Breath

Reuben Rose Poetry Competition

Rainbow_Watcher — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:42:40 GMT

As some of you may have already heard, one of my poems, "Oasis," was selected for Third Place in the international Reuben Rose Poetry Contest held by Voices Israel Group of Poets in English (final judge, Richard Berengarten [Burns] of Cambridge University). Another poem, "As in a dream I see a grave that is not there...," received Honorable Mention. For those of you in Israel, there is a public award ceremony and reading on Tuesday, 6 January 2008, 7:30 p.m., at ZOA House, 26 Ibn Gvirol St., Tel Aviv. I hope that you will be able to come to this public event. Richard Berengarten was originally scheduled to appear, but a family illness has caused him to cancel. His comments about the winning poems will be read, as I understand, and the winning poets will read their work. That includes me. Also, my eBook, The World Behind It, Chaos..., a collection of poetry, photos, and digital artwork, is scheduled to be available from why vandalism? (http://whyvandalism.com) sometime in January. It will be free to download--so pass the word!

poem

Rainbow_Watcher — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:40:29 GMT

unsaid moments before or after the falling through space, time, you, me, waves--and see again and that I don't know what or why I myself do or don't do what is undone or why

New work online at why vandalism?

Rainbow_Watcher — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:56:23 GMT

A poem of mine is in the current issue of why vandalism? http://www.whyvandalism.com/issue_mar08.html#21 If you read it, let me know what you think.

Read my Helium.com articles

Rainbow_Watcher — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:08:32 GMT

http://www.helium.com/users/174989/show_articles http://www.helium.com/users/174989.xml

New work online at Abramelin

Rainbow_Watcher — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:12:32 GMT

I have a poem, six photos, and the cover photo published in the Winter 2007 issue of Abramelin: The Journal of Poetry and Magick (http://www.abramelin.net/). Check out my work and feel free to leave comments here.

Three new pieces in "why vandalism?"

Rainbow_Watcher — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:47:27 GMT

The August issue of why vandalism? has three of my pieces -- a poem, a short prose piece, and a prose poem. Check them out at http://www.whyvandalism.com. Then come on back and leave a comment to let me know what you think of them!

Wedding and photo album...

Rainbow_Watcher — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:01:03 GMT

Aviva and I stood under the Chupa on June 13. It was a spectacular wedding, in Jerusalem, at a restaurant on the promenade that overlooks a monastery, an Arab village, and the Old City. There was wild dancing and much joy. If you want to see photos, check out our online photo album (first installment, more pictures to come): http://web.mac.com/michael_dickel/iWeb/June_13/Album%20Cover.html

Story on Neon Beam

Rainbow_Watcher — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:53:18 GMT

My short story, "Across the Creek," is in the premiere issue of Neon Beam, available online as a downloadable PDF at http://www.neonbeam.org/ Hope you download and enjoy the story!

why vandalism?

Rainbow_Watcher — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 08:53:23 GMT

New work on why vandalism? http://whyvandalism.com/issue_jun07.html

Shoah Rememberance

Rainbow_Watcher — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:29:11 GMT

In Israel, at any given moment, horns beep at intersections the moment the yellow flashing light joins the red light, the signal that a green light is coming. Drivers insist on moving forward, push the cars in front of them by creeping up before the green. Cars push through intersections on the other end, too, entering as the light turns red, a perpetual near-gridlock that somehow keeps flowing, however slowly, anyway. Today, however, at 10 am everything stopped. I sat on a bus in Tel Aviv on my way to work, at busy intersection. A man got out of his truck and stood next to it. Other drivers and passengers got out of their cars and stood. Then I heard the siren. The bus driver stood. All of us inside the bus stood. Pedestrians stood still. A nation commemorated the Holocaust, the Shoah. For a brief moment, a siren's mournful wail, and a silent, standing people stretched time into the past. Everything was still. Some of us on the bus remembered that during our generation, six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Some of us remembered that during our parents' generation or our grand-parents' generation the Shoah was. Some likely remembered lost family members, or at least the names and echoing memories of those lost in their family. The siren sound fell. Everyone on the bus sat back down, the pedestrians strode along their ways again, and as soon as the flashing yellow light joined the red light in front of us, a couple of horns sounded their drivers' impatience. Perhaps it is fitting. For even after our moment of rememberance, genocide continues in our own time. Distant places names like East Timor, Rwanda, and most recently, Sudan echo like impatient horns. Time for us to get a move on. Time to go. Somewhere. Anywhere.

