How the world came to be

The world is a sphere

Did it begin as the splice with

the biggest radius

And then

a faux garden well

The igloo with no door

closing in

The upturned basket

now ready to bear

The rest of the world

Based on the Mitch Fry's process of wooden spheres.

Making your cardboard tree

I have been into too much Family art lately with family away - soon to reunite. I wonder if I should spend time with family or go for that How to write for a special occasion of a family member workshop. And then Tempe center of arts offers:

Family Art Workshop with Mitch Fry

Cardboard Trees

TCA exhibiting artist Mitch Fry will bring recycled pieces of wood and cardboard for children and adults to create small tree sculptures reminiscent of his own work. Fry began a career as a designer and manufacturer of custom residential, commercial and retail furnishings which has spanned more than 33 years. Today he works on large and small scale sculptures and commissions and especially enjoys working with wood and found materials.

Mitch fry

On the left is my tree having blown in the wind. On the right is my sister's interpretation of tree. When I entered the gallery, I could see all the material for the workshop on a table and then works on the walls by various artists. When Tempe rubber dams burst, they didnt know they would be becoming placeholders for artists. Julie Anand's Long print with white background matching the wall lent the found objects a 3D quality. If you are a walker, hoarder of things you find on those walks, then you will relate to her work. I have a stone, a seed, a five rupee note (now that put the meaning right back to 'Early to rise, early to bed  makes a man, healthy, wealthy and wise.). Some other works broke out of their medium by installing a partly burnt wood from the recent largest fire, here in AZ. Local artists rose to the Green revolution challenge.

The piece that looks curly headed is my sun/clouds all in one. Today is Shivaratri. In Rudra, Lord shiva is said to be sun. My sister wanted blue for the water. And 'Purple' sheet was added to the materials for sunset. Lord Shiva is depicted purple/blue.

While reading Julie Anand's Q&A about 'What do you learn from students', I was reminded of the meaning that I had just read of shanti mantra om sahana vavatu that we recited everyday at school.

What they say

On writing
Some more on writing
Novelists-ebooks challenge fiction rules - Wow. No chapter book. GPS aware books reminds of Chandramukhi Tamil movie with its 'ra ra' Telugu song. When adapted into other regional language, the foreignness of the song was maintained wrt to the language of the whole movie.
There is a joke in Telugu about an object bought in foreign where it only turns out to be 'made in India' brought from a foreign country. Or how about that broken time translation I do to the 'what time is it now in India'. I get the numbers right but not the am/pm.

A persian saying - Dont misjudge pepper by its size.

Writing is like cooking
Writing tips
How to write
Liberating the essay
To spark creativity
Seven rules for managing creative people
Author website tips
Writing tips
blogging tips for authors

Find the total area

A Survey officer,
a maths problem continued:
found an irregular land
He had split the place
into parts with axial
and spines each forming
a shape whose area
could be easily calculated
by the basic formulas
Then you add them up.

Dictionary

I like tea. More tea, more like. There was some left in the kettle. I waited for my cup to finish. And then there was none. All evaporated by the heat the kettle was on

Boustrophedon.

The Indian plough
rectangular a has
wooden base
on sit to
kids and tired
it on squat teenagers
while the ox
on carry

A colour for a thing

Why are the barks green
or sky blue
Rainbow eucalyptus
would make them all alike
and  that we would not
like

But there are
rainbow trees
in places you havent been
labs of the nature

Gone

My dad knew that the
money was in the
downtown
At one of the buildings
he just ducked into it
It wasnt a door or a
window
Not a welcome hole

(Dream)

On dream and writing

Doing your thing

There are books about how people make it big.
1. Skip College. They are just one in a billion. And so are billionnaires.
2. Street smarts(Jim Rogers), Playing to win, Digital Disruptors.

I was thinking on these lines of a person who thinks about making the currency. What about a character who does the opposite. One who investigates all the ways of taking money out of others. Like a tax collector. I am thinking of Pale King.

