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.

BOOKS: The Last Place on Earth - a historical study in character

Need an amazing nature adventure? A character-driven drama?  Roland Huntford's mesmerizing "The Last Place on Earth." is for you. I know the genre on the back cover says history. Nonetheless  it kept me up late into the night several times. It's not a cliff hanger. But it is a fascinating dissection.

In 1910-11 Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian,  and Robert Scott, a Brit, each led an extended expedition across Antarctica hoping to be the first to reach the South Pole and return. This book is a gripping, meticulously-researched  narrative that contrasts the two men, their characters, methods, values, preparation and leadership styles, and finally their relation to their country's differing cultures.

Amundsen got to the pole weeks ahead of Scott and lost not a man. Scott's poor planing and failure to learn. listen and prepare cost five lives including his own.  Instead of an investigation into how such a lackadaisical administrator, poor planner, vain publicity hound could have been entrusted with so many lives as they entered a dangerous environment - he was venerated as a national hero whose victory was "stolen" by Amundsen.  Talk about spin. Read this book. You might never again trust what you think is a cultural given. You might never trust a "hero" again.

This past December marked 100 years since Amundsen arrived at the South Pole.

There is apparently a whole six hour  epic mini-series  based on this book. It takes up 3 DVDs and has Martin Shaw as Scott and Sverre Anker Ousdal as Amundsen. Might have to see that now....

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.

2011 - my personal year in review

When 2011 arrived I don't think I made a single resolution. There's just no point, as I break them all

, and if I say let it be a year of ___ inevitably it turns into a year of something else. So instead of my resolutions for 2012 (of which there are exactly none), I am thinking about what I accomplished in 2011.

A year without New Year's Resolutions is not an emply year. I finished a whole bunch of paintings in the first four months of 2011. That's the time of year when the sun comes right in the front window and the light is really fresh.

I did a lot of poetry slamming this year for the White Plains Slam team beginning with a regional 4-way slam at the Bowery Poetry Club in January and another in July. I did a short featured performance before the first ever  slam in June at the Veterans Memorial Center in Harrison NY.

Twice this past year I read poems at Free Poets Collective events - art-based poems written specially for the events. One was in April at the New Britian Museum of American Art another was in October at Broad Street Books in Middletown for a Celebration of Women Beat Poets/Writers/Artists. Thank you Colin and Yvon.

In July I started playing out at open mic nights again. I won a nice gift certifiace at the Tuesday Night Open Mic in New Milford. (still have to use it....) I did this on and off again all year, at Hideaway, Molten and one more in New Milford.

In August 2011 I officially became a National Slam Poet. I went to the week-long National Poetry Slam in Cambridge as a competitor on the White Plains Slam team. It was more fun than I expected.

The 2011 White Plains National Slam Team

Being at a National slam makes you a witness of sorts. You hear poems from all sorts of people, widely varying circumstances on all sorts of difficult topics. You become a witness to their stories and many were stories i had never heard first hand.  After this experience I find I am much more likely to look with friendly inquiring eyes and not look away. When I see strangers I am always wondering now - what's your story? What's hidden inside you?

I also got some great pictures of wild archetecture on and near the MIT campus, some crazy scuptures and paintings, got to see the MIT museum which is filled with intricate amazing robotic mechanisms.

So Thanks Zork, LV, Jonathan, our coach Bram and of course to the nameless guy who arbitrarily quit the team because he didn't want to be on NPS's favorite good-spirited losing team. This kind of brings things full circle for me as I quit the CT team as alternate in 1997 and Victoria Rivas went as alternate instead. Sometimes you get a second chance.

In September I read my comic erotic story Lipolt and the Amazons at the Erotic Literary Salon in Philedelphia, where two of my fellow Shijin also read. Thanks Erobintica for setting that up.

In November 2011 I finally finished my second chapbook Tabernacle of Bees (which I had been ignoring since 2009 when I began the project. ) I have printed out the first 25 copies and more are on the way.

Not only did I finish it - I sent a copy of Tabernacle of Bees along with a copy of my 1998 chapbook Inverse Origami the art of unfolding to Poets House . On Dec 23 I recieved word back that both would be added to the inhouse collections there and that Tabernacle of Bees will be on display this summer along with other chapbooks published in 2011.

In December I officially retired as Wednesday Night Poetry's web mistress and email update sender. I had been webmistress for most of the last five years and I think that is enough typos and photo changes, and governance committee discussions for anyone. I have passed the torch and the secret handshake or whatever to Derek, Lisa Marie and Christine. I will still maintain the new archve site at wedpoetrypast.wordpress.com. (regular updates are not required....)

Late in the year organizers asked if I would donate some music performance to the Molten Java send off bash on December 18. (The Cafe is moving from 102 to 213 Greenwood Ave). So I played a 1/2 hour gig of my own original songs for the event which went fairly well - despite me being in less than good voice.. I also got to see some fabulous acts -  Michel Rae, Marc, Joey, the Molten Jazz Trio, Burnkit2600, the Hip Replacements and many more during that event.  And  I'd like to take this space to thank the nine people who came out just because I invited them. Thank you all so much - seeing your smiling faces made it so much easier to do!!  As a consequence of video from that performance - I cut my damn stringy hair into a very short punkisk cut.

Finally - I have to note that for the fifth year running I weigh a little bit less than at the start of the year.

So,  bring on 2012.  What will happen? Don't know -  but I'm pretty sure something will!

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!!

Song from the Molten show: I bet it all on you

Well I can't say I was in good voice here - NOT. But it seemed to go well, nonetheless.

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.