WQueens7

Entries categorized as ‘Uncategorized’

Excuse Poem

December 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment

12/28/2009 6:50 AM

For almost a year, now/
My journal has been kept in haikus/
All of it has been posted on twitter/
Life seventeen syllables at a time/
Just like my prose journal/
That I used to keep/
I’ve not reflected on it/
I know, however, that/
This I must organize/
Because the Haikus are/
Of certain life-themes/
Family, my wife, life and kids/
Philosophical, bromides of life/
Artistic, moments of beauty/
That I catch in seventeen syllables/
I really look forward to reviewing
The thousands of Haikus/
I’ve distilled my life into/

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Worshippers

December 11, 2009 · 1 Comment

Those that worship Baal/

Are Jesus’ most ardent followers/

After they make burnt offerings/

@ Home Depot. Staples, & WalMart/

They recede to the church of their fathers/

Acting like their reverence for/

Their Romney-ing at Gates Trump-Buffet/

Was not as serious as their adoration/

Of Jesus’ scaffolding/

It is important to note/

Their wealth is in/

Products/

That project/

Their faith in stuff/


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Happy Birthday To Me

December 4, 2009 · 3 Comments

12/04/09 05:10am
Its my fiftieth birthday.
I haven’t written in my journal since february, though I have been keeping my Haiku Journal on twitter pretty assiduously on my phone.  I want to write this one “birthday letter” that I was thinking about as I couldn’t fall back to sleep.
Sometime in the fall or Winter of 1976 I was walking through the basement of the church where whe had theatre at Copley Sq. High school.  On the table of a room we didn’t regularly have access to was a newspaper.  It looked old and I am inveterate newspaper reader so I walked over to it. It was the sports section from the Boston BGlobe from the day I was born, December 4th, 1959.  I wish I could remember something pithy, like “the Bruins were winning when I was born,” but truthfully, I don’t that was a long time ago.  And, since I was born in Japan, and thought of myself as a New Yorker even then, it didn’t seem particularly relevant.  But I picked it up and kept it at least until my parents through my junk away when they sold the House I grew up in in the 80s or 90s.
I remember this bit of litter all these years later because it is a good reminder of my special sense of aesthetics.  I saw it then, in my tight high-wasted bell bottoms, as a sighn of my special providence.  I knew that I was not “select” like in some pilgrim’s progress sort of way, but in a nead coincidence and left-handed style sort of way.  This was long before I would read Siddhartha but I knew that my life was not going to be one of great import to anyone but me.  I guess I am an existentialist at heart, because I would have to find my own special meaning in the symbols of the world.  Bradshaw or Winthrop or one of those pilgrim-y types saw an eagle fighting a snake and took it to mean something (the rightness of evangelical colonialism).
I saw an old sports section from the day I was born in a basement and I took it to mean something.  I think it meant that I was to be happy with the quotidian (not vocabulary I had then), the everyday pleased me in ways that I cannot easily explain.  But, Since this is my 50th Birthday, and I did wake up at 4 against my will, I will to limn it out.  Looking back at my life I can see this aesthetic and moral value system even earlier.  My first recollectionof it was when Scott and I walked to school alone in the winter of ‘69-’70.  We walked past a vacant gas station that was in ruins between Warren Ave and Columbus Ave.  Methunion manner projects lay there the last time I was in Boston.  It was across from Braddock Drugs where junkies would get paragoric cough syrup and there were always lots of cough syrup bottles littering the abandoned lot.  It was there that the beginner junkies would “get straight” with codine.  I would always marvel at the repetition of these bottles in their decay, fragmentation and crystaline green form.  When the old came Scotty and I would crush the ice as it formed embedding the glass in the water crystals.  It is now over 40 years later and I am still mesmerized by the formation of Ice Crystals.  I look at their random perfection and skewed patterns and I am struck by their rightness.
Now I knew that this was a vacant lot full of litter.  I knew that this was a place of peril and filth.  I knew that this was where the lowest of the low went to shepherd their diminished chemical dreams into the abyss that was their lives. But I also saw a beauty there.  I saw patterns, textures, artifacts, symbols, shapes, colors, textures, causes and effects, and, finally, meanings that Scott and the adults who told us not to got there didn’t want to see.  I was a junior archeologist of some sort of hidden aesthetic that no-one-else saw.  I was an anthropologist of the despair of those junkies (that were never there frozen December 8-AMs).  What made them, like ants, repeat the same futile track across Columbus to the gas station and empty those light-green glass bottles?  Why did those bottles and shards embedded in the thin -first of the season- ice attract me so?
So now I am 50.  I’m not the child I once was.  I don’t care about the Bruins, Celtics, Three Stooges or even girls (outside of Linda) anymore.  But I am still the person who sees the hand of beauty in placement of litter.  Indeed, for better or for worse, I would have to say that this is my “signature move.”  I see the art and poetry that is littered evenly all around like the first snowflakes of a blizzard.  The sidewalk is still visible, but it will soon be obliterated.  Lost in a blanket of temporary beauty.  The white that will come, the even-ness and sound absorbing uniformity that most look to as payment for the inconvenience of the snow is not stunning to me as the discarded little tykes truck that once made a kid so happy. The litter of our lives tells us much more about ourselves than the prized possessions.
Those things we want, that we work so hard to get, will be the beaters, whoopdis, litter, of the next snow storm.  When they are new, they tell the story we want to hear. When they are cast away, discarded in heaps, like coffee grounds, tea leaves or the bones of the orishas, they tell us the truth.
Here’s a truth I can tell.  I am fifty today. I am alive today.  The world hids treasures for me today.  And  I will continue to be the archeologistof today, looking for the sports section of weighted import.

