linguistics of photography

A flickr friend of mine, Jeff Lamb, posed an interesting idea earlier today in mentioning an unknown language that exists within a photograph. As I so often do, I found a strange inspiration in someone else's idea and ran with it. This is a first draft of what I assume will be several.

you and i understand dust
in our own stuttered dialects.
black and white, i before e except
when sunlight scurries under a log
fetching an article unseen
and unseemly elemental.

the linguistics of photography
framed by the structure of what
i don't want known to the world.
secrets and sunlight are different
in the same way t and k wear
their stripes.

Oyster Crackers Save the Day!

So I've spent the last 10 days in a bad, bad place. I've got the icky-sickies. Just to my right, there are six new prescriptions that I've picked up in the last six days, running the gamut from anti-sober narcotic to anti-cough pill to anti-anthrax medication. I don't have anthrax, but what my doctor actually called "severe" laryngitis plus a couple ear infections thrown in for good measure. I suppose a glance at the proverbial bright side reveals this thought: good thing I don't have four ears! (And can you imagine me, not being able to talk, for several multiple plural days in a row?!?!)

I took to a melodramatic interlude this evening, brought about by a coughing fit that has toned my abs better than 12 fad exercise machines ever could. That's right, I've been emotionally thinking again...oh, the horror! I've been drafting that death-bed list of things that I should do, which I guess is akin to bargaining with some bellowing voice from the heavens, which I guess is akin to hoping that because I'm fearing death's hand nearby that it's just melodramatic goo dripping out of my noggin.

This illness (which has also included the diagnoses bronchitis, viral cold, asthma attack and dehydration) inspired within me a handful of things that I want to do. Not the cheesy "spend more time with friends and family" things that obviously are important and lead everybody's such melodramatic rubbish list. (But for the record, my friends & fam rock the hizzouz and while we spend a lot of time together, more is always better!)

So here are a few things from my list, dried out of steamy shower water:

See Fishtank Ensemble live
See Tom Walbank & the Ambassadors live
Read many more books...like many, many, many more
Read more lips and ASL signs
Make yearly trips to the beach, any of them
Make more things at home
Make more kooky scarves
Read some more books, and some magazines too
See more movies
Sing more often
Sing much louder
Sing Fishtank Ensemble's Tchavo at someone's wedding
Sing Fishtank Ensemble's Tchavo at my wedding
Give more of my time
Learn everything
Learn why
Make my friends smile
Make my students think
Make enough money to live on but not to be trapped by
Dream aloud
Take cookies to new neighbors
Write more poetry
Write more thank you notes
Write more letters
Watch far less TV
Write even more poetry
Take better pictures
Make more art
Buy more art
Hang the art I already bought
Make payments to billholders on time
Laugh heartily and often
Be a better dog-mom
Be me, every single time.

I think there were about a thousand more things. This will suffice for now.

This is my second card catalog reference tonight

Sina Lynn Evans's Dewey Decimal Section:

787 Stringed instruments

Sina Lynn Evans = 9941254452149 = 994+125+445+214+9 = 1787


Class:
700 Arts & Recreation


Contains:
Architecture, drawing, painting, music, sports.



What it says about you:
You're creative and fun, and you're good at motivating the people around you. You're attracted to things that are visually interesting. Other people might not always understand your taste or style, but it's yours.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

sinabobina's Dewey Decimal Section:

414 Phonology & phonetics

sinabobina = 9941252941 = 994+125+294+1 = 1414


Class:
400 Language


Contains:
Linguistics and language books.



What it says about you:
You value communication, even with people who are different from you. You like trying new things don't mind being exposed to unfamiliar territory. You get bored with routines that never change.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

gracieshoots's Dewey Decimal Section:

670 Manufacturing

gracieshoots = 781395985509 = 781+395+985+509 = 2670


Class:
600 Technology


Contains:
Health, agriculture, management, public relations, buildings.



What it says about you:
You are creative and inspired to make the world a better place. You can work hard on something when it catches your interest. Your friends have unique interests in common with you.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Slurpy Soupy Soup

It's that time of year, at least in the desert, when I wonder how long I can put off calling the handyman and having him disassemble the swamp cooler and power up my terribly inefficient wall-hugging gas heater. I think I can put it off for a couple more days, maybe a week.

