the page

 

Dear Reader,

Sometimes I think about why we read; why I read; why one would read.  The other place, yes, of course- the destination that is not here.  The other voices, the new landscapes.  So, for variety, yes, and sometimes to be validated, and a lot of reading I think might be to increase one's status.  This is eggshell territory, I know- I am suggesting, very, very faintly, that we read to show off.  Why faintly?  Because I think on balance, it is a very minor infraction, showing off our intellects to other readers who are busy showing off their intellects.  I mention it only because I think back on my days, and I want to redact some of my show off statements.  I have regrets about throwing my intellectual weight around.  Don't you worry, though, I am still telling myself I am a paragon of well readness, an empress of big words and complex ideas; I am just hoping, at this point, not to sound like one.  

And what of the less public reasons we might read?  The personal, the private reasons; the reasons we don't tell everyone.  The things we maybe don't say on our media platforms.  We read for greater understanding, which might come under validation.  We read to be comforted, I reckon, and that seems okay to me.  I suggest another category, that we might call 'joyful surprise.'  This is that great feeling where a sentence just yells out at you, flashing its poetic lights and sirens all over the page.  This is a reason to read that can make you run and tell someone else about what you read, except you aren't showing off, you are excited and you actually want to share it; like a really great watermelon, or a cake:  "Hey, you have to try this!  It is so delicious!"

Yes, I am taking the usual scenic route: this is the sentence I want to slice into cold, juicy triangles and give to you today:  "She went looking for Brandon's Memorabilia (a place one of her artist friends told her about) to load up on antique paper angels and fold-out valentines and other useless tendernesses."  Eve Babitz, in Sex and Rage, page 196- in case you want to run out to your library and read immediately for yourself, the beautiful, exquisite phrase: useless tendernesses.

When I read it, useless tendernesses, I was stopped cold.  It all came to a swirling, gyrating center: of course!  It is all useless tendernesses!  My whole purpose in life, my time here, the reason for doing anything!  Useless tendernesses; all my paintings will be titled this from now on!  I will get a tattoo:  Useless Tendernesses!  I will get two: on both arms, reading right and left, and mirror-wise, so I can see it too.  The whole book could have been just blah blah blah printed endlessly, if there was a prize like this in the box!*

You might think, here, mistakenly, that I am being sardonic, or glib, or some damned thing, but what I am meaning is, yes, useless tendernesses, but not, not, not that tenderness is useless.  The whole point is tenderness is maybe all we can try for, useless and all, useless especially.

*  Of course it is a wonderful book, and not at all endless blah blah blah.

PS  I had another photo I was choosing between to lede/lead here.  It was a photo of book spines on my shelf- some read, some to be read, including Sex and Rage, but it felt a little show-offy, in a way that the sloppy stitch work on my denim shirt did not.

first blooms

 

recently

 

party food politics

 

Dear Diner,

The Big Thing we all just had; you know, the Pandemic?  I know it threw light on things for you, too, and one thing that got all kinds of spotlit for me was grocery shopping, and eating 'out,' and how enslaving & class structuring those two activities are, how much class politics there are in food.  I know!  So much to talk about!  Check out this thoughtful essay from Vittles, and we will return to these topics again soon.

PS  A history, for dipping into.

prickly unlearning

 

Dear Hillside,

I keep seeing you, at this time of year, separating into patches of color; the flaxen hair, yes, and the gray green of star thistle, the brighter yellow and green of mustard.  It interferes, this patchiness with my enjoyment of your form;  my stupid, sluggish artist eyes want less surface 'the better to see you with, my dear; the better to eat you with, my dear.'  But, that is all such simplistic simplifying; the kind I want to turn down in the great soundboard of my mind.  Trying to see essentials has trained me to annoyance with small details and difference, and what a pity!  

Please let me try again, to see and love the prickly, invasive patches, the discrete surfaces, and the larger form they dwell upon.  I want you, like you are, with all the prickles and snagging bitter sharpnesses.  Why would I learn to love only smooth undifferentiated expanses?

impression

 

Dear Recent History,

You know how a lot of artists and makers really buried the needle during the pandemic?  Churning out all kinds of daily delights?  People made dozens of pairs of socks, they repainted, they made beautiful and poignant music and youTube videos, they planted flowers, they expressed their anxiety in all kinds of wonderful ways.  I did not.  I had none of that kind of energy.  To me, it felt like I was waiting in line at the scary roller coaster, moving very slowly towards my turn in the terrifying little cart; not a time to focus on creative pursuits at all.  My mind was frantic in its existential crisis.

