Refrigerator Magnets 29: Love Letter to an Alien
Category: Uncategorized
[blank renku] fledgling
fledgling rustles leafbed caution grows on bold first flight holding our breaths
As parent, I look on as someone's child on tender wings embarks on spring's first flight.
Paul Guernsey © 2020
The F-Word
[Question]
What is it with you and the F-word? [0] You’re just like my father the way you object to it.
[Answer]
The F-word is coarse. It debases everything around it, but mostly its user.
If art is the process of communicating ideas or feelings, [1] the F-word is the artistic equivalent of a slap in the face. The quality of doing, the process [2] employed by its user is a brute force attempt to infuse importance into the idea or feeling communicated. The word’s intent is to startle and shock the listener into agreement. This is not Understanding. It is Acquiescence [3] in the face of unwarranted forceful emotion. It is disparaging, disrespectful and dismissive of the listener’s choice to evaluate the communication and assign his own importance to it.
Users of the F-word, please know this: Upon hearing its use I apply a Reductive Filter to the whole communication, including its source, stripping them of any unearned importance or validity. Additional points are taken off for repetition and increased volume.
Paul Guernsey © 2020
[0] applies also to most curse words.
[1] art 1. something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings; a piece of modern/contemporary art; It’s a remarkable picture, but is it art? 4. an activity that is done to create something beautiful or to express important ideas or feelings
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/art
[2] “Art resides in the quality of doing; process is not magic.” – Charles Eames
https://www.treehugger.com/culture/eames-appreciation-world-through-common-objects.html
[3] Acquiescence: passive acceptance or submission
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acquiescence
Scandinavian Winter Start
Some wonderful photos from Scandinavia by U.S. Nordic ski Olympic veteran, Caitlin Patterson.
I love all these shots, but was especially charmed by the humility of style designed into the “warming hut” in Beitostolen, Norway, about 1/3 of the way down Patterson’s post. I love how the doorway is framed by the roof-line, accentuated by the contrasting cone of snow.
<!– /wp:paragraph –>Tahquamenon Falls in 45 Seconds
Refrigerator magnets 008
Heart
Refrigerator Magnets 006
Freedom’s Friendly Flight
The father bird is spelled and leaves their crowded nest. As mother settles in, and hatchling chicks peep welcoming hellos. A moment’s pause upon a nearby branch, and he is off. He”s off to Wade in shallow waters in the failing dusky light, to hunt to fish, but first to stretch his wings in freedom’s friendly flight.
[haiku] southern winter rain
southern winter rain;
the puddle grows wide and deep;
croaking of the frog;
Paul Guernsey Player © 2019
Impatient as the Passing Waves
The Water’s Way* is not a patient man.
More like a fickle lover, who cannot
make up his mind and choose a mate,
but washes down the path of lowest strain.
And nor is Rock as solid as it sounds,
Whose meteoric birth and silty death
are but a cycle much like water’s constant
churn from cloud to rain to sea and ice.
“Upon this rock I will build my church,”
as Jesus spoke to Peter, Petra, Rock.
This metaphoric church is built on nothing
more than future sand or fire scalded
molten magma ooze – a metamorphic
church as surely as the protolithic
sandstone to a hardened quartzite sets.
The Water’s Way is formed by Rocks, and Rocks,
though prominent, are merely islands on
a plastic sea, and though they mark our way,
and stud our maps, they are but passing ships,
as transient as stars, whose constellations
sway and drift appart upon the sky
as eons pass. And so, our Gods no more
than drifters are, and no more patient than
the passing waves.
Paul Guernsey Player © 2019/02/07
*in response to this sentence from Low Tide, by Brightly Blue:
“Now as I looked down, the receding water revealed a wealth of complex shapes where the rugged promontory is wearing away bit by bit, as water works its infinitely patient way through rock.”
Today’s views, by country:
Thanks, Guernsey!
See also…
