Conversation Styles Differ

Hot Air

Conversation Styles Differ .... Well that's an understatement. For some, conversation is a stream-of-thought run-on-sentence without punctuation or paragraph marks. Do you talk incessantly in ever widening circles as a way of thinking out loud? As a self-soothing smoke screen to fill up the space between you and another person? If so, this is written for you.

Some other people (including me), need to breathe and have silences in a conversation. We need a meaningful deep pause to collect our thoughts and share or to respond to a speaker. If there are no silences then we will just let the speaker go on and on.

I am listening, but I might be four sentences behind your rapid speech, thinking that what you said doesn't make any sense, seems out of proportion, relies on circular reasoning or a 'straw-man' argument, or that there are facts you mentioned which were improvised out of thin air. Or that this is the 3rd time you said the same thing. Sometimes I see an assumption you have made about me which is upsetting.

But you are six or seven paragraphs ahead of me now, chatting on all by yourself, making more statements that make no sense. So I think - there are so many disparities in this that it's pointless to bring it up any of them - so I let you go on and on and on even though I am beginning to feel beleaguered, buried under all the words.

And you wont find out for weeks that that my ex-husband is dead, or that I locked myself out last night at midnight and had to climb in through the window. At some point I might seem to be getting tense. I might quite suddenly say - "let's change the subject." or "I have to go now." I might quite suddenly, vigorously object to the last thing you said -- but the arc of it is this:

You have created a lengthy machine gun attack of words, and I have finally responded by running into an underground bunker and closing the door.

DRAWING: from a writing exercise

I once belonged to a poetry writing group or two. This side-long looking doodle is what resulted while words for a writing exercise were being chosen. Yes, she is quite asymmetrical with hair askew -- and I don't care..... Though I often digitally clean up these little drawings, this one is just as exists in my little book of paper.

Originally posted (and in the present tense) on 8/15/2010

A certain lack of something

This was how I felt before I adopted my three kitties.

Weathered,
patched with odd bits,
a jumbled collection
re-assembled without instructions,
left outside everything to rust away.

I carry on though. Not so sure. Positive but aware of reality. Carrying memories. And a tiny spark of hope.


originally posted 8/16/2016

Art: where the broken wings fly after all

Originally posted April 4, 2008. Thought I'd haul it up here again and update it a bit to remind me.

Every person has beauty and value. Some have other unsavory aspects which obscure the beauty and value, but it's there.

Some of us are eccentric, obviously old, ridiculously odd, too fat, too thin or perhaps misshapen or unpleasant or unreliable. Some folks, though beautiful, are misshapen in ways more difficult to see - disfigurement by the constant prejudgement of others, where every word was twisted, shaded, weighted and measured against some mythical standard of perfection. Or by constant criticism during childhood where every flaw was carved up like a roast repeatedly. Or by constant underserved praise and by life passages bought and paid for by blood money rather than earned. This unhappy learning is latter replayed on others.

Sometimes people find it really difficult to get past it all. Some are like moths that have emerged from the cocoon in a jar that was too small. (See my pencil drawing above) Their wings unfolded only midway and are forever bent. Yet even in this there can be value.

Like many other resources, the past can be transformed. Rather than repeat it, and live it out again and again, rather than turn the bitter criticism or the too clever manipulation on others or measuring them against an imagined perfection, or insulting them for dramatic effect (sounds familiar in the current political scene) -- the best use of the past is to render it down into art. (Not the so called Art of the Deal,  but art in the expansive sense - whether literary, musical, visual, theatrical etc.) In that way it is an offering, and something is given to world.

It doesn't even matter if the world accepts it. It is the making of it, and perhaps the offering of it, that heals in a way that golden toilet seats and hair implants never can.

- Mar  Walker

April 2016 Poem A Day #6 - Painting a LIfe Unfinished

Painting a life

Unfinished for decades,
a women in jeans sits in a chair
naturally with a black cat on the sill nearby.
Behind her through big windows are
the city and the sea, with a path to each.
On her right a guitar in a stand,
on her left a table full of writings.
She sits in the chair
faceless, eyes cast down
uncertain, even as the painter is not certain
how this will play out, what happens next.

