New Years Eve Crazy & Sawaya's Art of the Brick

Love this red fellow on the right who is busy rebuilding himself as we all hope to do each New Year's. And the one below who is witnessing something from behind his grey curtain, a new view that makes him gasp - we don't know why.

The images are LEGO sculptures I viewed in the Vero Beach Art Museum in November. The show was called "Art of the Brick," and the creator is American artist Nathan Sawaya. All are made from LEGOs.  He is interviewed in the documentary LEGOS, the Brickumentary, which is actually quiet an odd and interesting film.

Don't quite know what to hope for the world in the coming year. The property of crazy expands with each passing day. I don't know that it's getting larger though. Might be diffusion. Maybe it's just spreading out which will have the effect of dilution. Maybe. Or it might be infection. Ah well.

Have already watched several sets of glitzy techno-tainment fireworks with totally unappealingly overproduced music tying it all together. From several different countries. Is there just one school of fireworks showmanship in all the earth? Probably taught at Neilson Ratings. Ha ha. Actually I really liked the fireworks just not the music they are saddled with....

Anyway, happy new year. It's now 2 am. I was supposed to go somewhere at 11PM to ring in the year. Off to a questionable start.  But then the future always is an open question isn't it. (Determinists you are excluded from this thought) Ting-a-ling.

Happy 4th to all, everywhere

Heat, sunshine, shade, AC, PC, cat, (and cat hair), raspberries, lime-ginger pasta salad, distant barking of fireworks somewhere.... Someone is drawing. Someone is doing a crossword puzzle.

We are so lucky to be alive. To have food, quiet, electricity enough for now.

Thankful to everyone and to no one in particular for this day - to history, fate, and especially to those who have endeavored over the years, to keep separate religious dictates and political power in this country.

SONG: Elves On Expresso! (a fractured Xmas song)

Elves on expresso! was my Facebook status on Dec. 23rd. Someone commented that it sounded like a song title. So I agreed and wrote the song. 

ELVES ON EXPRESSO
- mad mar writes a new song on Dec 23, 2011

1) Kids are getting greedy
shopping lists are getting dense.
Everyone's fretting and getting tense.
Break out the eggnog, break out the rum,
when they ask you what you want
just play dumb dumb dumb because
the ELVES are ON EXPRESSO
OH NO they're over the top
ELVES ON EXPRESSO
NO NO NO
they just can not stop!

2) The sesason is unreason, expectations and illusion
buying, wrapping eating, salesmen in collusion.
Kids are full of GIMMES. Bills are all unpaid
parents under misletoe hoping to get ___ (you know!)
ELVES ON EXPRESSO
OH NO they're over the top
ELVES ON EXPRESSO
NO NO NO
they just can not stop!

3) So The relatives are coming, so the bank will soon foreclose
put on your santa hat and sparkly reindeer pantyhose
sweep out those killer dustballs, let that brick of fruitcake shine
you could always lock the door and drink holiday wine!
the ELVES are ON EXPRESSO
OH NO they're over the top\
ELVES ON EXPRESSO
NO NO NO
they just can not stop!!

My Pathetic Holiday: CHRISTMAS BE GONE!

Christmas is over and I for one am glad. I'm not so much grinchy, as totally irreligiously flummoxed by a season I find artificial and demanding.

To move things along next year,  I want to invent a product called Christmas-Be-Gone.  Perhaps an aerosol spray or tins of loose scrub powder.  Not sure what the fragrance would be.  And it certainly couldn't be guaranteed since Christmas is like the damn flu and return:s each year.  I'd like it to be a product you could spray around the house and no one would bring you awkward presents or heart-burn cookies or worse insist you visit a church.  That shouldn't stop us from visiting each other or enjoying the seasonal lights, the concerts, or the beauties of winter.  ---- BUT if only it would stop me from revisiting the follies of gift-giving disasters past. Take this year's: which I could easily title "My Pathetic Christmas Day."

This year Maize declined to have people in and instead asked for a particular present  -  a trip to the Mohegan Sun on Christmas day.  Not for a show, just for a little slot machine action.  It's not my idea of fun, but she doesn't drive, and my gift then, is to take her there and back which is two plus hours each way.

