I was moved to read that Norma Lyon, a farm mother of nine who came to fame through her life-sized butter sculptures of cows, celebrities, and even apostles, passed away on Sunday at the age of 81. I can’t even DRAW a butter elephant, hard to imagine sculpting one, especially in the heat of an Iowa summer fair. She sounds like a resolute and resourceful lady.
This is sort of an elephant of the fields (not savannah), faerie elephant, yes, done on iPad–a wonderful device for some day illustrating a fairy tale (with elephants.)
My sense is that the Photogene App is mainly for photographers, wanting to organize and frame and retouch and highlight their digital photos. But it allows for pretty cool iterations for digital drawings as well. (For those of you who wonder why this blog has been so focused on iPad art of late, it is NOT my concern over my Apple stockholdings, so much as the fact that I am trying to finish a kind of silly novel on the side, which has made it difficult to do any other writing.)
At any rate, the above is an unfiltered digital drawing. Below, only a few of the different iterations available through Photogene “filters”, including Dream, Painting, Comic, Posterize, Charcoal, Sepia, and RAINBOW (for those interested in designing old LP album covers.)
Oops. Forgot Night Vision.
Yes, the above is a goofy drawing–I’m not very good at pictures that don’t include elephants–but I am very happy and moved.
I’ll tell you straight out. This is going to be one of my blatantly pro-iPad diatribes.
Yes, the device is a bit awkward for typing, even with the bluetooth keyboard.
Yes, its wireless is not as strong as a laptop, and its camera is not as good as a Canon.
Nonetheless, it’s a wonderful device. The idea that I can just sit there with it in my lap listening to someone on the phone, and draw a face, and shade it in, and give it hair, and erase some of the contours just enough so that they look sort of graceful.
And then, as the call continues, the iPad also lets me paint a cow. A cow! I don’t know why I chose a cow, but there it is, a cow! Which is part painting, part photo, part erasure, part drawing–an act of concentration, and yet as I’m working on it I am also better able to listen to the call.
This morning I used it (on the subway) to scribble down the poem, but I’m only brave enough to look at the face and cow.
Which is enough for me for now,
(I’m milking them anyway.)
I hate to admit it but I’m kind of a solipsistic person. It’s not that I don’t like people–I take a strong interest in trying to help others (particularly if it involves telling them what to do.)
But I am just awful in social situations – parties, gatherings, even sometimes work settings. To some degree, this may have something to do with not being completely at ease with either my “public” persona or private persona.
At any rate, here’s a kind of gloomy sonnet about this kind of public/private disconnect.
Because I am now linking this post to dVerse Poets Pub Raising the Bar for critiquing, I am going to put up two versions of this poem, an older and newer. (I think the older may be better, but it’s also the one with which I am more familiar.) They are both a bit self-pitying, although that may be something that makes them universal.
The first is the older version:
Pretending
After years, pretending to be what you’re not
becomes a nature; a second skin
coating you like a kind of make-up, caught
in your pores, nestled in your grooves, a twin
of features, caked, you need not reapply.
But habits, faces, fail and it wears thin,
until, worn through, you can hardly try
anymore. Too wary, weary, the word
“cagey” describes so much of what you’ve been,
the opposite of free-flying bird,
while unheard, and hardly there within,
is all you’ve been saving, what you hid, why
you did this, what wasn’t supposed to die.
Newer:
Pretending
After years, pretending to be what you’re not
becomes a nature; a second skin
coating you like a heavy make-up, caught
in your pores, nestled in your grooves, a twin
of features, caked, you need not reapply.
Sometimes the habit fails, pretense wears thin,
that face that clung is suddenly wrung dry–
you don’t want to re-affix, but the word
“cagey” catches so much of what you’ve been–
the opposite of free-flying bird–
that, though you wish more than anything
to be seen, take wing; fretful, you still try
to keep tight all within. Oh me. Oh my.
If you are interested in my poetry, check out my poetry book, Going on Somewhere (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco, cover by Jason Martin) on Amazon.
If you are interested in my elephants, check out my children’s book, 1 Mississippi, on Amazon.
New experiment today: seeing if I can write a poem on the iPad! (And on the train.)
I love writing poetry by hand. But it is interesting to stretch one’s brain, and, frankly, it’s always terrific to write in a way that does not require transcription.
So here’s my attempt. What I was thinking of was another current interest–memorizing poetry. Followers of this blog know that I was very impressed by memory techniques outlined in Joshua Foer’s recent book Moonwalking With Einstein. My own memorization efforts have slackened recently, but the way in which the memorized poems have stayed with me has been kind of interesting. See below.
The Bits I’ve Got By Heart
In my head the women come and go
talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time, time for
the lines to formulate in the brain,
and when they are formulated, to drop like gentle rain
from a heaven that’s not quite consciousness;
to break, but soft, into a waking dream,
to be each morning morning’s minion,
as my head turns from the pillow,
plucking, before day is quite begun,
the golden apples from what might otherwise be
a simple rag and bone shop–too bland for foul,
scuttled by ragged part-my-hair-behind prosaicness.
Instead, those half-remembered verses,
gleaned from a teeming brain,
roll up into one ball all I ken
of poets’ strength
and sweetness, and the
dancer, who is part dance,
pirouettes, keeping time
with a beat that echoes
on the inside.
“But all the food falls UNDER the table.”
ManicDDaily 
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