Scratching for Something

Scratching for Something on Kindle

admin — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:02:01 +0000

Scratching for Something is now available as a Kindle book! We’ll be launching it on other platforms soon, but check out the Kindle version if you’ve got an e-reader.

Salamander Dream

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 02:50:04 +0000

Thank you, Douglas, for telling me about Hope Larson’s “Salamander Dream.” This gorgeous graphic novel is a coming-of-age fable about a nature-loving girl and her mysterious tree-dwelling salamander friend. You can read it on Hope’s website, but I recommend buying the paper version. This is a book you will want to return to again and again.

Tree Man

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:51:32 +0000

Whenever I find stories of real people experiencing fabelistic transformations I like to share them on this blog. Dede Koswara’s story reminded me that the struggle of a real person is more complex, tragic, compelling, inspiring, and heartbreaking than anything I could imagine in a poem. I wonder if literature exists merely to soften the rawness of human existence? I don’t have Dede’s affliction, but I do sometimes feel handicapped by self-consuming forces. Does my “tree” poem lessen my own suffering by giving it meaning?

Click here to see a video interview with Dede.

Cold Souls

admin — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:47:56 +0000

They made a movie out of one of my fables!

Just kidding, but the premise of the film is remarkably similar to one of my prose poems. Click here to read it.

Hybrid Creatures

admin — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:39:21 +0000

I’ve just discovered the work of sculptor Patricia Picinnini and I’m excited to share it on this blog. She crafts three-dimensional modern fables that are also cautionary tales for an era of genetic tampering. Her Frankenstein creatures are posed in casual and intimate connection with lifelike sculptures of human children. The sculptures evoke opposing feelings of discomfort and sweetness in line with Picinnini’s message — we shouldn’t get too cozy with genetic engineering, but since we already have, we might as well learn to love the results.

I guess it’s double-edged isn’t it? Because one of the things about the work that I’m making, is it’s not so far-fetched. There’s some story happening, I’m not crazy, this is already living in our environment I’m just responding to it. It’s not artwork that wants to horrify the viewer, it’s work that wants to bring the viewer into this world and let them emerge with their own ideas about what we’re doing in our world. It’s work to reflect upon. — Patricia Picinnini

If you want to know more, please take a look at Donna Haraway’s essay about Picinnini’s work: “Speculative Fabulations for Technoculture’s Generations.”

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Aesop’s Film Fables

admin — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:43:20 +0000

I’ve always been attracted to the animated films of the 1930s. They came out of dark economic times and had a sophisticated adult sensibility–think of Betty Boop, Felix the Cat, and Popeye. The humor was subtle and subversive and the images were complex and full of magical realism. The landscapes came alive to dramatize whatever the characters were feeling. It was a world where the greedy banker was “A. Wolf.” He rode in a limousine that moved like a snake and a bucking bronco and when he came to foreclose on your house, he literally “closed” it–folded it up and stuffed it into the trunk of his car.

This short animation was part of the Aesop’s Film Fables series produced from 1921 – 1933 by Van Beuren Studios. “Barking Dogs,” was created in 1933, but it seems particularly resonant today with the spector of foreclosure a reality for so many, and the “average folks” suffering once again because of the banking system’s unchecked greed.

1933-Aesop’s Fables – Barking Dogs
Uploaded by iToons

Film/Poem/Fable

admin — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:24:53 +0000

I’ve watched this incredible film by Lucinda Schreiber and Yanni Kronenberg at least 20 times. I’m in awe of it.

Firekites – AUTUMN STORY – Chalk animated music video directed by Lucinda Schreiber and Yanni Kronenberg. Music available from Spunk Records

tree growing inside a man

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:35:32 +0000

Sometimes real-life happenings are as fantastic as fables. Here’s the story I came across today: tree growing inside a man.
And here is the tree-growing-inside-a-man fable published in “Scratching for Something.”

tree

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:28:19 +0000

There was a man who struggled with a gritty sensation in his stomach. It was not so much painful as it was strange. The skin in that place began to arc up and extend outward, hardening and transforming into woody bark. This outgrowth became so substantial that the man could no longer stand or move about. He was forced to lie on his back and spread his arms to keep from tipping. The tree also grew inside his body, slowly taking it, making roots from his veins, transforming his spine into a thick hairy tuber and sending it down into the earth. Finally, the tree covered over all traces of the man. No one looking could see that its sap was bloody red and there was a tiny heart, still pumping inside the concentric rings of its hard wooden torso.

Fables by Franz Kafka and Charles Simic

admin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:54:58 +0000

There are writers that I like, writers that I love, and writers that I worship. Simic and Kafka fall into the latter category, so imagine how thrilled I was to find these two fables–one by Kafka, the other by Simic–which I read as dual explorations of a similar dystopian insight.

A Little Fable
by Franz Kafka

“Alas,” said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.”

“You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.

from The World Doesn’t End
by Charles Simic

We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the mousetrap. All alone in the cellar, I could hear them pacing upstairs, tossing and turning in their beds. “These are dark and evil days,” the mouse told me as he nibbled my ear. Years passed. My mother wore a cat-fur collar which she stroked until its sparks lit up the cellar.