Christmas morning came under a dead-pan sky and we were on the road. A planned stop at O'Rourke's in Middletown was kiboshed by the fact they were not open, or not open for breakfast at any rate. So we just drove on.  We arrived, had sweetish food-court muffins and java, then Mazie sat with the slots and I sat reading a book, 3rd Degree from the Woman's Murder Club Series by James Patterson. I felt it was pure formula pulp. The characters seemed flat and the prose sort of blah. (I couldn't get the voice of the TV  actress who played the lead character out of my head and I think that was problematic somehow, oh well.)

Then after an hour and a half Mazie abruptly announced she wanted to go home right away and didn't want to stop until we got there. (It might be she was out of sorts from eating Xmas cookies the evening before.)  On the way back I got a bit lost (flummoxed again) used the gps which routed me some odd way of just highway driving.  When we got home, naturally I felt compelled to finish the book I wasn't enjoying. And so it was  I gave a dud of a present on a dud of a day, and ended up reading a dud of a book (at least for me), and driving for 5 hours mostly on highways.  We decided it was not a plan we will ever repeat on any subsequent holiday.

Bring on the middle of January.

Gift-mas has arrived at the Danbury Mall

Oh come on! It's not even Thanksgiving yet!  Halloween is barely over and Santa is red-clad and ready for sales! He's already frightening shy children at the mall, and taking wish lists as the stores hope for some business after a quite few years of bleak. This child looked a bit reluctant to even look at Santa. These photos were taken yesterday, November 10th. This is surely the earliest sighting I can recall.  The mall however, despite seasonal decor, was pretty empty, and this was the only visitor for Santa, there was no line. Maybe he was a test run.....

Poetry in disguise at Halloween party

Pictured above, are the crazy folks at the annual Halloween thing at Wednesday Night Poetry,  missing are Faith, (a devil) Victoria, (a pizza delivery girl with a pizza) Ernie in a bandana with a pirate spyglass. And T.G. as herself, with Tess, as herself.  We can't forget Tess. I had 'em wondering, including Tess who barked at me in my head-covering Egor mask, I tried to talk very low pitchwise, and sit not like myself, no leg crossing or sitting on my feet.  The whole bit  seemed to upset Tess no end - the cues were too confusing I guess. Poor puppy.  

I read a short spoof of a poem in my ultra low-pitch, threatening Egor style:

Mouse traps
Hickory Dickory Dock
Little mousie ran up the clock
The clock struck one
And Mousie did run and run
until she was done dun  da dun, dun da dun da dun da dun

Attack of the pie brigade

Thanksgiving goes from one extreem to another. There might be 35 people or just one. All you need is a semblence of a meal eaten with appreciation.

In 2007 and 2008, my mom and I broke with tradition and went to a local diner for our meal. This year my cousin who had moved to PA has moved back here, and one of my mothers sisters has moved back from Florida. My cousin's sons and their families were not visiting this year. (One is overseas, the other is on the West Coast.) So it was a small crowd and a meal featuring some high fat but really delicious food. Our gathering including five actual relatives and three folks the cousins invited who are not relatives. One of them is Chef Johnny who deboned the bird and stuffed it with chestnut sausage stuffing. My cousin's husband basted it with brandy and cooked it on a grill outside. Oh my. Chef Johnny spiced up mashed sweet potatoes and doused green-beans with almonds and amaretto.  My family always fears there will not be enough, and so there is always WAY too much. When one is trying to avoid cholesterol  - it seems almost an assault to sit with a mousse pie to your left, cream pie to your right, etc etc. The following video is an account of dessert.

Christmas Prep: The Whirl, the Blur, the Pause, the STRESS!!

Here is a link to this column, posted as text on this blog a few years ago

Thanksgiving feast at Elmer's Diner - AAA+

I started this post but it was really hard to write considering a friend had died on Monday afternoon. So finally a week later I am posting it on its original date.....

My family on my mom's side always had a big gathering on Thanksgiving. For me, thanksgiving used to mean driving a half hour or more to a crowded busy place full of a dozen warm gabby relatives. Aunt Pearl always cooked a giant bird, the kitchen would humm with activity, the table was stocked with tons of food, 8 different impossible-to-resist desserts, a long day of eating and talking and family opinions. Often rapid fire conversation, feeling too full, and being sickishly on the verge of a headache.

Over the years most have moved far away or died. Mom says she doesn't want to travel on a holiday weekend, nor does she want to be invited to well-meaning friends family dinners. She doesn't want to cook nor eat MY cooking.. (No one could blame her for that...)

