I haven’t posted non-tree pictures in a while. But I remain busy with my camera, during my daily walks.
Here are some pictures.
Month: April 2019
Caveat: Poem #990 “Stasis”
ㅁ when waiting, small things slide by oddly unnoticed the wind pushes by
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #104
Here is a tree just barely hanging on to the planet.
[daily log: walking, 3.5km]
Caveat: Unlate
It’s a bit disorienting, but it seems to be the case that in fact I filed my taxes on time this year.
That’s the first time in at least a decade – and perhaps only the 2nd or 3rd time in two decades, where I’ve made the deadline.
It helped that I had already done all the paperwork, because I was unemployed during the second half of the year, and I had simply included the Korean income data for last year with all the previous years, when I’d compiled and sent to my accountant my tax info for all those missed years since my cancer hospitalization.
And it helped that like all those missed years, I had a post-deduction negative income. It’s all just paperwork. I paid my taxes in Korea for the last decade. The US is the only country in the world that requires non-resident citizens working abroad to file US-based taxes.
So happy day-after-tax-day.
Caveat: Poem #989 “But mostly empty space”
ㅁ the atoms around tumble and collide with me but I am too big
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #103
The one on the left, sticking up.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km]
Caveat: Lady Burns
In January, 1985, I was studying in Paris.
I had a camera my uncle Arthur had given to me – a fairly high quality Pentax (film-using, of course, in those days), with some nice lenses.
One day in Paris I walked around and over to the Île de la Cité and to the Notre Dame Cathedral. Because it was cold and overcast, there weren’t many crowds, and I climbed one of the towers and took pictures of Paris.
In the picture below, which I took at that time looking out on the Paris cityscape toward Montmartre, the gargoyle in the right foreground is part of the cathedral.
Today, Notre Dame burned.
Caveat: Poem #988 “The huntress moon”
ㅁ the overcast is bright because of the moon's clawing digging down in hunt
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #102
This tree has been forced to share the limelight with a utility pole.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km]
Caveat: Poem #987 “A record of a betrayal”
ㅁ with lost inertia and awoken too early the night betrayed me
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #101
This tree is the northeast corner of the putative treehouse I might build if I get motivated. Well, it’s not just that. I am holding off because I need to buy more supplies to take the next steps, but I’m limiting my spending because I haven’t got a job yet.
[daily log: walking, 1km; tromping, 400m]
Caveat: Poem #986 “The coming comminution”
ㅁ I greet a slow stone and begin to contemplate its comminution
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #100
The hundredth tree is still only a tree.
[daily log: walking, 4km]
Caveat: Role Reversal
I’m having a hard day.
I had dropped off my application for a job with the Craig Schools on Monday. But I was told at the time that Friday would be the earliest someone would look at it (though it wasn’t promised for Friday, either).
Anyway, today is Friday. I have a really hard time with “waiting,” where I have zero control and zero chance to know what might happen. Which is what my situation is. Will someone call, or not? Will it be positive or negative in outcome? I don’t even have a way to guesstimate probabilities.
I found myself playing a game on my computer. I don’t actually do that much. Hardly ever.
Meanwhile, I went downstairs and Arthur was being productive. He was sorting out his finances, in the wake of having written a large check to the well-drillers yesterday.
So Arthur, who normally spends hours each day playing solitaire or tetris on his computer, was doing useful things.
Meanwhile, I was killing time with a game on my computer.
I joked with him that we’d undergone a role-reversal.
Caveat: Poem #985 “Too early to tell”
ㅁ huckleberries bloom the gravel road weirdly dries the sky hints of spring
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #99
A smol tree on a big log.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
Caveat: Pump Not Included
After all the banging noise and money, this is what we got.
And no, water does not come out, yet. “Pump not included.”
Here’s a picture from earlier this morning, as they were pulling out the drill shaft lengths and lowering their derrick.
Caveat: Poem #984 “Unexpected clarity”
ㅁ A cup of coffee A window with a blue sky The calm water waits
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #98
An alder tree with it’s weird flower / seed pod thingies hanging off its still-bare branches.
[daily log: walking, 4km]
Caveat: Well
Arthur seems to have bitten the bullet and decided to put a well in. Currently water here is supplied by a bucket on the hillside. Because of the substantial rainfall, this has not been a significant problem in the past, but in the past 6 months we’ve had two “droughts.” Last summer there was an extended dry spell in August/September. And this past February we had an extended cold spell, which froze the precipitation preventing it from getting into the water tank. Both of these might be one-time flukes, or they might be part of a climate-change trend – even Arthur is open-minded with respect to the latter possibility.
Anyway, to address water insecurity even here in the rainforest, he’s decided to pay for a well.
This is a substantial investment.
Here are the trucks of the well-drillers. They are putting the well in on the edge of the new parking pad on the western lot, close to the property line and close to the existing water tank (cistern) infrastructure on the eastern lot.
They got down to a bit over 200 feet, yesterday, and it’s giving 3 gallons per minute. This is not great, but it’s adequate for a house or two. We’ll let it go a bit further, and see how it goes. Another resident down the road has 8 gallons per minute at 220 feet, while yet another gets only 1 gallon per minute with 370 feet. So the water table under the very hard rock of the island is a bit of a crap-shoot, apparently.
