This tree is a tree among trees on the equinox. Go figure.
[daily log: walking, 4km]
Month: March 2020
Caveat: https://
Probably most of you won’t even notice, but as of about 3 pm this afternoon, Alaska Daylight Time, this here blog moved from “http” to “https”. This is a substantial accomplishment, that has taken me two years to get around to doing. I had things running well, and so was afraid to mess with it – as they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
But I finally bit the bullet, in the wake of my frustrating experience with my other server over the last few days. In essence, the work on that server functioned as a “practice run” for what I needed to do.
Why make this change? Well, “http” is being phased out in favor of “https”, all over the online world. The latter is “more secure” by some standard I actually don’t really understand, but it’s become the norm for well run and “safe” websites, so as long as caveatdumptruck.com remained on “http”, it was in danger of ultimately being ostracized from the respectable part of the internet. When I left my prior blog host in 2018, it was because they were forcing me to move to “https”, but at that time I wasn’t ready. So now I finally got ready, and did it. It’s not that I disagreed with their wanting me to move, I disagreed with their having taken the decision for me, without consultation.
If done correctly, the migration should have zero impact on the user experience. The one casualty was the free little “flag counter” I’d managed to find – I’ll have to find another that’s “https” compatible.
Happy web surfing.
Caveat: Poem #1328 “Arboreal bureaucracy”
ㅁ The trees were gathered, put on lengthy lists, their reachings inventoried, nothing missed.
Caveat: Tree #442
Caveat: Apocalypse, Craig
Arthur and I went into town for Thursday shopping. The pizza joint where we generally go for lunch was open but “dining room closed.” They were mandated by the State to not let people in their dining room. So they delivered – to our car in the parking lot. This is because of fears of the virus.
The library was closed. Same reason.
The grocery store was open, but less busy than usual. They had an additional, non-virus-related problem: their freezers and refrigerators had ALL broken. Apparently all running on the same compressor. So: no dairy products, no frozen goods, and the fruits and vegetables were quite spartan, and sitting on piles of ice.
Meanwhile, due to people hoarding and stockpiling because of the virus, shelves of basics like rice, flour, toilet paper, etc., were all empty. Cleaned out.
I was scanning the horizon for the coming zombie army.
Caveat: Poem #1327 “Where the stars are”
ㅁ Before the dawn I saw the looming stars up north above the sleeping mountain there.
Caveat: Tree #441
It’s a bit hard to see, but this tree is lying down over the swampy water below it.
[daily log: walking, 4km]
Caveat: 8 hours of sysadmin annoyance
I had a bit of an annoying two days. Yesterday, I was pursuing my hobby of building websites, by trying to build out a prototype of a website for a friend. An early step in this process is creating a subdomain on one of my domains (e.g. caveatdumptruck.com is this blog’s domain, and something like “blog.caveatdumptruck.com” would be a subdomain). This should be an easy step, but it’s crucial because you don’t want to mix a new website up with any existing websites on a given domain.
Instead, somehow the versions of some of the software running my web server got “out of sync” – that’s my best guess as to what happened. There’s a lot of software on the “back end” of a website: apache (the “web server”), php (the thing that makes webpages “interactive”), wordpress (the blog publishing tool that can also be used to build not-so-bloggy websites of various sorts), certbot (the free certificate registrar that makes websites “secure” so your browser doesn’t give you alarming notices about bad guys), etc. All of these have to talk to each other. And if they have different versions, they might stop understanding each other.
So something was bad. And my whole server ended up down and all websites on it inaccessible. I spent 8 hours today uninstalling and reinstalling various bits and pieces, trying to get everything in sync again. It was really above my competency. So frustrating, because when I finally got it working, I’m not even sure how I did it.
So a 15 minute task took two days, with 8 hours this morning desperately trying to get my server up and running – this is not the main server, so my blog and map server weren’t down, but my pictures are hosted on this secondary server, as well as several sites I’m running for friends.
Caveat: Poem #1326 “Gilgamesh wrestles the bull”
ㅁ I wrestled mightily with my machine, in hopes of making websites great and small. The errors stayed the same despite my wants, and finally I slept and dreamed in code.
Caveat: Tree #440
Caveat: Poem #1325 “A transitory trust”
ㅁ With dreams you trust the patterns that you see. The meanings thrust themselves across your mind. You wonder at the things appearing there. At last they fade and morning shakes your soul.
Caveat: Tree #439
Caveat: Poem #1324 “The golem at the controls”
ㅁ the form of things precedes perception their reception thus then leads to done deeds
Caveat: Tree #438
Caveat: Poem #1323 “Pwyll’s regrets”
ㅁ The dark surrounded the place. I stepped out. I thought about my long chase. But sadness filled my mind's space.
