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Home
At the core, what does home mean to you? When you close your eyes, what image comes to mind? For me, the image that best captures the essence of this word was painted when I was ten years old. Outlined with simple pencil lines, brushed in a flat manner with Gouache paints, and perceived through a head-on perspective, this is a scene of the 'golden age' of my family:To read more, click the link
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/10/ho...
Actor-comedian Stephen Sorrentino, host Cameron Datzker, author-artist Uvi Poznansky, in a conversation about her upcoming poetry book, homeOctober 5, 2012 in studio at LA Talk Radio
The conversation was bubbly--to say the least! Take a listen:
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/10/in...
So, you ask, what is the plan for Home? Are we going to have a launch party On Oct. 10, or what? What a question! We are, and this is the way I see it...
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/10/so...
Let's raise our glasses... To friendship, so true!Feels like spring, even though it is fall
Here we are, right at home. Good luck to you
My heart overflows... Good luck to all!
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/10/le...
Come up for a breath... Fight your way back, against the flowof time
Is your hand too cold? Can it sense the warming, the glow
As you climb?
Reflections are trembling, rippling to the edge of the pond
Water lily
Stay here, just under this surface... You can see far beyond
In the dark, really.
(Inspired by the water lily in the quilt)
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/10/th...
You're asking me to put here in writing, once more,All that I lost, my esteemed counselor?
To list in detail, then describe and refine
And bring two witnesses tomorrow to sign?
My father's gold watch--I could just hear the sound
Had three lids that were shining
Reflected in it I could see us, standing around
All faces aglow and rejoicing...
To read more click the link
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/06/lo...
Dan Strawn took up creative writing after a long career in business and education. In addition to his longer works, his stories and essays have been published in a number of editions of Idaho Magazine and Trail Blazer Magazine. He is the author of Isaac's Gun, Body of Work, and Breakfast at Blair's, and his novel Lame Bird's Legacy will hit the market October 19th. So I am truly honored that he got my book Home, read it and posted this five star review:5.0 out of 5 stars Home's nostalga, October 14, 2012
By Dan Strawn - See all my reviews
This review is from: Home (Paperback)
Neither wild ride through history nor romance that singes your finger tips when you turn each page; neither Bram-Stoker-style piece of horror, who-done-it mystery nor gossip-filled memoir, Home is a delicate, detailed expression of love between the author, Uvi Poznansky, and her poet father, Zeev Kachel.
In "Home", Poznansky has created a patchwork quilt made up of her proses and poetry along with vignettes of her father's verses. Her prose paint a broad picture of her father's life circumstance. Her poetry is carefully contrived to honor him by emulating his poetic style.
Like a skilled surgeon wielding a scalpel, Poznansky uses carefully contrived words to open her heart. In doing so she becomes Every Woman telling the world she is her father's daughter. In doing so, she crosses the gender gap and makes her readers, men and women, aware of the meaningful moments in their own pasts.
The tender feelings and raw life carried in the combination of Poznansky's writing and her father's poetry will leave you wandering around for days with bits of "Home," now--for you--nostalgic flotsam, floating in your mind.
Bravo!
(This review can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Home-ebook/prod... )
I am thrilled that my new book, Home, has just received a five-star review from top Amazon reviewer and author Sheila Deeth. She has just released her novel, Divide by Zero. With a Masters in mathematics from Cambridge University, England, she is a reviewer for Amazon, Goodreads, Gather and other reading sites. This is what she says:Home is where the heart is, maybe, or where it longs to return, or where dreams remain and self is "now a guest" where once that same self "built a nest." Home lies vacant when loved ones leave. An empty chair enfolds its memory, flickering on the edge of perception. And in Uvi Poznasnky's collection of her own and her father's writing, home is a goal, an anchor, and a deepening relationship that whispers through the words.
Uvi Poznansky writes of other people rather than herself, disguising home at the start of this collection in art and poetry and short stories. Meanwhile her father, before he died, wrote from personal experience and longing.
"[P]erhaps happiness / Will again emerge from out of reach / Infinity, shine upon me... I beseech." There's a lovely rhythm and haunting half-hidden rhyme to Uvi Poznansky's translation of her father's poetry, a love and loyalty that breathes through the shapes of the words. Her father knew he was dying and images of autumn hold haunting thoughts of death and separation. "It's fall: all flawed," but home hides those flaws, love in the turn of a page.
"No longer will I carry you in my arms, little girl," her father writes. And she, the daughter carries his words, soothes them to the page, and holds them out, proud parent of the parent's love, for all of us to see. Chasing after the home of her father and memories, Uvi finds him chasing after her. I hope in this book they've found each other. Meanwhile, as I read, I'm glad to have found them both and a growing image of my own "home."
This review can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Zeev-Kache...
VANGUARD CITY We moved to Vanguard City, Calif., in June of 1973. Brooklyn had turned toxic. We came to V.C., as we referred to it back then, to be with the other dope smokin’ Godless Commies. We came to have a great time and build a just society.