I know somewhere out there, there must be one other person, maybe even five or ten, who felt like I did; too sad to make much of anything.  I didn't really know before that huge global event (the event, I expect, of my lifetime, even though no one even talks about it anymore) that my impulse to make art comes from something like joy.  I wasn't feeling any joy, or even any neutral sort of okayness.  I know some of you are out there; I hope you know that our way of getting through was fine too; it's possible we may have felt some guilt about 'wasting all that free time.'  We might still feel that we ought to feel that, but, with the power vested in me as a human who did not feel like being productive during that planet-wide tragedy, I officially absolve you (& myself) from all that crap.  We did the right thing, which was no-thing at all.  Doing nothing is fine, even best in many cases.

Still, I know you were marking time in some way; I made one of these little marks at the end of each day, in this cherry wood plank that a printmaker gave me.  I didn't start right away, I had to back fill about 38 marks or so; and sometime after the second year, after the vaccines didn't evaporate the virus, I thought, oooh, this is maybe not going to end in any kind of definitive way....

I kept making marks until May of last year; when I caught the dratted crud Covid finally.  After days of illness and finally testing negative, I was so debilitatingly tired that I got disgusted with the project; I was never going to be done making marks.  My Father caught Covid for the third time, this May.  It is printed now, and 'finished' in a sense.  There could be other endings for this board, too: cutting it up, burning it, using the back- saving it until time demands to be counted in that way again.

Baking, July.

 

Dear July,

I am trying to pace myself in your heat wave- this is day 4; there are 6 to 10 more!  There is no ice cream; we ate it in the pre-heat heat wave of a week ago.  We had cake instead.  Cake is brought to me today through the great and glorious technology of Modern Conveniences.  A little after the last big record shattering (and mentally scarring) heat wave of  the First Covid Year of 2020, we got a spiffing heat exchange air conditioner.  And last year, I was given a hand me down very Fancy Toaster Oven.  

This toaster oven is not at all like Old Bess, our beloved stove which runs on great gobs of propane; the emissions of which fill our well sealed straw bale house, especially when you don't want to open the door or window to let in the triple digit heat.  This Little Bess, a Bessie, really, is electric and using it does not make the red light flash on the Units of Death* meter we have in the kitchen.  It heats up in an absurdly short time, and can cook some fairly large things, like this cake!

It's adapted from a recipe from the wonderful people at Hayden Flour Mills.  Here is the original, and this is what I made today, with just a bowl and a spoon; no mixer required.

1/2 cup light olive oil (one that doesn't taste of olives)

1 cup sour cream 

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

1 egg

      Mix all the above in a bowl, until it isn't lumpy.  Add:

1/2 cup tortilla flour (masa harina, for instance, or use more A. P. flour, or go crazy, and add cornmeal or buckwheat flour)

1 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt.

     Mix all this until it isn't lumpy and pour it into a 8 inch, greased, round pan.  Bake it in Little Bessie, or Old Bess, or whatever you have for an oven, for about 30 minutes at 325 degrees.

Now, you can eat it as it is, or you can make a simple glaze:  In this instance, 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, and heavy cream until it is the right viscosity (trust yourself!).  But, this cake would be great with ice cream or whipped cream, or even whipped up ricotta!  It's what Marion Cunningham would call a "plain cake" and plain here means it is like a tee shirt, it goes with everything!

* AKA carbon dioxide monitor.

PS I almost forgot your song, July!  I know, I know; the drinking, the driving, the objectification of women, but, oh!  The euphemisms, the longing, the story; and anyway, I have not been known as the saint of San Joaquin!

learn the words, you might sing this

 

ufo

Dear Duckies,

Here is your song for today!  And, remember, don't, don't, Don't Believe the Hype.  

Ground Plane XVIII

 

Where the hell have you two been?

 

Freedom soundsystem.

Dear Unknown to Me,

Hey!  I love your voices- I can't believe I never knew you before now!  My DJ just played Norma Fraser's version, and it got me to thinking about who else has recorded this song, which is how I found P. P. Arnold.  Here they both are, and sounding so beautiful, on Radio Dodo, your Friday Dance Party tracks for the second Friday of summer!

