Écoute bien.

Dear Poetry-Lovers,

This wonderful poem comes to me from the far and wide ranging tentacles of the Dodo correspondents.  To think that I have been bumbling along in the dark without this lovely poem for so long gives me a twinge of regret.  However, we have committed ourselves to looking forward, and so on we go with this Jacques Prévert poem in hand; the original French follows the Ferlinghetti translation.





To Paint the Portrait of a Bird

                                                       To Elsa Enriquez

First paint a cage
with an open door
then paint
something pretty
something simple
something beautiful
something useful
for the bird
then place the canvas against a tree
in a garden
in a wood
or in a forest
hide behind the tree
without speaking
without moving...
Sometimes the bird comes quickly
but he can just as well spend long years
before deciding
Don't get discouraged
wait
wait years if necessary
the swiftness or slowness of the coming
of the bird having no rapport
with the success of the picture
When the bird comes
if he comes
observe the most profound silence
wait till the bird enters the cage
and when he has entered
gently close the door with a brush
then
paint out all the bars one by one
taking care not to touch any of the feathers of the bird
Then paint the portrait of the tree
choosing the most beautiful of its branches
for the bird
paint also the green foliage and the wind's freshness
the dust of the sun
and the noise of insects in the summer heat
and then wait for the bird to decide to sing
If the bird doesn't sing
it's a bad sign
a sign that the painting is bad
but if he sings it's a good sign
a sign that you can sign
so then so very gently you pull out
one of the feathers of the bird
and you write your name in a corner of the picture.

(translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

 From Paroles, by Jacques Prévert


Pour Faire Le Portrait D'un Oiseau

                                                               A Elsa Henriquez

Peindre d'abord une cage
avec une porte ouverte
peindre ensuite
quelque chose de joli
quelque chose de simple
quelque chose de beau
quelque chose d'utile
pour l'oiseau
placer ensuite la toile contre un arbre
dans un jardin
dans un bois
ou dans une forêt
se cacher derrière l'arbre
sans rien dire
sans bouger...
Parfois l'oiseau arrive vite
mais il peut aussi bien mettre de longues années
avant de se décider
Ne pas se décourager
attendre
attendre s'il le faut pendant des années
la vitesse ou la lenteur de l'arrivée de l'oiseau
n'ayant aucun rapport
avec la réussite du tableau
Quand l'oiseau arrive
s'il arrive
observer le plus profond silence
attendre que l'oiseau entre dans la cage
et quand il est entré
fermer doucement la porte avec le pinceau
puis
effacer un à un tous les barreaux
en ayant soin de ne toucher aucune des plumes de l'oiseau
Faire ensuite le portrait de l'arbre
en choisissant la plus belle de ses branches
pour l'oiseau
peindre aussi le vert feuillage et la fraîcheur du vent
la poussière du soleil
et le bruit des bêtes de l'herbe dans la chaleur de l'été
et puis attendre que l'oiseau se décide à chanter
Si l'oiseau ne chante pas
c'est mauvais signe
Signe que le tableau est mauvais
mais s'il chante c'est bon signe
signe que vous pouvez signer
Alors vous arrachez tout doucement
une des plumes de l'oiseau
et vous écrivez votre nom dans un coin du tableau.


 



If all this puts you in the mood for French, try this Serge Gainsbourg song to Jacques Prévert.

Darker Still.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

hammering on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Scott Mann.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Hammer-Handed,

 

These are the hammers of a sculptor who was the husband of a sculptor friend of mine.  I wanted you to see them, because they are so beautiful, and because of their inherent potential and also because I am wondering just what a hammer is without a hand.

 

While we wonder this together, we can consider also what we would do if we had a hammer.

 

 

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

PS

A little piece of hammer theater for you.  Brought to us by the fine folks at Make Magazine.

 

 

 

 PPS

Also, consider the Hammer Museum:

 

 

 

ring ring

Dear All,

Hey, how you doing?  Here is your song to sing today.  Want a dance remix?  Have one.  Or two.

open road

 

 

 

 

Dear Drivers,

I know, you have heard a lot, maybe even too much from me on this of late, but this beautiful song for today gets at the heart of my thoughts on the self-driving car.  I am neither ready nor willing to hand over all the beautiful motion of driving to our robot overlords.  What, I ask you over and over, is it to be human essentially?  What is the thing that makes humans different from machines or devices?  Does our dependence on devices and data storage threaten essential human-ness?

At the last of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion's broadcast a few weeks ago, President Obama called in and said he thought it was stories that made humans human.  I think it might be empathy, but I love a good story, so I will make room for that being one of the markers as well.

Another idea is that what makes a human a human is asking questions.  Or maybe more properly, seeking answers.  Here's to being human, whatever it means, and I repeat:  What is it to be human?










PS

Yes, you are thinking:  What is empathy?  What is story?  What is artificial intelligence?  What is inquiry?  Once we have definitions for all of those terms, we will return to 'what is human?'  In the meantime, get out there, man, and don't delay: grab whatever you can of the pleasure of the open road, and write it down, draw it, paint it, save it; but not on your hard drive.