In Vanguard City, I partied, dealt drugs all through the ’70s. Spring of 1980, I went to rehab, cleaned up. For the next 30 years I labored, rendered anonymous by occupation. I was a beast of burden, an untouchable, pushing a lawnmower over the manicured hills and dales of Alta Vista, California, just to the east of Vanguard City.
Then my wife died. We had been very close. She died a hideous death, a medical malfeasance suit, leaving me more than enough to get by on.
Fifty-five years old, bereft of companionship and short on purpose, I joined a fiction writing group which met in the Vanguard City Senior Center. I’d been in the group two years when Chester Ague showed up. Chester Ague was our resident alien, not that he was from Mexico or Zanzibar or Patagonia, or Mars. Well perhaps Mars. Perhaps he was from the bowels of the earth; maybe that would explain him. At first, I took him under my wing. In a city full of the purposefully weird, Ague stood out as being genuinely odd.
When I inquired about his past, all he’d say was that he lucked out on a “dot com,” getting out just in time. “Not millions but enough to live on while I try to write.” And how that sonuvabitch could write, not the type a’ thing I could write or would wanna’ write. I much preferred my Romantic Comedies to his ….. horror stories, to my way of thinking. The fact that the rest of the group took solace from these tales was what so disturbed me. You didn’t listen to Ague’s stories with your heart and your mind. You listened with your glands. I was immune to his charm. My jealousy inoculated me. In my two years in the group, I had more than established myself. My light comedies were a hit with the ladies in the group. I had been quite the darling. It didn’t take Ague long to beat my time despite his pot belly and his ravaged complexion. I was amusing; he touched baser emotions.
When Ague read one of his stories to the group, it wasn’t unusual for the ladies to sob, or sigh. These were mature and gentle ladies, bear in mind, sophisticated and worldly. The men would hold their breath till the climax of the story when inevitably, an army of the dispossessed or Indonesian pirates or space aliens or a Great Horned Beast would appear in order to smash the thin veneer of civilization, revealing the sensual paradise beneath. Then the men would roar and the women would moan. That was only the beginning; it wasn’t long before Ague had his own little harem. His own praetorian guard.
So I seethed at my computer and wrote a story that savaged Vanguard City and all of its inhabitants, from its larcenous mayor to its nihilistic hordes pining for the beast and the no-nothing bourgeoisie they hid behind.
Sadly, I went word for word with Chester Ague and was humiliated, scorned, finally shunned. If the pen is mightier than the sword, what do you do when the devil is the better wordsmith? That is not a rhetorical question.
Mod
Congrats on the review!
Mod
We moved to Vanguard City, Calif., in June of 1973. Brooklyn had turned toxic. We came to V.C., as we referred to it back then, to be with the other dope smokin’ Godless Commies. We..."
Fascinating.
M. wrote: "Congrats on the review! "Thank you so much M.!
If the pen is mightier than the sword, what do you do when the devil is the better wordsmith? You find your own voice, and you refine your story-telling skills. This is no race (except perhaps for the the favors of the ladies...) Art and literature can only be enriched by a variety of voices.
"At this moment, a man is lying in his armchair, propped up on a large pillow. He has lived, or rather, has confined himself within these walls for decades, for a reason unknown. In this stagnant place all sounds are muffled, all images erased—but for one thing: his youth. There is a vibrant longing in him for the adventures of his early days..."http://www.amazon.com/Home-ebook/dp/B...
Welcome Home! Today we have the awesome Uvi Poznansky, author of Home and Apart From Love. Uvi is a very talented in several areas. Welcome Uvi, it's a pleasure to have you visiting and sharing your work...Tell us a little about yourself.
I earned her B. A. in Architecture and Town Planning from the Technion in Haifa, Israel, and practiced with an innovative Architectural firm. Then I received a Fellowship grant and a Teaching Assistantship from the Architecture department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and earned her M.A. in Architecture. Then, taking a sharp turn in my education, I earned her M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. I worked as an architect, and later as a software engineer, software team leader, software manager and a software consultant (with an emphasis on software for medical instruments devices.) You can find my work online at uviart.com. It includes poetry in English and Hebrew, short stories, bronze and ceramic sculptures, oil and watercolor paintings, charcoal, pen and pencil drawings, mixed media and even animation.
This year I published a novel, Apart From Love, and a poetry book, Home.
How did you decide to enter the world of writing?
I never decided to enter the world of writing--rather, the world of writing has enveloped me from childhood. Before I even know how to hold a pen, my father (who was a published author, a poet and an artist) would ask me to collaborate with him and help him rhyme his poems. He would also read world poetry to me in several languages, none of which I knew, and translate these poems for me on the fly. Which allowed me to appreciate the music of the words, and the emotional impact this music has upon my soul.
To read more click the link
http://crystalpixiedust.blogspot.com/...
I am so delighted to find this new 5-star review for my poetry book, Home:5.0 out of 5 starsStunning and Poetic, November 6, 2012
By Michelle Bellon - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: Home (Kindle Edition)
Not only does the author take the reader into a wonderful world where words are like music, ebbing and flowing with a rhythm that is captivating and beautiful, but she also gives life to her father's writings as she pays tribute by translating his work.
