History Lesson - Welcome to the Anthropocene

I just added a new poem to AnnaSadhorse, my poetry blog. It's called History Lesson. It was recently published in a bi-lingual (French/English) anthology called, "300K - A Poetry Anthology about the Human Race".  The editor, Walter Ruhlmann, writes that he wanted to publish something, "as a mark, a sign, a trace of our - yours and mine - passage on this planet". Monsieur Ruhlmann describes himself as a pessimist. It's a view I don't entirely share however, History Lesson, being a reflection on the Anthropocene, fits right in.




You can purchase 300K here.

Publishing and republishing

Besides publishing a current list of literary magazines accepting reprints, the blog Published to Death includes a link to poetry publishers accepting unagented manuscripts. And it's not just for poetry. There are listings for all genres, including visual, and their markets and includes cool links such as . . . calls for submissions by the month, paying markets etc. Yes, there are similar sites, but this is a good one.


Of course, Duotrope is, at least in my limited experience, the best of the best when it comes to offering an "extensive, searchable database of current fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art markets, a calendar of upcoming deadlines, a personal submissions tracker, and useful statistics compiled from the millions of data points". Yes, that's their description but it is what they do and they do it well. I was a subscriber until they erected a paywall. After that I couldn't justify the expense. I seldom followed through and actually submitted anything.


I did a poetry blog instead. Poetry needs to be free. However, that means if I want to publish something elsewhere, in a "real" publication, I must find publishers who accept reprints.  Annasadhorse may be one of the the least visited sites in the universe but most publishers automatically refuse anything unless they get first rights. Rock and a hard place.

Barcelona museum crawl

Pause when agitated

Barcelona:  Museums visited to date:


Museu d'Història de Barcelona (City History Museum):  Rome came alive when we explored the underground ruins of the medieval Roman city of Barcino upon, and around which, Barcelona of today is built.

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (National Museum of Catalan):  I think more famous for the building than the art. On our first visit we viewed the medieval art. I came away impressed again by how much religion depends on its martyrs, real and imagined. Especially imagined. We went a second day to see the modern collection. Thanks to smart curation, it was good in spite of itself. The Spanish artists are placed in the larger context of the Paris art scene of the 1920s, thus adding significance to what is otherwise mostly B grade work.

Of course I don't mean you!

Miro Museu:  Prepare yourself for room after room of Miro recycling the same patterns in primary colors over and over again and again. Perhaps he knew and respected his limits? I do have a new appreciation for his sculpture and mixed-media collaborations and but, otherwise, we both came away with a diminished regard for his paintings.

The temporary exhibit of the work of Alfons Borrell was absurd. Oh, colorful enough, but really. Is the world is still dazzled by "modern artists" doing monochrome paintings?  In any case, the curation is a delightful example of how absurd and pompous art-speak can be.

Picasso Museum:  Wow. Okay. Yes. Picasso the man was a flaming sexist asshole, among the extreme but a man his time but, after visiting this museum, I have a much greater appreciation for his genius and artistic contributions. Most of the work here was donated by Picasso himself in collaboration with Jaime Sabartés, his lifelong friend and, in later years, administrator and secretary. It includes wonderful paintings from Picasso's teen years up through the Las Meninas series including the pigeon paintings, all done at blazing speed at the end of his life and never, otherwise, exhibited.

Until now I did not know that Picasso also considered himself a great writer and poet. Naturally, some agree and some do not. In his 2012 publication A Psychoanalytic Approach to Visual Artists, James W. Hamilton writes, 

"some of Picasso's prose reveals concerns with oral deprivation and immense cannibalistic rage towards the breast.." 

For the hell of it, I include some of Picasso's imagery below, all from "The burial of the Count of Orgaz and other poems", courtesy of Wikipedia:

"the smell of bread crusts marinating in urine"
"stripped of his pants eating his bag of fries of turd"
"the cardinal of cock and the archbishop of gash"

MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art):  Skateboard park on the outside, pretty cool art museum on the inside, plus it's only a street away from where we're staying in El Raval. This particular sculpture, depicting Spanish King Juan Carlos having sex with the late Bolivian activist Domitila Barrios de Chúngara and a dog, was one among many excellent on display.

Not Dressed for Conquering
by Austrian artist Ines Doujak
MACBA

This spring, the night before the exhibit was scheduled to open, the museum director announced he was cancelling the entire show because the artist would not remove this piece from it. A bitter protest followed resulting in the director's resignation and the dismissal of two museum curators. MACBA, definitely worth a visit.