 

Listen to This.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Eared,

 

My dj brought me to this song a few evenings ago-  Don't you love the jangling bells and the rinky-tinky wall of sound redux?  And how about that Jackson Miriam Makeba Mahalia Jackson Nina Simone voice?  Nothing at all wrong with that!  If your dj don't play Mahalia, Miriam or Nina, y'all better turn your dials.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cherry Lullaby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Stoned Cherry,

 

This is a short story about waiting a long time-  you might sit there, and think that you don't have time to read a little paean to drupes, and so you might want to run along now.  If you do have the time, begin with this sweet song that has been around since the 15th century, which will help to put the next few minutes of our lives into historical and philosophical perspective.

 

I have never met a cherry I didn't like- I like their blossoms, I like their pits, I like they way they grow in twos, I like their color, their scent, their wood, and even the very word cherry- so close to cheery.  I love the rainiers, the morellos, the queen annes, and the bings- but cherries do not grow easily or well here at Twittering Patch, and over the years, most have perished one saddening way or another-  I make sculptures out of the their straight, sapling, hopeful remains.  But this Spring one of our orchard trees exploded in a cloud of white blossoms.  Then, even more surprising, green pips appeared!  They then grew into actual factual edible red cherries.  We ate about half of them right off the tree, hurrying to beat the birds and the deer.  The other two dozen we made into ersatz tarts. 

 

The little tree gave us Montmorency cherries- what they call a sour cherry: the spunky kind to be made into pies.  I could not be happier at our extreme good fortune in getting a small harvest this year.  It really does beat all!

 

 

 

 

 

Ersatz Cherry Tarts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have a little more time, you can set back and wait until winter and you can get yourself a bare root cherry tree and you can put it in the earth.  After a few more winters, maybe two, maybe four, you can make these tarts and you will have all the glory of a project completed after half a decade.  They are just cut squares of pastry with pitted halved cherries set on top- tip a spoonful of sugar over the cherries and bake them at 400 or 425 degrees, for 8 minutes or so.  They taste like a beautiful five years. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PS

 

When it's cherry blossom time in Orange, New Jersey, we'll be a peach of a pair....

 

 

 

PPS

 

If you do give your love a cherry, you might want to sing along, or play these easy guitar chords.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Won't Last Long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Darlings,

 

Can you believe I have been stumbling around in the dark without this song?  My goodness, I must make a point of getting out more.  I really must, and you should too.  Meet me tonight at the nearest rotating restaurant and we can talk about it at length. 

 

Until then.

 

The Way Now Sounds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Listener,

 

Remember that little waltz* that I look forward to playing in the future?  This is another song to play for today; and then, when it is tomorrow, we can say, Yes, 2016 sounded just like That.  I figure Chasing Shadows sounds like 2016, just like 1958 must have sounded like Well, All Right. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*  In case you don't recall it, you can hear it here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's in the plane, it's on the ecliptic, it's zodiacal light!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Sky-Eyed,

 

I can hardly contain my newfound enthusiasm for this dark-sky spring (or fall) time visible phenomenon:  zodiacal light or false dawn.  False dawn!  Oh, the beauty of that phrase!  What might a false dawn signify?  The untrue fiancé, the early miscarriage, the brilliant idea that flops?  So many allusions to consider....  Still, what is this fabulous offering from our earth's past?  Nothing but dust!  I know!  Isn't it just terrific!  Can you feel your mind gently unfurling with possibilities? 

 

I know, I know; just what am I babbling about?  This. 

 

If you haven't seen zodiacal light, you will want to make a pilgrimage to a dark place and seek it out-  You will need dark, and you will need a nearness to twilight or sunrise.  I saw it a few days ago, in a place very dear to me, The Land of the Alluvial Fans.  To be sure, I saw the night owl preferred 'false dusk,' but I find that term a little less poetically-charged, don't you?

 

Yes, I think a song to celebrate this new knowledge is just what we need.  Maybe just one more?  I could listen to this one over and over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Song to Sing Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grande South.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Care for a little more?  Listen to this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lost Your Marbles?

It's ok, my dears, you can find them in this instrument....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water of Love

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Besprinkled,

 

I hope, wherever you are, you are enjoying a damp, wet, rainy, and/or snowy winter.  Here at the Dodo, we are very satisfied with the mud and the dripping, and this water dropletting reminds me to show you this.