SO - Last year we went to a new diner in town - Elmer's. (There is a long post on this blog about it...) This year, despite invites from relatives in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we went to Elmer's again. Except we decided we would have what we wanted instead of the requisite Turkey Dinner that we were supposed to eat. So mom had salmon and I had a chicken & mushroom dish made with my favorite wine Merlot. The food was great and we didn't have to do the dishes!

The staff is very friendly at Elmer's and we were very well attended. Our waitress even ran outside after the meal because mom had left her hat in the booth.

So then, after, we went to the brand new dollar store open for the first time that day. A mom bought a few bargains, then set her money down on the moving belt in this brand new store and the bill slipped between the belt and the counter and disapeared leaving everyone gasping and full of consternation. They were very nice and polite and sent mom off with her change. After I got her situated in the car, I went back and they were taking the panel to the counter off and a man reached his hand up and over something there and retrieved the bill. WHEW!

Too much excitement!

My Halloween costume this year....

This is how I answered the door this year. The thing on my head is black furry ear muffs that hold the dime store wig in place. In the front window we had a big "BOO" with orange lights!.  I had the door cracked open with Oggi dog on guard. Erie Thermin music was playing with its weird moans and slides.  It's eight thirty and we've had over thirty kids and attendent moms and dads. I love Halloween!

It's nine pm and we have had 38 tricker-treaters. We are out of treats and the lights are out.

 It's good to take off this wig...

My cat and dog are settling down now that the  weird music is finally off....

The surreal state of late

Everything goes a different way than anticipated. Usually later. With all my writing about late publications, I am late too, so late in so many ways.

Hope you all had a satisfactory New Year's eve. Old acquaintences have an annual party, and this year I was thinking I would go. Looked up from working too late. I was trying to get the magazine out, and at the same time upload stuff to a new youtube channel my boss created.  This divided flipping continued long into the night.

Some notes of the evening:


• Bent Pin is going to be a week late due to software glitches, ticks and odd computer behaviors  and me. I don't charge for Bent Pin though. I am tired and am spending way more time than I want on computer woe. My brain is late.

• After midnight on Jan 1 around 2:45 or so, I heard something outside and looked out to see what it was - the DANBURY NEWS TIMES HAD ARRIVED EARLY ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE NEW YEAR!

• Had a reasonable view of the fireworks out that window earlier in the evening. Pretty colorful. Saw the little dipper between the clouds while walking the dog tonight.

• Did I make any resolutions? uhhhh. My resolutions are going to be late also. I can't figure out what to resolve. EXCEPT MAYBE THIS I resolve to do more real things and fewer unnecessary cyber things. Right now I am going to do something very real - I am going to sleep.

The pre-christmas bleak

The holidays are sure a time of greatly varying mental states. Some of it is very sweet, On the other had there are the choking bitters. Thanksgiving starts the Christmas season. Mostly I could live without a lot of the Christmas doings. I like the music and the pretty lights. Gifting is for the birds though.

My friend Rich just left. He is usually a veritable Christmas elf. But he has recently lost his job, his car, his apartment and his dog in the span of three or four months. Yet somehow he borrowed a car from his sister-in-law to drive down from Brattleboro on the spur of the moment to visit a few folks he knows down here. He was subdued today. Probably needing to be near people, and remembering better times.

He is lucky that he has a brother with a cabin and so he has a roof over his head for a while. I am another nar do well that is lucky to have a roof.

This past weekend I have been watching Christmas specials which I cannot believe are already on the air. I get more melancholy with each one. A couple of weeks after Christmas all this heart-warming stuff evaporates leaving a crop of crime shows in its stead.

For now though, It seems though, that when you feel sad, it's best just to feel it. Never run from it or try to drown it. If it's not clinical Just suffer through. If you feel each thing as it comes, it doesn't come back to haunt you later.

merry.

Thankful? Yup! Thankful the diner was open!!!

For the very first time this year, my mother and I celebrated our Thanksgiving in a diner. Not a fancy restaurant but a simple humble diner.

She is almost 80 now and has never once eaten out on Thanksgiving - until this year. In the old days sometimes there were 30 people from Mom's side of the family who arrived for this holiday meal at her sister Pearl's house. Later it was  her daughter, my cousin Linda who made the meal.

