I have created an author page on Amazon. It’s rudimentary – they don’t give you a lot of room for customization, but that’s fine. I’ve added a link to the top-most menu on this blog, to the right.
More significantly, I am now getting ready to publish the always intended second volume of poems, which will cover the time period from my departure from Korea to the current date. I suppose the poems included in it will be those right up through the moment I am ready to push the “publish” button.
The Library of Congress number has been applied for, and I have finished the formatting work for the text. I have also made a draft cover design.
Month: April 2020
Caveat: Poem #1359 “A diagram of the local weather”
ㅁ gray skies calm skies brooding skies intermittent drizzle damp ground seeping ground squishy ground drifting mist rocking trees steadfast trees green trees steady rain you watch out the window awaiting something which remains undefined yet urgent focused thoughts observational thoughts random thoughts meteorological meditations
– a quennet
Caveat: Tree #473
This is a tiny pine tree. These types of trees are quite common in the muskeg, between 7 mile and 8 mile along the road out here. But on these two lots here at 8.6 mile, I have only ever found one of them, lurking gloomily up the hill a hundred feet or so among many alders and sitka spruce.
I uprooted this baby from along the road at 7.5 mile and planted it in front of my greenhouse.
[daily log: walking, 2km; chainsawing and woodsplitting, 2hr]
Caveat: Tarp and Bean
“Tarp and Bean” sounds like the name of a roadside inn in a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel.
I finally got around to finishing my effort to “unfloor” my studio (green tent storage facility). I had hoped that putting down a large tarp as a kind of floor would help limit the moisture. But much of the moisture inside is due to condensation, and the tarp just collected that and made a little lake in the middle of the floor. So I resolved to get the tarp floor out – just have a muddy floor.
That’s what I’ve completed. I did it without taking out the stuff in the studio. It was like a large-scale implementation of the “tablecloth trick” – where you yank out the tablecloth and all the things on top of it remain in their places.
Here is the tarp drying.
Here is the interior with its new mud floor.
Here is a bean appearing in my greenhouse.
This is not a greenbean, but a black bean. It wasn’t clear that these would grow here, so the fact that I have a sprout is a good first step.
Caveat: Poem #1358 “Fifteenth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon tried to retrieve her lost soul, searching the forest and hunting a role. Slowly her hope drained away, till at last, Only a ghost trod the earth. She had passed.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter
Caveat: Tree #472
This tree looms over me.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: too many planets
I have been busy with trying new stuff and experimenting with my GIS server.
I now have 8 distinct views of 4 distinct “planets” running on the server. Only one of those planets is real – that’s Earth, of course. Included there for comparison purposes.
I have been learning a lot about some new aspects of GIS systems admin under the OSM architecture. That’s good I guess. Good to learn new things.
Caveat: Poem #1357 “What lines will do”
ㅁ The lines had minds, expressed their deepest thoughts, and curved, and took the long way round to maps.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Tree #471
This tree is from my past. I took this picture in April, 2015. I’m standing on the foot bridge that goes over Ilsan-no (Ilsan Road) in Ilsan, right in front of my place of employment, the Karma Language Academy (which is the orange and white sign on the building on the left). Spring in Korea was always kind of smoggy and horrible, but the blooming trees were sometimes beautiful.
[daily log: walking, 1km; chainsawing & woodsplitting, 1.5hr]
Caveat: on the ranch
I tend to put a lot of salad dressing on my salads.
That wasn’t always the case. But ever since my mouth surgery, I like my foods to have a more “squishy” character – easier to chew with my “handicapped” tongue (shortened, limited in range-of-motion, and without a sense of touch, due to the cancer surgery). So I pour on the salad dressing and then the salads don’t create the problems I can sometimes have, especially with pieces of lettuce adhering to the roof of my mouth where my tongue can’t find them.
Arthur, however, always looks on disapprovingly as I slather on my creamy dressings – blue cheese or ranch being my preferred ones. I suspect he just feels aware of how much money is spent on bottles of dressing, and it seems exorbitant to him. I’m really not sure why he has a right to disapprove – given his chocolate and ice cream habits. Or maybe it’s just not appealing to him, in that he would not enjoy a salad so adorned. But… anyway.
I decided to try to save some money and make my own ranch dressing. It’s not that hard – some milk, sour cream, mayo, some spices. I added some finely chopped onion.