The First Cut.

The Second First Cut.

Oh, it's so good; let's have some more!

The Third.

The Fourth.  (Oh!  Such a White Orchestral intro!  Amazing!  It gets so deeply maudlin, hymnal, Country & Western, doesn't it?)

The Fifth.

The Sixth.

keeping it together & the emotional labor blues

 

Guy Debord

Dear Workers,

You come to a time, and that time could be now, when you find yourself deep in a task that you thought you'd seen the last of.  You unbend from your load, straight up into an Awareness that you have been here before.  

You have been holding things together for 9 hours straight, and this is the 4th day of such straight-i-tude, and you have NOT barked at anyone, nor have you burst into tears at the total futility of it all; no, you have patiently suffered all the minor slings and arrows, all the grim facts (such as: no one even noticed that I got the food!  No one said thank you when I washed all those dishes!  I told that story to keep the ball rolling and people said I was stupid for not 'correcting' the hapless person in the story!), and you notice that you have done this easily 1,000 times.  Ah, no, not easily, but uncomplainingly, is my point.  You have held it together for your friends, your family, your work colleagues, all without a single error, and also without a single notice.  

The thing here, that I am trying to tell you, is that the thanks wouldn't even cover it at this point, and the real terrible thing, as you straighten up into that aforementioned Awareness, is that what you really want is to be able to avoid these Kind of Situations where you step into the Keep It All Together person role, where you are lifting everyone's emotional baggage up, up, up again!  

As for my own complicity in this, I know, that just like my father has often said, when asked what he might need (vis-à-vis: tools) while undertaking some harebrained repair job, "I need to have my head examined!"

PS  Your song for today is Career Opportunities!  And, this one, too.

a June tune

 

Courtesy of Hyperfine.

Dear Listener,

Here is your song for today; indeed, your tune for June!  It's a lovely, fugue-y spiral of a song- may you love it as much as I!  Happy Solstice!

PS More ways to see what the sun is up to.

I was going....

 

Dear You,

Hey, it's me again.  I had to write again, because I don't want to read even One More Word before I tell you something.  It's because it changes me, all the words, all the ideas; it makes me doubt my feelings, my memories, and mostly that is fine, but I really want to explain something in my own way, before it has slipped into the shadow of what The Real Writers have said.  (n.b. I believe there are actually only two modes, two verby places you can be:  Writing, or not writing.  Both are very real.  The funny bit is that there is no difference until there is this complimentary (symbiotic? parasitic?) action place that you can be:  Reading, or not reading).  

Well that is more than the usual amount of instructions, isn't it?  It's just my way of beating about the bush, hoping to feel more at home with my topic.  Let me start again:

Title:  Worldbuilding.

Dear You,

It's something about world-making. About the audience, about who it is for, this thing you make, you made.  It wasn't a castigation for me to be a mom, it was a redirecting, a new audience for the things, worlds, I made.

At night, I would build great towering block sculptures on a low/coffee table (this table, even, was 'made'; it had been a normal, chair height table; we cut the pedestal in half, and I painted the top of it pale yellow, and the apron with lines from the Wordsworth poem about daffodils), and my son (which is not how I have trained myself to say it, I avoid it, the damned 'my.' Not my son, but a son of mine, a person, who exists with or with out my mineness), my son would wake each morning and hurry down to topple these block towers.  It was a percussive, joyful destruction that was the start of day building for and with him.  A railroad, a story book, a cake, a drawing, a mess.  I made these things for an audience of one, and it was the most appreciative audience you can imagine- utterly devoted.  He loved everything I did, and I loved everything he did.  Occasionally there was some kind of sense of my value from an external point of view that tripped me up, that made me worry I was nothing, or that I should be doing something else.  The work of it, performing mother, performing family, felt great to me; it was only the occasional intrusion of the outside world, another world, that had me wondering.  Someone would say, 'can't he make his own sandwich,' and I would feel terrible, like I had stolen his independence and subjugated my own.  When you are very high, you can also fall to a very low down, I guess.