                           --Mar (Mistryel) Walker




The prompt today is to write a poem from a work of art  The work choose is one of my own.

"For today’s prompt, write an ekphrastic poem. An ekphrastic poem is a poem inspired by art. You can pick your own favorite piece of art if you wish. Or you can use one of the examples [provided in Robert Lee Brewer's original post.]"

Busy No 2 at SCAN this week

Busy No 2: (on the bottom right) is on display at SCAN this week at the library. Here it is nicely grouped with two other works. I am thrilled they took it. It has never actually been shown before....

How to ruin an unfinished painting

This is the tale of how an unfinished painting with possibilities turned in to a waste of paint, kitsch and silly. Instead of throwing in the trash I put it on display. Silly me.  It's an oil painting of mine (currently named pajama party) that started out as a village in the mountains with a clock tower:

I just felt it need something. So when there was a call for paintings after Chagal I added some floating people. See below, for the three floaters.

Then I thought the clock tower had to go, then a friend insisted  I needed to take out the bottom figure - and I thought she was right... so I did but then
I had a dilemma - it really needed something else but I had no idea what.   And it sat like this for a long time.  Then the wonderful eccentrics and the local coffee shop put out a call for unicorn paintings for a summer show. One night after I had gone to bed - I sat bolt upright, went to the painting and put in the unicorn in white. Added the colors and the pajamas the next day.  I don't know. It's tacky. But somehow it works.  At least that is what I think now.....  When it comes home from the unicorn show - who knows what might happen to it... perhaps the circular file.....
AND:
Here it is on the wall at the unicorn show:

Ubiquitous entropy

Summer seems an odd backdrop for thinking about fall, but entropy is on my mind today. Ordered systems tend toward disarray. Everything that grows also harbors a limit of time, energy, health, of life itself. Nature ferments a slow cycle of wax and wane. These days, this is is not a popular thought. Yet, everything is cyclic, planets, plants, even people and ways of thinking about the world. All things bloom and wither. Things change in the world and in us. The interior world does not follow a smooth logical trajectory upward anymore than the exterior world does. Oceans rise. Rivers dry up. Things that are whole fall into parts. Things that have grown crumble into compost. That which crumbles doesn't permanently return. Something new might grow. And even in barren dry soil, a desert might offer it's subtle beauties. Selah.

The above picture I made in an online browser program. I was thinking about fall.

A view of land, water, sky

This new work was created entirely in browser-based programs, including DeviantArt Muro and Google+ Creative Kit. This work was inspired by a landscape workshop I went to last night. It was given at SCAN by James Grabowski - whose playful nonchalant approach prompted me to experiment more freely with color in the context of this landscape. All rights reserved.

Emerging from something or other

This morning's doodling. Made using Pixlr.com then finessed using the creative kit on Google+

First Layer: Chromebook as canvas

This is the first layer of a new painting I've started -  just a doodle so far really, and it's just black and white, though that will change. The canvas is the white cover on my Chromebook. Okay I am nuts. I was admiring some of the laptop covers I saw which are sold on various sites around the web. They seemed too pricey though - I thought it would be easier and cheaper just to paint the thing itself. Call me crazy, (or reclusive, awkwardly antisocial in many cases. )

I used an inexpensive acrylic paint in a squeeze bottle. I only have black  right now, so when I get more colors I will add new layers and post a photo of each as I go along.

More drawings, this time a life drawing

This is quite a few years old - something on paper. It might even be from a drawing class at Western Ct State U.  That was several decades ago. Life drawing is term used for drawing from a live model. If you have never tried it - it's really not what you might think. While working you find you are following the relation of line, form, volume, and contours receding into other contours. Really, the model becomes a human landscape or a still-life.

Since that time I've also done clay sculpture from a model during classes with Janice Mauro and with Alexander Shundi, among others.

I am quite behind on my posting.

Gee, I wonder if my blog will get a PG rating now... hmmm.  Looks like a human being. Of course human beings do need parental guidance. At least for a while.... haha.

