effigy

scary

perplexing

numbers coming down

seven flights, solo.
9/11 memories
echo off cement.

thinking, as i climb,
how descent with covered mouth
would have been that day.

clearing the runways,
not tripping, not inhaling
ashes of a friend.

seeing things, I'm still --
hearing things in the stairwell.
voices? no. music.

some joe citizen
playing bach, as though to me --
for six minutes' peace.

_______________________________

This just happened today, so I thought I'd do what you're supposed to do with weblogs and blog it. I can only give account for me, but I rarely hear radio music floating down from the heights above when I'm in the stairwell, nevermind a symphonic piece. I can never think of such juxtapositions as mere coincidence.

so what.

geographical orientation
Down here...I wouldn't mind living in a treehouse just off the Nile, but for now it's an upper apartment overlooking the Rock River in northern Illinois, about an hour west of Chicago.

"A man is known by his favorites."
I love a well-crafted metaphor. You know, the kind that makes an abstract concept concrete without degrading it in the process.
I really like when large collective bodies work in sync, like a cosmic choreography of some kind -- for instance, when a flock of birds swoop down on fields or over roads in these magnificent waves, or when the wind whips leaves or corn husks up into those multi-colored mini-cyclones. Those may sound like crazy favorites, but that's the way it is.
My favorite fiction book is Perelandra. (At the moment.)
My favorite instrument is the cello, which of course I can't play.
My most favorite thing to do that I can't do on my own is fly.

worthless and unusual facts
Thanks to an encounter with a VW van at age 2, I no longer have a spleen. Thanks to an encounter with racquetball court at age 25, I no longer have my right tibial sesamoidits bone. I do, however, have an extra cusp on my #15 (2nd) molar, which makes up for everything.

Seriously, though. To sum me up in five words:
"child of mercy and grace"

definition: effigy

Main Entry: ef·fi·gy
Pronunciation: 'e-f&-jE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -gies
Etymology: Middle French effigie, from Latin effigies, from effingere to form, from ex- + fingere to shape
Date: 1539
: an image or representation especially of a person

~ Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

welcome...

Welcome to EFFIGY... Just another dot on the Internet where I hope to get some discussion going about various things, particularly poetry and photography. Both of these deal with portraying images. That is, they are trying to reflect characteristics of what they're about. Not necessarily mirroring exactly, but pointing up various aspects of the reality. Whether it's a metaphor or an angle or a zeugma or a shadow...the similarities ought to magnify the message.