Richly Deserved. Or Not
10
Tag Archives: poems
Characteristic Characters
There have been a few occasions in the past when I thought I would go out into the wide world, metaphorically speaking, and seek my (however tiny) fortune on the strength of my artwork. I happen to think I’m a pretty good artist. Even other, seemingly sentient and sane, people have given me reason to think I’m a pretty good artist in somebody’s eyes besides my own. Not that I would be in the least biased.
So I’ve looked into various ways to ‘put it out there’ [Ed: don’t be ridiculous. NOT THAT!], from looking at DIY publishing, either online or on-demand, of prints of my artworks or of books–I’ve got a whole stack of book pages laid out with my art and writing on a whole slew of topics and themes, all stashed away digitally for Maybe Someday use–to sending hard copy prototypes of said books and artworks to various publishers, galleries, shops and the like to see if they’d be interested in aiding me with their resources. The answer, always, has been No. All who respond with anything other than simple form responses indicate that they, too, think my work is good stuff. But the other universal response is: I’m too hard to ‘package’. After whatever amount of hemming and hawing is required in the instance, the clarification is that my work (usually referring to the visual parts, but written forms have been included as well) varies too much. I’m not same-same-same enough to be marketable, apparently.
I consider this high praise. But it’s rotten for business, as you can imagine. Yes, I’ve sold both speculative and commissioned artworks, but only privately and by word of mouth and for very modest sums and, frankly, none in quite a long time. I’ve had a number of gallery showings, but virtually all ones that I organized myself, paid for from start to finish, framed and installed and lit and removed myself (though as my family and close friends will attest, not entirely without enslaving some of them for some of the schlepping and heavy lifting)–and nearly all of these also garnering me good reviews, when I could get any critics to attend, and lots of enthusiastic appreciation from attendees, but no sales. I’m actually beginning to think they might be onto something, those crazies who sell high-end mansion properties and deal with slow sales by jacking the prices higher and higher until equally crazy buyers consider the places posh enough to capture their highfalutin imaginings and plunk down megamillions of dollars or Euros or what-have-you. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here on my little paper and digital treasure trove of creative wonders and selling occasional copies of them for pennies at Zazzle.com.
The other aspect of the critiques I’ve sought that always seem to end with ‘gosh, you’re wonderful, buuuuuuut . . . ‘ is that the same people who tell me I’m too diversified (if not wholly a dilettante and a flighty fool) for my marketable good often tell me in the same conversations that I have a very recognizable style, so no matter how much my subjects and media and moods vary, they find my work fairly easy to identify. And they say this as though they, too, think that’s a good thing. Can’t say I can untangle how the good seems to be perpetually the enemy of the moneymaking; clearly a puzzle I haven’t solved. Yet.
Until then, I keep doing-what-I-do, plodding along and enjoying the process because if it isn’t making me (or my patient partner) any income, it should at the very least be fun to do it! And I do find that no matter how much my attention wanders or my themes hop around from light to dark, from complex to childlike, from crudely handmade to semi-seamlessly digital, I see more and more the marks of my own nature and personality and style peering out at me from each work. I may draw characters that are as far from my own ‘type’ and experience and even beliefs or prior interests as can be imagined (by me), but each of them ends up being somehow a child of my own making or a member of the larger family of my creative spirit, and that’s pretty good, too, I’d say.
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.
Of Dire Days and Nebulous Nights
Missing You
The kettle on the hob is hissing
Without cease, for Kettie’s missing—
She dashed out to check the door
And hasn’t come back anymore;
Although we saw a pair of shoes
And stockinged legs amid the ooze,
Heels up, in yon green murky swamp,
We dasn’t get our own shoes damp
By plunging toward her in the rough
Glutinous muck, and soon enough
The heels stopped kicking anyhow.
No one will come for coffee now,
For though ‘twas us stood at her door,
She slipped; shan’t visit anymore.
Slightly Bent
Emmylou and Louie went
To town together long ago—
They went to town, for all we know;
Although they both were slightly bent,
We think they just went off to town,
Not that they were bumped off, ambushed,
Stabbed, poisoned, or shot down;
But given they were slightly bent,
Our finding them quite stone cold dead
Was not a shock, it must be said,
So we’re not certain where they went
Or what they did or what it meant
Or whether in the town or out,
Or if some others were about
That had a slightly different bent,
But anyway, the two are dead,
Both of them, Emmylou and Louie,
And lest I should become all gooey,
That’s the whole that need be said.
Interludes: Songs for Dancing
Sounding
In the hands of a master
The melody played so sweetly runs
Like a playful rivulet down the hall
Spilling an invitation to
Light-footed dancing, to
Birds chittering along, to light
Flickering between the window blinds
To call all of us down the passage
To bathe in its cool music
All our Loves
All our friends are singing
In the chorus on a Saturday
And though I know they will be fine
And sing it well, I have to say
That hearing all our friends ring out
In chorus is more complex still
Than polyphonic harmonies
And counterpoint, and what we will
Be loving best and savoring
On the occasion, likely, is
The sheer delight of soaking in
That all these loves are mine and his
Companionship or Conspiracy
Rodents on the Run
Moments of Music
Art-Colored Glasses 