Photo: Molotov Man, an Ecstasy of Influence -- SEO Series No. 3

Rainbow_Watcher — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 19:59:52 GMT

Appropriating Joy Garnett, Susan Meiselas, and Jonathan Lethem with your photo search (1) Photo: Molotov Man and an exploding ecstasy of contextual influence and perhaps today a photo framing my page will savor your search and, downloaded to your ambitious hard drive, live a new, ecstatic life of influence. But I doubt it. My photo: perhaps you will appropriate my photo, use the photo for a holiday photo card, increase your or my influence anxiety while my holiday- photo-card appropriated photo dances upon family occasion. My photo. You appropriate a photo, my photo, I appropriate your search for a photo to give you my photo. Originality and appropriations are as one. You want a holiday photo card, digital photo printing, or just photo printing or just a digital photo. I want you to see snippets of other writers’ texts in this work, an action my teachers would have called plagiarism. Visual, sound, and text collage, explosively central to a series of movements in the 20th century. Collage, the art form of the twentieth century, never mind the digital search of the 21st. See: my photo, its life, its use—even as a holiday stock photo card. This picture, this moment I saw, appropriated, manipulated, selected an angle for and lighting and perspective for and framed, this photo framing a picture of my sensibility, placed here to attract your attention, to appropriate your search. Enframing Heidegger’s technological orientation toward the task he identified: to find ways to resituate ourselves vis-à-vis object, things pulled into relief against the ground of their functionality. Appropriating your photo, nude photo, holiday photo card search pulling out from the ground of the search engine an optimized photo album poem against the ground of naked-picture backs. Central to my work, respect the individuality of the people who search for photographs. If I find my photo later, disguised as a Britney Spears picture or sex picture, a tattoo picture to capture your ink-mind word-splattered photo-appropriation imagination, creating found photo art from my photo, so what? I am a photographer. Perhaps my name could ride with the photo, for a while, this obscure and unknown photographer offering a small gift: the appropriation of your search for image, for photo, for photographer, for Britney Spears picture, for photo print, for sex picture, for PhotoShop, for a Jennifer Lopez picture, for a funny picture, for a Joumana Kidd picture (who is Jouman Kidd?), a tattoo picture. Ah. A tattoo picture I have. What joy, this practice of decontextualizing searches in my own hope as a photographer to contextualize the photographer’s photography, an image of self: there is no denying in this digital age that images are increasingly dislocated and far more easily decontextualized. Technology allows us. As a photographer photography is my grasping at the world, a shout of my consciousness, a demand for a picture framing me. The photo album is my mind. My ego. My self. I don’t have a Saddam Hussein picture to offer you, no free sex pic here, although death and sex are on my mind. It is a poetry of witness photo, this picture frame, the photographer’s photography, influenced by ecstasy. My mind poem witness to an adult picture photographer, not the free sex pic, sex picture frame Yahoo! Photo graphic kind, a graph of body, mind and creation and eye and experience and against interpretation, appropriated to appropriate your photographer photography photo search so that, for a moment, you might see as or what I see. Even though you won’t. Because you are searching for a photo, not my photo, a photo you will take out into the world or view privately alone, hands busy not looking, on keyboard or body. I cannot appropriate your eyes, hands, desire, your perspective always outside my picture frame. You searchers of photos look for the photo, private or public, the photo in your mind: the holiday photo card, the Saddam Hussein picture, Saddam Hussein being executed, saving the most promising images in folders on your computer, a photo album mirror reflects your eyes, your mind, and you forget where you found the photo. Assembling each photo you find based on aesthetic, psychological, cultural, social, religious criteria more than that, on your emotional attachment to their narratives as self-constructed, into your photo-album self, the mirror of culture, the constructed dance of influence, past, present, philosophy of digital photo printing a newly released Adobe PhotoShop self, photo printing picture, the public-persona photo album. The private-alone-at-night photo album seeks Britney spears pictures, a Lindsay Lohan photo, an adult picture in the