As a writer myself, I relish the moments when I find an author whose prose is so exquisite that it inspires my own creativity and drives me to strive to do better with my own expression.
Poznansky gives life and breath to emotion that every reader can feel in their core.
"Now I cry but not with tears;
After long, long years
Of holding it
Now I cry
Out of a burst of pain
And howl in darkness out of loneliness
Now I give my pain its full release..."
Reading this book is an experience that I highly recommend!
I dreamt a dream that I'm still a child,Here's home.
In a minute the door will open
Letting in my parents, my sister.
I'm foolishly beguiled!
They were all swept off by a gust, into the wild...
I'm alone
No longer a child.
When my father wrote these words, which to me are profoundly heart wrenching, he still knew the difference between dream and reality...
To read more, click the link
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-...
Ready for our next fun activity? But first, join Our Family Tree, where we will celebrate this theme in my books Home and Apart From Love.I am asking you to post images on the event page, images that depict you and your mom, you and your dad. I will bring your images together into this scene, a scene of a garden party happening around this tree, which stands for the name of this event: Our Family Tree. In this place, which I hope will embrace all of us, we touch each other. We celebrate and give thanks...
To read more, click the link
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/11/ou...
"She locked herself in and started writing letters, some of which were never sent, for fear of revealing too much of her loneliness. Other letters she embellished along the margins, with a hand heavy with years but with the manner of a schoolgirl: She embellished them with pink flowers and long sequences of X’s and O’s for kisses and hugs, and then she sent them to that foreign sounding address, so that her grandchildren, who rarely came to visit, would know she loved them.How would a doorknob feel to be barely touched, its latch rarely released, the lock always bolted shut? How would it feel to be in the grip of rust?
She glanced at the doorknob. Would it retain a memory of her touch, even when she is gone? Would it keep, in its own transparent ways and despite all that polishing, the layers upon layers of all their fingerprints?"
To read more, click the link:
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/11/xs...
I dreamt a dream that I'm still a child,Here's home.
In a minute the door will open
Letting in my parents, my sister.
I'm foolishly beguiled!
They were all swept off by a gust, into the wild
I'm alone
No longer a child.
When my father wrote these words, which to me are profoundly heart wrenching, he still knew the difference between dream and reality. The door, he realized, would never open, and it remains there as a poetic symbol of hope, of yearning for something that can never happen, not only because of his advanced age--but also because his parents and his sister perished during the holocaust.
But during the last year of his life, that border between what is real and what is a dream, a poetic symbol, became thinner and thinner, and thus more illusive to him. He would crouch by that door, banging his fist upon it and begging his mommy to open that door. Then, as a mercy to his sanity, he passed away at the age of ninety four.
This was, and still is, quite painful to me. Having witnessed it I wrote several pieces--some poems, some short stories--about the thinning of the border in his mind. These pieces are all inspired by my vision of his life, as I saw it in retrospect when I came to mourn for him. This vision also inspired my oil painting which became the cover of the book, Home. Here is a detail of it, showing the door and his armchair, ascending in the air above the turmoil, the grief...
So here is an excerpt from one of the poems in Home, which highlights the vision of the door as a thinning border:
That door sealed him off, away from all danger
Except from the depth of the danger within
No one could intrude here, except for the stranger
Who would carry him off to where his end would begin—
The poet, who’d mourned the loss of his mother
Would then, somehow, be reduced to a child
He would crouch at the threshold, and call, call, call, call her
Knock, knock, knock at the door; no more held back, but wild
And here, another excerpt, this time from a short story about my father:
"And then, trying to ignore the ticking, the loud, insistent ticking of the clock from the adjacent kitchen, you too would, perhaps, start sensing a presence. Voices would be coming from a different place, a place within. A faint footfall… A soft laughter... Who is there? He glances nervously at the entrance door. Is it locked? Can a stranger get in? Then—quite unexpectedly—the fear subsides and for the first time, gives way to something else. Something wells up in his throat. Why, why is the door locked?
He feels a sudden urge to crawl down, get to that threshold, and cry. Mommy! Open the door! Let me in, mommy! Let me come home! But for now, he can still hold it in. He forces himself to turn away from that door. Somehow it feels lighter in the dark. The bareness of this space, which was once adorned with rich Persian rugs, colorful oil paintings and fine furnishings, is more bearable this way. So is the weight of loneliness."
Am I a leaf about to drift About to fly away, to chance
The cold, the heat, the drop, the lift
Upon the wing of wind, to dance?
Or else, nestled in this tree
Am I to stay, and thus be free?
Here I am, Apart From Love
Flying Home just like a dove
This is now, just for ThanksgivingTake my gifts of love, forgiving
Take them Home and I will sweep you
To a different place, a different view
Of how our bonds do make us free
Apart From Love we cannot be
(⁀‵⁀) ✫ ✫ ✫.
