Caveat: Sitting Among the Snowdrifts

I need to talk about procrastination.
It’s easy to do, in this hermetic space on the edge of civilization, encased in fresh-fallen snow and betrayed by the bureaucracies that lurk just over the horizon.
I had been highly motivated in the fall to become a full-time student in the University of Alaska’s online teacher certification program. That fell apart, as I’ve noted before, due to the stringent, two-year basis of the state’s concept of “residency.” I would be subject to exhorbitant out-of-state tuition, and decided to forgo the privilege. Hopefully I can try again next year.
Meanwhile, I had already registered for a set of tests-for-credit to fulfill some outstanding prerequisites. Two parts of US History, and Intro to Psychology. I had scheduled the tests for the 13th of January, because given the online classes would have been starting the week before, it seemed the best way to maximize study time and still not end up overwhelmed once classes started.
So I told myself, after I decided to delay starting the online program for a year, that I would just take the scheduled tests anyway. It’d keep me busy during this hiatus while Art was still down south.
Unfortunately, that didn’t work. When the pressure is off, I tend to procrastinate. And the pressure was definitely off. There was no way to trick my mind into thinking these tests were important, when their “due date” was now more than a year off.
Last night I took a set of practice tests. Their results clearly show that my studying, such as it has been, hasn’t really been effective. Of course, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I might, indeed, be able to pass the tests. But not in the “summa cum laude” way that is my accustomed academic mode.
Further, there is no penalty in delaying the tests. I believe when I registered the only deadline is something like 8 months from registration. I have until summer to get them done without extra cost.
I have therefore elected to delay them. I specified a March date, only because I had to specify something. The test date is easily moved – the testing center in Ketchikan has several slots every week.
But I feel guilty.
I also had made a firm commitment to do something about a more generic job search once returning to the island. I made up new resumes, dropped feelers among my acquaintances, but have hardly been assiduous in follow up. It’s too easy to settle into a routine, here.
I put in some time outside: firewood, shoveling snow, maintaining the RV, checking that our water system is handling the cold, etc.
I put in time on my computer: maintaining my blog and server and websites, admin stuff on the geofiction website, trying to solve certain puzzles related to making my websites “cleaner” and more professional and better-coded.
What else? Study time happens, but not as it should (see above). I read some in various books-in-progress. I have developed a new hobby of reading a few well-written “web-comics.” This is an emergent genre – essentially graphic (i.e. pictorial) novels published online. They were extraordinarily popular among my students during my last years in Korea, and I made several efforts to get into some of the Korean ones at that time, in hopes it would inspire me to improve my Korean. I suppose it did, a bit, but the slog of reading them with dictionary in hand was hard to keep up. One English-language one that I’ve been enjoying is called Seed. It is science-fiction, essentially: a psychologically interesting set of characters dealing with a rogue Artificial Intelligence.
I admit that although I love the snow – it’s gorgeous and calming and I have no concerns about the chance of isolation or the work involved in shoveling out the stairs whatever, it does rather de-motivate me vis-a-vis any project to get out to town, whether job search or anything else. Heavy snow is about staying home and looking out the windows, not about going to town on treacherous roads in hopes of getting a dead-end job out of a sense of obligation to be “productive.”
I feel guilty about abusing my family’s generosity and Arthur’s “hospitality” (despite the notion, too, that I’m presumeably serving a genuinely useful care-taker role with him, which his disavowals of disability make difficult to maintain). I think if I was truly self-sufficient, I’d not feel guilty for being a currently “unproductive” member of society. I feel sufficiently creative in my various pursuits – my poetry, my offline writing efforts, my programming work on my websites – such that I am contributing to the world, just not for remuneration at the moment.
And that’s the news from this side of Port Saint Nicholas, here in Rockpit, Alaska.
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Caveat: Tree #371

This tree may not be a tree but rather an ambitious shrub. And yet…
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picture[daily log: walking, 2km; snowshoveling: 30min]

Caveat: Outside? Play?

