They woke me up at the crack of dawn.
Looked out my window. Here’s what I (heard and) saw …
On the Wires now live at qarrtsiluni in the ‘Animals in the City’ issue.
~
It was early. It was loud. It was the beginning of June and I’d just returned from a trip abroad. I’d spent a full month in Read the rest of this entry »
This one was by invitation …
The theme of BluePrintReview Issue #30?
“… instan/ce(s) … dedicated to series of works that explore the nature of moments Read the rest of this entry »
There’s nothing quite like a private tour of the countryside.
It was May 2012, in the spring heat of Hungary. A local resident took me in his car…
First stop was Sümeg Castle, located in the town of Sümeg, Veszprém, Hungary. The castle sits atop a mountain called “Castle Hill”, about 20 miles north of Lake Balaton. Built in the 13th century by Béla Read the rest of this entry »
Another trip down memory lane; another collaboration with Dorothee Lang. ‘POP UP poptagon’ went live in Locus Novus on September 22nd a few years back. The day/month strikes me as significant in more ways than one: My long-time animal companion died on September 22nd this year. The passing was, and still is, sad. The project, however, was floral and fun: “a collaborative exploration of the pop culture lexicon as it pertains to four overlapping processes that set and keep pop culture in motion: distribution, commodification, (re)production, and consumption”.
Here’s the link:
POP UP: a poptagon / Locus Novus
Thank goodness for Dorothee’s blog notes. They contain email excerpts that remind me of how the project began. She wrote:
it started with some images of backyard flowers sent back and forth as mail additions. then came some floored peonies. and a tossed thought in a mail:
“here, a rain front washed through. the peonies are floored. i just was outside, trying to perk them up a bit. picture to follow.
we could start to work on a flower-collaboration ;-)”
– d.
For the full blog post, and my response to her suggestion, go here.
Locus Novus features projects that synthesize text, image, motion, and sound.
A trip down memory lane recalls my first collaboration with German author / artist Dorothee Lang—a 2009 cross-disciplinary project that appears in the online journal qarrtsiluni. The quasi-mathematical formula is as follows:
audio + visual + fiction + theory + stamp
=
Dealing with Family and Friends
The project evolved over a game of email volleyball; a series of back-and-forth tosses that began with the lines that now appear on the photo. Image selection was next. Then came the postage stamp. The fictional theoretical story followed. Audio-recording of the words came last. Somehow, we pulled it together, without any conscious road map or plan.
In addition to the online publication, the project is included (without audio) in qarrtsiluni’s print anthology entitled:
~
Dorothee’s notes on the process are here.
Fun thing about submitting work to Referential Magazine— regardless of whether the submission takes the form of poetry, photography, or non/fiction—is the process. Each submission must refer, in one way or other, to a work on the site that is already published. It could refer to a word in a poem, a sentence or phrase in a work of non/fiction, or even to a video or static image.
Three circular photos now appear in the zine. The references, and links, are as follows:
Melanie Faith’s poem “Ad Infinitum” contains the phrase scattering them into circles. Reading this poem recalls a photo I took at sunset in Richmond, British Columbia. The scattered circles, and the poem, are here.
The words full moon in Ellen Kline McLeod’s poem “Her Cracking Open” bring to mind a moon scene I captured near Vancouver International Airport. For the image, and McLeod’s words, go here.
The third image refers to Paris Elizabeth Sea’s poem “moment, molecule”. A full moon I witnessed one night while standing on the curb in front of my home refers to Sea’s words: the smallest of dots. For the moon and the poem, click here.
~
Links to all of my references at Referential.
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 brings the black/white image in and out of view. Read the rest of this entry »
Unexpected engagements. Misleading social markers. When they coincide, they crack the solidity of my own taken-for-granted assumptions. They raise questions and contain the potential to move me, transport me, to shift my perceptions.
My story entitled ‘Impromptu’ details such an encounter. It happened in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Here’s an excerpt:
It was one of those clear March days when dozens of crows line the branches above the stop and defecate on unsuspecting folk waiting for the southbound #3 — a typical 2pm in Vancouver at the corner of Hastings and Main.
The full story appears in Real Time—the nonfiction pages of Australia’s Pure Slush literary magazine. Here’s the direct link:
A special thanks to
Pure Slush editor Matt Potter.
