Thing-a-day.com

It may seem pretty arrogant for a city like Colorado Springs to promote Pike’s Peak as “America’s Mountain” - but it makes a whole lot more sense when you understand it is ”America’s” Mountain. (still, my apologies to those Americans not from the United States of) 

America the Beautiful

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

I was inspired by this note from Katharine Lee Bates about her trip to the mountain in 1893:

“One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.”

 I have been waiting for a really clear morning to try to capture some of that feeling of expanse, possibilities, and joy — This comes pretty close for me - I hope it works some for you too

One of my favorite Pippi Longstocking quotes…

embedded by Embedded Video

Tonight, we have a short but completely awesome magnetic poem, sticking to the side of a little silver Ikea drawer unit in my basement office. Above it, you can see a cheap Bodhisattva statue I picked up at some New Age store in Albuquerque, a cheap silver architect’s lamp, and a little stack of books and notebooks.

The text reads:

brilliant opaque moon
chaos dream garden

you started out
a page in system book

a tiny insect murmur

Cross-posted at The Attic (http://attic-museumstudies.blogspot.com/2008/02/reviewof-sorts.html):

I’m kind of reluctant to post this. Read on, and you’ll see why…

On Sunday I went to see Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes, a British Museum travelling exhibition, currently on display at New Walk Museum, Leicester. I intended to do a straight review for the research blog I write (i.e. The Attic), but then I had a stunning idea (always dangerous).

I thought I could (to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak) see if there was a way of achieving both tasks (the review and my ‘Thing-A-Day’ for today) with the same piece of work. Hence, the following poem (yes, you read that right - a poem) inspired by the exhibition. Quite honestly, it has to be the worst poem ever written in the history of civilization but, hey, at least I’ve tried. *ha!*

And so, without futher ado, I present to you the first piece of poetry I have written for public consumption since I was, oh, about eleven! Please be kind.

* A note about the theme: I’ve decided this counts as ‘edge’, cos I’m really on the limits of my capabilities here!*

Black and red-figured amphorae,
Images of young men honing their skills.
They do battle, in sport, in the theatre,
To achieve status,
To become citizens.

The victorious athlete raises his absent arm
To place a wreath of laurels upon his head.
A hoplite combats his Persian counterpart
In a symbolic battle between civilisation and barbarity.
Greece, the cradle of learning.

In the arena are poets, musicians and actors.
A clever turn of musical or literary phrase.
A comedy,
A tragedy,
Sophokles is a fighter too.

Myth and reality fuse.
Herakles achieves redemption -
The Olympiad delivered of his labours.
An odyssey.
A wooden horse.

A woman covers her hands in an act of modesty.
Her marble-chill gaze looks distant,
Through time, she has prevailed.
In life, smothered by her culture,
As the folds of her cloak envelope her now.

And yet all ends, changes.
The past is forgotten, meaning is lost.
Those accursed statues and pagan icons,
Are destroyed to save the present
From the long since dead.

Today I doodled everything in my head.
Click to enlarge.

An Ode to the Smuggler’s Inn, my favorite bar in Hong Kong. (Photo is from my last visit there, in January.)

It started raining, a sudden downpour in Stanley.
We ducked into Smuggler’s for dry shelter
And a few beers. It is a good place, we decide,
when someone buys us all a round.

‘Do not scream, even when it hurts,’ the sign says, unless
it’s with laughter. Actual pirates drank here,
ages ago. Now we yo-ho-ho it up, laughing off the rain
and cracking up the landlord, making outlandish toasts to impending typhoons.

Love its riotous jukebox, playing the Fall and the Saints,
It’s stinking hot, wringing wet, but who cares.
We are in Hong Kong in June, but have found home,
halfway around the world.

It is said, several slackers make the grade

They have prospects patented, I should say with capital
“P.” They have 14 streets cordoned off
just so they can have their babies. And then
three years from now, there will be strollers everywere, great
traffic jams of them; octopuses.
They’ll take two tea bags with their pleasure
and ask for more.

For me,
     no more sugar.
For me,
     down in the hole.
For me,
     on a footbridge somewhere. Send in the mongoose, bring out the goons.

While I wait for the thing-a-day muse to inspire me I’ll simply put a hem in my slacks. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I’ll design a dress or write a poem. At the end of the day there’ll be, you know, one less thing.

This is not at all what I had planned, and far earlier in the day, but I was laying awake with insomnia (my theme of the week, I guess (See my blog for proof)

I’m about to send a birthday present off to a friend who shares my love of silly, whimsical things and I thought I’d make a card (not made yet).  Then I decided to make a crappy art piece to go in it (not made yet) and  hype it up as if it was the real present.  Anyway, the card and art thing will come this weekend, but the message I have done, and I’m calling it my Thing-a-Day for Feb 1

It’s just a silly little poem muchly inspired by Dr. Seuss… (oh and for the Britslang challenged, larf=laugh).  This is what I get up to when I’m sleep deprived!

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