15 Books that stayed with me over the years

• The Greek Way (Hamilton) I read this in high school, and it gave me the crazy idea that I should try different things. (Try reading my resume...) The ancient Greeks believed in the well-rounded man who could recite a poem, play the lyre, make a speech, etc etc etc according to Hamilton. Jack of all trades master of none, oh well....
• The True Believer (Eric HOFFER) I read this book right after I dropped out of born-againism around 1972. I think it made me wary of other fanatical things I might have fallen into....
• Utopia Minus X (Rex Gordon) Science Fiction, and now out of print - people are codified and some people are classed X because they don't fit. Hmmm . Classifiable folks get to live in Utopia, the oddballs get launched out into space....
• The Adogmatic State (Apostolos N Depastas) This one also reenforced the dangers of dogmatsm in a cultural sense rather than a personal one.
• Working (Terkel) I didn't read this until later in my job-hopping life. Too bad. What a great project.
• Times Arrow (Martin Amis) In this book, time runs backwards which is the only way the life of a Dr. Mengela makes any sense - he takes the dead, broken or tortured and turns them back into whole human beings.
• The Road to Wellville (TC Boyle) OMG. This is the funniest book and makes you not want to take any claim at face value. Oh for a good colonic... haha
• Does Poetry Matter? (edited by ?) This book is a series of essays by different people on the meaning and function of poetry. And yes it does too matter!
• Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman) Whitman goes with Turkel's Working somehow. Leaves of Grass is a celebration of the everyman...
• Why I am not a Christian (Russell) Two other books on this line that influenced me were The American Religion, (Harold Bloom) and the Lucifer Principal (Howard Bloom)
• Mount Annalouge (by Rene Dumal) Hmm. Holding the incongruous and eccentric, striving for metaphorical heights, but helping on the way up and down.
• Owning Your Own Shadow (by somebody johnson) At some point in your life, you might find that this slim volume is worth a library of self help books. A novel I read around that time was The Man Who Would be Thursday by Chesterton? which featured the idea of a doppleganger
• Pale Fire (by Nabakov) This is the first book I had read where the narrator cannot be trusted to tell you the truth. But you don't realize this at first. Slowly it dawns on you that the narrator is fabricating.
• Einstein's Dreams (by Alan Lightman) ...a series of vignettes portraying different imagined mechanisms of time and their effect on a town or a few individuals -- written in a clean yet lyrical way.
• Labinrynth (by Louis Borges) A collection of his short odd works. The Garden of Many Paths. etc My dog orginally chewed up seven of my hats, then abruptlly switched and pulled this book out of the book shelf and chewed it to shreds. I was so upset I bought a crate and crate trained her....)
• On Writing Well (Zinsser) This guy's advice can enable you to trim Doughboy prose into a jaguar..... Other than the inestimable Jack Sanders, I can't think of anything that has changed my writing more. Hmm - a reread may be in order.

-- Mar Walker

Talk about my process

ARTWORK:

This is a slide show of my weird art work - rough sketches or formal works, in a variety of media. I tell the original medium for each piece. MUSIC: The background music I improvised on a Yamaha keyboard, recorded on a tiny Olympus recorder. I also used that to record the talking track. I tried using the macbook mic in iMovie but the fan is running a lit and it gums up the sound.

One of my interests in creating visual art is in capturing or creating motion. You can see that in some of the pieces shown here.

 A sense of motion can be created in a number of ways:
** by the texture or vigor of mark, scrape or brush stroke
** the lines or the edges of the forms depicted
** by moving the eye with either the juxtaposition of light and dark or colors.
** Also by subject matter, ie bodies in motion. (though that in itself is not enough)

 I am not a purist when I work, I tend to make a mark on what I am working on using what ever is handy. I like working in oil pastels with water colors, but might also make marks with gesso or pencil or even ball-point pen or nail polish. I also am very fond of collage, if I have what I consider and unsuccessful composition, I might cut a particularly nice section out of it and glue it to another work.

Comments from the original post:

Pedaling poetry in New Haven: Elm City Cyclists' Poetry Ride

Original Date 6/21/09

Pedaling hmm. Often I find I am sitting absolutely still as I think or meditate, so I was quite surprised to be invited to read a poem to a small group of Elm City Cyclists at a location of my choice in New Haven! I liked the idea, as long as I didn't have to pedal. ( I don't even own a bike!) To the right is poet/cyclist Lisa Siedlarz who does own a bike, and who went on this pedaling poetry journey put together by William Kurtz!

For a location I picked the New Haven spot I had driven to recently - Orange Street where I parked when I saw Buckwheat Zydeco last week. I had parked right across from Millennium Plaza where there was an odd relief sculpture with the marvelously dualistic name "Millenium Relief."

Anyway, after standing around like an loitering lunatic for almost an hour, getting quite pleasantly damp in a light rain, and fielding one polite text msg warning me the event was running behind, a group of eight or nine smiling cyclists arrived.

So on Orange Street - in the shadow of the New Haven Hall of Records I read the following poem: (click the title to read the poem)

Lady Liberty Observes....

After I read, a young guy on the tour had us all laughing with his on-the-money yet whimsical poem about boring business meetings! Then we all strolled down to the next stop which was the Bru Cafe just a few doors down which was the last stop on the tour - for more poetry and CAFFEINE!

To the left is a poet and cyclist named Paul, who frequents the Word of Mouth reading over at the Institute Library. He was sporting a multi-colored umbrella hat which he was happy to model with a big smile.

