Units of Perception

Thirty-first of the first month
(skies alternately sunny and foul)
I conclude my research
into the change in my perceptions
since attending the concert.
Hampered by inappropriate units

I've failed to unite
my fishhook with the moon
despite prolonged and concerted
efforts. All the nets are fouled
by my faulty perception
of depth. It's hopeless to search

for answers in this research.
The universe's seamless unity
is all my instruments perceive--
analysis, impossible. All month
I lay awake while returning waterfowl
filled the night skies with concerts

of travel music. The concert
that triggered this vain research
project fled from memory. Foul
play, composer: promise unmet!
If you've thought me a mooncalf
lately, it's a fair perception:

I've been preoccupied, perceiving
something conveyed at the concert
had been lost on me. What it meant
was the object of my research.
I struggled in vain to untie
thing from symbol: failed.

The universe itself cried foul.
It's not so easy to alter perception
and though the dramatic unities
required revelation at the concert,
I went on a fruitless search
that consumed an entire month.

I fouled up. Too much time in search
of a unit to measure the meaning
of a concert at the doors of perception.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Corned Beef, Cabbage, Free Wifi

It's a Saturday morning in 2010 and we're
driving through North Portland on Interstate Avenue
and the pub on the corner advertises corned beef
cabbage and free wifi. I love my town
for insouciant commercialism married
to the love of fine things: organic marketplaces
bookstores, home brewing supplies
cheesemaking and yarn shops. Rainbow city
garlanded with bus routes and bike lanes
we flourish in the shade of your many bridges:
happy, quarreling, multifarious rolling-ahead
at sixty minutes to the hour into a new decade
of a still-new century. Everyone opinionates for'n'agin
but still and all, we call you home.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Villanelle for Three-Legged Chair

I think I recognize you: I'm not sure
but you look so familiar I could swear
I've seen you someplace else, sometime before.

Like shadows cast outside an open door,
like faces glimpsed through veils of falling hair,
I think I recognize you. I'm not sure

of much these days, and this is one thing more
that's slipped my grasp. I can't remember where
I've seen you. Someplace else, sometime before,

we must have waltzed across some ballroom floor
and gone out to the balcony for air...
I think. I recognize you. I'm not sure

if I've forgotten, or if I've made war
on memory. There's things that I can't bear
I've seen. You, someplace else, sometime before

abducted me to some uncharted shore,
a shock like sitting on a three-legged chair.
I thought I recognized you: now I'm sure
I've seen you someplace else, sometime before.

image by Milad Gheisari courtesy of Read Write Poem

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Shipwreck

3 Word Wednesday offers: Beacon. Grieve. Kindred.

beacons burn on shore
the kindred huddle grieving
for vanished crewmen

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Trellis

Trellis up this rose and make it climb
against the house. Protect from bruising hail
and leaf-destroying winds. Should rainfall fail,
bring water every week in summertime.
Keep hungry aphids from the tender stems
and guard each leaf from spores of sooty mold.
Your care will be returned a thousandfold
when summer blooms appear, like living gems.

How high the blossoms reach, like lover's faces
raised for kisses from the stooping sky,
or floral arms raised to the sun's embraces.
And when the tumbling scarlet petals tell us
winter's come, when roses fall and die
I'll bind my soul to prayer, like rose to trellis.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

More numbers

Reorganizing my files, I find I've had more than 80 journal publications. Mostly poems: three prose pieces. Three poems have been featured on radio programs or podcasts; that's other than the ones I read on KBOO's Talking Earth back in September.

This includes pieces that were published in online journals that no longer exist and pieces that appeared at "volunteer" sites like 350 Words and the Human Genre Project. Still, it's not bad considering I've only been working at getting published since the fall of 2005-- just over four years ago.

Total $$: a fifty-dollar B&N gift certificate from Sol Magazine, a fifty-dollar check from the Alabama State Poetry Society, and a one-dollar payment from an online journal for a short story. Hey, that's averaging slightly over $1 per pub! At that rate, I can quit my day job if I can publish... ummm... a couple thousand poems every month?

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Condensation

Morning: I brush crystals from my eyes
and strangeness from my brain. The dream
that lingered with the flavor of surprise—
of who-knows-what, of things-not-as-they-seem—
evaporates at last. I wash my face.
Retreating dark exposes clouds, defines
the edges that give shape to city space:
concrete sidewalks, power poles and lines.

And underneath my heels, the pavement clicks
and shadows swing as I walk past a lamp
like clock-hands slicing hours into ticks.
The bus stop shelter glitters with the damp
and as I shake the dawn rain off my coat
my dream comes back, a hand upon my throat.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Cathedral Glass

Today I'll let my feet decide the path
I take. And look, how beautiful the trees,
like bonfires seen through old cathedral glass
with broken shadows crawling underneath.
I walk away. No memory of truth
remains on hollow sidewalks, empty streets
that echo to the heels of my old boots.
To those who follow, here's what I bequeath:

a broken shadow on a broken wall;
a ragged wrack of ruined clouds behind
the storm; a palisade of stone; a face
all carved with dreams upon a temple vault;
a moonbow drawn against the nightmare time;
a life of struggle and a moment's grace.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Canyon Blues

Even when you can't see the rivers, you can feel them:
gaps in the landscape where the terrible cliffs plunge
into the earth. And overhead the opalescent sky
goes on and on, held up by the same sagebrush wind
that throws suicidal tumbleweeds under trucks.

