visit with dermatologist positive

                  
                                         
                                              
My legs are improving. Dermatologist has reduced my
need for four daily applications of Triamcinolone to  
two daily.  For that I am thankful as the routine I
must use is time-consuming and somewhat difficult.  
Will be on the antibiotic medicine for another week.
Am to visit him again next Friday.                  
                                                   
                                                     
                                                                  
                                                      
                                                              
                                                     
rho00366 

autobio notes

              
                                               
                                         
Yesterday I searched through my Seminary poems and    
determined every poem there was trash.  Without a  
doubt I was grievously askew spiritually during my
year-and-a-half at that Jesuit school.  Conflicts   
in my soul I should have come to terms with while  
I was in high school intensified my misguided fervor  
and most of the poems I wrote were ruined by it, to   
say nothing of my technical inadequacies.            
                                                      
-                                                      
                                                     
My local sister bought a pair of jeans shorts, and 
when I tried them on today I found I needed to roll
them up some, but I also found I no longer needed  
to use the towel I was using over my legs so that 
my keyboard would be high enough for its right end  
to rest on the mouse pad on the stool to my right.   
Thus, I now have that towel on top of the towel I  
have been using on the table between where I sit    
and where my monitor is atop the desk.  Surely my  
feet are now elevated high enough.  I may not get   
to heaven but my feet will.                              
                                                   
                                                    
                                                    
                                                   
                                                 
                                                    
                                                 
rho00365        

Have been feeling oddly empty

                      
                                                
                                           
recently.  Am unable to determine why, but have some   
guesses; however, let's just say my psyche is in the   
horse latitudes and/or the horse latitudes are in it.
Here is a little something I wrote two days ago:                    
                                                        
Others                                                
                                                    
There are a million voices out there,              
and they all keep changing:           
clippity, clippity,                    
chug, chug,                           
bitter as butterflies.                                
                                                     
----------------------------------------          
                                                      
Received another prize-winning book from                  
the Academy of American Poets.  Am reading it.  That   
is, I was reading it.  Perhaps I'm totally out-of-sync  
with the variant new ways of writing even though some  
of those ways I have used in my writing.  In any case,   
next to nothing is exciting me, not even Fanny Howe or  
Franz Wright.  There's an old song I one day tried to   
track down, something about "and the days go by" is in  
its chorus.  Have it in my head it's a song by Devo; so    
am going to try a Devo songs search.  Have grown tired   
of my minimal song lyrics, but an autobio project which   
is not yet ready to continue posting awaits/ and poems  
to be added to Scatterings which are in nearby folders.   
It's just hard these days.                            
                                                        
                                                      
                                                           
                                                     
                                                        
                                                        
                                                       
rho00364                                                                           
 

Thinking Lizard revisited

                       
                                          
                                        
As I remember it, I invented Thinking Lizard
(the icon and the press) and the pen name of    
Alden St. Cloud in 1979.  In 1980 I published   
in the cassette medium and registered with    
The Library of Congress 1976 (the 366   
sonnets and 12 reflections version), Postures,
and Fond du Lac; and in 1981, I believe,  
Rooted Sky.  I no longer have saleable   
copies of these.  In 1982 in Austin, Texas, I
published as a paperback, First Pick, a 
selection which included some poems that were
previously unpublished.  I also registered it
with The Library of Congress.  I have a mockup
of it, but I have dismantled this book.  Soon
thereafter I let Alden St. Cloud die.              
                                                   
Thinking Lizard remains a viable press, but I  
would need to update its ISBN system.  The point
of this rehash is that I self-published books  
of my poems.  Those events are precursors to  
what I have since done online, especially at   
Sprintedon Migrasaurus (thinkinglizard.b---), 
and to what I hope to do in the future: make   
all my books of poems available for free in   
PDF.  As it is, I am not selling any of my poems.    
You are welcome to browse through, and if  
you encounter one you like, link to it or  
display it on your web site.  Heck, you can  
even do that with one you think is horrid.    
                                             