Love, Stafford

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California Vacation (Day 5)

March 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Dawn

Dawn

Cali Day 5
Waiting for sunrise over the east-bay hills from the west berkeley tracks
dsc05127-small
Grumpy shape-up from “quiet please” motel tells us all that we’re ready to fly back home @ 1:30.

stack of Corn meal pancakes: poached eggs and applewood smoked bacon, currant scone with lemon cream and sourdough toast with scrambled eggs (extra toast & syrup because they’ve cut to 1/2 rations to keep prices low).

Royal cafe above solano: been going there since village days (where my daughters learned to like runny eggs).

The hit toy of the vacation, better even than the mood rings, is a series of multi colored blocks teathered with bungie elastic: insainly playable.

Burritos from Gordos Taqueria in Berkeley on jet blue gave me a twinge of missing cali that I felt when I’d enjoy my last slice of pizza before returning to grad school during breaks. The grilled chicken, guac, salsa picante & frijoles are somehow un-replicatable in nyc.
-sigh-

Driver’s licence has expired, but in spite of the fact that the airline noticed homeland security didn’t: I was spared the sanctimonious predations of finger wag

Insane jostling for overhead storage space: I’m resenting the later boarders who’re repacking the stuff above my seat: even though I can see down her shirt.

Manchester united vs. Inter Milan on jet-blue flight: good start to flight
Punchline: espn showed only the 1st 1/2

Back to nyc with a newly minted 14-yr-old daughter, more confident -look-’em-in-the-eyes- son, and happy 7-yr-old: bittersweet because of time change (amped kids on cali time).

Next Morning:
Retrieved Lucky-Limpy from the pound & she woke things 1 & 2 with happy licks & buzzing tail: sleep is strong with thing 3.

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Comicon and Me

February 9, 2009 · 1 Comment

dsc04470-small

2/9/2009 5:29 AM
I went to Comicon twice over the last weekend and had a smashing time.  It is funny how much you learn about yourself in unusual environments (More on that later).   Back to the quotidian, I went to an academic panel on Friday (as well as just walking around and engaging in my geekdom).  At that panel I learned about storyboarding and I got some great ideas about teaching comics.  I want to quickly write down the plan that I got (at http://dw-wp.com/).  They did a quick “story lottery,” where you have each student draw a picture (of the same character?) and then you through a voting system put them in order to make a narrative.  I think more about this can me seen on their website (and they showed a place where they had a completed random one done in a bookstore in Brooklyn).  I never did find their booth after the panel or the completed one in BK.
Comicon was full of the people I always wish that I could have admitted that I was when I was younger.  I loved being there and have to say that the excitement of the crowds when I went on Friday and Sunday was refreshing.

I saw myself over and over.
The self I wanted to be
The self I was
The self I am
I saw the Stafford that was
Who could never admit
That he loved Comics and art
When he was a teenager
And had to disco down and check
It all out
When I was into my comics’ renaissance
1987 was too old
To put my shoulder to the task
I was more a “mature guy”
Who just happened to read comics.
Needless to say, at 49
I am a mature guy who loves comics
I don’t think Ill ever be able to let my hair down
And dress up as a soul samurai or planetary assassin.
Sigh, when will I loose my reserve?

Other things that have been happening.  Old Friends including Henry Jackson have found me on facebook and I am really not free to be friends to more than my life right now.    Here’s a bit of odd confluence; at comicon I saw the vampyrella booth and they still use the design he did in the 70s for her costume.  I’ve also found my JH best friend Stephen Ferry.  Funny, I thought of him as I rode the bus up from comicon to meet Chandler at rehearsal at Hunter.  I googled him and found his website.  Sent him an email and got a response as I got off the crosstown bus. Quick.  He is a photographer based in Columbia and quite good if the time I spent on his site this AM is any indication.

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Chandler’s Play

December 5, 2008 · 10 Comments

From teh first play, "Drunk."

From the first play, "Drunk."

Chandler is performing in part of Shalimar’s annual “shot play festival:” this year titled “BINGE.

I decided to go into Manhattan and catch opening night for my birthday.  It was another nice transit authority quality time with a kid.  When we are on the subway we talk, and unlike the car, there is no radio to fight over and you can look at one-another.

While Chandler prepped I went out and went to Rice and Beans a Brazillian place on 9th ave that I’ve been wanting to go to.  I actually really liked the food, though it was much more upscale than I was comfortable with and I ordered an inexpensive dish because I don’t treat myself when I should (and I over indulge myself when I shouldn’t).  Here is what I wrote before I ate:

Its my birthday I’m sitting alone @ a pretentious Brazillian joint on 9th ave waiting for my food. Smooth samba washes over the crowd of Manhattanites searching for authentic exotic.

(The fact that I was sitting alone in a restaurant typing on my crackberry says I lack the refined skill of irony.)  After I gobbled down the sautéed vegetables, sweet plantains, collard greens and red beans I was more charitable about the crowd.

MMMM, Chandler’s play,  is near the end of the short play festival, next to the last as I recall.  The scene is four “girls” laying about on the floor talking about their favorite foods.  They are eating junk-food.  Hardly a word or sentence gets finished with each of them riffing on the observations of the previous.  Chandler’s obsession is chocolate.  I suppose I could include lines from the script (which I had to make sure that this was legit and not exploitative), but I’ll summarize it here now by saying that Chandler’s part is in love with Chocolate, and she brought to life this obsession in a way that is completely different than the way she actually loves Chocolate (she is a 13-year-old so chocolate is still very important).  When her character is soliloquizing on chocolate the dream of someone else steals my daughter and she is truly suppressing someone else’s anxieties by dreaming of the sweet commodity.  Seeing Chandler there being someone else was a strange experience for the dad who has to wake her for school every morning.  Her hard work has paid off and she is, indeed, an actress working in the trade.

The play itself, which Chandler is only one of the cogs in, is about comfort food and its ability to evoke or suppress feelings.  From what I got watching it last night one of the characters had recently lost her mom.  The dialogue does not didactically spell this out.  Instead we have to glean this from the subtle reactions and interaction of the women on stage.  Most of the time the foods that they soliloquize, in-between interruptions and sparse Mametian dialogue for four “girls,” are cleverly symbolic.  Chandler’s chocolate was a straightforward paean to the commodity that gave flavor to the sugar trade.  I found the pickle soliloquy a bit racy, but chandler claims not to get any of it and it was hysterical.  I wonder if any of the older cast members have explained any of the double entendres to her.  The vegetarian soliloquy was the most opaque because it dealt with an absence, so the cast member goes on and on about Thanksgiving dinner but leaves out the turkey and defends its absence.

