My post Songs to Fill the Air, from Monday, was revised and updated.
I updated the creative writing pages on my Web site, restating the links to poems and stories offered there.
Back in the spring of last year, I said Vista sucks and we should speak out to save Windows XP. Well, I’ve had Vista for about a month on a new computer and I like it. C’est la vie.
Excerpts from Chapter 25
I like to have breakfast for dinner. I don’t know why. Once or twice a week, instead of frozen pizza or chicken pot pie, I have cereal and toast or scrambled eggs and sausages. Maybe it’s a way of starting the day over before shutting it down. It’s comforting, especially in winter. I like cream of wheat with gobs of butter floating. If there was anyone else around, they’d warn me I’m softly, silently killing myself. That’s alright. I never imagined I would live this long, or outlive so much. I believed I would die much younger – suddenly, dramatically…
Dad could explain it. He would tell you how he got straight with me about commitment at the lake, how he came to me on the hill north of the orchard and was forthright. Dealt with me man to man. And gave me half a dozen other chances through the years, to speak up and say what I wanted, what I was willing to do for it. Then since he had a wife, another son, and long declining years to think about, it fell to him to act in place of me.
Now isn’t that ironic. The son who stayed turned out to be the prodigal and profligate. For me the land was divided, the robe and ring brought forth; for me, the slaughtered calf. And since the tale is inside out, I stand here waiting to awake someday among the pigs. And not a word of protest from my brother, not a sound.
…
I was quiet as the wind in Papa’s Sycamores – which stand now on the northern edge of my remainder – when Dad took an offer for his and Bo’s shares. I said not a word except in refusing to add my own third to the deal. And so it went, and Dad might say it broke his heart to see it come to that, but that he was finally impressed by the action I took.
…
I would rather have had them see me waiving down from on high, bearing an enigmatic smile born in the lessons taught outside of time and space, of how perfect life is and how much better than life is death. So people die, but they keep watch on what we do and how we spend our fading days, but most don’t choose to stay too close. Everything looks purer in its blues and greens – even the dull brown between the trees and the ruddy drying tack of our blood on the land – from an infinite distance like heaven.
© 2009 by J. Kyle Kimberlin
All rights reserved
I happy; at least, terribly satisfied. Blogger has added the feature I was ranting about not having, just last night. Look!
Insert a break in my post. Then you can keep reading or not, and the whole long boring thing isn’t cluttering up the main page of the blog.
OK. As I shared in my last post, I am frustrated by Blogger. I’ve had my shower now, and Blogger’s a good little dog, but it won’t hunt like the big dogs do. Still, it’s lovable. I’m not ready to kick it to the curb.
I have my solution, I think. Won’t bore you with the details. … If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
When I have a long post, you’ll have a link here.The Internet is made of links, not tubes. And a mouse is a good as a dog in this roshambo, just as a nod’s as good as a wink – nudge nudge.
I’m going to use WordPress posts, or pdf files, or some of each.
It took a fair bit of scrubbing, but I think I got the sap.
I’m consternated, peeved and aggrieved. I shall not head to the thesaurus to explore further how much I’m just … grrr.
First of all, I was sitting under a pine tree this afternoon, and it took a poo on my head. I guess it bled. I got sap in my hair. It bugged me for a couple of hours, but when I got home I forgot about it for a while. Now I need a late evening shower before bed. I’m not in the mood.
Also, I’m frustrated to the end of the block and back by Blogger. Sometimes, I want to post something here that’s longer than a few paragraphs of quickdraw drivel. Maybe a bit of story, you know? But I don’t want to post it all together, because maybe you’d like to read a little and decide if you want to move on to something else, or read the post.
So I could push a button right here, and you’d have a link to read the rest or skip on happily downward.
[Follow-up to this post]
This is an option in other blog platforms; for instance, WordPress has it. I have a WordPress blog. Their functions are pretty cool. Static pages, post excerpts … sweet. I could move this blog there in about 10 minutes. But I like my blog here on Blogger. Except for this one little function, I have it just the way I want it. So I tried a big nasty html work-around with the template code, which used to work, but it doesn’t.
Blogger upgraded their compose functions recently. Why didn’t they just add the old split post thingy and we’d have it? Grrr.
I’ve been playing around with creating longer things in pdf or html pages, or using WordPress just for longer posts, and it’s the kind of time-wasting crappity crap that can waste vast tracts of sanity.
Heads up and fair warning: this blog might move. If it does, there will be a link here for you to click, until you get around to changing your bookmarks.
