It begins with "p" and isn't poetry.

I have long been familiar with "found object" art. Sure. Old things. New art. The artist can claim the new creation as his own. Makes sense.

Tonight I have learned that I'm a bit behind the times. Or simply not very inquisitive. Turns out there is also "found poetry." You take someone else's words, refashion them, and voila! A poem. Like a remix. Or on a refrigerator.

But it seems that found poetry is stirring up the ugly bean pot, as they say at El Centro:

Bloody Found Poetry

November 10th, 2009

Former British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion has been accused of "burglary" over a poem he wrote for Remembrance Sunday. Military historian Ben Shephard is upset because all but 16 of the 152 lines in Motion's poem come directly from the text of Shephard's book A War of Nerves. Shephard: "There is a word for this. It begins with 'p' and isn't poetry." Motion: "He has got the wrong end of the stick. To blow off about it like he has done completely misunderstands what found poetry is."

SMARTISH PACE THINKS

To blow off about it
like he has done
completely misunderstands
what found poetry is.
It begins with 'p'
and isn't poetry.
He has got the wrong end
of the stick.
There is a word
for this.

Admittedly, I, too, would be upset if someone read 136 lines of poetry as his own when I had actually penned the words in the first place. However, one time I wrote a song which consisted mostly of text taken directly from Treasure Island. I've called it mine ever since. (Privately, that is, since there is no amount of good scotch that would get me to sing it in front of people.) I hope Robert Louis Stevenson isn't rolling in his grave.

Old Notebooks Aren't Just for Burning Anymore

I've spent the past couple days going through a few of my old notebooks. Generally this process of review is painful. Lots of regret. Embarrassment. Conflict. Doubt. I'll try to disown my previous thoughts. I'll read things I wrote and think, "I need a fire. Right now. So I can burn this. So it doesn't last long enough for another person to possibly find. Like one of my yet-to-be-conceived children."

Most of my notebooks written between 1999 and 2005 have met a fiery end. (These years correspond with the ages 17 to 23, by the way.) The ones right before and after are not much better. I spent a lot of ink trying to convince myself that false things were true. Or trying to sound poetic and deep, like some author I admired. I used those notebooks to purge. They were tainted. Pretentious. Word-vomit.

However, in the past couple years I started using my notebooks more for preserving moments and small ideas and less for emotional purging. And even the emotional purging is more entertaining to me. So I've been able to mine some rather amusing tidbits. Here's a sampling:

From Annapolis

• I just wanted time alone to mull over my thoughts and, well, brood.
• I now reject vacuous independence.
• Realistically, I'm not going to be satisfied as a martyr.
• And he throws his arms up in the air like a televangelist.
  
• I dreamt the car got vandalized and all my teeth were rotten.
• I'm working on my paper. My apartment smells like an old lake shoe or a swim suit that's been on so long, crotch rot is setting in. Ray Nowles is yelling at someone. On the phone, I guess, because there's no yelling back. Or he just killed someone and is yelling at the corpse so that I'll think there's two living people downstairs and won't call the police. Again.
• I will miss my friends, but they should all move to Texas anyways.

From the Appalachian Trail

• His clothes are spread over the rocks like a shipwreck.
• I wanted to stay in Cade's Cove, rent bikes and tool around the loop for a day. Daniel said that idea sounded like a whimper.
• I walked to the bano to cry, but there was a long line, so I stifled it. And I just got mad.
• Then I think about Dallas. And I feel it coming on like a cold.

From Dallas

• Faulkner's sentences run on to the horizon of thought.
• Time has swept by me like a swollen river.
• I want to have a simple life that ticks by curiosity, not clocks.
• I am not a good model for American economic growth.
• I am wine. I am fermenting in a barrel.
• When I forget to compare my life to a What-if, I'm cool with it.
• I officially aged today. Not a gray hair. Not a wrinkle. Not an ailment. Rather, I just decided that being impetuous for the sake of spontaneity no longer appeals to me. Why? Because a rush is no longer a good return for the risk, and because impetuous decisions have not worked out for me. No more benefits to be gained from them. There it is. I've aged.
• I'm imagining a story where he has an ambidextrous life. Right- and left-handed EVERYTHING. His life is like a constant mirror image. Maybe it's because he has a special connection to his other self in a mirror dimension. His ambidexterity is caused by his other-dimensional life. It is, of course, a love story. He must find his soul mate. An acrobat. Also ambidextrous and ambidimensional.
• No more commuter digs in Blandville.
• I resent: traffic and dirty air and Botox lips and image-obsessed joggers and inconsiderate dorm-style neighbors and my one-year lease and Green Mountain Electric and trendy urbanites (except cyclists) and yippy dogs and cigarettes and suburbs and SUVs and all manner of ass holes here. (Whew!)
• Freedom: Not being stuck in yuck.