This is a test

I'm back to testing free image hosting sites because Blogger is so anal about what they will link to. Plus they promised unlimited storage if you join google+ then cannibalize older photos they host to make room for new ones. WTF?!

Chiang Mai, Thailand - Street shrine hosted by photobucket

Plus, I hate google+. It's just facebook by another name and I already hate facebook. Flickr is best. They offer a free terabyte of storage! Basically they rock, but then they disabled direct linking. WTF?! Lame.

Chiang Mai, Thailand -  playground hosted by TinyPic

Photobucket and it's offshoot, Tinypic, are both still free. I posted these two photos there and yes. Blogger still accepts the links so good. You don't even need an account to post to TinyPic. You have to watch an ad to get the captcha, which is obnoxious, so I won't using it much, but it's worth keeping on the list. As for Imageshack? I logged in and found out it's no longer free. In the process, seems I activated their 30-day "free trial" countdown but I won't bother. They're out.

Notes in passing

Spaceman and me.

Went to the National Archives today. I have never been in a building with so many brass doors. Even the bathroom doors are brass and gigantic. The Archives are the home of important historical documents such as the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta. Oddly, of these four, the Magna Carta, from 1297, is in the best shape. In comparison, the Declaration of Independence, 1776, has almost completely faded away and the Constitution and Bill of Rights aren't doing very well either. However, the room they are in, the manner in which they are displayed and the Security surrounding them is so opulent, reverential and threatening that it wouldn't matter if comic books were under the layers of brass, glass and watchful eyes, they would inspire awe.

Glenn Curtiss
1907s Fastest Man in the World.

We also visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It houses everything from the Wright brother's airplanes and Glenn Curtiss's V-8 motorcycle to the Command Module which ferried astronauts to and from the moon and a full-scale replica of the same Voyager I which is on its deep space mission, never to return. Besides sending information back to Earth, Voyager is carrying the Golden Record with pictures and sounds of Earth and detailed information about where our planet is located. I hope that's a good idea.

This evening, back in our little makeshift basement apartment on Capitol Hill, the domestic battle raging upstairs all week continues. It's really sad. Their baby chirps away happily in morning and they are at each others throats at night then the silent treatment.

Charles River and Reno Vegans

An Infinite Number Of Monkeys

After all the Shakespeare, the book

of poems they type is the saddest

in history.

But before they can finish it,

they have to wait for that Someone

who is always

looking to look away. Only then

can they strike the million

keys that spell

humiliation and grief, which are

the great subjects of Monkey

Literature

and not, as some people still

believe, the banana

and the tire.

~Ronald Koertge

Photos from the protest yesterday organized by Reno Vegans at Charles River, the world's largest supplier of animals for experiments or, as they say on their website, "essential research products". Charles River carefully conceals information about dogs and monkeys but their use and cruelty is documented and ongoing.

Charles River Lab on Longley Lane in Reno, Nevada.

Are those chimneys from a crematorium? Any animal who manages to survive an in-house experiment at a Charles River lab is killed shortly afterwards. Photographs obtained from the USDA through the Freedom of Information Act in 2008 revealed cramped and barren conditions at this facility "with the potential to cause madness".

At this point, most of the group is out doing a walkabout.

Seems Charles River sent one of their goons to intimidate us. Unknowingly, I parked right next to him as he sat across the street doing a video of the whole event from the cab of his black truck.

He immediately turned his camera on me so I took out my camera and took several photos of the bastard. No surprise he was there. Billion dollar corporations like Charles River employ countless goons, including platoons of lawyers, to guard their gates.

The turnout was small, as these things generally are. There were two main elements, a group of young people in black wearing black bandanas over their faces and about an equal number of older people dressed in regular clothes.  But, whatever our difference, we all feel strongly about animal rights and are glad to protest multinational merchants of death like Charles River, aka the "General Motors of the laboratory animal industry".

"There are dogs in there too.
You do care, don't you?" ~ Martha

Open mic night

The SpokenWordParis open poetry mic at Au Chat Noir last Monday was really excellent. I'm always an outsider at these things but I read whenever I can wherever I go and, in my opinion, the quality of writing at this event was among the best of any I've participated in. And the presentations were good. Even the poems read in other languages were interesting. And unlike London's Poetry Unplugged,which makes people pay a suck ass cover charge to read, SpokenWord Paris is free for all.

