Nature's economy

I was looking out the window yesterday afternoon and noticed a big black crow on the lawn. It seemed to be watching something. Across the street in a neighbor's yard two squirrels sprinted face first down a straight tree trunk. They were moving very fast, hit the ground flat out. The first bounded across the road; the second was turned back by a car.

The lead squirrel had something in its mouth. I thought it was a hunk of  bread, and that must be what was so interesting to the crow. Then I realized the bread was wiggling, had legs and a tail. At first I thought it was a mouse, and marveled because I didn't realize squirrels were carnivorous.

When the victor squirrel got into our driveway, it stopped and started to eat the poor thing alive, opening  a bright bloody wound in its throat as it struggled. Of course I ran out yelling like a fool.  I  guess I thought it might drop its prize. As I approached I realized, this creature (whose species I had previously admired) was a cannibal. It was eating a live baby squirrel, and not a tiny infant either, a juvenile, about a quarter of his size, but still recognizable as a grey squirrel with a grey coat, white underbelly and a long but less fuzzy tail.

The crows, three at this point, were closing in too, and the squirrel leaped into nearby  tree with its poor prize clamped in its jaws. A neighbor approached and I had to explain why I was yelling.  By then I couldn't see where it went. So I went back inside the house,

Less then a minute passed and I looked out the front window. The crows had won the second round. They had the taken cannibal squirrel's meal which was now in three pieces, one bloody piece in front of each crow. And the crows were polishing off their meal. Nature is not gentle, but in its stark economy there is a great horrific beauty.  Trust me - it's not  the invention of a loving kindly god. I'd hope as a species we can have as a goal to be kinder  than nature.

I still don't know if the squirrel chasing the cannibal was the mother squirrel or a bystander like the crows, who was trying to steal dinner.

So called infallible pope covers up abuse

http://www.youtube.com/v/jT8sQvXXU8Y&hl=en_US&fs=1&

http://www.youtube.com/v/dWErBV0MfEg&hl=en_US&fs=1&

Offline, life is better

Though I am unemployed, I am not unoccupied. My life has taken on a certain friendly rhythm.. I get up in the morning, get coffee and study my current row of unfinished paintings. I ponder them, and what needs to be done to them in the beautiful morning light. Besides daily tasks and occasional errands and things to take care of,  for the last few weeks, I have basically been painting all day from 7 to 3 pm. as if it were my job.

Only then -- after 3p.m. do I  allow myself to go online. I used to be on all day -- let me repeat ALL DAY!  I would CHURN in that endless internet way -- where by you feel like you are working at something, yet afterwards you realize you have actually done nothing and taken all day to do it..... I am not twittering, nor facebooking, nor chasing down endless email items all day.  Not that those are not interesting - but they need to be balanced with something physical and real. They need to be contained by limiting the time spent on them. I don't know about you, but I need other things in my world. I have stopped joining various membership sites online as well, and unjoined a few.  You can't be everywhere....

Now at the end of the day, I can look and see what progress has been made. That is, what concrete physical changes have been made to the paintings at hand.  It has made life more simple and less stressful, and made me a bit quieter at heart. In this crazy world, that can't be bad.

Reggie Marra "Bump" - a poem for Anne Marie

A poem about Reggie and his older sister Anne Marie as giggling children at play. Reggie read this during his featured reading at the Blue Z Coffeehouse on the one-year anniversary of Anne Marie's death on St Patrick's Day 2009.  --> Cherish life. You only get this one....
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http://www.youtube.com/v/D2Ws6-I_LEQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

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The roar at Stevenson Dam after all the rain, 3/14/2010

While traveling from the New Haven area on Sunday I took this short video of the Stevenson Dam on Route 34. Notice the incredible gush of water that is being let out of Lake Zoar at the side of the dam > you can see it in the lower right hand side of the frame . That is a lot of water. Peak was not expected until 1 p.m. the following day, according to a Danbury News Times article. This was video shot with a G3 iphone using the Qik Video app. The G3 cannot shoot video out of the box. This is a a low rez fix - but low rez but better than no rez.

http://www.youtube.com/v/zvRsLMKukJ0&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

POETRY: Dick Allen enlightens listeners

Poet Dick Allen read at the Blue Z Coffeehouse last Wednesday. As always, his work is  fresh and filled with details in layers of image and nuance. Though he had three books for sale, (Present Vanishing, The Day Before: New Poems and Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected), he did us the great favor or reading lots of his new work.  When this happens in a reading - not only do you get to see where the writer is headed in terms of  ideas and technique - you also get the heightened delivery because people are frequently more excited about their recent works.

Afterwards during Q&A  Allen spoke to his self-taught Zen Buddhist  roots.  He expressed how mindfulness lends itself to poetry, and his involvement in meditation, his belief in nondualism, and also reincarnation. (I thought those last two seemed to conflict, but I see there are several meanings for nondualism. In one, matter is  illusion, in the other, there is only matter....)