OK, I gotta go wash my hair.
Novel work in process
I like to have breakfast for dinner. I don’t know why. Once or twice a week, instead of frozen pizza or chicken pot pie, I have cereal and toast or scrambled eggs and sausages. Maybe it’s a way of starting the day over before shutting it down. It’s comforting, especially in winter. I like cream of wheat with gobs of butter floating. If there was anyone else around, they’d warn me I’m softly, silently killing myself. That’s alright. I never imagined I would live this long, or outlive so much. I believed I would die much younger – suddenly, dramatically…
Dad could explain it. He would tell you how he got straight with me about commitment at the lake, how he came to me on the hill north of the orchard and was forthright. Dealt with me man to man. And gave me half a dozen other chances through the years, to speak up and say what I wanted, what I was willing to do for it. Then since he had a wife, another son, and long declining years to think about, it fell to him to act in place of me.
“Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.”
Not sure I agree with Mr. Brodsky on this. Every poet can teach you something, but not every poet can teach you language. But if you tend to agree, you can use me if you want. Easy pickins.
DOLPHINS AND THE DEAD
Remember San Francisco,
windy sunny hillside
and your hair floating
with the grass.
Your back to me
in black leather.
The sun so bright
I moved
into the shade of your body.It was different on Goleta
pier. The sunset ignited
the sea, rose and gold.
The dolphins danced and cried,
the whales turned to see
the trees bow down
where the mountains knelt.
Then there were songs
to fill the air.
As I mentioned over the weekend, I’ve posted my chapbook, Finding Oakland online, something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. The delay was just that there was no digital expression of it; the computer files had been lost. And who wants to spend hours typing poems, trying to make the thing come out just as it was? That’s what I finally did. So if you read the book, you’re seeing it exactly as it was published, except for page dimensions.
And as I said, I thought it might be interesting to go over some of those poems, to see what they mean to me now. This is the first of such efforts.
Dolphins And The Dead was not the first poem in the chapbook, but I chose it to be reexamined first because it inspired the cover illustration. The cover was drawn in pen by a friend of mine, Sasha Bergman. I told her what I saw in my mind, and she drew it; nicely, I think.
The poem is simply a case of a poet looking for words to capture strong memories and feelings for another person. In this case, two short times I spent with my brother in about 1990. He was living in San Francisco at the time, and I went up to visit him.
We went to a Grateful Dead show, in Oakland or Sacramento, I’m not sure.We went to a number of Grateful Dead shows over several years.
We went to the top of a high hill of forgotten name and looked down at the city. Another time, probably that same year, we went to Goleta Pier west of Santa Barbara.
I think I remember how I felt as I wrote this. Our lives felt so fragile, so mortal, and amazing. The mundane was infused with sanctity, as life so often is.
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?Its a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps theyre better left unsung.
I dont know, dont really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.[Ripple, by The Grateful Dead]
Related posts:
Here’s my new little friend Jasper. He’s staying with my folks for a few days while his person is out of town. He’s a sweet, friendly little dog. Likes to play. Not big on walks, but I think that’s because he’s a little anxious about his Mama being away, and a new neighborhood is just more than he wants to process right now.
It’s a lot of fun for me to have a little dog to play with, and Jasper seems to like me pretty well, for a temp in the play and cuddle department. But he’s definitely aware of his owner’s absence, and I’m aware of others not present too. But hey, more will be revealed.
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod
Big wheel turn by the grace of God
Everytime that wheel turn round
bound to cover just a little more ground
… touched me.
I was cleaning up files on my Web site, and found this old page of poems and stories, put up in 2004. I had forgotten about it, but it’s cool.
I’m pleased to say, in the spirit of digital storytelling, that my my ancient and venerable book of poems, Finding Oakland is now online. It’s posted in .pdf format, so all you need to read it is Acrobat Reader. Both the book and the reader for it are free.
The book is also free from the anachronistic and persnickety constraints of traditional copyright. I want to get it into people’s hands again, or at least in front of their eyes. And no more trees need to die in the process. So it’s covered by a Creative Commons license.
Read it in your browser, download it to your hard drive, pass it along to your friends, as attachment or link.
You will be seeing more of this little book here on Metaphor. My plan is to share one of the poems, individually, every few days over the coming month or so, to examine and discuss its creation, and the changes in poetics for me since that time.
The reason for this, other than I think I would find it interesting, is that I’m editing newer work in preparation for a public reading in the near future. So a redux of this old stuff might make a nice creative harmony.
More on that reading, very soon.
Metaphor 