The tall multi-colored Apollo to the right is an enormous sculpture in the yard of the Bru Cafe!! It's very cool.

At the cafe a Jazz Musician/Poet who calls himself Pigman read some fabulous poems in the open mic at Bru!!! My favorite was "Do Angles Have Sex?" I only was able to stay for a few of the readers, and one cup of Sumatran. (No doubt that's why I am still awake!!!

POEM: Lady Liberty Gives Her Report

Liberty's report


I am moon to this loud sea.
Chaos or collusion -
the tide’s drawn out
by me.

From colony to nation,
with woodsmen’s maul and wedge
you divided peculiar powers;
with ink-stained sledge
But I am mirror - honest glass ‘n lead
reflecting your collective head:
freedom to speak and hear
to read any book
to believe or discount
with skeptical looks
freedom to sell and buy
to hawk and whine
freedom to sue anyone, anytime.
Free cruises for congress
on corporate boats
- freedom not to know
- not to vote.
Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Jefferson and I watch
jetsam’s apex and ebb
future flotsam in moonbath,
drunk on the web of tide.
Below, deep, the waters move.
The paper leviathan continually entwine,
create unseen vortices
flee the harpoon’s sting
with lurching expedience.
Indifferent yaghtsmen quaff their conyac.
Speedboaters toss back beer.
Innumerable row boats rise and fall,
bail and steer with hapless oar
while hungry shorebirds
sing and soar
dropping oysters
to salt- stained rocks below.

Bystanders watch for pearls.

copyright 1998 Marjorie M. Walker
(from the Metaphoratorium on http://pages.prodigy.net/mmwalker

Buckwheat Zydeco: Joy on the New Haven Green

This BuckWheat Zydeco show was the opening concert of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. It was last Saturday night and it was free. What a show! These guys have a happy lively sound and you simply cannot resist dancing! Your feet move without your will. In these empty-pocket days, the price and the mood were exactly right. An acquaintance and  I headed New Haven way late, and didn't get to the show until 8PM, an hour into the festivities. We found a parking spot on the street not far from the green and waded into the crowd as a light rain began. The rain did not dampen spirits anywhere. The band even played a ten minute encore played strait through until 10:10!

The last time I saw Buckwheat Zydeco, it was in South Portland, Maine 1989 or 1990 or there about. I was living in Cornish Maine at the time, more or less seeing an odd man, tall and thin, somewhat conservative seeming in nature but who wore Billy Idol leather gloves with no fingers, who literally spent hours combing his long hair and beard, obsessed about his outfits and shoes. My old friend Rich who I'd known for probably 20 years prior to this, came over from Battleboro, VT to Maine to visit and we all met that night at some South Portland dive where the group was featured. As they ground out their intensely happy dance music, a melodrama unfolded.

The two men shook hands and eyed each other warily. My old friend, a fan of gothic horror with a tricky sense of humor, took me aside. "Misti, you are dating Charles Manson," he said with a grin. "Come on, look at him - can't you see the resemblance?." I was abashed. Didn't see the humor in it. Then, on the dance floor, my Charles Manson-look-a-like was cold, asked probing questions about the nature of my relationship with my old friend. He seemed sure it was more than a friendship we harbored. He acted so badly I left early. We never went out again. Anyway, this past Saturday, it was nice to actually enjoy Buckwheat Zydeco without distractions!

PROPOSAL: NATIONAL REFEREMDUM STRIPPING CONGRESS AND THE SENATE OFGOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE!!!!

Let them all apply for and pay for insurance like everyone else does -- especially after they leave office and have no power..... . Right now, they have guaranteed health benefits from even one term, that will last until they die and which covers their whole family. Let them dial the numbers they give you to call when your COBRA runs out - numbers which are NEVER ANSWERED....

THIS IS DISCRIMINATION. STRIP CONGRESS AND THE SENATE OF HEALTH CARE!!! IF JOE PUBLIC DOESN'T HAVE IT - LET CONGRESS AND THE SENATE GO WITHOUT IT TOO!!! Of course then, the big health care lobbies would bribe them with primo insurance packages.

Second thought lets just break up into states and dissolve congress and the senate. (and What a really awful idea that is.. a stable system even an imperfect and irritating system that more or less works, is far better than violent chaos. So all you revolutionaries go turn yourselves in.... )

Sentator McConnell implies Ford (F) is DEAD

Unbelievable - this morning on Face the Nation Senator Mitch McConnell very casually implied that Ford Motor Company would cease to exist. (Should we check to see if he is shorting the stock?)

Senator McConnell was discussing health care options when he addressed this matter. He stated that everyone knows that when the government gets involved in private enterprise that it is so big it crowds out all the competition and that soon the competition will cease to exist. As an example of this he gave the auto industry citing the government involvement in GM and Chrysler as creating a big problem for Ford. He cited in particular the government backing for financing of GM and Chrysler cars. He said Ford couldn't complete against the government

If you back track on the reasoning: everyone knows that when the government gets involved in private enterprise that it is so big it crowds out all the competition and that soon the competition will cease to exist. He is saying that Ford will soon cease to exist.

So I guess people will be dumping their Ford stock because according to Senator McConnell, Ford is not going to exist for long...... I happen to think he is wrong in a big way. If I could afford a car, I would consider buying a Ford. It would NOT be advisable to buy stock in Senator McConnell. You could do better.