A Canadian classic, the Four Horsemen

Canadian classic, the Four Horsemen, sound poets.

bp Nichol

Raphael Barreto-Rivera

Steve McCaffery

Paul Dutton

From the a clip from Ron Mann's documentary, Poetry in Motion (1981). It was posted 5 years ago on Google video. It's also on YouTube, but in a lower resolution. I chatted with bp at a party I helped to organize for my ex way back in the mid-1980s. bp liked my quiche lorraine, if I recall. He was sprightly, outwardly sort of 'hippy-ish' perhaps, but mentally as agile as any high wire rope walker. Later on, in the 90s, Paul used to come by our house, and talk with my ex. Though I wasn't writing or painting in those days, I had a library of a few thousand books and could hold my own in conversation. I knew lots of bookish things, I guess, which Paul seemed to appreciate. Anyway, this is a bit of trip down memory lane tonight. bp died in September 1988. He'd gone into hospital for an operation to remove a cyst on his spine, a routine operation, and died on the operating table. Completely unexpected in such an operation, and tragic. Tonight I found concrete poems that he'd composed on one of the first Macs, way back in the 80s. What he would have produced had he lived. Though that is a mute statement, isn't it. Glad we have what we do of what he did create.

 

The bones, the x-rays, the bones...

Very likely a bit demented. But because I had to get copies for specialists I am seeing, I now have two CDs of x-rays of my wrist (from two different labs, I might add - this lady has been footing it about the city). An Intern said that while there was indication of FLAC wrist in the May 28, 2011 x-ray (osteoarthritis due to multiple injuries), he saw no fracture. The August 1, 2012 x-ray apparently shows the fracture. Damned if I can see it though. Sort of, maybe.  But I definitely see that there is no cartilage left between the scaphoid bone (in the wrist) and the radius (one of the forearm bones). So that's the OUCH. What's worse is I'm thinking of using these x-rays in a videopoem of the Palmistry, a Psalm painting and poem, which is really demented. Lol.

And, anyway, I need a place to store these for future reference, and Bloggers' search engine is way better than Picassa's. Keeping them in Draft in this blog doesn't really work since I'd be likely to delete the post without realizing it at some point.

So, herewith I place photos of my bones in the public domain (uh, ok, in the unlisted album domain). Lol. :)



Then, uh, I, uh, added a detail of the painting, and then, uh, combined them. See, a Conceptual Art piece!



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Yoga to Cleanse Your Body

Yogi Bhajan said of this set when he taught it:

This set is especially recommended for women as a regular practice. It wards off menstrual problems, breast cancer, and excess emotionality. It is good for men too.

Exercise 1 gives the mind calmness and strength to judge each situation. Exercise 2 cuts down excess waistlines, improves digestion and builds your overall power of recuperation. Exercise 3 strengthens the aura, your power to communicate clearly, and removes the deposits in the shoulder area. Exercises 4-5 are for the lower back and sciatic nerves. They prevent headaches and adjust the thigh area. Exercise 6 is for the magnetic field, heart, and shoulders. Exercises 7 and 8 can correct any imbalance between the diaphragm and the sex organ. They are valuable exercises for rebalancing the navel point.

Each day I seem to be doing Spinal Flex (yoga for your back), and then once a week a more rigorous yoga set. This morning I did Exercises for Body Cleansing and Disease Prevention. It took awhile and was quite invigorating. I recall it as one of my teacher, Sat Dharam's, favourites (at least, she often taught it). Because of the difficulty in my wrist, camel pose was a challenge, as was the final exercise, and I was not able to do them as I once could, but it was still good. This yoga set works with Apana, the eliminating energy. Do it to cleanse your body.






I finished with this crazy little meditation, Meditation for Absolutely Powerful Energy. It is such fun to do! I recall, in the 90s, sometimes sitting in my car (I still had one back then), waiting for school to be finished to pick up my two children, exhausted, as often mothers, and especially single mothers are, and doing this meditation with the windows closed, trying to boost my energy.

Sure it helps, especially if you can laugh at yourself too!

because I should include this when I post yoga sets 

Note: Scans of these yoga kriyas and meditations have been uploaded to an unlisted album in Picasa and cannot be found by public search engines, but only if you have the link (which is available from this blog). I have begun this album so that I can easily access yoga sets and meditations I am working on. Also, all of the yoga sets in this album were given to me when I attended yoga classes and to everyone attending those sessions (or from freely downloadable on-line sources)  - they are not scanned from books, which hold copyright. 

If you find these sets and meditations intriguing and try them and like them, I urge you to find a Kundalini Yoga class in your area to properly learn how to do them, as well as how to tune in, the Bhandas, or body locks, the different types of breath work, and so very much more. 

Ink Ocean

Posting Ink Ocean again, hosted at my own site, because while it exists on Jamendo, the player there does not seem to be working. Le sigh.

Still one of my favourite drawings. India ink on archival paper. I think it's 11" x 14".