So, if you find yourself in Paris looking for a place to read, or listen, to poetry I highly recommend this event. Not only was the work excellent, but people were friendly and unpretentious. Our friend Karen enjoyed the evening, as did M. Lee which is saying something. Generally, to hear him talk, you'd think a rat had gnawed his earlobe off at one of these things.

Kansas City Weirdness

First there was Roy the Redeemer, then this.  It's your week, Roy.

SubTropolis, Kansas City

I didn't know your hometown has one of the 10 weirdest urban ecosystems on earth. Or at least according to i09.

Kansas City native

Quite a distinction.
 (link via M. Lee)

Ps. Sorry, I forgot to mention the one detail which adds color to this otherwise halftone post. Ninety percent of the world's underground office space is in, or shall I say under, Kansas City. Thx M. 

Jersey Shore 1904

Atlantic City, circa 1900. Swimsuits were either flannel, serge or Alpaca, went from head to toe, included vest and collar plus skirts for the women topped off with modest caps.

And in case you are wondering.... yes.
The women are wearing swimming corsets under their suits.

Source: Shorpy

Even though we saw topless women on Miami Beach the other day, and even though no one seemed to mind or, for that matter even notice, the crowd still reminded me of the subdued, modest bathers from more puritanical times. I think it was the general disconnect people seemed to have regarding the environment itself as though being in a crowd offered protection from the power and uncertainties of Nature. Like I said before, creepy.

Diorama of a Midsummer's Day

We went to Fort Lauderdale last week to visit M. Lee's cousins and explore the area a bit. His cousins are nice fellows and basically hermits. They live in a big pleasant house in a skeevy part of town with their mother, kids, a sweet, pony-size pit bull who is not neutered and six hens they treat like children who have their own place out back. We saw everybody for dinner both nights and during the first day biked around Ft. Lauderdale and the second decided move on and check out Miami Beach.

It wasn't a particularly pleasant drive. Imagine "dragging yourself shirtless across a desert of blazing hot broken glass, your back full of arrows, predator birds tearing at your flesh". That's how Lee described driving to Miami Beach. 

America is already a tax haven for the world's wealthiest people and Southern Florida is one of their favorite spots. Everyday millionaire retirees roost all over Florida but South Florida is known for it's high-stepping billionaire, and very shady, richer-than-god crowd. Even from the street Miami is a gaudy showcase questionable wealth.

But, for us, there really wasn't any there there, just more urban sameness.

When we finally got to the beach, the world famous Miami Beach, I ran like someone escaping a fire, well, with a few stops along the way.

 

I'm a surrealist and, surprisingly the beach was surreal, so I should have loved it but, instead, I was horrified. I already knew that every inch of ground, mangrove and shoreline in Miami is developed, and has been for a long time so, of course, its "world famous" beach would be no exception but it was so dismal. Whether I looked north or south, it was hotel after hotel after hotel—no trees, no shade, no wildlife—and on the sand— thousands of people laying under umbrellas or standing in the water. I assume for them it was a lovely summer day at the beach.

To me the scene had a musty and unreal quality as though, rather than at the ocean, people were in a diorama built by a Jersey taxidermist and titled Day at the Beach. And mostly it was just sad. We're back along Alligator Creek today. The development here is bad enough but I'm still caught in yesterday's mood but grateful to be back in the small world here on the gulf.

Time to move on

Professor William Strunk Jr.

Some time ago I got tired of living under the tyranny of Strunk & White's Elements of Style and sent my copy packing to the secondhand store. In case you are unfamiliar with it, this tiny book is a terse manual long considered by many educators and writers as the final word in rules of word usage and the principles of writing style. So this morning I was interested when I found a link at ArtsJournal to this article by Adam Haslett. For starters, Haslett notes that the work is "spoken in the voice of unquestioned authority in a world where that no longer exists".

