BROADSIDES: granite lover, I want to be That Man
For a 1996 erotic art show at Art City, I made a full size body print and beside it scrawled the text of my poem “granite lover.” Subsequently, I turned the image into a broadside to be published in ARTLIFE Limited Editions.
The full text of this poem and the original post of this poem can be found here.
That Man poem & ARTLIFE broadside
My poem “I Want to be That Man” showed up first as part of an installation for an Art City April Fools Show in 1995. In 1997 for an erotic art show at Art City, I applied the poem onto a shirt as well as copied the shirt then reproduced the poem in blue onto the copy of the shirt to make this broadside for ARTLIFE Limited Editions.
The full text of this poem as well as an mp3 can be found here.
(NOTE: when I originally posted these poems, I didn’t have a scanner–now that I do, I can post the ARTLIFE broadside along with the poems! Which I am busy doing!)
how to catch a rattlesnake
Th Aug 30 2007 315am Nevada someplace
on the way to Burning Man
To catch a Mojave rattle snake
you grab its tail
send it circling about your head with one hand
you take your second hand
slide it down the snake’s body
until you reach its head
where you grab on & you don’t let go
you can hold it there
behind the fangs
with one hand
your hand on the body
with the other
until you know what
you want to do next
she swims in the ocean every day
takes off her clothes
plunges in
then climbs on the roof
to meditate
she’s in the room
that’s at the top
her roof is very slanted
she’s learned how to balance
she’s made herself a board to sit on
& meditate
outside her window
is the roof of the bedroom below
it’s flat, decklike
she likes being on top
I like to know them
I like the smell
by which it
makes them ugly
The readwritepoem prompt for this week is a collaborative one, but I didn’t get a chance to participate, so I decided to post this 315 experiment poem from last summer and dedicate it to the rattlesnake my son almost stepped on the trail yesterday up in Sequoia National Forest! And no, I didn’t try catching the rattler using this method (or any other!) BTW, the “she” in the poem is not me (the author); she’s just someone who wandered into my 3:15am mind.
Chumash publish Samala dictionary
Chumash elder Julie Tumamait-Stenslie; photo by Gwyneth Roberts
Hearing Julie reminded me of an article on the Chumash language that I read in the Times last spring:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/20/local/me-chumash20
Chumash recover their ‘alishtaha’n
The last fluent speaker of Samala died in 1965, but thanks to a trove of anthropological notes, a linguist has drafted a 608-page dictionary to keep the tribal tongue alive.
A generation ago, the ancient Chumash tongue of Samala was all but dead, its songs and sagas buried in a university basement beneath mountains of yellowing research notes.
But now Samala is the talk of the reservation.
Thanks largely to a non-American Indian graduate student who was working for pocket money 40 years ago, the tribe has unveiled the first major Samala dictionary, a key moment in the language’s rebirth. Read more…
Chumash Folkways with Julie Tumamait
Next Julie Tumamait demonstrates how to use a thistle brush, and shares how plants work as medicine and food, and in daily life. The soaproot’s versatility makes it of utmost importance.
* A cleaning brush of soaproot used to wash hair, skin, clothes works well enough to get lanolin off the overalls of her grandfather; lye in soaproot also was used to stun fish.
“Bangs, the women, they liked bangs,” she says. “They’d singe the hairs to trim them, then used used soap root as hair gel. They also baked in the soaproot in beds of coal to eat them. Read more…
Poem: Third Day of Kindergarten & Chumash Folkways
Third Day of Kindergarten: Thursday August 21, 2008 230-330p
Loop: Barranca-Beach-River-Thompson-Barranca
I wanted to ride west with the moon this morning
ride along the beach to the river
watch it dive
into the sea
There is quite a bit of it left this moon
this waning moon this much more than a sliver
well worth watching
But the day didn’t go that way
The foggy morn would have blocked
the moon’s slide down one white
against another
And the child needed me needed me
this morning needed to hold my hand
to be on this adventure with him
this third day of school of kindergarten
here at outdoor camp
So I put mine on hold
stayed with him at the confluence
of my needs and his
where he moves on to school
and where he stays home
here at the confluence of
the Ventura River and San Antonio Creek
stayed with him at the site
of the Chumash village
of Somis, of scrub oak
to walk with him and his classmates
to examine local plants
to press apples into cider
to play theater games
to listen to Chumash elder Julie Tumamait
to continue to engage us with her stories
as she did last night at the campfire.
“I guess the spiders are enjoying it here too,” says the boy when finally, this afternoon, we make it on my ride to the river. “They should clean up their messy webs. Those silly silly stupid spiders. But I like them.”