`⋎´✫¸.•°*”˜˜”*°•✫ *´¨)¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*¨)
..✫¸.•°*”˜˜”*°•.✫ (¸.•´ (¸.•`
☻/ღ˚ •。* ˚ ˚✰˚ ˛
http://tinyurl.com/home-ebook
http://tinyurl.com/apartfromlove-e
http://tinyurl.com/my-book-links
"Then, all of the sudden, amidst the glow, he finds himself standing at the banks of a lake with his daddy. He lets go of his daddy’s hand, flings a stone and at once he can spot—right there, in the middle of the lake—a ripple taking shape. One circle rises magically inside another, widening, riding out farther and farther until at long last it fades out. White lilies can be seen floating all around. One of them is right here, at arms reach. Only a thin line, the line of illusion, separates the petal from its white reflection. And underneath it, schools of golden fish scurry in one direction, then take a sharp turn and flow elsewhere."An excerpt from Home.
More and more guests from around the world are already here, at Our Family Tree. http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-...
My father had a bunch of stories. You believed’em or you didn’t, made no difference to him. He was born in Montreal in 1913 to a family of Yiddish speaking immigrants from the Ukraine. When he was thirteen the family moved to Brooklyn where my father completed the eighth grade. When he was fourteen, he left home, moved to Patterson, New Jersey for a factory job. The truck drivers at the factory were always braggin’ about their conquests. My father would pester them to hook him up. So one night they drove him out to the countryside. They pulled up to a clearing, the only light from a bungalow, twenty, thirty yards back.
My father tip toed through the field towards the light, up to the door. Knock! Knock! Knock!
No answer! When my father got back to the road, his ride was gone!
Perhaps a cold, lonely wind blew that night, maybe he got to thinkin’. He wasn’t going to be lightweight champion of the world or a famous entertainer. He’d die in that factory or one just like it. Surely the idea of a lifetime of factory work would leave my father gasping for breath, grasping for opportunity.
Seven years later he married the boss’s daughter, but before he could move into the front office my grandfather sold the factory and my father got canned. My father never forgave him.
At first we lived on Ocean Parkway, all three kids in one bedroom. At night, I’d lie awake. I’d watch a train going round and round the wall up by the ceiling. A reflection of the twenty four hour traffic down below going between Coney Island and Manhattan. If I scrinched my eyes, I could see into that train, see the fine ladies at tea, the men in the club car smoking cigars, playing high stakes poker, drinking imported cognac.
When I was four years old, we moved to 1815 East 16th Street, just a block from Kings Highway. It was a neighborhood of two family homes and six story apartment buildings most of them with elevators.
We moved into the upper flat of a semi-detached red brick building with a front stoop, and a big back alley, where we had snowball fights in the winter and stickball games in the summer. In the fall the men, would sweep leaves into burning piles on this surprisingly bucolic, Brooklyn Street, Then one summer the city came and uprooted the trees.
In the lower flat lived uncle Lou a postal worker, meek and mild, and my Aunt Eleanor who was my mother‘s sister. Eleanor was a chain-smoking Dodger fan who could do long division in her head. They had two sons. Charlie became an engineer and Larry a rocket scientist.
Upstairs there were five of us. My father Ike the kamikaze cabdriver. My mom Fannie, a sweet, bookish woman who didn‘t say much, but somehow managed to keep her family and her wigged out husband together, my big sister Arlene, pretty, bright, blue eyed , a very popular girl, who filled the flat with her friends, and my brother Michael, who took after my Mom’s side, olive skin, dark brown eyes, thick, curly, black hair that he would pomade straight back into graceful waves.
There were three bedrooms, a living room and a parlor. My father needed room so he decided to knock down the wall down between the living room and the parlor. Forever after, the ceiling dipped, but now my father had room to dance. Usually he danced with my sister. The Lindy Hop, but also the Mambo and the Cha Cha Cha.
We also use’ to box in our living room. The cousins, the uncles, we all boxed in that room. Big, heavy gloves, keep the bleeding to a minimum, no headgear though, we weren’t sissies.
Summer nights in that extended living room. My father in his boxers reading the New York Post, in his comfy chair, listening to Al Jolson on the record player.
“When there are grey skies
I don’t mind the grey skies
You make them blue, Sonny Boy”
I reach out to my father with my little, bitty arms, he puts down his paper, lifts me on his knee. We listen to Jolson. I loved them all, but there was one that stood out, not necessarily better, just different, more serious, maybe:
(Sung) “Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Buddy, can you spare a dime?
I thought “Brother, can you spare a Dime.” was about Al Jolson, because it’s written from the point of view of someone called Al. I thought Jolson had won the war, built the railroads and so on, then fell on hard times till one day, it was discovered that he had the passion to move a nation. Only such a giant of a man would be worthy of my father’s adulation.