Things change though. Some relatives moved, died, grew up, became estranged. My father died in 1984. In the last few years, Thanksgiving has been smaller. With a cousin or two and their children, either been at mom's, or at my cousin Denise's house near Hartford.

This year, Denise went to see her grand-babies in PA, with whom she is utterly obsessed. Their mom is prego again and sickish, not fit to travel. Dense and her husband passed through yesterday on their way to the grandbaby palace. They stopped here for lunch. we had ham and cheese and bagels. But that left Mom and I all on our own for THE meal on Thursday.

Somethings never change - nobody ever suggests that I cook anything. (Prudent choice...) So, today we went to Elmer's Dinner. She had the turkey special with cream of Turkey soup, I had the turkey special with a salad. It came with mashed potatoes, apple stuffing, candied yams, greenbeans and carrots, coffee, and pudding. They cooked it and took away the dirty dishes.

When we eat with the family there are six or seven deserts, and left-overs for weeks - months if you count the freezer! Thanksgiving is normally a caloric high-fat disaster. NOT THIS YEAR. We had a successfully moderate day foodwise. We didn't eat the potatoes, scrapped off the gravy. I did enjoy the apple stuffing and the pudding. The salad was great too. The Turkey was tender and hot and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

In the parking lot on our way out, we passed a family arriving for their meal - a middle-aged husband and wife, a wild ten-year old child, and an elderly couple. The older gent was a bit wobbly, grey-headed and all dapper in a black and white modern art sweater and sun glasses, but his wife looked out of it, and was maneuvered deftly into a wheel chair. Life does have its necessities. So today, I am thankful for diners.

LIFE itself is reason and meaning enough for anyone

A version of this column of mine appeared in January of 1994 in the Ridgefield Press.

There is a strange nocturnal tendency at the end of the year. The whirl of Christmas celebrations complete, children in bed, we sit exhausted amid holiday debris. We catch our breath, count our toes and our debts. By the tree’s schmaltzy twinkle, we measure the weight of the passing year and ponder the meaning of our lives.


Apparently weighty matters ripen more rapidly after dark. Only a few moments ago, with eyes clamped determinedly shut, mind still in the spin cycle, I restlessly stretched out my right arm, As I did so an odd intruding thought crowded out the annual clamor of self-assessment.

How smooth, that movement of arm; how incredible and improbable the sensations of each muscle moving, perfectly coordinated and alive... I sat straight up in bed. How strange, how amazing, I thought every human being over all the Earth, whatever language, religion or economic reality, every one of them partakes in this same phenomenon - life.

We have life; we are life; yet we spend life arguing about what life is. We are alive yet we can’t agree on life’s cause or goal.

Over centuries, humanity has fermented a primordial sea of argument. Ideas and needs that simmer like soup, boiling over often into political and personal violence. Despite the beauty of  each season, despite the sincerity of our endeavors, despite our common aliveness, we have never once agreed on the scheme of things. But we carry on anyway. Each year people fall in love. Children are born. New projects begin. The status quo decays. Revolutions are launched. Ideas take hold. Countries are founded, technologies invented, branches of knowledge expanded, fallacies debunked, empire disassembled. New fallacies, new empires arise.

Apparently life itself, full of vigor and promise, is enough to work with, this life which contains its own wordless philosophies, which is astonishing - both to philosophers who ponder it and scientists who study its mecahnisms.

And being alive is like tasting good soup. No amount of probing the roster of ingredients, no amount of pleading with an imagined chef or  picturing vegetables being chopped, no amount of accurate measurement, timing, skimming or stirring -- none of these will convey the wonder of savoring a single spoonful.

Whatever life’s cause - each moment is precious, complex, intricate. This is true whether there is one loving god, an army of indifferent gods or no god at all. It is true whether there are angels and archangels, a living gaia, a sentient universe or only DNA struggling for survival in chaotic cycles of energy and time. None of these concepts alters the immediate reality of my arm. Or your arm. Or my brain or your brain. Or the cacophony of our conscious minds swirling with divergent and conflicting thought every hour of the night and day.

As an experiment, observe yourself inwardly for a moment. Mentally slip thought the side door. Stand just out side your stream of thought and watch the flow. Listen to your heart beating, to the steady rhythm of your breathing. Notice the faint odors of familiar things without labeling them or thinking about them, simply be them all. You are them all already. It sounds simple, inane even. But this process of simply observing reveals the rich texture of our existence.

