saline woman

be careful what you fish for.













[painting, magritte; film still, jean vigo]

40 whacks

One of the things that you don't know about me is that I had a grandfather who was a photographer and a recluse, and who lived much of his adult life alone (he died there, too) in an apartment in Fall River, Mass. Although I had no relationship with him, saw him only twice that I remember, I'll write more about him sometime.

I have also had an abiding, unrelated interest in a more well-known, you might say infamous, denizen of Fall River, that monumentally difficult daughter, Lizzie Borden. As such, I am copying this recent posting (8/15/2011), an excerpt from one of my favorite literary sites, www.bookslut.com/blog/.

"You don't think of Lizzie Borden as this kindly woman who loved children and sent Christmas cards and little bunny stickers, and she did," he says.

A) People in her hometown still have strong, personal feelings about whether Lizzie Borden was an axe murderer.

B) There is apparently a quarterly journal about Lizzie Borden (deliciously called "The Hatchet") and I for whatever reason don't subscribe to it. (Must change this.)

C) There is a new book coming out about Lizzie Borden called Parallel Lives and its co-author swears it will blow people's minds. Possibly only the minds of the 91,000 people who live in Borden's town and are still caught up in the drama, but count me in, too. I will read the 1000 pages of axe-wielding goodness.





[photos (mine) from Cape Breton Island]

half-way there

I have two manuscripts done out of four to edit by Wednesday, so a few more days of intense work, and I can come up for air.

Last night, instead of sleeping, I was compelled to ruminate on every fault line in the terrain of my life.
There they are, the representatives of my flaws, all queued up like lunatics off to the magistrate, waiting their turn to present their documentation: every slight, every worry, every word said, every word unsaid, leaving me exhausted, with the fire in me completely tamped out. The lunatics take extra pleasure in dousing me with buckets of icy water as they parade by, with their smug little grins.

The geological metaphor may not be accidental: I did take a break over the weekend. We took a walk on a rocky stretch of beach we don't remember to go to very often. I was able to unkink the tightness in my neck, breathe deeply, and study the ancient faces of these boulders. Strains of quartz run like brooks through the granite, the crystals sparkling in the whitened light from the sea.
And always, an errant clump of grass, as in the header photo, clings to life against all odds on this windy, soil-less terrace.

buried in work

back soon.

Tuesday poem, on Wednesday

Wee oors

In the heich oors o the nicht
stars strip aff
and douk in the rivers.

Hoolets grein for them,
the wee feathers on their heids
birse up.



Sorry for tardy entry; just ran across this poem and was so charmed I had to post it.
This poem is by a Guatamalan, the Mayan Indian poet Humberto Ak’abal, translated into Scots, and published in a trilingual edition of his poetry. Please follow link for the full back story...
http://www.drumofstone.co.uk/about-drum-of-stone/

here comes the bride

I am making a quick trip to NYC tomorrow, for my stepdaughter's bridal shower.

I can't wait to see her. It's been two years.

I apologize for censoring, but a long time ago I vowed not to indulge in mean-spirited rhetoric about my marriage. I think this posting crosses the line, I regret writing much of it, and so I deleted most of it, as well as comments that had anyone's name in them. My apologies to those who followed my example and used names I had mentioned.

Tuesday Poem: The Strange Woman And Seven Diamond Miners

The image above (you'lll have to click on it to read it) is a spread from a work in progress by a friend of mine, Debra Jenks, who is an artist who works with language as well as more traditional media associated with the world of fine art. It may be stretching the boundaries to call this poetry and sneak it in under the wire here, for the Tuesday Poem, but hey: i'm just back from vacation and I'm so stretched beyond my usual boundaries that I want to keep it going....

This link explains her process: http://thestrangewoman.wordpress.com/
and I will conclude with a link to the page on Debra's blog, where she is periodically posting the pages of her found story.

Just to totally wedge my foot in the door to her artwork even more firmly: Ben Ames Williams, who wrote the original novel from which Debra is working, also happens to be the author of a book called Leave her to Heaven, which I remember well from my own naive attempt at a conceptual piece at the age of 14, in which I embarked on reading every piece of fiction in the Clift Rodgers Memorial Library. Not such a big deal; it was a tiny private library and I started at "S" after reading Catcher in the Rye, unable to walk away from that shelf....

In any case: I am very excited about this work, and the Yves Klein blue makes me doubly happy.

[Debra's blog: http://thestrangewoman.wordpress.com/the-book/]