Diana
Walking abroad in dawn’s bright light,
She bears the jewels of the night
To feed with wisdom and with grace,
With wild, sweet beauty, still apace,
The earthbound Lady’s angel soul
Embraces all to make them whole.
A Latter-Day Goddess
6
Tag Archives: art
Hot Flash Fiction 1: Pedigreed
I know it’s been around, arguably, for generations, but the extreme short story seems to have undergone quite the revival in recent times, being popularly called in the English-speaking and -writing world Flash Fiction. Me, I’m an old lady and slow to keep up with any sort of trend. Or, to give myself partial credit, I am so old that I was already around the first time half this stuff was popular.
Never mind all of that. In the way of condensed arts, I’ve always been particularly enamored of short forms, miniatures and compact performances that have rich enough content to hold up under speedy scrutiny yet continue to beckon one for a second and third and thirtieth look, or at the very least, to get one’s nose a whole lot closer to the subject before waving farewell. That applies to works by others (short stories, small photos and drawings, children’s books, one-act plays, songs comprising one or two brief movements, and snappy quatrains), and very much to my own productions. Since you lovely people already know full well that I have the attention span of an end-of-season Mayfly, you can easily surmise that this obsession with tiny-tude is merely a natural outgrowth of my laziness and tangential, caroming path through life.
Which is, of course, partly true. But I’ve also been known to commit to larger-scale projects and yes, in real life, honest-to-goodness fact, to complete them, too. Sometimes, I’ll readily admit, this happens at a very, verrrrrrrrrrry slow pace. But though I have made murals twenty feet wide, rebuilt gardens from the bulldozer up, written and/or drawn every single day for years at a time, my heart does retain its deep affection for the minute, yea verily for that minutiae that can happen in a minute. But only if it’s worth the effort. There are still those larger goals to be achieved and metaphorical mountains to be climbed that require my continuing attentions between spurts of compact acting. And it’s the very change from the massive to the mini that makes those idiosyncratic idioms of iota-size such excellent crevice fillers and so appealing as a respite from larger concerns.
So, old though I may be, I’m trailing in the dust of your every trend–unless you’ll allow that I am only lapping myself in circles, having written couplets, sketched 3-second figures and made one-bite desserts since I was hardly bigger than a molecule myself. I like to think that I’m gradually getting better than I was back then, at least. Practice, practice.
They were justifiably proud of their daughter’s pedigree, but it was precisely this family resemblance that first drew the unkind attentions of those catty girls in the sorority.
Competitive Edginess
Who really wins or loses when there’s a competition of sorts in hand? Seems there’s usually ample opportunity for both sides to get the better of each other, and even more so, for both to end up battered and belittled by the ordeal. I’m all for battling against one’s own failings and worst characteristics, but by George, I’d rather not have anyone else taking advantage of my myriad weaknesses. I feel a certain–possibly smug–contentment right here on the sidelines, watching all of the other snarling and smirking dupes work themselves into a froth by attempting to best each other all the time, knowing as I do that as long as it is a competition, somebody’s bound to come out on the bottom of the stack.
Join Me for Dinner
The beast that ate the hunting dogs
Was fatter than a hundred hogs
But oddly still was hungry when
The hunters chased him down again
So dinnertime—you’ll be delighted—
Found dogs and masters reunited.
Whistle a Happy Tune & Sit in the Catbird Seat
About six million starlings
Roosting on the overpass
May pass the evening pleasantly
By dumping on the grass
While singing chirpy little tunes
Of evening’s charming cheer,
But just remember their first task
If you should drive too near.
Their cat companions lie in wait,
Meanwhile, beneath your couch;
When you come home, they like to roam
Right in your path, then crouch,
Paws up, complaining with a scream
If you should chance to trip
Upon their fine reclining place;
They’ll fly right off to rip
That couch to ribbons, smithereens,
On this remote pretext,
And if you scold or turn them cold,
They’ll turn and rip you next.
Someone to Watch *All* Over Me
[In a Really Creepy & Inappropriate Way]
Thought I was your stalker, violent,
Sneaking on you, ninja-silent,
Pervert peering in your casement,
Clear from attic to the basement,
With my satellite trained on you
All the way from where you’ve gone to
From my distant lair? I’ve got you
Hid from trouble while I watch you–
Baby, you’re not scared now, are you?
I’m just trying to watch out for you;
If I didn’t, who could keep you
Safe and sane, awake, asleep–Who?
I’m your hero, watching closely
So you won’t become morosely
Sad and spooked at all; to
Keep you safe and sound; I call you
In the morning and way later
Just to keep away the hater
That might try to nab your collar,
Take your keys, your watch, your dollar,
Keep you sleepless, full of sorrow–
Sleep tight, Babe! See you tomorrow.
What, *me* scary???
A Picture is Worth a Mere Thousand Words; a Collage Invites Endless Elaborations . . .
“Why, yes, now I can see how much your beautiful daughter takes after her mother,” he stuttered with a hasty glance at the upstairs window. He hoped that he hadn’t started too visibly, what with that drop of ice-cold perspiration suddenly racing down his spine, and was unspeakably grateful that he hadn’t asked “Mister” Warren whether it was permissible to take Elvira to tea, for her obvious attractions were beckoning him still from where she leaned out of the parlor window below.
He Cracked a Wicked Little Smile . . .
. . . as he was hatching his plots . . .
Quack Quack, Etc.
There’s nothing adverse
That I throw in the sauce
As I start to rehearse
The demise of the Boss
But as I descend
To the end of the day
It’s more tough to pretend
To be lightsome and gay
When I feel in my marrow
The building of rages
Brought on by the narrow-
Ness by which he gauges
My quest for perfection
In service to him
Whose extreme predilection
For being quite grim
As you guess is a needle
To nag and annoy
Like the high nasal wheedle
Of a self-centered boy
Until something explodes
In the back of my brain
At some one of his goads
And I go quite insane
So I must kill him gladly
By end of the day
And go off quacking madly
As I’m carted away
The Way It Ought to Be
I’m not what you might think of as a big traditionalist in the ways of romance–at least, if you think of those things packaged in the way that American commercial enterprise would have us think the norm or the appropriate mode. It may be that I’m a little too tomboy at heart and in physique to wear either the girly or the sexy look with any credible panache. There’s more than a small chance that I’m too lazy and cheap to buy cards and flowers for my nearest and dearest with any regularity. Chocolates, yes, but you know that I’m going to expect to share in their consumption. I’m far from selfless enough to be a true romantic either, I guess. Otherwise, around our place the romantic expressions are more often found in filling an empty gas tank, caulking the shower door, making lunch, washing socks. All of that sort of glamorous stuff.
I’m so unromantic in the popular sense, in fact, that despite being both shy and kind of prudish, I moved in with my intended life partner before I married him–yes, before I even warned him of my intent to marry him. Or to stick to him like glue for the rest of my life if he was shy of the whole getting-married thing, having done that before. Despite my love of pomp and circumstance and ritual, I was prepared to forgo the whole dress-up extravaganza and either commit to the partnership in heart and hand only or just keep the legal transactions simple and stand in front of a Justice of the Peace somewhere and then party later with family and friends. (Because, let’s face it, any excuse for a good and love-filled party is not entirely to be passed by, wishes for simplicity aside.)
As it turned out, we had a pretty spectacular wedding day, but it was really icing on the proverbial cake. One of the central beauties of that day was an anthem composed for us by our dear friend, with a text my intended chose from the enigmatic and marvelous Song of Songs that includes the phrase ‘love is as strong as death’–this accompanied by other close friends playing organ and horn and a superb choir of yet more friends (also conducted by the composer). Hard to get more romantic than that. But that was all well after I’d realized that a big spectacle wasn’t necessary to validate the spectacular thing that had already happened within.
All of this because at some point pretty early in our relationship, I knew with complete and unshakeable conviction that when I was with this person I was where I ought to be. It was so clearly and plainly the place and state in which I was meant to exist that I felt it in my bones. I was at home in his house the first time I stopped by for a visit–even though you all know full well that I reinvented that physical space from Day One around the two of us. The music that I heard was not just the glorious sound of his choirs welling up around me but was also a new rhythm in my heartbeat that was more confident, more joyful, and more purely contented than it had ever felt before, in those days before I even knew it could feel this lovely new way. A new sense of the world skewing into proper perspective that suffused my brain.
And that, to me, is how true romance ought to be. Genuinely loving and playful and silly and passionate and supportive and all of that, yes, but most of all, merely having the recognizable quality of a homecoming, every single time we come together. Flowers and candy and frills and thrills are all very welcome in their own right, but they have nothing on a sense of wholeness that only grows with time and no matter how it evolves and changes iterations over the years, will not go away. It is both transcendent and, when it’s so well ingrained and incorporated in the truest sense, also wonderfully, perfectly ordinary.
Today, on my beloved‘s birthday, I have another reason to remember all of the reasons why I am grateful for him and his place in my life and my love–and I in his.
Beloved Mysterious
Beloved Mysterious, if you could see
The blood-dark river hid inside of me
With longing deep as chasms unexplored
Through which, from which, in which that love is poured
In endless flood of hope and of desire
As hot and wild and dangerous as fire
Then you would know the depth, the liquid breath
That carries love for you beyond my death.
It’s Not Just Dragon-Breath that Scares Me
Night Terrors and Morning Madness
How odd, arising in the morning, to look in the mirror’s glass,
To see someone so unfamiliar, so unkind, uncouth and crass,
So ill-mannered and repellant, full of grossness, grease and grunge,
And to wonder how on earth I can begin to clean, expunge,
Remove, ameliorate; to salvage any goodness I could hope
To find in such an unfit carcass; rescue with what bar of soap,
What fell razor or belt sander, what hair shirt, what whips and chains
Aimed at purifying putrid monster madness, would what else remains
E’en resemble who I used to think I was, have any grace?
What relief, when after coffee, I come back and see my face!
Under all of it, thank heavens, lies the self I onetime knew,
With its kindly dragon scales and bony crest familiar: Whew!
Pirates of All Sorts
Always Someone Else’s Problem
‘Twas the pirate Rumbustious Rudy
Who felt it his life’s work and duty
To divest someone’s self of his piffling pelf
And retain the remainder as booty.
With a Full Heart
A Song of Farewell
Ends Only the Beginning
A fond farewell should only end the start
Of what emerged from nothing to become
Much greater than its origins, a home
For all that’s good and gracious in the heart–
What had begun in silence has grown deep
And richer than imagining could guess,
A tapestry of joy and tenderness,
A score of blended notes that time will keep–
Whose voices came together first in this
True confluence of sound and sweet accord
Cannot again move aught but closer toward
Such harmony as, now it’s found, is bliss–
For in love’s benedictory refrain
Awakens what all hearts must sing again.
With gratitude to all at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, Dallas, Texas,
and especially to the choir, for welcoming us so kindly during this past year.
Kathryn Sparks
August 2012
Art-Colored Glasses 