Advice

Never let a friend slip out of sight.

Objects in a Dream

I dreamt we were eating at wooden tables in a place near the beach and one woman said that she was using the bed spread that her brother had used on the bed on the day that he committed suicide. She made this statement as a matter of fact, while she spoke about her lunch and meanings attached to everyday objects.
I thought about Liz Marron, and the terrible thing that happened to her, how even now the savage beating remains a mystery and a taboo in conversation ten years later. She borrowed a book from me and never was able to return it. I made her promise at the time. The last time I saw her she could not speak but she burst into tears. So did I but I turned my face away so that others could not see
Another guy who sat with us was talking about the school that his daughters went to he said, " they let the island people go at the regular rate because it's cheaper than busing them to the public schools on the mainland.." He seemed pleased with the arrangements he unpacked his lunch. I imagined pine trees on the island while he spoke.
We were talking about objects and why they have certain meanings for us. Some younger boys were near by in a in a whirlpool hot tub and on of us asked them why they had purple stripes like war paint on their faces. "'Cause it's cool," said one lad, not unpleasantly, as thought he were the leader. "But why purple?" asked one person, more to people at the table than the boys. "It's zinc oxide," I said, "I've seen lifeguards wear fluorescent pink and other wild colors.
There was a beeping sound like somebody's telephone but it turned out to be my alarm clock. I turned the alarm off and made a phone call to wake Masha.
As I write this, telling the dream is no more real than my memory of seeing Liz that day. They both flicker in my mind like phantoms or wisps of fog clearing from the trees as the morning brightens.
What triggers memories to rise up in our minds from ordinary objects. Is there some reason that I need to have an old wooden spoon to stir my oatmeal?

Central Casting

Central casting will likely close for the summer after next week.

Summer Camps run from June 6 thru august 12.

The situation regarding William And Gloria has further deteteriorated. She backbites whenever she speaks of him and he occaisionally points out that he has been 'spoken too' by Gloria under her newly assumed 'monitor powers.' She stepped for over an hour last night to do some "shopping," William Managed to cast a few flasks. Gloria has decided tosell a few commission pieces to another buyer to raise some quick cash. I cast two rings and a circular pendant. and had a discussion with Martin about Patchogue NY.

I also cast a flask for Martin.

Face Your Fears

Surprising numbers of people, (yourself included,) fear something without cause.
Check this list of phobias to see if you are on it. Then head over to Change That's Right Now and see what you can do about it. unless you suffer from Metathesiophobia

Generic Template

I just put up a Generic template for the weblog "Sunlight" I based the design on a CSS template from Bluerobot and some Blogger code. there are no external references except for the "powered by Blogger" button. The Date floats as an independent post and each post is contained in its own little box against a bluegrey field. The menur bar on the right is another shade of blue, The Blogger code displays the authors full name an highlights it as a link to the users profile code. The whole thing is Arial or Helvetica, making it seem very clinical. the one glitch is that comments are displayed outside the post box with no margin up against the side bar. I will examine this later and try to put it in a box. there may be a div class containing coments which could be exploited to give them a special character.
Feel free to Save it and use it for your own Blog.
It's real ugly in IE though. Must fix.

index

Remember poetry
Has no worth
Only points
A finger at the moon.

Some dark nights
Her ship founders
In the void, aground
Well charted shoals

But there she is again
Full bright in the windy sky
A silver finger points
Across the water

Is this a UFO?

Google Maps - 33409
Odd object on the satellite map.
Any other things like this out there?

Central Casting

Central casting had a visitor last night: Florence, a patron of William's.
Martin was unable to make it. Waiting on a transfusion.
Florence was charming but a bit of a distraction.
Masha and I ended up botching a casting two "First Calvary" insignia, in silver. i invested without weighing the waxes frist so we estimated by the weight of a finished piece and doubled the weight. adding a few grams for the button. That didn't work. plus the button resevour was sort of flat, so the last little bits didn't run down into the sprue stem. The problem could have been solved if I had joined the Models with a simple span of wax wire to create a way for the silver to balance out between the two cavities. One of the pendants came out, but the other was missing a little bit of the top.
I wouldn't blame Florence for my mistake. She and William went out for a bite to eat leving us to monitor his kiln, and they returned with a pot of bouillabaise from a portugese restauranteur who was generous enough to Give them the whole pot
We were just hasty and we could have thrown a bit of extra metal in for good measure.

