Saturday, July 28, 2007

Santa y Rodolfo



I am one step closer to cleaning and organizing my room, finally. It won't look great until I find a studio, just because I have so much in art supplies, paintings, paper, and whatnot just around my room. At least I organized the pictures and cleaned around the mirror. That's where the picture of pauli and me at Kohl's comes from.

My head is aching a little..............

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

deleting history/poems

I'm deleting my emails from the uark.edu account that will soon be deleted. They only keep it open until the 12th day of the semester of which you are not longer a student. That semester, for me, is going to start very soon. And somehow going through the emails from friends, listservs, and organizations is filling my heart with a little sadness. Not that it hadn't hit me the fact that college is now part of the past, but I'm not where I was hoping to be where this time were to come.
It's not my fault that I'm not there yet. It's just that I'm not meant to be there yet. There are circumstances that won't let me get past a certain point, and sadly, many can't understand and so they think I'm the one who doesn't make it happen.....and they think I can't see it in their eyes.

Anyhow, I found a couple of poems in one of the two thousand emails I'm going through right now. I had emailed these to myself for an assignment, but oh how they speak to me!

Here they are:


I must have known you
-- by Ricky Flores

I must have known you
We passed each other a thousand times
Never talking yet forever, you, echoing in my memory

I must have known you
Through the fog of time resonating like a beating heart fading in the distance
Never talking yet,

Yet,

There you are

Shaping everything through the passion of your words
That I never heard
Not once in my lifetime

Yet,

There they are

Always there

My life written out on a page that I never saw
My life intimately exposed on a page for all to see
Was that life, my own, written on the page as you stood watch over me?
Or did I take yours and made it my own?

I must have known you
How else do I explain the eerie semblance of our lives?
That connection of remembrance of a life that you lived or was that life my own?

In the fog of time we parted and what was left was the page

______________________________


Forgetfulness by Billy Collins


The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

_______________________________

I Wanted by Roque Dalton

I wanted to talk about life of all its melodious
corners I want to gather in a river of words
the dreams and the names what is left unsaid
in the newspapers the pains of the solitary
surprised in the nooks of the rain
rescue the leafless parabolas of lovers and give them to you
laid before the games played by a child
elaborating his sweet daily destruction
I wanted to pronounce the syllables of the people
the sounds of its grief
show you where their hearts limp
insinuate those who only deserve a bullet
in the back tell you of my own countries
impose on you from the exoduses from the great
emigrations which opened up all the roads of the world
of the love of even the bedraggled one over there
by the ditches
speak to you of the trains
of my friend who killed himself with another’s knife
of the history of all the men broken
by blindness by myth’s reefs
of the century which my three sons will outlast
of the bird’s tongue and the furious foam
in the stampede of the great four-legged beast
and I wanted to talk to you of the Revolution
of Cuba and the Soviet Union
and of the girl that I love for her eyes
of shortened storm
and of your lives filled with dawns
and of people who ask who saw you who said that
how could it’ve been done I got here
before you
and of all of nature’s things
and of the heart and its testimonies
of the last fingerprints before total annihilation
of the tiny animals and of tenderness
I wanted to yes say to you all of that and tell you
lots of stories I know and in turn were told to me
or that I learned by living in that great room of pain
and things said by other poets before me
and that are good for you to know
And I can’t give you more — closed door of poetry —
than my own corpse beheaded in the sand.

Friday, July 20, 2007

I almost drove into the sunset


I almost drove into the sunset, originally uploaded by bgutierrez.

It was 8:28 pm and the sun was gone from the horizon, it set while I wasn't looking and now the night was making her entrance. So glorious, by touching a few clouds with a delicate, soft pink. I was driving home.

Had I been there a few minutes early I would have felt as if I was driving into the sunset. I love that feeling. Though the falling night colors can read my soul and give me a smile.

It was a nice drive. On a day filled with different stories and discussions of government incompetency and social classes. It was a day of telling stories of Katrina.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

FEMA failed... once again.

I am pissed. I read this today and just could not believe the words on the screen. Katrina truly came to wash off the make up that covered this industrialized nation.

the article HERE.

"At a hearing this morning of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, investigators released internal e-mails indicating that FEMA lawyers rejected environmental testing out of fear that the agency would then become legally liable if health problems emerged among as many as 120,000 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lived in trailers.

The formaldehyde controversy, revived scrutiny of the disaster-response agency. Its sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 was chronicled in a series of government reports and led to a congressional overhaul earlier this year.

Today, Waxman and Davis charged that FEMA's apparent ongoing indifference to storm victims and resistance to investigators marked an infuriating pattern of bureaucratic self-protection that augurs poorly for the nation's emergency preparedness."

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Sides


poor America, originally uploaded by mh301179.

There's a part of America that doesn't get much publicity....

"Just under 13 percent of the U.S. population lives in poverty, a shockingly high figure in a nation where hundreds of thousands of people recently lined up for the privilege of buying a $599 iPhone."

.... it's a hard topic. Maddening.
link

Monday, July 16, 2007

Two Hours, Ten Minutes, and Twelve Seconds


She calls me "B", originally uploaded by bgutierrez.

THAT is how much time I just spent on the phone talking to a friend. That's a record for me in a LONG TIME. So I had to say something about it.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Backyard moments


Cherries, originally uploaded by bgutierrez.

After what seemed to be a eternity, I finished mowing the grass at home. We had some cherries, water, and time with the family. Later I enjoyed some lighting bugs sights and some movies. There's a room waiting to be organized and cleaned. I have got to get up and do that.

My camera broke a couple of weeks ago. I haven't had much photo-bliss since then, but a friend of mine gave me the vivitar 5340 she had and I've used that a couple of times. I hope that by the end of the year I will have my camera fixed or gotten another one. Canon, I hope. In the meantime I have to make the best of what I have.

.... and maybe get some more cherries.

Friday, July 13, 2007

A big wall, space, and inspiration


IMG_8307.JPG, originally uploaded by Mason Poe.

I find myself wanting these things. Looking for them in the most pasive way you can imagine. There are wishes and dreams in me, but they seem to be stuck. I don't know why or how it happened, but I know it's necessary. Something tells me that when I come out of this small (I hope) stage wonderful things will happen. And maybe I'll even get my big wall, my space, and my inspiration.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Summer 07


Summer 07, originally uploaded by bgutierrez.

I took down my "B to Z" painting exhibit today and put up a photo exhibit I will be sharing with another artist. He'll be exhibiting paintings and I will be exhibiting photos.... for the first time ever. My part of the exhibit is called Katrina Stories. All the photos are from New Orleans.

I am tired. And have been sick since July 4th.... all my time off I've spent recuperating. Still not where I should be, although I'm better now.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

I love lightning bugs

and this campaign:

Ocean meets land


Ocean meets land, originally uploaded by J. Star.

I'm sick.

Monday, July 02, 2007

something


something, originally uploaded by iamdamiandotcom.

I went "postsecret" hunting today.
found this.