(Poem #470 on new numbering scheme)
You. You talked. You explained. You challenged me. You gave me presents. You said, "Don't ever change." You lived, laughed, traveled, and cried. You said, "You've changed." I had to leave. You then made clear the world was not yours.
"Unless life also hands you water and sugar, your lemonade is gonna suck." – found online.
[daily log: walking, 5km]
(Poem #469 on new numbering scheme)
I needed to get out of my house. I walked around my neighborhood. I saw a lot of buildings. I saw a lot of cars. I looked at the trees. I stepped on leaves. I saw birds. I thought. I.
Below are some Ilsan redwoods (yellow-orange color, right-of-center) – in fact, they are planted instantiations of the Chinese "dawn redwood" (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), which shed their needles for the winter. Yet they have that redwood smell of the California coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) of my childhood, and that familiar texture of bark and shape of needles. It's just exotic enough to remind me of what a long way I am from home, yet familiar enough to remind me of home. They are abundant in Korean suburbs.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
(Poem #468 on new numbering scheme)
passing buses wail a magpie glides to a branch atoms get slower
[daily log: walking, 8km]
(Poem #467 on new numbering scheme)
Heavy air of a hospital room I knew I was having a dream Dim lights illuminated A bed, a chair, blankets I lay unmoving Ouside myself I just watched My heart Stopped
I enjoy finding very weird music videos sometimes.
What I'm listening to right now.
Fever The Ghost, "((SOURCE))."
Lyrics – I'm extremely skeptical about the accuracy of these. I found them online. They look like some kind of automated transcription such as is common these days, but it doesn't really scan right. I didn't take the time to try to improve them, though. I guess we could just say they're hallucinatory, which matches the video.
Run run, ditto moon
Pullin' back, shape up to. The know?
High street, pushing steam
Rolling eye, is forced to dream
You go
All I want to know is how to start over again
You want it?
All I need to know is how to gain control
But the shameless soul
Oh, your sitting amongst yourselves
Soon, you lie under ecstasy
Your eye has stolen me
Oh, you sit amongst yourselves
Soon, you lie under ecstasy
Your eye is swichin' with it
Run run, ditto moon
Pullin' back, shape up to
You know?
High street, pushing steam
Rolling eye, is forced to dream
You go
All I want to know is how to start over again
You want it?
All I need to know is how is how you start to control
But the shameless soul
Oh, your sitting beside of me
Soon, you lie under ecstasy
Your eye has switched away
Oh, you sit amongst yourselves
Soon, you lie under ecstasy
But I have source it means,
Every wish you go in, every wish you go in,
I will see you sitting here
Every wish you sold it out, every wish you sold it out
In the silence
In the silence
Oh, your sitting amongst yourselves
Soon, you lie under ecstasies
In our mysteries
Oh, you sit amongst yourselves
Soon, you lie under ecstasies
In our mysteries
I await, no rise
Everywhere you goin', stop the city.
Oh, no
I'll know
Let's sail go go
You, I don't need ascension
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
(Poem #466 on new numbering scheme)
Everyone seated on cushions, around a long table for late night eating and drinking, a constant slow patter of talk in Korean that I can't quite understand: the ubiquitous Korean group dinner. I have decided to write down and publish this ode to the hweh-sik. What is an ode? You expect me to tell you about bouts of fondness, share some congenial anecdote. No. I just sit and absorb words.
TO A NESTLING GREEN LINNET
Cease, infant songster! why complain?
Nae school-boy rude wi’ heart o’ stane,
Or vagrant herd o’ rougher mein,
Thus gars thee mourn;
Come wi’ the bard and be his ain,
An’ leave the thorn.
Thy flow’ry hame thus to forego,
’Tis true is surely cause of woe:
An anxious mother’s soothing throe,
An’ tender father:
But yet, thou lovely pris’ner, know,
The bard has neither.
For hawk’s, or pie’s, or eagle’s ire,
Thou needstna frae thy perch retire:
Or should grimalkin at thy wire
Her visage offer:
Her lives, until the nine expire,
Shall sprawling suffer.
They sweet retreat shall stinted be,
In nought save love an’ libertie:
Frae a’ extremes they’re wisely free,
That quietly want them:
An’ gude for mony mair than thee,
They ne’er had kent them.
