Reading, Writing, & Arithmetic Club

She used to talk to me About her life Happily sometimes, Sometimes not Scenes from her inner landscape I would marvel at the delight she took In her own wordplay Watching her mouth and eyes dance The sounds in her words rising and falling Like shadows on the wall Never failing to enclose me But after that night I took her to the cafe To listen to the cellist Tell his sad stories with a reedy moan, To the un-syncopated rain, Her voice has gone, She speaks not to me. She has taken to leaving me scribbled clues Of her inescapable musings On random shreds of paper, Like breadcrumbs of thought And has me clinging For the lost embrace Of what she no longer says -LFB, 2010

 ". . . it’s not always easy to be comfortable in the space created by open questions. Agoraphobia can set in. It’s tempting to hide in small rooms built from quick answers."  I am prompted to write by this metaphor.  Agoraphobia can be disabling. The limitation of movement.  Consensus agrees this is generally considered a negative. However, we humans crave quick and uncomplicated answers. We seek the comfort of black and white, the solace of definitive solutions. We want them now. The quick and easy answers generally considered a positive. Yet, life rarely offers such neatly packaged resolutions. Instead, it throws us curveballs, presents us with riddles wrapped in enigmas, and leaves us standing amidst a kaleidoscope of uncertainties. Life gives us unsolvable conundrums. Sheldrake suggests that the easy answers may be disabling to us. Limiting.   To be true, we are afraid of getting lost in its infinite possibilities. But what if we embraced the discomfor...

Stories, it's all about the stories in life. In the vein of Lacuna and Here I Go Again is my own snapshot of stories: I wonder what happened to you  You wrote poems for me,  You were going to take me to  The Rocky Horror Picture Show  We were going to dress up  Your eyes turned green or blue,  Depending on your mood  I wonder what happened to you  Your name like beer  You wrote songs and played guitar  And gave me a dragon ring  Told me not to lick stamps, because you cared  We’d drive the abandoned streets and  You’d stop at green lights   I wonder what happened to you  I loved the cool tattoo you drew yourself  We’d haunt coffee shops in the city  You made me a plastic ring   From the coffee stir stick  Said we were married  We were not  I wonder what happened to you  You’d quote me Shakespeare and   We dress up for the renaissance fair  You painted me pain...

 The following is a small part of a story of my life that I'm writing for my children. Since the name of our group is Reading Writing and Arithmetic Club, Lance and I have discussed that it's appropriate to put writings here, so here's some writing. Just for fun.  It's a period of a couple of years during the 60' s.      Even though that first year in Berkeley wasn't easy for me, it was endlessly fascinating. That was Berkeley in the 60s. When I arrived on the scene, organized student protests were already underway, and about to intensify. The Free Speech Movement had begun in October of 1964 with a massive student sit-in at the administration building, Sproul Hall. The students took over the building and refused to leave. A lengthy standoff ended with the students being hauled out of the building and arrested in a huge police action. Afterwards there was a continuing police presence on campus.      This was the norm when I arrived. There were pro...

 Our latest book to read is: It would be great if we could be on the same page (pun intended) by all reading the same book although I understand this isn't alway possible.

We are fans, no doubt. In Sophie Strand's "The Madonna Secret," she delicately weaves together the intricate threads of womanhood, life, and the cosmic energy that envelops us. Sophie's poetic prowess transcends the ordinary, creating a tapestry of words that resonates with the very essence of existence. As a busy and strong woman navigating life's demanding currents, I find solace in Sophie's ability to articulate the profound connections between femininity and the pulsating energy surrounding us. Her words are an invitation to explore the depths of our own existence and embrace the powerful force that binds us all. Yet, amidst the beauty of Sophie's prose, there's a subtle weariness that echoes in the hearts of busy women like myself. The richness of her writing, while captivating, can also be an emotional investment, a journey that demands our time and reflection. In the hustle of a strong woman's daily life, Sophie's intricate tapestry beco...

Dear Sophie, I was deeply moved and enlightened by your latest book. Your vivid and flowing prose brought the story to life, and it was clear that you had poured your heart and soul into your research. Your decision to travel to Israel and walk on those ancient paths was a testament to your dedication to your craft. Your love of this planet is palpable. The implications you have unfurled for understanding the true history of Christianity is enormous. She has been recognized by the forest as one of its ancient guardians, now returned, graced with the quiet yet boundless capacity to heal, to shield the vulnerable, to be the sanctuary amidst the storm. Time itself has bowed to her essence, allowing moments of grace to unfold, where the innocent found refuge and solace in her burgeoning powers; a living testament to nature’s poetic symphony of nurturing and safeguarding its own, through a young woman reborn as a beacon of love and a sentinel of the living tapestry that embraced her.  ...

And my own body felt more alive than it ever had, as if the woman's long-nailed finger had reached into my chest and kindled the flame in my heart. I could hear every sound around me again, painfully. I swallowed, tasting each particular smell. Human piss. Dirty wool. The sweat of a person about to die. Gummy and blue, like rainwater caught in a stone's cleft. Bird droppings. Balsam perfume.  Galbanum incense. The dense, moist center of yeasty bread. - Sophie Strand, The Madonna Secret 

Alright suckers, here's another one.  A former Poet Laureate of the US named Ted Kooser wrote a book called The Poetry Home Repair Manual.  In it he gives advice, and examples of his and other's poetry.  Here's a one line poem by Joseph Hutchinson.  Kooser points out the poems don't have to be grand in scale, and asks if you could ever look at an artichoke in the same way after reading it. ARTICHOKE O heart weighed down by so many wings That's it.  Here's another with two lines!  Maybe you'll think of it the next time you buy a bottle of Port wine. Sweeter Than Wine Her Port-stained lips suggest a sensuous nature. I wonder the taste of that recycled fruit. That's it! For now.

Here's something that is I think is in the same vein as Lacuna and what we discussed that day at the cafe. Thicker Than Blood Cut my finger slicing potatoes, and rendered my life's blood to the breadboard. Blood from a supernova explosion more than 6 billion years ago somewhere, somewhere in this universe where I guess I've been. Where the iron in my hemoglobin was forged, and the calcium in my bones was scattered to where now they are a part of me. I wonder how in the world I managed to get here, to get all those elements in the right place, in the right sequence, at the right time to meet you here so casually. I can appreciate your journey too, on the same long fiery path as mine. I am you and you are me and we're all the same. All together, all the same. Like it or not.

  LACUNA A small comfort to know you already have lips, eyelashes, a bellybutton, a way of taking coffee; already have friends, ticket stubs, scars, a favorite book, a least favorite book, lovers, although I do not yet know your name. A small comfort to know you have a name although I have never yet said hello to your hello, held your hands in my hands. And it is delicious to imagine you have a mountain you like to climb – that perhaps you sit at the summit as I am doing now, on my mountain, and you rest your chin on your knee, watching the valley shiver like a yellow sea of leaves. You have already wept. And sorrowed. And mourned. As I have wept. And sorrowed. And mourned. What have you lost? What are you going to lose? Are you are worried I do not exist? Let me assure you, I exist. I exist. Let me find comfort in the word you even if you have not yet arrived to fill it. -  Sophie Strand

I read Lance's An Ode to the Sprial (on this blog) and it got me thinking of spirals of course, the way a maple seed spirals to the ground.  Maybe not truly a spiral, but truly wonderful in its own way.  And that got me thinking about things we may see but not really appreciate.  So here's another yada- yada about such things. Seeing Things In the space between where the pines and aspens grow, in a sunny open area of grass and flowers, a tiny mushroom pushed its crown into the light, then another, and another, until a tiny forest of psilocybie cubensis bridged the gap. This was but one miracle you missed, another occurred nearby where a big strong battered fish laid her eggs in the gravel of a stream a thousand miles from the sea; no fanfare, no cigars, no champagne, just a small miracle. And there were others you didn't see, even in your own backyard.

We have a loose rule that everyone in the club gets to choose a book for us all to read. We're in agreement to read it - or some of it, even if we don't like it.  It's my turn!  I just ordered my copy on Amazon and I can't wait to get started. I hope y'all like this book. Sophie Strand is an amazing human being (thanks to Corinne for telling me about her). This book is hot off the press.

Maybe you're reading, and I'm writing, and one and one and one is three, and when you've seen enough from me, text STOP! Or maybe close your eyes. With that, here's another whatever it is. And now maybe it's not just ink on paper. Lost and Found Lost in poetry I've had my feet burned as the sun slid unseen over the eaves. Heard the music of words that had me in tears bitter and sweet, of joy, sorrow and defeat. Had sleep lost scribbling flowery lines that in the light of day were gibberish. Felt the viper strike the fair newlywed, robed, veiled and slippered in white. Looked back in anxiety as Orpheus had, into a dark empty dream, and awakened alone. Written then these last lines from a message received on the memory of an ancient dancing tree found sealed in a bottle from across the sea.

Thanks Sue. Nice book. You gutted me. The cover of the book is innocuous enough, but wading into those pages, I found myself wandering through a landscape both haunting and visceral. It was far from a meandering journey of fiction, but a raw traversal through history's harshest terrains. Each word, each account, felt like a shard of glass, piercing and cutting me. Yes, there are silhouettes of resilience and courage to be found. But for me this is a tale of chains, pain, and the heavy curtain of despair. This book, it's not just a story. It's an echo from the past, and for some, a whisper of both caution and hope. Not so for me. Because, while I hope the Grimke's and Handful somehow made it through to a better life, I'm haunted by the knowledge that most just sank into an abyss of human cruelty, profound inequality, debilitating injustice, and monstrous, indefensible atrocities. I'm haunted by the thought of all those innumerable lives diminished, dreams crushed...

 Common Ground Jump up mother luck, I could use you today. Rent's due, nothing new, heats on, no relief. I'm an angel on trial in hell, the Marlboro Man my confidant, Jack Daniels my attorney. Jury's out, verdict's unclear Pray for me.

We had our first meeting on Tuesday evening, and although there were only three of us there, Cindy, Lance, and myself, all of us had finished the book. We all enjoyed the read, and had a lively discussion about parts of it, which spun off discussions about our lives and situations here in Quincy. A good time was had by all. Before we adjourned, there were several ideas about other books that may serve as our next reading as well as ideas about writing and arithmetic projects. We decided it was Lance's turn to decide, and he will let us know the topic of our discussion for a Tuesday evening meeting in mid September. Hope y'all can join us then.

Yes, welcome to the club. A little history. Wayne and I were talking about a book both of us had read, and at the end of the conversation he said we should start a book club. I thought it was a good idea but nothing happened for a couple weeks until I saw him again.  He was still interested but said I should get it going. After talking to a friend in Colorado who has been a book club member for many years, I asked her about some books she might recommend. She gave me a list of maybe 10 books, and I chose The Invention of Wings to try to get this thing going.  I mentioned it to Lance and Cindy, and we were on our way.  The reason I chose this book was that my friend Shirley said it was by the author of a best selling book, The Secret Life of Bees, which she didn't like as well as The Invention of Wings.  Also I learned that the book was set in Charleston, a city where I've been, as my son lives in South Carolina.  Charleston is a lovely city and because I was the...

I'm going to post another "poem" here, but first I'd like to say, what I'm doing is not really poetry, I guess.  Poetry, at least the poetry I read, seems to present certain parameters that allow the reader to find their own path to wherever it goes emotionally and intellectually. It's essentially nebulous, only hinting at anything certain or absolute. What I do is more specific, more concrete, I think. My goal it seems, is to have the reader essentially feel what I feel in a way that's not demonstration nor lecture, but is graphic in an emotional way. And which stimulates the reader intellectually as well. I'd like the reader to understand, with just words on the page, what it's like being me, spiritually, emotionally and intellectually, and hope they can recognize some common ground between us. I desire to share my life with the reader, and at the same time for them to see their lives, with perhaps a different lens. That's about it I guess. S...

I fell in love with a married woman. I suspect this has happened to most everyone sometime in their life, whether a man or a woman. If that has happened to you, we have something in common. Here's a poem about such a circumstance. Oh, and the Sea of Tranquility is on the moon and where the first moon landing took place in 1969. Shadow Boxing Insignificant tittering banter she said in our latest dreamy verbal sparring. Another oblique conversation, yes, but a tangent was spun off dangerously close to getting to the point of revealing the painful throb of envy at my core, pierced by the allure of the forbidden fruit in the beautifully pruned tree next door. Daytime analysis and uninvited reality tell a liaison no more possible than a barefoot stroll on the sands of the                        Sea of Tranquility. Still, if I could ask her to vacate my dreams,                     ...

Sitting on your deck with your laptop now, you realize there are so many possibilities in spiral-making.  From wikipedia:  Some of the most important sorts of two-dimensional spirals include: The Archimedean spiral The hyperbolic spiral Fermat's spiral The lituus The logarithmic spiral The Cornu spiral The Fibonacci or golden spiral The Spiral of Theodorus The involute of a circle spiral What to do? So many spirals, so little time. You decide to make a new spiral out there every week. You start playing around with short snippets of code that make spirals, like this: angle = PI * (3 - sqrt(5)) for i in range(1 to 800):         t = i * angle         x = sin(t) * t         y = cos(t) * t         drawpoint(x, y) By changing the angle, you ended up with a large variety of spirals to choose from: You spent the next five months making spirals in your field. You forgot about the original intentio...

You're sitting on your back deck. It's mid-morning in late Spring. You have your coffee in hand and the local paper on your lap. You're looking out over the back 40. You decided not to plant corn on this parcel to let the soil recuperate a bit.   There's an article in the paper about a farmer who lives not too far from you who swears he saw a UFO. You don't think so. But to prove to yourself you're open-minded, you get the idea to make some kind of design on your parcel that would signal to a UFO that there is semi-intelligent life down here. You look up how to make a spiral. You decide that an Archimedean spiral (named after the 3rd-century BC Greek mathematician Archimedes) will suffice.  You are going to make something that looks like this: You figure 800 footsteps will do. You grab a stake, measuring tape, and a pair of snow shoes. You pound the stake and start walking in a circle, letting out the measuring tape a little at a time. It takes you less than 20 ...

In numbers, there lies a beauty profound, In spirals, this beauty is perfectly wound. From sunflower fields to the galaxies' twirl, The spiral is nature's own charming whirl. Born of the digits, a dance in array, Unfolding in elegance, in a cosmic ballet. Each spiral unique, with a twist of its own, A story in curves, through seeds it has sown. Oh, spiral, you're the golden angle's delight, Your logarithmic twist an amazing sight. In the nautilus shell and the hurricane's might, Your form is captured in every sight. In the sunflower's face, your secret we find, Seeds spiraling out in patterns aligned. A mirrored image of the starry night, Linking the earth to the cosmos' flight. From Fibonacci's sequence to the Milky Way's band, You twirl and you twist, both simple and grand. Oh, spiral, your beauty is a sight to behold, In each sweeping curve, a story told. Your dance, a harmony of space and time, A testament to the universe's rhyme. In every tu...

  Welcome to the revived and revamped blog originally called Quincy Writers Group. The new blog is called Reading, Writing and Arithmetic Club. We are readers and writers and people who have a fascination with numbers and images (although this isn't required to be a part of the group). We want to read good books and get together to discuss them. We also want to write essays, poems and just about anything. Some of us love numbers and like to write code to generate pictures and maybe write about that too!