Caveat: Tree #437
I’ve been feeling kinda under-the-weather. I know it’s not that crazy covid thing – because I’ve had these lingering cold-like symptoms since before this thing came along. But it’s annoying. I haven’t been posting much on this here blog thingy, I know. Sorry.
This tree is down by the water on the neighbor’s property (where the house burned down).
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Poem #1322 “Approaching an equinox with wide-open eyes”
ㅁ During these recent mornings, the sun's path, its orbit's math, is changing, it reaches my eyes, shining.
Caveat: Tree #436
Caveat: Poem #1321 “Apprehending the world around us”
ㅁ Ice paved the beaches. The sun attempted to climb. A strong breeze crept through.
Caveat: Tree #435
Caveat: Best of Arhet, Week 5
Caveat: Poem #1320 “And nothing was said”
ㅁ Dream-sung humming root echoes silent, among my lives, while multitudes - he devours the soul, dances helplessly, chained to the past by what he said. I the variable in some universe determined by a fraction of time. Beyond is within, a skeletoned beach with rough velvet sand. This dream I'd had kissed my dream with pain, and the gentle wrenching strength tore tears from my eyes, and left me empty. It was not right that she was there, she would not leave, but stared the angry challenge of a stranded tiger, sad and - - - alone. I was alone. I never said anything, and she didn't either, and ...
– a free-form poem. This poem is another “guest post” from my distant past. I found it handwritten on an undated loose sheet of paper among my many old papers. Based on the style of my handwriting (which has changed often over the years) and the type of paper, I believe this was written around 1984 or early 1985. I have copied it without editing, though I didn’t retain my idiosyncratic capitalization of the epoch. In fact this poem is about a repeating dream I had all through my teens and early 20’s which I still vividly remember.
Caveat: Tree #434
Caveat: Book of Caveat: Poem
I’ve mentioned this to a few people, but here it comes more “officially.”
I’ve decided to publish my daily poems.
At first, I was going to publish some kind of collection, but on reflection, I’ve decided it’s both easier and more gratifying to just publish all of them, and quality be damned. In today’s publishing environment, where anyone can publish anything, I still think I meet higher criteria than many.
I’ll have “Volume 1: Mostly in Korea” on Amazon in a few days. Meanwhile, I’m asking for last-minute feedback regarding the manuscript. Below is a “cut-and-paste” of the introduction, and the full .PDF manuscript is available here (link).
In 2016, I began writing a poem every day. Prior to that, and back to my adolescence, I had written poetry occasionally. In 2004 I had started a blog (caveatdumptruck.com); a brush with cancer in 2013 rearranged my hopes and dreams. Those factors induced new efforts at creative writing. A friend of mine had noticed a few of my poems on that daily blog, and had given me positive feedback. In particular, he liked my poems in the “nonnet” form, and so he off-handedly challenged me to write one every day. Or perhaps I challenged myself, while in conversation with him – I don’t actually recall.
By the end of 2016 I was reliably publishing a “daily poem” on my blog, and I have done so ever since without fail. Many of these poems aren’t so great – when you hold yourself to such a pace of production, quality inevitably suffers. Most of them are quite short – I often will just slap together something I call a “pseudo-haiku” if time is short or I feel uninspired.
Over a long period, however, quality seems to emerge from the quantity. My first impulse was to try to put together a “selection” of these daily blog-poems for publication, but the more I thought about it, the more I reached the conclusion that in today’s internet-mediated literary environment, this served no practical purpose. Given how the technology and business of publishing work nowadays, nothing is to prevent me from first publishing my “Collected Works” (as grandiose as that feels) and then only later publishing whatever selections or excerpts I might choose. In fact, all the poems here are already published, anyway – just in “blog” form.
These poems often reflect the moment of life that I am in at the moment of writing. Through the first two years, I was living in South Korea and working as a teacher. The poetry reflects that lifestyle. Then I moved to rural Alaska, and so subsequent poems reflect that quite different lifestyle. Throughout, my various interests emerge: philosophy, nature, literature, Zen Buddhism. My prior life as a student of Spanish Literature also shows up – a number of these poems are in Spanish. I only occasionally offer translations, and ask readers to bear with this linguistic eccentricity. Although my Korean fluency never equaled that of my Spanish, I have thrown in lines of Korean here and there, too – also with only haphazard translation.