A special thanks also to BluePrintReview for this #StorySunday accolade:
Do you recall any first impressions that concealed a story you never suspected?
Any engagements that cracked the solidity of your own perceptions?
Hadn’t settled on a favorite color until asked about it the other day.
That’s when Matt Potter popped the question, out of the blue–he’s the founding editor of Australia’s Pure Slush literary magazine. Under pressure to answer him, I did,
after thinking it through.
Matt’s question is part of “The Hue Questionnaire”–a ritual interrogation of all authors whose words appear in the journal. My creative nonfiction flash entitled Impromptu will go live on the site February 25th. My thought colors, however, have already appeared:
Pure Slush features writers from around the globe, including
Nicolette Wong (Hong Kong), Marcus Speh (Germany), and Susan Gibb (USA).
If you haven’t already, check out their work and favorite hues.
For me, the year began in reverse …
with the re-publication of a poem in the new Reprint Poetry–a journal with a mission to
“provide an additional home to previously published poems that deserve to be read again.”
dinner for 2 in Vacation town > Reprint Poetry
The poem was originally published in BluePrintReview alongside a photo by Claire Ibarra. I blogged about the original publication here. So good to see this poem with two homes–both an urban oasis and country villa, so to speak.
There’s an interesting mystery with Reprint Poetry—the make-up of the editorial team. It’s a long shot, and for whatever reason, I’m
guessing those involved are from Vagabondage Press. Fawn Neun, perhaps? Read the rest of this entry »
This one is all about blog-hopping. Funny how it goes…
It began with three photos 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.
As for the ‘challenge’ issue of BluePrintReview, here it is.
Contributors include:
Arlene Ang, Marcia Arrieta, Jenni B. Baker, Alex Bernstein, Jessie Carty, Jeff Crouch,
Julia Davies (+1), Daniela Elza, Susan Ersinghaus, Susan M. Gibb (+1), Stephen Hastings-King (+1),
Rose Hunter, Claire Ibarra,(+1), Ron Kostar, Sherry O’Keefe, Kim McMechan (+1),
Jean Morris, Brigita Orel (+1), Ron Riekki, bl pawelek (+1), Rouchswalwe, Ray Scanlon,
Nancy Scott, Michael J. Solender, Steve Wing (+1), Mary Stone Dockery
A trio of poems appear in MudJob, under the banner of ‘Guest Poet’:
Kiddie Cocktail / OM / all inKlusive
Soon after publication, the collection was featured in The #poems Daily, like this:
The #poems Daily feature prompted mentions on Twitter, like this:
This merry-go-round circulation is similar to what happened with my videopoem the lake. I documented that process here.
At times like this, the Internet is great…
~
Thanks to Howie Good for bringing my attention to MuDJoB.
oenisplx / igrnimeeg / spnimirt is an asemic project I put together with Dorothee Lang.
It’s included in the language/place blog carnival #7–assembled by Julia Davies:
“unwritten language / unnamed place”.
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]
~
Other collaborations with Dorothee Lang include: Induction/Deduction, The White Squares, POP UP Poptagon, and Dealing with Family and Friends.
No question about it: Web time moves quickly…
Just yesterday, my collaborative poem with Steve Wing was published in BluePrintReview. The piece is called Impermissible Occlusion. My blog post about it is here.
Then, just an hour ago, Steve and I exchanged thoughts about our collaboration over email.
Just moments after emailing Steve, I opened today’s issue of The #poems Daily. Much to my surprise–and delight–I discovered that ‘Impermissible Occlusion’ is included in the #poetry section (about half way down).
One day here, another day there.
When it comes to the Web, things are everywhere …
On a cold spring day of clouds and rain, sun takes the form of a new publication–
a poetic collaboration with Floridian author and artist Steve Wing:
.
Impermissible Occlusion
BluePrintReview #27: The Synergetic Transformations Issue
.
Instead of offering copious details about
our collaborative process, I’ll give just a hint:
East Coast Yoga, USA
+
West Coast Hot Springs, Canada
=
Bi-Coastal North American Poem
To unlock the mathematical equation above, click this.
Here are the editor’s recollections on why she published ‘process notes’ in this issue:
Curiosity. It’s the first time that a whole issue of BluePrintReview is focusing on collaborations, and also is open re: format. It’s in some ways the counterpart to the usual issues. I just looked for the original call:
“The next issue of BluePrintReview is dedicated to collaborative works and has different guidelines: usually, the text + image on each page is coming from different submissions. For this issue, they come from one submission – with the submission itself coming from more than 1 person: please submit collaborative works that are combinations of text+image, and if you want, add a note on the process.”