I ran across these fascinating videos and blog-entries about a linguist / speech pathologist who is training her dog to use “word buttons.” The dog seems to carry on spontaneous conversations with her owners. She pushes the button “outside” the owner says “not now.” She tries again. The owner says “I’m sorry.” And then the dog pushes the button “play.” The owner says “OK. Let’s play.” This seems very close to toddler-level language use.
Here is the link.
As a linguist, I am slightly skeptical that this can be called “language” in any strict sense. But I have also always thought that Chomsky (et al.) and his notion of a specific “language faculty” in the human brain wasn’t necessary. I have long had an intuition that language is just an “emergent property” of the complex neural networks evolution created for the purpose of “being a mammal.” As such, human language is not qualitatively distinct from the language-like behavior of higher mammals. Rather, it is simply a massive scaling-up. This type of animal behavior feels like a confirmation of that intuition.
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Caveat: Changeable Weather

It can be interesting seeing the shifts in weather. These shifts seem more noticeable when it gets colder. I think it has to do with a change from the monotonic and endless fronts of Pacific rain to the colder continental airmasses that sometimes make it out this far.
Yesterday, I happened to capture this with a series of pictures from the deck looking north toward the mountain across the water.
8 AM.
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10 AM.
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NOON.
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Caveat: πoetry

I saw this at a blog I read, called JF Ptak Science Books. The guy is a dealer in old and rare books, with an emphasis on books related to the history of science and ideas. He often posts very interesting things.
He found a text of a poem published in 1905, which has an unusual constraint: each word in the poem has the same number of letters as a digit of the number π (3.141592653589793238462643383279), in order.
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The poem’s text:

Sir, - I send a rhyme excelling
 3     1   4  1   5       9
In sacred truth and rigid spelling.
 2    6     5    3    5      8
Numerical sprites elucidate
    9        7        9
For me the lexicon's dull weight.
 3  2   3     8       4     6
   If "Nature" gain,
    2    6      4
   Not you complain,
    3   3     8
Tho' Dr. Johnson fulminate.
 3    2     7       9

Most definitely a bit of oulipisme-avant-le-lettre.
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Caveat: as fast as I can

I present a flashback to the mood of this blog 2 years ago – when I often posted contemporary songs I thought would resonate with my middle-schoolers.
I continue to believe Taylor Swift is one of the best songwriters of the current era in the pop genre.
What I’m listening to right now.

Taylor Swift, “The Man.” The context for this song, is, at least partly, her ongoing legal battles with the condescending record company execs who absconded with her intellectual property, and who are, perhaps not coincidentally, men.
Lyrics.

I would be complex
I would be cool
They’d say I played the field before
I found someone to commit to
And that would be okay
For me to do
Every conquest I had made
Would make me more of a boss to you
I’d be a fearless leader
I’d be an alpha type
When everyone believes ya
What’s that like?
I’m so sick of running
As fast as I can
Wondering if I’d get there quicker
If I was a man
And I’m so sick of them
Coming at me again
‘Cause if I was a man
Then I’d be the man
I’d be the man
I’d be the man
They’d say I hustled
Put in the work
They wouldn’t shake their heads
And question how much of this I deserve
What I was wearing, if I was rude
Could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves
And we would toast to me, oh, let the players play
I’d be just like Leo, in Saint-Tropez
I’m so sick of running
As fast as I can
Wondering if I’d get there quicker
If I was a man
And I’m so sick of them
Coming at me again
‘Cause if I was a man
Then I’d be the man
I’d be the man
I’d be the man
What’s it like to brag about raking in dollars
And getting bitches and models?
And it’s all good if you’re bad
And it’s okay if you’re mad
If I was out flashin’ my dollas
I’d be a bitch, not a baller
They’d paint me out to be bad
So it’s okay that I’m mad
I’m so sick of running
As fast as I can
Wondering if I’d get there quicker
If I was a man (you know that)
And I’m so sick of them
Coming at me again (coming at me again)
‘Cause if I was a man (if I was man)
Then I’d be the man (then I’d be the man)
I’m so sick of running
As fast as I can (as fast as I can)
Wondering if I’d get there quicker
If I was a man (hey!)
And I’m so sick of them
Coming at me again (coming at me again!)
‘Cause if I was a man (if I was man)
Then I’d be the man
I’d be the man
I’d be the man (oh)
I’d be the man (yeah)
I’d be the man (I’d be the man)

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Caveat: Poem #1253 “Within”

Within
Where Iron Factories spouted grey,
There I dwelt by Mahhalian shores.
So Doctor Hubert came with a Word,
For plastic Angels of the new Hell
City; for mind-slaves of Its hurt.
There I became blest--his Apostle.
Wind beat a slime to a sandy shore
There I began to hear of his word.
And from a dead-empty, bloody Hell
All the eyes glossy-dull by a hurt
The Rats fled; became his Apostles
So he promised to remove the grey.
Said he: No one can refute my Word
There I said: Amen! Ruin this Hell
Dr. Hubert!  Destroy my deep hurt!
He smiled: follow me, my Apostles.
Showing us how to survive the grey
Leading us to a candy-green shore.
Dancing, we were far from any Hell
Hoping, we failed to feel any hurt
Loving, thus were we his Apostles.
Plastic melted; we denied the grey
Eyes flickering/reflecting a shore
Free, happily alive with his Word.
Under a rock, the centipede hurts,
And he crawls, to sting an Apostle
Leaping, then he dies cadaver-grey
He's left to rot on a slimy store.
I run; I search for His holy Word,
The rats return whispering of Hell
For Hope, thus I became an Apostle
Then the rat-emperor came in grey,
And drove us to a cadavered shore,
Erected a cross for harmless Words
Removed the candy, revealed a Hell
No! Not Dr. Hubert.  Not the Hurt!
He brought Apostles to the shores,
He destroyed hurt with his Words--
But Hell revealed the Grey within.

