Sole Readers

What histories are written in the feet? Who can read the lines? Steps through the years. The earth presses against our feet. Ancient bone runes, graveyards rising, shoes fill with dirt, with seeds that unfurl cartographies inscribed in swirls of lines, ridges and hollows that map life in calloused, toughened skin.

These animal pads.

Their
finely boned dance.

____



If you click on any image it'll take you to the album, and a larger slideshow if you so wish.

Into the bathroom I went with a large pad of paper, dark acrylic paint, a cleaned shrimp sauce container from Christmas day for water, a large brush and shouted to my daughter, 'I'm taking off my jeans, don't be embarrassed!' I laid an old dog towel and paper towels on the floor, poured some water into the tub with bubble bath creating a pool of a few inches of warm water.

I painted the soles of my feet, and stood, stomped, painted some more, took specimens, footprints, identifying etchings. The bottom of my feet were dark sepia black.

Then I scrubbed my soles clean with a sponge in the bath, watched the grey water swirl down the drain.

After I used a daylight bulb and took these photos. For the visceral, the real. Animal pads, baby!

Feet that done a bunch of walkin' through a whole crunch of years, oh yeah!

___
Written for Big Tent Poetry prompt: feet.

                                          

YouTube Custom Video Players

YouTube is now offering the players that were in beta. I think they are terrific.

Remember, first you must create a playlist with the videos you would like to show in your player. To do this, click on the videos and add them to a playlist. When you create your custom player you will be given a list of your playlists to choose from.


I have this one on the first page of my website. I'm not sure how to find it in the new menus, but if you go here http://www.youtube.com/custom_player you can highlight it as a layout style and then you'll get the embed code. Be careful, though, YouTube says: "The layout option is only available when you first create a player. Once you've chosen a layout and saved the player, you won't be able to change it."



In the bottom left corner, click on the box after the Play sign but before the Volume control and the videos in the playlist will appear along the bottom of the screen. It's a toggle switch: click on it again to make them disappear. Use the arrow at the end to see subsequent pages.

Clicking on the Videopoetry playlist will take you to a cool page in which the videos are shown in mini size in a vertical line, along with total playtime.

I am amazed to see the 13 videos I have in this playlist are a total of 41 minutes! Each one took a minimum of 20 hours to produce, and the longer ones in the 50 hour range!

Crazy what we do for enjoyment, huh?

                                          

Stone #6

A man as wide as he is tall throws birdseed. His old Jack Russell watches. Twelve rock doves peck like feathery iridescent ocean waves.

(Actually, I think I can remove the second sentence to make a better image:

A man as wide as he is tall throws birdseed. Twelve rock doves peck like feathery iridescent ocean waves.

But I leave the Jack Russell in since this distills moments in my life - I see these two nearly every day out my window, sometimes I chat with the man. And one day I will read this post, and remember them. So the image is for my own keepsake. One of the stones in my silk pouch of poetry and memory.)
_

A River
of Stones



                                          

Stone #5

A sealed envelope, my nephew's present from his uncle, unexpectedly falls out from behind a bookcase. l hold it, notice the moment.
_

A River
of Stones