The issue itself was partly inspired by the collaborations in the previous issues (listed at the bottom of the “Re: Synergy” page ) With each of those, I wondered how it had come together. What had been the starting point – an image? A line? How had it all come together?” So I added the invite to send notes.
— Dorothee Lang
~
The entire issue is filled with synergy: collaborative words and images from a global cast of creators. In each case, process notes are included alongside the publication. Click on the names of individual contributors for their work(s) in collaboration:
Michelle Elvy, Walter Bjorkman, Robin Susanto, Karyn Eisler, Jónas Knútsson, Claudia Grace,
Ron Kostar (2), Mary Duffy, Paddy Barry, Christian Tuempling, Rose Hunter, Steve Wing (2),
Dorothee Lang, Marcus Speh, Catherine Davis, Roland Goity, Mary Alexandra Agner, Peg Duthie,
Daniela Elza (2) (3), Christi Kramer, Cliff Tisdell, Lynne Shapiro, Jeanne Krabbendam, Stacey Dye,
Jean Brasseaur, Dianna Stark, Michael K. White, John Sibley Williams, Staci M. Cole, Kimy Martinez,
Susan Gibb, Carianne Mack Garside, Steve Ersinghaus, Al Rempel, Joanna Smythe, Abha Iyengar, Gopal M.S.,
Judith McNally, Rosemary Lombard, Lynn Alexander, Michael Solender, Farfel Lombard,
Arlene Ang, Sam Rasnake, Cheryl Dodds
I’m pleased to report that my videopoem ‘the lake’ made the rounds…
It first appeared in ‘Referential’–a magazine that publishes referential literary and visual art. I submitted the piece, referring to the words ‘the lake’ that appear in a poem by Teresa Stores:
the lake > Referential Magazine
After the initial publication I discovered–by accident–that ‘the lake’ was featured in the media section of ‘The #poems Daily’. I’d mentioned the initial publication on Twitter and ‘The #poems Daily’ picked it up:
It wasn’t long before I stumbled across another republication of ‘the lake’. This time, in ‘Moving Poems’–a video poetry anthology that features “the best video poetry on the web”. Needless to say, it’s a thrill to have my work featured alongside the likes of Cecilia Chapman and Alastair Cook:
~
Last year, two photos I took of the lake appeared in ‘elimae:’ Lake Hévíz , Hungary
~
same lake / same time /same place
It’s a three-part repetitive poem with introduction and title–four tweets total. The image above depicts how it looked as it was published in stages on Twitter. Here’s how it looks on the publication website, all parts put together:
A special thank-you to unFold’s Brooklyn-based editor Rose Auslander for seeing the potential of my work. I’d submitted the poem as a singular tweet, including three alternative layouts for her perusal. She suggested including all of the layouts, and connecting them for a multi-tweet tale. I hadn’t considered that possibility, but am delighted she saw the larger picture.
The poem was published in conjunction with
a
SPECIAL CELEBRATION — A Valentine to Poetry and Celebration of unFold.
An honor to be included …
A vowel is a vowel is a vowel … right?
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…
~
An abbreviated all-English version now stands: rudas bath, budapest
~
Other Leaf Press featured writers include:
Rose Hunter, rob mcLennan, Daniela Elza & Christina Shah, Tammy Ho Lai-ming,
14 Poets [including Dorothee Lang]
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.
Two companion picofictions now published in PicFic–the Folded Word Press Twitterzine.
They are referred to as ‘companion’ stories because of this:
They are separately authored, yet collaboratively conceptualized and edited.
I wrote one, Dorothee Lang wrote one–they follow each other in either direction.
The links, here:
Dorothee Lang > D(ash)
Karyn Eisler > Tr(ash)
Dorothee’s virtual notes feature an excerpt from the invitation that sparked our words.
Other PicFic authors who’ve written about ‘ash’ include:
Simon Kewin, Nathalie Boisard-Beudin, S. Kay
The story–originally published in PicFic December 2009–
was recently republished in the new Folded Word Press paperback anthology,
On a Narrow Windowsill: Fiction and Poetry Folded onto Twitter.