– George Dugall (Ulster poet, 1790-1855)
[daily log: walking, 4km]
(Poem #465 on new numbering scheme)
sun shining down on me through my window actually it's annoying me a lot so i think i'll pull my shade and get it out of my eyes now it's not that i don't like the sun but well sometimes it gets on my nerves
"Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it." – Benjamin Franklin.
So there's that.
What I'm listening to right now.
Kelly Clarkson, "Stronger." This is one of the songs we've done for the "CC" class (lyrics listening / dictation). I like this song, because it's empowering for girls, in a fairly innocuous, pop-culture way. And girls need that kind of thing. Yesterday, I had a rather serious discussion about ambition and lowered self-expectation with one of the girls from my painfully unambitious but talented HS1-T cohort (because she was the only one that showed up for class). After explaining the idiom, I kept asking her, "Why do you sell yourself short?" Of course, these things don't have a clean resolution, in real life, but I hope what I said made sense.
Lyrics.
You know the bed feels warmer
Sleeping here alone
You know I dream in colour
And do the things I want
You think you got the best of me
Think you've had the last laugh
Bet you think that everything good is gone
Think you left me broken down
Think that I'd come running back
Baby you don't know me, cause you're dead wrong
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone
What doesn't kill you makes a fighter
Footsteps even lighter
Doesn't mean I'm over cause you're gone
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stronger
Just me, myself and I
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone
You heard that I was starting over with someone new
They told you I was moving on over you
You didn't think that I'd come back
I'd come back swinging
You try to break me, but you see
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone
What doesn't kill you makes a fighter
Footsteps even lighter
Doesn't mean I'm over cause you're gone
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stronger
Just me, myself and I
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone
Thanks to you I got a new thing started
Thanks to you I'm not the broken-hearted
Thanks to you I'm finally thinking about me
You know in the end the day you left was just my beginning
In the end…
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone
What doesn't kill you makes a fighter
Footsteps even lighter
Doesn't mean I'm over cause you're gone
[2x]
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stronger
Just me, myself and I
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone
(When I'm alone)
[daily log: walking, 7km]
(Poem #464 on new numbering scheme)
Only one student came last night to that bad class so it was less bad.
Today is the centennial of the October Revolution – so named based on the old Russian calendar, despite the November 7th anniversary date on the Gregorian Calendar.
When I was growing up, the Soviet Union seemed eternal, and if not triumphant, certainly persistent. The notion that now, in my own middle age, the Soviet Union fell and disappeared more than a quarter century ago remains a stunning bit of history. In terms of impact on human history I believe that – in the modern era at least – the Bolshevik Revolution has been basically unparalleled, despite its unqualified long-term failure. Nor do I mean to necessarily praise it in saying that – it let loose demons that are still abroad in the world, if perhaps we could charitably grant that its "heart was in the right place," in the distorted view of its protagonists.
What I'm listening to right now.
Prokofiev, "Alexander Nevsky" op. 78.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
(Poem #463 on new numbering scheme)
I can taste the salt the other tongue-senses lost... but still there is salt.
La sirana y el pescador
La sirena se levantó del mar
para verl el mundo seco.
Ella encontró a un pescador en la playa,
esta pez guapa sin red.
Ella tenía la cola reluciente; las escamas
que cubrieron el pecho, los brazos, la cara;
la estala de las olas contruidas de encaja.
El pescador agarró la cola de sirena
y la cortó por la mitad.
"Ahora," él le dijo a ella, "tienes piernas.
¿Por qué no caminas?"
La sirena empezó a cantar al mar
para ayuda, su sangre transformando
la arena de la playa en los arcoiris.
Ella cantó al pescador, "Te perdono,
te perdono, te perdono."
– — –
The mermaid fled the ocean
searching for a better world.
A fisherman found her on the beach,
this pretty fish with no home.
He noted her oily tail; the scales
that covered her breasts, arms, and face;
the frothing waves in her wake.
The fisherman was seized with pity,
and made the mermaid a pair of legs.
"Now," he told her, "you have legs.
Will you walk with me?"
The mermaid began to sing, telling the sea
of her good fortune, transforming
the sand of the beach into rainbows.
She sang to the fisherman, "Thank you,
thank you, thank you."
– Elisa Chavez (American poet, b. ?)
