One More Resolution

I'll Catch You Kelly Puissegur retrowhale.etsy.com & retrowhale.com

It is far too easy to lose track of friends,especially online or outofstatecitycountry friends. I'm not offended or in a fight with any of my friends, but I've let them slip away. I'm busy. They're busy. We have so much on our plates. Correct?

With the shock of learning of my friend's death yesterday, especially that she was terribly ill, and that I had absolutely no idea, I started looking up everyone I've lost touch with. I thought about my friend Carol, many times over the last year. The last time we emailed was last November. I've thought to call her and catch up. But didn't, just as I have thought about calling, writing, emailing, texting old friends, but haven't.

I'm adding one more resolution to my list.

It is too late in the case of my departed friend, and it may be too late with other friendships as well, but I am going to write, call, reconnect, check in, this year.

Keep Track: All we have is each other. In this life it is comforting to know we have friends who love us despite our many failings. Accept us for ourselves. Love us despite our quirks and tempers. Take our calls at unreasonable hours. Know our secrets and still like us. Defend us against our enemies with a fury worthy of myth. Break our fall. Catch us when we trip over ourselves. My goal is to contact every friend I've let slip under the horizon.

Artist Bio:
Feel free to visit my website- retrowhale.com

My drawings are little appreciations for found objects, plants, animals, people who inspire me, family, music, shapes, textures, and what ever else pops into my head. I change mediums frequently because I get board easily but my work generally maintains a child like, playful quality. My goal is to make affordable art that people can appreciate or relate to in some way.

Retrowhale is a member of Etsy for Animals: Artists Helping Animals (efa): www.etsyforanimals.com

This Moment: 6:27 P.M. January 4, 2011

David Bowie's Glolden Years is playing at Starbucks. I'm sitting in an overstuffed orange chair facing a wall of mirrors. Strange how sobering your own reflection can be. The barristas are laughing. A woman orders a skinny caramel mocha. A girl next to me stands with her legs spayed, her feet encased in buckled military style black leather boots. The store is a cacophony of music and conversation, punctuated with the whir of machines. A young woman discusses her scratched corneas as if discussing the weather. I only have twenty minutes more to hide. Starbucks will close and I will have to leave and go home to my mailbox and it's contents, the laundry, dinner and dishes. I will have to sit with the news of the day. I see myself already on the couch, the dogs vying for pets, an open magazine willing to draw me into it's prose. A piano piece offers an essay on dissonance. Sugar packets are stuffed at odd angles in it's container. The New York Times is focused on the amazing number eight. On very rare occasions such as this moment, jazz can seem like a taunt. A young man with his long hair and abbrieiated soul patch, comes over and apologizes that the store will be closing in fifteen minutes. The woman with the scratched corneas says she's not leaving, then laughs. Two women lean into each other laughing. I know there are tears welling, but I feel nothing but cool air from the outside rushing in when a woman holding her coffee opens the door and leaves.

Rest in Peace: Carol Novack

Oh, this lovely, irascible, hilarious, infuriating, marvelous woman will be missed! I just learned that she left us just this past Friday. When she'd call, it was an hour long expletive-laced conversation, at the very minimum. They were filled with raucous laughter, minor, sometimes more than minor disagreements, but we always parted friends. I remember a moment of shocked silence after I casually mentioned my paternal grandmother's surname, Hertzog, and she accused, "you're German!" She emailed that it had been a long time. It had. We emailed a few times. She'd left New York City for Ashville. She had just published her memoir. We hadn't spoken in real time for at least two years. I had no idea she was ill.

It's true you don't know what you had until it's gone.

Until I can find the words:

I am not who I think I am or is I whom?
Author's Bio
Carol Novack is the former recipient of a writer’s award from the Australian government, the author of a poetry chapbook, an erstwhile criminal defense and constitutional lawyer in NYC, and the publisher of Mad Hatters’ Review. Fictions and poems may be found in numerous journals, including American Letters & Commentary, Caketrain, Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, First Intensity, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Literature, LIT, and Notre Dame Review, and in many anthologies, including “The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets,” “Diagram III,” and “The &Now Awards: the Best Innovative Writing.” Writings in translations may or will be found in French, Italian, Polish and Romanian journals.
I would say that I'm an outside of the box writer, if I could recall where I put the box. I write and have led workshops in poetic/musical, genre-blending (hermaphroditic) "fictions." Samples of my work, along with reviews, may be found on http://www.amazon.com/Giraffes-Hiding-Mythical-Memoirs-Novack/dp/1933132833/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top; http://booktour.com/author/31642; & http://carolnovack.blogspot.com (links to writings, reviews & interviews).

