Dear new diary

Written as suggested by Sunday Scribblings:

The prompt for this week is: Dear Diary.
Shhhhhhh... are your secrets deep and dark or wistful and whimsical? Do you have a character that you need to flush out by writing some diary entries? Is there something your twelve-year-old self wants to say? Do you have a silly secret crush? What needs to be written in a beautiful book and locked with a tiny gold key?

Here goes...

Dear new diary,

I’m starting you to turn a new leaf, swearing to be radically honest about the person to be recorded here. For a few minutes being.

First off, what are my motivations?

1. I want to be read, that’s why I’m participating in a blog thread. So I’m like a spider in a way, spinning a web to trap potential readers. Except that the overall web has been woven before. I’m in a chain of webs, so to speak.

2. Why not be radically honest once in a while? Even though I’ve had my share of radically honest attacks and have always come out radically honestly different, this has not worn off all my inclination to radical honesty. I’ve noticed that radical honesty – my own or others’ – is not necessarily free from strings. There might be vanity involved – Look how radically honest I can be! – or sickness with one’s own perpetual lies to cushion up one’s existence. Can we really stand the truth about ourselves? Can we admit to being greedy, stingy, stupid, envious, evil, hopeless, hopeful, befuddled, spaced out, sick, perverse, all that? Not that we are all that all the time, of course. But some of the time or the majority of the time everyone is a bit of this, a bit of that. Even though some of it might be well-hidden under so-called good intentions.

3. After this theoretical preamble on virtue and vice, let me delve into today.

• I’ve already managed to be tired and not listen to some of the things my beloved held forth about. That’s why I can’t even remember the topic of her holding forth.
• I’ve already ruminated about a friend – how strenuous she can be, how hectic, how difficult in her relations with others (including me). Although I tend to go to great length with her in trying to smooth things over. To explain her misconceptions benevolently.
• I’ve already suffered from self-doubt, thinking that, if closely examined, people will quickly find out that I’m not all that wonderful. (Have I given you any reason to believe I’m wonderful so far? No, I don’t think so.)
• I just thought about wordiness. I’m usually a man of few words. I can put things in a nutshell, but often others want more effusion than a nutshell. They want at least a big, big coconut – stuffed and overflowing. I’ve been accused of being simplistic because I’m usually happy with simplified interpretations of things. Makes life so much simpler sometimes.
• I’ve already white-lied. It’s that cushioning I mentioned before. Cushioning things up for others, but also for oneself.
• Worry: the truth will inevitably shine through!
• I had too much for lunch. Not only that, I ate two more chocolate-covered rice cakes shortly after lunch.
• Now I’ll have to go get coffee.
• More reason to worry: I am doing things I am not getting paid to do.

Dear new diary, that’s it for now, some time in August of 2007, in the middle of the week. I can look out from underneath the shutters and see dense white clouds moving along the stark contrast of a uniformly sprayed sky. Just thought you needed to know that for environmental completeness.

PS: I'm fighting with some Blogspot formating issues. Sometimes Blogspot does something different every time you save the same post.

Gacela of the three dark pigeons

Three dark pigeons were sitting on the ground in a triangle.

“I am chest,” said the first one.
“I am beak,” said the second.
“And I am eye,” said the third.

The first one was another,
the second one could not speak,
and the third one was none.

Three dark pigeons were sitting on the ground in a triangle.

– Leonard Blumfeld

Unavoidable note
This is what you get when you walk over to Penny Market for a frustration snack and notice three pigeons seated in the parking lot. Brings up memories of García Lorca's Gacela de las palomas oscuras, and your mind starts playing around...

Elucidative Ad Sense

In my previous post I used the word "elucidative" without being quite sure whether it really exists. To verify, I did a Google search and landed on a Free Dictionary by Farlex page that promised help.

