Month: December 2021

Caveat: Tree #1079 (cancelled for bizarre numerological reasons)

A Daily Tree / My Photos

I’m going to take a break from posting tree pictures. Gotta shake things up for the new year, right?

I’m not done posting tree pictures. But I think it’s very weird that the enumeration of my poems and tree pictures ended up “in sync” – which is to say, each day the last two digits of each posting are the same. This wasn’t planned, and in fact it causes me confusion, sometimes. So… if I stop posting tree pictures for a while, then that number alignment problem will go away.

Anyway, they were getting repetitive. Not that they won’t still be repetitive, when I return to posting tree pictures.

Meanwhile, I continue to neglect the neighbors’ dog. I have been feeling a bit “under the weather” as they say, and also perhaps a reaction to the weather, which is not conducive to dogwalking: road coated in layers of slippery ice…

picture[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: 김치볶음밥 알라스카 스타일

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

Normally, on Thursdays Art and I go to town and do our weekly shopping and library visit, but because of how icy the road was, I decided not to. We also normally order a pre-made pizza at the place called “Papa’s Pizza” and take it home and so Thursday is “pizza night.” Yesterday, we had no pizza night. I got a bit creative, and made kimchi bokkeumbap (Korean style fried rice) – something I’ve been craving.

I’d tried the dish once before, a few years ago, for Arthur, to rather mixed reviews. So I altered the recipe some to his benefit: I doubled the amount of ham I used, I halved the amount of kimchi I added (compensating with some red pepper powder to keep it spicy), and I was generous with salt. I left out the dried seaweed garnish that is integral to the Korean version.

Arthur declared this new version entirely acceptable. Which is high praise, coming from Arthur. And I put my seaweed on the side and added it separately to my own serving. To be honest, I found the result to be remarkably close to my memories of the street-vendor version available on every corner in South Korea. It was very good.
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Caveat: Tree #1078

A Daily Tree / My Photos

This tree witnessed a pinkish dawn.
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There was a lot of ice on the road. So I ended up not dogwalking, and cancelled our Thursday shopping trip. I suppose I could be be crazy and reckless, like those guys that zoom down our road as if their trucks were hovercraft, but I prefer not to.

picture[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: our mortal eyes

Not My Poetry 
Chartres

I do not wonder, stones,
You have withstood so long
The strong wind and the snows.

Were you not built to bear
The winter and the wind
That blows on the hill here?

But you have borne so long
Our eyes, our mortal eyes,
And are not worn -

– Archibald MacLeish (American poet, 1892-1982)
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Caveat: 2021

Year-In-Six-Sentences

I continued living in Rockpit, Alaska.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2021 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Tree #1076

A Daily Tree / My Photos

This tree (among the young alders in the foreground) saw the sun set behind San Juan Island.
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picture[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 6hr]

Caveat: Tree #1073

Uncategorized

This tree waited while the dog waited at the top of the ramp to the dock.
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We had a Christmas that was so low-key that it really wasn’t very christmassy at all. I made fish curry for dinner.
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picture[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3.5km]

Caveat: holding the carols / Consciously at bay

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Not My Poetry

December Blues

At the bad time, nothing betrays outwardly the harsh findings,
The studies and hospital records. Carols play.

Sitting upright in the transit system, the widowlike women
Wait, hands folded in their laps, as monumental as bread.

In the shopping center lots, lights mounted on cold standards
Tower and stir, condensing the blue vapor

Of the stars; between the rows of cars people in coats walk
Bundling packages in their arms or holding the hands of children.

Across the highway, where a town thickens by the tracks
With stores open late and crèches in front of the churches,

Even in the bars a businesslike set of the face keeps off
The nostalgic pitfall of the carols, tugging. In bed,

How low and still the people lie, some awake, holding the carols
Consciously at bay. Oh Little Town, enveloped in unease.

– Robert Pinsky (American poet, b 1940)
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Caveat: Dogwalking #12 and the collapse of civilization (again)

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Alaska / My Photos

I went out this morning to discover that my storage tent (sometimes called the “studio”) had collapsed under the load of ice and snow. I suspect it got bombed by chunks of ice or snow falling off nearby trees, which didn’t help.
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This is not the first time my storage tent has suffered the inclemencies of the weather. Last year it got blown down off its foundations and ended up caught up in a tree – which was impressive for a structure that is 20 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 8 feet tall.

Anyway, I am dismayed, but not overly so. It has provided approximately the value I paid for it, which wasn’t really that much – a couple hundred dollars. I think in the spring I will build some other type of structure, which might weather the weather better, so to speak.

Meanwhile, I went and took the neighbor dog for a walk.
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Caveat: Tree #1070

A Daily Tree / My Photos

This tree was near an eagle perched on a snowbank beside a road on the side of a mountain.
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picture[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 6hr]

Caveat: Tree #1066

A Daily Tree / My Photos

This tree was being rescued by an enthusiastic dog. “Rescued” in the sense that the dog, for some reason, decided to excavate the snow around the base of the tree, and then sit in the hole she’d made and admire the world passing by, while resting her chin on the embankment of snow. I suspect she smells mice or such in their little lairs, and digs for them.
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picture[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 4km; snowshoveling, 0.5hr]

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