Now, the anthology is also available as an e-book, here, here, and here.
~
Are you an indie publisher? Want to learn the art of converting
“a highly formatted literary book from print to .epub to .mobi in one smooth workflow”?
If so, sign up for FoldedWord’s free tutorials. They’re willing to share what they know…
Join the lessons by dropping a note at this address:
editors [at] foldedword [dot] com
In the subject line, type “exPRESS”.
~
The original ‘Happy Holiday’ blog notes are here, with poll questions included.
Small discoveries are exciting…
A year ago, the Winter 2009 issue of The Battered Suitcase was published online. In it, a story I wrote called The Secret (he thinks) He Keeps. Today, I saw the issue available as an eBook ‘Kindle Edition’ at amazon.com
If your into eBooks, check it out.
The issue is filled with poetry, non/fiction, interviews and art that examine:
“life in all its lovely ambiguity, grittiness, glory and despair…relationships as a means for transformation and the complexity of the human psyche”.
Blog notes that accompanied last year’s publication–poll questions included–are here.
It’s so nice to revisit this work, and to see it available in a new form ~
I’m thrilled to have a picofiction of mine featured in the new Folded Word anthology:
On a Narrow Windowsill: Fiction and Poetry Folded onto Twitter
The editors?
J.S. Graustein (California) and Rose Auslander (New York)
.
Here’s what they say about the collection:
Written on four continents and read on six, the works in this anthology celebrate the birth of a new literary form: the tweet. Ironically, the 140-character limit of the Twitter platform has inspired new and veteran writers alike to stretch traditional boundaries. Some experiment with abbreviated poetic forms. Others create back-story through innuendo. All make every word—every character—count. This collection introduces 43 of these pioneers who venture out each day onto text’s narrow windowsill.
~
Geographically dispersed writers featured in the anthology include:
meika loofs samorzewski, S. Kay, Nora Nadjarian,
Nathalie Boisard-Beudin, Christian Ward, Rose Auslander,
Amanda Lawrence Auverigne, Ashley Baldon, Mel Bosworth, Eric Burke, Opal Castmin,
Andrew Dobbs, Kaolin Imago Fire, Jay Flemma, F.I. Goldhaber, Joel Handloff,
Michael Lee Johnson, Beth Katte, Karyn Eisler, Peter Keller, Robert Laughlin,
Ellaraine Lockie, Jenny McFadyen, Joanne Merriam, Derek Osborne,
Joseph Patrick Pascale, Cynthia Reeser, Michelle Ristuccia, Stephen D. Rogers,
Linda Leedy Schneider, Nate Sullivan, Jennifer Tatroe, Patricia Wellingham-Jones,
Ben White, xTx, Changming Yuan
~
Here’s an Orange Alert review of the anthology.
~
Want one?
Order it here, here, here, or here.
~
75% of the profits will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.
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.
Here’s the link:
(Hungarian) sanitarium / just a moment
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 zone and 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.
I consider the shapes of actions and thoughts–how particular formations are often assigned either positive or negative value; how they are associated with either progress or regression; how the meaning of things–shapes included–are situated within cultural and historical contexts.
I focus my musings on squares and circles–linearity and circularity, respectively. I carve my thoughts into a micro-text–List(less). It appears in unFold–a California-based Twitter-zine edited by Rose Auslander and published by Folded Word Press. The zine features “poems/stanza’s in 140 characters or less”.
Here it is:
A burgeoning project on flowers and culture splits in two…
One half morphs into POP UP Poptagon–a collaboration with Dorothee Lang, published in Locus Novus last year. The other half starts with a query from Dorothee, who mails from Germany to my office in Vancouver.
“Shall we write some poems now?” she asks.
Words are crafted, then stored in a file. I travel to Calgary–work with designer Lawrence Eisler on illustrations to accompany the text. Meantime, back in Germany, Dorothee is curious about literary hypertext–she’s engaged in consultations with U.S. hypertext author Susan Gibb.
I eventually leave Calgary; return to Vancouver with a series of illustrated poems in hand. Dorothee–stoked about what she’s learned from Susan–writes, “Want to turn these poems into hypertext?”
“Why not?” I write back.
We craft more illustrations and poems, and, inevitably it’s more complex than that, but at the end of the day, here it is:
(R)Evolution: Wheelhouse Magazine
a hypercosmos by D. Lang + K. Eisler + L. Eisler
Dorothee’s virtual notes on the process are here.