"Though never explicitly political, The Elements of Style is unmistakably a product of its time. Its calls for “vigour” and “toughness” in language, its analogy of sentences to smoothly functioning machines, its distrust of vernacular and foreign language phrases all conform to that disciplined, buttoned-down and most self-assured stretch of the American century from the armistice through the height of the cold war. A time before race riots, feminism and the collapse of the gold standard. It is a book full of sound advice addressed to a class of all-male Ivy-Leaguers wearing neckties and with neatly parted hair." source

Don't get me wrong. I believe we have all benefited by the good professor's dictates. I will be wary of adjectives to my dying day, although mostly because of their egregious misuse by bad poets, but I have an unabashed fondness for the well done run-on sentence. Perhaps this is because I am given to a perpetual adolescent rebellion. Nevertheless, I have no interest in novelty for its own sake. I just do not agree with Strunk's overarching rule: “Prefer the standard to the offbeat” although, as Haslett notes, Hemingway managed to successfully blend the two.

Still, a word about Strunk's famous dictum: "

Omit needless words".  Of course, I too am always on the lookout for flabby writing but I also agree with Haslett's conclusion that:

"This rule leads young writers to be cautious and dull; minimalist style becomes minimalist thought, and that is a problem."

How far into uncharted territory can any rule book or map take me? I realize it's tacky to quote oneself but a line from one of my own poems comes to mind... "The glass breaks and I am gone." I don't know about you but, for me, that's the point.

When words slip away

In the course of dying from a rare affliction which will first rob him of language, art critic and artist Tom Lubbock recently published excerpts from his memoir of the experience in the Guardian. It is well worth reading and, especially, I think, if you are a writer. Over the course of his disease he reverts to pure poetry, the first and last link, the voice of the soul.

Postscript:
Tom Lubbock died 9 January 2011. His obituary was published in the Guardian UK. If you do nothing else, read the end, Tom's final words.

Spoken Views

Here are a few photos from the Spoken Views event in Reno the other night. I read just fine. I know how to deliver a line. I don't shirk. I don't mumble. It's just that lowering the page and talking directly to the audience freaks me out. Always has and I've been doing this for years. Reading in public almost invariability increases my sense of isolation. I'm a very shy person. People who know me might argue that but, in fact, I am seldom comfortable in public.

So this time I picked a poem that has two voices and promised myself I'd ask someone to read with me. The regulars at Spoken Views are very competent performers. Many, I reasoned, can easily do a cold read so maybe I can just ask for a volunteer at the beginning of my set? That way I don't have to actually talk to anyone beforehand. I've only been once before, and I'm older than most, but what the hell? They claim they welcome "readers from all walks of life, young & old". I decided to take 'm at their word.

As it went, the kid sitting next to me struck up a conversation before the show started. It was his first time at Spoken Views and, though he wrote poetry, he'd never read in public. I asked if he'd like to read with me. It seemed like the right thing to do. He said "sure". That's him in the tangerine colored shirt. Gabino. Really nice guy.

In all, I read three poems. Gabino joined me for the final one. He did great. A real champ. I still pretty much panicked once I got on stage but I doubt anyone noticed and guarantee no one cared. Of course, I obsessed well into the next day about how I could have better introduced our little one minute ad hoc multi-voiced experiment. Next time...

Oh Oh Os!

Awhile ago I did a post slagging Trader Joe's for wimping out and turning their Joe's Os breakfast cereal into a mealy nothing, like all the other breakfast cereals. In fact, they did not. This afternoon, Mr. Lee pointed out to me that I had mistakenly purchased the regular Os, the version made for ordinary people. You see, Joe's sells two versions of Os, regular and the red box Fiber Os with extra fiber, lots and lots of fiber, with so much fiber that eating a bowlful feels like you're eating a bale of hay. I begin to wonder if I'll ever get to the bottom of the bowl. I chew and chew and chew so long I forget I'm chewing, and when I do remember again, I'm only half done. In fact, Joe's Fiber Os are so chewy that I sometimes fear my teeth will be ground to nubs before I finish breakfast. If you made a paste out of Os you could scrub oil stains off the driveway or use it to sand barnacles off a boat. I am delighted knowing that the world has not completely given into the sissies. So, as amends to the venerable Os, I share with you this video by Keith Haskel. I don't know if this is viral marketing or what but I don't care. I think it's just him having fun but, either way, he speaks the truth of the red box.

Friday update

M. Lee left this afternoon for China. It's been a helluva week. Murphy's Law was in full force. When he left he still wasn't sure if he had a seat on the connecting flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong and I won't know for a couple days how it turned out. All this was the result of going through a funky ass Chinese travel agency in Oakland by the name of J & V Travel. NEVER USE THEM. He needed to make a slight change to his ticket but the wankers at J & V Travel were totally unwilling/ignorant/rude and or stupid to get it done. I needed to make a similar change on a ticket I bought recently directly through the airline. It took a one minute phone call. Anyway, I'm sad he's gone. It really changes the way I look at my surroundings. I'm glad I'm leaving in the morning. It won't be an epic trip but at least I won't be moping around here. When I was a kid I tried digging to China with a tablespoon. He seems that far away tonight.

