Comics at Thirty Plus: Introduction

My foot is in my mouth about comics. Throughout my teens and early twenties I believed that comics were not worth my time. I was your run of the mill snooty-toot on the matter. I had plenty of friends with comic book collections, some of whom had boxes and boxes of them carefully packed away in their plastic wraps. I was curious what the allure was, and at times, I looked over the shoulders of someone who was reading a comic, but I never committed myself to reading one cover to cover. I never asked to borrow one. I never searched them out in the library (nor did I know they could be found there). I never really gave them a chance until quite recently, something like wintertime, 2009.

At that time, I had been invited to join a group of writers and artists at Denver's Drink and Draw, which meets at Leela's European Cafe every Tuesday. I was introduced to many artists and a few writers with whom I became enamored right away. It wasn't difficult to see the amount of talent contained in one room. It also wasn't difficult to see that the main emphasis at this particular shindig was comics.

Because I was so impressed, I began asking some of the artists I met what their top five comics suggestions were so I could become savvy to the medium. I wanted to be able to talk about comics with the Denver Drink and Draw Crowd. I had my mind blown by quite a few of the suggestions, which resulted in my deeming comics as a medium more than worthy of respect and study.

That is why I have decided to do a series of little articles featuring these top five lists. I hope to relay what I have learned from the artists and a little bit about the artists surrounding Cellar Door and Denver's Drink and Draw.

I hope you enjoy what is to come!

originally published at the Cellar Door Anthology Blog (http://cellardoorbook.blogspot.com/2011/03/comics-at-thirty-plus-introduction.html), March 27, 2011.

Last night, while preparing for an upcoming shindig that will feature poets, musicians, actors, and more, I noticed this poster (pictured left) on our hostess's wall. I was reminded of some of the conversations we have had in R.A.W. about the pertinence of growing our own food.

This is something I would like to discuss further. I know that there are many people, locally, nationally, and globally working on this, practicing this, teaching others, etc. I would especially like their input, ideas, and expertise. How can this be done? Is it feasible?

Also, what are we giving up if we are not participating in the creation of our own foodstuffs? Some of this is evident to me, but I want to hear from others on this! Let's talk. Let's continue this conversation:

This post originally appeared 3/27/2011 at the R.A.W. blog.

Non-Sequitur Exquisite Corpse Pot Luck (October 24)

It is autumn, a long time away from the last Exquisite Corpse shindig. We've met again underneath Anita's apple tree, but with a variable cast:

Anita Lonergan

D. Shane Peterson

Craig Svonkin

Sandra Maresh

Tameca L Coleman

It's cooler now. There are no bees out doing their good work. There are greens left in the garden and apples on the tree. The tree has done well this year. The garden is tilled, readied for winter.

We have a wonderful feast, again. There's the Waldorf Salad that we almost all had a hand in. The apples and celery were cut in the car on the way to Anita's. There was a stop made to the store for walnuts and mayonnaise. At Anita's, we added the walnuts, mayonnaise, nutmeg and cinnamon and stirred them all together with a lovely old wooden spoon.

There were the sandwiches from a neighborhood Vietnamese restaurant, the Lonergan's buckwheat waffles, homemade jams from the garden, a lovely pan of greens and vegetables, and a beautiful, cocoa dusted Bundt cake. Tummies were pleased.

Despite a slight chill, and a greying sky, we decided to sit outside underneath the apple tree. We went three rounds, just as we went the time before. The first time, to warm up, we wrote with the ability to see the lines that came before. The second time, we folded the pages over, so that we were blind when we wrote our next lines. The third time, we wrote poetic bits on torn pieces of paper, scrambled them in a hat, and chose the pieces at random and read them in no particular order. The results of this activity follow:

Round 1:

We five sitting under the apple tree

contemplating life, love, & sex in the garden

A hole in the fence & grey skies

frame the circle, the squirrel in the compost,

taking chunks from the autumn harvest,

enjoying a discarded pumpkin,

The talk, the words, bees moving from

flower to flower,

none of us performing the role of bees.

The Bees do that.

Round 2:

The tree, the talk, enjoying an encounter between

diverse peoples, but similar

we are laughing, thinking, comparing life experiences.

Jets in the missing man formation. Who's not here?

The alliums are gone now, the peaches, too.

The pumpkins and the berries give way

to the greens, and the apples mulching

into the earth.

Can I live amidst the squalor?

Green of the hose, green grass, green

leaves, green house, all varied colors

by the same name.

Tapping and jet roar. Schmutz in the city.

Cover the windows. It's time. The season

has come to its next dot, resting

here until the next writer picks up the next sentence.

Schmutz dropping on his sweater, he

hesitates.

"Sum up air, sum up noise," Doe

says, but one can't sum up.

Round 3:

1) We are writers, the 5 of us, comparing notes, lives,

roommates, "I am best when I speak, not when I write."

2) I was gonna roll on the floor laughing.

I come from here. I ain't Chicano. I ain't shit.

No accent on the Dia De Muertos.

Kinda like the Hornada de Muertos.

3) Writing is not speaking

Is not singing or humming.