Maybe he knows Grandmother Spider
helps me tell this story to you
weave the parts
see the pattern
she hands me the threads
quietly quickly into my hands
whispers softly in my ear
tickles my chin with filaments
guides my hand as I write this story down
Thank you Grandmother Spider for all your words today and every day, for telling so many stories to me, and for spinning time this morning so that Julie Tumamait and I could talk together, share ideas, together this day, help each other from this day, thank you Grandmother Spider, thank you.
What Julie said
This morning, Chumash elder Julie Tumamait gathers the children round, they calm, they quiet, they listen, clustered together, parents children elbow to elbow side by side:
“Coyote are young right now, three months or so,” she says, “roaming around learning how to be independent.” My boy nestles against me at the picnic table, watches her every move. Read more…
Artist Fellowship: Send some love! Thnx!
Earlier this week I applied for an Artist Fellowship to support to support my new writing project, efforts to publish new and old work including a manuscript Love & Terror at 3:15am:poems from the 3:15 Experiment, to support the production of a cd with music from Jeff Kaiser, and more. Wish me luck–I’m competing against some wonderful poets and performers including my mother, a living historian who received the most points last time…
As a writing sample, I gave the committee who will be reviewing my work copies of five of my ArtLife pages and written copies of the two 3:15 poems I made into iMovies plus links to all those poems on this blog. I’ll be putting links to all this on a new page, Artist Fellowship, plus I anticipate publishing my Artist Statement and possibly other supporting documents.
Upcoming posts include:
- burgers & bruscetta
- week #2 a draft from my new writing project which includes Chumash folklore & folklife from elder Julie Tumamait
- on Monday, poetry, maybe even something new inspired by this weekend’s camping trip up in Sequoia’s Methusalah Grove group campsite
- there’s another one but I can’t remember what it is I’m working on!!
Lorelle VanFossen, WordPress blogger and author of Blogging Tips: What bloggers won’t tell you about blogging (Splashpress 2007), and her alter-evil Lorraine gave a whirlwind of a presentation at the WordPress Blogging Conference, WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco last weekend.
While her book provides very basic yet substantial advice on how to structure, administer and maintain a blog, how to write engaging blog posts, how to develop and keep an audience, and how to deal with rights, copyrights and comments, her presentation at WordCamp was much more sophisticated and definitely fast-paced.
She started with details from a post written by her alter-evil Lorraine which I recall reading on her blog, Lorelle on WordPress. Her main points Read more…
Because it’s not. BuddyPress is a platform that works with WordPress, hand in hand, connecting your blog with something like a “Facebook.” However, It has open source, better control, more choices, than the others, according to Andy Peatling of BuddyPress, and greater support for open standards. Unlike other social network sites, BuddyPress is not a “data silo” for someone else to mine. Read more…
WordCamp SF 2008: Good Will Virality aka Viral Virility
Hey, you! Yeah, you, the blogger in the trenchcoat blogger! Check this out!
Achieve Viral Virality by Ben Huh the guy behind LOL cats and FAIL blog didn’t wear the funny hat from the picture in the WordCamp program but he was still humorous, and gave people something to think about too.
According to Ben Huh, Invite Based Virality, like Facebook is Irritating, Spams your friends, and Sacrifices Good Will between you like a deadly virus (or Multi Level Marketing!) (Anybody disagree?)
Sustainable virality doesn’t force people to visit but builds reasons to invite; it invites readers to invite others. Read more…
5 Haiku 4 WordCamp Weekend
Friday night: Driving north on 101
moon on golden grass
inspires imagination
winter snow becomes
Saturday Morning: UCSF center
Apples strewn about
WordCampers blog, compose code
converse in real life
Saturday Afternoon: UCSF
Sierra kicks ass
Automatticians spellbound
WordCamp a success
Saturday Night After Party Drive
Cotton fog fingers
undulate under summer moon
awake drowsy eyes
Sunday Drive Home South of Santa Barbara on 101
Summer sunset cars
everyone wants to get home
train whistles freedom
I’m too exhausted (from 12 hours of driving to SF for WordCamp, then 14 hours of WordCamp, and less than 6 hours sleep the last two nights) to figure out the whole haiku, tanka, hokku, senryu. For simplicity sake, and for the common blog reader, I’m using haiku to describe these 5 moments from my weekend at WordPress’s WordCamp. Feel free to comment on what form they may be!
Go here for more responses to readwritepoem’s prompt to be in the moment and write about it. And ride Creative Goddesses Poetry Train!
art predator 