bad day down on the farm

What a horrible day for everyone involved here. my 86 year old aunt (visiting from Florida) fell early this morning and as it turned out - broke both knees as we were getting ready to leave for Foxwoods. My aunt is now off her feet for eight weeks. Her daughter spent the entire day with her at the emergency room. And Maisy, instead of a fun day at the casino, or having a party or going to dinner for her 80th, we have spent the day having high blood pressure while awaiting news about my aunt. Oh yes - fabulous day. Move over Friday the 13th.

Military cheating soldiers out of rightful help

Nation Magazine has estimated that the Military is saving around $8 billion dollars. You might think that they are economizing by getting a deal on equipment. NOT. They are cheating soldiers who have served them well. They are discharging long term soldiers for so called pre-existing mental disorders - disorders not discovered until after ten or twelve years of service. Ten or twelve years that included repeated mental health screenings that found nothing wrong. If not for mental defect, these men are discharged for misconduct when they fall apart with untreated Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or for Traumatic Brain Injury. Once they are discharged not only do they not get the help they need for treatment - THEY ARE FORCED TO PAYBACK RE-ENLISTMENT BONUSES somethings over $10,000 dollars. Many of these soldiers asked for help, but their requests were denied.

What kind of country have we become? We ask men to give their lives to a trumped up war, then throw them away like used cars when maintenance costs loom.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/424/soldiers-ptsd.html

Inverse Origami - a poem from Inverse Origami

Instructions for a Timed, Juried Performance:
(hear the author read this poem)

Be sure to
to unfold yourself
as the music begins
or the universe

will unfold another like you
less, perhaps, or more
or in another key
but similar enough.

Chaos conjures you
out of the void
can conjure an army
of you if need be

like you, less, or more
but not you not quite you
not you in all your intricate detail.
You've come this far - unfold.

Expedite.
Don't make them call you twice:
flatten out the soul
until geometry recedes

and winds roar
through you the code
written there
time's sweeping hand.

Unfold before the shredder,
before the trashman turns you on end
before the recycle plant
dissolves you to pulp

again.

---

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

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Battling entropy - with cat watching....

The forces for chaos are all around me in piles. My cat, ever seeking a better vantage point from which to observe, knocks over the piles. The piles mingle into heaps. Old mail. scraps of drawings, poems. Today I am a Klingon swinging a broom - sorting and barbarically imposing order onto my chaotic belongings which mutter to me of memories and past plans gone awry.

Saxofestivus - crazy name, wild sounds

Yes, Sunday night, a friend, Anne Marie Marra and I attended Saxofestivus – a concert of saxophone quartets at Western Connecticut State University. We went because it was close, and cheap. The press release on the college web page said the event was free, although a sign at the door suggested a $5 donation.

Considering all the pricy alternatives – we thought it might be a hoot to hear a bunch of saxophones playing in their brassy way. We sat in the back in case it wasn’t – so we could sneak out. But we didn’t sneak out. We stayed to the end and clapped for every round because it was worth clapping for….. Unlike a quite a few in the audience – we were not family to any of the players, nor fellow students at WCSU, but were just a couple of low budget boobs out for a little tune to tap a toe to…..

There were four student quartets that played – and the concert ended with a set by the first quartet, who ( I think) were upper classmen or at least the most experienced players of the evening. Who knew four saxophones at once would be so lush? The program ran the gamut from Bach to Twentieth Century music, and strayed once over into pop. All in all – the quality was very good. Well done.

patchwork - a crazy life...

I think my life has been something of a patchwork like the colors on this sculpture. It's been an extended juggling event. Still, I have dropped a lot of plates over 5 decades. You can't go back. You have to start from where you are and figure how to go forward with joy. Selah and hi ho!

This is one of my small scale sculptures. It's gessoed, air-dry clay with oil paints on the surface over the gesso. It was not meant to be provocative at all, just a dramatic pose. There is a bit of gloss medium on top of it all as well.

Thoughts after a funeral - poem from Inverse Origami

I drift east of the moon,
a vapor dispersing,
a dimension perpendicular to noon.

Call to me.
Tend me with great remorse.
I am wrapped in death's granite skin.

I have become
an over-the-counter medication
encapsulating formaldehyde in a time-release formula.

Call to me.
I will answer
with silence, in temporal immobility.

I am less
than a breeze,
a nuance of dark matter falling to a black hole of being,

building
to a critical mass...
Will I shriek into nova after half a billion years?

---

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

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