It has its own pains & pleasures,

rhythms & embarrassed pauses.

4) We're all just going to keep everyone guessing:

The hints of accents in our voices, misplaced & misinterpreted,

and the breadth of knowledge and interests

defy labeling.

5) Wrecked cars & broken sonnets litter the front yard: schmutzy.

Please stay tuned for future shindigs!

originally posted at the Exquisite (!) Corpse Pomes (!) blog: http://exquisitecorpsepomes.blogspot.com/2010/10/non-sequitur-exquisite-corpse-pot-luck.html

The Two Kinds of Decay

The first word that initially came to mind after reading Sarah Manguso's book, The Two Kinds of Decay, was "stark." The subject matter could be what brought that word to mind. Add to that, the author's treatment of her memoir as distanced, if not clinical. Her writing is very controlled. She also shirks sentimentalities effectively, despite the painful and personal nature of the material. Further, the short chapters, block paragraphs, and abundance of white space seem to form a visual context of strict form.

These are a poet's tools, without a doubt. Though the style of the piece, its voice, and tone initially threw me, I appreciate the tools Manguso used a lot more now. She is consistent and uses her devices deftly and with purpose.

Manguso describes, studiously, with clarity and concision, medical procedures, characters and events from her life, her confessions, as well as the hows of living with a rare form of Guillain--Barre syndrome. The book could be a sort of polished journal in which she writes with disregard to time and instead writes in what sequence the details make sense to her. The book is a recounting, wound tightly to a couple of principles which I can very much appreciate and relate. She writes constantly from the point of observation, distance, and simply, so that nothing is missed and the reader is held close to the text until the end. In the end, the reader is not left with a hole, or depressed, and not even with apathy, but with a new way of seeing that the author herself has come to and shown quite well.

The book is poetic in a meaning-follows-form kind of way. The crisp precision of Manguso's narrative, the observant distance with which she relates her story, the segments of short chapters and blocked paragraphs which reveal a bounty of white space on the pages, and the chapter titles around which the author seems to write certain memories as if they were prompts, come to mind. I would even argue that there is a poetic turn where Manguso explains a way of seeing that has become a part of this work:

My existence shrank from an arrow of light pointing into the future forever to a speck of light that was the present moment. I got better at living in that point of light, making the world into that point. I paid close attention to it. I loved it very much.

Further, an affirmation that the author is very studied in her treatment of the material. She writes a note about how such things (memoirs) should be written:

I resisted as long as I could. A narrator must keep a safe distance from the story, but a lyric speaker must occupy the lyric moment as if it is happening. Or so it seems to me at this moment.

I believe that Sarah Manguso has done the job she has described above well. Because of this work, I have ordered her books of poems and am anxious to read them soon.

originally published for Explication. Analysis. Conversation. (http://explicanalyconvo.blogspot.com/), October 16, 2010 and crossposted at GoodReads (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/126421469).

Anger

Lately, I am reading a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh. He speaks to the issues that presently reside within my heart. Also, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks so beautifully and clearly about those things and he makes the remedy simple.

I have a lot of anger and disappointment to deal with. I figure after many, many years I should deal with these things so they can stop getting in the way of my goals and my happiness.

I have so much anger and disappointment within me it often hurts me physically. I have major heart burn and frequent headaches nearly every day which inflame when my emotions do so. It's difficult for me to not recognize the correlation between the inflaming (and literal burning) and the emotional state I am in at any given time.

Thich Nhat Hanh suggests something really beautiful. He suggests that instead of stuffing emotions we should "get in touch with our anger." We should understand it and treat it as if it was our own child. Normally, I think most of us vent. We spew our frustrations out onto a friend or an acquaintance or a stranger. We hit pillows and cry ourselves to sleep at night until we are so fatigued it seems the anger has dissipated. In the morning, when the anger returns, we have a whole new day to wait in before we can practice our anger into the pillows again. That's what Thich Nhat Hanh says we are doing. We are practicing anger and this is not healing at all, nor is it good for the person or thing towards which we are angry. We'll explode when we see them because that is what we have been practicing.

Instead of suppressing or practicing anger, Thich Nhat Hanh says that we should recognize and nurture our anger as if it is a child. We should take care of it and understand it and then transform it.

We should not fight our anger, because anger is our self, a part of our self. Anger is of an organic nature, like love. We have to take good care of our anger. And because it is an organic entity, an organic phenomenon, it is possible to transform it into another organic entity. The garbage can be transformed back into compost, into lettuce, and into cucumber.

--Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames.

originally published at Grow (http://mecacoleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/anger.html), October 15, 2010, and crossposted at GoodReads (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/121955597).

Non-Sequitur Exquisite Corpse Pot Luck (July 18)

On July 18th, underneath Anita's apple tree, eight of us got together for a potluck, sights in the garden and some exquisite corpse. We went three rounds. The first round had us write, one after the other, with the ability to see what had been written before. The second round had us write a line on the same piece of paper without being able to see the line that came before. The third round, had us each write on a scratch piece of paper, pile the papers together, and then read them randomly. The results follow:

Round 1:

shady seven, city sounds softly

chatting, asking suggestions for

words, but when silence says

everything. Everything, and what's seen

without words; the mini-bee turning in its flower,

part of the cycle. Or the dream.

While the Beats smile knowingly,

having done it all half a century ago,

when turtles went underground

under two inch thick cement slabs,

under lead pipes and earth packed hard

beneath years of traffic and chaos.

An ancient tool shop operator

gave dinosaurs several pieces

of shrapnel steak. Dinosaurs

ate pipes and lumber.

Cracking underneath the stone weight

each dinosaur's breath shimmering

in the plant's growth.

Round 2:

Summer hums around, circling the

salon. Tomatoes progress, onions double,

pumpkins travel down the path.

Just enough cloud cover, and just enough sky,

under the apple tree, next to plush clover--

myriad forms of cover....

Down South. South of the border.

Musical language, languid music.

It's not like here, ya know.

And to string a sentence

together you need pumpkin butter,

blackberries, half ripe, and Anitatea.

It was like ink bleeding through a piece

of paper. Or blood through butcher paper.

A sickening smell, like rotten meat wafted from

somewhere.

Over the rainbow there were

pieces of light.

The stillness of the wind

speaks to the leaves.

Round 3:

1) We were born after the war.

Then we were in the war.

Now our children and grandchildren

are gone to the war.

2) All of the rocks strewn along the path

and the constant chatter of the

passing cars, cans thrown.

3) The music was tangible. I felt almost as heavy as a mist,

but not quite. More like a tingle at the tips of your

toes when they fell asleep.

4) In exquisite corpse land

we never decided to leave

Point Pleasant beach.

Instead we launched

a hand-made book.

5) Died in the check out line

with a crab, he did.

Seafood is dependable.

Trees give us amnesia

good for the onion fields.

It's shell gave way

to red lobster.

6) Shadow and light spackled paper--

the pen courses over the pattern

another level of black and white.

7) Laughing, sharing notes & souls plot

a course in the garden, under the apple

tree, next door the door opens.

Participants:

(in no particular order, since Frank's suggestion that naming who wrote what would kill the whole idea of the exquisite corpse, as it's the product that matters, and not who wrote what).

Anita Lonergan

Michael Lonergan

Frank Bessinger

Kat Willow

Tom Gerlick

Sandra Maresh

Max Rommerdahl

Tameca L Coleman

Originally posted on the Exquisite (!) Corpse Pomes (!) Blog at http://exquisitecorpsepomes.blogspot.com/. I hope to have more such shindigs in the not so far future.

The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty

I already have a love for rustic bowls, plates and baskets. I also feel that lately there is too much "noise" in my apartment. Clutter abounds. I picked up the book initially because of my want to tame the clutter factor.

What I was not prepared for, and what made me very happy about this book, is the way wabi-sabi is a method of living and not just a home decorating slash de-cluttering motif. 

Wabi-Sabi is what I am already and more. It is an idea that I might have called granola or hippie-dippie in the past. A good friend of mine's old house was made of stone and decorated with branches, pine cones, fruits pricked by cloves in the winter time and dried desert blooms in hand turned vases in the summer. My friend spun wool from her mother's sheep, made knotty wool sweaters and scarves and hats for the cold. The kitchen was full of antique, non-mechanized (and lasting!) utensils. All of these things are quite wabi-sabi, according to the book.

I have an eye for more rustic and earthy things. There is a framed Bodhi leaf on the book shelf, a large half shell to catch the ashes of my incense. One of the quilts my great grandmother made is lying on the bed. Pens and post-its and other household materials are held in chipped earthenware and baskets. My antique desk is unpolished, scuffed, worn and well-used and it is bedecked by three crumbling pine cones I found in the forests of Idaho, a long time ago. 

The book is an inspiration to further this tendency to include the rustic and unpolished in my life. It also links itself to Zen Buddhism. (All things come from nothingness or are on their way to nothingness. All things are imperfect. Observation is a key, as is living the present moment). Because of its inherent ideas, wabi-sabi becomes a way of life in general, an enjoyment of the present, an appreciation of any thing, relationship or idea in whatever state it is in at any given time. The book prompts its readers to shirk the mindset of replacing what is deteriorating (though we do not keep in our houses those things that are dilapidated. Wabi-Sabi is not slobby or ruin) and to instead appreciate the chips, cracks, folds, and wrinkles of time.

crossposted on goodreads

Centering

I have a confession to make. I am not centered. I am so unbalanced that I am unable to simply observe what is going on around me....

Feeling off-kilter, I have taken more on. It’s my tendency. When stressed, I pile on the work, take on more projects and push through them the best I can. It’s an avoidance tactic, so, the body says, “Stop.” I come down with the flu and I have no choice but to heed what the body says.

“Stop!”

I stop.

When I look around me, there is less of the head getting in the way of what can flow in and flow out, if I just let it. This is that quiet place where all things can be planted and grown. This is that quiet place where I can let it all go.

originally published at Grow (http://mecacoleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/centering.html), October 6, 2008.