picture frame of lonely bodies. An Aishwarya Rai picture highlights the diversity of the search as you seek a free porn pic, the sex photo you want to create in your Adobe Photo Shop mind of a photo: a Beyonce picture, a sexy picture, you in it with whomever, a Shakira picture, a porn picture with Britney Spears, car, Paris Hilton picture you in the nudist photo, part of the celebrity photo, the digital photo, the passport photo that takes you to the porn sex nudist pantyless Britney excited photo of your cultural and personal despair, alone in the Elisha Cuthbert photo. No porn picture when spent, you return to looking for the holiday card photo you sought to appropriate before the dance of loneliness left you looking for a Victoria Beckham picture, your superiority sought the execution of Saddam Hussein picture, your free nude pic reminded you that you need a haircut, and quickly you appropriate a picture of hair style that will end your loneliness you are sure, or a dog picture, so cute, to cleanse your inappropriate searching for a Shilpa Shetty picture. (Who is Shilpa Shetty? Why do you want that picture?) I know that you want a Britney Spears pantyless photo uncensored, a pussy pic to go with the dog picture, but not that kind of pussy cat picture. Despite this, I appropriate your search. I am not a wedding photographer, but perhaps you will hire me to take a baby picture. I have no Paris Hilton private photo, but no photo in this digital world remains private long. I have no free nude pic, no sex photo, no sex pictures, no 2006 Miss World Photo. This poem anxiously appropriates your searches for photo, for photograph, for photography, for photographer. This poem steals words and language from writers and searchers for photo. This poem is a photo gallery of the digital cultural mind searching, searching, seeking, not hiding, not finding. This digital picture frame strings Joumana Kidd photo gay pic with Cameron Diaz picture with Britney Spears photo with Ivanka (Ivana?) Trump picture with xxx pic and girl pic and naked picture, nude photo, sex photo, right after naked picture comes horse picture, perhaps adolescent girls sublimating photos. The seekers look for a flower picture, a free gay pic, a Ciara picture. They look for Miss USA photo, b h photos (what are b h photos?), herpes pictures, and then a Serena Williams hot photo. From our space we want a satellite photo, stock photo of earth or moon or where we live; we want stock photos to appropriate in our digital art world, a cat picture, an animal picture. I’ve got those, cat pictures, a dog picture, animal pictures. Not sex pictures, nor am I hanging Saddam Hussein pictures on my living room wall. I’ve stolen your searches for this poem. But you were not searching for this poem. Who has a dragon picture? Today, we all have a MySpace picture. A senior picture. A developing photo fetish for photo fetishes. A two-dimensional representation of culture, an appropriation. A Jessica Simpson picture and a Serena Williams picture, sandwiched between them: your photo shop tutorial. Beyonce Knowles’ picture hangs next to a dragon picture on Saddam Hussein’s hanging-wall photo album of hell. At least some of us would like to see an angel picture. Or a dragon picture. Or simply to find the photo for our photo-album selves that would be the holiday photo card photo of our persona, imago, projected appropriation of cultural masks of self, of whom we could and might well be. I’ve stolen your searches, plagiarized your phrases, put together this pastiche with my feeble scribbling, contextualizing sensibility, picture-framing, selecting, digital photo making something of a lot of nothing, words that might bring you to me. You may well appropriate my photos. But if you have found this poem, I may well have appropriated your search for photos, your quest for a free sex picture. Your desire to see for my desire to be seen. A new project having to do with the human in extremis. Will you include a credit line? In this swirl of appropriated search, creative agitprop and commentary, several questions come to the fore. Does the author—whose mission is to provide a public with— control the content of the readers’ mind? Searchers of photo, did you find what you’re looking for? —Michael Deqel (nee Dickel) ©2007 All Rights Reserved to the Exact Text (but appropriate freely) (1) See “Portfolio” and “Criticism” in Harper’s Magazine 314:1881, Feb. 2007, 53-72; also “Reviews,” “The Devoted,” by Robert Boyers, 87-92--some text in this poem has been appropriated from Garneet, Meiselas, and Letham (the first references), and an homage / allusion to Susan Sontag influenced by Boyers (the second reference). If you appropriate parts of my work, I’d appreciate a similar line of influence credit. If you want the whole thing, please ask.

