2012.12.17 — 30k and Counting to Pi and Puke, Naming and a Coq fushigis*

On December 14, 2008 I posted my first blog with the inauspicious title 2008.12.14. That means I've been blogging for exactly four years to the week, despite my expressed concern on that blog about not having anything to say because everything that can be said has already been said.

Well, this morning, 4 years and 3.14159 days from that first blog post, my two blogs have had, combined, the 30,000th page view. Thirty thousand! When I first started, I was ecstatic with even one! Thank you everyone for making this happen, the one time hitters and especially the regulars who, with an apparent streak of masochism and/or a perverse humour, keep coming back. [I just checked the count before posting this: the official count is 30, 089.]

I was going to just post the milestone, but a small fushigi jumped in to pervert that. Okay, that and the funny fushigi that it was early in the morning 3 days after the 1 year anniversary, (3.14159… days? LoL!)

And, okay, my going back to re-read that blog created in itself a small fushigi. Doubly funny because the fushigi's genesis came from the amazingly talented Gregory Charles. (I loved his radio show, one of my all time favourites ever!) The show he broadcast on that day had as its theme Secret, during which Charles discussed that (some) ancient philosophers posited the existence in the universe of a secret melody. And why I find this doubly funny, is that my previous post, 2012.12.16 — Pi Fight it? 3.1416 Fushigis* and an Also Ran Poem, had a fushigi-connection to my current favourite CBCR2 show, The Signal and the number pi and the music of pi and a movie about a musician who falls in love with a girl named Pi.

When I looked for the musical expression of the number pi because Laurie Brown of The Signal had played it, I came across a peculiar YouTube video called The Miracle of 528 Hz Solfeggio and Fibonacci numbers. It makes the argument that certain secret 'musical' frequencies, once 'lost' (????) but now un-lost, are being used by scientists— [interrupted @ 3:30pm by ML to prep oranges and then make supper.]

Now supper is done, and the dishes too. Question: how to write this next bit? While cutting the peel off of a bag full of oranges and then cutting them into chunks, ML turned on the TV. She was watching trailers for future movies on the movie channel.

One of them was for an Alvin and the Chipmunks' movie. I wasn't paying attention so I didn't know until later that it is for something called Chipwrecked. What caught my fushigi-ear was when one of the monks, not Alvin, said "I'm going to puke". What was fushigi significant about that is that I was flipping through my stacks of fushigi stickies and near the top of the pile was one about, of all things, puke from various people and of different kinds. See image of fushigi sticky note.

@ 7:05pm I interrupted this blog write in order to write a letter to RoMA in Goodreads. He had replied to my request to post some of his Haiku, and I wanted to acknowledge his okay. While writing the letter he commented about having seen only two of my shortlisted poems. So I mentioned 'Cotton for Comfort', and that I'd recorded it. I went to SoundCloud to get him the link. In my SoundCloud list, I have two readings of Comfort. R4 didn't satisfy me and so I listened to R3, which I like better. As I was creating the link and the text in the e.mail to RoMA the next reading in the list played. And so I listened with half an ear while composing my letter to what I think is one of my better poems, What Cannot be Expressed. And as the end is coming up, I am surprised to remember that the narrator pukes! The poem's last line is .../as my body heaved its stomach wordlessly into the muck and its mud splattered books." This poem was published and originated from a photographic prompt in the Houseboat Blog, for December 19, 2012. There was created another poem from that image, which is very fine. Anyway, here is the text of:

What Cannot Be Expressed

Far from urbane strictures, while in yet another distant and impoverished land,
I was contentedly alone and self-contained in a noisy crowded decrepit bus when,
as if from a great distance, I thought I heard a kind of drumming I did not recognize.

I paused, stopped reading, marked my page. I looked out the dirty window and,
unexpectedly, I remembered the wet summer day I read on a VW van's bumper sticker
'live life as a tourist.'
I was a young man then. Because I could read, I thought I understood.
And, when I did become that well-booked tourist, I thought I was happy.

The bus slowed at a corner crowded with colourfully-dressed ebullient villagers.
Behind them my word-drunk eyes mistook the makeshift grain-bag windbreak as a soiled deconstructed yin-yang art-piece.
I laughed at how easily the eye is fooled by false appearance and because the book in my hands was the I Ching.
With a bemused shake of my head at this odd coincidence I returned to the book, where I read

Writing cannot express words completely.
Words cannot express thoughts completely.

At that moment the stony weight of verbiage I had made myself blind to fled my fluttering heart.
In an animal panic I pushed my way past the press of shoulders and jabs of elbows.
With my hands grasping my mouth and books I stumbled down the bus's step-well
and crashed though the rickety doors to splash down on the rain-soaked earth.

Now silent, the villagers' heads turned and their eyes watched my hands flail uselessly
as my body heaved its stomach wordlessly into the muck and its mud splattered books.

On the sticky note I have noted M's 'puking cat Haiku.' When I went and did the research, it turns out that that was a funny addendum, because he'd written them a couple of months before the date on the note. But the Haiku are funny, nonetheless, so here's the link to them for the curious: 2012.06.19.

2012.12.19 Addendum
I sat down after supper and turned on the TV to see if there was anything interesting being broadcast. Eventually I stop on a Sarah Jessica Parker movie I Don't Know How She Does It. The best of a poor listing! I think the movie was about halfway through. The character played by SJP has been scratching her head during some kind of sales pitch with Olivia Munn to Pierce Brosnan.