A review of (R)Evolution in Hypercompendia.
Note: He’s my brother, not my husband, if you’re wondering who Lawrence Eisler is.
~
Wheelhouse Magazine is a publication of the Wheelhouse Arts Collective: “a collection of wayward artists, many of whom are progressive activists, labor unionists, and dilettantes, stuck inside the cramped confines of a seafaring vessel’s main cabin. Luckily…We know where we’re going: towards land, specifically a land where art is defetishized (not appreciated but wrestled with) and politics is a civic duty, where the New Yorker is not the arbiter of literary history (and no, it’s not necessarily Canada). We come from New York, Philadelphia, the Midwest, and abroad. We cling together in cyberspace and are bounded by the covers of our books.”
Not long ago, I wrote about the human practice of assigning homo-sapiens the names of non-human animals.
Now, in a ‘stone’ called ‘Catch & Release’, I offer a cross-species sporting reference to a mate-selection ritual used by some individuals. The 22 words–in all their glory–appear in the U.K.-based web-zine A Handful of Stones. According to editor Fiona Robyn, a small stone is a very short piece of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment.
To read ‘Catch & Release’,
click the fish below:
A note about the image: I captured it while staring through water, looking down at a pond, standing on the bridge behind Festetics Castle in Keszthely, Hungary–the place where ‘Catch & Release’ was conceived.
And a question:
Do you use non-human animal references to describe assorted human activities and practices?
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.
Here’s the link → Lake Hévíz, Hungary
And below, a MicroMoment I captured the same day:
In case you’re wondering, the correct pronunciation of elimae 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.
.
Sometimes I marvel at global connections:
I draft a poem in Hungary. Polish it in Canada. It’s accepted for publication in an international journal based in Germany. It appears alongside a photo by Claire Ibarra who splits time between the USA and Peru.
Now, the poem and the photo it’s coupled with are digitally available around the world.
Here it is → dinner for 2 in Vacation town
And a link to the collection → BluePrintReview #25: the two² issue
The cast of geographically dispersed authors and artists in the issue includes:
Michael K. White, Marcia Arrieta, Ray Scanlon,
Michael Brandonisio,Eckhard Gerdes, Molly Sutton Kiefer,
Linda Simoni-Wastila Z.Z. Boone, Changming Yuan, Kirsty Logan,
Michelle Elvy, Rose Hunter (+more), Kim Keith,
Susan Gibb (+more), satnrose, Jean Morris, bl pawelek
Sheldon Lee Compton, Smitha Murthy,
Jeff Crouch, Brad Rose, Steve Wing (+more),
Suzanne Marie Hopcroft, Tyler Cobb, Justin Kern
Karyn Eisler, Claire Ibarra (+more)
~
What kinds of connections inspire you?
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:
Red/White/Blue [Eisler] + Red, White and Blue [Lockhart]
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.
The birthing details of Red/White/Blue?
One day, a while back, I took three detail photos of the painting, digitally morphed them beyond recognition, then put them together like a puzzle.
I find contradictions between morality and ethics interesting–those disconnections that sometimes exist between a person’s notions of right and wrong (or good and bad) and their daily practice of living. Another curiosity is the extent to which people shift their morality retrospectively in light of their behavior and decisions. I find these topics even more compelling when the forces of consumer culture are factored in.
I explore these curiosities in a Twitter length story–140 characters or less. It appears in PicFic–a California-based picofiction online magazine.
Here it is → The Fickle Consumer
When it comes to new publications, I typically write a few words in my blog — provide context; give the back story. Most recently, I did so here, where I detail how strangers in an airport terminal inspired ‘Flight 493’. Another example is here, where I explain how ‘(Re)Vision’ connects to a 70’s TV character and my childhood obsession with Jan Brady.
‘Drain’ is my third micro-story as PicFic’s Featured Contributor for July 2010. In terms of context, details, and back story — this one is different; I don’t offer any. Have a look. I’m sure you’ll understand …
Here’s the link → Drain
It occurred to me at Vancouver International Airport, while waiting for a Lufthansa flight to Budapest via Frankfurt:
Language is music — especially when I don’t understand it.
My question shifts from:
“What are they saying?”
to
“What image am I left with?”