You can say what you want about the artistic impulse and vocation, but when I make something, a painting say, or these words here, these writings, I want someone to see them, I want an audience, a witness to my construction, and when you do something for someone, when you make them a sandwich, a scarf, an afternoon of conversation, you are getting your audience.  The thing that you make and the audience are totally interchangeable.  You make a party, you make a statement, you write a letter, you write a poem.  You give it to friends, family, a publisher (so they can reject it).  

This has been on my mind for years, this contrary feeling I have about being a mother, about having been a mother.  It was the same for me, to make a stuffed velvet ball with a jingle bell in it, or a wooden rattle, as to make a sculpture; the difference only was in that the child really, really appreciated it, thought it was magic to have made it.  I have not received such acknowledgement of my art from anyone else.

A trouble arises in me still; a concern that this makes me soft, un-ambitious, a flabby feminist.  But I hope that maybe you will read this and find it acceptable, this delineation of the truth of my experience... instead of continued hiding and hoping that no one notices how good I had it, how much fun it was to be appreciated as a builder of worlds, a maker The World.  

skate day: 2200

Dear Old Companions: Effort, Progress, Betterment, Frustration, and Okay-ness,

I am trying to re-arrange my mind's stupid hierarchies.  You know the ones I mean, the best, better, goal-oriented, value-praising, A for effort-izing that we do to ourselves, when, there must be, must be a way of less absurdity, of less striving and hunting, seeking and straining.  I want the effortlessness of the behavior of gravity on water, of rain, or dust motes that float in light.  No, I don't mean in my skating (although, yes, of course!), I mean in my thinking about the past and future of my skating.  Yeah, I want the now, and I bet you do too, but there it comes again: why is this only as far as you have come?  I don't mean the raw number of days; those are immutable facts and they are fine, very fine:  2200 days of skating.  The Trouble lies in other metrics; the Progress.  How I wish I'd never met Progress!  Blah; I hate him!   

Still, from these broken bits of feelings and memories, let me try to make something we can use:  my message today, from the land of daily skating, is that we cannot let our goal be to 'get better,' because sometimes we don't improve, we don't progress, we might, even, Never Actually Get There.  "There" in this case being a three-turn that finishes in skating on the skating foot, with the other remaining suspended above the floor.  Even for a second!!!   This is sounding like Frustration, and there has been some, certainly, but I am aiming for a place where even that is okay.  I think pretending might lead to embodiment, so let us spend the final paragraph pretending towards a non-goal, an okay-ness.

Next time we talk about roller skating, another 100 days may have passed, and I may have tried the Forward Outside Three Turn another 1,000 times, and I may not have tried it even once, but, we will meet here and I will suggest that skating is it's own reward, although, that reward is not conventional, not transferable, and not Valuable.  The reward is the non-reward, the entirely voluntary nature of rolling with wheels on your feet for no reason, heading no-where.  It's a feeling you maybe forgot, but you probably had it when you were a kid:  a feeling that you are building your own thing, here, this experience of life, and it was all yours.  I won't use that abused and manipulating four letter word that starts with f, but you know what I mean.

PS  Here is a fine tune for today, and what a glorious cavalcade of roller skaters!

a even paler white room

 

The Tree, 1964, Agnes Martin.  If it feels like you aren't getting it, try this interpretation.

Dear Radio Dodo Head,

We got a car, a new car, about 2 years ago, and it came with a lot of Modern Stuff, including a satellite radio subscription (which ran out, and then we had to buy it, because addiction is like that), and, wonder of wonders, it has a channel on it playing elevator music 24/7!  I think I am actually not supposed to tell you this, this is the 'guilty pleasure' you read about and think:  What the hell?  You are making a confession of chocolate ding dongs?  Seriously?  Anyway, the ding dong doesn't taste like I remember it, but the muzak still sounds like muzak, and I love listening to it. 

It was born for me to love, and for you to love too; like the pointless cat cafe 'game' you have on your cell phone; muzak is built to couple with your dopamine receptors.  When you occasionally surface from the euphoria induced by the engineered perfection of this sonic morphine drip, you notice that the song, the music's re-arrangement reveals details & structures you did not see before.  It is like an aerial view of your very familiar neighborhood.  You know this song, you know it like crazy, comme ta poche, and here it is, made new, made alien, made deeper.  You suddenly hear the echoes of the music of the ages in say, Desperado; you hear the 1950's in a song, the 1600's, even the liturgical chant of the middle ages.  You achieve a oneness with the song that would not occur with just another listening to the usual version.  It's like seeing with x-ray eyes, or being shown the insides of the pocket watch;  ah, so that's what makes it tick!