– this is a “guest poem” – not by another author, but by me, but written 37 years ago, in the fall of 1982. It is a sestina, in form, with an additional constraint revealed in the use (abuse) of the mono-spaced font. The poem was “lost” for most of the intervening years, but turned up in a box that I was sorting through in recent weeks.
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Caveat: Snow Generator

I’m trying to make a habit of once a month, around the beginning of that month, to go and check the GDC (RV). I run the engine for 30 minutes, with the heater full blast, to heat things up inside. I start and run the generator for while to make sure it still works. I check the inside and make sure no major mold or such is growing.
It was snowing pretty hard as I did that this morning.
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Caveat: Beetling toward the end

The VW corporation is officially retiring the Beetle after 70 years.

Actually, they retired the model once before but then resurrected it in the form of the New Beetle. And in fact the old Beetles lived on in countries like Mexico and Brazil. In Mexico, for example, I believe they only stopped manufacturing old Beetles in 2003, while in Brazil, they continued to be made until 2006.
I have owned 5 cars in my life. 3 of them were Beetles (old types). It’s the only car where I was able to take apart and put the engine together successfully. I lived in my Beetle for a summer in 1985.
The first bug I owned had been my mom’s before it was mine. We traveled in it across Canada in 1977. The car was known as “Betsy.”
Here is Betsy in Ontario in the summer of 77.
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Later I drove Betsy through 25 states and she died in the town of Normal, Illinois, in late 1985. I sold her to a kid named Derrick for $50.
My second bug had been my grandmother’s, and when she died in the late 80’s I inherited it. That car was known as “Rog.”
I had it with me until I was living in Philadelphia in 1997, when Michelle and I sold it because we were broke. It was a sad.
My third bug I bought when living in L.A. and Burbank in 2000. It was named “Vato,” because it was a very Mexican-seeming bug – it had been “lowered” and had one of those vato-ized, mini steering wheels. But it was a good car.
It caught on fire and died on the 134 Freeway near Glendale, I think, one day when my dad was driving it.
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Caveat: Tree #365

A year’s worth of trees. More or less.
I was with Arthur visiting his brother, my other uncle, Alan, in Colorado. I found myself struck by the stark trees in the snowscape there, and decided to take pictures of trees.
Without regret, I present a tree, one year on.
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I suppose some readers of this here blog thingy™ will feel that it’s a bit tedious and definitely lazy, all these trees. Where is the idiosyncratic, random content of old?
It still crops up, I guess. The character of the blog has evolved, over the years, there’s no denying. It’s more anodyne, now, in some respects. I’m sorry. I have come to appreciate the daily poems and trees as a way to ensure I get something posted every day, even when I’m uninspired. I lean on them as habits, to force a communication with a world that I otherwise would quickly neglect. Which is a way to say, “Sorry if the trees are boring, but they’re better than nothing at all, right?”
Have a happy new year.
picture[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: Temperance

Some people know I mess with tarot cards.
I don’t believe them at all. I am an empiricist and a rationalist, and committed to that. But I also enjoy apophenia – the misreading of random data as meaningful. It strikes me as a deeply human trait. And my interest in tarot is probably related to that – in this random set of cards, we’ve imbued each card with many layers of semiotic detritus, and then we can plow through the cards and find some interesting meanings, perhaps leading to reflection.
Well I pulled a card to define my year, 2020. And got the card called “Temperance.”
I pulled a series of cards to to define my month, January, and the summary card was again “Temperance.”
I  guess I could consider temperance – what is it, exactly?
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Caveat: Tree #364

The weather wants to turn to snow, but it’s being quite wonky in the transition. Some rain, some snow, some rain again.
The trees are at a loss how to respond, and I did not wish to photograph them in their disarray. Plus it was quite windy outside.
Here is a tree from the archives. Korea, July, 2014.
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picture[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: depersonafication

“If you believe you are an enlightened person, you are by definition mistaken. Because if you had truly experienced enlightenment, there would be no person left.”
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