All in all, it was quite a very interesting evening.Allen noted that there are over 3000 print journals publishing poetry and an unknown number of online journals, blogs and sites.  One interesting point: apparently many of these publications are staffed by younger editors who send form rejections to everyone. While even a fine writer's work isn't always a fit with a particular publication,  he said old school notables are hoping for at least a personal rejection not a form letter.  I suspect these editors often don't know who they are rejecting or they would be inviting further submissions. (Makes me wonder who I rejected when I had Bent Pin Quarterly!)

Allen surely qualifies as one of those notables. He has a Pushcart Prize, and has gotten NEA and an Ingram Merrill Poetry Writing Fellowships. He's been published all over the map: The New Criterion, Crab Orchard Review, Ploughshares, American Scholar, The Georgia Review, The Yale Review, Poetry, Stone Boat, Gettysburg Review, The New York Quarterly, and The Hudson Review.  Literally hundreds of his poems  have been in publications ranging from The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and Agni to The New England Review, as well as 40 + national poetry anthologies including five editions of The Best American Poetry . That's notable.

We also got another insight into  Dick Allen, in the form of his  wife, poet L. N. Allen, who read some fine work during the open mic. I am not sure but a "little bird told me" she may be reading for Wed. poetry fairly soon. Tweet.

-- Mar Walker
Read about a workshop on short poems given by Dick Allen Several years ago...
Read his book Ode to the Cold War on Google Books

POEM: Koan (from Inverse Origami)

---

Koan

head-lamp                                                                shining

out of the eyes                                           wholeness

hiding                                               nothing

admitting                      everything

swamp songs of peepers at twilight

love                              hate                  indifference

shoeless feet slapping clay tile

one

flat surface of soup in a bowl

I am

holographic

mist drawn up from the lake

interior                 exterior

unchanged at 5 a.m.    the same at midnight

elemental         &         spacious

---

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

POETRY: Robin E. Sampson in Stamford this past week

It's an adventure careening across the winding paths of Route 124 and 137 on the way to Stamford. The destination was  the Stamford Town Center Barnes and Noble  which has a once a month poetry series run by Frank Chambers. This month the feature was Robin Sampson of  Wednesday Night Poetry, Shijin and editor of  Poetry Liner Notes, She gave a nice tight reading,  with a well-planned set that  seemed to have something of an emotional arc. It was smoothly executed with no paper rattling, no indecision, no apologies.  Well done.  Read some of her short poems in Bent Pin:

 Loom     Staring Back    Tangible Rain    
The Christmas Letter Life    The Sentence    Throw It To The Wind

-- Mar Walker

Tinnitus - these ubiquitous bells

This quiet morning, with a low sun and odd grey sky, I clearly hear the roar of highway and also a ninth chord of bells inside my head.

For many years I've had a common and incurable phenomenon known as tinnitus - which is a ringing sound in your ears, often related to hearing loss, blood pressure, allergies, or sometimes brought on by dozens of different medications.

I think of it as the hum of the universe. I guess more properly it is the hum of the "innerverse."  I find it comforting to  know everything is circulating and my inner machineries are on with their usual whirl .  On most days  this ever-present accompaniment fades to the background, becomes unnoticed. Today I am noticing it more than usual, though  I don't find it unpleasant.

Not everyone is amused by this malady. It drives some people crazy and they go to great lengths to find a cause and to mitigate the sound, sometimes with electronic devices that make still more static sounds. For me, as for many, the cause is unknown.

It's funny how what one person finds comforting, drives another to distraction. Life is like that I guess, what with all the little preferences we hold.

The photo is a reflection of a patron at the Blue Colony Diner in Newtown. The overall effect of each tiny light, with its reflection in the double-paine glass, reminded me a little of the layered ringing sound. She also appears to be covering an ear.

Comments are welcome.

-- Mar Walker

"Science is the poetry of reality" - from Symphony of Science

Another tuneful statement from Symphony of Science.com:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cd36WJ79z4&w=560&h=349]

Securities commission goes after "psychic" investment counselor forfraud

Some things are just too far out to be believed. Yet always someone believes them.....   Here is a link to a story on a National Public Radio blog, about the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) going after a self-declared "psychic" investment advisor for fraud.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/03/sec_sues_psychic_for_securitie.html

Poet Laurel Peterson at Blue Z

Poet, and Norwalk Community College professor Laurel S. Peterson featured for the Wednesday Night Poetry Series last week.  During her reading, at one point I laughed so hard I lost my grip on my coffee cup which fell to the floor creating a lake of coffee.  It was during a poem where she was describing various things she contemplated doing to other women who pursued her husband....   I imagine she also is a fierce defender of battered or abused women - she is a co-founder of the Fairfield County Women’s Center. She also started the  women’s studies program at the college. Her chapbook, "That's the Way Music Sounds,"   from Finishing Line Press (July 2009) is available through Amazon.

Visit her webpage at http://www.laurelpeterson.com/  where you can read a few of her poems.

-- Mar Walker