My homemade ranch dressing was better than I had expected – better than store bought.
Meanwhile, in the morning, I did some more maintenance on our back-up heating system. So to speak. I had bought a new, bigger maul for pounding the wedge into the log-rounds to split them. The result was pleasing.
Caveat: Poem #1356 “Last night’s detour”
ㅁ Most nights I sleep fine. A quick trip from dusk to dawn. Then, last night, awake.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Tree #470
Sometimes you must choose your own tree, from among many that present themselves, each with their respective merits.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: My greenhouse springs a leek
The leek is growing in the form of a small sprout.
Caveat: Poem #1355 “Fourteenth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon went on refusing to fight, peering around in an eerie half-light, kicking at dirt and escaping her friends: heartless and actually seeking her end.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter
Caveat: Tree #469
This tree is not like other trees. This tree was created in my imagination, to accompany a narrative I was constructing for an elementary-aged student in April, 2017, in Korea. I often would draw pictures and tell stories to students, as a way to motivate intrinsic learning. This is from one of the frequent one-on-one sessions I’d had.
The tree is at the center of the picture. It doesn’t appear to have played a major role in the narrative, but I can’t be sure. The student drew the bat in the upper left.
[daily log: walking, 2km; chainsawing, 1hr]
Caveat: logs and lettuces and loopy isolines
I worked on my firewood collection for a while in the morning.
I saw some lettuces growing nicely in my greenhouse.
I created a really messed-up topo map on my server. Something went wrong with the algorithm. I later learned it had to do with not deleting some temporary files left over from a previous run of the same program.
Another day in my moss-covered, misanthrope’s paradise.
Caveat: Poem #1354 “Anti-Chomskyan”
ㅁ And still my luck was green and colorless and dwelt among ideas like a ghost.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter). This obliquely references the famous Chomskyan composition which he used to demonstrate the distinction between syntactic well-formedness and semantic well-formedness.
Caveat: Tree #468
The tree is trying to hide among other trees.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: In a storm, the very waves seemed friendly
The Idiot Oh how this sullen, careless world Ignorant of me is! Those rocks, those homes Know not the touch of my flesh, nor is there one tree Whose shade has known me for a friend. I’ve wandered the wide world over. No man I’ve known, no friendly beast Has come and put its nose into my hands. No maid has welcomed my face with a kiss. Yet once, as I took passage From Gibraltar to Cape Horn I met some friendly mariners on the boat And as we struggled to keep the ship from sinking In a storm, the very waves seemed friendly, and the sound The spray made as it hit the front of the boat. - John Ashbery (American poet, 1927-2017)
Caveat: Poem #1353 “The rainforest’s shore”
ㅁ The rain had returned. A luminous dusk showed mist. The sea tasted rocks.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Tree #467
The four hundred and sixty-seventh tree is one among many.
In other news, rumor has it there are now not zero, but rather two cases of covid-19 here on our isolated island.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Rendering Rocks and Trees
I spend a rainy afternoon making some pleasing and surprising progress on my “map server” architecture that is one of my chief hobbies.
One thing I want to be able to do is to eventually create and host my own “contour” (elevation) data for my geofictional places. Currently, this contour work is hosted at the OGF website, e.g. my island called Tárrases (link to the contour map). I want to be able to host this type of map on my own server.
It’s quite intricate to use raw GIS (geographic information services) data to “draw” one’s own digital contour maps.
As a first step, I have imported the raw data for a small corner of my home in Southeast Alaska to my server. This is digitized planetary height data, freely available from the NASA website. After nearly 3 months of on-and-off effort, I have finally managed to render (draw) the contour map, using the OpenTopoMap architecture (a Mapnik render architecture). Note that this really is only contour data – I didn’t import the other real-world map data, and in fact only placed a few of my own invented towns, such as the towns called “Rock” and “Tree” on the map. The town of “Rock” is out at northern tip of Noyes Island, where Arthur likes to go fishing. It’s a rocky little cape. The town of “Tree” is my home, of course.
Here is a link to the current server, but I’ll include a screenshot below, since the link might end up evolving or changing as I continue refining this effort. You can click that screenshot to enlarge it.