Sitting there, surrounded by linguistic diversity, I pulled out my notebook and wrote my impressions. I honed and revised them while flying to Europe over the Canadian High Arctic, Greenland and Norway.
.
Now, those words appear in PicFic—an online Twitter Fiction journal.
It’s my second piece as PicFic’s featured contributor.
Here it is → Flight 493
This blog post is included in Issue #1 of the BluePrint blog carnival: > language > place.
It’s both an honor and thrill to be the invited PicFic Featured Contributor for July.
This means that four of my Twitter-length fictions will appear in PicFic this month, and also on the journal’s Twitter-feed — one per week.
The first in the series is entitled (Re)Vision. The direct link is → here.
Now that’s it’s published, I have a confession:
While (Re)Vision is certainly a story, it’s a bit of a stretch to call it fiction.
Why, you might ask?
Well, the source of (Re)Vision goes back to my childhood, my days in grade school, the era of 70’s television. And when it comes to 70’s TV, it’s no secret that ‘The Brady Bunch’ was IT for me. I blogged about it recently here.
Of all the Brady characters, Jan was my idol — something about her pensive look, her emotions, blonde hair, the braces, her glasses. Jan was cool. No doubt about it. I wanted to be her, so I did what I could:
pensive, emotional → no problem
hair → used a product called ‘Sun In’ to lighten my locks
braces → got them in high school; late, but better than never
glasses → this one took work …
Blinked my eyes incessantly. Closed them hard. Told my parents I couldn’t see. They took me to the ophthalmologist. He tested my eyes, and like clockwork, the plan worked…or so I thought. He said I needed glasses to solve the vision problem. But the blinking issue — a sign of allergies, he said — called for another course of action. He instructed my parents to:
Get. Rid. Of. Our. Dog.
That’s right.
When I confessed to my parents that all was a lie, that I could see very well, that I voluntarily forced the hard blinking, that I loved my dog…they didn’t believe me one bit.
So, I got the wire-rimmed glasses I wanted so badly but didn’t need. And our beloved dog, Scrubby, left our family–went off to a farm for good. We never held him again in our arms–all because of me (and Jan, of course).
Now back to my story Re(Vision):
Karma, perhaps?
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.
BPR editor Dorothee Lang pairs the image with words by Vancouver poet Daniela Elza.
The direct link is here:
Tracks [Karyn Eisler] + The Math Ex.am [Daniela Elza]
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.”
And a question:
When you see tracks, what thoughts come to you?
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” in Referential 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.
There’s an introduction to the piece on Referential’s blog.
A direct link to the joint works is here:
Pop On Fire [Karyn Eisler] + Love at the Movies [Jenny Billings]
For me, this was a first — a three-person, three-country, digital collaboration:
Dorothee Lang, Germany + Karyn Eisler, Canada + Susan Gibb, USA
The result?
Two visual poems published in Issue #17 of Otoliths:
an Australian-based “magazine of many e-things”.
Here’s the direct link: Induction/Deduction
Funny how this came together:
Dorothee and I were in the midst of a two-person collaboration on a hypertext project (still in the works), e-mailing back-and-forth. Alongside discussions about the mechanics of the project itself, we also shared thoughts about our creative process; our decision-making methods; the different forms of reasoning involved. Dorothee suggested these discussions might serve as the foundation for yet another project. And this is where Susan — a hypertext whiz we’d been consulting with — came in. From there, a three-way collaboration evolved.
Dorothee’s account of the process here. Susan’s account of the process here.
~
An interesting note about Otoliths:
Founding editor, Mark Young, publishes each online issue in book form.
Otoliths #17–the issue in which these images appear–is available here.
And a question:
In your creative process, which form(s) of reasoning do you use?
Wonderful news …
The Curious Practice of Pet-Naming wins a 3Cheers Award!
The story appeared earlier this year in PicFic — a Folded Word Press Twitter-zine.
***
The other winners?
Gregory Sherl and Ben Nardolilli
***
The prize includes:
the video interpretation above ↑
the “blog bling” below ↓
and the honor, of course.
It’s so nice to hear someone else read my words …
A big thank-you goes out to voters and Folded Word’s California-based Managing Editor, J.S. Graustein.
I’ve written about secrets, and taken photos of paradox.
The challenge?
To combine these phenomena in a micro-story of 50 words exactly — no more, no less.