Ruins of Detroit

Treat yourself to this stunning peek at the ruins of Motor City by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Off to Tonganoxie

Chief Tonganoxie
When Kockatowha died as Chief of the Turkey Band in 1861, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs refused to recognize Tonganoxie as the chosen successor. Not to worry. Tonganoxie won. He has a city in Kansas named after him. I'm sure that's more than the racist commissioner got for his trouble. Not only that, Tonganoxie's old lodge/tavern still stands. Of course, at this point it's a ghost bar but is more popular than ever now that the drinks are free.

Local news at 7:31

I've been rummaging around over at the wayback machine this morning. Great place. Anyway, they cached this page from my website years ago, before I nuked it and then lost the backup files. Always, always backup anything you want to keep! I still do not, so there you have it. However, thanks to them, Sweet Lorraine's wonderful silver polishing tip lives on. May she rest in peace. Handy, as my silver is in need of polishing and lately I've been lamenting the loss of her recipe.



If you have trouble getting the polish out of the cracks of your silver jewelry here's a handy trick I learned from my friend Lorraine, who always wore gobs of silver and turquoise jewelry. She was a very cool lady who knew how to do things the easy way. It works. It really does.


Ingredients:
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 sheet of aluminum foil
1 quart water

Add dry ingredients to 1 quart boiling water.
Submerge foil in water.
Drop silver onto foil.
Tarnish will immediately disappear.
Remove silver from water.
Place on drying cloth.
Allow to dry.
To enhance affect, gently rub silver but it's not necessary.
It will come out of the water shiny as new.

TED

Looking for a little inspiration? Wisdom? Want to be amazed, fascinated, inspired, dazzled by beauty or looking for a laugh? Check out the TED archives. You're in for some fun ...

IQ - education - creativity
TED blog

and much, much more...

From the feet up

M. Lee and I had our first foot massages today (Kathy's treat) and are we hooked! Being our resident expert researcher, M. Lee picked the place but, as he likes to keep his sources to himself, you didn't hear that he read about it at Yelp.com from me.




That little tidbit is definitely off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush. But Yelp is a user driven site so what the hey? Give it a whirl.



Los Angeles proper has a new Chinatown located where Little Italy used to be. That's where we had lunch yesterday, but the real new Chinatown is a few miles east of LA in San Gabriel, which has become a massive Asian ethno-burb. Incidentally, East West Magazine calls it the foot-massage capital of the country. That's where we ended up going. We started with Dim Sum at 261 Mission, then went to CCM Health Inc. I have nothing to compare them to but when Kathy's in China she gets a foot massage every day. She rated them as one of the best.



In spite of having a horribly dry corporate sounding name, CCM turned out to be a tiny, homey hole in the wall with the ambient charm of a psyche's parlor but instead of crystal balls and tarot cards it is stuffed with big easy chairs and has a couple of corners curtained off for full body massage. Foot massages used to run about $70 an hour but are now so popular that competition is up and prices down. Ours were $15 an hour plus tip. We're planning to return again on Monday, which is our last day in LA and the Do Over - Pick Up Day. We all agree that a foot massage needs to be on the top of the list.



So. Now I'm a reviewer of foot massage parlors. Lovely. I never know where the words are going to take me. I am definitely not in charge here. For a while I was enjoying fitting the words to the page, like a crossword puzzle, not paying attention to what's filling the spaces as much as making sure they fit.



I'm kind of disgusted. No offense to reviewers. They get paid for writing the damn things. I'm just doing it because tapping away at a keyboard calms me. But at this point I'm like a poor rat in a cage tapping the pellet bar long after the pellets are gone. Sad.

But Los Angeles continues to be a fun city to visit.

We might as well be in a foreign country.

For most people in the world it is in a foreign country.

Hollywood,

City of Dreams.

Tomorrow we're going to Venice beach and I don't know where else. Our favorite place to eat so far is RFD, a little place on La Cienega that serves delicious organic vegan cuisine.

Every day is packed with fun. I can't stand it anymore.

I feel completely out of sorts without a little angst to ground me.

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