late

Masha bought a copy of "Getting Things Done."
At the moment I' more tied up with Paul Tillich.
But her purchase renewed my interest in conserving brainspace by making lists and notes. She did say something interesting about mistaking journaling for planning. She has a big planner out now to write appointments in. I wish I'd gotten her a Moleskine for Christmas.
I'm still trying to debug the "crazy mouse," cursor problem. Right now it's fixed by dis-able-ment, and using the WACOM pen-tab as a mouse replacement.
My adopted sisters birthday WAS May 16.
She says that "Mom," doesn't remember me. That's not what Dr. Wheeler says when we talk on the phone. She recently made her sisterly plea for acknowledgement. I've been waiting for last tears birthday and christmas cards.
She implies that she has health problems.
Guilt is stupid
eat it.

Fossilized Mythology of Flight.

Circling nuclear abduction fire.

Crook of the Clawed Panel

Happy day !!! 

Blame

So who cares if you ran away from home. If you sold drugs in high school,
Or distributed them through FedEx?
Who cares what your friends stole from Diedres' apartment.
If you slept with Jose Accuna, Phil Chang or K*** S***?
Or if Uncle John felt you up
When you were less than six and gave
You a horrible infection? (i saw him)
Or some strange black boy
Licked your privates in the shower when you were eight or nine?
Who cares if you told every one.
If you made a practice of telling.
If you abused your self
To the point of disease and miscarriage.


If you found some man who loves you that is all that matters. That you have daughters.
That you sand the floors with your birthmother and declare Margaret Wheeler unloving Incompetent and forgetful.

You beatify yourself.

And I am your shadow brother
Animus that stinks of murder.
Buried his own child or someone else's doesn't mater
Still the same
Paints with lots of red.
Splatters. the paint.
That means Blood.
And all my friends and family
Seem like senators
Cloaked, daggers glinting darkly
As they close around me in the Agora.
No wonder that I'm phobic.
We children were paraded
before the wealthy relatives the softies.
The promised trusts and escrow accounts were made before the blame
The horror of the drugs.
The glass of wine with dinner.
The reefer passed at a concert.
Who made out?
Who accused?
Am I the killer of a child named Owen?
If so then who killed Me?

Bird at the window

Lately, the past three weeks or so, a young mocking bird has been battering his head against the window of our living room. we havethose lorered windows that open at a slant and self destruct after a decade in the sun.
the young bird flies against the glass over and over. I can hear his beak against the glass ant the thud of his head and chest. he takes a break from time to time, perching on the edge of the half opened window, his head feathers ruffled from the attack. then he flies at the glass again.
Ive gone so far as to call him, wave my hands and even put my face against the glass where he is attacking. He'll sometimes fly to a safe distance and perch on a wire only to resume again.
In Richard Wilbur's Poem, the bird wanted to get out.

Letter never sent

She wrote:

OK I got it to load!

There is no descriptive information other than a list of addreses,. Are they your addresses or Dad's adresses. If they are Dad's then I may be able to add a couple more to the list. Let me know.

I know that Rowayton is missing. Its zip is 06855, and I think we lived on Highland Ave but can't remember for sure. I checked my old journals and I found my friend Wendy Wilson's adress, she lived up the road from us and went to Low Heywood Thomas with me. I know the library was next door so could check the Rowayton libraby address?

If they are your addresses, for complete accuracy, you may want to include New Haven, your birthplace and then Pine Orchard - I know you lived there as a very little person before they moved to Belle Terre.