You look up from the river and the sky seems so far away.

Baby ravens call from their cliffside nests and their mothers
answer from the tops of invisible towers. They shall inherit
this vastness of air. Theirs is the kingdom of cumulus
and juniper.

I look up from the river and the sky seems so far away
And these cliffs hide all except the smallest slice of day.

We have not stolen enough feathers to get us through
a winter storm. We have not learned to be lifted by
convective ribbons of air, too slender ever to be used
as lifelines by us. We remain forever strangers
in the kingdom of vastness. And the mountains hide their faces.

And these cliffs hide all except the smallest slice of day.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

The Earth Still Rings

Days later and still the earth
rings like a bell. Groans. No, wait—
that's the sea moaning unsettled
against the trembling mountain.

No, that sound is too terrible to hear
or encompass with pathetic fallacies.
That sound is shattered limbs
and slowly fading breath.

That sound is rubble mounded above
fragile lives. Without food or water
in tropical nights that can turn
from black velvet to claws of ice.

That sound is bare hands clawing
at debris. Where is. Where are.
Days later and still the earth
rings with our cries, you and I.

International Red Cross
Medicine sans Frontiers

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Programming Pizza Party

Three Word Wednesday: Jolt. Ribbon. Zeal.

slurping Jolt Cola
and mozzarella ribbons
zealously coding

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Here Comes the New Boss

Well, this is an elite company of
enthusiasts drawing together,
all ready to shoulder the burdens
of the sundered world.

Just like Hercules kneeling on the stones
thigh muscles swelling to take
Atlas' load. But that was deceit—
the poor simpleton fell for it.

Someone has to take the brunt,
let it be these fertile imaginations
that froth with answers to questions
most of us haven't thought of.

And if they hand us back the world
we'll know not to take it on again.

words courtesy of Read Write Poem
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

The Last Dreamer

Do you still walk under whispering trees
by bone-white cliffs over wine-dark seas?
It seems my friend you are the last dreamer,
you are the last dreamer.

Do you still drive out on Highway 9
pedal to the metal, outrunning Time?
It seems my friend you are the last dreamer,
you are the last dreamer.

Do you still dig in the pirate's cove
looking for treasure or looking for love?
That's just how it is for the last dreamer,
you are the last dreamer.

Your eyebrows lift like blackbird wings
when the crows come around and tell you things
the lonely secrets of the last dreamer,
you are the last dreamer.

The rain comes down and it cleans the streets
that give up their hearts to your passing feet
and pay their homage to the last dreamer,
you are the last dreamer.

The world goes by like a storm of smoke
like a syllable in a word God spoke
like a speck in the eye of the last dreamer,
you are the last dreamer.

When morning comes and the last dream fades
you'll know what it meant as you draw the shades
and sunshine drenches the last dreamer,
you are the last dreamer.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

The Widmer Brew'ry Disaster

Night before last there was a fire at a power substation that knocked out power to several blocks of N/NE Portland. Including the building I work in. I got to spend yesterday at home.

There were some tragic consequences to the outage. According to the Oregonian's article:

"Widmer Brothers Brewing Co. Co-owner Rob Widmer said the brewery lost 250 barrels, or the equivalent of 62,000 pints, of Deadlift Imperial IPA, a new brew and its most expensive beer, because of the outage.

"For us the painful part is the loss of 62,000 pints of delicious beer," Widmer said."

Brewery under the freeway bridge over the shining Willamette!
I am sorry to say you have been visited by a most terrible calamit-
y on this seventh day of January, two thousand ten
A day we must all hope will never, ever come again
For an electrical substation burned down in the middle of the night
And left several blocks of businesses without power or light.

In the evening all the good people who work at Widmer
Went home, and nothing untoward did fear
While in the cooler sat two hundred fifty barrels of Deadlift Imperial
Which is an alcoholic beverage that is brewed from cereal.
No-one would have believe that there was any cause for fright
Or that a power substation would catch fire in the middle of the night.

But when they awoke, what horror! The beer would not stay cold
Which meant they couldn't sell it as fresh-- and after all, who wants to drink old
Beer? With a heavy heart, co-owner Rob declared it a loss.
"Sixty-two thousand good pints of new-brewed beer we're going to have to toss."
The ale ran brown and foaming into the brewery's drain
Like the storm sewers overflowing after a heavy rain.

Oh seventh day of January two thousand and ten,
You are a day of infamy in the minds of beer-drinking men
A day when a sacrifice was made of so many barrels
And now I believe that no sensible man would quarrel
With my conclusion: that Widmer sooner better than later
Ought to buy themselves a reliable generator.

Thanks to to old Will. I mean McGonagall.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

New Year's Party

3 Word Wednesday: Drain. Epic. Nibble. This one is really unavoidable...

epic indulgence
nibbling hors d'oeuvres and draining
glasses of champagne

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Avatar

Warning: Spoilers!