In the meantime, I'm cranking back through my soup recipes, tinkering with old faves and playing with some hopeful new ones. Tonight's slurpiness is easy enough, based on Heidi Swanson's Ten Minute Couscous Soup. Heidi, if you're not familiar, writes a fabulous blog that I've been following for a couple years now, 101 Cookbooks. She also wrote her first (second?) cookbook last year. She's cool and groovy in the best possible ways.

So using her recipe as a template, but halving it being the single fabulous girl that I am, I am halfway through a pot of what is easily my fastest and tastiest soup yet this season. My version goes something like this:

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup whole wheat couscous
1/2 leek, sliced thinly on the diagonal
handful of shredded carrots
6 or so frozen artichoke hearts
generous tablespoon of shrimp-slosh spices (below)
scant tablespoon butter, softened

Smoosh together spices and butter into a beautiful ruddy paste. Bring broth, leek, carrots & arty hearts to boil. Turn off heat, stir in spicy butter, add couscous and cover for 4 minutes. Enjoy with a few oyster crackers or a drizzle of olive oil or a few pieces oil-soaked sun-dried tomato.

** Shrimp-slosh spices: A couple decades ago, a family who is very close to mine first served us this lovely New Orleansesque shrimpy dish. The actual recipe card they gave my mom long since evaporated into the ether, but about a decade ago I sort of figured out my own version of the spices. Since there's no clear guideline, use the herbs and spices you like. Here's how mine looks mostly:

3 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon dried thyme
2+ teaspoons cumin
generous pinch or two dried red pepper flakes
3-4 grinds black pepper
pinch of cayenne
pinch of sea salt

Mix all spices & herbs in a glass jar. You could also include a few bay leaves in the jar, keeping in mind that if they make their way into the pot, you'll need to dredge them out before serving it.

It's slurpilicious!

11042008.364

Numbers of significance
numbers that may or may
not mean something to
anyone else.

Young people, beautiful in their diversity
in their quest to be
a part of something
anything
this thing,

pulsing and hopeful.
In the unlikely story that is America
a staggered breath rattles with disbelief.

This is our chance to answer that call.

I'm clapping wildly in my living room
awash in words
just words
just words.

I'm crying ecstatically in my living room
awash in hope
just hope
just hope.

This moment, a history unfolding with each
of those staggered breaths,
this moment is unbelievably moving.

haiku du jour

Polysyllabic.
It means more than one sylla-
Bull. It ain't no cow.

Autumnal Sweeps

Don't mind me...I'm just cleaning house a bit. A bit of a new look here at Fogstorm, new writing will follow soon. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my...

I hope you're well.

Beetles Invade!

44 years 5 months and 16 days later
another invasion lands,
not the British sort
but beetles nonetheless.
I find them in
strange and unstrange places
clicking across kitchen tile,
and doing the backstroke
in my dog’s water dish,
and tunneling through
various rugs,
and freefalling out
of my wet laundry.
Hello goodbye indeed.

Hunger

by any other name
would smell as sweet
as nonsense.

The rumbling within,
the rumbling without
are too different from
actual hunger.

I don’t even know
what that feels like,
hunger.

Post-Katrina Hobby: Staring

Houses stilted
not quite towering

or teetering, quite
high, but not high enough.

Image of inspiration.

untitled

angry stomping overhead
sky peels itself apart.
if it were a tree, i would say
limb from limb
but it isn’t. it’s bigger, vast
and blue except during night
when it is only vast.

tidal

tide washes in
eddies around an anemic faith
and skitters seaward.

tide washes in
pools in the shadow of doubt
and drifts seaward.

tide washes in
dizzies the muse
and races seaward.

tide washes in
eddies around a swollen faith
and floats seaward.

Kitchen morning

he looks at her
he sighs
he says "it's over"
he looks down at his feet
which have turned to anchors
and moored him

same kitchen, different morning
she clears her throat
she looks away
she mumbles "i know"
she remembers a time
before her kitchen
became a shipyard

* poets note: for some reason, blogspot does not seem to allow for multiple spacing (for formatting purposes) in text. the appearance here is not true to the way in which it was written. my apologies for that.