Old So-and-Sos
Yea, smell that rose!
It’s on the nose.
Not one of those
Who would suppose
That poems, prose,
And speeches’ throes
Must not disclose
Where their heart goes,
I always chose
To stick to those
That told my nose
What was a rose.
Among her treasured recordings of Harold Arlen gems, Ella Fitzgerald gave her distinctive verve to the admonition to Get Happy, and even a retrograde curmudgeon would be hard-pressed, hearing her clarion call, to resist the call. I think this is a great time of year to succumb to the great Miss Ella’s invocation. Listening to her sparkling voice, her incredible vocal agility, and her superlative interpretive artistry is Spring tonic to me, no matter when.
Let me just keep this snappy for today and add my voice, unimpressive as it may be, to hers to call everyone within earshot with a wide-open invitation to rejoice in whatever is available on the day. Live in the moment, yes. Sing at the top of your lungs, yes! Be glad and generous and gleeful with and through whatever you can possible find in the day, make of the day, and grow out of the day, oh yes indeed. You can ignore me, but if you listen to her, I think I can promise that you’ll find it mighty hard to ignore that glorious and welcome summons.
Clearing the Air
I missed you when you went away,
But if you should come back today,
I will no longer—for my sight’s
Been fixed—I’ve got you dead to rights.
We are taught from childhood that excess is inherently negative. Certainly, as a trained artist, I had a certain version of that idea reinforced throughout my studies. But thankfully in that training, there was also the affirmation that part of the purpose of knowing the rules and boundaries thoroughly, and especially the valid reasons for those having been codified as The Way to Do Things, is so that when we choose to break the rules, cross those bounds, and color outside the lines, we will do so intelligently and with purpose as well.
Otherwise there would be no invention at all.
Imagine if those who developed the magnificent decorative beauties of the art and designs prevailing in Art Nouveau work had always held back and refrained from going a bit beyond the norms, never mind whether any of the magnificently ridiculous extremes of the Baroque and Rococo would have bloomed in the darkness. Think, if you dare, of a world where experimentation and thinking outside the proverbial box were forbidden: would any of the useful, meaningful, and beautiful inventions that save lives and enrich them ever have happened?
This idea can be expressed on a much smaller and more modest scale, too. Why not let our joy in excess sometimes shout its existence for others to bask in its reflected glow!
An iconic sight along the edge of Alki Beach in Seattle, this home has grown, literally, into a garden of earthly delights that we all enjoy as we pass along our ways. Sometimes being ‘over the top’ is the perfect solution.
Critics, beware! Some performances are more unpleasant than you ever imagined.
For one wonderfully sweet and lovely woman I know, I struggled to decide what to give her for a token of my respect and affection on her birthday. Then, because she is a superb singer and I, an admirer of her glorious singing, I decided to write her the lyric text for what might—with a composer’s help—become her own sort of theme song someday. For now, it’s simply Bea’s own poem. She said I could share it with you.
For a Lady of Great Beauty
For the song, bouquets of roses
For the day, a joyful start
For the labor, peaceful evenings
For the care, I give my heart—
For the wisdom, inspiration
For desire, a glorious year
For the wish, the starry heavens
For delight, companions dear—
For the sorrows, deepest comfort
For the friendships, never part—
For the moment that I met you,
You resided in my heart.
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And since it’s her favorite of my other poems (so far, I hope), I’ll repost the following one. For good measure.
An afternoon with you
What splendid light comes blazing from the blue
No matter what the promise of the day
When one sweet presence chases drear away:
The prospect of an afternoon with you!
How do you change the climate to such ends
Effortlessly, it seems, with one small grace,
Bringing your cheering spirit to this place
And on its strength, inviting full amends
For every sting of sorrow or of pain,
For any old frustration or regret,
Making the clouds all part, and me forget,
I thought I’d never see such sun again?
All afternoons with you become blue skies
Simply because love shines out of your eyes!
Whenever I think I’m finding my balance, getting the hang of things, or otherwise making rational sense of my life, something happens to remind me that in my reality, these things are impossibilities. And probably unnecessary anyhow. The longer I look at anything, the more its illogical qualities emerge; the more illogical and foolish the world appears to me, the more at home I feel in it. Go figure. 
Writing, like most other creative problem-solving processes, can sometimes best coalesce into sense out of utter nonsense. Untrammeled play is often the precursor to productive work, and if it remains unproductive, there will be less cursing afterward anyway. If you know what I mean, and since you’re hanging around here I can only assume that you, too, understand the importance of letting your silly side out for regular exercise.
So today, no more from me than a hearty helping of hooey. How shall I refine the ridiculous on this occasion? Perhaps not at all. Maybe I’ll just throw it on the table and let you decide what’s worth a nibble or a nosh, for once. Play on, pals.
Noises On
Bye bike bicycle
Far farce farcical
Pop plop Popsicle
Drip drop dropsical
Miracle spherical
Fanatical dramatical
Hysterical historical
Oracle Coracle Rhetorical
Trickle mickle pickle tickle fickle nickel prickle
Hackle spackle cackle grackle tackle
Chuck chuckle chuckling Buck buckle buckling Suck suckle suckling
Duck…Duckle? Duckling…
Oh, F…I mean, Yuck.
Definitive Thoughts
Aberration [/ˌæb.’bɛər.ˈreɪ.ʃ(ə)n/ noun]: the odd ursine meal.
Harbinger [/ˈhɑːr.bɪndʒ-ɜːr/ noun]: one who chortles incontinently.
Jasmine Tea [/’dʒæz.men.ˌtiː/ noun]: Thelonious and Tatum play golf.
Protuberance [/prə.ˈtuː.bər.əns/ noun]: in favor of liquid-cleaning one’s brass instrument.
Rapscallion [/ræp.ˈskæl.i.ən/ noun]: green onion that induces stream-of-consciousness chanting.
Raisin Bread [/ˈreɪ.z.ˌɪnˈbred/ noun]: what’s the matter with cousinbrother Raymond.
Saline [/ˈseɪ.lɪŋ/ verb]: what square-riggers do over the bounding main.
Scalawag [/ˈskæl.ɪ.wæɡ/ noun]: opera house humorist.
What, you wanted sense? Why’d you come here, then?
Art-Colored Glasses 