Glad to wake up

It was raining.
I'm in the town I grew up.
I wanted to tell some people
who I was
To see if they could recognize me
I hadnt changed, still a child

A miscreant next to us
My husband snatched his phone
and another device and dropped
it into a well.
We dropped him too.
some fellows were helping us
One of them turned against us

I am on the run and hiding
in a hospital
in the rooms of doctors
a helpful acquaintance

alas, I have to leave
I reach the edge of a building
contemplating falling
and then I glide down

All around the building trained women
are looking for me

Then little dogs catch my scent
I enter into a farm house
and they fall into the dung



PS: Essay staiger odyssey. For times when you itch to write a long essay.

In the dictionary

are the answers.
Metastasize has now entered the non medical lexicon.
Greeks knew the word centuries ago
But only after the English knew cancer

While questions take time to form.
Jeopardy.

Which tree?

No leaves on trees
Tiny black pellets 
seeds of a tree 
nature has its way of 
getting into into your living room 
without knocking the door

Spirituality

A friend recently said that she fast for 6 months of which the first 4 months stint is called Chaturmasya. She said it helped with her spirituality. In NAMTA Journal Vol 27, Number 3 of Summer 2002 titled Montessori Spiritual: God, Evolution and the Natural world, I saw the definition of Spirituality by Csikszentmihayli - "when a person invests energy in trying to connect and go beyond the self, that is what we usually call spiritual". (Recognise the 'flow' guy)

AmritaBindu Upanishad. When/how does desire start? 

Things you can take for granted

A while ago, my roommate recommended this book. The book sat on the shelf for some years now. Into it, I related to the author's confusion of age during his college years. 

When the old dying asks the author to breathe and count to show his decreasing abilities, I was reminded of Randy Pausch demonstrating his fitness before his imminent death.

Another writer with ALS

When you punish someone, what/who are you punishing - the soul? Where is the permanent world?

Related books:

,

PS: Things you can take for granted

Gap between God and man

When we hear of a controversy like misrepresentation of accepted idols or the Tum Hi Bandhu song from cocktail movie where some of the line shave been appropriated from sacred lines. Hindu gods and goddess have to fight not just evil and demon but their mischaracterization in art. Our thought and idea bin is formed from the roots of our culture. That common language will be used to express the modern/current life. If you say your love is as sacred as god, we have to accept the change that has happened to 'god' in your mind through time.
There is the eternal god that we accept that we still dont know much about and our own understanding of god that is coming of our daily experiences of love and society. These two may meet.

Is our life stage wrt understanding the eternal, like the childhood of man - where we dont know or understand all things yet.

Beauty of mess

Havent we read enough of Americans travelling to Asia? But still, we read on expecting a different arc. In Unquiet Americans essay she notes that her husband is physically transformed. What a traveler is open to? Let the place change him.

other country's cash referred to as monopoly cash in the above essay.
reverse pioneering in 'Joan Didion'.
Shell game - A similar game can be seen in Telugu movies from earlier decades.
Joan Didion article is continued in the book. 

Family tales

Today Tempe library had a workshop .

Following from their site:

How to get started writing about family members, events, and places

Family History Series

Duane Roen will discuss the family experiences that offer rich material for writing and will share strategies for beginning the process, including an easy hands-on activity that will get participants writing about a memorable family member, place, or event (so please bring paper and pen or laptop). Participants will respond in writing to a series of questions designed to generate concrete details about family stories. After recording these details, participants will be invited to share their writing with the group. In turn, the group will be encouraged to offer constructive feedback that will help writers develop their writing further. This is the first in a series of three writing workshops focusing on journaling and personal and family history. Each workshop has a different focus. You may participate in one, two, or all three. There is no charge for this program.

Duane Roen is Professor of English at Arizona State University, where he serves as Assistant Vice Provost for University Academic Success, as well as Head of Interdisciplinary and Liberal Studies in the School of Letters and Sciences. He also coordinates the Project for Writing and Recording Family History (http://sls.asu.edu/humanities/familyhistory/). Throughout his professional life, Duane has taught students how to write more effectively—how to tailor their messages for specific audiences and for specific purposes. He has published nine books, and he has authored more than 250 articles, chapters, and conference presentations. 

