One Picture of Me

 

One Picture of Me

By Mike Garofalo

When Laurence asked for poems on the theme of "Self-Portrait" I though of a long philosophical poem I wrote about the interrelated subjects of Picturing and Describing. 

One set of examples I used in that long poem was the human skull. I spoke of memories of Halloween in East Los Angeles, where Mexican Skulls, calaveras, filled displays on El Dia De La Muerte. Meaningful from artistic and religious perspectives.

The brief poem I'm sharing today is a excerpt about my own skull as Pictured by medical imaging, and described by me and interpreted by the oral surgeon.

"This bony skull of mine
electrified
pictured onscreen for me.
     Doctor recommends
     some oral surgery.

The brain disappeared,
an empty space
sliced from
X Ray images retraced.
Eyeless in inner space.

Monkey nose holes,
bony eye glasses,
teeth glowing in the dark.
     Inner spaces never seen
     underneath my very being.

Skinless, noseless, earless,
a shape, a form—
     the images informed.
Stripping away the unneeded,
revealing my inner core."

So, as we all know, a single picture or image can cause a flow of ideas, interpretations, and feelings in our minds.

Or, just two words can please, excite or inflame our minds. Our lover's name can explode our feelings.

But, just two other words can frighten our moral being.

For example, 

Donald Trump ...
[pause, raise your elbow]

Kick Him Out. 

See you on the street next Saturday.

The above "brief poem" will be printed in
The SkullCrushing Hummingbird
Zine #7, in Portland, Oregon,
on 10/12/2025.

Commentary: Off the Cuff

So, considering, have you ever seen
a picture or a video or a drawing
of a Skull Crushing Hummingbird,
crushing an insect's Skull
with its tiny beak or flashing wings?

No, you have not,
and that is just one reason why,
you don't believe
that Skull Crushing Hummingbirds
are really alive.

However,
Words, context, technical knowledge,
and intent claim meaningfulness,
even truth,
in addition to any pictures viewed.
The surgeon and I see differently.

Sometimes, though, we reader's prefer
fantasies and fictional
Skull Crushing Hummingbirds
to any ho-hum boring beings-
a moniker for fun memories.

***********************

Pictures mirroring things
displaying aspects of reality
uncovering hidden realms of being
pointing to more clear correspondence.
Show me a good picture - Please!

We drew pictures in caves
Heroes pictured in statues
Books illustrated pictured facts
Drones picture our towns from above
Hubble sends us clear pictures of Space

Our brains are
Picture processing ... Machines-
and you can picture mindfulness
you can picture your intent verbally...
picturing is a form of meaningfulness.

Science and technology have
invented new ways of picturing
so we can see into Reality
and open our ordinary eyes
to new ways of seeing.

Picturing - Defining
Planning - Imagining
Painting - Photography
Reflecting - Mimicking
Do I see what I mean?

Wittgenstein in the Tractatus of 1921
Used Pictures and Picturing as the
criterion of meaningfulness and truth.
Wittgenstein in the Investigations of 1953
changed to talking about our talking
about, in ordinary words, aspects of Picturing.

The best pictures, the best descriptions,
how we talk in everyday ways,
point to correspondence, mirroring,
a theory of epistemology.
Richard Rorty disagreed.

**********************************

Bundled Up, Volume 1
Quintains, Pentastichs, Tankas

Gushen Grove Sonnets

Highway 101 and 1: A Docu-Poem
California, Oregon, Washington

25 Steps and Beyond
The Poetry by Mike Garofalo

One Picture of Me

 

I have a problem with my teeth and gums in the upper front teeth area. An oral and facial surgeon in Vancouver, Dr. Verschueren, examined me and took XRays of the area (shown above). He thinks it is a benign cyst that should be removed in late March.

Seeing the inside of my face, for the first time, I was startled, amazed, and humbled. Also, a fear of something serious has unsettled me.

47.

One Picture of Me

This bony skull of mine
electrified
pictured onscreen for me.
     Doctor recommends
     some oral surgery.

The brain disappeared,
an empty space
sliced from
XRay images retraced.
Eyeless in inner space.

Monkey nose holes,
bony eye glasses,
teeth glowing in the dark.
     Inner spaces never seen
     underneath our very being.

Skinless, noseless, earless,
a shape, a form—
     the images informed.
Stripping away the unneeded,
revealing an inner core.

Bundled Up: Tanka Poetry by Mike Garofalo

 

Head's Up

Advice for how the head should be used during Taijiquan practice:

Lift the head.  Push the top of your head upward (ding jin). 
Tuck you chin in and slightly downward.
Relax the neck.  
Hold your head as if it were suspended by a string from above.  
Slightly part your lips and softly smile.  Your tongue should rest gently on the roof of your mouth behind your teeth.
Swallow all clear, thin and watery saliva.
Keep your eyes open, and hold a wide angle and soft focus in the field of vision. 
Imagine an opponent in front of you and imagine using the self-defense movements of Taijiquan being used against an aggressive opponent. 

Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.Breathe naturally as needed.  Gradually, tend to exhale when extending limbs out, inhale when drawing limbs to a more centered position.
You head should be aligned along an axis through your center and down to your feet.
The head should not extend beyond the feet.
The head, torso and waist should move as one piece.  

"The upright direction has always been the most salient, constant, and unique direction in our world."
-   Roger Shepard and Shelley Hurwitz

"Professor Cheng often talked about the position of the head, "as if pressing up against heaven," "as if being suspended by the pigtail: worn by Chinese during the Manchu dynasty.  He said that, while there are a number of good images for the head position, he especially recommended the idea of "hanging" because it counteracted the tendency to hold the head stiffly in place."
-  Wolfe Lowenthal, Gateway to the Miraculous, 1994, p. 5.  

"With respect to the position of the head, Cheng Man-ch'ing says, 'Cause the energy at the crown of the head to be light and sensitive.  The head should not incline backwards or hang forward.  It should not wag to the left or right, but should be as if suspended from above.  When this is supplemented by keeping the wei-lü vertical, the spirit extends to the crown of the head, that is, it reaches all the way to the zi-wan point.' "
Cheng Man-ch'ing, Advanced T'ai-Chi Form Instructions, Wile 1985, p. 21.