Subway Writings

Here's an observation that morphed into a monologue while I was sitting on the subway today writing.

"A row of people with books and phones. They aren't reading the words in front of their eyes. They're reading the words of the person to their left. All of them except that poor Johnson to the very left who's got nobody next to him. So by pure circumstance, by virtue of where he is in that line, he is excluded from the artificiality that governs the projections we show others. Without choosing, he now sees that we're all desperate to know each other, so desperate that we'd rather wallow in a solitude of stolen glances and what-if's than shake hands and talk about why we bite our nails or why it's so hard to love after a broken heart. We're dying to know each other. We read, we listen to music; somehow we think that words and sounds published and distributed are more cogent to our immediate lives than the person next to us. That's how life goes. You get this spectrum of relational mirrors where some people you know so well they become strangers, and some are so estranged that there is this profound connection you have, and that's, like, 90% of earth's population you're deeply connected to through this necessary, circumstantial estrangement. Question is, do we realize how how close we all are?"

French Translation

A very special thank you to Sylvie Miller for translating my poem "Departure" into French. Sylvia, a kind spirit from Monaco I've never met before, found my poem on the Armenian Poetry Project site and liked it so much she decided to translate it. She too has an awesome blog, www.poetrytranslations.blogspot.com , definitely check it out! And thanks to Lola Koundakjian and the Armenian Poetry Project for publishing my work on their site - http://armenian-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/03/raffi-wartanian-departure.html

That's right. MONACO!

Altocumuli

This morning I woke up on a beautiful day in NYC, spring whirring in the distance, to these spectacular clouds outside my window. It's only 30 minutes since I saw them and they've since disappeared. In any event, there are many KINDS of clouds and this kind is called "Altocumulus" characterized by the ominpotent wikipedia as, "a class characterized by globular masses or rolls in layers or patches, the individual elements being larger and darker than those of cirrocumulus and smaller than those of stratocumulus. Like other cumulus clouds, altocumulus signifies convection. It is usually white or gray, and often occurs in sheets or patches with wavy, rounded masses or rolls. Altocumulus often are seen preceding a cold front, and their presence on a warm, humid, summer morning frequently signals the development of thunderstorms later in the day. Alto means high and these clouds may cause rain if they are higher up."