Category: <span>Art & Design</span>

Category: Art & Design

“Checklist,” a blackout poem

What I like about blackout poetry is that it’s sort of an inverted version of pinhole cipher, where a hidden message is concealed in printed matter by pinholes under the words of the real message. I used to make pinhole ciphers on discarded newspapers in cafeterias and coffee shops, just in case someone noticed.

checklist
“Checklist. Smile smile smile smile. Imagine the lie.”

If I had nine lives, I’d use one of them to be a spy who retires and opens a coffee shop.  Preferably, the spy part would be in the early half of the twentieth century, before analogue cryptography was completely outmoded.

With blackout poetry, I can just sort of pretend that someone sent me a secret message and pick out whatever words or syllables interest me.

I didn’t have any particular plan when I did this one, but it’s clear to me that this poem explains how I deal with a lot of social niceties, particularly being asked how I’m doing when I’m not doing well, but I don’t want to say so. Smile, smile, find some sort of lie, and try not to sigh depressively.

Not that I would put on such a charade at my spy coffee shop. I like to think I foster an atmosphere of erudite grumpiness.

The camera ate my color

Perception and memory interest me.

I took the first photo at the community garden where my partner has a plot, and it looks much duller than I remembered. This became even more obvious when I sliced off the top to use for my website’s header.

Part of the blame for that falls to my digital camera, which does poorly with low light and action, and is also skittish around children and wolves.

Part of it has to do with my own perception. How can a flat picture on a screen compare to standing on a hill at the onset of a cool spring night, the air rich with plant smells? I’m sure the sum total of impressions from my other senses influenced my memory.

I punched up the color in this picture three times. While the first picture is the one I took, and the third one matches my memory, the second one might be closer to reality. The fourth one isn’t quite hyperreal, but it looks more like an idealized, imagined sunset.

Even though number two is probably most accurate, three is more truthful in a way. It still can’t capture the energy of being alive with cold wind in your face, but the extra vibrancy conveys a bit more of the energy I remember.

They say that cameras don’t lie. But that depends.  Do you count a lie of omission as a lie?