Caveat: Poem #983 “Simple words”
ㅁ In philosophical discourses the trees and ravens have their say, while solitary thinking forces the passing meditative day. The churning mind can seem so fragile and its surroundings strong and agile: a soul made up of colored glass and tangled in a vague morass. The mental gaze can just distinguish a cloud enclosed in blue and gold, but all the world spins, gray and old, that simple words will not extinguish - instead, imbrute the thinker's skull: a cloud up close is broad and dull.
– a sonnet in a tetrameter.
Caveat: Tree #97
I failed to take a picture of a tree today. I didn’t take my daily walk. It was raining hard, and I was feeling tired and disgruntled.
So I will offer this tree from my pre-daily-tree archives.
This is the very rare Korean cat tree, with a ripe cat ready for harvesting, taken in Jeollanam Province during a work-related field trip in February, 2011.
For a less tongue-in-cheek explanation, you can visit my blog for that time, here.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Not Just America
In fact, the incarceration of children whose parents are in violation of rules about migration is a global problem. I was recently impressed by some discussion of the growing problem in my erstwhile home, South Korea, where it is normally an untouchable subject.
You can read about it here. The below video is included on that site.
irreversible effects of immigration detention on children (full version) from APIL Korea on Vimeo.
My important point is that the recent outrage among some parts of the US population about this issue is in fact quite narrow and parochial. This is a global problem and the US is at best a minor violator. That doesn’t excuse it. Rather, I think this core problem of child punishment for parental behavior is key to understanding why migration restriction regimes are on par with chattel slavery in ethical terms.
Caveat: Poem #982 “Lack of constraint”
ㅁ I'll take some time now, meditating: my strange relationship to rain, which often boils down to waiting - you'd think it feels somewhat mundane - but no, in fact it's more like soothing and letting clouds present their smoothing, on-flowing torrents for the trees to drink. This flow of water frees not just the pebbles from the seething and urgent earth, but also thoughts, which surge and dodge life's random lots, but then are loosened from their wreathing constraints to fly against the dark and overarching sky's gray arc.
– a sonnet in a tetrameter.
Caveat: Tree #96
A tree which is special because it stands somewhat alone, having survived the “treepocalypse” which Richard wrought on the new driveway last fall.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Poem #981 “A precipitous arrival”
ㅁ back in Alaska it rains as if to welcome it rains and it rains
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #95
Back home in Alaska, I found a tree. This one is an alder about to bud leaves for spring.
[daily log: walking, 4km]
Caveat: jaredway.net
As a part of my intention to take more seriously the notion that the time has come to look for a job, I have created a new website which will function as a more “professional” snapshot of my persona than the one on there here blog:
jaredway.net
Caveat: Poem #980 “A hierarchical classification of unpleasant experiences”
ㅁ Waiting for airplanes is easier than sitting in the airplane seats
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #94
We have arrived at home. Here is tree #94 – from the archives (I think this is from the Hollis ferry terminal at dawn).
[daily log: walking, 2km; flying/driving/ferrying, 600km]
Caveat: stuck inside a machine once again
As I sat, packed into a middle seat on my 5th airplane in 3 days for another seemingly interminable journey, the mp3-player on my phone played a musical track that I’d first downloaded and listened to when I was undergoing radiation treatment for cancer, in the Fall of 2013.
So of course I had some flashbacks to that point in time, as can happen with evocative music associated with specific experiences – and the actual character of the music has little to do with it… otherwise, why do I always think of Ayn Rand when I hear Arlo Guthrie’s “City of of New Orleans”? He’s a commie, and she was a hard-right libertarian type. But that song was on heavy rotation in my “life’s soundtrack” at the point in time when I was reading her book Atlas Shrugged. Thus it goes. Okay, enough of that digression.
I posted this picture of myself, back during my cancer treatment, which recalls my experience with the radiation treatment concretely. Note the immobilizing rigid (yes, rigid) plastic mesh pinning down my head and upper body).
Anyway, the thought that struck me so profoundly, as I sat crammed in that airplane seat, was that the radiation machine (a high-powered CT scanner, basically – the radiation therapy was technically called “X-ray computed tomography intensity modulated radiation therapy“) was more comfortable than a typical economy-class airplane seat. Given a free option to spend X number of hours in one or the other, I would definitely choose the radiation gadget.
That’s how I feel about traveling in airplanes.
Of course, there’s no denying that the real negative on the radiation treatment wasn’t the time spent in the machine, but rather the side effects: weight loss, hair loss, nausea, etc. I guess airplane seats don’t have such a long-term impact.
What I’m listening to right now.
Epsilon Minus, “Lost.” I wrote about this particular track once before, on this here blog, noting that the track appeared to be one of the few that doesn’t exist online. Obviously someone has since remedied that problem.
Caveat: Poem #979 “Supervised hubris”
ㅁ straight lines on hillsides sketch out a daily hubris; ravens supervise
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #93
Here is a tree unclear on the concept of “up.”
[daily log: walking, 5km]