Auf Wiedersehen

Off I go to visit my "German family."  I leave you with a smile from God as Josh drives me to the airport with my new red luggage and then fly over the Atlantic "in a window seat!"

It's All Temporary

Goodbye, Puddleduckpuppet Plaza

Hello, Germany

It's All Temporary

Noah's Ark

“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.” 
― Rumi

What a great quote!  I love Rumi.  If and when you are feeling down, google Rumi quotes, and you are bound to find at least one that will cheer you up. I love projects, especially huge, foolish ones.  Rumi was so prolific. Although his poems were hardly foolish, he never gave a fig about what people thought of him, he could have cared less. In that respect, he was a bit like Woody Allen. Woody never read his reviews.  When a movie was "in the can," he put it aside and started another one. If the critics liked it, fine, if the critics didn't like it, fine. 

My puppets are the same way.  They may be small, but they are very self-assured.  I wouldn't go so far as to call them egotistical, but they are no dopes.  Sometimes size matters, sometimes not. Soon I shall be off to Germany to visit "the German Contingent." It will be very good for me to unplug, to forget about the upcoming election, Obamacare, and more importantly, what happened to the cat who sat by his window opposite mine every morning for three years and said good morning.  He is gone, and my world is a lesser place.  I hope he, too, is only off on vacation and will return some day soon.

It's All Temporary

Face Off

It's All Temporary

Stone God and Goddess in an Ark

Stone God and Goddess in an Ark
by Tom Sleigh 

Out of the stone ark that carried them this far
in their two by two progress up to here,
they've outlived everyone
and everything they've known—

he in his fishscales up to his waist, she
in her grunge hairdo of stone:
and on each face no guilt for surviving,
no stony comprehension

of all they've left behind, just a joy
so of the moment it seems almost heartless,
the two little stone gods grinning mad little grins

at whoever could be so foolish as think stone
thinks, as to think they could get close
to what those grins might mean...

And in the hotel room
where all this is happening, traffic flow
halting in its own stalled glow
ricocheting pane to pane, I'm

coalescing out of sleep, dissolving back,
as if it were the moment just before
the moment cracks
and I become a little god,

that grin on my face making me
feel a little silly, silly immortal, silly
not to die when my dad's

long dead, Amy's dead three years,
Benny died a year ago, and Jason's
just died, his stare still dissolving in the room.



It's All Temporary

Thousands of Hits

It's All Temporary

Curl Up and Dye

A promotional for the hair Salon at Puddleduckpuppet Plaza.

It's All Temporary

The Moon is Always Female

To Have Without Holding, from “The Moon is Always Female” by Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard,

love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can’t do it, you say it’s killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate

diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

It's All Temporary

I Can't Stop Thinking

Wrap a rubber band around your head and snap out of it.

It's All Temporary

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton is one of my favorite authors.  This is from The House of Mirth - a description of Lily Bart.

Scarcely three months had elapsed since he had parted from her on the threshold of the Bry's conservatory, but a subtle change had passed over the quality of her beauty.  Then it had had a transparency through which the fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes magically visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a process of crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard brilliant substance.  The change had struck Mrs. Fisher as a rejuvenation: in Selden it seemed like that moment of pause and arrest when the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape.

It's All Temporary

The Child Angel by Rabindranath Tagore

Let your life come amongst them like a flame of light, my child,

unflickering and pure, and delight them into silence.

They are cruel in their greed and their envy,

their words are like hidden knives thirsting for blood.

Go and stand amidst their scowling hearts, my child,

and let your gentle eyes fall upon them like the

forgiving peace of the evening over the strife of the day.

Let them see your face, my child, and thus know the

meaning of all things, let them love you and love each other.

It's All Temporary

A Vegetable Thief

Puppets are stealing vegetables from each other's garden plots.

It's All Temporary

A Blessing by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.

It's All Temporary

Don't Feel Good?

The Wellness Center at Puddleduckpuppet Plaza: A promo

It's All Temporary