Apology

I'll have to apologize to the weather angels for my previous post. There's blue sky out there now, with some fast-moving white clouds and some wind.

It's an "i" day in the vowel rating system.

The next NRWQ:

It comes as a surprise again and again
that dark skies
that linger
will eventually give way to blue.

Weather continues

The grayness today is such
that it could be said
that a consonant
has been added

If I were a certain creative character out there, I would now claim to have originated a new poetic form.

Maybe I have. It could be called the non-rhyming weather quatrain, for example, abbreviated NRWQ.

By the way: One of the main rules of the NRWQ is that the 2nd and 3rd lines have to start with that.

Nothing to say no. 3

There might be more to say than nothing (be warned). It has been said about me that I hardly ever run out of words, and that, if I do, that's a very bad sign.

Today's list of events (non-exhaustive):

• The rain gods meant well and opened their buckets.
  
• The chill gods meant equally well.
• Today's light was mostly grey. No, gray. One vowel grayer than grey.
  
• Some primroses for sale at the grocery store brightened things.

• I treated myself to some super expensive chocolate, the wrapper of which was more expensive than the taste.
• I got work done slightly after the deadline, and then felt it was too late to get started on more work.
• Failed miserably again in the fields of morning yoga & fibonacci.
  
• What am I going do about that fall vacation with scooters that Blogger keeps suggesting for tabs?

Today was good,
today was fun,
tomorrow there will be
another one.

– Dr. Leon Seuss

Shameful admission

I have been neglecting my warm-up fibs.

However, I seem to be doing just fine without them.

The gun is loaded with other shot.

– Gene Browdy

There's nothing to say no. 2

The only proper solution
to this condition
would be silence,
but that would be difficult,
wouldn't it?

It's good that we drink
from the well of loneliness
now and then,
how else would we
appreciate company?

(The above link is to give due credit to the inventor of the turn of phrase.)

PS: Can I ever avoid saying something?

PS2: Who gives a shit?

Let there be light

Let there be light,
let there be an invasion of light,
light to inhale, light to store,
light to shower
on our surroundings

– Louis Green

A poetic-phonemic-semantic development

ELLE
LP
LIP
FLIP
FLYURA
FLIPPER
FLAPPER

KNAP-SACKER

STALE CRACKER

A MONUMENT FOR FLYURA
SHE MIGHT CLIMB, SHE MIGHT FALL OFF OF,
SHE MIGHT LAUGH ABOUT, SHE MIGHT REMEMBER

Now a pro

Long ago I was also an amateur crastinator, but I have long since moved to the pro ranks.

– Gregory K.

Wonder if Greg's a relative of Tonio K.?

Anyway, I'm also a full-grown pro. Otherwise I wouldn't be blogging. I'd be doing something existential, necessary, economically valuable, you get the drift.

Not doing what they call stealing the good Lord's day in German.

N.B.

"There's nothing to say."
"Oh?"
"Yes, I'm typing letters, but there's nothing to say."
"Not even to blog?"
"Not even that. Even though that's close."
"You're making it sound like the end of something. Something so –"
"Final?"
"Yes. But then again –"
"But then again?"
"You just gushed a fib!"
"Well, yes, I guess I did."
"So?"
"That doesn't count. That's like professional. You know."
"I don't. But I suppose it's better than scooters during a vacation in fall."
"Where the hell did that come from?"
"Blogger."
"Oy cee."
"Toodleloo!"

A fib

An
arm
comes up,
breath in steam,
eleven chortles,
a new morning is rising fast.

A fibonacci poem. Don't ask me where the eleven chortles came from – they were somehow associated with the morning imagination that brought this forth.

Oh, for those who don't know: fibs are six-liners with 1/1/2/3/5/8 syllables.

This is my second one. The first one was more or less this in the language of Hölderlin, Goethe & co.

In response to a friend ...

with somewhat far-eastern leanings, who told me, in a heated discussion:

You better face it: it all boils down to nothing

I said:

Let me tell you, there is PLENTY!
And if only it’s the appearance of something.

Shall the twain ever meet?

Another one of Blumfeld's unnumbered wisdoms.

Blumfeld's Wisdom No. N

Some of my attempts at wisdom, wit, cuteness & meanness were posted at Garden of Literary Confusion in various skins I choose (like a snake, but I keep shedding them and putting them back on as convenient).

Oh, and by the way, life goes on today. As it always will – in one form or another.

Promise to stop counting my wisdoms! Solid promise. At wit's end for now. Good-bye.

He acted like God come down to earth

Having the great writer at my house was not all that enjoyable. We talked more about his aches and pains, sensitive bowels and eyes than about the wonderful novels and poems he’d written or future plans of his. That is, he talked. In the afternoon he wanted to go for a walk and headed back home five minutes later as a light rain came down. He asked for homeopathic ulcer medication and a light vegetarian meal, of which he devoured three servings. He also scarfed down most of the chicken korma I’d fixed for myself. I had originally planned to show him some of my own poems (in all humility), but abstained from it because my head was aching from all his talk. Two more days I’ll have this man around, I thought in desperation.

– Surendra Sparsh

(Sparked by a real experience with one who knew himself to be a great artist.)

In a dark monster of a building

Do only monsters live in that kind of building? Or is there somebody who'll carry up Granny Whip's shopping bag, make tea for the young man who's been down with a fever for days? Yes, there is: it is Elsie, who's in a sparkling mood at all times, what with her blonde pony tail, freckles and dimpled cheeks. Watch out, Elsie: not all of them deserve you!

- Leon Blumfeld (text and photo, Copyright 2007)

Note:
I wrote this story inspired by this picture I took a while ago and by a blog that publishes extremely short stories in German and submitted it on the off-chance they would also take something in English. The editor suggested that I supply a German translation, which I did. Hopefully he'll accept it.

Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor

One evening Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor, was climbing up to his apartment - a laborious undertaking, for he lived on the sixth floor. While climbing up he thought, as he had so often recently, how unpleasant this utterly lonely life was: to reach his empty rooms he had to climb these six floors almost in secret, there put on his dressing gown, again almost in secret, light his pipe, read a little of the French magazine to which he had been subscribing for years, at the same time sip at a homemade kirsch, and finally, after half an hour, go to bed, but not before having completely rearranged his bedclothes which the unteachable charwoman would insist on arranging in her own way. Some companion, someone to witness these activities, would have been very welcome to Blumfeld. He had already been wondering whether he shouldn't acquire a little dog. These animals are gay and above all grateful and loyal; one of Blumfeld's colleagues has a dog of this kind; it follows no one but its master and when it hasn't seen him for a few moments it greets him at once with loud barkings, by which it is evidently trying to express its joy at once more finding that extraordinary benefactor, its master. True, a dog also has its drawbacks. However well kept it may be, it is bound to dirty the room. This just cannot be avoided; one cannot give it a hot bath each time before letting it into the room; besides, its health couldn't stand that.

(The beginning of the story by Franz Kafka)

Hello World!

This is Leon Blumfeld's contribution to the world, which he considers so wide that, even if you flitted around and around it, you would never reach the end of it, particularly because it is in constant change.

Leon has been and hails from many places, including the Florence of the Sinclair Lewis novel that gave its name to this blog.

He also feels an affinity for Kafka's Blumfeld, even though there's no blood relationship.