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Splinter Factories

November 18, 2016 by rurugby Leave a Comment

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Books finished:

Splinter Factory by Jeffrey McDaniel — Great book of poetry. It’s always wonderful to discover another poet you like. I miss the features at Port Veritas in Portland, Maine and discovering great poets all the time. ***1/2

Voices of Bipolar Disorder — A lot of good pieces in here. The opening piece about the play was unnecessary. There is no question to me Bipolar is a spectrum disorder. ***

You Don’t Miss Your Water by Cornelius Eady — Short book of narrative poetry about Mr. Eady losing his father. Good stuff. ***

Books checked out:

“The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics” by Maureen Dowd — Probably too soon, but decided to grab it at the library. When you have a 30 page introduction I feel like it should be part of the book not in small capped roman numerals. Finished the introduction and a couple pieces so far. Read about 60 pages so far.

“A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry” by Mary Oliver — I love her poems especially “Dog Songs” and “…” curious if I will want to buy this. If I like it, it’s something I will need to own.

“From Bauhaus to Our House” by Tom Wolfe — A criticism of contemporary architecture and the Bauhaus movement. A book I already love and I think own, I have no idea where it is, probably a box in our storage space. Up to page 12 this time. ****

“The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World” by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu — Two figures I would like to know more about.

“The Making of a Poem : a Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms” / edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland — I will be curious how much of this I read or if it’s something I want to keep.

I actually have 15 books out of the library right now which is an awful lot.

Books read:

“Pleasing the Ghost” by Sharon Creech — Nice fun little kids story about his uncle visiting him beyond the grave. Dopey in a lovely way. On page 40 of 89

“This Girl” by Colleen Hoover — Getting better, still an odd book. Helps that it’s been a few weeks since I finished the book this tells from the man’s perspective “Slammed”. This feels mostly unnecessary though. pg. 106 of 285

“Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas” edited by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker, I really want to finish this one, trying to push ahead pg 66 of 158. I honestly wish this was a longer book, the text size is way too small. I definitely need my reading glasses.

“The Kingdom of Speech” by Tom Wolfe — odd book on how speech isn’t explained by Darwin’s “Origin of Species” in Tom Wolfe’s opinion. Not his strongest non-fiction work so far pg. 90 of 169 ***

On Kindle:

Sample of “This is Not My Beautiful Life: A Memoir” by Victoria Fedden, good fun but too expensive at I think $10 on Kindle. Going to see if the CT library has it. Yep.

Sample of “Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life” by Kim Addonizio, very good and fun, not in the CT library system but did reserve a fiction book and book of poetry

“Shelter” by Robin Merrill — 17% of the way in. I’m enjoying the Christian romance so far. She said there are 3 churches that operate as shelters within 30 miles of her house in central Maine. Not my genre but I expect to read this one and the sequel Daniel. ***

Nice that my Kindle is working right again, my wife Lanna figured out something to get it updated. Woo!

Filed Under: books, FridayReads, My books, poetry, reading, The Ecq Review

How the Doing the Arts Makes Us Better

January 26, 2016 by rurugby Leave a Comment

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I am currently re-reading Mark Vonnegut’s “Just Like Life Without Mental Illness Only More So.”

In chapter 17 “There’s Nothing Quite as Final as a Dead Father”, in his case the legendary Kurt Vonnegut, he talks about one of Kurt Vonnegut’s more famous quotes, the one that actually starts my chapbook, how about how art makes us better and creates something.

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

Here are some of Mark Vonnegut’s thinking about making art. He was a writer and also liked to paint watercolors.

My father gave me the gifts of being able to pay attention to my inner narration no matter how tedious the damn thing could be at times and the knowledge that creating something, be it music or a painting or a poem or a short story, was a way out of wherever you were and a way to find out what the hell happens next and not have it just be the same old thing. It’s better to live in a world where you can write and paint and tell a few jokes than one where you can’t.

All the arts are ways to start a dialogue with yourself about what you’ve done, what you could have done differently, and whether or not you might try again. Whether or not you want to make a living or can make a living at it, people who consistently bother to try almost always get good or at least a little better.

Kurt was always trying to reach a little beyond what he was sure of. His refusal to find a groove and stay there when he was famous and successful was admirable, but it was also because he dreaded what life would be if he stopped being creative, honest and willing to be awkward.

