I went to the airport to pick up Arthur on his way back from the VA in Juneau – but the leg of his flight from Sitka to Klawock was canceled due to weather. It is misty and drizzly with very low visibility. So I came back home.
Here is a purplish tree in front of someone’s house along the expressway. Some kind of maple. It came out somewhat blurry.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
Month: May 2019
Caveat: Poem #1034 “Glossolalia”
unreal words deployed carve out landscapes in the mind like lucid dreaming
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #148
Arthur will stay another night in Juneau.
Hopefully they don’t find anything unexpected.
Here is a tree.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Poem #1033 “A drive through the neighborhood”
that crunch of some tires on the gravel road up there a few times a day
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #147
I took Arthur to the airport this morning. He has some tests the VA doctors want done, and needs to be at the hospital in Juneau.
Later in the day, he called me to say the doctors are keeping him overnight. This is … concerning – but not overly so. Arthur and I have already discussed that the doctors at the Juneau VA seem overly cautious. He feels like they are wasting his time, but he nevertheless is deferring to their wishes. We’ll see what happens.
I took this picture of a tree against a metal shed at the airport this morning.
Here is the airport.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Poem #1032 “Water, sky”
down the road, morning grasping at bits of water, the sky just as blue
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #146
This tree is a time traveler.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Poem #1031 “Transmogrification”
bread and bacon, piled with lettuce and tomato... failed sandwich: salad!
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #145
A tree down by the water.
[daily log: walking, 1km; ditchdigging, 2m]
Caveat: Poem #1030 “Syntactic verse”
ㅁ strident birds green ideas forceful sunlight gloomy eagle grave concerns red movement gentle wind rough bark angular branches precipitous descent able creatures spinning insects the day arrives but nothing changes except now it all feels different deep soil dull failure dead spirits ghostly contortions
– a quennet. This poetic form, called a quennet, is one of the many odd and wonderful things to emerge from Oulipo. It is a specification not based on meter or rhyme but rather parts of speech and word counts – you could argue that it is syntactic versification. I think more could be done with inventing such constraints.
Caveat: Tree #144
This tree survived the treepocalypse. Maybe I posted a picture of it before, I don’t remember. But it stands somewhat lonely in the rock and dirt.
[daily log: walking, 1km; ditchdigging, 1m]
Caveat: Poem #1029 “The nearing summer solstice”
as the solstice nears: a quadrangle of dawn's sun flees the north window
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #143
I’ll return back to a more traditional-style, Alaskan roadside tree.
[daily log: walking, 3km; ditchdigging, 1m]
Caveat: Poem #1028 “A concrete haiku”
a few syllables strung out like stones on a path embedded in mud
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #142
This tree I found in my ditch: dead and buried.
[daily log: walking, 1km; ditchdiggin, 1m]
Caveat: Evidence for the Anthropocene
This is pretty interesting. It’s a diagram showing the distribution of biomass by taxon, for the whole Earth.
What really struck me more than anything else is that humans + livestock, in the lower right corner, far outweigh all wild mammals and birds. And humans nearly outweigh their livestock. I never thought that could be true.
Caveat: Poem #1027 “A failure to communicate”
The silver sea spits, praying for rain, no comment... tree shrouded islands
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #141
Arthur and I drove into town: “Thursday is shopping day.”
Therefore, I present this tree from the archives.
The tree that I have selected is to the left of a scary-looking sign. The sign memorializes a prison uprising on a notorious prison island in South Korea (실미도), during the 1960s (the era of the dictatorship). Apparently the prisoners were being trained for a suicide mission against North Korea, but they decided to use their new skills to rebel and escape, instead. Things got messy, of course.
But anyway, it’s a nice tree.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Poem #1026 “Meteorological activities”
The sky enfolds pale and the rain makes suggestions while mist chews the trees
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #140
This is a tree viewed by looking straight up at the site of the new well-shed thing.
[daily log: walking, 1km; ditchdigging, 1m]
Caveat: Poem #1025 “Another nonnet that ends with the word ‘stop'”
There are plenty of words at the start. These words emerge and tumble down. They fall in cold rivulets. Soon, there are piles of words. Strangers tromp through them. They block the view. Children play. I sigh. Stop.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Tree #139
This is a sad-looking pine tree about two-thirds of the way up the slope toward the treehouse location. It’s the only actual pine tree I’ve run across on Arthur’s two lots – there are quite a few of them out east along the road where the muskeg is (the flat stretch near the bridges), but not so many here along the hillside. This pine tree looks like someone attempted to decapitate it at some point, but it’s decided to stay in the game for now.
[daily log: walking, 1km; ditchdigging, 1m]
Caveat: Poem #1024 “Numerological babble”
one oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh - two to the tenth
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #138
I scrubbed barnacles in the morning.
I dug ditches in the afternoon.
No walking took place.
So, here is a tree from the archives: on the grounds of the Korean Shamanism Museum, July, 2017.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: The Moronic Barnacles
I think The Moronic Barnacles should be the name of a musical group.
Instead, there are barnacles (probably moronic) attached to the bottom of Arthur’s boat. It is my mission to try to remove them.
Caveat: Poem #1023 “The singing string”
A string sings along through the lumpy, bumpy sea... our sad, swollen sea.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #137
Arthur and I went out in the boat today. Still fishless, though.
The tide was very low in the morning. I took this picture of a tree reflected in the water with a fat starfish under the water in the shade of the dock.
Here is the low tide – you could actually step from the beach to the dock.
Here is a sea otter I saw.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: where is the man who lives out of himself?
Where is the Poet
The inky-garmented, truth-dead Cloud — woven by dumb ghost alone in
the darkness of phantasmal mountain-mouth — kidnapped the
maiden Moon, silence-faced, love-mannered, mirroring her golden
breast in silvery rivulets:
The Wind, her lover, grey-haired in one moment, crazes around the
Universe, hunting her dewy love-letters, strewn secretly upon the
oat-carpets of the open field.
O, drama! never performed, never gossiped, never rhymed! Behold — to
the blind beast, ever tearless, iron-hearted, the Heaven has no
mouth to interpret these tidings!
Ah, where is the man who lives out of himself? — the poet inspired often
to chronicle these things?
- Yone Noguchi (Japanese poet [composing in English], 1875-1947)
Caveat: Poem #1022 “Exposed”
the tide is quite low there are crabs among the rocks an eagle watches.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #136
A tree out along the road a ways.
[daily log: walking, 4km]
Caveat: Poem #1021 “A run-on sentence about time”
Wind precludes the silence which sits waiting at the edge of things, off in the forest, there, down by the surging waters, where the eagle crouches, watching, and no one awaits nothing but time.
– a reverse nonet.
Caveat: Tree #135
This is a the tree at the corner where the new driveway splits off from the expressway.
I am making progress on the well shed thingy.
[daily log: walking, 1km; digging gravel, 50cm]
Caveat: Poem #1020 “As survivalists will do”
some survivalists surveyed their situations and gazed at the sky
– a pseudo-haiku.