Israel Images — SEO Series

Rainbow_Watcher — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:09:04 GMT

Israel Kamakawiwoole sings from the speakers here in Jerusalem, his Hawai’an poetry, love poems, free love poems to my ears, weaving through Israel. It’s Israel, a new breed, multi-cultural historical Israel, who could make a map of Israel with Israel Kamakawiwoole, with Israel news no song, no poem most of the time, no love poem for those who cry out, america call I infidel Israel Jihad. Now renounced, terror they war why do they war oh America call I infidel. Israel. Jihad. And the other side, the Israel Palestine side, the Israel travel map to questions so complex that from Beirut to Jerusalem, Iran to Israel, Syria to Israel what is Israel travel? A love poem for Israel a love poem for Palestine an Israel image, so many Israel images, Israel maps torn asunder and taped back together, the Jerusalem Bible singing to Iz, Israel Kamakawiwoole, singing his Hawai’an poetry, his love poetry, his mystic music into the tapestry while I wonder on my Israel tour, in this Israel weather, who in Israel power state united can be state or states of disillusion meant in the Jerusalem hotel for Israel sex, God and liberty for all? I’ve got the Jerusalem vibration, the Israel tour, the Palestinian Israel dance of thundering rhetoric and bombs and rockets and it all leads to Israel war, Eichmann in Jerusalem, a confusion of fever and doubtful conclusions amidst corruption sealed into the history of Israel one more time.

zeek

Rainbow_Watcher — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:51:44 GMT

Hey. Two of my digital images just published in the march issue of Zeek Magazine http://www.zeek.net/703fiction/. Check it out. Not exactly love poems, but certainly lovely photographs :) Support artists, support artists' venues.

