Klatch & Buzz 11-14-18

       A friend of mine visited for a few days several months ago. In the kitchen, while we were preparing morning coffee, she turned from my cabinets and said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” She meant the signs and images I have all over my kitchen cabinet doors—everything from a photo of a rocking chair on a string that swings when the door it’s on is opened, plastic wrapper tags (one that has a wire tie around it making it look like a crucifix, another with the date Dec. 25^th), photos of hands painted and positioned to look like a goose and a giraffe, a sign that simply states “Sit with It” in letters cut from magazines ( meant to look like a ransom note?) and on and so on. I call these “prompts” and have a good deal of them in a file when I take them down. Every now and then I spread them out on the living room carpet and attempt to remember how many have truly helped me when they were up. They aren’t all meant to nudge me toward some desired goal—despite my label for them. Some are there to delight, such as the frog that’s hanging onto a reed in a pond with its eyes closed and a smile on its face. Underneath I’ve plastered cut-out letters, “Enjoy Everything.”

       What can I tell you? I’m a visual obsessive. I have awful auditory recognition and retention. I enjoy opera above all other musical forms because of the visual drama associated with the beautiful music. For me, music usually accompanies some mise en scéne. And although I own hundreds of music CDs, I rarely play them and am totally baffled by people who have music on constantly, especially while they are doing something else. Television is my preferred white noise. Audiobooks are my companions while I cook or bake, and old-time radio is often on late at night while I play mahjong on my iPhone.

        So years ago when I came upon magnetic poetry in kits (Dave Kapell invented these in 1993 and sales boomed by the end of the nineties) I was in heaven. I bought a metal board and played with the magnetic words for hours—while watching television! These words are entrancing because they are givens and whether by chance or manipulation, the unexpected ways they come together can be downright thrilling. Their appeal, beyond doubt, is that everybody can be, well, poetic without practice or craft. It has the feel of a Ouija board, with the magnetic band guiding and sliding words across the board’s metal surface.

        When doing these on the refrig, photos I have on its door sometimes inspires the poem. I’ve attached some notables.

 [my mother, Viola Mae Becker Boehs]

 [my friends, Jim Mazza and Nancy Osborn]

        But I’m finding these poems or phrases are becoming glued to their places. I become so accustomed to the connection between the image and the words that I don’t often take them down and put others in their places. They become quite like an album or some image-poem in a bound book. Those that stand alone, I have no idea what they might become out of refrigerator door context. Here are a few. You tell me.

eat life with honey

read language like a swim in the sea

voices flood aching beauty sleep

true loves luscious skin

sky above bitter wind

picture a cool rusty knife

hot summer shadows

black leaves soar

still sweet whisper from the summer goddess

        It’s interesting how much gets lost in the topographical translation. The magnetic band-fragments and the cut-out letters from magazines give the words a hefty feel, something concrete, almost like little sculptures—as books are sculptures, held objects with textured pages of word-meanings that we move in a repetitious or random rhythm. There’s something in this that resonates, that I recognize as a kind of mind-body interaction or a me-other thing that I do.

        Okay, I’ll stop now and play with sliding words across a surface. Want to join me?

[me deciding to go or stay where I am]