So good to have a permanent home for these images, alongside the words of New Jersey poet Nancy Scott in Issue #29 of BluePrintReview.
The flowers are from my patio garden. I took the photo back in spring 2010, around the same time as my April Garden Party. The checkerboard is part of a water feature in the Italian Gardens at Vancouver’s Hastings Park. That photo also dates back to 2010.
If you click here, you’ll see Nancy’s words—Diary of Pink—with the flower image above it. Scroll over the flowers with your mouse, and the squares will appear. It’s a “now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t” feature that Read the rest of this entry »
When I feel off-balance or a sense of dis-ease, I recall that day I saw peace at my feet. I conjure the feeling of the smile on my face, and imagine the joy of the person who took time to etch peace on concrete for passersby to see.
This one is all about blog-hopping. Funny how it goes…
It began with threephotos I’d posted over at my image gallery VisuaLiving. I later decided to feature them together in a blog post here at Living ?s. I snapped the photos on a walk I’d taken while preoccupied with planning a trip and escaping. At some point, I returned to the present and realized the beauty I was missing while daydreaming.
Meantime, Dorothee Lang was in the midst of editing a BluePrintReview issue on the topic of ‘challenge’. She’d stumbled across my post containing my images and musings. Apparently, the post fit well with her theme, so she published it as an issue preview in the literary and visual art journal’s blogzine. The feature highlights my post at Living ?s, and links to the photos at VisuaLiving. From blog to blog to blog. Dizzying.
Some folks are penny wishers, others are star wishers.
If you prefer stars, here’s a chalk star to wish upon …
~
This is a re-post from a couple of years ago. Thought I’d revisit it now–
at a time of year devoted to intentions, resolutions, success plans. Sometimes, perhaps, it’s better to drop the effort and hope for something grand …
The cat’s name is either Teddy or Red–not sure which. It’s tough to tell in a close-up like this. Both cats keep company with my parents in Calgary. The folks invited them into their home when they realized they weren’t getting grandchildren.
I took this photo a couple years back. I assumed it was sitting in my archive, secure. Much to my surprise, one of the cats–Teddy or Red–escaped and moved into Rose Hunter’s poetry journal.
It’s funny, the memories that stick with us. For me, memories from a wedding I attended in Keszthely, Hungary have little to do with the castle it took place in, or the even the bride and groom (dare I say). What I remember is the flower girl, the flow of her dress, and the light that made her glow like a light bulb as she left the castle to get on with her day . I also remember the man who wore traditional Hungarian boots. It actually wasn’t the man so much. It was more about what he had on his feet. I thought, “How can I get a pair of those boots to take home with me on the plane?”
A larger version of the asemic images appear in life as a journey > the direct link is here.
~
The term ‘asemic’ is variously described as “post-literate”, “nonsensical”, “non-symbolic”. Like abstract art, asemic work promises viewers the opportunity to generate personal meanings from their own cultural and linguistic standpoints rather than having meanings imposed by writers and artists.
In keeping with the spirit of asemics, I won’t tell you the origin of the images. I certainly won’t reveal that the images began as photographs I took inside the bathing complex that sits at atop the mineral-rich Hungarian Lake Hévíz–the largest thermal lake for swimming in Europe; the second largest in the world.
Something else I won’t reveal is the video below; that water in motion–a MicroMoment I captured on camera while standing inside the Hévíz Complex after a long afternoon of soaking:
Other things I promise to keep secret are the symbolic meanings in the title of the project. I won’t tell you the nonsensical three-part name carries the following interpretive content:
~
oenisplx = the letters of the word ‘explosion’
[explosion of energy that leads to the elements]
igrnimeeg = the letters of the word ‘emerging’
[life emerging, colors spilling into one another]
spnimirt = the letters of the word ‘imprints’
[dried out world, only imprints remaining]
Well, not exactly. A vowel is only a vowel when it’s recognized as one,
and a vowel in the word ‘gyógyfürdő’, I’ve discovered, isn’t recognized as one in all places.
Below, the back-story, told backwards:
A steamy experience in Hungary is featured as ‘Monday’s Poem’ at Leaf Press:
The photo that appears with my words is the only one I took at the spa–the only snapshot the attendant permitted.
This bath is my favorite in Budapest–a city touted as ‘spa capital of the world’.
~
The process that accompanied publication included a linguistic snag:
The original submission was called ‘rudas gyógyfürdő, budapest’. The Hungarian word ‘gyógyfürdő’ translates into English as ‘medicinal bath’. This word–gyógyfürdő–is the one that caused the glitch.
Late Sunday evening, the night before publication, I opened an email from Leaf Press publisher Ursula Vaira:
I am working on the poem now, and am stuck on the last o in gyógyfürdő … my software (Dreamweaver) simply has no character for that. Even when I go to a website and copy the word and paste it directly in, it still turns up as a question mark.
It’s interesting that Dreamweaver understands the vowels ó and ü, but not ő.