Hearing this song instrumentalized (a song I love for its surreal and mysterious narrative:* Who is this miller?  What is his tale?) it was unveiled as a stately processional suitable for a graduation, wedding, or funeral!  How could I have missed that?   Check it out, it is your song for the day!

* And for its bustle-in-the-hedgerow-y Britishness!  Take another, White Room for example, it makes a fine pairing.  More is more, comme d'habitude.

something sweet

 

Dear Y'all,

Can you believe the beauty of these?  Do you know that they are not beach glass, but hard candy!  If the trompe-l'œil of it doesn't send you into paroxysms of joy, then, know this: they are different flavors, and what flavors!  I don't recognize them with surety, which is another delightful aspect of this wonderful gift from a colleague.  There is one kind of herbal one, varied citrus flavors, cinnamon, and one that is root beer-esque, which I believe to be horehound, which is a great word just to say!  I love this small jar of kindness very much, and especially as it was so unexpected and thoughtful!

oddly satisfying

 

Dear Reader,

The phrase, the two word combination is oddly satisfying, but what do people mean in saying it?  Is it a satisfaction that feels odd, or is it odd that it feels satisfying?  Because, finding yourself satisfied is an odd feeling, for sure;  I don't think we give much attention to how we feel and whether it is odd, or satisfying.  

The thing I find sometimes, and it is odd, I guess, or at least rare, is a feeling of elation.  Or a dawning giddiness.  A sudden awareness of lightness.  Oh, and it is also like when you get to yell "bingo" because you have filled in your board; Bingo is such a metaphor for my emotional landscape!  Maybe yours, too?  You are working away, listening, putting markers on the co-ordinates, focused on the task at hand, and then, pow!  Bingo!  Up you jump (figuratively) from the flow of attention to a big burst of extroverted yelling.  It's a marvel of experience, playing Bingo.

You may need convincing- it isn't strategic; but you have to pay attention.  I used to play in our community center as a 13 year old; a lot of people older than I were there, and you played for a dime, so when you won, when you bingoed, you'd get a paper cup with maybe $2.70 in it.  I really loved the way this game brought people of different ages into the same, focused space.  It's odd, yes, and satisfying, too.

bonus bag!

 

Dear Had Enough,

I know, I know, but this one is so great!  All the bags and baskets here are great!

unneeded, last

 

Dear Patients,

This is it, our last unneeded bag!  I need to go now, and clean out my purse!

unneeded, no. 7

 

Dear Purse Strings,

Wouldn't you love, just love, to open up this bag and take out an apple?  More beautiful wood things at Salakauppa.

unneeded, or?

 

Dear Shoulder Strapped,

This acorn bag is my favorite of this week o'bags!  See it, maybe even buy it, here.

Unneeded, no. 5

 

Dear Baggists,

This lobster backpack would make your whole outfit; See the striped lining here, and tune in tomorrow for another exciting bag; same bag channel, same bag time!

unneeded, no. 4

 

Dear In the Bag,

This one is a super cute pooch pouch!  Look at more views, right here.

unneeded, no. 3

 

Dear Pursed,

I was thinking that a cheeseburger handbag goes beyond unneeded right into unwanted, but, a Google image search will give you many more burger bag options than you ever thought possible!

unneeded, again

 

Dear Toter,

Yes, it's another handbag you don't need, and you probably don't even want!  Check out more wicker critter bags at Wicker Darling.

Stay tuned for further baggage!

file under: unneeded

 

Dear Appreciators of the Fabulous,

I find these things and I just want so much to buy them for you!  I know, I know, you don't need it, you don't want more things, and you wouldn't use it, but oh!  I still think that a box with a bow containing this toast bag would be a welcome antidote to life's slings and arrows.  This bag could complete your life and utter satisfaction, no?  The beautiful thing about this flattened, techy, 90 percent visual universe we are in here, this little corner booth at the Internet Diner, is that I can give you 8 useless handbags a week, and no one need suffer any actual physical contact with money or purses!

That gives me an idea...