…… don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
……. don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Dana wrote: "My father had a bunch of stories. You believed’em or you didn’t, made no difference to him. He was born in Montreal in 1913 to a family of Yiddish speaking immigrants from the Ukraine. When he was ..."Thank you so much, Dana! These are lovely memoirs, and a loving tribute to your father! I wish you had entered the writing contest I am organizing around the same topic. But you can still cast your vote on the entries of other pets and writers!
To read the entries, go here: http://uviart.blogspot.com/p/entries....
To cast your vote, go here: http://uviart.blogspot.com/p/contest_...
Dana wrote: "Thank you!"My pleasure Dana!
Home is a vessel holding poems and prose in tribute of my father. I spent an entire day working on the design of the front cover:
The image may look familiar to you, I have showcased it in My Father's Armchair, and offered closeup details, in association with my poems Muse and This is the Place. However, I needed a higher resolution image for the front cover, which presented a real challenge. It is extremely difficult to photograph this piece, because the layer of gold, which is exposed in places, reflects light in unpredictable ways. So I snapped the picture in one room, then another, with diffused daylight coming from the side, the front, the top, with and without flash, then took it outside and snapped it in sunlight, in the shadow, here, there and everywhere... You get the picture.
At last I found one version that looked fine to me. First I had to fit the image to a prescribed size (according the book size I have in mind.) Then I created the shadows of the lettering. You may notice that the shadow's color is not black, but rather it is the darkest purple of the painting (which can be seen in the lower left corner.) Also, I blurred these shadows, so they do not have hard edges, but fuzzy ones. Then I selected a soft yellow, with which I typed the title, Home; and a less bright version of this yellow, with which I typed my name and my father's. Being brighter, the title 'comes forward' in relationship to the author names.
Normally I would make sure that all text fields are of the same width, or that they are arranged in a way that the one on top has the shortest width, and the one at the bottom has the longest width, which creates a sense of stability. Not so here, because I view my childhood home through the shaky lens of memory...
http://tinyurl.com/home-ebook
http://tinyurl.com/apartfromlove-e
http://tinyurl.com/my-book-links
How rewarding it is to get a review from a reader who is not only a truck driver who has seen most of the continental US through her work--but a writer as well! Having received an autographed copy of my poetry book Home, Cindy J. Smith, the author of Voices In My Head, has just posted her awesome review on Amazon, Goodreads and Barnes and Noble:To read the entire review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Ashley Fontainne is an avid reader of classic literature. She is also the author of Zero Balance, Accountable to None, and Ramblings of a Mad Southern Woman, and the host of a Blog talk radio show called the WriteStuff, which is coming to its close this weekend (to be replaced with a new show.) I have read Ashely's poetry, and trust me--her writing is no rambling, it is a full throated roar! So I am truly honored that she brought me on her show for this special episode, to talk about Apart From Love, Home, my sculptures and paintings, the new possibilities of publishing in this new Indie era, and more.
Come take a listen to our conversation:
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/12/no...
My friend, the amazingly talented Australian artist and the author of Sydney's Song Ia Uaro ordered my poetry book from Amazon, as an end-of-the-year gift for Dr Rada, who is a Polish Jew and--get this!--became fascinated with Japanese at an early age, and now teaches the language. The Aussie-Japanese-Polish connection. How neat is that! Ia shared with me the image of Home as it arrived at her place! Here is how it hangs 'down under':
On a different note, the reference librarian in Santa Monica Public Library wrote this to me:
"Thank you for contacting the Santa Monica Public Library about the book, Home. Our materials selection staff has decided to add this title to the collection. Please be aware it can take several weeks before added items are available for checkout."
If you have read any of his books, you know that his pen oozes incredibly hilarious humor. Oleg Medvedkov is the author of How to Successfully Remove Any Negative Feedback on eBay!, Attila the Hun, CIA Hamster, Time Machine, Samurai's Confessions and more. Humorous Stories, Funny Tales and Amusing Anecdotes, and the latest installment in his Laugh series, Take a Break & Have a Laugh Series. Passionate Mind-Control Worms, Cool Cats of Fortune, The Art of Getting a Sandwich and more. Just this morning he posted this review for Home:http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/12/fo...
A DAY AT THE BEACHA man, a woman, a little boy. The woman and the boy are making sand castles. The man is lying on his side, his head propped up by his hand.
‘Northern California beach, Sonoma County, roaring sea, slamming against rocks, spray occasionally splashin’ the three of ‘em ‘though it’s hard to distinguish the spray from the fog which is especially thick. Still it is mild and the spot they have found, which is almost like a cove, shelters them from the wind.
Jake and Karen and their little boy Mikey. Jake happens to notice the elastic of Karen’s panties, twisted above the waste of her hiking shorts. Jake runs his finger along the elastic, in a husbandly sorta’ way, to straighten it, Karen freezes, just goes cold, the ride to the beach had been a long one, Jake had been sullen, in one of his moods.
“……. elastic was twisted,”
“I’m just tense Jake, Okay?…..”
“’sorry.”
“I know you’re sorry, that’s what makes it so frustrating.”
Later, after lunch, Jake is restless. He stands up, claps the sand off his legs.
