It started with a trip to CompUSA to buy a monitor, a fancy, big, groovy monitor to hook up to my laptop. The day before I’d been to Best Buy and bought one there, but it didn’t have speakers and was too small, because I’ve got to have a widescreen to match the screen on my laptop. We (my tech guy, Jeff really did it all) set it up and plugged it in and it looked too plain, didn’t have any pizzazz, so we (Jeff, really) packed it all up and slipped it back in its box, re-hooked up the old one and there we left it until the morning when I got back in my car and returned it to Best Buy. From there I hopped on the freeway to Redondo Beach, because, as luck would have it, the Culver City Comp USA didn’t have the monitor I wanted, the one Jeff and I spent a good half-hour scouring the internet for, the one that had speakers and a 22 inch screen. It was ten in the morning so the traffic was good and I zipped along the 405 for the twelve miles, aware that on my left, the 405 south was crawling along, (due to a tanker overturning farther up the freeway, I heard on the radio).

After backtracking a couple of times on Hawthorne Blvd I pulled into the parking lot. The salesman at CompUSA snapped me up as I walked in the door and promptly checked his stock on the VX2235wm and confirmed they had six of them. He commandeered a rolling ladder that took him up to the tallest shelf in the place and pulled down my new monitor, asking me before it even hit the bottom of the shopping cart whether I wanted to purchase the Extended Warranty that CompUSA offered. Insurance, he said and explained how much of a hassle it would be if something went wrong with it and I had to return it to the manufacturer; packing it and shipping it to their service center, while with CompUSA, well, with them, I could just bring it in and they’d replace it, no questions asked, for the same model, or a newer model of comparable value—for two years, he said. After sharing with him my philosophy on insurance; that it was gambling, that it was all about the risk factor, I declined the offer. He heartily agreed with me that insurance was a racket, but wanted to point out it was only $49.99 for the protection plan, and that was for two years and he highly recommended it.

I took my monitor home in the trunk of the car, slid it into my office, didn’t open the box until after lunch, marveling at how sleek and Star Wars it looked, how it had such a presence sitting there on my desk, even if it wasn’t plugged in yet and no image was flitting across it’s pearly surface. I’ve been upgrading computers since the ‘80’s and every time a new piece of hardware lands on my desk, whether it is a mouse, a keyboard or a back-up drive, there’s a thrill that is akin to (I imagine) how the pioneers felt when they put a new wheel on the wagon or blade on the plow. My feeling is if you have to work with machines they should not only perform at a high level, but give you pleasure when you lay your eyes and hands on them. This monitor was all of that—promising many happy hours marveling at its attributes.

By now you must realize that not every fairy tale has a happy ending. And that, of course, goes for computer tales as well. What was to be a "simple install" was fraught with perplexing, mysterious and downright contentious “issues” between the laptop and the monitor. Although the laptop (a Japanese model) said it would support the monitor and could project the high resolution necessary to view images in a normal perspective—well, they were speaking different languages. Calls to ViewSonic (by Jeff, of course) didn’t help. Calls to Toshiba were close to worthless. Installing this driver and that driver, upgrading the BIOS (I have no idea what that means) had no effect at all. When set to the desired resolution the icons on the Desktop ran off the sides of the screen, simply disappearing into the ethers. We’ve (mostly Jeff, again) have tried everything, including considering a faith “computer” healer to simply realign the aura of this obviously recalcitrant laptop. Nothing we have done has brought a whit of change to the dysfunctional relationship these two pieces of equipment have with each other.

By the end of all this I was one fried and wigged out gal; eyes crossed and brain numbed to the point of zombie-ism. I had counted on this technology to ease my stress, to allow me more creative freedom and now, NOW, it seemed an insolvable “issue.” I went to bed early and hoped (as sometimes does happen) that the answer would come in a dream (to Jeff, of course, who would be able to understand it) and that in the morning, the sun would be shining, the birds singing and my laptop and monitor would have made up and decided to shed their differences and embrace—to co-operate and align themselves for my sake and for the sake of their kind. I believed it was possible. Miracles do happen. Yes, but when I woke up in the morning the sun was hidden by clouds and soon it began to rain. It hasn’t stopped all day. Jeff has gone skiing for a week and, as you can see, I’m typing away, looking right into the heart of my new monitor, finding that in spite of resolution “issues,” the words still find their way to the page. And, even though I didn’t get that protection plan I can return the monitor for a full refund within 21 days of purchase. I’m at 20 and counting.

Here’s a fun poem that somewhat expresses the frustration (nay, exasperation) I was feeling yesterday:

POEM

"It’s only me knocking on the door
of your heart" whined the radio
while I bawled feverishly, eating
an orange, salting it up a little.

A gelatin light squeezed windows
I had watched all night at, bored,
lordy was I bored. I thought maybe
some bombers would fly over or

something. No, I was really nuts,
miserable. I called Jan and John
and Al and Waldemar and Grace and then
got scared, hung up, screamed!

and couldn’t get out a window
because I’d locked them all, because
I’m six flights up. And it’s been a
terribly cold winter, radio’s been broke.

Frank O’Hara
Poems Retrieved
Grey Fox Press

This is a reprint from the PE e-letter sent out earlier this week. I’ve added pictures of the art work as well as the well-known ekphrastic poem by Ranier Maria Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo. 