Perhaps, as life is what we have in common, we might in the new year contemplate and celebrate the life inherent in our competing arguments. this network of vigorous, argumentative (letter-to-the-editor-writing) life -- over all the Earth and anywhere else it night be found -- this life itself is reason and meaning enough for a thousand philosophers.

So live every day of this new year. Remember the soup. Some days may be nourishing and hearty. Some may be watery and bitter. Whatever life’s taste, savor every second.

Oil Pastel: Overwhelmed

For some of us, holidays feel a lot like this sketch — we sit quietly while other folks race around acting crazy, trying to match some past holiday ideal. It's done in oil pastel on a 5 by 7 inch index card. (low buget materials.) For me, this year was a relatively good holiday, less stress. Today is work day though, with more than enough stress for everyone.

Another Christmas, Another Religious War

It's Christmas morning and a new religious war is afoot between Christians in Ethiopia and Muslims in Somalia. Religion all around seems more a cause of war than a source of comfort. This photo is one not used for a story I did recently on Hanukah. A Reformed Congregation Rabbi, a warm and caring person and a great interviewe, is reflecting on and reflected in a display-case of seasonal items. Hanukah celebrates the 're-taking' and re-dedication of the Temple by the Maccabees -- who mounted what this Rabbi called 'guerrilla warfare' to do so. Is there any religion with a truly peaceful history? I doubt it, since religion is the invention of mankind, and man is a dangerous and aggressive animal. (Women I do not exclude you here....) We are an animal species full of loving kindness and also full of savage craft. Selah.

XMAS - The whirl, the blur, the pause, the peace

by M. M. Walker
(This Christmas column of mine ran in two small newspaper quite a few years ago. It's also been posted on my website.)

The Christmas holiday comes in so many subtle flavors. What does Christmastime mean to you?

Snow, twinkle lights, the scent of pine boughs, mistletoe, mulled cider, spiced eggnog, apple wood on the fire... Family caring, togetherness, visitors, carols, candlelight services, Christmas parades, children's smiles, warm fuzzy feelings about goodness in the world, hope... Tree chopping, trimming, broken ornaments crunching underfoot, getting the lights right, the tinsel straight, the cat/dog/baby tipping the tree... Shopping, fretting, having no money, worrying they won't like it, that it's not good enough, wrapping, scotch tape stuck on your shoes, on the cat...

Rushing, children's demands, store after store after store, wrapping, wishing it were over, charging it with regrets, refusing to admit to the kids/neighbors/ in-laws/your mother that we can't afford it, and paying for it next year at 18 and a half percent... Crowded grocery stores chopping vegetables, raw cookie dough and lumpy gravy, eating too much, or not having enough to eat, not having enough to give, getting a handout and hating it... Loneliness, wishing you had somewhere to go or someone special, wishing you didn't have to go, wishing the company would just go home... Desperately missing people who are not around -- who moved, stayed behind, who deserted or simply died, who linger in vivid memory of past Christmas...

House cleaning -- before and after, irrelevant preparations, celebrations followed by aching weariness and stomach pains because you're in debt... Wishing just once he'd wash dishes instead of buying cologne, self-pity, reminiscing, reverie, foolhardiness, cheer, remorse... The make-it or break-it retail season, profits or maybe losses, precarious prosperity vs chapter 11, lasting til summer vs letting people go in January. Knowing you'll have to and hating it.. Bills, bickering, more bills, endless Charlie Brown specials, meaningless, fleeting, insincere budget-busting sentimentality...

WAIT JUST A MINUTE HERE!

Whoever you are, however good or bad it is for you this year, go right now, this minute, find a someone you care about and give them a hug, because that's the thing that will get you through. And if there isn't a friend or relative, or acquaintance that you care about, at least say something friendly and polite to the very next person you see. If you're home alone, call someone up and wish them well. It's a start.

And if you haven't got any gifts to give, remember that the gift-giving part of Christmas, like the evergreen tree, is just a good old pagan tradition. The Christmas part is where the diety gave something to men. If you are a christian of whatever variety, that's the real meaning of Christmas. And while you're getting glassy-eyed with religious exultation, just remember that us atheists, pagans, cynics, n'er-do-wells and even those democrats and republicans -- they, we all need hugs too.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.