The poem arose from the words that arose in the drawing.

It became an almost 10 minute poem on the Gulf oil spill, the ocean, love, the tides in us. 

At the time, I was doing a lot of experimenting with recording different readings of a poem and then layering them so it sounds like an echo but isn't. In this one I was trying for a 'main voice' - the public one; and a 'whispered voice' - the private one. When we make art, we make it with our private, fragile, sensitive whisperings, our delicate words, our delicate brushstrokes, but always mindful that it will also exist in the social world, so public, strong, spoken with clarity and confidence.

+P E Sharpe had some very interesting things to say about being a 'literary thinker' as the source of her art in some respect - which reminded me of this piece. So sharing....

She wrote this in a very interesting discussion (https://plus.google.com/u/0/107066609145001672622/posts/JF3EvA3g9EK) that ensued from her Hangout Interview with +Brainard Carey , which you should watch - http://youtu.be/MruMiL3a8FA.

Dr. D. Richard Clews, my Dad

Tonight, for no reason, and not something I have ever done before, he died well before the Internet age, I Googled my Dad. He died in 1984. I discovered some his books are still referenced in an obscure library or so -  http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n87-809900 - not that we knew - he was well-published but never boasted except to say to me once, after your 30th article, who's counting, and who cares? When he mentioned an article he had written for Time Magazine, we went a little crazy, 'Where is it?' 'Why didn't you tell us?', and he simply shrugged, saying he'd written articles for Time before.

It could have been that he simply kept his professional life separate from his family life.

Tonight, on the eve of my mother's passing (whenever it is, a week, a month, a year), I also found an old obituary on his death. It wasn't until after he died reading all the obituaries sent to us from friends and colleagues of his that we realized he was considered a world authority in his field. We knew little of this side of him.

I am unable to paste in the obituary due to the lettering and spacing of the original, so I took a screen capture. I'm posting it in my blog, so that I can find it again.

Obituary in The Association of Exploration Geochemists, Newsletter #48, June 1984

Still damn proud of him.

testing a super easy way of embedding an MP3 player in Blogger with html5

A Palmistry, a Psalm: see previous post.
Background music by Aymeric, from their album on Jamendo, 'Sometimes,' cut 03.

just testing a super easy way of embedding a player in Blogger with html5, thanks
Amanda Kennedy!

A Palmistry of Signs

What do you think? I plan to write it into my painting. Once there, the words can't be changed.


A Palmistry, a Psalm

The hand is a poem. A fragmenting poem in my hand. Fingers blow in the wind like bulrushes. That gnarled branch overhanging the water, a twisted wrist. I wear a carpal bone like a pendulum, the rattle of Coatlique.

Our hands, neuronal cells pulsing nerves probing the world, soft, sensitive. In the signs in the lines on our palms a seer's language. Our journey mapped in grooves of curvature of skin over muscle and bone. Born here; die there. One, or two, or five central relationships. You will /or will not have children. This will be a difficult time; easier there. My, you are a sensualist.

They cut off the hands of thieves. Only I never stole. When was my hand severed? As a child? In the nightmare it is staked in the window, a sign for the henchmen of dictators, thieves of the freedom of souls. Herod's soldiers grabbing the first born; Nazi boots kicking down the doors of the Jews. Marked houses. Signs of those sacrificed on the altars of cruelties of power.

In my hand, you will find I've lived a clean life. Does this echo the ethical universe? Ethos is what enables order, harmony, beauty. This swollen and sore hand is emblazoned with 'the mark.'

I touch you, lying on the soft grasses of the riverbank, glide delicate fingers over your features, reading you, your body of braille. And massage you, warm oiled dance of fingertips and palm whorls penetrating knots, torments, memories. Even as my wrist flicks, and breaks.

My hand drifting downstream, decked in an Ophelia of lace and rings. Hold it; hold me.

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I made a recording of the prose/poem, if you like to listen while you read.



(Background music by Aymeric, from their album on Jamendo, 'Sometimes,' cut 03.)

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Some notes on writing process.

(Is this a defense of my style, or a rough explanation of my aesthetic?)

While I like to offer depth and complexity, for the record, I don't do 'stream of consciousness' - I've been working on this for a while, the images, the feelings, the meanings - even if it only took 20 or 30 minutes to write. Nothing comes out of a vacuum, and the semiotic undercurrent in our subconscious minds has not got the metaphoric order of a poem (or prose poem). I like to radiate out to divergent images, spark their neuronal connections, get the whole mind thinking, sometimes puzzled, sometimes recognizing. My poetry hopefully gives the reader a bit of a ride into an imaginative world, a ride that also offers exercise of those faculties of imagination, and the extraordinary ability we have to find meaning in divergent things. And be inspiring, of course. Emotionally, we are a very complex and nuanced species, and our emotional reactions and apperceptions cohere our lives. I like to tell it as it is, in all its paradoxes, ambiguities, irresolvable inconsistencies, its terrors and beauties - this is life, how we live.