“Let’s go, Mikey.”
Mikey stands, claps the sand off his legs.
“Guy time!” says Mikey.
“You are correct, sir!” says Jake.
Mikey giggles.
Karen shakes out Mikey’s sneakers. Mikey sticks one foot out, then the other, balancing himself, grasping his mother’s shoulder, one then the other.
“Now, help me up! You two.”
Jake takes one hand, Mikey the other, they pull Karen to her feet, Karen kisses Jake’s cheek, “I love you.”
“Love you back,” says Jake.
Jake wonders if Karen is putting on a show for the boy. If nothing else, they agree on the boy. Mikey is sweet and smart, special in his quiet attention to the task at hand.
Jake and Mikey walk down the beach. They come to rocks, large and small, rocks that delineate the northern border of the stretch of sand they have come to think of as their own for the day.
The boy, hands and feet, climbs the rocks. When he gets to the top of the heap, Mikey, carefully stands up.
“Way ta’ go, Mikey…..”
Mikey, his arms stretched out, starts down the other side to the next beach. Jake grabs Mikey’s hand.
“Mikey, do this part sittin’ down,”
Mikey sits, figures it out, bumps down the rocks on his behind, gets to the next beach, which is much wilder then theirs, Mikey’s hair blown back, his eye lids flutter against the wind and the spray.
It is Jake who first sees the ancient sea lion; the sea lion is lyin’ in the sand amongst the boulders, just it’s tail slapping the water.
The sea lion is huge, over six foot tall, Jake figures, maybe ten, fifteen feet long, god knows what that sucker weighs. The sea lion is huge, but you have to be at just the right angle to pick him out from amongst the boulders. “C’mere Mikey!” Jake points Mikey in the right direction. Mikey freaks, looks like he has seen a ghost. Jake picks Mikey up,
“He’s like an old man, dad, he’s dying.” says Mikey.
Mikey turns his head, studies his father’s face, Jake figures that Mikey is trying to understand things, things that could not readily be understood by boy or man.
A man and a boy, hand in hand, walk along a beach toward a woman who sits upright staring out to sea, her fingers sifting the sand.
Love your story, Dana!I invite you to join my Q&A Group, http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/6... where we talk about creativity and members are welcome to post stories and poems...
"Leaning her head against his broad shoulders, she would take in his smell, a mixture of shaving lotion and a trace of sweat, and think herself happy.But tonight she was lonely. Ethan was not there. Edna tried to imagine him coming close, even whispering some sweet nothings in her ear. She waited for the whisper to dissolve, then tried to force another one—but again, the voice was vacant. She rose to the tips of her toes, as if longing for a kiss. She could almost feel him. His embrace was tight, she nearly fainted—but there was no breath, no warmth in his lips. It was, to her, like a kiss through a handkerchief."
So starts a story in my book, Home. The character in this story is quite different from the other female characters. Edna confines herself to the four walls around her, and tries not to face her unhappiness. Here she is, passing through a corridor and capturing sight of herself, hanging there in the mirror:
"For a second, it looked like her older sister. Edna stuck her tongue out at her, thinking, oh well, those wrinkles are just a play of shadows, just shadows in the murky glass. She could make them disappear, simply by tipping her head backwards. She leaned over the cabinet for a closer look. The eyes looked somewhat blurry; so did her mouth. It seemed like a smudge, perhaps because the lipstick had been wiped, or else because she was too close.
In her youth, she was so weak that she could easily fall for something, easily laugh for anything. But that other woman, on the other side, seemed as if she could easily cry for nothing.
There, see? She rubbed the corner of her eye. So did Edna, thinking it was hard to know, anyway, if someone was crying or laughing. The features of the face contorted in much the same way.
There were walls around her, on both sides of the mirror; walls waiting for something to happen, for anything really; waiting there with great patience—with stability—as if they were home. Edna looked away, unable to escape that feeling, the feeling that there was no motion, it was all an illusion; and that in reality, both she and her reflection were absent. She was lost and could not be found."
All this, of course, is just the opening. What would happen next? And why is this story called A Heartbeat, Reversed? Good questions... To be answered in my next blog post. Stay tuned...
In this painting I floated various paints on the paper, letting them drizzle and mix, to create an intricate, fiery flow of color. Then when they dried out I came in with a black pen, and drew just a few lines to suggest the figure.
Have you ever wanted to go back to your youth, to reverse the flow of time? For you, is it tempting thought? It would take some kind of magic, which I describe in my story A Heartbeat, Reversed. In it I use a silent movie projector as a device that allows my character, Edna, to make believe she can rewind time. And perhaps it is more than make-believe...At first, it stirred into motion, casting a glowing, larger-than-life face into the darkness. The eyes sparkled, and from the lips came a laughter. It was giggly, yet utterly silent. Edna smiled back at this girl, the spirit of her youth. The eyelashes fluttered and then—with a sudden stutter—something took over the machine; for stuck on that single frame, it started rattling uncontrollably.