Caveat: Poem #1352 “Thirteenth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon drifted, as drifters will drift, taking in scenery, hoping for lift. Nothing appeared, though, and life carried on. Sighing, she wandered... evading the dawn.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter
Caveat: Tree #466
I have sometimes taken the time to make precarious piles of rocks here and there. So this tree is foregrounded by some piled rocks.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
Caveat: Cursing his name (what’s his name?)
Arthur was really mad at my brother Andrew earlier today. But he couldn’t remember his name. It was funny, because the target of his anger floated from “person to person”: “damn Aaron” … “what was Jeffrey thinking!” …
The reason he was angry was because we were putting the boat railings back in the water after their winter hiatus.
Last year when he was here, my brother Andrew had ambitiously taken on the task of trying to improve the safety of how the boat trolley is mounted on its cables. Andrew had added these extra U-bolts and changed the configuration of how the cable attaches to the trolley. Arthur hadn’t been opposed in principle to this improved safety, but we were now finding that we’d increased safety at the expense of reducing the flexibility of the system, such that it had become essentially impossible to get enough slack in the cable to re-attach it to the rail-brace down at the bottom in the water
So I spent more than an hour removing one of the supplemental U-bolts at the base of the trolley so that we could increase the slack in the cable. Once there was some slack, we were able to re-attach the cable, and we could tighten things back up.
But now the U-bolt is gone. Andrew would not approve. Arthur thought it had been overkill anyway. We know what Arthur thinks of safety: “Better to be lucky than smart!” is his operating motto.
Meanwhile, a second radish appeared in my garden. The greenhouse was actually hot today, for the first time, I think: a combination of a sunny day and warming temperatures. Here is the second radish, on the right, with the first radish, on left and more in the foreground and out-of-focus.
And the patch of lettuce is doing well.
Caveat: Poem #1351 “Mental health”
ㅁ I dreamed I was on a train... on the roof, looking for proof that my brain takes the strain.
– an englyn cil-dwrn
Caveat: Tree #465
This tree knows nothing but optimism.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
Caveat: Purplish Propensities
As seems to arise on a regular basis, I developed a craving for borshch. I happened to see some beets among the vegetables at the store on Thursday, so I took a piece of beef that Dean and Pam had brought to us last summer out of the freezer and made some borshch this morning in the slow cooker.
Meanwhile I keep trying to fix the old broken links in this here blog. But I don’t have a vast amount of patience for that project, sometimes.
Caveat: Poem #1350 “What the stones do”
ㅁ The stones deceive. They lie in wait. They sleep. A road goes past, and cars and trucks don't see.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Tree #464
This tree has seen its optimism challenged.
[daily log: walking, 2km; chainsawing, 1hr]
Caveat: Isolated activity
I am normally living an isolated lifestyle. So this period of “social isolation” during the virustime doesn’t imply any kind of true lifestyle change for me, whatsoever.
One thing I continue is my geofiction hobby. Here, for lack of anything more interesting, is a cross-post from my other blog (which is pseudonymous and focused on geofiction).
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I keep making small incremental progress on the imaginary city of Ohunkagan. I start to imagine the city it will be when I reach the “present” – from the perspective of around 1900, which is its current historical moment.
[Technical note: screenshot taken at this URL (for future screenshots to match).]
You can see that the near-northeast has filled in (Balto area). Also, the Conagher Rail Car Company, in the southwest along the portage shoreline, and the Signal Hill area straight west near the line with the town of Mythic.
I have done work farther out, beyond the frame of the “standard” screenshot above, including work at Iyotanhaha, Riverton and Prairie Forge. All these towns will be within the Metropolitan Area’s modern perimeter, once we reach 2020.
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What I’m listening to right now.
Tears for Fears, “Mad World.”
Lyrics.
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you ’cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very, very
Mad world
Mad world
Mad world
Mad world
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you ’cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very, very
Mad world
Mad world
Mad world
Mad world
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you ’cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very, very
Mad world
Mad world
Enlarging your world
Mad world
Caveat: Poem #1349 “The beast outside”
ㅁ I got up early. The purpleness of pre-dawn Groped my windows.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #463
Sometimes I miss Korea a lot.
Here is a guest tree (or gathering of trees, with some attendant bicycles). I took this picture in December, 2017. I know exactly where it is – it’s behind the Gangseon Elementary School. I’m looking toward the southeast, so that’s the morning sun on the brick wall of the school. I was probably walking to work.
[daily log: walking, 2km]