So snuggly yes. The purple afgan.
The web page
It works in most browsers.
The side bar was a short list of links to maps on Google's map service with the satellite pictures. Since you mention our child hood together etc., I thought that you might have some warm memories of places and things that you wanted to share, I should have realized that you woulds say it doesn't work it was incomplete and you were having a perfectly happy time any way.
The map in the frame was a more personal " stand alone," with markers and descriptive stuff. I can put up to ten markers on a map and use ten maps for my account. AOLs browser may have problems with displaying the I frame or the links. you should obviously open the URL separately, not in the email itself. but you figured that out.
I don't have journals to consult photographs or any thing that connects me to the Wheeler family other than the small collection of papers you sent.
you probably remember that GWW accused me of murder and told me never to contact him again.
My hope was that we could reconstruct some of the life that we shared by creating a memory map and adding some reflections about things that concern us both. I do remember Pine Orchard from the photographs and also a house in downtown Port Jefferson You joined the family at around the time that we moved to Belle Terre. I recall watching fire works from the flat roof with the family. whe used that same old green wooden ladder to get up there through trap door in the ceiling of the attic. That ladder we also used in the Garage at Belle Terre and employed many times to " break in," to the house when we were locked out after school.
I started on the little map project and thought to share it with you.
I realize that this is no Purple Afgan nor even a nice thing or a personal thing. I hastily sent it off with the hope that you would appreciate some part of it. Yes You are correct those were 'Dad's' houses. I only occupied them while i was in he Wheeler's custody.
As i have only a few recollections of actual street adress I've been feeling my way around the maps by memory alone. I would certainly appreciate Information. but if youre confused or critical about the project don't trouble yourself.

The moving finger

I had heard that the Finger was a hoax, But now I read that the finger was real. But probably planted in the chili for the purpose of fraud.

My dear friend Mr. Punch. 

littleben,
originally uploaded by _william.

just a buck

Central Casting

I spend too much time considering
the shifting alliances of any small group of people.
Common cause can create real and lasting bonds between people.
This should not be confused with shared interest.
William is back casting after time out for dental work. Gloria no longer drinks beer in the car while monitoring. Now she talks on the phone to her new boy friend. Martin, a perfectly nice gentleman, spends his time talking to her. so it seems she is still working on the same set of pieces as she was in christmas 2003.
William is focusing more on starfish and seahorses. he is pretty much working alone. Gloria no longer speaks to him except in the most minimal way. Gloria has apparently promised Martin that she will teach him in exchange for his setting up a web page for her to sell stuff. I guess she is doing some murals. Masha was in tonight. She worked on finishing some earrings that I cast for her last week. we worked on fabricating little bails for the earhooks out of the excess sprue material. I worked on a Fabricated ring. The solder kept un-binding whenever I annealed it so i used iron binding wire to hold the shape. the wire cut into the ring and kind of ruined it. on the other hand it may be fused, so I could reforge it without worrying about the solder. I put it away before I totally destroyed it. The problem is that the weird tension in the group makes me sick.I don't feel like doing any creative work.
OH and I did polish up one ring that Masha made weeks ago. It was rough and lumpy . . .a quick casting. now it looks kind of neat. shiny with a primal zig zag around the band. About a size eleven.
At one point Gloria And William got on great together. He encouraged her work and got to know the gallery owner where she sells stuff. He even found a new venue where he got her a gig painting a sign and A high profile place to show jewelry. He is making thousand dollar sales now and she appears to hate him.
We could really use some unity I used to think that there was some.
Of course gloria has a small teaching gig at The Arts Center. So She is now Important. Oh well.

Think, While You Still Can!

And while your at it Drop a dollar in my paypal account. Send me a note if you do, So i can thank you. I make silver jewelry by hand forging and lost wax casting. If I can make something for you, and have you pay me to do it . . .
Well i could be a happy man. Tell me what you want.
Think about it.
If you use Hello, My Id is TygerBill. we can talk ring sizes, and i can how you pictures of work I've done.
Think About It.

Never Finding Land

"When will the Grown-ups return?"


I saw Finding Neverland last night, semi biographical material about J.M Barrie, author of "Peter Pan."

A very good movie, well played, with intriguing special effects that supported the "imagination" of the protagonist. not nearly as over the top as Hook or Peter Pan itself., the story casts an insightful eye at how and why artists make stuff and effectively de-mystifies the surplus reality of fantasy. We should all understand the crocodile with a clock in his belly. he is a familiar figure. So are the Pirates.