In this state of mind, Edna watches her long-forgotten wedding event flickering on the wall. The sequence, which is so formal we all know how it ought to be arranged, is reversed. Starting from the moment he carries her across the threshold, we go back through events:
Ethan gathered her to his chest, his face dark with effort, his brow dripping with sweat. He swept the bride off her feet, and carried her in his arms, walking backwards. He backed away from the living room, out through the corridor. Edna shouted, Look out! She sucked in her breath; somehow she was quite sure that in a snap, the veil would ensnare him.
And going farther and farther back in time, here is how the groom and bride place the rings and exchange vows. Seen in reverse, the meaning is changed, too. You realize that they are about to separate, perhaps even forget they ever met:
Ethan and the bride had just separated out from a kiss and stood still, facing each other. The silvery light could barely filter through the wedding canopy. Gathered around them were members of both families. They bore witness, in a serious and ceremonious manner, to the unravelling of this union.
Edna could see clearly how he kept tugging at that ring on his finger, as if it did not fit, no, it did not feel quite right, now did it. She caught herself hesitating, wavering there under the gray shade, between one nail and another. Finally the bride took back her vows and set him free. With great gentleness, she recovered his ring. Ethan, in turn, recovered hers.
How far will she allow this magic to take her? Will she lose control over it, and what are the risks, the repercussions of denying the normal flow of time? Will Edna go back to being a young woman? A girl? A baby? Will she lose her mind? You can reverse a sequence of numbers, but when you get to a single heartbeat, no longer in the context of a sequence, would it matter anymore which way it is played, forward or backward?
A Heartbeat, Reversed appears on the pages of my poetry book, Home.
I have just discovered a new review on Amazon, written by Brian Benson, and it was deeply moving for me. http://tinyurl.com/home-ebook★★★★★ Artfully Done, December 21, 2012
By Brian Benson (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: Home (Kindle Edition)
I was very moved by this intensely personal outpouring of poetry from Uvi Poznansky and her father Zeev Kachel. This could not have been an easy book to compile. As a father and a lover of poetry, I found myself constantly thinking about my relationship with my own daughter. This is a rare poetic glimpse into the sometimes dark corners of that most special relationship. Not for the faint of heart though. Poznansky is not afraid to confront the darkness, and bring it to light. Their poems and prose will definitely cause you to look inward. Her vivid word pictures left a deep impression inside. Thank you for sharing your inner self with us Ms Poznansky.
DALE ARDEN ON THE PLANET MONGO!Episode 1-Dale Arden
Dale Arden spent her first eighteen years at Saint Bartholomews home for girls, in Sandusky Ohio, the unwanted daughter of a scrub woman and a trolley driver, married of course. “Dale Arden” was a name she took on her eighteenth birthday, she took it by bus all the way to Hollywood, California where she knew fame and fortune awaited her. What awaited her were waitress jobs in all night diners and sleazy bars where the boss and clientele would slobber over her; proposition her, offer to pay her bills. Dale was tempted; she was a very sensual young woman, but she saw what happened to girls who took the free apartment or merely fell in love with a sailor or traveling salesman; the pregnancies, the heart breaks, the hopeless poverty. Hope was a thing she had to have, in the orphanage that’s all she had. So Dale was saving herself. In her free time she would go to the movies and study Jean Arthur and Carole Lombard; that would be her one day on the silver screen. Watched how they moved, how they talked. By the age of twenty two, she had grown into her name. She secured a job at The Tiki Lounge in Beverly Hills as Hat check girl and she was on her way to the first day at work when she stopped to buy that day’s Las Angeles Times, she always read the Times. It got her ready for the next stage of her life where she would be going to fancy cocktail parties talking to all the swells.
“EARTH DOOMED!” said the headlines,
“Aw hell! I shall die a virgin!” said Dale Arden as she smacked the startled newsboy upside the head.
Dana wrote: "DALE ARDEN ON THE PLANET MONGO!"Thank you Dana, you are invited to join my Q&A group and post your beautiful excerpt there: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/6...
In my story A Heartbeat, Reversed, Edna peers inside a cabinet, and deep down on the bottom shelf she discovers a box. She pulls it out, lifts the flap, and then she can already sense what lies there, covered under the obscure plastic wrap. Perhaps she should avoid unwrapping the thing. It is a silent movie projector, which later in the story allows her to rewind back time. Now Edna recalled how the very act of projecting had been a special ritual, a special game for her: Watching the reels turn, listening to the sound they produced, gauging the contrast between the blackest black, the whitest white—and above all, playing with different speeds, both forwards and back. It made her marvel at how the brain would merge separate images, to create the illusion of motion.
Giddy with excitement, Edna carried the box to the living room. She used her elbow to clear the coffee table and then, very carefully, set it down. Inside, tucked under the machine, she found two reels: One empty, the other heavy with celluloid. The filmstrip rolled down her fingers. Thrilled at the familiar touch, the touch of perforations, she threaded it as best she could, up and down through several guides, until it locked into place. Then, aiming the projector at the wall, she fired it up.