******** 

A few weeks ago I wrote an ekphrastic poem inspired by the painting The Little Yellow Horses by Franz Marc. I only became aware of this genre of poetry in the last few months when one of the poets in my weekly group shared one she had written with Georgia O’Keefe’s Horse’s Skull with Pink Roses as her inspiration. According to Wikipedia the definition of ekphrasis (alternate spelling, ecphrasis) is the following: a rhetorical device in which one art tries to relate to another art by defining and describing the essence and form of that original art, and in doing so, "speak to you" through its illuminative liveliness. To me, what they’re saying and how I experience it, is that one artist is having a dialogue with another artist, with their respective crafts as the medium.

I was attracted to the painting, The Little Yellow Horses, not only for the beauty and serenity of it as a work of art, but how there was this resonance with the subject matter, how the horses at once were so still, so content, but, as is the nature of horses, they could fight or flee instantly, if so provoked and that the fiery energy, the amazing grace and power of these animals is awe inspiring to me. I also know that when the horses felt safe again they would settle down, graze, lay down in the grass, swish flies and embody the docile side of the horse. I felt a kinship with this desire to be at peace as well as be passionate in life; to live simply in harmony with the earth and heavens, and also bare my teeth, strike out, or outrun anything or anybody that threatens that tranquility. On a larger scale I see this dichotomy between the desire for peace in the world and how as individuals or communities or whole nations, we can become spooked into rising up, often times without fully comprehending the nature of the threat. All of these thoughts and feelings played into the poem, some of which, (to tell you the truth) I didn’t even realize until I wrote it down this minute.

I highly recommend the book, Transforming Vision: Writers on Art. Edited by Edward Hirsch and featuring artwork from the Art Institute of Chicago.
 

(My poem originally appeared here, but has been removed. Many journals will not publish a poem that has been previously published anywhere, including a personal blog. Hopefully you’ll see The Little Yellow Horses printed elsewhere soon.)

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

I took the last three days off from the world, chugged through Friday afternoon traffic, with my friend Siri Ved driving, leaving L.A. to climb into the mountains to Big Bear Lake. Even though we were bumper-to-bumper for half the way and it took an additional two hours to get here, we are both glad we came. We’re staying at a friend’s cabin that is cozy inside and surrounded by pines and fir trees outside. When we got here we started a fire, put our groceries away, unpacked a few things and made some tea, before showering and slipping into dreamland. The quiet is always the most blessed nourishment I receive when in the mountains; the relaxation that seeps into my tight city muscles, the slowing down of my thoughts and rapid-response mechanism, the way my eyes soften, how the tension in my face begins to melt like snow on a spring day.

One thing I notice right away when I’m in the mountains or at the ocean or desert, is how much more engaged my senses become; how the fragrance of the pines fills my nostrils, the spray of the ocean waves is salty on my skin, and the thin air of the desert brings everything into sharp relief. It is not that the senses disappear in the city, quite the contrary. I believe they are completely over stimulated, bombarded with such an array of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch that there is barely enough time for the nervous system to sort one out and send the message to the brain before the next one piles on top of the last. It’s simply the nature of living with thousands, or millions, of other humans, all doing what they do.

I’ve been reading the book, Western Wind, a poetry textbook that is a treasure trove of knowledge; organized and written in a way that is easy for the novice poet to grasp, engaging as well for the more experienced. It is chock full of poems written in an incredibly wide range of styles and spanning the full pantheon of poetry from Sappho to Li Young Lee. I’ve had this book for a couple of years and because of its length (over 600 pages) I have been reluctant to really dive into it, really just scanning a chapter now and again or reading some of the poems in the anthology section. I brought it with the intention of at least settling down and reading a chapter or two, priming the pump for when I return home, where I plan on continuing the practice of reading a chapter every day or two. The very first aspect of poetry addressed in Western Wind is “The Role of the Senses,” and how images are created in writing through attunement of the senses. When a writer is adept at expressing what is felt through imagistic writing, the reader is able to have an emotional response to the poem, not merely an intellectual one. This ability to place images on the page, to create metaphor, similes, the bridges from concrete objects to ideas, this is what separates literature from purely expository writing. Involving the imagination, allowing the reader to “sensorize” (this is my own made-up word, by the way) what is being expressed in a poem or story is where the universal connection is truly experienced, it is where one soul touches another.

In order to regain a deeper connection with the sensory world, if you do live in a heavily populated area, I find you must first have the desire to do so as well as a practice to slow down the internal mechanisms of thought, to practice a mindful attunement to the environment. One way I’ve found that works is to sit and breathe long and steadily, to focus on relaxing my body and mind until I’m at the point where my thoughts are like a stream passing by and I am on the shore simply watching them. At this point I tune in to one of my senses, for example hearing, and allow my ears to separate the sounds I hear, to isolate them one by one. Right now, for instance, I can hear the refrigerator, a pulsing kind of rumble, with a bit of a whine. I can hear a plane passing overhead, a muffled roar; two people talking animatedly next door; a bird chirping in regular rhythm; my friend turning the pages of her book. I find it a beautiful thing, a kind of reverence I feel when I pay attention to these individual sensory experiences, so very different from lumping them all together, where they lose the power to affect me with their unique voices. This mindful kind of exercise works with all the senses and has the power to enrich not only one’s writing, but much more importantly, one’s experience of the world in which we live.
 

Quotes from Western Wind:

"I no sooner have an idea, than it turns into an image."   Goethe

"To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit."   William Blake

" The poet is a professor of the five bodily senses."   Frederico Garcia Lorca

"The artist seeks out the luminous detail and presents it. He does not comment."   Ezra Pound