Here is an aphorism from my book of Korean aphorisms.
차면 넘친다
cha.myeon neom.chin.da
be-full-IF overflow-PRESENT
It [something] is full, it overflows.
This seems quite straightforward – “one’s cup runneth over,” perhaps. But also, it seems to mean simply, “all things pass,” or “all good things come to an end.”
ㅁ The trees surround us. "Find your way," they say. The stones are singing, night and day, they say. They sing their geologic dirges, then. They grasp the roots of trees and play, they say. A raven might make signs across the sky. That kind of bird can't see the gray, they say. You waited but refused to change your mind. Your ghost just watched and didn't say, they say. I saw it once out on the tidal flats. You'd hoped that I could learn to pray, they say. The orange-hued bits of sun revealed your face. It seemed to you I'd lost my way, they say.
– a ghazal with six couplets. Ghazal is an originally Arabic poetic form, later popularized and spread through the old world by the Persians. It has a long history of adaptation into different languages, including into English. I was struck by the repeating identical refrain of the second line of each couplet, and I felt it demanded an adaptation to the “second-hand-orality” (my own term) that I’ve seen in a lot of translations of classical Haida and Tlingit literature here in Southeast Alaska. Aside from constraints on theme and voice, and of course the repeated rhyme and refrain, there seems to be some freedom with respect to meter – it only demands that it be in some kind of consistent meter – so I’ve chosen iambic pentameter as fairly appropriate for an English adaptation.
This tree is just getting started.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
I guess someone (2 someones) actually ordered my book.
That’s kinda cool. Thank you to whomever that was!
Joke seen on internet:
Q: What do you get if you cross a helicopter and rhinoceros?
A: Hell-if-I-know.
ㅁ The thing about these daily poems, you see, is sometimes they're alright, and sometimes not.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
This tree looks like other trees, but it’s not.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km; tromping, 500m]
And then there was an itty bitty lettuce leaf.
A joke seen on the internet:
“My snail was losing in races, so I tried taking his shell off. But it just made him more sluggish.”
ㅁ Again some snow has stippled frozen ground; again the sky broods gray and hides the sun.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
This tree lurks.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
I went out to my greenhouse this morning, just after dawn. It was snowing outside. But inside the greenhouse, I think I detected a radish rising.
ㅁ With paratactic words, I shall proceed: the rain returns; I sip some coffee now.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Any tree can be much improved by the addition of a squawking raven.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
ㅁ The light lingers late, but the cold remains. There is a kind of lag from sun to warmth.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
A tree can be photographed from below.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
The morning dawned with a bit of fresh snow having fallen, and cold and clear. Winter’s not done yet.
I used some rocks to build a “planter” outside the door of my greenhouse. My thinking is that I will grow only local things in this “planter” but in a controlled way. I’ll stick in an alder sapling or some moss on a piece of wood, or see what emerges. Not for food or anything like that, but just out of curiosity. A kind of mini zen garden.
ㅁ The winter had unfinished business here. It tossed out falling flakes of snow with wind.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
I was being impatient with my garden. Nothing has sprouted – but it’s been less than a week, so of course nothing has sprouted. But I wanted to see something growing in my greenhouse. So I uprooted two 3-inch tall saplings from outside and planted them in a corner of one of my planters. The tree on the left is a cedar, the one on the right is a western hemlock. These are extremely common trees around here, and grow like weeds in the gravel by the road. Now something green is growing in my greenhouse!
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
… Not what you think.
On my homegrown geofiction server, I have temporarily imported some of the southeast Alaskan islands, because I want to test some functionality and sometimes using real-world data is easier. But I only brought in the coastlines for this island, and some nearby islands, but skipped the continent. I decided to make my own towns, somewhat tongue-in cheek. You can see them on this screenshot, below.
ㅁ The trees put up resistance, fighting time with outspread branches. Still, old time will win.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
These trees (which one do you like?) are just outside the southwest entrance to the Jeongbalsan subway station in Ilsan (Goyang), South Korea. That was my “home” subway station for the majority of the time I lived in Korea, few blocks from the Urimbobo apartment building where both my first and last apartment in Korea was located (there were other apartments in between, however). I took this picture in November, 2007.
The banner on the footbridge, interestingly, is advertising a local performance of the Nutcracker Suite (호두까기 인형) at the Ilsan Cultural Center which is on the right behind the bridge.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Yesterday, I decided to solve something that had been bothering me.
The new well, drilled last year, seems to have developed an artesian character. It’s not clear whether this is a new permanent feature or just a temporary or seasonal development. It is constantly pushing out water, overflowing its sleeve, at about a gallon a minute. That’s substantial flow. It’s not necessarily undesirable – if it’s a permanent feature, it’s another “backup” aspect of having a well, in that we will not run out of water even in the event of long dry season combined with a lack of electricity to pump water.
But it does create a problem: the overflowing water flows down the outside of the well-sleeve, and was actually creating some erosion in the gravel of the driveway pad where the well was placed. So I wanted to get the overflow routed to the hillside, away from the top of the driveway pad. My idea was to tap the side of the well-head and attach a simple hose faucet, to which a hose could be attached to re-route the overflowing water.
This is what I did, with Arthur’s “technical assistance” – he actually does know more about which drill bits were appropriate, and such. So we got it done.
Earlier today, we drove into town for our Thursday shopping. I saw this house on a tracked vehicle. I thought to myself, “that looks like something my brother Andrew would drive.” I don’t know if that’s an accurate thought, but it was amusing.
ㅁ The ideologies began a feud, and stalked each other through the icy wood. They leapt small streams and danced from stone to stone, but failed to solve the wheel of human pain.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
This tree is down behind my storage tent.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
The book is now “live”. Link to Amazon.
This is the first volume, subtitled “Mostly in Korea.” The poems included are through July 21st, 2018, when I left Korea – it seemed a good breaking place. I’ll put together another volume, subtitled “Mostly in Alaska” for poems written subsequently.
I would like to be clear – I would be very pleased if people bought my book. But owning a book is a kind of fetish object, and if you’re simply interested in reading the poems, please don’t feel obligated to give me (and Amazon Corporation!) money. The poems are all freely available online. You’ll have to go back in time to the first page (highest numbered) to see them in chronological order, since the blog format provides them in most-recent-first order.
I made very few changes to them in making the book (mostly in the area of formatting), and that was intentional – I want the “free versions” to still be “canon.”
ㅁ Is Linux really weird as people think? I guess it is. My weirdness makes me glad.
– a couplet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