I was in tears. Well I was in tears in a birthing class too. It was an interesting format of writing down and then sharing your work with the rest. I saw how family stories are similar in some ways - displacement and different in other - sometimes you are leaving your best friend off and sometimes you are the one left behind.

Writing down, I realised that my first memory has me and my sister. Some curried favour with repetition. I realised why my grandma was my favourite person, may be because I was with her during KG.

Old norms

RSVP. While this beast has a variation 'regrets only'. Why not be more accomodating and say 'accepts only' need to reply. Why cant the norm get modern and take it easy on those who havent learnt the power of saying 'no'.
Besides if it all started in the King's time - Wasnt there enough food? And did the subjects ever refuse?

Missing the big picture

With all the colorful birds and butterflies around, I didnt realise that the bunny in 'I am bunny' is actually enjoying all the seasons. Like this picture where a same motif is presented in different formats. Hint: Food/pig. 

Things to do before buying a home

You would read The Wall Street Journal: Complete Homeowners Guidebook by David Crook, if you didnt want to buy a house. Reminds me of a quandary I had about who to talk to single or married about not marrying. 

Lack of support aside, it is good to wash the veils off your eyes on some generally accepted things floating around new home buyers talk - deductions on the interest, Imputed rent, is buy or rent the right question.

What is Amortization? Thats a good place to start if you are thinking of buying a home.
I didnt know that Fairway was a golf related term. I have once been to apartments by that name close to a golf course.
Cachet

Best American poetry 2012

Long poem.
While reading 'wax' by Paisley Rekdal , I was curious about how such long poems are written. inspiration and time - 8 months went into that poem. To pull off a poem with such simple title.

The Gods - A theater experience

As a new mom
I went with my infant
to a reading by Michael Ondaatje


My daughter dropped a toy giraffee
A fellow reader pointed it to me


While I was waiting
the assistant offered to stow
away the stroller
"Theres no room inside"

While the gallery was filling up
I excused ourselves when
she started crying
"Theres a directors room"
No one will hear her cry.
You can still attend the reading

In the Directors room.
Dark and lonely.
Quiet.
I couldnt get the volume up.
Does the director only see?

We reached home one sock less

God is there because we know we can be better.

A dream

She was eager to please me
I was happy
wanted to please her too
Friend became a lover

google books

Proper Noun

Nancy Willard

Tall man in a small place. Do the plants miss the gardener, I wonder of the plants that I am watering for my husband. My sister tells me of an acquaintance who watered their plants - cardamom in their absence with used milk packets dripping water. The poet asks the gardener :

" or are you the pupil

they your examiners"

With teachers too I wonder who is the pupil. With the task of helping the child, they are the examined.

Tree House

A very still life

Walking with glass. Recently at a Pulla Reddy sweet shop, I walked to a tiered display of sweets and banged into the glass.

In Legend of the tangerine, the poet says 'never hurry a tangerine'. Tangerines may be off the hook but the raw green bananas better hurry up.

At the foundry. The poet finds improbable things found only by artifacts. Once she finds them, her ambitions want to overcome the frozen state of the metal and behave like the life of our world - animated, whole and mobile. Her fascination with the magic is reflected in poems like The mirror, Flying Carpet.

Losing compass and Deer in winter - Weather and deer.
Hummock
Foamflower

Poetry exercise
1. The Mirror. Begin with a noun and let a famous quote about be the springboard. Many poems in this book have a clear beginning. Noun or Proper Noun.
2. Some things should never be written down. A title in the book. What are those according to you?
3. Elementals. 'Put on my cap of air..... Put on my shoes of fire...' like the gifts given to Perseus.

All things DFW

Federer both flesh and not

Fictional futures and conspicuously young

Other DFW works

The nature of fun - On writing

Period poetry

What the poets of this century might not be on this time. Poets of previous century can write of us imagining science fiction, or of the next century as historical fiction.

When I read that the book has poems on Titanic, I can see how news articles might have led people to imagine about it.