It was posted at a blog by someone who only goes by the online identity "featherquillpen." I don't know much about the poet, and was unable to find much online.
This poem, and its "translation" by the same author, are, together, actually a single poem, because the translation is a painfully inaccurate, deliberate mistranslation. The Spanish part is quite sad, and is essentially the description of a brutal assault by the fisherman on the mermaid. The English part makes it seem like a voluntary experience for which the mermaid is grateful. As others commented (here), the poem is thus a kind of portrayal of the cultural disconnect between Latin American perceptions of Anglo-neocolonialism and the Anglo world's own perception of what they've done. It also is a kind of representation of the ways that American culture (broadly) is currently quite unable to grapple with sexual violence – people can't even agree on the terms of the discussion (i.e. there's mistranslation going on).
[daily log: walking, 7km]
(Poem #462 on new numbering scheme)
A twilight settles like dust on sand, the sky consumed by lavender, the clouds slightly soft and vague, the roar of cars on streets imperceptible until you pay attention: zooming... hiss.
I learned this aphorism from my book of aphorisms.
거북이 잔등에 털을 긁는다
geo.buk.i jan.deung.e teol.eul geulk.neun.da
turtle back-LOC fur-OBJ scratch-PRES
[One] scratches the fur on a turtles back.
This means trying to do the impossible. “Trying to shave an egg”? “When pigs fly”?
Something like that.
Don’t try to do impossible things, right?
[daily log: walking, 1km]
(Poem #461 on new numbering scheme)
A flash of red there hovering amid yellows and greens and buildings.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
(Poem #460 on new numbering scheme)
The wind grasped puddles left over from morning rain and the moon was full.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
(Poem #459 on new numbering scheme)
Kay turned, saying, “My birthday was Saturday. Were you aware?”
Next to me, she pushed out from her desk, but not looking at me.
“I didn’t know.” Put my head down, sighed. So she said, “And my sister
died early Sunday. She still knew – in her coma – her deathday
shouldn’t be shared with my birthday.” Suddenly tears were appearing.
“I didn’t plan on this… why am I crying again?” I sat silent.
Gathering scattered cool remnants of calm, she returned to her work.
Just an odd, errant outburst of emotion disturbing smooth water.
Coda. I watched a small orangegold leaf twist, struggle, detach
float and then hang, now suspended against a wide orangegray sky,
held there in place by a wind that was blowing from somewhere quite far.
It was so strange. Maybe life’s endless terminations grant
sweeping perspective on things – if not hope – and so, pulling my eyes
down and away from the spinning dead leaf, in the end I keep walking.
что я слушаю сейчас.
Niloo, “Ola Ola”
Текст Песни
Ни минуты покоя, только ты и ты
Мир наполнен тобою, я верю в мечты
Ты близко, ты скоро, я жду, я молю
Я признаться готова, что тебя, что тебя я люблю
Ola-Ola, я и ты, ты и я
Ola-Ola, долгожданные слова
Ola-Ola, ты и я навсегда
Ola-Ola, ты мой, я твоя
Ты мой, я твоя, ты мой, я твоя
Ты мой
Ты мой, я твоя, ты мой, я твоя
Ты мой
Я слышу твой голос, забываю себя
Понимаю, не спорю – ты для меня
Мы сегодня не рядом, жду нового дня
Ни минуты покоя, бегу, бегу до тебя
Ola-Ola, я и ты, ты и я
Ola-Ola, долгожданные слова
Ola-Ola, ты и я навсегда
Ola-Ola, ты мой, я твоя
Ты мой, я твоя, ты мой, я твоя
Ты мой
Ты мой, я твоя, ты мой, я твоя
Ты мой
Ola-Ola, я и ты, ты и я
Ola-Ola, долгожданные слова
Ola-Ola, ты и я навсегда
Ola-Ola, ты мой, я твоя
Ola-Ola, я и ты, ты и я
Ola-Ola, долгожданные слова
Ola-Ola, ты и я навсегда
Ola-Ola, ты мой, я твоя
Ты мой, я твоя
[daily log: walking, 7km]
(Poem #458 on new numbering scheme)
Beasts of the Earth, part-uncoiled from the sphere, rising up skyward,
cruising alongside the edge of the sky, become platforms of gold stone.