Cubist-like, flattened? Man with a dog, bone, & cigarette

I was shooting for flatness, lines with no heft, or volume, depiction in two dimensions without the illusion of mass, when I drew this little shot - quite a few years ago. A reclining man is  smoking a cigarette, while making a dog jump up for a bone.  It seems like a summertime drawing, maybe after a picnic. I really like the feel of the chair but that may be because it is the only thing with any discernible three dimensional form.  I had been looking at a lot of Picasso but certainly this is not quite that either. The actual drawing has a crease down the middle. You can still see it a bit.

More abstracts: Purple Neon Night

This composition makes me think of unexpected chaos at night in New York City.  I like all the reds, purples, and dark brooding smoky blues, the hazy blackish green on the edges. It seems noisy, exciting, yet it's too much and the viewer is hiding. I am not sure what I am making when I do this sort of work. I just keep adding and tweaking until I am satisfied with the effect.

More circles in pastel

Android artwork:

More phone art

Woohoo!  More phone compositions. Different phone this time. Virgin Mobile. Prepaid. No contract. I sold the iphone and ditched ATT. I had 4000 plus rollover minutes, paid for 450 minutes a month I never used, and was starving for data.  Oh well. On the bright side, I'm paying half the bill and now am getting mostly data and only paying for 300 minutes a month i won't use.  I don't miss iOS at all even though I'm only on Froyo Android. Made with a free version of the MagicDoodle app. Something new everyday.....

Sketch: an extended doodle

Sometimes the hands are busy and the mind is doing something else. Not sure who these folks are, or what kind of odd fairy tale scenario is going on here. I guess its a visual dream sequence. I was watching the idiot box, while doodling with a mechanical pencil and a black bic pen on an 8x11 sheet of light grey card stock. I digitally faded the grey to white.  I kind of like the result. It might be the plan for a painting.

Seeing through the haze of actions and reactions

This digital abstract represents something for me today, namely - how hard it is sort through what is actually happening between humans.  Sometimes a person wants something from you - but it isn't obvious what that is. Sometimes you answer a question with what you think is your fairly simple reaction and step out into a mine field of replies.

It's hard to know what to make of it all. It feels like this picture, as if you were trying hard to see the simple line drawing or pattern through all this colorful and busy fog.

And in this technological world, sometimes technology allows people access to you at all hours, in a way someone you weren't particularly close to would never have had only a decade ago. Electronic communications can arrive when you are tired or half asleep or ill. They might seem to alternate between mild friendliness and something bordering on an aggressive insistence.  I have to learn not to check my mail so much and not to reply to email after say, 10pm. or before 8am. I really have to learn that. Like I had to learn not to pick up the phone and let it roll to the answering machine so I can deal with whatever it is at a later time when I have recently counted all my marbles and know where they are located.

Technology can also complicate things. Right under the "To" field in Google's webmail there is a line that says "Send also to:" which is followed by a list of people you might often email at the same time as you email the address in the "To" box.  If you have an oversensitive trackpad on your laptop (as I have on my Chromebook), you might hover a fraction of a second too long on the way to the Send button and find you've wisked an extra recipient into the "To" box.  Ah well. The kaffuffle is on - it always is I guess. Maybe life is just an extended kaffuffle.  hmmm.

The picture was created and edited on a phone, and then in enhanced Picnik back when that was available.

Abstract made in web-based browser programs

It's Xmas eve and the days are moving fast toward years end.
This picture was begun while sitting at Molten Java in Bethel this past Wednesday night. I connected to the web over the wifi and usedg Deviant Art Muro to make a few sketches. This was further processed later in Picnik

Sun, blood and darkness - a digital pic

Title:  Sun, blood and darkness. This digital abstract bit was originally an MS Paint file. It's last facelift was in Picnik. I have a feeling this little file should actually be big, wall-sized like a Pollack. If I could print it out onto canvas, I'd have some extra brush work to add since this file is small.

There is this sporadic, insistant intermingling going on in this picture. of the red and yellow, of the beige and black. For me it bespeaks the relentless stippling of ideas and culture. There is always disturbance and spillage.