The coming urban century.

Rocky point

If someone can interest you in rocks like the layers of a cake, then its a geologist who will let you feel the thrill of his findings as he joins the dots. He gets us conversant in using stratigraphy of looking at the layer changes in the rocks.
The story under Rome is no less riveting than the many on/of it.
Now a geologist is not going to leave you without rubbing off a thing or two about his subject - potassium argon dating. Other than this method, geologists have also used fossils and microfossils.
Can you believe that Earth's magnetic field is reversing from time to time? Not once or twice, if you look at the changes of magnetic polarity, it looks like a bar code. You can study these things if you become a paleomagnetist.
Lie water cycle, there's a rock cycle with sedimentary on the surface rocks are bedded deep into earth to become metamorphic rocks which later emerge as volcanic rocks. Then part of the water cycle erodes these rocks to form sedimentary rocks.

Dec 18, 2009

Clash of the natures

Madame X by William Logan

Pale blossoms, chipped like tea cups in The War, The War

The placid tuna, hacked into agate slabs in The eels of the lagoon

Words

VEX, hex, SMASH, smooch by Constance Hale

In an American Airlines inflight magazine article, when I came across 'luckily', I felt how our sense of gratefulness never comes across the page. It has become like the overused just.

A vocabulary list is included in DFW's 'Both Flesh and Not'.

Storing summer

The Golden Road by Rachel Hadas

origin,journey, wound and destination in The pattern. It has been said that all stories are about a person going from one place to the other. Into this shuttling story, the poet adds the bump of wound into the journey element. A resultant journey to find the cure creates a web of story yarn. 

departure and arrival in On the ferry. The author's poetry deals with states, before-after. The narrator is always in a flux, travelling in a plane, on a ferry in which she lets her thoughts to travel too laying down conversation starters dormant.

The address book begins as a data management/organizer, in years if it does not fall out of use, it stocks the living, dead and the forgotten all in the same book.

Plot of Macbeth
No good deed goes unrewarded reminds me of good intentions being misunderstood.
Rear window
The language of women

That was another summer though. Life has some times that return. Birthday celebrations and seasons which rest like layers on the previous.

In After the end of summer,  a brown brook
'over and over in its water voice,
a voice born out of silence'
takes us to that moment of beauty spent solely with nature.

poet on The end of summer in Three poets.

Storing the season

Ill naw mean

From a family with values derived from the mind of Shihuangdi, the man who built the Wall and unified China come tales that remind me of 'Talk Thai: the Adventures of a Buddhist boy' in the situation of narrators with fresh of the boat parents.

In the times when Instagram and smartphones werent heard of, author Eddie Huang has been part of many things that would have made popular videos. Ousted out of various schools faster than annually, you can see the making of the mean boys - he and his friends who bond over hip-hop.

'I found myself. I rehabilitated myself'
I went into the book thinking that it is about food. The author ends up owning a restaurant just like his dad but the route he takes is rife with many imagination pumping street fights and meets with cops.

'I wanted to know if there was one person, one voice, one individual inside me.'
When in Taiwan airport, the author felt best at house, midway between his white America and Chinese Taiwan.

The author bangs into the stereotype culture wall and being called names for his ethnic looks. He veers off many times to be influenced by many 'most important' professors who recognise his talent.

Our response to culture is different based on the age we are exposed to it. The author's formative years form tales that turn into culture tapestry.

The transition of the voice from a child to the adult is maintained in the book.

How the book is a metabook

Like MLA(Modern Language Association)'s guidelines for bibliography, the author too has one.

David Shields, How Literature saved my Life. In later chapters, when it comes to his `Fifty-five works Iswear by', take for example:

Borges, Other Inquisitions. An investigation of otherness pretending to be mere miscellany.

In a strange way this note resonates with the book too with its web like miscellany and the `otherness' apparent in the quest of unifying the search in the many books.

If you look at life through the lens of death (lens of the book), everything would seem trivial. But still the trivial is not left unexamined. In between this apathy and scrutiny falls the authors study not limited to books but also to failed public heroes, Brown university, fictional superheroes.

A book about many books and writers. How other writers deal with death.The author is a self proclaimed ambivalent. Literature is his saviour and then its not. With his vast reading, the author is able to quote from a variety of sources. Sometimes the quotes steal the show. Sometimes they are out of place.

Many books mentioned in the book like ` This is not a novel', a book according to the author almost entirely out of other writers' lines. Atleast that book has the pleasure of recognition of the passages included. If we rdid `Wait don't tell me `for everything in the book it wouldn't be too fun. So even though there is the humility of not knowing much of the work alluded to in the book, the author has trapped himself into a construct like a never ending story where the magic is supposed to be in the million mirroring of a mostly empty diorama box.

One strength of the book is that even though no lines will stick with you. If you flip the pages, because of the miscellany, the aptness will hit your radar sometime.

The writer does achieve the `dubiety of the first person pronoun' that he wants to achieve by making the reader wonder if he/she is in between quotations.

Things I didn't know
Scout belt can be bought
How Tree of Codes book was made
Collage books

3/5

Write

Last book I loved

Essay contest: Mystery and memory

Poetry. Loving it while hating it.

Let the train move on

One Train May Hide another

This is the kind that would make me happy as a school going child taking a bus. If the bus in front just left and somehow there's another bus in the same direction.

From a simple observation, poet Kenneth Koch has moved to one of the most important situation in life. If you cant move on, never mind, let the train move on.

Appian Way

I missed reading the first line in parenthesis.

Being a poet, it is a given that this sign should first make him see how it translates to poetry.
You always have to wait for the train. Yield it says.
Wait for the line. One line may hide another thinks the optimist writer.

A jump to a personality shadowing another. Jumps back to his turf of words.
The path of things.

Valley of the var. Turns too hide things. Blind spot.
We only look for what we are waiting for. Think of a giant Lazy Susan or Baggage carousel. The bag has to be picked. All celestial things are on a carousel. To be is to be everywhere. Moving all the time.

PS: Today a group email was sent about a lost hairpin. This hairpin would be easy to find.

From Light to Dark and Back

A poetry exercise

Day 5

Poem: Homage to Yalta

Words in the order they appear in the poem:

Yalta
Chigorin Defense

washout. Have you felt the discomfort of being between knowing a word and guessing it from context? I have seen people use this word shortened to wash and never quite understood what they meant.

Livadia.  Cities inside us. The poem by Alberto Rios makes me wonder why he didnt choose a specific place as it would leave a better sense of belonging to a place and holding it in you too, when you move away. All cities might remain in you. But they would differ in how. Even without the specifics, the poet does not lose the reader. For one, he binds with them as the citizens of the city inside. The title is the foreshadow of the direction. When you say city, the mind wanders out. What is true of the places is true of the people.

Day 4 Joseph Brodsky

Today while watering the pothos which grows on only one side, the leaves that have been there for a long time, I realise that they wont long. An acceptance opposed to the eternal why should leaves fall and flowers die.

The unrelenting law
that happiness cant last

- For E.R, Joseph Brodsky

Pontus which 'remains unfrozen'.
frozen is such a cold, solid word that you first think of the shit down white and then clear it to imagine unfrozen.

exploded soundlessly, nymphs leap, 
The aural scape is charged

But no wind blows, ..slowly rising breakers

In an obvious state of calm, there is an upsurge welling.

I tend to write in terms of A caused B. The last para is a succession of things overthrowing a succession of other things. With the multitude/complex happenings, there is a benefit of texture.

Stereotypes

Title: Scandinavian Humor and Other Myths

I was interested in this book after an incident at a Scandinavian restaurant where we went to celebrate my friends Bday. We were overcharged. Seemed like the owner/mother was going to give it good to the son/cashier after we left. it also reminded me of an ad for a credit card where a son loses his customer and the mom is ready with her culinary weapons.

An Iceland person with a pile of books in a hand makes sense with a recent survey calling them the most reading.

Title: Counterpart (New Series)

Author: Elizabeth Robinson

Day 3 - Joseph Brodsky

Poem: Autumn in Norenskaia

I thought I hadnt read Joseph Brodsky until I got the 'Collected poems in English' by mail. A search led me to The Poets Laureate Anthology where I have read the same poems. But I cant recall having read them. Poets take heed to Carl Sandberg's words on advertising (why? Cause he is bday boy today and his wishes have to be fulfilled) and 'irritate them' readers so they can remember the poem.

The lines are from winds point of view in a rustic setting

Rhythm of exile and Anti Regressive Dissimilation rhythm?
When in exile at Norenskaia, Brodsky learnt English by translating works into Russian.

On Anno Domini  poem - Also on his travel. Place plays a major role in his poems. as an exile, his very slippery affiliation with it, makes him collect it in memory.

Some libraries have his papers boxed. Is that enough to know him. Or as he says, is the way through his vowels and words. Or with a  Who's who entry. Or in the poem Walcott reads to Brodsky's God mother by a reader-poet.

Surely you didnt hear this

Title: The universal sense

Listeners of the low end chapter on tadpoles that switch from opercular hearing to the ear. A human foetus switches from umbilical cord to lungs for breathing

Tuning fork on the book cover might/might not work as an attention monger depending on your experience in science class. If you think, the ear with its so many inner/outer/middle like levels of hell is too much on one thing, feel free to skip the jarg on it and still theres the 'How hearing shapes the mind' to be appreciated in the book.
All that pregnancy reading helped in seeing parallels of how foetus shifts from systems during birth. A human foetus shifts from umbilical cord to pulmonary route for breathing. And such a shift is found in bull frog tadpoles when they move from the opercular way of hearing under water to the ear.
There are so many things about hearing that we come across daily but havent put it into:

Do you know why you have preference for one ear when you talk on the phone
 Why you have to take care of alarms while it doesnt seem to bother others
How you can hear over the din in a restaurant/party - Cocktail effect

This is science amped All you wanted to know about hearing from a contemporary scientist who does his homework of popular/necessary reading.

Valued Ex

Title: Stag's Leap
Author: Sharon Olds

For the reader, recognising the perfect love involves an ex makes him/her confront the loss to the author as many times as her encounters in her mind.
Some poems show her split half for art and family.
Like they say 'is there ever a good time for something like break up/ divorce?'. is there ever a goo time to spend on art vs family?

on PBS
Guardian review
NPR review
Huffington post review
Something new in each interview

Play time in BC

A toy

A head falling out of a neck
connected by a string of holes
Mouth to the top of the head
Push and pull the string
to see the head bob up and down

The holes on the side of the neck
Can it be moved sideways?

A year with Brodskys poetry

Title: Joseph Brodsky Collected poems in English

My friend told me that she sent me a gift. I guessed it to be a book. I hoped it wasnt one I had read. I asked for a clue. Poetry book she said. I didnt know how to feel as a receiver of poetry book. I would have liked to pass around some poetry books but never thought what if someone gave me a poetry book. Here is the moment. Joseph Brodsky, I dont think I have heard of him.

The Gift

Paris review interview

From specific to general to specifics

10 snack foods originally sold as medicines
When you find a tidbit interesting, see if there are other examples.
Compact powder expanded to vanity case.

It is true

what they say about
sugar high for kids
I thought that sugar high
from cookies was for American kids

As kids we climbed the sack of rice
to reach the ledge which has Horlicks powder

When daddy hid the Nutrine chocolates in the attic
we asked our grown up cousin to lift us so we could
reach them

And the white glucose powder
we had to have gulps of it
solid to liquid in 3.5
Why did we have to

I cannot imagine eating sugar like that now
by spoonfuls or even pinches

--------------------------------------------------

Glucose is the starting point for the above.
Chase it. Read to find your trigger word.

Sudden Dog

Title: Sudden Dog

Author: Matthew Pennock

Short lease

Two poems
Two more poems
Forgive the Hyena its crimes. A title that reminds me of Please do not yell at the sea cucumber.