Search Engine Optimization Love Poem

Rainbow_Watcher — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:01:07 GMT

This is my poet's poem to optimize your search engine, my love poem to draw you into my web of intrigue, my friendship poem to invite you to read my myspace. Quote my poet's poem, my myspace poem quote. My poem, my love poem, my friendship poem. This is my best love poem to the world, my free love poem—a poet free to love the world. Romance this poem, this love romantic poem to the world of searchers, seekers, optimizers racing engines through the sleek myspace poem quote, my poem to you, my love poem My romance poem, my best love poem to the seeker of poets. This may be a funny poem, but it is not a Valentine poem. It is a love poem, poetry for you to read, poems to dance on the head of your pins and needles as you search, engine, optimize my site, poetry for you to read, free love poetry, free love poems here for you to read to copy to send a friendship poem or a funny poem, not really a sad poem. This poem, this search-engine optimized poet poem is not a birthday poem, not a death poem, not an inspirational poem, not a child poem, not a sad love poem, not, in the end, a short love poem, but a poem, a love poem, a friendship poem, an invite-you-to-myspace poem, quote my poem, love my poet's poem. Is this a romantic poem? I am the poet but I don't know—I am this poet, this I love you poem, this slipping kid of a poem falling from my grasp, not a kid's poem. This poem could be a birthday poem, happy birthday to you, oh seeker of birthday poem, of birthday poet blowing candles out as fireworks in deep velvet romance poems. This is most definitely not a Maya Angelou poem, not a funeral poem, not a death poem as I've said, though many have died. Will this be a famous poem? It is not now a famous poem nor am I a famous poet but a writer of poems, a writer of poets, a love poem to poets who want to be found on the poetry search of poems, lives of poets, love poems dancing with death poems, laughing at sad poems as they sit with sister poems recalling best friend poems. So many short love poems, so many I love you poems, birthday poems celebrating at the punch bowl, romantic poems optimizing love poems, sex poems sneaking out back, away from the chaperones. This is a family poem, a mother poem, a brother poem, a sister poem. This is a love poem, a life poem, not yet a famous poem. Let's have a wedding poem! My birthday's the same as Langston Hughes' poem. I'm not Langston Hughes, he wrote many a famous poem. But I love a good Langston Hughes poem, a Maya Angelou poem, a Robert Frost poem, a famous poet poem. I laugh at Shel Sylverstein poems, funny poems, broken heart poems (in my sick not-very-famous poet poem way). Oh, give me a good code myspace poem quote! A baby poem! A baby shower poem! Before the baby poem, the baby shower poem. A teen love poem could lead to a baby poem, even a baby shower poem. A teen poem could lead to a famous poet, a famous poem, a famous poet poem. Give me a black ghetto love poem, not a broken heart poem. Black ghetto love poems, romantic poems, sex poems, famous poets all famous poems party at the liberating grace of the poet, the poem, the celebration, the birthday poem in its birthday suit, naked in the sex poem, the love poem, the kid poem growing up from the baby poem, the love poem, the teen poem, the teen love poem that could not raise the kid poem. This is my thank you poem to you seekers of famous poets and famous poems, you seeker of free poems, of love poems, of free love poems. This is my thank you poem to famous poets, to Langston Hughes poems, to Maya Angelou poems, to Robert Frost poems to Shel Silverstein, thank you g-d for Shel Silverstein poems. This is no missing-you poem, no anniversary poem, but it is a Winter poem, a winter poem full of Edgar Allen Poe Poems, cold, dark and shivery love poem quotes missing from the winter poem quote love poem to mislead you to sympathy poem. This is a myspace poem, not a Christian poem, mom poem mother poem to be more formal, family poem, love poem, famous poet poem, none of those. It could be our friendship poem, oh seeker of poet and poem, search engine optimized to lead to our love poem. Not my best love poem, not my best love. Poems of the romantic heart tend to be death poems. This most definitely is not a short poem. It is a sister poem to the wedding poem I always meant to write. The baby poem comes after k-i-s-s-i-n-g love poem. I love the free poem. The free tree poem. The free love poem. The free black ghetto love poem. I love the sex poem, not a famous poem, but a love poem with a good sex poem could lead to a marriage poem, and there we are with the baby shower poem and the baby poem, and the next thing you know it's the famous funeral poem. That's a family poem. A love poem. A search-engine optimized not so very famous poet famous poem. Over 1.1 million times a month, it is estimated, you seekers search for poems. Over one million times for love poems. Love poems. You seeker of poems want love poems, romantic poems, Robert Frost poems, Maya Angelou Poems, Edgar Allen Poe poems, Langston Hughes poems, and yes, Shel Silverstein poems. You want short poems, funeral poems, death poems, and sad poems, to be sure. But you want poems. Poems. More poems. Poets you don't want so much. Poems, you want. You seek the family poem. The mother poem. The mom poem, the sister poem, the free poem. (Couldn't you once pay a not-so-famous poet for a not-yet-famous poem?) Two-hundred thousand seekers want a friendship poem. As many want myspace poems (myspace poem quotes, code myspace poem quotes). Who wants free love poems? The same people who want sex poems? Who wants all of those love poems, over a million seeking love poems. For all you seekers of poets, of poems, of famous poets and famous poems, this is one poet's love poem to you. Seek, optimize, search, rev your engines and love, love, freely love your poems and their poets. Poems. Love poems. Poems. So many poems. —Michael Deqel (nee Dickel) ©2007 All Rights Reserved

All in a rush created more work to do...