Publications and Prizes
Books:
Giraffes in Hiding: The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2010), Living Alone Without a Dictionary (Makar Press, 1974)

Anthologies:
New Cross Musings on a Manic Reality (Dog Horn Publishing, 2011), Heide Hatry: Heads and Tales (Charta Books, 2009), The &NOW Awards (&NOW Books -- Lake Forest College Press, 2009), Diagram III (Del Sol Press, 2008), The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets (Penguin, 1986), The Tabloid Story Pocket Book (Wild & Woolley, 1978), Mother I'm Rooted (Outback Press, 1975)

Journals:
5_trope, Action Yes, American Letters & Commentary, Anemone Sidecar, Apostrophe, Big Bridge, Caketrain, Cellar Door Magazine, Diagram, Drunken Boat, Elimae, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Fiction, knock, La Petite Zine, Lamination Colony, Laura Hird Showcase, LIT, LITnIMAGE, Mad Hatters Review, Metazen, Milk, Mindfire Renewed, Mississippi Review, Muse Apprentice Guild, Necessary Fiction, Newtopia, Notre Dame Review, Opium Magazine, Otoliths, Pindeldyboz, Retort Magazine, Salt Flats Annual, Salt River Review, Scythe, Scythe Literary Journal, Segue, Sein und Werden, SmokeLong Quarterly, Susurrus, Tears in the Fence, The Angler, The Beat, The Del Sol Review, The Jivin' Ladybug, Underground Voices, Unlikely Stories, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Void Magazine, Wheelhouse, Wild Strawberries, Word Riot, Yankee Pot Roast
Prizes:Creative Writers' Grant from the Arts Council of the Australian Government
Personal FavoritesFavorite Authors:Beckett, D. Barthelme, DiLillo, Stein, Rilke, Kafka, many others, including friends of mine.

Artist of the Day: Imam Reza Fighting with a Monster - Ausgezeichnet

Imam Reza Fighting a Monster - from Iran, the Book of the Presages Ausgezeichnet ausgezeichnet.etsy.com & http://ausgezeichent.over-blog.com

Other than my new emotional attachment to this artist and that I absolutely adore his work, I chose this particular piece because of the news of this morning. I'm talking about the new sanctions proposed for Iran. And, all the saber rattling. The former Administration tried this, then dropped it when the country let out an exasperated sigh all at once. Can we please not be so predictable and go from one war to the next to the next! Let's all hold our breathe, and let out a giant wind of exasperation and see if it does the trick. All I'm asking for is a little peace.

I love this artist from Samur, France and his joy inspiring paintings. His paintings are irreverent and wonderful. What I love most about his homage paintings, is that, from what I can tell, he reimagines famous painting with himself as the subject. From the few pieces I've seen of his work, other than the painting featured above, is the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadeloupe.

Artist Bio:
Please see my blog : http://ausgezeichnet.over-blog.com. It would be for me a great pleasure, thank you.

Poem Therapy January, 3 2011 8:20 A.M.: Losing Track - Denise Levertov

Losing Track
Denise Levertov

Long after you have swung back
away from me
I think you are still with me:

you come in close to the shore
on the tide
and nudge me awake the way

a boat adrift nudges the pier:
am I a pier
half-in half-out of the water?

and in the pleasure of that communion
I lose track,
the moon I watch goes down, the

tide swings you away before
I know I'm
alone again long since,

mud sucking at gray and black
timbers of me,
a light growth of green dreams drying.

It's easy to lose track of where you are in your own life.

After a period of anxiety, hope, anguish, resignation, it is easy to leave a year, a job, a relationship, long before you actually say the words, pack up your stuff, and go. Perhaps you've said the words, but you were met with a look of disbelief, or worse, a blank stare.

It's disconcerting, when you've left, really said goodbye in your mind or heart, when the year hasn't finished with you, or your boss is ticking off the list of expectations required for the next five years, when you know, know, the paint has sealed that window shut. Or your husband,or wife, or partner enters the house and starts asking your opinion about some minor change to the house, when you know you've closed the door already.

How could they know you've left when you are still sitting right there where you always are?

Perhaps you've said the words and haven't been heard. Say them louder.

That is how this new year feels only three days into it.

One Sentence: January 2, 2011

A brisk day of sunshine, quail and pheasants running for the underbrush, more early March than January.

One Sentence: January 1, 2011

Tearing pages from magazines to the sound of snoring and television chatter coming from the bedroom.