PS  Your bread song for the day!

rocks, rabbit

 

missed out

 

Dear Somebody,

Did you do this?  Did you get a chance to be Somebody?  I didn't even have a cell phone in 2014, but, it would have been worth getting one just to use this (now defunct) app.  I send you this now, too late, too late! but I think you need to know about it anyway, because maybe you want to make something, do something like it.  

refused upon delivery

 

Dear Author,

I want you to stop giving me tragic heroines.  I want you to go back, recall every copy, and put the woman's name where the man's name is now.  I want you to redact all the actions of the female character, and replace them with the actions of the male character.  Do it.  And I don't want to hear from you until you have done it.

Once you have cleaned your mess up, I want to talk about the Damage You Have Already Done.  I want to explain to you, very patiently, that women who get their way in your stories do not have to be killed or punished for it.  That if, for example, your female character bops along for 200 or 300 pages, and then, Realizes What She Has Missed, you do not need to have her slip into the abyss rather than accept her 200 (to 300) pages of loss.  How about you have her, at the very least, ride off into the sunset?  Better yet, might you let her shrug her shoulders and start writing her memoirs?  Or move to a new town?

Or she could sing this little ditty, your song for today.

Did you ever? Or, A heap of superlatives!

 

Dear You & Everyone Else,

Did you see it?  The Northern Lights?  A few nights ago, after 45 years of wanting to see them, they came to me!  As usual, I cannot believe my good fortune.  I hope you saw them too, and if you didn't, I am sure their light shined upon you.

And that maybe should be the end?  That is sufficient?  I have communicated to you about them?  I have shown you the depth of my feeling for belonging to a world with a spectacle as grand as that?  No, as usual, I have sounded like a car that passed with its radio on very loud, or maybe a sappy greeting cards' message.  You might wonder, why do you do this?  Why do you try to voice, to talk, to write, to think, to paint, to draw?  And the answer is seeing the Aurora, but not seeing, so much as feeling it, and in feeling it, wanting you to witness it too.  Because the enormity of it might feel less lonely that way.  

Thinking all this, and of how to describe the Aurora to you, similar moments appeared:  a raft on a river in the rain, a field of dried grass, an empty, open doored and windowed cabin with a pile of cottonwood fluff in the corner, a whoosh of bird wings overhead, a gray sea that shimmered out forever, a booth at a darkened bar; and these two songs.  The first is a very pithy, plaintive version of what I am might be saying, and the second is so long, so repetitive, you might be droned into something like comprehension.

PS  It isn't without risk, you know, to try to say something.  I might, instead of reaching you, be repelling you with these whiney vocals and endless guitar riffs.  I am always circling, beating about the bush, barking up trees that are wrong, and if I should, somehow, blindly hit the target, I will not know.

egg carton

Dear Imaginative,

Pretend you have an egg carton and you want to put just one really good thing into each little cup.  What goes in? 

a heart shaped rock

a little ball of pink yarn

a piece of chocolate

a recipe, folded up

a leaf

a beaded ring

a pop top

a twist of seeds

a marble

a white owl's feather

a shell

& one 

more 

thing.

mountain and valley

 

mayday

 

Dear May,

It's May Day!  Get out your paper and scissors and crown yourself the May Queen, my lovelies!  When you are done with making the crown and all of the self-crowning ceremony, maybe make a Beltane Cake.  If you think, no, I don't have time for any of that, well, please, please don't forget you are my May Queen!

a million

 

Untitled (Tools), Jim Dine, lithograph, 2008.

Dear Opposable Thumbs,

There is a large stack of books where I work; it's all detritus, really, and it doesn't belong to anyone, so even the spines don't get a glance.  The world would be a better place if some of them were never looked at, but a few of them could be useful to raise up a too low television set, or to chock up a short leg on a table.  Thinking larger now, perhaps combined into a solid stack of 'how to' art books, maybe painted, in say palest pink?  Illustrated on the outside with delicate red handwriting and gentle blossoms?  

Well, you know when someone says to me, "good idea," I always respond "I have a million of them!"  And you do too, which puts me in mind of a little spontaneous poem a fellow* sent me in an email.  You know how messages and letters can generate these kinds of things- a person says this, another replies that, all that thoughtful responding suddenly leaps, jumps beyond quotidian communication and becomes a gleaming poem:

Tools for the soul, or is it, a soul full of tools?

Always measuring, always fixing.  

*Thank you, D. Prochaska, for the poem!