She gets a text saying her child has been found to be infected with lice. When SJP's assistant, Olivia Munn, learns that, she say's 'I think I'm going to puke.'

And, now, near the end of this post, I return to the Gregory Charles' Secret frequencies fushigi: the claim made on the video is that particular frequencies use by Gregorian chanters can promote health and other physiological effects. They make specific reference to scientists using a frequency to heal DNA (I think). Anyway, a subtle aspect of this fushigi is that, if you haven't heard him, Charles is a musical prodigy: he, like a magical sponge, remembers every note of music he hears, it seems, and can replay it. Listening to his show was like listening to pure musical genius, musical magic, if you will.

2012.12.18 Post 17th Addendum.
I had meant to blog this yesterday, but as it was being written yesterday's post went sideways. So, here is a post post fushigi addendum, comprised of some of what I'd wanted to blog originally.

2012.12.15-16
I visited my one 'secret', meaning private, Goodreads' membership, called The Boathouse, which is a collection of about 20 amazing poets, some famous, and by some weirdness in life, me. I have been so busy with work and with the WSS that I've not been a regular there. However, on the 15th, I popped in because, I guess, the WSS was slow and because I am on vacation and had some free time. So I visited a post by Ruth Bavetta.

She was looking for our response to a list of proposed titles for a book of poetry. I had a bit of fun with the list, and morphed some of the elements from the various proposals into one title, on the 15th.

The next day, I continued my perusal of Stanley Park, and was bemused to read of a series of critical path issues, i.e. a list, associated with making happen the opening of a restaurant. But that isn't what caught my fushigi-ear, originally. Only was when I was re-hashing it while doing this blog that I caught that. No, what originally caught my fushigi-ear is:

Critical Path Issue #2 had been fabrics, a half-hour discussion that evolved directly into yet another debate about suitable names. This topic had been open for days, but market research had come up with a final proposal (294-5).

And what Ruth had been doing, of course, was critical debate and market research, because the group was being polled for their opinion.

2012.08.29-30
And, I've thrown this one in here,

despite the odd date, because the fushigi sticky note was attached to the cover of Stanley Park as one I hadn't got to yet. I attached it to the book yesterday, when going through my old fushigi stickies because it is about food and SP is about a chef and food and cooking. Anyway, way back, on the 29th of August I saw on the TV show Chopped one of the contestants make coq au vin.

On the 30th I was standing in line behind a man in a wheel chair. He

was having a struggle with getting his groceries attached to the back of his wheel chair: the cashier was having a hard time figuring out how to get everything hung without the bags rubbing against the wheels. During the course of the engagement he mentioned that he was going to the wine store next to get the wine he needed to make coq au vin. In 35 years of buying groceries I've never heard any mention making coq au vin.


So, a bizarre, interweaved, nonsensical story that goes nowhere, like the end of pi. And that is, I believe, a perfect celebration of my blogs' milestone.

2012.06.03 — Cotton for Comfort — a Nearly Successful Poem

Hello!
It has been too long since I have posted here. I have been busy writing. Elsewhere. Primarily for the Weekly Short Story Contest and Company — WSSCC in Goodreads. But it is long past time to post something. I have been amassing a long string of tiny fushigis (March to June), but today's blog won't be them. Instead this blog will be entirely self-promoting.

I have been having the smallest of creative writing successes over in Goodreads and the WSSCC. Today's post began with the story/poetry prompt Cadaver. I wrote 'Cotton for Comfort' and subsequently had it critiqued and with the help of some excellent writers revised it into a form good enough to make it as a finalist on the Poetry Group's monthly competition (out of 300+ entries). And even though it finished 5th out of the 6 finalists, this constitutes a form of publication, and so here is:

Cotton for Comfort
The cadaver wanted to signal the world
That the remains of the she
she once was was not all that she was!
But her tongue remained still, thoughts stillborn
under the weight of entomological entropy.

The cadaver remembered
all her apprehensions, understandings
and now even their misses. All of them.
Misses. Missus. Masses. Mass. Mas. Maws. Mauls. Mulls.
Mulligans! Now that is a great word!
Missed. Mist. Miss. Misses.
Where's the mulligan?

The cadaver wondered
at the state of her body.
It would seem, by the sights
she couldn't see, and the sounds
she couldn't hear, that she had been abandoned
somewhere wild, wild where the wild things are.
Where the wild things were returning
her once complex interleaving of molecules and cells,
with a macabre dance,
to the more natural chord of thrumming humming humus.
Humus! Hum Us. Humour Us. Humorous!

She wondered that she could hear
that chthonic humming
now that she couldn't hear words
that chimed charmingly
with an importance she could no longer fashion.
Fashion?
She began to soundlessly laugh
at being alive in vain.

Vain. Vanity. Inanity. Insanity.
She'd left that morning wearing her badly worn,
tired and holey underwear,
underwear her mother told her
not to be seen dead in,
but in which she felt natural.
Nature all. All Nature. All Natural.
Cotton for comfort. Comport. Come apart.
Be apart. Be a part of. Be a part of wordlessness.

One of the people who commented on this poem asked to hear it. With Koeeaddi's prompt, I proceeded to record it with music. If you are curious about how it sounds as read brilliantly by Rose Mary Boehm click Cotton For Comfort. To hear me read it not as well as Rose Mary, click on Cotton for Comfort.

And I encourage you to visit the WSSCC if you like creative writing of all short stories, not just short stories. Recently a script writing thread/competition has been started.