Rainbow_Watcher — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:45:36 GMT

So, last week I had a few problems with my computer. When I fixed them--a piece of software was tagged as open when it wasn't, and the CD would hang up waiting for it to close, causing all sorts of issues. Anyway, when I fixed the problem, singular, as it turned out, I thought I should back-up my photos. My writing I regularly back-up on a pocket drive, but the photos require a larger external hard drive as I have over 15,000 of them, each from 1-2 mb, not to mention digital artwork that can approach a gig in photoshop format. Before doing the back-up, though, I thought I'd go through and reduce duplication--some files I made a smaller version of to email, some existed in a couple of folders as I used them for different projects, etc. And I was in a hurry. So I was going through it all very quickly. And using keyboard strokes as well. And not paying as close attention as I should. Did I mention I was in a hurry? So a few keystrokes and inadvertently I had put the whole pictures folder into the trash, not just a file. Not noticing this and impatient, I emptied the trash. All the photos. Gone. Well, not all. I did have a back-up. And Aviva has some on CD. But I had not backed up for way too long, and most of my photos since June 1 of 2006 were gone. The secret to restoring trashed files is to do nothing with the computer until you get the software for "un-erasing" those files. Anything else one does, even opening other software, likely writes some new (if temporary and invisible) file on the hard drive. That new file might (or might not) cover over the erased file. In Minnesota, I would have known where to go to get the software I needed. I couldn't download it from the web, b/c that ran the risk of covering what I wanted to uncover, er, recover. Here I had to call people I knew, who gave me the numbers of people I didn't know and computer stores that carried what I needed. And then I had to wait a day or two for someone to come out (yes, come out) to try to recover, b/c in the end I couldn't find a place to buy the software. He installed on my external hard drive (that I was going to back-up the photos on, so not where the photos were erased from) software that I was able to activate (read: buy) online after I first used it to locate the files. I had to buy it before I could save the files. And now, that hurry I was in? Well, I have hours of work to do to go through all of the recovered photo files and rename them, re-import them to my photo software, and re-organize them in that software. Fortunately, with the back-ups and with the CDs Aviva had, well, I only probably have a few thousand photos to find... in the something like 33,000 files (including thumbnails and duplicates) found by the software. I have skimmed through enough to see that many of the lost photos are there, including the latest import from my camera. I guess I'll keep busy for a while. Little doubt about that. But I am grateful that I have the files again. And yes, I will back things up... once I get them organized again...

Blog Catalog, Quick Register Links

Rainbow_Watcher — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:40:34 GMT

"http://www.blogcatalog.com" "http://www.quickregister.net"

New posting on Jerusalem Imagined, Recalled, & Revisited

Rainbow_Watcher — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:38:31 GMT

I wrote some of my thoughts about the "talks" between Rice, Abbas, and Olmert at http://blog.myspace.com/mhdpoet

Winter flowers and blowing crows...

Rainbow_Watcher — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:33:01 GMT

Outside the fourth floor window of my drafty sublet an Israeli crow sits on the tv antenna of a neighboring rooftop, hanging on in a wind that pushes it to fly, its brown and black feathers ruffle in the strong air. Below, an almond tree flowers. Or perhaps the tree is a plum, they are all called almond, the flowering trees. This tree peaks out from a narrow walkway of larger green trees that makes its way down my view from the window here down to industrial Talpyot, a commercial and shopping area downhill from my apartment building. Across the way, hills rise West and South of the City Center. Clouds skim low across them, but blue sky also shows. The past few days have been off and on rain, last shabat mostly rain. Aviva and I drove down to the northern Negev to view flowering koloniot (anemones), iris, narcissus, and many yellow, some orange, a few pink and a couple of blue flowers, all of the names of which I don't know. Even on a cloudy, rainy day, seeing the greens of the rolling hills and the flowers dotting meadows delighted. The bright red koloniot bobbing over bright green grasses with yellow flowers weaving below particularly struck me as something for an impressionistic painter. Here, these are not spring flowers. These are winter flowers. In Minnesota, winter flowers with ice, snow, temperatures double-digit below zero (f). In Israel the rains bring green grasses and trees, brightly colored flowers. So it will be, I hope, with my emigration from Minnesota to Israel--that what is cold and ice within me will blossom into green meadows dotted with lovely colored flowers.

