Archive for March 2011

No iPad 2 or Phone….

March 12, 2011

Interest in my household in the iPad 2

As an avid user of the Brushes painting app on the iPhone 4, I have waited eagerly for the iPad 2.  (Finally, I could make little “paintings” without the constant zoom.)

I’m not normally a gadget-freak, but I really have been bitten by this painting app, so I was set to buy yesterday, launch day, March 11.

I’d reviewed the differences between wireless and 3G, the various gigabites, the types of dock.

My only point of indecision was whether to order online or go to an actual store (completely uncharacteristic of me), so I could get the stupid thing sooner.

Then I woke up Friday, as we all did, to news of the Japanese earthquake.  My consumerist zeal crumpled so fast I didn’t even have time to be embarrassed of myself.  How could I think of anything but the news, the wave, the reactor, the discipline and indominability of the Japanese people?

And yet, and yet–as the day moved on, I called Apple–not to actually place an order–I still didn’t feel up to that–but to ask more questions.  Shipping times were up to two or three weeks by then.

Two to three weeks!

I checked out the lines at the stores.   I even resorted, repeatedly,  to Twitter trying to get current info.

I thought of getting up at 5 this morning and going to tbe Fifth Avenue flagship store.  (I didn’t, which was just as well, since they were sold out of the model I wanted.)

In the midst of all this –how could I think of buying stuff in the face of the nuclear reactor explosion– I spilled tea on my iPhone.

It was only for a moment, it wasn’t boiling, but… yikes.

My addiction stared me in the face.  As did the price tag of a new phone.

How could I even think of pencils and paper?  Paint?  An iPad 2?

Heat blowers, rice bowls, more heat blowers…. it seems to be working….

Aahhh…..

Dear Japan

March 11, 2011

Thinking of you.

Dancing in the Dark (Pink Elephants)

March 10, 2011

Followers of this blog may notice that I’ve descended into the world of elephants and iPhone art over the last few months.  (Those who disagree with my views on art and politics may consider this an ascension.)

I genuinely like elephants!  (I’m guessing you’ve noticed.)

I’m also having a hard time writing blogs lately.  Part of the problem is that the news feels almost as grim to me as the weather.  The outbreaks of protest and democracy in the Middle East are pretty amazing, but there still seems to be a pall over much of the world, or, over this country at least–bifurcated clouds of threat and slog.

Of course, there’s always poetry!  Fiction!  Important loves (besides elephants.)  However, in the face of a world of publishing which seems increasingly fragmented –divided between an impossibly crowded field of micro-sellers and a few celebrity blockbusters–even these have, for the moment, lost some of their glint/promise/appeal.

I tell myself: change happens!  Transitions are messy!   Dispiriting confusion is part of the mix!

Yes.

And too, there are elephants.

Which, when they are not stampeding, have a certain timeless sweetness.

In my book;  on my iPhone screen; dancing, pinkly, through a (temporarily, I hope) darkened mind.

(PS – the elephant book is 1 Mississippi; the poetry is Going On Somewhere. Both are available on Amazon.  Check them out!)

Old dog, night walk

March 10, 2011

My old dog, increasingly blind,

My old dog Pearl is increasingly blind, especially in darkness.  The leash tends to provide reassurance rather than restraint.  Sometimes, I find myself completely leading her on a walk, as if I were her seeing eye person.  I have to be careful to avoid the bottoms of park benches, the sides of steps.  (She frequently veers to one side, which leads her into such obstacles.)

Other times, scent takes over and she, with canine persistence, pulls me along, avidly reading a kind of olefactory hieroglyphic.  I never am sure of what she actually sees, only that she knows exactly where she wants to be.

Unexpected Harbingers of Spring

March 8, 2011

Not exactly Robin's egg.

 

Many wonders–as in bare sidewalks, sun, snowdrops(!)–now to be seen in Battery Park City, NYC.

Belated Happy Birthday Michelangelo Buonarroti! (With Elephant)

March 7, 2011

He'd be 535 today. You'll have to imagine the candles (and elephant.)

 

Errr…. actually that was yesterday (March 6th)….  I mean, the day before yesterday….    (Time flies at 535.)

Charlie Sheen- Some people just don’t listen to their guardian elephant.

March 7, 2011

“Waiter, What’s this… ‘not a fly’… doing in my soup?”

March 5, 2011

"I think, ma'am, it's the backstroke."

Have a nice weekend with good soup and better elephants!

If you have time, check out Going on Somewhere and 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson (and BackStroke Books) on Amazon.    (And buy a copy!!!)

Gogol’s “Diary of a Mad…. Elephant?”

March 5, 2011

Not quite Geoffrey Rush at BAM

Re-Kindling a love for books/ Resisting the Inner Polar Bear

March 3, 2011

Speaking of gadgets (yesterday was the iPad2), I have been a victim of the Amazon Kindle of late.

Aging/sore eyes are difficult.  I had not realized until receiving a Kindle for Christmas how my ocular limitations had inhibited my enjoyment of reading of printed matter.    That and a relatively recent addiction to electronic screens had really limited my span.

I spend my work day in front of a computer;  and yet I still couldn’t turn away from the screen–not before work, not after work, not in the middle of the night.  I seemed to be like the polar bear at the Central Park zoo–you know the one who swims back and forth and back and forth and back and forth–determinedly submerging myself in a groove that ran through a small reflective surface.

With Kindle in hand, however, and my need for connection with the digital world somehow satisfied, I find myself reading constantly – not scanning bits of newspapers, blogs, videos, my own manuscripts–but reading.  In an extended fashion.  Books.

The only problem is that there’s so much ease in downloading a book (you can do it from thin air), that I hardly feel like trying to write one anymore.

But reading is good for writing, right?

Sure, but writing is necessary for writing.

Agh.