I’m not sure what to make of it other than it sounded like the most reasonable “Last Supper,” which if I’m not mistaken was the working title of “MMMMMMM.”  The title change makes the play more amorphous and, I think, less preachy.  The payoff was, strangely, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  I guess that is the ultimate comfort food of a certain era.  I think of it as the culinary sound track to the 60s suburban childhood I never had.  Writing the play around retro-comfort-food was clever and kind of strange after Gus’s pickles, a vegetarian Thanksgiving and chocolate (CHOCOLATE, MY CHOCOLATE).  I felt like the play with its intricate and precise direction and dialogue receded to comfort food as a default suggesting that, perhaps, comfort is lowest common denominator consumption, rather than something that will nourish and enrich us.

The other short plays, which ranged from good to confusing, deserve a shout-out here:

The first play was about the lack of boundaries in an office with three women who behave strangely when drunk come to work on a Monday.  I was torn between the cluelessness of Jen Taher’s new hire and the coming-out saga of the newly sober Jessica Hendrick.  Kim Gainer’s imperious queen bee drunk (and object of desire) was awful in its realism.

The second play, “Dr. Oz and the Secret of Longevity,” in which Chandler has a cameo, was a hilarious and tragic trip back to my 1980s (well except for the fact that the short play was longer than 70% of my relationships in the 80s).  The adulteryed (cuckolded)  polite husband and the stoner dealer without boundaries both broke my heart with their inability to understand Phyllis Johnson’s relapsed character. The canned food seemed gratuitous, but the insane denial in the face of bureaucratic defeat on the part of Miss Pugh.  The ineffectualness of Erwin Thomas as the husband holding on to a marriage to a relapsing wife was painful (especially now that I am married).  Craig Peugh as the tactless stoner/dealer was an amusing bit of work.  The timing and interaction was one of the elements that made this play work so well.

“Eugene’s Got to Eat” was a strange post-modern amalgam of issues that add up to a prolonged metaphor on addiction and recovery.  The cast was amazing, but the symbolism was a bit heavy.  I think it should have followed through with the lucha-libre mask from the onset and gone into the surreal rather than making it a domestic addiction story.  I want to say that the music and syncopation did work, but I would have liked more story.

I had the embarrassing honor of being a fake guest in “The People Who Make it Happen, Hatred For.”    This parody of a daytime TV show cooking segment was funny (once I stopped shaking).  Jennifer Avery Semrick made the maniacal faux cheer of TV Hosts really scary.  I had once entertained the fantasy of going to one of these shows taped in New York, but seeing this made me want no part of “TV-Life.”

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Hope

November 4, 2008 · 2 Comments

ballot-1-copy

Categories: new york ballot · obama ballot
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HalloQueens

October 31, 2008 · Leave a Comment

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Queens Dawn

October 24, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Dawn in Queens

An iridescent landscape

Rips out of the night sky

Acute early sunlight

Polishes metal and glass

The sun, just over shoulder

And below the clouds

Fires smooth surfaces

On the merry-go-round of dawn

Now it’s the Seven Train

Or the N or the R

Soon it’ll be the glass box

A crafty architect sold

Across pre-dawn Queens

Shapes jump up and out

Glinting like precious ore

In a pan full of gravel

Quickly, it’s a cab window

Scurrying to Manhattan

Carrying bright rectangles

To early morning fares

Longer, stretches out the N

Slow motion meteor

Snaking to Astoria

Heavy steel bent light

Immobile, are glass buildings

Fifteen minutes of fame

Glowing brightly against

Low clouds and concrete

Originally Posted Here

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1968-2008 Park Concerts Observed

June 28, 2008 · Leave a Comment

I remember the cambridge common in 1968, when I was 8. Scotty, my
brother, and I were running around in the outskirts of a crowd of
eugene mccarthy supporters listening to The Doors on a dirty field.
Campaighn hope was high for an end to tje war and a progressive
president.

Tonight I’m watching my kids run around the prospect park bandshell
listening to Cold War Kids. Occassionally from the stage a woman
harangues the crowd about voting (never mentionig Obama or the war).

God I hope everything has changed in 40 years. .


Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Stafford

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