 

Remarkable, no?  To accompany this marvel of the natural world, a poem by William Carlos Williams:

 

 

RAIN

 

As the rain falls

so does

           your love

bathe every

                  open

object of the world--

In houses

the priceless dry

                         rooms

of illicit love

where we live

hear the wash of the

                                rain--

There

          paintings

and fine

             metalware

woven stuffs--

all the whorishness

of our

           delight

sees

from its window

the spring wash

of your love

                      the falling

rain--

The trees

are become

beasts fresh-risen

from the sea--

water

trickles

from the crevices of

their hides--

So my life is spent

                              to keep out love

with which

she rains upon

                         the world

of spring

                    drips

so spreads

                     the words

far apart to let in

                           her love

And running in between

the drops

                   the rain

is a kind physician

                              the rain

of her thoughts over

the ocean

                     every

where

           walking with

invisible swift feet

over

         the helpless

                            waves--

Unworldly love

that has no hope

                            of the world

                            and that

cannot change the world

to its delight--

           The rain

falls upon the earth

and grass and flowers

come

          perfectly

into form from its

                           liquid

clearness

                But love is

unworldly

                and nothing

comes of it but love

following

and falling endlessly

from

          her thoughts

 

 

 

Here also, is a song, to emphasize the wonder of water.  May your rain barrels overflow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wheels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A tune to hum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fast Away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear The End,

 

I always hate to see you go, even in the hard times, and the difficult years.  Folks say to me, often, at the end, "I hope next year will be better."  I never see how it could be-  not because I expect them to suffer at the hand of fate, as they feel they did this year, but because I love each year as if it were a daughter of my own.  Like a potted plant that finally cannot continue in its confined corral, I hate to see the years succumb to the inevitable end.  Oh, yes, yes I know, it will be a good year also, and I will come to love it just as fiercely as the present year, but for now, I hate to see you go.

 

 

 

 

PS 

 

Here is a song, that might say what I mean, or might it?  Maybe I mean this: 

Though blind the seed, and dull the earth, Yet sweet shall be the flower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crash Club

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Crashed Aeroplane,

John Singer Sargent, Gouache &Watercolor, 1918

Imperial War Museum, London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Troubled Mind, 

 

 

I was listening to some people I hardly know, strangers, chance encounters really.  They had all kinds of sorrows;  I wanted to pack them up for them, and I had only "oh!" and "I'm so sorry" as salve.  Which isn't much.

 

Laurie Anderson mentioned on the radio joining a crash club.  In this club you tell about your crash until it bores even you, until the story loses its power, its energy. 

 

Let's meet here anytime, it will be our own little virtual crash club, for the emotional accidents, for falling out of love, or falling out of favor, or landing hard any old place.  Bring your struggles, your mishaps, your heartbreaks, your deaths, and we will tell the story until our ears bleed together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lost Highway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nearest, Furthest and Dearest Ones,

I am little threatened, a little scared, a little loathe to lose my highway.  What I mean, of course, is that I prefer to continue to drive my car, and make my own mistakes, and not have to discuss too much of it with Hal.  The car, for me, is a symbol of a kind of sovereignty.  It is a wildly powerful machine, a car; and they let you first drive one in your formative years.  Which might be why it will always feel to me a little like Christmas morning to pull the strap across my chest, bandolier-like, turn the key in the ignition, place my hands at 10 and 2 o'clock, and think:  Is everything go?  It will always feel like a fine beginning to me, like an adventure.  Driving has never felt like a chore to be avoided, like cleaning grout or filing taxes.  This, they tell me, is partly due to genetics, but I prefer the conceit of believing that it is my own personal choice to be a pirate, a gadabout, a pilgrim, and a gallivanter.

Did I tell you about the thing with the light bulbs?  I abhor those efficient bulbs with their ghastly bluishdeath glow, and so I bought a C-note's worth of incandescent bulbs some years ago.  Yes, it did feel like I had gone a little mad, hoarding light bulbs like that.  And so we come to the automobile: Can I get a big box of older cars that will let me do the driving and just use them up for the next however many decades?  Would that seem crazy to you? 

By the time the self-driving car hits the shelves, I will be through with my mourning, because I am already seeing that what I really worry about, what I am most afraid we might lose, is not just the chance to drive along in an automobile, but some piece of being human.  When I figure out precisely what human attribute I fear we are losing, you will hear from me, and we can try to save it together.  In the interim, please enjoy these three songs:

 

 

one

 

two

 

three

 





 four.

 

Written down in a tear-stained letter.

Dear Recipient, or, To Whom it May Concern,

You know why I still write to you this way, don't you?  I send my love like this because I have lost your address, and I don't think you are driving past the billboard I wrote my message on; in large red spray painted letters, across the lugubrious grins of a pair of 10 foot high lawyers.

In any case, I send you all my love, mostly, and occasionally a few news items-  here is something that seems especially salient.  

The wonderfulness of this particular moment is that I received a message with this noteworthy item in it, and so I wanted to pass it on to you, but more than that, I am also reading a terrific novel about mail, and letters, and technology and pins, and pigeons and golems and well, you really should read it too- it's a delight:  Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett.

The letter un-received is a powerful metaphor and I must consider it carefully, and organize my thoughts by writing them down.  I hope you will get my letter, but if you do not, please know that I am thinking of you.

Until my next missive,
yours,
truly.






PS
A Tear Stained Letter.  And another.
- S. W. A. L. K.

Will the Taurids be torrid this year?

Dear Watchful Ones,

Of course, you are still reeling from the astounding conjunction, and you have been spying for Taurid meteors since mid-October, and now you are ready for the smoking hot South Taurid meteor shower!  Use this handy tool to find a good place to watch them, and listen to this wonderful song on Radio Dodo.






PS

Another star song.