Right now I am trying to learn Spanish, I should probably do some Babbeling today on babbel.com. I am trying to learn guitar playing with the guitar for a while most days, and trying to write everyday with the blog and Three Good Things on Facebook. I guess one disadvantage of doing Three Good Things on Facebook only is that it is effemeral to me until I see the anniversary of the thoughts. But, I think that is okay, I guess I could make a Three Good Things Blog. So many of them are similar each day. I love my wife, I love the kitties, nature is beautiful, the little things matter.

I have been also quoting other Mark Vonnegut after Googling “Mark Vonnegut Quotes” on going on Goodreads, there are 3 pages of them.

“Beyond a certain point, gathering further evidence of the hurtfulness and shortcomings of one’s family, employer, et cetera is like eating the same poisonous mushroom over and over and expecting that sooner or later it will be nutritious.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir

“I understand perfectly why some of my autistic patients scream and flap their arms–it’s to frighten off extroverts”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

“Writing is very hard mostly because until you try to write something down, it’s easy to fool yourself into believing you understand things. Writing is terrible for vanity and self-delusion.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir

This one is very sad.
“I don’t think the people today who start hearing voices, stop eating and sleeping, and run amuck are likely to get good treatment. Having more knowledge, better diagnostic capabilities, better medications with fewer side effects, can’t make up for the fact that most patients are being treated by doctors, therapists, and hospitals, who are operating under constraints and incentives that reward non-treatment, non-hospitalization, non-therapy, non-follow-up, non-care. Lost to follow-up is the best outcome a health insurer can hope for.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“If you believe that the dollars made by the pharmaceutical industry are plowed back into research that leads to better and better medications, you probably believe in the tooth fairy as well.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir

“We’re here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“What occurs to people when they read Kurt [Vonnegut] is that things are much more up for grabs than they thought they were. The world is a slightly different place just because they read a damn book. Imagine that.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Introverts almost never cause me trouble and are usually much better at what they do than extroverts. Extroverts are too busy slapping one another on the back, team building, and making fun of introverts to get much done. Extroverts are amazed and baffled by how much some introverts get done and assume that they, the extroverts, are somehow responsible.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas?”
― Mark Vonnegut

“None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrecoverably sick.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“I often took him as one of God’s little jokes on me. When I was in desperate trouble, what saved me from a fate worse than death? To what do I owe my life? Was it love, affection, understanding, friends, wisdom? No no no. It was a man who looks like a poor copy of Walt Disney, drives pink Cadillacs, wears baby-blue alligator shoes, and appears to have the emotional depth of a slightly retarded potato.”
― Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity (I think this was Kurt Vonnegut he is speaking of)

“The biggest gift of being unambiguously mentally ill is the time I’ve saved myself trying to be normal.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

“He couldn’t help thinking that all that money we were spending blowing up things and killing people so far away, making people the world over hate and fear us, would have been better spent on public education and libraries. It’s hard to imagine that history won’t prove him right, if it hasn’t already.”
― Mark Vonnegut (on Kurt Vonnegut)

“Today it’s nice to be able to entertain odd thoughts without having to marry them all. Thank God. I can think whatever the hell I want. Entertaining odd thoughts won’t make you crazy. Refusing to entertain odd thoughts won’t make you well.”
― Mark Vonnegut

“At the end of his life, which had included financial ruin in the Great Depression, his wife’s barbiturate addiction and death by overdose, and then his own lung cancer, Doc said, “It was enough to have been a unicorn.” What he meant was that he got to do art. It was magic to him that his hands and mind got to make wonderful things, that he didn’t have to be just another goat or horse.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So (on Kurt Vonnegut)

Another thing that I like in Mark Vonnegut’s book is that he has terrible handwriting too. Although unlike Mark Vonnegut my handwriting is okay.

Here is an excellent NPR story about “Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So” by Mark Vonnegut, that includes the first few pages of the book.

It’s an excellent book, that I still need to finish today.
***1/2

Filed Under: acceptance, books, creativiity, facebook, Kurt Vonnegut, My books

“Rumi (for Coleman Banks)” and “Such Silence” by Mary Oliver

March 26, 2015 by rurugby Leave a Comment

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When Rumi went into the tavern
I followed.
I heard a lot of crazy talk
and a lot of wise talk.

But the roses wouldn’t grow in my hair.

When Rumi left the tavern
I followed.
I don’t mean just to pick at
such a famous fellow.
Indeed he was rather ridiculous with his
long beard and his dusty feet.
But I heard less of the crazy talk and
a lot more of the wise talk and I was
hopeful enough to keep listening

until the day I found myself
transformed into an entire garden
of roses.

– Mary Oliver
from Blue Horses: Poems

Her last book “Dog Songs” was my favorite book I have read in the last 12 months.
As someone whose dog Misty saved his life when I was a toddler and slipping on the ice in Wisconsin, blocking me with his strong long-haired collie body.
It’s one of the great reasons Coywolf/Eastern Coyote, the guardian of the suburbs bred from coyotes and the last big group of eastern wolves deep in the wilderness 200 miles north of Toronto, Canada appeals to my spirits.
The coywolf is an animal that can walk through suburban neighborhoods often unseen by humans, if seen in one shot in the wonderful “Nature” episode “Meet the Coywolf” by a cat.

I really think that my cat Squiggy who greets everyone at the door when they come in and says welcome to my house please pet me, is dog spirit.
His brother Lenny is the trickster who hides when guests arrive and likes to love through bites and play.
They are together coywolf spirits.

Please buy Mary Oliver’s last two books they are excellent.

And I would of course love to interview her on my The Poetry Conversation podcast.

A second poem I was touched by even deeper is about an old stone bench, very, very old .. such silence

———–

Such Silence

As deep as I ever went into the forest
I came upon an old stone bench, very, very old,
and around it a clearing, and beyond that
trees taller and older than I had ever seen.

Such silence!
It really wasn’t so far from a town, but it seemed
all the clocks in the world had stopped counting.
So it was hard to suppose the usual rules applied.

Sometimes there’s only a hint, a possibility.
What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots
than reason.
I hope everyone knows that.

I sat on the bench, waiting for something.
An angel, perhaps.
Or dancers with the legs of goats.

No, I didn’t see either. But only, I think, because
I didn’t stay long enough.

also from “Blue Horses: Poems” by Mary Oliver,
The Penguin Press, 2014

Wow. This hits very deep into my spiritual practices.
Hearing the water and hearing the birds.
Feeling the wind.
Connecting deeply with a tree in a three cauldrons meditation and checking in to see if the cauldrons of your gut, heart and head have their cauldrons up, sideward or down. The three cauldrons mediation is powerful for me. The first time I did it, I saw the snarls of people who are in crisis not getting care. Of people who in ERs and prisons, by police officers and well intentioned professionals are placed in frightening areas.

May we all work to be like Spring Harbor Hospital in Portland, Maine and realize that patients are much better off in a ward where they can talk to nurses who will listen and hear their concern.

It calms their fire. It definitely calmed mine in 2013. This book today is helping me know. Outstanding!

And I am also happy that I waited in front of the Vietnamese Buddhist temple here in Ansonia. It is a place I will need to spend my Sundays to balance the fire of creativity going through me out.

edmund

Filed Under: hiking, nature, poetry, quiet, running water, The Poetry Conversation Tagged With: Blue Horses, Coleman Barks, Dog Songs, Mary Oliver, The Poetry Conversation

Blog Themes Again

March 22, 2015 by rurugby Leave a Comment

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When I was blogging every day I had themes to build around so I am doing that again and writing quite a few posts in the future.

Sunday will be Spirit of Sunday like it was before.

Monday will be Music Monday, could be a song I write could be talking about music, it could be an appreciation or so many other things. Music makes the heart sing.

Tuesday is still Port Veritas poetry Tuesday. Although I plan to highlight more poets I like and why I like them preparing for my launch of the Poetry Conversation Podcast and website coming soon.

Wednesday is Wildcard Wednesday where anything goes

Thursday is Thoughtful Thursday which could mean many things. But a deeper piece of some kind.

Friday will still be Friday Reads when I talk about not just the books I am reading but other things as well. Recently that has been more pieces online. I think I will repost much of what I say on Facebook walls here as well if I think I would like to have it be more than effemeral which is what most of social media is.

Saturday will once again be the Saturday Night Review but will include more mini reviews such as the Aldi French Bread pizza that I had this afternoon, skip it and stick with the Stouffers. #skip

Or I saw Pinky and the Brain Season 1: Episodes 3 and 4 on Amazon Prime today. I forgot how brilliant the show is. It’s a complete masterpiece and to me it’s obvious which one is a genius and who is insane. ****

I look forward to blogging more again.

edmund

Here is what I posted to Facebook. I plan to archive much more of my social media posts now. There is some great stuff there.

I have decided to do weekly blog themes again and blog much, much more.
They are Spirit of Sunday about spirit in it’s many realsm
Music Monday that is about musical journeys and will include song lyrics, mainly parody songs
Port Veritas Poetry Tuesday which will talk more about poets I like and poems I like and include some poems too. I feel like I am more concentrated on music then poetry right now but their are so many great poems that deserve more eyes.\
Wildcard Wednesday which could be about anything
Thoughtful Thursday which I want to be a longer, deeper piece
Friday Reads about what I am reading which will include more internet links since I am reading more in bits and pieces right now.
And the Saturday Night Review which will include mini-reviews and some longer ones.
I want the blog to be able to archive what I do on Social Media. Facebook and Twitter aren’t designed to store information well. WordPress is.

Blessed be and believe that your words matter.

Filed Under: Blog Themes, books, Edmund Charles Davis-Quinn, Friday Reads, FridayReads, Music Monday, poetry, Port Veritas Poetry Tuesday, spirit, Spirit of Sunday, Spirit of Sunday, The Ecq Review, The Poetry Conversation, The Saturday Night Review, Thoughtful Thursday, Weekly Blog Themes, Wildcard Wednesday Tagged With: Music Monday

A Day Without a Smartphone

April 17, 2014 by rurugby Leave a Comment

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Smartphones are amazing things. What would be considered a super computer not that long ago in the palm of your hand.

The ablility to send a Tweet around the world. The ability to send a Facebook message to all your friends and followers. Amazing apps, games, messaging ….

You know you can turn them off. No, seriously you can.

My phone died on Tuesday afternoon. Put it in my coat pocket, went to fix my car and then weird squares on the bottom left.

I went to the Great Lost Bear for mac and cheese and beer and it wouldn’t work. I tried removing the Otterbox (which has a horrible design on the Galaxy S4 that already broke from Thanksgiving with loose rubber and breaking plastic that doesn’t seal), and changing the battery but the problem continued.

I want to tweet and message about the the first date going on next to me. It did seem to be going relatively well and I think they will have a second date, not sure if it will be a long-term relationship, but they will likely be friends.

I also tried the crazy mix at Great Lost Bear that is mac and cheese, topped with baked beans, topped with cole slaw and then three fried pickles in a mason jar. It was good but I think wicked farty.

Yesterday, I didn’t really miss my phone that much. I was mainly zoning out and watching stuff like “Orange is the New Black” (which is awesome.)

Usually at work I use my phone more. I check in with my wife, I use it to listen to music since I lost my iPod a few weeks ago, and I play smartphone games (been addicted to FIFA 14).

But the Galaxy is down for the count and the SD card is missing from my old Evo so most of the apps don’t work.

So on my downtime I read more. Read a bunch of the April “The Bollard” (easily my favorite free paper in town and favorite newspaper considering the Portland Press Herald kind of sucks these days.) And I read quite a bit of the 2013 Entertainment Weekly with the 100 best of all time. Really “My Dark Twisted Fantasy” by Kanye West is the 8th best album of all time, really? Between Aretha Franklin and “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys, really?

And as much as I love Woody Allen and adore Annie Hall, I just don’t like Manhattan **, I have tried multiple times but it’s just ridiculous. Why would he really fall for Muriel Hemingway’s HS character, does he have some weird thing for young girls?

But, when I left work I felt like my mind was working on writing ideas. That I wasn’t as distracted all day. That I had a very good day.

So, I am getting my phone back on Monday, ok a replacement phone, but I think I will just turn it off more. I really don’t need to keep checking Facebook or Twitter or FIFA 14. It’s a weapon of mass distraction.

I am ADDish enough without it.

So, I hope to read more and smartphone less.

One of the things I love about my retreat every Memorial Day weekend in the Berkshires is that phones and the internet don’t work. I engage with people more. I don’t hear the traffic. I hear the running water, hear the birds tweeting their songs, not the clatter of millions in under 140 characters. I experience the green and beauty of a sacred place. It’s magic.

I have been feeling the need for a smartphone vacation. I miss my old Evo dying of battery faster. The Galaxy is too good at being a mini-computer. The Google Chrome works too well. Sometimes it runs better than my laptop at home.

So, I don’t think I will disconnect, but I will connect less. People are much more important than devices, if you find you can’t ignore your phone at a poetry reading, turn it off. If you can’t ignore your phone while having lunch or dinner with someone, turn it off. Seriously. If you want to connect it will still be there. If you really want to connect with actual people you should turn if off.

Seriously. Try it!

C’mon. Try it!

I know you don’t believe you can, but your public can wait. Especially if you have to pay attention to the road.

Be safe. Be mindful,

edmund

Filed Under: facebook, Television, The Blog, The Ecq Review, The Off Channel, The Poetry Conversation, twitter

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