System Update

I've been Bothered by Java/Byte/Verify Virus infecting zip and class files in application data. I'm not sure if the files themselves are viral. But the issue keeps recurring. Turned off my system restore because i've been told that it prevents the removal of many viruses.
I think It's gone to the virus vault now, but I don't know where it came from. Backdoor Stretch has been there too in a file called "ipmon." I know what trojans can do. That one probably came off an insecure backup CD that I made a few months ago.
The results of all this have been the disappearance of some critical files that operate windows wordprocessors and allow HTML editors to work. There was also a lot of mouse trouble. Double clicks don't always work. For a while I had the Wacom Tablet hooked up to use as a mouse. Of course the 'clicks didn't work on it either.
Any way I had to breakdown and reinstall all the windows software. This time I was clever and allowed the windows installation program to back-up all my system files. Usually I wipe out the whole hard drive and rebuild. This did not stop windows from loosing all connection to my HP printer. I think the system still connects to the scanner, but i'll have to check.
The quirks in the template for this blog still bother me. I'm thinking about using tables in the layout again. This time I'll try and avoid inline structural elements. I just want to hold three "div" classes in place and not have them shift around from one browser to the next. And I want to control how stuff looks inside using CSS. I've gotten way too frustrated by trying to get the blocks to sit three in a row in both FireFox and IE. I am afraid that I will sacrifice the pretty grey columns on the side, but If I can get the Three column thing to work right I will be very happy. Probably will use PostCard for the experiment since that blog is very messy and seldom visited. Of course there are quirks in HouseCall and SunLight could use work but sunlight should be simle enough to use as an 'iframe' on another website, after all it's just a repository of other peoples poems.

New Moon 3/30/2132

Today is the last day of Metal Horse month in the a black month in Tibetan calendar.Now begins the month of the water sheep.
today should be favorable for aquiring food and clothing.

Also a good day to meditate on endings and beginnings, on what will come to fruit in the next thirty days. The day of the new moon is always Shakyamuni day. He is the young prince who renounced his heritage to become an acetic. Ultimately he became Buddha. Of course he always was Buddha, but he came to a point where he realized that. This day celebrates his break with the past and his separation from his fathers world; the beginning of his journey.

Of course it is also "Mothering Sunday." This secular holiday was passed into law long before the florists and card companies got into the act. It dates back to an old English custom of letting their servants go home to visit their mothers once a year. Then for a while it became a celebration of The Mother Church." I suspect that the contemporary holiday leaned back towards more ancient customs of honoring the mystery of biological parent hood and the awful amount of work expected of women raising children

Many of us chose to celebrate other mothers besides our own, respecting the fact that children tend to be a bit self centered. So let's join in celebrating the contributions of foster parents, adoptive mothers and those women who relinquished their children hoping for a better life for them. Then let us honor those who lost their children to war disease and catastrophe, and finally let us celebrate that maternal instinct in all of us to nurture and protect all things small and growing.

more mappage

I tried to add a few Dots (for later connecting.) I can easily see people becoming addicted to the searchable satellite images. There is nothing to search out side the US. And blurred areas obscure the better part of my hometown Port Jefferson. Also, the USGS topo map of that area was made in '67 It's the same map that I had as a kid given to me by one of the surveyors named Jens. I learned how to use a lensetic compass to triangulate my location by sighting notable landmarks and plotting the angle with a parallel rule. Whenever I "missed home" over the years I would pull out the tattered map of Port Jefferson harbor and all the roads that I had traveled there. I'm sure that other people have the same urge but there is something slightly more compelling about looking at the grey fuzzy rooftops than the neat marks made by a cartographer. Of course I need the detail provided in the topos.

If I had a digital camera I would consider organizing online photos with a link to their location. Along with Memory Maps, I can see this taking on a journalistic function. It could also be used for evil. Stalkers might get better at their game. It's not such a problem if they spend a lot of time looking at two-year-old photos of you roof, but if people collect data and then share that data, there could be unforeseen consequences. I recall a Novel called "Earth" by David Brin in which privacy was pretty much a thing of the past. Everyone has total access to public records and the right to add observations to the public database. The purpose of this open book policy, in Brin's novel, is the prevention of clandestine wealth hoards, created by individuals exploiting the natural resources of the earth.