Not long ago, I observed a secret paradox close to home — it concerns business, humans, nonhuman animals, and eating habits.
The story appears in the weekly New Jersey-based e-zine 50 to 1. Editor, Glen Binger, “posts only 50 word stories and first line inspirational sentences that are meant to get the reader hooked ...”
Here’s the link → Secret Beef
Words: Father of the Suicide [David Jordan, USA]
+
Image: Reflect/Absorb [Karyn Eisler, Canada]
+
Matchmaker: Editor of BluePrintReview [Dorothee Lang, Germany]
=
THIS
unanticipated international collaboration in:
BluePrintReview #23 / (dis)comfort zones
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 …
Life is paradoxical; full of contradiction. The 2010 Olympics in Vancouver are no different.
McDonald’s and Coke are official sponsors; athletes are beacons of health and fitness. Many oppose the games; scores embrace them. Locals and visitors party in the streets; a competitor dies on the luge track in Whistler.
On opening day I see another paradox — an Olympic (dis)comfort, so to speak.
It appears in just a moment. The direct link → here.
Some puzzling labels for humans are as follows:
Some men are teddy bears, some women are cougars, some people are pigs (regardless of sex), while others are simply called animals. In Animal Planet—a postcard story—Rose Hunter provides more examples.
Nonhuman animals themselves are the recipients of perplexing naming practices.
I explore this phenomenon in a Twitter-length fiction—140 characters or less. It appears in PicFic—the Twitter fiction wing of Folded Word Press.
Above, as it appears on Twitter.
And here, as it appears on the PicFic website: The Curious Practice of Pet-Naming
Another curiosity:
What have you named your companion animal(s)?
The Bow River, a view from the bridge, a blue afternoon in Banff, Alberta. Moss topped rocks promise rapid descent into the depths of the milky water. Inviting. Dangerous. Delicious. Repellent. These are the impressions I remember.
My photo of The Bow appears in BluePrintReview, where founding editor Dorothee Lang seeks “unexpected connections between texts and images from unrelated places.”
In Issue 23: (dis)comfort zones, she couples the photo with a Georgian author’s words on (addict)ion — Jennifer Jackson Whitley’s tale of desire and cautionary, yet reckless, compulsion.
For The Bow/(Addict)ion → go here
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.”
A link to the entire (dis)comforting collection → Issue 23: (dis)comfort zones
The Six Sentences [6S] submission guidelines are as follows:
Length: “six consecutive sentences”
Title: “should be no longer than 36 characters, including spaces (because 6×6=36)”
Response Time: “all submissions will receive a response within six days”
Clearly, Robert McEvily — “creator and editor of the NY Times recommended writing site Six Sentences” — likes the number six. Figured it might be fun to embrace his challenge of 6’s, so I did. In six short sentences I explore the complexities of money and work.
Here it is: The Psychology of Labor
And I wonder:
If a woman, not a man, was the focus of the story, would the zone of depression be reversed?
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.
Three photos from that day are on display in the Red Gallery at Splash of Red: Asbury Park’s Literary Arts Magazine.
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 >
‘Tis the season for shortbread and shopping malls, holiday stress and family tension.
I have visions of geographically dispersed families with members scattered around the globe, doing whatever they can to make it home for the holidays to spend time with relatives and friends.
I see travelers arriving on the doorsteps of (grand)parents and siblings. They bring mountains of gifts (or none at all), too much luggage, and odd habits not apparent during long-distance telephone calls. For several days–weeks even–they pile on top of one another in the tiniest of urban condominiums and compact homes.
Anticipating such an event, a friend of mine writes in a greeting card, overwhelmed: “We’re staying put for Christmas but everyone is coming here. Aaahhhh! Help!” Read the rest of this entry »
The Battered Suitcase is the flagship publication of Vagabondage Press. The magazine’s mission — to “examines life in all its lovely ambiguity, grittiness, glory and despair. Chief Editor Fawn Neun and the editorial team express a particular interest in “the question of what it means to be human, the exploration of relationships as a means for transformation and the complexity of the human psyche.”
It’s a thrill to have a super-short fiction of mine appear in this issue:
Here’s the link → The Secret (he thinks) He Keeps
Working on the piece I thought of late Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman, his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, and his notion of dramaturgy — the idea that we’re all actors, regardless of whether we do the job in a professional capacity or not. Read the rest of this entry »
