the sound of silence

at 13 i found myself making an odd decision: whether to be an artist or a writer. i'd been a bookworm since the 3rd grade, wrote for the school newspaper, couldn't draw, whatever made me think i could go completely visual? of course, i made the logical decision (why not, even at 13 i tended to be level-headed. well, maybe.) then i bought my first computer and digital camera in 2002. i'd always taken pictures, but got frustrated, foolishly not photographing in thailand, india, sri lanka, and nepal. my camera might get stolen. and the new digital age had just begun. to make a long story short, after 9/11 i felt nobody was listening. so i stopped writing. little did i realize i'd probably said everything i had to say in www.pbase.com/wwp/enigma the beginning of '02. (feeling a writer is usually remembered for a one-liner, i've always written a lot of them.) in 'the enigma variations (2002) a summing up' you'll hopefully find everything that's fit to print. after that i've tried out the artist's life. it's a lot more fun and just as frustrating!

the disappeared

what's not so strange is the impact on us of those close to us. say my friend sherry, www.pbase.com/wwp/sherry or my friend berta, www.pbase.com/wwp/berta . the truly bizarre is the disappearance of the man at my storage locker, the secretary of the accupuncturist, the seller at the bookstore, the people who give us a sense of community texture without being close friends. www.pbase.com/wwp/trans . stay in one place long enough, watching these gaps open and re-filled, and you begin to believe, as i have this week, 'all men are mortal. wayne is a man. therefore he is mortal.'

here's a passage from the second day of the cloudwatcher diary.

Last night I suffered death dreams. A Flamenco Master in Black handed me a deck of cards and a guitar. He said, "Study them thoroughly." I awaited a ferry on a dark river. Did I have the fee for Charon? Was this the change into something 'rich and strange'?

Last December, Isabella Nigrido, my personal psychic, said, "You were overly impressed with death when you were young." What did she envision? Was it my preacher father performing funerals, or my friend Max, shot down in the street, at home in his glass coffin the day after we played together? Gazing at his painted, waxen eleven-year-old body while old women in black whispered, I tingled with terror and raced from the room.

I seek to make death my friend, to die before I die as the wise advise, yet on this first day of the season I don't want to release the world. Memories of travels this winter - Sri Lankan civil-war road-blocks in the middle of the night - haunt me. Out of nowhere images of a dark street-corner in Madrid and the footsteps of a passerby in Berlin invade my brain. And I don't want to die. In March my friend Amy experienced the death or her twenty-three year-old daughter from cancer. She rose with her daughter's spirit into the next world before plunging back into her own body and she said, "There is no death." I wish I could believe it.

perhaps there are intimations of immortality in the rocks around the lookout, in some of the spirit pictures i've been adding: www.pbase.com/wwp/summer

the best revenge

my father used to stop in the middle of his sermons and silence me where i squirmed and cavorted in the front pew. (i also went thru a period of being the class clown in high school.) odd, that i wanted center stage when i finally found performing unsatisfying. instead, i got my revenge by writing this play: www.pbase.com/wwp/rite the humor may not be the most sophisticated, but i still get a chuckle whenever i look at it. only many, many years later did i learn most boys have issues with their fathers. may i be forgiven for writing this piece before realizing i'm not alone.

third time's a charm

does everyone want to write a musical? i suspect so. first time i had songs and tried to make a story. the second i had the story but no songs (and most of the action happened over the phone, a fatal flaw). since i usually do better doing more with less, i wrote something smaller, a three person pocket-musical: 'old man finding the desire to live' and that seems to me to have worked. at least, i like it. hopefully, you will too. www.pbase.com/wwp/finding

my only starring role

due to many misfortunes, only one of my film scripts actually made it to the silver screen (in black & white) 'mother thunder' directed by john lehmann, starring kathy martin, jeff shore, and yours truly. the original 16mm celluloid really lovely, but now 35 years later, sadly decayed. i just ran across a few rough and smudged grab-shots from the dvd. perhaps later i can post better ones. a time-capsule indeed. and the making-of a drama in itself. www.pbase.com/wwp/mother

strike while the iron's hot

the secret of both poetry and romance seems to be obsession, putting oneself totally at the service of the image. when these descended upon me, i couldn't sleep, i'd go to bed, get an idea, and be back at the table. i'd wake up in the middle of the night, no choice but to write. a memorable time, and a pain. yes, the muse can be very demanding. www.pbase.com/wwp/apple

they can be cranky

last night i posted prayers to things. however this discounted their kinks, which i describe in the following poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/candles and so you know what you're getting yourself in for...

SCISSORS

Scissors

know no shame;

they cut up

in the classroom

with a keen,

sharp

wit.

Scissors

cut ribbons

at public functions,

collapsing pictures

into collages;

they like the irony

of me

half made of you.

Scissors

point themselves

like two bird-beaks

at everything

we've done;

they swoop down

from the ceiling,

chopping the bed to bits,

dropping us

back into offices,

where they sleep

like innocents

in drawers.

Scissors

smile

when we go wild

in wars,

acting like

them.

Yes, we need to be careful with things, defend ourselves against them.