                                           
                                           
                                               
                                     
                                                 
rho00363
 

Metarealism Hyperrealism and Transcendence

             
                                                   
                                                     
On May 30, 2009, Seth Abramson, having read Mikhail Epstein  
on Russian Metarealism and Conceptualism, realized to his   
surprise and chagrin that he was an American Metarealist.
On that same date J J Gallaher commented beneath Seth's         
post and made a post on his own blog wherein that for him     
Conceptualism would be more fun.  He had been interested   
in Hyperrealism in painting.  Epstein saw the two he wrote  
about as opposites with all others somewhere between them.    
                                                            
In painting, metarealism involves depicting a mood while    
hyperrealism's goal is to equal the level of perfection     
reached by digital photography.                                
                                                          
If you allow a broad secular definition of transcendence,    
all artists ((musicians, painters, sculptors, architects,    
dancers, poets, and similar others) of whatever persuasion  
and in whatever medium)) strive for transcendence, a reaching 
beyond.                                                      
                                                              
Among the results of a Google metarealism search are:       
Wikipedia introduction
-                                                        
Tendreams introduction
-                                                           
a Google Books result                                             
-                                                   
Abramson's post                                        
-                                                     
Gallaher's post                                                     
---                                                     
One result a Google hyperrealism search garners is:              
Wikipedia introduction
                                                
                                                 
                                               
                                                
                                                 
                                                    
rho00362                                         
                                                 

Body challenges have taken over

  
                                       
                                     
with some being temporary.                            
                                                 
Trying to keep my legs elevated is permanent       
and I have been innovating toward that end.     
Fortuitously, the furnishings I have for my    
computer equipment are nearly perfect aids:     
the 30-inches tall desk my monitor is now on,
the 22-inches tall table partially under that   
desk on which are my modem and a towel folded   
so it is two inches high for the heels of my
feet, the stool which is 23-inches tall and is    
being used for my mouse and the right end of   
my keyboard, the folding chair I am seated on  
with a cushion beneath my rear and a cushion   
behind my back, the glasses I wear which are
set for viewing my monitor which I have for   
some years had three feet from where I type.
My keyboard is on a towel I've folded which  
is over my upper legs.  Am having to use a   
yard stick to turn my computer and monitor on.
Will try to improve on this, but for now it will    
have to do.  
                            
                                           
                                               
                                                
                                                   
                                               
rho00361                                      

Why Am I Online

     
                                             
                                                    
is a question I have asked and answered often.           
The Internet is my house of learning.  That is   
my common response.  And while I'll never even   
scratch the surface of what I would learn, no  
further response is needed.  However, there are
deeper reasons.                                 
                                                    
I used to be out and about easily, but that ended      
in mid-January of 2003.  It doesn't matter that   
by current standards I am still a young man.  So    
I am a hermit, but not a true hermit.  It isn't in
me.  Yet, even if I made no contacts with other   
humans, being online would suffice because I think   
it would be enough to alleviate my loneliness.         
                                                      
An early post of what was my last AOL journal is   
a note about Frederick Seidel.  Due to a recent   
comment by Michael Robbins beneath a Harriet post,   
I have been learning more about this American   
poet.  If you do a Frederick Seidel 2009 search
via Google and choose the Google books result,   
you can potentially read many of his poems.  I    
read, among others, "The War of the Worlds" and  
found I liked it mainly because of his straight-
on yet imaginative way of engaging a difficult  
topic.  Three reviews worth reading are Sarah  
Crown's "Chronicle of excess", Adam Kirsch's    
"The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", and this   
one by Wyatt Mason in which he writes          
". . .the cultural definition of what a poem is: 
a thing that wakes us, shakes us, moves us,   
and pays equal attention to the details of    
living and the art of poetry."
                                                     
Therefore, God willing, I intend to be an online
human in spite of the varying technical challenges.             
                                                    
                                                   
                                                     
                                                    
                                                       
                                                       
rh00360                       

It is my life

         
                                       
                                         
and I can live it destructively and I can live it
constructively and anywhere inbetween, and I have.
                                                     
For a long time my opinion of myself has been:  I
am not right.  As much as I do not want to--though
sometimes (as the evidence shows) it seems I must  
want to, I too consistently have made poor choices.
Had I had the vision, I would have lived both as     
I chose and as I did not choose.  Have been a Brian
and an anti-Brian.  
Examples: 
1. As a writer I would have been both reclusive   
      and highly visible.                          
2. As a purchaser of stocks, I would have traded
      aggressively and invested judiciously in
      growth stocks.                             
3. As a general consumer I would have allowed     
      myself some excesses but would have found  
      a residence I intended to remain in.             
4. As a mind/body being I would not have favored  
      my mind over my body.                          
                                                     
There's a current body story I am tempted to share
but a voice within says:  Don't.  Share it with   
your doctors.                                       
                                                     
As some of you know, my life here in Missouri is   
one of greater isolation than it was in Florida.     
This is not to say I can't make it less so, but   
I am more limited.  Other blogger's write about  
books and journals they are purchasing or have 
received and about what they're reading out of     
their extensive libraries.  I have a library, but   
little in it is contemporary, and presently my  
days are heavy with other concerns.  Actually, I
maybe shouldn't have a blog.  Does it seem I'm  
confused?  I am.  However, it isn't just isolation,   
it's my lack of pertinent knowledge.  It's my 
inability to keep up.  So much of my time is spent       
visiting blogs and making my often difficult-to-   
compose comments.  Besides, that I do not have a
defined agenda to push as do certain bloggers in 
that I do not belong to a coterie and am not bound   
to a specific style makes me less interesting on  
the face of it.                                       
                                                    
---                                                  
                                                   
Am at the second chapter on Imagination and Fancy         
in Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought, and at        
the end of the first chapter Barfield presented   
the passage in which Coleridge defined the Primary
and Secondary Imaginations.  Barfield had stated   
Coleridge was at odds with most thinkers--oriented
as they were toward scientific rationality--of his    
time.  Thus, as I suspected, Coleridge assigned    
the Primary Imagination to the ". . . infinite I Am."
This puts me in line with Coleridge.                     
                                                        
---                                                   
                                                       
Events of late have been signalling to me I am in         
my last days.  Yet there's no way of knowing.  I  
could concentrate my weakened energies.  Fanny Howe
and Franz Wright?  St. John of the Cross?  The Age  
of Pisces is in its last days.  Even so, it may be     
more than 300 years before the Age of Aquarius fully
takes over, which some say St. Germain will rule.  
Others are expecting a new reign of Jesus and 1000
years of peace.  Barring more miracles, I'm expecting
to be dead.  The Dow had a lackluster day.  Read that
President Obama said the government won't get into    
healthcare insuring unless Congress can figure out   
how to pay for it.  GM is getting a second chance. 
They ought to help revitalize the railroads.  For me
tomorrow means another trip to my GP's office.        
                                                      
Just remember: a good poem is one you like, even if  
you don't know why.                                 
                                                    
                                                    
                                                       
                                                      
                                                   
rh00359    
   
     

Acacia

            
                                        
                                     
is an ingredient in the Unna's Boot product I purchased   
yesterday at a medical supply business within walking  
distance of where I live should I ever be determined   
enough to walk there.  According to the massive entry   
at Wikipedia there are 1300 Acacia species.
                                              
                                                
                                                
                                             
                                              
bl00358

2000-03-17

                                     
                                  
was the date I became an AOL member.             
Today, after spending days clearing   
out and moving and/or deleting what          
was being held at my Thinking lizard  
email location at AOL, I deleted t l.
Later I submitted a completed formal
electronic AOL membership cancellation.       
                                         
                                          
                                           
                                           
bl00357