This collection is titled “Caveat: Poem” after the typical heading used in my blog (where from the start, in 2004, all entries begin with the word “Caveat:”). When I started numbering my poems, I somewhat arbitrarily and retroactively numbered them back through the blog to around 2009. However, all but the first thirty or so poems are from a daily poem-writing habit that can be precisely dated to having begun on August 12, 2016.
For convenience, I have divided this collection into two volumes, based on my time living in Korea (“Volume 1: Mostly in Korea”) and my time living in Alaska (“Volume 2: Mostly in Alaska”). Given that my daily poem-writing activity continues, I expect more volumes in the future.
In the blog, I have the habit of remarking on the intended genre of the poem afterward, and I have retained those remarks. Occasionally, these genre descriptions included other information about the context or background of the poem. Sometimes I have included these. However, where I feel they cross too far over into autobiography or aimless rambling, I have deleted them. Regardless, please forgive the no doubt sometimes obscure nature of the referents of these poems – in the blog, the context is often more clear because the poems are juxtaposed with other events in my day-to-day life, not to mention pictures, photographs, travelogues, etc.
I’ve also had to compose a “blurb” for this book – the text that appears on the back of the book and also on the Amazon website. Here is my current draft of that:
While living in South Korea between 2007 and 2018, the author maintained a daily internet blog. After surviving cancer in 2013, he returned to an interest in poetry, occasionally publishing poems in that online medium. By the 2016, he was publishing a daily poem, a habit which has continued ever since, including through his relocation to Southeast Alaska in 2018.
This first volume of poems includes those poems written while living in South Korea. Most are quite short, but the poems come in a variety of forms from traditional sonnets and Welsh-style englyns to free verse and what are termed “pseudo-haiku.” Themes range from daily life as an English teacher in South Korea through interests in philosophy, language, culture, storytelling and myth. Observations of the natural world often predominate. As a half-hearted practicing Buddhist, the author often attempts to craft poems that look at the world through a “zen-like” lens. Though a native English speaker, the poet occasionally writes poems in Spanish (having studied Spanish Literature in graduate school) and he has even thrown in fragments of Korean.
So I’m interested in hearing any feedback on content or format – let me know, via comments, here, or via email.
Caveat: Poem #1319 “In the present moment, summer cannot happen”
ㅁ Snow appeared and patches, blue and gray, bestrode the heavens. Trees began to doubt there'd be a future warmed in springtime.
Caveat: Tree #433
Caveat: Poem #1318 “The house, again”
ㅁ I dream this dream about a magic house that changes shape and shifts its placement too.
Caveat: Tree #432
It rained so much today that I didn’t even try to walk somewhere. I didn’t take a picture of a tree. I decided to post one from my archive.
This tree is in northwest Seoul, Korea. I took the picture on July 1, 2017, while visiting the grounds of the Korean Shamanism Museum (샤머니즘박물관).
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: gone to seed
I ordered some seeds for my greenhouse.
I’m having an attack of low self-confidence with respect to taking on gardening this spring. Perhaps with respect to a lot of things, I don’t know. I’ve been having a hard few days since Andrew left. I think not directly related to his visit, but just feeling very aware of being stuck. I feel often frustrated with Arthur’s frequent obstinate denialism, his refusal to acknowledge any problems (incipient deafness, physical limitations, cognitive limitations), as well as with his frightening temper – with respect to his computer, especially.
And I’m frustrated with my own lack of motivation or determination to just get on with life. Feeling stuck.
Two quotes, unrelated to the above but related to each other:
“Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.” – Joseph Conrad
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” – Rudyard Kipling
Caveat: Poem #1317 “A calloused, gray-fingered dawn”
ㅁ No rose-fingered dawn here. Just grayness. But not hopeless, just austere, moody, drear.
Caveat: Tree #431
With the sun shining on the trees by the water, you’d not realize from the picture that it was below freezing outside.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Give that homework app a one-star review
Schools in Wuhan, China, have been closed due to the epidemic. According to an article at LRB, kids were being forced to use a “homework app” on their phones to complete schoolwork. They figured out that if they gave the app a one-star review, it would get removed from the app store on their phones, and they’d have an excuse not to complete homework.
Children were presumably glad to be off school – until, that is, an app called DingTalk was introduced. Students are meant to sign in and join their class for online lessons; teachers use the app to set homework. Somehow the little brats worked out that if enough users gave the app a one-star review it would get booted off the App Store. Tens of thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk’s rating plummeted overnight from 4.9 to 1.4.
Caveat: Poem #1316 “Rain as analgesic”
ㅁ Some days I will feel more pain than others. I will smother it with rain. Such disdain.