Not that Google Maps could eliminate plutocracy. The White House is blurred, as are Oil refineries and Power plants. Watts In California is visible, as is most of suburbia. The only poor who escape are those in dilapidated rural areas too remote to justify photographing.

Mappage

I made a start at Google maps You can see my first awkward standalone page here

Zero the Hero at Central Casting

Gloria was talking to a man when I pulled up to The Art Center.They were still leaning by the door by the time I hauled my tools over. "Wanna Meet Dean," she asked. as I walked By. "Sure," i said. He offered his right hand as I switched the canvas bag over to the left hand and tucked my knife case under my left arm. By that time changed hands: "Or we can do it this way," he said extending his left. Shook the left hand and grinned, not showing any teeth. Gloria opened the door for me.

Sam, the courtesy guard stood in the hall, looking at a shiny red Vespa parked across from a jewelery display case. " S'that your new ride?" I asked, picturing the six foot tall man scooting around with a basket of baguette on the tail-rack. We talked about the bike for a minute. "They have it for a raffle," he told me.

Martin was in the Studio sprueing little waxes. It was sort of lonely without William. I cast one flask for Masha and forged a funky little anticlastic ring out of a piece of stock i rolled. Martin played two CDs that he bought at an art fair on Passe a Grille. The guitar was nice in a flawless uninspired way. I put on a Segovia tape for comparison and Martin asked me to turn it down. later Gloria suggested that Ottmar Leibert sounded like music from the movie Zorro.

I was happy that Masha's earrings came out.

I learned that the old masters seem flawed and unclear by todays standards. True passion must go masked and flourish a cape; people insist on seeing that way.

I saw an enormous frog last night. It was on the outside wall of my house where i have plywood leaning under the eaves to make hurricane shutters. He looked about the size of a child's fist: grey green with darker spots. This explains why the gekkos have moved indoors.

Pale Bloom

Reptile

My Old Friend Sweetie. Photo by Lelani Carter. 

Judy was in town again. She visited her son and managed a private lunch with Marie. She and Mash, later met at a bar in Gulfport. 

The Pier at St Petersburg. 

a formal feeling comes--

I bought beer and cigarettes from this woman for years on end. when they tell you that Brazilian women have ***, believe it. I wish you could have met her.

7-Eleven clerk revered in life, death

"Customers often gave Onelia Budge a ride to work. Now, a month after her death, a store tribute remains in her honor."

When customers spotted 7-Eleven clerk Onelia Budge walking to work from her nearby apartment, they regularly offered her a ride. In the month since her death, many have stopped to sign a memorial at the store where she worked.

Mrs. Budge's husband, Jasper, is surprised that the tribute, initially set up by employees and refreshed by his daughter and a friend, has not been taken down.

"I thought it would be all gone by now," he said.

But he couldn't know. Budge, 73, said it has been too painful for him to visit the store across from the Albertsons supermarket on 31st Street S.

"I miss her," he said.

She was well-liked, Budge said. Ken Venzera, manager of the store at 5451 31st St. S, agreed.

"It's just the way she treated people and talked to people. She was so well-known in the neighborhood. A customer would drive her to work almost every day," Venzera said.

"Once you meet her, you could never forget her."

Mrs. Budge generally worked the 2-to-10 p.m. shift. She was a good employee, the manager said.

"She was 72 years old, and she worked harder than the 22-year-old kids," he said.

"We loved her and miss her so much."

Mrs. Budge came to the United States from Brazil in 1958. She and her husband, whom she met when he was managing a restaurant in Miami, had been married for 37 years. It was her second marriage. She had two sons from her first marriage and a daughter from her second. She died at home from lung cancer on March 22.

"She liked to smoke a cigarette. I figured that she would quit, but she never quit," her husband said.

"I think she knew she was going to die, but she didn't want to die in the hospital. She died at peace. She had no pain."
[Last modified April 27, 2005, 00:48:18].

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
Published April 27, 2005 ST. PETERSBURG -

Many a time I had a few words with her out side the store while she was on break smoking. She seems to have survived quite a few managers. And I'm glad that the 'shrine' at the store has her sitting at a table smoking like to stab me in the heart. "One ninety two," She drawled in her thick accent. The last thing she said to me was, "thank you dear."

Gonna miss you when I'm gone.