My brother graduated! From college! CONGRATULATIONS, IAN!
Category: People
David Flora steps up with a terzanelle of his own–ignoring word count, but with fantastic use of full-line rhyme as a substitute for repetition and slick iambic pentameter (in which terzanelles are really supposed to be).
Fixed-format poetry was just one more subgenre of constrained writing, which is probably why I find old forms so much more interesting than those of modern and postmodern poetry. Constraints like the terzanelle provide so much opportunity for innovation, as Holly and Flora have just demonstrated. I still think the best explanation of the value therein comes from Constrained.org’s FAQ:
“Constraints set additional challenges to the writer. Writing to a constraint is like solving a puzzle. Graceful solutions have a pleasing feel – like watching the moves of a chess master – on top of their value as stories.”
I’m always delighted to rediscover that my friends are masterful, in some way or many.
In other Anacrusis-tangent news, I’m happy to report that Holly threw my gauntlet right back in my face and did, in fact, prove me wrong. I reprint her story-poem here, with her permission, to keep it from getting lost to the winds of LJ-feed comment rot:
The Burger King is fat with youth,
With adolescent pageantry,
With shining eyes revealing truth.He’s fifty-two; unagingly
He lounges over golden thrones
With adolescent pageantry.Unwrinkled cheeks, uncreaking bones;
But nothing sinster to dread.
He lounges over golden thrones.No bloody baths, no gingerbread.
He chargrills souls to golden brown
But nothing sinister to dread.Adorned with shining paper crown
His sceptre’s high; his forehead clear;
He chargrills souls to golden brownAnd swallows them with ginger beer.
The Burger King is fat with youth,
His sceptre’s high, his forehead clear
With shining eyes revealing truth.
You won’t be able to read this without an LJ account and a membership in Anti-Afflatus, but the mighty Riana has posted a brilliant sequel to Asuka.
Lessig and company have been saying this for so long people have forgotten about it, but this is exactly why it’s good to let go of the protection and restriction of full copyright: if you let people use your cool stuff without begging and paying and declaring intent, there will be more cool stuff than there was before.
Bee and Graham are here! We ate some tremendous meals and toured our favorite parts of Bardstown, which entailed me buying a lot of crap. One of those meals was my second time eating the Tierra y Mar, now called the Beef and Shrimp Diablo; I also talked Michael, Lisa and Graham into trying it. We unanimously agreed that it did not put the lie to my earlier ravings. If you are in Louisville and looking to find maybe the best single meal in the city, you need to go to the Mayan Gypsy and order the Beef and Shrimp Diablo with corn cakes and fried plantains. Get the goat cheese and black bean empanadas, too, and try the exceptionally rich chocolate mousselike cake.
I felt expanded in more ways than one after that meal: as if my consciousness were enriched, my senses stretched out and switched on. I felt taller. I felt really, really full.
Obligatory reflection
Thanks for everybody who called, wrote or commented to send me birthday wishes, and to all the people who showed up at my partylike entity. You’re all great! And I am made happy by material possessions: DC gave me more of the awesome restricted-access Actors Theatre notebooks, and Maria gave me about a jillion books and DVDs and an ice cream cake and apparently something else that hasn’t arrived yet, and Lisa gave me–exclamation marks!–my first-ever illustrated story! (Of Fortado.)
Despite my inexplicable knee-jerk belief of the past several months that I’ve been 26, I’m 24. Tonight I sent off the third-to-last thing I have to do to graduate. Almost done.
It doesn’t honestly feel like I’ve lived in Louisville that long. I feel so much more competent now, in so many areas, than I did two years ago: working with humans, writing code, writing, traveling, using public transportation, applying the principles of aikido to solve nonphysical conflicts–all the things I want to spend my whole life doing.
Also, I think this is the year my brain starts dying!
I recently discovered Scott Thigpen’s Flickr stream, thanks to Grumpy Tim Coe pointing out his “Sad People in Disney World” set. I have thought Scott Thigpen and the things he draws were awesome since about 2000, so it’s neat to see the stuff he photographs.
Anyway, I thought Jon and Amanda would want to know that he recently captured the exotic Cheshire Pug.
God to align the God
“By the energy of the alcohol
the virgin Mary was made man.”
The Nicene Creed, babeljacked. Man, I don’t know whether it’s funny or a million stories waiting to happen. Or maybe just a stupid Dan Brown book.
Also, “babel-” totally needs to be a prefix in the Futurologian Congress. PS Dear Leonard: can the Eater of Meaning maybe do this someday?
Pookie
He was a canine Houdini, absolutely brilliant at escaping whatever fences, gates or other barriers we could set up to keep him safe. He was brick-stupid about everything else: glass doors, bigger dogs, cars. Those two things in combination don’t make for a long life expectancy; it’s kind of surprising that he lived to be eleven.
Pookie was always nominally my dog, although Ian took care of him more often, and after we moved out he was really my mom’s. She found him, Friday afternoon, on the wrong side of the fence around Kelly Ridge. There wasn’t any real evidence of what exactly happened. Could have been a car, or another dog, or some unknown medical problem.
He was a shih tzu, the kind you see like little furry hovercraft on shows: glossy, legless, gliding. Pookie never looked like that. His fur was short, tangled and dirty; he smelled like a dog. He lived outdoors, and always seemed satisfied with that.
After Mom sold the house, Pookie spent much more time with Joe and his giant antisocial dog, Greg Brown, out on the ridge. I don’t know how Greg and Pookie first behaved around each other, but by the time I saw them together they were inseparable. Pookie was already nine, but he acted like a dog finally growing up: his body got thicker and more muscular, and he seemed more reserved, less goofy. Greg never let anyone he didn’t trust near his protege.
When he was wet he looked like a rat, but when his hair was just the right length he looked like those Chinese statues of lions. I’ve never met anyone more confident, or more trusting, or who spent his entire life in such a happy mood.
