I am with Arthur in Juneau.
He came here for two medical appointments – we’d decided when planning the trip to my mom’s in Australia that it was logical to just tack on the visit to Juneau to the end of that trip.
This did not work out well. We got to see the specialist this morning, but our delayed arrival due to the problem in departing Cairns meant that the general annual VA appointment was utterly cocked up by our missed day. And there seems to be little we can do about it. Arthur is being indecisive about whether to stay longer in in Juneau to get things taken care of, or to go on home and come back to Juneau later – both involve almost exactly the same level of extra expense, and without that as a guide, it’s hard to make a decision.
Meanwhile, I decided to walk around. I’ve never visited Juneau before, despite repeated visits to Southeast Alaska.
Here are some pictures.
The State Capitol building – one of the few non-purpose-built state capitols in the US (the only one?), it’s just a repurposed old office building.
The Russian church.
A neighborhood park called Chicken Yard.
Manila Square – there are a lot of Philippine people in Southeast Alaska (which I knew – I remember my surprise at hearing Tagalog on the streets of Ketchikan), so there is, apparently, a memorial of this here.
The Korean Restaurant that is closest to my new home (bearing in mind that that still means more than 500km by boat or plane from my new home).
A view of Juneau from in front of our motel.
A little hut in a field.
Month: April 2019
Caveat: Poem #978 “Antipodes”
ㅁ A day in tropics... then there's a long airplane trip... rain turning to snow.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #92
We are officially back in Alaska, after a 42 hour long day (because of the international date line and all that).
We landed in Juneau a few hours ago. I don’t have a tree picture – it’s dark here.
So here’s a picture of an Australian tree – one seen during my long walk in Cairns yesterday (the day before yesterday? – depends on the dateline thing).
[daily log: flying, miles and miles and miles and miles…]
Caveat: 한국어영화
Having nothing better to do on the 15 hour transpacific flight, I happened to stumble across the fact that the Air Canada movie selection included quite a few foreign films – including 4 Korean movies.
I decided somewhat arbitrarily that transpacific flights should include Korean movies (such movies have been included, so often, in the past, because my most frequent transpacific carrier has been Korean Airlines).
So I binged on Korean movies. No comment with respect to quality – this is not, nor has it ever been, a movie review blog. You can find summaries and reviews elsewhere, better than anything I could write.
But I enjoyed watching them – a few hours of immersion in Korean culture, absent from my day to day life since last summer.
The movies I watched:
돌아와요 부산항애 – a violent cops and robbers thriller where the two antagonists (cop and robber) are twin brothers.
스타박스다방 – a comedy involving a guy starting a coffee shop in a small coastal village in Korea, where many of the characters die at the end.
선명탐정: 흡혈괴마의 비밀 – an anachronistic comedy adventure involving vampires in Joseon Era Korea (1700s).
Caveat: Poem #977 “An anthropomorphization”
ㅁ the sea stares outward into space like a great eye noticing the moon
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #91
Another Australian tree: from the neighbor’s yard up the hill. She is actually a pretty horrible person, per descriptions of my mom and others who’ve dealt with her, but I nevertheless like her tree in her yard.
Presumably, we are flying.
[daily log: flying, farther and farther]
Caveat: Poem #976 “A chance meeting in Cairns”
ㅁ ...and we were stuck in Cairns for just a day and walking from some mall where time was killed and crickets sang and rain made rivulets and randomly my spirit sister waved and stopped her car and turned around quite quick and said hello. We told our little tale. She laughed and grinned and drove away again.
– seven lines of blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Tree #90
We were supposed to be flying in the air. That turned out not to happen – we got stuck in a motel in Cairns. A delayed departure for the first flight led to a chain reaction of missed connecting flights all the way to Juneau. Systemic failure. So they postponed everything 24 hours and we try again tomorrow morning, same time, same place.
Malingering around Cairns, I took a very long walk, from our suburban airline comp hotel to the downtown waterfront. I’ll post pictures when I get a better internet connection.
Meanwhile, a banana tree (or two).
[daily log: walking, 12km]
Caveat: ikr
Excerpts from the chat app on Abraham’s smartphone:
God: kill your son
Abraham: srsly?
God: damn right
Abraham: um…ok
God: holy f* nm
God: jk
Abraham: jeez…
God: hah on that topic i’ll prolly kill mine tho lol
Abraham: wtf?
God: ikr
- Credit where credit is due: I found a joke, online, similar to this, but much shorter and not “all in” with respect to the chatspeak. Inspired by that, I expanded the concept to the above.
Caveat: Poem #975 “Pause”
ㅁ a wallaby watched waiting, wondering, weirdly wild then it hopped away
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #89
An old, gnarled tree up along Wooroora Road.
[daily log: walking, 4km]
Caveat: Poem #974 “A walk around my mother’s neighborhood in the north of Queensland, where there were a lot of bugs”
ㅁ They swarmed: a cloud of tiny bugs that - distilling atmosphere with wings - as if hyped up and stoned on drugs that impelled orbits more than stings. The green of trees and breeze-bent grasses made better views than bug-strewn glasses. In water standing by the road they buzzed beside a flattened toad. Unreadable unlike books' pages, the path unfolded asphalt planes and hiding mother earth's hot veins, concealing geologic ages. I stopped to take a picture then and waved my hand around again.
– a sonnet.