By the end of the story, something starts happening to her. When her husband Ethan comes back home, we see the scene through his eyes.
He entered the living room and at first glance all he could see, in the ghastly light of the projector, was celluloid; clips and clips of celluloid snaking, curling one over the other, all over the coffee table, all over the floor.
“Edna?” he cried.
He bent over to turn off the machine, and it was there—in the darkest dark, right under that beam of light—that he stumbled over her. He brushed away the celluloid and, guided by nothing more than a sense of touch, passed a hand over her forehead, her eyelid, her ear, trying to piece together how she looked, and what had happened here.
“Wake up, babe,” he whispered.
Her breathing was barely audible. He took a guess—by the grip of her fingers over her nose, and the subtle movement of her cheeks—that she was hiding a smile. Was it a game? Was she toying with him?
It is through his eyes, ears and fingers that we will be led to the final discovery.
The story appears in full on the pages of my poetry book, Home.
Home, with a cover image based on my oil painting, is in a cover contest! Currently is in fifth position (out of 90 books) on Goodreads' Best Illustrated Book Covers. If you are a Goodreads member and you like the cover, please vote for it. http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/33...
Memory Written by Zeev Kachel
Translated by Uvi Poznansky
When the past becomes your present
And follows you everywhere
Like a hunting dog, it's so intent
Then memory becomes despair
Memory, by a sudden spell
Then becomes your daily routine
Reality turns into hell
A crazy race to the unseen
You set your ladder on a ripple
No wonder that you fell, you cripple
The original Hebrew text of this poem appears in Ropes, Separation, Tear which was published by me in February of 2012, in tribute to his memory. I used my pencil-on-paper drawing of a twisting rope as the basis for the cover of that book. The word Ropes in Hebrew has an additional meaning, beyond the obvious one: it means pain (as in growing pains or pain during childbirth.)
The English version of this poem, along with an entire collection of my father's work, is now included in my poetry and prose book, Home.
I am truly amazed by this review of Home, written by a talented poetess, Angela Davis. I find it incredibly estounding that she used the poems and prose in my book--some of which were written in moments of sheer isolation and despair--to read aloud to patients and families, as a way to let the words wash over them and allow their pain to dissolve. This is what she wrote:★★★★★ Unbelievably Moving and Real, January 11, 2013
By Angela Davis
Amazon Verified Purchase
Home. How does one describe, "Home"? An indelible reality of thoughts and feelings, intertwined, to allow one to experience, or perhaps, re-experience, the connections, of lack thereof, from childhood, throughout the stages of grief.
I have had the luxury of reading Ms. Poznansky's novel, Apart From Love, prior to experiencing this delicately insightful view of her collaborative effort with her father. Initially, when I read this book, I was working as a hospice social worker, and was astonished at the numerous profound statements that were imparted by both father and daughter. At that time, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to read, aloud, certain aspects of this book, to patients and their families. The ability of both Ms. Poznansky and her father, Zeev Kachel, to express the depths of being, of the human condition, allowed for others to acknowledge the reality of human nature, which was simply priceless. Certain aspects of Ms. Poznansky are captured in this book, her ability to relate to others,as well as her father's very overt nature, are provided for the reader in the most elegant manner. Beautiful, delicate, angry, aggressive, solitary, painful, anguished, and paradoxical-the writing is simply breathtaking and the words will take you to another realm.
A Love Poem by my father: She and I I'm dying to sleep, but oh
She's eager to get going
All because of a little window
And tempers that are blowing
I close it gingerly
So she demands it open
I want to sleep, but woefully
She'll shake it till it's broken
She longs for flowers
And I—for chocolate
She wants adventure at all hours
While I dream only ‘bout my ballad
I want the window closed
And she prefers it open
She hates that I have snored
In concerts, and never woken
She deserves dresses galore
And a burning passion
Yet I have only two loves, no more:
My homeland and my nation
Two loves that I adore
Are me, and you with a bouquet
And one more
The Sabbath day.
The perfect Valentine's day gift: a paperback edition of my poetry book, Home.
Now I will try on a little red dressLick chocolate-dipped strawberries, and let you caress
All of me... Oh let me kiss you, my sweet valentine
With lips that are glistening with rosy red wine
Let me fill your glass full, up to the rim
And clink it with mine, for such is my whim
When this evening is over, when dawn rises in glory
Let the magic transform. Then tell me a story
Whisper it, play out the music of words
Let them rise from this leaf, flocking like birds
Going back Home, turning one by one
Across the pages of A Favorite Son
My sweet Valentine, if you enchant me
Apart From Love we will never be.
Marsha Casper Cook is the author of six published books and eleven feature-length screenplays, a literary agent with fifteen years experience, and the host of the blog talk radio show A Good Story is a Good Story. So I am thrilled that Marsha invited me to be appear on her show. Come take a listen:
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-...
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There is so much happening in the celebration of Home! There is a writing contest, a quilt of memories, and daily posts about the creation process, the publication process, art and writing of Home. If you haven't joined, you're missing out!
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