Three Shots Last Night

...that my camera just couldn't get. We all have those moments. You see it, it makes an emotion, your brain swirls, perhaps even your life blood drains low and absurdly, you either have your camera or you don't, you either have a great camera or you don't, you come upon a perfect image at a perfect time or you don't, and no matter what you have, no matter what the moment gives, you will never capture the shot through your lens as well as you saw it when it appeared.

The first one was a curve down on a street we walked in the late evening. We walked through it away from the house, down to the main road, the humidity of the night salivating over us, and cars passed us, the nasty little ones with the new halogen lights that blind the mother sear out of you, and we smiled and waved anyway. At the main road, no traffic, no sounds, no gleams over the horizon, and we turned around. But somehow the road had disappeared. We looked bewilderingly, fruitful and encouraged by each other, and took a step into what was the blackest spot on earth. I had never seen a wide spot so dark as a nighttime closet, yet we entered into it as if it were an event horizon we knew not the destination to. The faint edges of light from before, worthy of a shot, had faded into pure non-recognition. Our hands felt the only knowledge of the other.

The second was coming out of the black hole and up the hill. Before the canopy of trees unveiled the world again where the streetlights grew, a swarm of woodpecker-beak sized lightning bugs wrapped around something, some frizz of a plant, and lit up in turn as if being punched on a gameshow. It was something I had seen once before in N Carolina one night while driving through a swarm that lit the windshield in gruesome fashion, but this moment was almost a frozen delight. Nothing else could be seen or felt for fifty feet. Just these hundreds of little greenish lightbulbs flickering away for three minutes. I was reminded of Robert Redford running the bases after his final home run in the explosion of crackling light that humbled the field.

The moon over the sunset was the third one, just six minutes later. The sky was nearly black at this point, except for a dash of light-to-dark blue and a twinge of violet just above the trees. Now on the hilltop we could see a passage down into the valley surrounded by trees, but empty of brush. Like looking into a pinhole really. The moon was a sliver, a word overused yes when describing the moon, but it works. But it was wasn't just the illumination that could be seen. The dark surface of the forward portion of the moon, the entire round ball of battered mantle could be seen, a faint gray against a haze of color. Was the sliver covering the bare of the moon or was the bare of the moon feeding the sliver. They were wed, romantic, succulating each other, forcing their love in union over us. A smooth grasp of inlay and bulge, built to last at least for one cool night.

Lifting Helicopters

Azure sky bleeds

With grey coal

Steam and white

Doves milk and

This sky mariner

Has holes he

Cant plug and

Weights all day

And lifts all day

And drags all day

And a wet thrust

Into azure sky

I hope to give

But the green

Hairs of earth

Blow and share

Aches and whispers

And I remain

In silver chill.

Printing and the Mind

A very elongated book, 'Printing and the Mind of Man: The Impact of 
Print on Five Centuries of Western Civilization,' edited by John Carter 
and Percy H. Muir, is an interesting book to be hold, and full of history. 
From its shape and the bold red on the facing title pages to the 424 
books or so that it discusses regarding enormous impact on the world, 
the book is a faucet of early dedication.

A very cool thought arrives in the introduction, that "the bondage of 
words was broken by writing them down," and a page later comes a 
sequence on the availability of the written word allowing mankind the 
ability to forget since the storage of words was then made possible. 
People could make lists of those who owed money, of those who 
donated money, of those in a parish, of those who swam on New 
Year’s Day as members of the Polar Bear Club.

That’s remarkable to me to think that the world changed that much 
with the origin of the written word, and not always with the correct 
consensus words. We have discussed cave marking and other forms 
of communication in class less semester, but with organized wording, 
with printing, with the placement of letters on paper in certain orders, 
the world grew dramatically in a very short amount of time.

I don’t doubt that literature developed across the world like word of a 
happy hour beer special spreads like fire on a college campus when a 
new bar opens, and the world at the dawn of the printed word had 
different lettering, of course, depending where you lived. Latin 
originally had 21 characters, which was derived from Greek and 
Etruscan, and alphabets that were born from it, such as modern 
English, but none carried the weight of the Chinese character total, 
which was upward of 6,000. I can picture the literary giants sitting 
around the Yellow River with their satchels full of character printouts, 
merely there in case someone wanted to write a thought in their journal. 