Here in Jerusalem, age 52

Rainbow_Watcher — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:05:55 GMT

I turned 52 all of this week: Sunday on the Hebrew calendar, Tuesday in celebration with Aviva, today on the secular calendar. And here I am, starting my life over in Jerusalem. I've spent the past couple of weeks since arriving mixing a tiyul (hike, trip) or three in with bureaucratic office visits, starting a bank account, setting up health insurance, sub-letting an apartment (I move in tomorrow) and acquainting myself with the job market. And here I am, living in Jerusalem, officially Oleh Chadash (new immigrant). Today, besides turning 52 in the Gregorian or Julian world (I can never remember which is the secular calendar), the first issue of why vandalism? came out online. It has a prose poem and digital arwork of mine. Also, Gary Lundy has two poems in this premiere issue. We have been friends for many years, in fact, he is my best friend, fellow poet, fellow traveller in the adventures of human living. I'm very excited that we have finally landed not only in the same journal, but the very same issue. Check it out: http://whyvandalism.kiwibeak.com/issues.html. (The picture with this is a blue heron on a fishery pond just north of Dor beach, which is on the Mediterranean between Caesarea and Haifa.)

On My Way

Rainbow_Watcher — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:15:57 GMT

I'm sitting at the gate for El Al, here at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. In less than an hour, boarding begins. Then a stop in Toronto on the way to Jerusalem. Here's my latest Aliyah blog post: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=127320580

Well, maybe not with Plain View...

Rainbow_Watcher — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 20:13:55 GMT

Plain View and I haven't been able to agree on a contract. The one they sent is not enforceable for either side, according to my attorney. And the one he offered as a revision, they didn't want to deal with as it didn't "trust" the process. I'm not sure, but I think contracts are usually to make clear what an agreement is, how the parties know if the agreement has been met, and how they resolve any differences should they arise. Apparently Plain View has a different view. So, if anyone knows of another publisher... :)

Preparing to return to Israel

Rainbow_Watcher — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 00:28:28 GMT

it has been a hectic Fall and now Winter. I am moving to Israel long-term (permanently, most likely) in two weeks. Not that I'm ready. I still have work to do on the house itself, and on finding a tenant for it. I have packing. And getting rid of or storing stuff. I've left my job and spent most of this week on house projects, getting ready, bureaucracy, and finishing up a writing / editing project. As part of "going up" to Israel (aliyah), I have begun a new blog on MySpace: http://blog.myspace.com/mhdpoet I will continue to write here, as I have in the past, occasionally (meaning on occasion to write). I am thinking that this space will be, for me, about writing, poetics, readings, etc. I guess I shall see as it evolves. If you do read me on occasion, do let me know. A comment or email would be nice :) It seems likely that I will have a book of poetry and photographs out in 2007, Jerusalem Imagined & Recalled (Plain View Press, Austin TX). The other site will also cover that process, although some discussion here no doubt related to aesthetics, poetics, etc. Another vision I have for the MySpace blog is marketing the book. I hope some of my friends here will help out by buying a copy or three and, if you like it, telling your friends, etc. Well, that's it for the moment. Peace and a Happy New Year to all.

Environmental flick

Rainbow_Watcher — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:16:54 GMT

Hey, anybody who reads my blog. I've just entered a one-minute environmentally-themed video in a contest online. Check it out and see what you think. If you like it a lot, give me five stars :) Check out my experimental 1 minute video at: http://sbflixcontest.org/indexFlix.php

Four poems published by Zone

Rainbow_Watcher — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:31:35 GMT

Four of the poems I wrote while in Israel have recently been published on Zone: International Forum for Experimental Poetry and Prose (http://www.zonefornone.blogspot.com/) and will be published in the print version of the same journal in an upcoming issue. I hope that my blog-reading friends will visit the site and maybe offer a comment or two on the poems!

New Yorker Article

Rainbow_Watcher — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 06:44:42 GMT

My friend Pam sent me a link to an article by Seymour M. Hersh. His research seems to confirm my suspicions, stated in earlier blogs, about the war in Lebanon having been 1.) a proxy war between the US and Iran, and 2.) planned well in advance of the actual provocation. See my earlier entries for my thoughts, but for an account using intelligence sources and other research, read Hersh: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact.