“Perplexing thought”
Alf Sukatmo. Pencil on paper. 2014.

It is hard to describe an entangled mind, isn’t it?

(Reblogged.)

What could we start the new year with? My somewhat top ten Autumn photos of last year. That sounds reasonable. Had some really good days last Autumn, when it comes down to photography. Went out in the forest and came back with a dozen useable photos every day. 

Never been much for doing top ten lists.

Actually, this will be my first and last.

AUTUMN 1 SIGFRIDSSON

AUTUMN 1 SIGFRIDSSON

AUTUMN

Depression, Rage, Humiliation, Shame, Desire

These are all emotions that most people spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars trying to fix or hide from. Some go to shrinks. Some attempt to suppress their feelings with binges on food, alcohol, drugs, and even sex. And for some, the spiritual guru is the ultimate tool leading to their salvation.

I, too, have throughout my 33 years used every single one of the vices/remedies listed above to at the very least conceal my issues. Unfortunately, cupcakes, vodka, and random quotes on how to be a spiritual person have never helped. In my experience, they only lead to shame and ultimately humiliation.

No outside influence that I have found can demolish the ineradicable shell of pain that has taken up residence inside my heart and essence. I recently wrote a poem called Beauty, Hidden. It’s about how I sit and dream of writing…

Sometimes the “media” in my country continues to… Well, no they don’t…

I expect sensationalism and alarmism (is that a word?)

Anyway….

I saw this on my Facebook page.

“Walmart caves in to Muslims and Sharia law” or something like that….

It’s an article from a bunch calling themselves “American Overlook”

This article crapola is typical fear/hate mongering to the ignorant.

This is hate propaganda for ignorant people.

Here is what Halal means: Wikipedia

“In Arabic, the word halal means permitted or lawful.

Halal foods are foods that are allowed under Islamic dietary guidelines.

According to these guidelines gathered from the Qu’ran, Muslim followers cannot consume the following:

pork or pork by products

animals that were dead prior to slaughtering

animals not slaughtered properly or not slaughtered in the name of Allah

blood and blood by products

alcohol

carnivorous animals

birds of prey

That’s weird…

Jewish people don’t eat that…

Malone and I do lunch every couple of months or so. We Syracuse bloggers have to stick together, I figure. Besides, I’ve come to more and more admire the way the mind of this guy works, this fellow who writes The Infinite Abyss(es) here on WordPress as well as The Inevitable Coffee Ring on Tuesdays and The Espresso Shot on Thursdays over at the Syracuse New Times, the same site for which I toil to produce film review and news blogs on Mondays and Thursdays.

I send out the initial email. (Hint-hint, young Christopher.) He doesn’t look. I put a comment on his blog. He comments back and reminds me of the more technologically advanced ways in which he can be reached. (Hint-hint, old Mark.) And thus we meet and eat, and talk about writing and our city and employment search statuses and all sorts of interesting topics.

This…

Happy endings are hard to come by in dealing with big business, but here’s one to share. It didn’t come easily, but it was worth it — to the tune of hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars.

I had been fully prepared to blast Target in this space if it wouldn’t send me a simple one-paragraph letter on company letterhead. But someone at corporate headquarters saw the light and did the right thing.

Target had initially refused to send me a letter verifying that on a certain date I added my domestic partner as an authorized user on my credit card. We needed this as a proof of status to add Michelle to my health insurance policy. Target’s refusal would have delayed this and forced her to continue paying monthly premiums on another policy.

Several weeks of phone calls and e-mails finally resulted in a letter granting my request. I was pleasantly surprised, to say…

Why did these leaves wait until there was snow on the ground to fall?

It’s never too late to learn a lesson you snoozed through in high school biology.

Especially when it provides a metaphor that smacks you upside the head.

The science: When trees shed their leaves in autumn, there’s more going on than cold temperatures and wind wreaking havoc. Deciduous trees are wired for “abscission,” an active process of willful shedding that keeps them alive so they can bloom again in spring.

Last Saturday morning, as I looked out my kitchen window and listened to the coffee maker gurgle, a strong breeze whipped the leaves off the trees by the hundreds. They darted every which way before settling onto the snow-covered ground.

It’s dangerous to think too much before coffee, as it can lead to mixed metaphors. So be it. Here goes:

A prevailing mindset is that outside forces take things from us…

Rural Missouri Property in Winter

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”

The image posted above is the property behind a friend’s ranch where I stayed as a guest a few winters ago while spending Christmas holidays visiting my parents in the St. Louis area.  I stood in his kitchen and looked out through the glass patio doors at the beautiful snow across his sprawling woods, and worked on this quick watecolor sketch, so I guess I could say I was painting en plein air, though I was indoors, and warm.

I’m closing out a beautiful, though cold weekend (my furnace has been out of commission since Thursday–supposed to be repaired tomorrow), seated next to an electrice space heater (which…

Back when I covered the Central New York music scene for the big daily, I always had it in the back of my mind somewhere that these voices, these talents, these people I was hearing, seeing, watching, following, talking with, tracking, well, they were as good as the folks other people doing this job in other cities in the country — no, around the world — were hearing and seeing.

A bit parochial, of me, I know.

And, really, there was no way ever to quantify that hunch, no matter how many national and international acts I went to as they came to the bigger venues in Syracuse or cross sections of albums I listened to.

Taste is all relative, right? And I sure as hell wasn’t getting paid to travel to the little listening clubs and pubs to hear the emerging or longstanding bands in other cities.

The music…

Those who would draw, from such quotes as this, only that America’s founders believed in a small government have overlooked reality, and then pasted their own interests onto the quotation for a label. Such folks would find it hard to convince a scoffer that our federal government does much that is not in the majority’s interest or that it does much that goes beyond defending us from each other. The first thing such folks do when they gain power is tear down those controls and begin imposing new laws that violate personal freedom. Most of what would convince such a scoffer would show a heavy dose of favoritism for the rich, an expensive smidgeon of concern for wellbeing of the aged and poor, and a fortune devoted to outside influences.

This all avoids the point, however, of what Jefferson wrote about in Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, from…

It’s Bonfire Night and the sound of exploding fireworks is unsettling Sparta Puss, who is alternating between dozing fitfully on my stool and pacing around the living room. I have a few small Khadi sketchbooks, beautiful textured handmade paper from India and some sepia walnut ink I made recently, so I grabbed a brush and started sketching her in transit. I’d previously coloured the paper with wet tea bags to break up the white with a pale brown wash, speckled by the rough texture of the paper.

I sketched her dozing, which is the page I’m least pleased with; then pacing around. She has one of those very expressive question mark tails, constantly curling around itself and it was fun following the movement with a sable brush. Finally, a couple of sketches, just a few seconds each, of her sitting down, watching me watching her. Most of the fireworks have…

We met in the hospital smoking area; as the ambulance and fire trucks rolled in to drop a patient off he looked wistfully at the men in uniform and sighed, “I love firemen.” I laughed and replied I did also. He was HIV positive and asymptomatic. I was 18 weeks pregnant with stage 3 cervical cancer I told him as we sat waiting for our significant others to pick us up from this exciting round of Who’s Your Doctor. Every week it was the same; a new doctor to give your history to, a new treatment, a new pain med. Knowing time is short, we became fast friends. He came to my house after I lost my son and seeing the bottle of liquid morphine on my nightstand asked if I had ever smoked weed. It helped with the pain and didn’t have the side effects morphine did. You mean…

What are the stories behind our storytelling tools?

1. “Ungumming the Keys.” (B.J. Hollars, The Rumpus, September 2014)

The author purchases a typewriter engraved with mysterious initials and dives into the pasts of its potential previous owners.

I dimly remember Andy Goldsworthy from when I lived in the UK, perhaps through that veritable institution Blue Peter, but his work didn’t connect with me at the time. I recently rediscovered Goldsworthy through his book, Time, that I found when I was browsing in a bookstore – remember those?

Andy Goldsworthy is a ‘land artist‘, a sculptor who uses the elements of nature as the materials for his sculptures. There seems to be a balance between the permanent works done with stone and the more ephemeral sculptures made with fallen branches, leaves, and ice. Thinking about his more transitory work made me think harder about why I photograph, I’m not sure that I would be happy to see my constructions disappear as the weather changed or the tide changed. Perhaps the change that ensues is part of the process and that seeing how the…

My autumn watercolor palette has joined forces with a

• Platinum #3776 fountain pen
• Pentel Pocket Brush Pen
• Autopoint Twinpoint 0.9mm mechanical pencil (Two grades of lead are better than one.)
• Kuretake Waterbrush
• Stillman & Birn Epsilon Sketchbook (5.5″ x 8.5″)
• Lamy pen holder
• Two small binder clips
• Paper towel
• Staples Arc notebook band

to form a compact kit for writing and doodling any time space is limited or travel is necessary. The notebook band holds everything securely so I can grab the kit on the go. It also keeps the journal closed so the pages do not get damaged and bits I’ve tucked between pages stay put. However, if I want to play things extra safe, a clear, plastic zipper bag that formerly held a pair of new pillowcases, is the perfect size for the whole caboodle. Another option is to place the waterbrush in a zip lock bag…

Some captured Labor Day weekend nature moments at the Marianist Retreat Center…

flying saucer spider web

Dear Doctor,

I’m going to come clean with you. Actually, I’ve tried to be clean, because I know I’m going to have to submit to a urine test. So I’m going to be totally honest with you and pray this doesn’t backfire on me. When I do that urine test, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a positive result for THC in my metabolites. But I can assure you that I have not used marijuana in over three weeks. I’ve been trying to be clean in order to get my prescription for hydrocodone. So I’ve had to do without both my pills for most of the past month, and the marijuana.

Since I’ve come clean, I have suffered the pain tremendously. I didn’t realize just how much a part that marijuana played in making me feel less pain. See, there’s never a day that I’m pain free. When I…

Pens dominated this week, but there were a few other things worth mentioning…

• Bertram’s Inkwell: Marlen Aleph Grey Fountain Pen, a modern flex nib
• FPGeeks: The Franklin-Christoph Music Nib is now available for purchase!
• Writer’s Bloc: Quo Vadis Scholar #55 Academic Planner Review
• Gourmet Pens: Pelikan Souverän Red M600 Review
• Dragon Company: 万年筆 (Man’nen’hitu{histu}) is the Japanese word for fountain pen (h/t FPGeeks)
• Pen and Design: The Hobonichi Planner
• Vintage pens in demand from collectors
• Free email course helps you start your book, finish writing it, & get it out there
• Decal Art

It was time for the interrogation of the suspects in my house.

Suspects; My Hobbit-like wife, Sheila and the dookie licking daughter, Lacy.

I had searched almost an hour for the bacon that I had bought the day before and stashed in the crisper drawer of our refrigerator.

It was Farmland’s Hickory Smoked Bacon with low sodium.

It was nowhere to be found.

I tore that fridge apart!

I even looked under the lettuce for god sakes!

I even checked the receipt from the grocery store to make sure I hadn’t imagined it…

I am almost 50 years old, after-all…I….forget stuff……sometimes…..a little.

I didn’t remember waking during the night and experiencing a pseudo-sexual bacon feeding frenzy.

I thought about it for a second….

If anyone knows, I know….that anything can happen @ 2 am in a dark kitchen, bathed in the low glow of light from the fridge.

No, that…