Makes me wonder what other languages feature the first two vowels, but not the last…
This blog post is included in Edition #4 of the BluePrint blog carnival >Language>Place.
It is hosted by UK-based editor, translator, and university administrator Jean Morris.
The direct link to the carnival is here.
A fresh word/image combo is live in ‘just a moment’–BluePrintReview’s companion blog that publishes ‘moments’ of various kinds on a rolling basis between regular issues.
I took the photo poolside, penned those words, while keeping the company of
health tourists in Hévíz as I contemplated the meaning of life and gained perspective on
time and age.
~
Previous works that have appeared in ‘just a moment’ include olympic (dis)comfort zoneand East Vancouver Detours. While you’re there, consider scrolling through the archive of literary news and slices of life expressed through words and images by a variety of international contributors.
Two photos of Hévíz, Hungary are featured in the September issue of elimae. I took the photos of the lake in broad daylight back in May–the water was warm; centigrade, about 33 degrees.
In case you’re wondering, the correct pronunciation ofelimae is el–ee-may. It stands for ‘electronic literary magazine’. It’s been around since 1996, features creative writing and occasional images, boasts an elegant minimalist design, and is currently published under the joint editorship of Cooper Renner and Kim Chinquee in the U.S.
I have a new image up in Referential Magazine–a place where literary and visual artists connect their creations to work already published in the journal.
My photograph–Red/White/Blue–refers to Annmarie Lockhart’s poem with a similarly colored, yet differently punctuated, title: ‘Red, White and Blue’. The title of Lockhart’s work, and the poem itself, brought to mind my image, sitting in neutral, hiding in my archive, all but forgotten. Now, I’m happy to say that our works live together on a page of their own. Here’s the link:
The image has roots in the ever-changing painting below–a work in perpetual progress like a chalkboard with spontaneous additions and deletions whenever I feel inclined to play with it. It hangs behind me on the wall in ‘The Lab’ where I work.
That day with my camera at Waterfront Station, standing on the elevated walkway, shipping yards and loading docks in the distance, I look down at the tracks, and think about choices and all that comes with them:
beginnings and endings, distractions, mergers and divisions …
I see the fabric of life:
challenges, happy accidents, well-worn patterns …
My photo entitled ‘Tracks’ appears in BluePrintReview #24 — the microcosmos issue.
NewPages.com describes BluePrintReview as “an online journal constructed to ease the complex and beautiful convergence of language and art and all the possibilities this entails.”
Inspiration for ‘Pop on Fire’ goes back a full year:
Last summer, POP UP Poptagon appeared in Locus Novus — an on-line journal devoted to the “synthesis of text and image and motion and sound”. The piece came together as a collaborative effort between myself and German artist Dorothee Lang. It was an exploration of the pop culture lexicon. At the time, anything and everything ‘pop’ related jumped out at me, including a ‘pop’ intensive window display for the Pop Opera on Hastings Street downtown. Here’s how it looked in its entirety:
None of the photos from my window display collection made it into that project, and I’d pretty much forgotten all about them — until now, when the memory of one of the display photos I’d taken came back to me while reading Jenny Billings’ poem entitled “Love at the Movies” inReferential Magazine. In the poem, the word ‘pop’ appears in one form or another three times:
once here: “you held the popcorn” again here: “warm, fresh popcorn, wrapped” and yet again: “red velvet seats popped”
When I made the connections I submitted a photo from the collection, and now it appears on the same page as Jenny’s lines.
Words: Father of the Suicide [David Jordan, USA]
+ Image: Reflect/Absorb [Karyn Eisler, Canada]
+ Matchmaker: Editor of BluePrintReview [Dorothee Lang, Germany]
= THIS
How does the editor, Dorothee Lang, explain this particular coupling?
“the essay is about a painful subject: teenage suicide … and your water image has just the right mood: sadness, depth, a closing focus, things and thoughts underneath the surface”
I took this photo on the same day, from the same bridge, at the same time, save a moment or two, as the The Bow — an image that also appears in Issue 23, paired with Jennifer Jackson Whitley’s words on (addict)ion.
These word/image couplings provide a study in contrasts:
(addict)ion and suicide → two tales of discomfort;
and,
two photographs taken in Banff, Alberta, on a day when the mood was so different. It was such a happy day for my family and I; my mother’s birthday, my father and brother in attendance; all of us together, laughing, reminiscing, making moments of joy, memories of comfort …
Bag beauty struck me on Boxing Day. I was people-watching on Granville Street when I shifted my focus from faces to the shopping bags people were holding. I simultaneously wondered what was in them, saw them as icons of consumerism, and reveled in their beauty. They appeared to me as sculpture, a kaleidoscope of color, poetry. I asked their holders to stop and pose for me.
Dylan Emerick-Brown, editor-in-chief, says inspiration for the magazine title comes from several things, including: “the blood and passion that goes into only the most skillfully crafted art” and “great work that stands out just like a splash of red.”
Here’s the direct link: Red Gallery / Karyn Eisler
When you enter the gallery, click on a photo; when it expands, follow the arrow >