So, Avatar is taking some flack for being unoriginal and racist: the latter accusation is usually couched in terms like "noble savage" and "magical Negro".

As for unoriginal—well, yeah. I'm not willing to go so far as Steve Perry, who claims it's not possible to write anything original: it all depends how fine you want to slice it. But SF movies typically deal with the Big Ideas that print SF was dealing with thirty to fifty years ago. It's not profitable, I think, to spend time and energy arguing over whether Avatar was more ripped off from Ursula LeGuin, Poul Anderson, or Andre Norton (or fill in your own candidate), not to mention legions of nameless pulp cover artists. It's also clear that Cameron intended Avatar to be at least partly an unobtainium-fueled homage to classic SF and the SF fan community.

As for racist?

On the face of it, that seems like a ridiculous accusation given that the humans/whites are the Bad Guys. By movie logic, that's all you need to know, right? But there are subtler forms of racism than, for instance, the kill-the-Japs logic of WWII-era propaganda movies. Look at Walkabout: the Aborigine character is ostensibly the hero, but since he neither speaks English nor generates subtitles, he's effectively voiceless. His opinions on life and the universe appear to merit no attention. It's a "good" stereotype, but a stereotype nonetheless.

So, what about Avatar? Well, the "magical Negro" claim just doesn't hold up. Typically the "magical Negro" (substitute any minority) sacrifices her- or himself, or is sacrificed, to save the white characters, in this case the humans. But, if you've seen the movie, you know that salvation for the human race is not on offer. In fact it's possible (though not mandatory) to interpret the ending as suggesting that humanity is doomed, trapped on a dying planet without enough resources to sustain a space colonization program. Humankind is sacrificed to save Pandora and the Na'vi.

The trope at work in Avatar is technologically superior humans vs. morally superior aliens. This is a very old SF theme, in fact I would call it one of the founding themes: if you're not picky about genre boundaries you can see it as far back as Dunsany. Literarily, it probably does owe a lot to Rousseau's "noble savage" idea. But I think it deserves to be seen in context, as a rejection of one of the other common SF tropes: that technological advantage confers moral superiority. Tech-empire as Manifest Destiny: the point of view represented by the corporatary types in Avatar.

Neither of these tropes really lends itself to nuance. It's interesting to compare Avatar to District 9, which touched on many of the same themes—but the aliens there were technologically superior, with space flight and mysteriously powerful biotech. That context made it possible, I think, to offer a little more moral complexity.

District 9 was a riskier movie in many ways: the aliens were much less humanlike, less likable by our standards of cute and cuddly, and one could honestly say they represented a credible threat to Earth (not the castaways with their barely functional ship, but the presumably numerous and powerful home planet). Peter Jackson is brave enough to argue that we should treat aliens compassionately and respectfully even under those circumstances. Cameron didn't go that route. He's also making way more money than Jackson did with District 9—but then, it's not as if Jackson needs to worry about dying in poverty.

The claim's been made that all of the actors who portrayed human characters in Avatar were white, while all or most of the actors who played Na'vi were not. (Seems to me the actor who played the helicopter pilot had a Hispanic last name, though.) If it's true it's a bit disturbing—but you could take the first half as a sinister suggestion that all of Earth's nonwhite people have been killed off or marginalized to the point that they aren't trusted on space missions.

(Actually, how many nonwhites have we put into space? Darned few. Possibly that's Cameron's point: the future of Avatar definitely isn't the happily multiracial future that we see in Star Trek.)

As for the second half, there are a couple of possible explanations: Cameron felt that minority actors would get inside the whole oppression/exploitation thing better than white actors; Cameron wanted to offer minority actors an opportunity, and since they were going to be heavily CGIed their looks wouldn't matter that much; there was some quality of movement or appearance he was looking for that white actors couldn't supply even with the CGI; or it just kind of turned out that way. I dunno. I'm not sure I can buy the last one, and all the rest leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it was just that, having decided the human half of the movie would be all (or mostly) white, he wanted some balance.

The point that really bothers me is that the Na'vi seem helpless to do anything for themselves without human leadership. One can talk about the difference between battlefield warfare and guerilla warfare, between a soldier's training and warrior culture: one can reasonably argue that the information and expertise supplied by the humans was indispensable to the Na'vi resistance. But there's no reason one of the Na'vi couldn't have captured the uberdragon and become the war-leader. What if that had been the female lead? With the humans as her trusty strategic advisors? Wouldn't that have been a fun twist?—and frankly rather more empowering.

As a story, Avatar was good but not great. One big weakness I see is that the main character has everything to gain and nothing to lose by switching sides. It would have been a much more interesting movie if he'd had something to live for on the human side—a girlfriend, family, a healthy body. Or, if there had actually been anything honorable about the human position. As it stands, he would have had to be both stupid and amoral to stay with the humans.

As a movie, of course, it rocked. The bar for CGI has officially been raised (again). Sigourney Weaver just gets better and better. And you have to love a planet with tubeworms for shrubbery.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Thanal Online

Three poems from this blog in the current issue of Thanal Online.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside