A.I. Image - click for a larger version
Whatever else you might think of A.I.-created images, they do allow differently abled artists – e.g., the rest of us - the chance to produce pictures of things we’ve seen, imagined or dreamed. This is one of those.
When I was young, my family fostered quite a few abused and neglected children over the years. Most stayed with us for only a few months, but one, Alan, came to us when he was an infant. No parent or relative ever came to visit him. Without conscious memory, at least, of trauma or separation, Alan spent the next five years with us as a member of the family. He was my little brother.
One standout memory of Alan is always seeing him with his favorite toy, a plastic guitar. He’d stroll around the house like a miniature troubadour, strumming that guitar, improvising lyrics responsive to his thoughts and experiences at that age. If he ever reads this, I hope he takes my reminiscence as fondly as I do:
“Nebber, Nebber, Nebber
Pick Up Poopies!
I HATE Poopies!” – one of his hundreds of songs.
After a while, his plastic axe started to resemble one of B.B. King’s love-worn instruments, as the strum-wear around the sound hole began to show. I wondered if Alan had been a musician in a past life.
In kindergarten, when Alan was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he’d say:
“I want to play the piano. On the back of a garbage truck. On the moon.”
Back in the early ‘60s, it was a rule here that foster parents weren’t allowed to adopt their charges. Eventually, Alan was officially declared abandoned by his birth parents, and thus available for adoption. The day ultimately came when we were told he would be moved to his assigned adoptive parents.
Tears streaming down his cheeks, Alan promised he’d break a window and come home to us.
Alan, I wonder if you became a musician. I hope you’ve had a wonderful life, brother.
The
other day, I stepped out on our back porch, and to my left was a
“helicopter” seed, spinning, hovering – stuck in a long strand of spider
webbing. I grabbed my camera, but the seed flew off before I could
focus. About an hour later, above the fence in our driveway, there was a
leaf, just floating there. Also stuck in a spider web. This time, I got
it.
And the moon behind it
Contents:
Come Each Bird That Seeks Its Nest, by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
The Burnt Layer (poem), by Sonya Taaffe
Bridge, by Zary Fekete
The Intrepid Botanist Insults the Wrong Plant (poem), by Gretchen Tessmer
The Moon in His Eyes, by Francesca Forrest
Star-Clad and Howling (poem), by Beth Cato & Rhonda Parrish
Benny Was a Binman, by Aaron Long
Vestments (poem), by Susan Shea
Blue and Black, by Patricia Russo
Endlessness of Oracles (poem), by Devan Barlow
Art: John and Flo Stanton
Contents:
Still Life, by Gwynne Garfinkle
Locusts, by Francesca Forrest
A Passage Through Ruins (poem), by Jennifer Crow
Exstasis, by Sam Derby
Gentle Lullaby (poem), by Gretchen Tessmer
Snowborn, by Rachel Cordasco
Soporifia (poem), by Jordan Hirsch
He Will Make It Plain, by Sophia D. Merow
The End, by David Kloss
Tarnished Gold (poem), by Ed Ahern
Art: John and Flo Stanton