From the Great Eastern Road Trip

• So many of my friends are still themselves. It's beautiful to me, in a faith-restoring kind of way. It gives me faith that people are reliable and don't reinvent themselves and go through personality trends. Maybe it's just me and my brothers who do that.
• I don't want people to look forward to leaving me.
• Not much diversity of ethnicity here. Just white granola and adventure bankers.
• We walked around the Latin Quarter. Students. Murals. Bars. Sex shops. Ice Cream...And we left, cold and hungry.
• Someone needs to write a book called, "All You Should Know About Canada But Don't Know Because You're An American." It can address things like: Canada won the War of 1812; Canada has 10 provinces; Canadians think JFK was killed by the army warmongers because he wanted to de-escalate in Vietnam but Johnson wanted to continue the war; Canadian beer has more alcohol than American beer from Detroit; and Canadians have socialized health care and are actually doing OK.
• I like how cities make you feel involved, just by walking around and looking at stuff.
• Dead flower heads rattle beside the road.

I think of myself as being slightly retarded. It takes me a long time to figure out how things work. Like the derailer on my bike. Or Daylight Savings. Or slang. Or my own creative process. I wrote these tidbits down together in a new notebook. Having them corralled makes me feel like I can say something about something. Like I'm not wasting my time. The compilation is motivational. So I'm experimenting with this kind of mining as part of a creative process.

I know it's prying to ask, but if you write notes to yourself, I'd love a few tidbits from your collection, too.

Home Sweet Marfa

Hello Daniel and Bo and u/b and Sarah and anyone else I know who I've nagged into reading my blog and, ahem, leaving feedback. Now that I have Interweb access again, I am resuming my Interlife in the Interworld with a statistical recap for the Great Eastern Road Trip of 2009 and an update on our recent move.

Days on the road: 56

States visited: 19

Provinces visited: 2

Relatives visited: 11 at their homes, and another 15+ at Canadian Thanksgivings

Friends visited: Luckily, I can't count them all.

Miles driven: over 6,000

Photographs taken: over 3,200

Final odometer reading: 99,848 

We finished the road trip October 24. Thanks go out to everyone who met up with us, housed us, fed us, helped us, and made our journey delightful. And especially to Laura and Chris - thanks for giving us a great reason to dream up this trip. Since I have mentioned you by name, I will also nag you into reading my blog.

We are now in Marfa, Texas. It's a small artsy town of 2,121 people, situated 525 miles southwest of Dallas in the high desert. Thanks to the generosity of two Marfan friends, we will be spending our time, from now until Christmas, here:

This is the Goat Head, an efficiency apartment that our pals Chase and Rachel crafted out of one corner of their home. It is named after a fictional/possible dive bar and the little burrs that stick in your flip flops out here. It is perfect in every way, as you can see:

 

So why are we here? Well, some people - let's call them artists and writers - get grants and residencies to go sojourn somewhere and create without any of the disturbances of regular life. Other people - let's call them Daniel and Billi - save up money working at Starbucks so that they can quit regular life and go live in the desert for a couple months in undisturbed creative bliss. So we're here to live out our fantasy of being full-time creatives. Daniel is painting. I am writing. Everyday. We both hope to leave Marfa with a handful of good, finished pieces to be used in school application packets.

After one week in this paradise, I've started two stories: The Penny Farm and Pecos Pip. The first is about a lady who grows things from people's spare change. The second is my reincarnation of the Pecos Pete bedtime stories my father told me when I was a kid. (My dad got Pecos Pete from his dad, who, I suspect, got Pecos Pete from a 1938 comic strip which featured Pecos Bill suffering from a case of amnesia. Unfortunately, in 2005 some screenwriter created a series called, "The Adventures of Pecos Pete and Black Bart," for which he owns the copyright and is seeking a producer, forcing me to Christen my character with the only other suitably alliterative name I could come up with.)

I've also mined through my past two years of notebooks for ideas and unfinished stories. Plus, I'm working on a great tan, since it's been sunny and 75 every day so far.

Danno has created a studio in Chase's shed. He built a work table, strung some lights, killed some black widow spiders, and went to work mixing various media with paint thinner to see what he could invent. Yesterday he discovered that he could make prints that look like a combination of road rash and photographic ghosts. The process involves oil pastel drawings sprayed with lacquer, fired with a welding torch, and pressed onto blank paper with a paint roller. He's a clever one, that Daniel. 

A Letter to the Republic

(The field across from my parents' home.)

Dear Texas,

I just wanted to tell you that I love you. I missed you while I was away. Your big, blue sky. Your open prairies. Your sculpted canyons. Your libertarian spirit. Your cheap gasoline and Hill Country microbreweries. You are my one and only homeland.