The first book mentioned is Gutenberg’s bible, per se 1455, and the last 
book mentioned is Winston Churchill’s 'The Lion’s Voice' from 1940. The 
book was a random find in our library, improperly numbered I feel, with 
a badly torn spine and plastic covering. The book has some odd 
illustrations and lettering examples, and a rather massive index, and at 
least one spacing issue on the front cover jacket. 

The book is definitely worth viewing even if you happen to hate all 424 
or so books mentioned inside it. There are more posts about books and
publishing under the Publishing tab on this site.

Sensitivities In The Cavities

Her watching me lick chocolate on a stick and feeling the wood
in her mouth. The end speech Colin Firth delivers, with those deliberate
and somewhat eloquent pauses. The dynamo of watching the final out of
a perfect game, including a final hit and the suspense of getting to first base,
these are all moments felt in my jaw as of recent.

Sometimes it doesn't matter what you're watching or hearing. A movie
can be average, a game can be boring overall, chocolate can be a little
tasteless, but something can happen in a second to make that dreariness
become overwhelming. I always feel it first in my jaw. In the back, where
you always feel the warmth and flavor of a juicy filet wrapped in bacon.

Crying afterward is not necessary. Nor is spilling forth a mess of words.
It's just fine to sit there and erupt inside knowing that someone succeeded,
right before your eyes, or that someone is enjoying something immensely,
something they will remember. There is an enticing jubilation in the body
when you are overjoyed for someone else.

Not everyone feels it. Not everyone cares. Selfish or not, not everyone
is on the lookout for the success of others. But it means so much to witness
something so little, especially when it is out of your control. It's not like
me changing the channel for an inning and then back again will change the
outcome of the game. The speech patterns of a king on a different shore
aided by someone you've never met will not change with your wish for it to.
The chocolate on the stick, yes I could have given it to her or even placed
it in her mouth slowly myself, but it's still such a small thing in the world.
And just think, this happens constantly around us. You just have to scoop
it up. You just have to let it happen.

Always feel the power of someone else's success. It's contagious. It can
illicit great changes in your world, for the world.

Shapter's Documentary Should Be Required Viewing

I watched a documentary, directed by Andrew Shapter of Austin, 
recently and recommend it to everyone. Get it on Hulu or Netflix or 
the library or somewhere. Though not about the publishing industry, 
the entire documentary parallels it. 

Interviews include Branford Marsalis, Bonnie Raitt, Dave Matthews, 
Eryka Badu, Questlove, Eric Clapton, and Doyle Bramhall, among others, 
including many former major music label professionals who have now 
moved to smaller labels. 

Dave Matthews discusses a lot about how radio and the major music 
labels are now like publishing houses, that they can only take and 
produce what they feel is either from an already big name or from 
someone who looks like they will be mainstream. It takes years for 
someone new, with new material, with original writing and 
performance skills, to be heard. Doyle Bramhall said the same, eluding 
that he was becoming depressed with a big label who couldn't figure 
out how to market him and wanted to change his whole concept, how 
he refused and went on his own again, and how it wasn't until 
Eric Clapton recognized hiw work that things changed.

Both Branford Marsalis and Bonnie Raitt discussed that it is based on 
appearance and allowing yourself to be marketable to how the major 
labels want you to be for you to make it these days in the industry, 
or at least break in. Talent and originality won't cut it. I remember 
Branford making a remark at around the 28-29 minute mark that kind 
of made me raise my eyebrows, but I can't recall it now. 

There is some fantastic music throughout the documentary as well, 
so watch it for no other reason that that, but the comparison to big 
publishing houses, how the market is changing, how new and original 
work will go unnoticed, or at least take a lot of time to get noticed, 
how the public is now expected to react to the changing market, say 
ebooks and such, is all highly recognizable.

Some Books You Just Can't Let Go

I was looking at a line of books earlier on one of our shelves and
noticed a favorite of mine.

The book is "The National Gallery Address Book." That's right, it's 
an address book, one I have never written a word in. I found it 
roughly fifteen years ago on a bargain stand for a buck fifty. 
It's 8 inches tall and 10 inches wide, with beautiful cover art by 
Canaletto, "Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh." But you wouldn't 
know that by just opening the cover, because when you open the 
cover and pass over the first completely blank page, you next 
stumble onto a page that starts with an X and several letters 
upside down.

Every bit of art, which begins every letter, and every address and 
note page are printed upside down, or right side up if you turn the 
book over and upside down. I thought what a strange find and 
easily paid for it. I may never write in it. My other address book 
is still working fine.

Who else has books like these in their library?