This is a little hemlock tree that was in the way of the path I was making up to my new greenhouse. So I moved the tree to a different spot. I thought if it grows there it can help anchor the corner of the steep, landfill hillside behind my new greenhouse.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Month: March 2020
Caveat: Not for Resale
I received the “galley proof” for my book today. This is really the last step before the book can go “live” on Amazon. I clicked “publish” for the text, and now must await the censors’ approval (the corporate censors, making sure there’s no content in the book that violates Amazon’s terms-of-use). By the end of the week, I expect my book will be for sale online.
Caveat: Poem #1339 “Unexpected events”
ㅁ I pulled the baby tree up by its roots. I put it in the ground again nearby. The tree perhaps was stunned by such events. But life adapts to things. The rain still fell.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Tree #453
This is a guest tree, drawn by Rockpit Resort Preferred Customer™ and sometime blog-reader Wayne, resident of an island “just down the coast a bit” in British Columbia.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: the eye of the young alligator
Nomad Exquisite
As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life,
As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth hymn and hymn
From the beholder,
Beholding all these green sides
And gold sides of green sides,
And blessed mornings,
Meet for the eye of the young alligator,
And lightning colors
So, in me, come flinging
Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.
– Wallace Stevens (American poet, 1879-1955)
Caveat: Poem #1338 “The sacred text”
ㅁ He knelt down, worshipping the words themselves - a selfless act of epeolatry.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Tree #452
This tree is hard to focus on in the foreground.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Beware of Software
I spent the day trying to learn a new bit of software. Results were mixed. I documented the more positive aspects of the experience on my other blog, but I didn’t mention the more frustrating aspects.
Still, I shouldn’t be so negative, right?
Caveat: Poem #1337 “The road untraveled”
ㅁ No person walked that road bestrewn with holes, nor stumbled on the stones awaiting there.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Tree #451
The tree awaits something.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: 극락길을 버리고 지옥길로 간다
Here is an aphorism from my book of Korean aphorisms.
극락길을 버리고 지옥길로 간다
geuk.rak.gil.eul beo.ri.go ji.ok.gil.ro gan.da
heaven-road-OBJ abandon-CONJ hell-road-BY go-PRESENT
[One] abandons heaven’s road and goes along hell’s road.
A fool will leave the straight and narrow path to heaven and travel the road to hell instead. Note that these conceptions of heaven and hell are not at necessarily linked to Christian cosmology, but long existed in Buddhist and even shamanistic cosmological traditions.
Caveat: Poem #1336 “Immolation of the self”
ㅁ negativity infests the mind with grim thoughts but serves no purpose
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Tree #450
This is a guest tree from the past. Its picture was taken New Year’s Day, 2009, in the Gangnam District in Seoul, looking west along Tehran-no (Tehran Road, a very posh address in the city).
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
Caveat: Link-rot
I have been working on a project, lately, involving the back-end of this here blog. It keeps me occupied while I wait for the galley proof for my upcoming book publication, and while I wait for my radishes to grow.
Over time, there is a thing called “link-rot” – links to websites become stale due to changes on whatever site is being linked to. Sometimes videos disappear, sometimes new articles get re-named by their hosts, etc.
So part of keeping a long-term blog functional is going back and fixing those rotted links – either replacing them, or simple putting a note, “link no longer works.”
My blog has accumulated a fair number of rotten links over its 15 years and 7500 entries.
But by far the worst offender is the vast number of broken “internal” links – links from one blog entry to another, including to my many pictures. The reason I have this problem is because I had to abandon my previous blog-host two years ago and move to a self-hosted version of this blog. I’m happy with that decision, but it means that 1000’s (yes 1000’s!) of internal blog links from before 2018 do not currently work. Perhaps if you’ve visited older entries, you’ve noticed this.
Anyway, I’m trying to fix all this link-rot – both the external and internal variety. It’s very tedious work – there is no magic “find-replace” that can do it, because the format differences between the old links and the new links are arbitrary.
Ah well. It keeps me socially isolated. Which is, apparently, a goodly thing, these days.
Caveat: Poem #1335 “Gone viral”
ㅁ The virus makes claims against people's awareness, but I'm just the same.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Tree #449
It’s a tree foregrounded by a cute lil greenhouse.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Not Effective
Caveat: Poem #1334 “Waiting underground”
ㅁ my greenhouse awaits A sunny day to warm it the radish seeds sleep
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Tree #448
This tree was reaching for the sky, but froze when I turned my camera toward it.
[daily log: walking, 3.5km]
Caveat: Have Eat Cake
One of my students once wrote a very memorable phrase in English just bad enough to sound gnomically brilliant:
“Cake’s existence is have eat cake.”
I have never forgotten that phrase.
So today I made a chocolate cake. It came out pretty good.
Caveat: Poem #1333 “The lost continent”
ㅁ The land was missing, Sunk like some vast Atlantis or a lost disk file
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Tree #447
Look, here are quite a few trees. Which tree is the daily tree? How can we decide?
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: seeds
I put some seeds in one of my planters.
Later in the day Arthur asked what I was doing. I told him, “Checking my seeds. Nothing yet.”
“Nothing?” he asked.
“Right. I think to grow a garden, I need to be more patient.”
Arthur found this amusing.
Caveat: Poem #1332 “Ladderlove”
ㅁ His love of ladders overtook all else: Affections which beclouded reasoned thought.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Tree #446
This tree… is making an effort.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
Caveat: dirtbound
I spent part of the day watching Arthur climb a ladder. Again. The guy loves ladders. I guess it is as close as he can get, these days, to his time as a pilot. I think he has the opposite of acrophobia (fear of heights) – let’s call it acrophilia. I have to accept with equanimity that he can’t really be controlled – I have no power of persuasion with respect to this issue, as far as I can figure out. So what can I say or do? He knows how I feel about it, but seems determined that this will be his means of exit from the world. Or maybe not. He’s got luck on his side, anyway – this is in fact his “reason” why it’s not dangerous. So that was that.
But another part of the day, I spent making dirt. I want to plant things in my greenhouse. There isn’t much quality dirt just lying around. Buying planting soil is super expensive. So… I have to make some dirt. Find some dark loamy stuff from an excavator-turned-up stump. Add some sand, some ash from the fireplace, some sawdust. Maybe this will be adequate planting soil. I don’t know. I guess I will find out.
Caveat: Poem #1331 “Ad hoc cartographies”
ㅁ The lines suggested forests, cities, roads. In fact they traced mere cracks in melting ice.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Tree #445
This tree is from the past. It is in the Yongsan area of Seoul. I took the picture in September, 2012.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Alarming Creatures
I found a folder full of old drawings and sketches and maps I did in elementary school.
I remember drawing this one in 6th grade – that would have been around 1976.
Caveat: Poem #1330 “The world alive with meanings”
ㅁ The wind attacked us in the afternoon while questing down the road to stretch its arms. The grayish skies were roiled with nature's doubts, and angry trees danced signs upon the hills.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Tree #444
The tree tried to avoid my camera.
[daily log: walking, 4km]
Caveat: Starman
It is a little known fact that Arthur once appeared in a major Hollywood movie.
That movie was Starman, which was released in 1984. I knew this fact, but I’d never seen the movie.
Last night, he and I watched the movie.
Here is the scene where he appeared – I took a photo of the TV screen.
Arthur claims you can see his white hat in the pilot’s window-bubble. I’m not sure – the resolution on the photo-of-the-TV-screen is too poor to judge either way.
Caveat: Poem #1329 “The concretization of mere words”
ㅁ A click - and so it was my book became not just a text onscreen, but paper stuff.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)