St. Valentine at his best

It’s a rerun, but it also amuses me greatly.

The backstory, in its era, is even more fun.

It was a desultory gig in Midland-Odessa. Rode out from Austin on Friday night and was forced to spend a few hours with an ex-lover. Weird energy in and of itself, and I’m guessing, late January, early February.

The image itself was taken with a Palm Pilot derivative, a camera that snapped into a device called a Handspring, I think.

Cell phone pictures before there were iPhone and cell phones that could take pictures. Technically, it wasn’t that much. For entertainment, though, it showed a side of the country that existed, then, but has largely been subsumed by correctness and political expediency.

At the time of the image, though I did prowl certain pawn shops, looking for used wedding bands. It was a joke, and yet, also held a kind of usefulness in my work, when I was more in the public eye.

The image, I’m grateful to an old fishing buddy for finding it, and now, that image has served well, over the years, evergreen, as a reminder of a time and place, and the way it was, and the humor we all shared, then.

If I were more enterprising, I would just recycle images from the sign for the tiny hamlet of Valentine, Texas — maybe a few short minutes west of Marfa, now world-famous. Doing so though, doesn’t serve with the singular image, possibly pre-millennial, that captures so much about a spirit, now sadly departed.

St. Valentine at his best

#Valentine

know not the heart

Sonnet 24

Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,
And perspective it is best painter’s art.
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictur’d lies,
Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me
Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee.

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 24

Shakespeare’s Sonnets & Poems (Folger Shakespeare Library)

Romance Tips

Either for a woman, or man, you know, I don’t care. I do care, but I’m not picky.

1. A man should find a woman who has a job, a source of income.
2. A man should find a woman who likes to cook and clean.
3. A man should find a woman who makes him laugh.
4. A man should find a woman who adores and spoils him.
5. It is vitally important that these four women never meet.

Works either way:

1. A woman should find a man who has a job, a source of income.
2. A woman should find a man who likes to cook and clean.
3. A woman should find a man who makes her laugh.
4. A woman should find a man who adores and spoils her.
5. It is vitally important that these four men never meet.

Usual disclaimers apply.

The Tragedy of MacBeth

Shakespeare’s Scottish Play

Subtitle: all hail King James.

Previous notations &
Front piece & Masthead.

The Tragedy of MacBeth

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

MacBeth 5.3.41-5

Truly a wonderful rendition of the play, loved it.

The Tragedy of MacBeth

The Plot: A Novel

The Plot

First blush? Cringe, another Russo. My bad, and a mistake I’m willing to own, with my own prejudice and arrogance, on display for all to see. Heady meta fiction link toward Dream Girl, maybe.

My sister recommended the book; although, to be fair, she didn’t read the book, but rather listened to it. Noted, though, writers writing about writing can be tenuous.

In my day job, everyone is looking for that silver bullet. That one piece of evidence, or even just a belief, that “This is the one that cures it all!”

I’ve grown to doubt that there is a silver bullet of any sort.

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.” (Picasso in Pink Cake)

There are, like what? Seven major plot lines in the world? Anything else is derivative or some combination thereof?

Ostensibly, the plot of The Plot is about a writer who acquires — it’s a grey area — a killer book plot, delivers it, then gets wrapped up in a thrilling unraveling, wherein the plot is twisted around on itself.

Carefully woven together, set against the current big-market drivers of post-modern publication, it’s a thrilling little ride.

As the title suggests, it’s all in the plot. A rewarding adventure.

The Plot

The Plot: A Novel