foolishness

Here's a poem to go with this crazy digital sea:

The mix, the shrift of wave and gilt,
all gnarl or growling storm
All life's atwist in azure time's wild light.
Adapt! Transform!

Quiet streets after polls close

On Super Tuesday, I came home after a poetry reading around 10 p.m.. I drove up old Route 7 and though the streets of downtown Danbury. No one was walking. No cars passed. The streets were eerily empty. Really empty. I could have been driving though a deserted movie set.

I can't help but wonder if people were so interested in the voting results, that they were cloistered at home in front of their TV sets waiting for the tally. If so, that's a promising sign in a democracy where most of the electorate traditionally stays home on election day. Whoever you favor, whatever party, whatever philosophy - register to vote and have your say in November.


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Pixies pluck forget-me-nots

Being an agnostic heathen doesn't mean one can't draw fairies or angels or sing scared music. Here are two versions of something I drew for My Not-Quite Blank Book, a book of writing prompts put out by Hanover Press. One was used in the book, but I forget which.

 For elegance and lightness I like the angel on the top. For impudence and a sort of solidity, I like the one to the left.... Forget-me-nots are my favorite flower which grew in miniature in the yard of the house I grew up in. They were originally planted by my father, who also mowed them into mutation when they spread out from the corner flower bed.

Department of delayed reactions: fear and its uses

Looking Back: All my life I have had a most unfortunate coping mechanism. When I am overwhelmed and don't know what to say - I freeze, stare straight ahead with a blank look, utterly inarticulate. Like the white tailed deer, I usually have a narrow escape and leave some angry driver zig-zagging down a dark road.

The first time I noticed this effect was in economics class in eleventh grade. (This was in the late 1960's; let's say the dark ages or there abouts....) A teenager who sat across the isle from me, and who I joked with every day, asked me to the junior prom. He had slicked-back hair and pointy black shoes - trademarks of a greaser or "hood" in those days. When I heard his invitation in that husky masculine whisper, I was terrified to the core. The idea stirred all my teenage hormones into a frenzy. But I froze, stared straight ahead, made no reply at all - as if I hadn't heard him, as if he wasn't there. In my demented teenage brain - I knew instantly if we went out, things would happen, things like sex in the back of his car and all the life-altering consequences that might follow. In a second it all unfolded in my mind. My throat closed. My eyes glazed over. He never spoke to me again. The prom went on without me.

New-age shrinks have a field day with this sort of thing. Strategies for overcoming fear are legion. But deer freeze for a reason. Deer who are still escape the hunter's gaze. As it turns out, this young man was a Moltov cocktail-brewing future felon who died in jail at a very early age. Despite the popularity of "conquering fear" and "living in the moment," it's worth considering that fear can be nature's useful warning. It can save your life.

---- Mar Walker