Sure, I spent some time with the Deep South. I visited Appalachia. I gave New England a few weeks. And the rumors are true: I did go to New York City. And, yes, Canada, too. But I never thought for more than a day or two about uprooting from you.

How could I leave you? Move to a state that levies tax on income and restricts the possession of fire arms? Move to a state that can't stamp its own silouhette on everything in sight because of its unsightly figure? Move to a state that can't secede from the Union? Move to a state that doesn't remember the Alamo? No, not me. I'm no fool. I know how good you are.

As I looked at the First Quarter moon tonight, my feet firmly planted upon your black clay, with a mildly warm fall breeze pressing against my cheeks and the rumble of a thunderstorm rolling in, I knew I was home. Wherever I roam, I will always come back to you, Texas.

Love always,

Billi

Gone but not forgotten

I'm fasting from the Internet, apparently. We bought a new car battery this morning. But the alternator is fine, thanks. The gypsy wagon continues to roll toward 100,000 miles of adventure.

Road Tripper

So, we are now on the lam. We have been roaming for three weeks now. No home. No address. No bills (except the phones). And no problems so far. We haven't even had a travelers tussle yet. This is because we are superhuman. (Actually, it's because we are having a great time, and I'm biting Daniel less.)

We started the road trip August 31 with a visit to my brother and sister-in-law in Kyle, Texas. We had a splendid visit, even though my bro blogged sarcastically about it. After a bike ride with Bo from Kyle to San Marcos, we were smitten by Old Stagecoach Road. We want to build a Monolithic Dome on this road and raise vegetables and hens. But that will have to wait a bit.

Anyhow, our road trip itenerary looks like this:

August 31 to September 2 - Kyle, Texas
September 2 - Garland, Texas
September 3 - Wylie, Texas
September 4 - Driving through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama
September 5 to 6 - Marietta, Georgia
September 6 to 9 - Columbia, South Carolina
September 10 - Driving through SC, NC, Virginia and Maryland
September 11 to 15 - New York City
September 16 to 19 - Boston
September 20 to 24 - Annapolis, Maryland
September 25 to 30 - Camping and hiking somewhere
October 1 to 3 - Newport Center, Vermont for Chris and Laura's wedding!
October 4 to 9 - Quebec and Ontario
October 10 to ? - Maine
October ? to ? - Hiking through Appalachian Mountains, weather permitting

When we get back to Texas in October, we will visit the family before heading West to the Big Bend area for a creative retreat until Christmas. January will take us to Morocco and Finland. February will be the end of retirement, hopefully, in Austin. (Hopefully as in, "Hopefully I can find a job in Austin in February.")

* * * * *

So, as you can see, our retirement is peachy. I had superb cannoli yesterday from Mike's Pastries, and our retirement periods are like the ricotta filling in the cannoli of life. Delicious. Delightful. A reminder that the center is what matters. Every retirement sharpens our focus. On living right and living well. Our best refinement so far has come from experiencing other people's generosity.

We made a new friend in Annapolis (thank you, Zeb) - Mr. Will Hawkins - who bought us each a Galway Guinness, served with a poetic toast to the kindness of strangers. It was beautiful. Right there, our focus was sharpened. His beer gifts have been two of many kindnesses we have been served on this journey. And, inspired by those creamy stouts and Will's words, we have been on the lookout for kindess, and for ways to be generous, and for ways to show gratitude. Living well entails receiving help and offering it freely to others. I wish I would remember that all the time.

To all the kind strangers and kind friends who are helping us on our journey: Thanks. You make my life wonderful, and I want to do the same for you.

My owl. At last.

We found my owl at last. We have been looking for him for a very long time. Since last summer, in fact. We couldn't find him Asheville. Little did we know, he was a Finnish owl in Garland, Texas.

He was sitting on the cover a book of wise sayings that my mother-in-law received as a gift when she graduated from high school. The book was sitting in a basket in my in-laws' house. Daniel discovered it a few minutes ago.

The book is Valitut mietelmät by V. A. Koskenniemi. I don't speak Finnish, but here's an excerpt, just in case you do:

1. Luonto on jumaluuden varjo tyhjyydessä.

2. Jumala loi tyhjästä mailman. Kaikista luoduista olennoista on vain ihminen tavannut tämän maailman raaka-aineen: ei vuorten syvyykaistä eikä merien pohjalta, ei maasta, ilmasta eikä vedestä, vaan oman sydämensä onkaloista.

3. Ihminen on luomakunnan käsi ojennettuna jumaluutta kohti.

Any-hoo, I am in love with this little owl. I want him to sit on my shoulder and go with me everywhere. And he will say, "Hoo-hoo-huomenta," to everyone.