Alas, the page had little elucidation on the elusive elucidative, but wisely knew what people who search for the word might actually need:

HD Endoscopy
Endoscopy cameras utilize HD to improve clarity and visibility.
www.hd-endoscopy.com

Prevent Server Down Time
Pre-emptive Support - 24/7 Identify problems before they occur
www.bea.com/wls

What Is Metaphysics?
What Metaphysics Means / Courses University Of Metaphysical Sciences
UMSonline.org/CourseDescriptns.htm

Thank you, Ad Sense, for understanding my needs in such a precisely targeted manner. I'll definitely check out the true meaning of metaphysics the next time I have a few hopefully elucidative moments. Whatever that may mean.

Should I worry about blogspot server down time, though? Enough to identify problems before they occur? Would endoscopy help?

Small world

In

the

line at

Kentucky

Fried Chicken: Naked

white globe in crown of tousled hair.

– Len "Bad Food" Blumfeld

I admit it, I went to KFC for lunch. Well, all the people I usually have lunch with are either on vacation or were out. Still I looked over my shoulder to see if anybody caught me.
Before I entered, I spent a while reading up on the footnoted ingredients they use at KFC. Quite a list! Flavor enhancers in various combinations with phosphate and colorants, to name just a few. Even their corn cobs are artificially colored. Having slung down my flavor- and color-enhanced chicken product, I came to the conclusion once again that neither I nor anyone else should be caught at KFC – dead or alive.

Anyway: When waiting in line, the hindhead of the gentleman in front of me inspired me to the above fib.

A Kenneth Patchen Love Poem for Poetry Thursday

Oh now the drenched land wakes;
Birds from their sleep call
Fitfully, and are still.
Clouds like milky wounds
Float across the moon.

Oh love, none may
Turn away long
From this white grove
Where all nouns grieve.

– Kenneth Patchen

(from "The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen", City Lights Books, 1966)

Posted for one of the last Poetry Thursdays to take place.

Note
To readers not familiar with this great and underrated American poet and novelist, I recommend the Wikipedia page on Patchen as a start.

So what fib no. 1

Lunch
with
sausage
and Indian
spice was good. So what?
you ask. Where is your gratitude?

– Leon B.

Note
As the number in the title indicates, more of these are intended to come.*
The idea goes back to Richard Brautigan and his green pepper/salad bowl so what poem quoted in Poems like untucked shirts.

*Readers are left with three or more options: joy, indifference, horror, ...

Darshini David’s wardrobe

Dedicated to her

She
loves
her big
buttons and
collars and has sets
of them: mauve, beige, red, turquoise, etc.

– Leonard Blumfeld

Notes
This is in reference to BBC news presenter Darshini David, who seems to have a distinct predilection for tops with oversized collars and plastic buttons. She has at least four of these in different colors. Where does she get them?
Can “etc.” squeeze through as a one-syllable word? I hope so. (It certainly would have one syllable if it were pronounced “ets.”) If not, the purity of the venerable fib form is compromised here.

Blood, sweat and tears

Not
quite
so bad:
Sweat, no blood,
no tears. Just dry eyes
from screen slog. For daily bread. For
others, yes and no.
Daily toil.
No end.
Yes,
no.

– Leonard the Screen Gazer

The merest touch of her

Poetry came by again last night
to drop something off.

I spend too much time
without Poetry but don’t

want to be too insistent
in calling her over.

What did she drop off?
A locket I can’t seem to open.

But I’m not worried. It
sits on my desk with

a silvery half-smile
and reminds me of Poetry.

– Leonard Blumfeld

Note

This is my belated contribution to Poetry Thursday's invitation of August 2.

I was working hard on inspiration (see previous entry To squeeze tears out of a rock) and found it in a line read on Poetry Thursday itself:

“Poetry keeps me company and sings me lullabies. Poetry is making moments, little moments, into brushstrokes.”

To squeeze tears out of a rock

Can it be done?

Or is it a mission impossible?

(I'm trying to come up with a poem for Poetry Thursday – currently vacationing and without topic suggestion – and feel quite rocky and unpoetific.)

Doesn't necessarily have to be tears, either.