This tree swung beneath a glowering sky.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
Month: December 2022
Caveat: Poem #2342 “An agenda for the day”
ㅁ The day was like the rest: began with rain. I set aside my outdoor tasks for now, preferring labor making use of brain. But all the things to do: I don't know how.
– a rhymed quatrain in iambic pentameter.
Caveat: Tree #1434 “The dog’s nose and the trouble it can bring”
This tree is growing out of a stump that has a hole in it where a dog stuck her nose.
Later, this dog found a dead animal carcass lying by the road at the pond (the spot I call “Rockpit City Park”). Of course she tried to eat the carcass. Subsequently, almost instantaneously, she vomited and had diarrhea, but soon she was feeling fine again.
It really makes me angry how people leave carcasses by the road. It’s irresponsible and disrespects neighbors.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3.5km]
Caveat: Still my proudest geofiction
[This is cross-posted from my other blog.]
For this week’s low-effort post reviewing my geofiction work on opengeofiction, I’ll present what I still consider my “masterpiece” – it’s the best bit of geofiction I’ve created for any OSM-style platform (i.e. opengeofiction.net or arhet). I did this work mostly in 2015-2016.
That’s my island city-state called Tárrases. It includes a well-wrought contour layer.
Here’s the link: https://opengeofiction.net/#map=12/-58.3003/83.9568&layers=B
Caveat: Poem #2341 “The view from the second floor window”
ㅁ The rails bestrode the busy street; the trolley made its way. The lake beyond was torn by wind: a sketch drawn green and gray.
– a quatrain in ballad meter. The setting here is the imaginary city of Ohunkagan, in the Ragged Point neighborhood south of downtown.
Caveat: Tree #1433 “The lift bridge”
This tree is a guest tree from my past. It’s on a hillside above downtown Duluth, Minnesota. I took this picture in early October, 2009.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Poem #2340 “As ghosts will do”
ㅁ The ghost visited. She never said anything. Mostly she just watched.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1432 “Take me to the river”
This tree got taken to the river near dusk.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Poem #2339 “The unknowable cartographer”
ㅁ The map revealed the new road (or made it), a bold transit, so it showed the movement from node to node.
– an englyn penfyr.
Caveat: Tree #1431 “The road home”
This tree stood aside as I commuted home as the sun set at 3:30.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Poem #2338 “The loyal opposition”
ㅁ The clouds remained: they'd things to do. The sea had sent them here. The trees composed a welcome song, opposing all that's clear.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Tree #1430 “The subsequent unsnowing”
This tree stood in the ongoing rain, which had mostly unsnowed the area, but still sheets of ice coat parts of the road.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: 게으른 놈 짐 많이 진다
I found this aphorism in my book of Korean aphorisms.
#한국어 #한국어공부 #Aphorisms #Korean
게으른 놈 짐 많이 진다
ge.eu.reun nom jim manh.i jin.da
be-lazy-PART guy burden a-lot carry-PRES
The lazy guy carries a greater burden.
This refers to the fact that someone who is lazy will try to carry everything at once, in one load, rather than make multiple trips. I suppose it could also be indicative of the outcome of procrastination – the giant burden at the end is a consequence of laziness in doing a task systematically. I’m not sure what the precise English equivalent would be for this aphorism, but it’s certainly a relatable principle.
Caveat: Poem #2337 “Onomastics”
ㅁ Names are impossible spells in the world, quickly consumed by the wind where they're hurled, labels for things that we can't understand, fastened to randomly picked bits of land.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Tree #1429 “The little house by the sea”
This tree is down at the neighbors’ house. I took it a few days ago, when things were snowier.
Today, it rained a lot. The snow has washed into a kind of slush underlain with ice.
We went to the neighbors and had a Christmas dinner. Other neighbors came from farther down the road, too. It was a very low-key Christmas.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: Poem #2336 “Fruitless words”
ㅁ The haikus were thrown across the landscape like seeds but few set down roots
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Tree #1428 “Snow then rain”
This tree is along the snowy road. But it started to rain and later that day the snow was turning to slush.
This is not necessarily good for the road’s iciness: we live in the shade (no direct sunlight because of the mountain), so the rain falls on the sheets of ice on stretches of road and instead of melting the ice, it just adds to it.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: frame.work
A few months back (in September), I finally received a new laptop computer, that I’d ordered last year. I’d ordered it so far in advance because the laptop is made by a new company that is making an effort to sell open source laptops that come “bare” (without operating systems installed). That company is called framework (link). I thought it was such a cool idea that, given that I was hoping to buy a new laptop anyway, I went to the effort to pre-order.
My last two laptops have both been lemons. There was the “XNote” – a South Korean domestic brand, which was just a piece of garbage running windows 7. And there was the rather pricey HP laptop I got right upon returning to the US in 2018, that had several disappointing issues (including a useless battery and having Windows 10 installed on it, which is a tautologically defective operating system). HP specifically managed to make the warranty service so arduous as to effectively prevent me from availing myself of it, so I was stuck with it. I’ve been using it, these past years, as a desktop (hence always plugged in, and therefore without any need for its broken battery). I reformatted the harddrive and put Ubuntu linux on it, and it runs fine, such as it is. But for what I paid, it remains an intense regret.
So I was in the market for a laptop, I guess. But it was in the back of my mind and a low priority. For financial reasons, too.
But this framework idea appealed to me. I have strong feelings about “open source” and “right to repair”, and this new company seemed committed to these principles.
I received the laptop with some internals uninstalled – so it was up to me to put it together: a kind of faux-“kit” computer. Here are some pictures. I installed the “hard drive” (actually solid state), the memory. The CPU and wifi were already in. I added some little plug-in doo-dads that make up the external plugs for it.
Once it was all together, I stuck in a USB stick with a Linux install ISO on it, and installed Ubuntu and got it working the way I like.
I held off reviewing it because once it was all set up, I didn’t use it very intensively for the following few months. But during my travels down south, last month, I got to use it quite intensively, and it proved 100% reliable and without disappointment. That’s the first computer in a decade and a half that I can say that about (“knock on wood”).
Here it is yesterday running some updates (at command prompt screen, of course). I like linux because I get to completely control that.
Caveat: Poem #2335 “A fragment of Mahhalian cosmology”
ㅁ wingsnake came dark, lighting and clouds and rain monkey and raven grinned and danced benevolent orca sailed the surrounding sea when monkey killed the wingsnake at deity encompassing darkness's garden tree the wingsnake was not dead but burrowed down the monkey was hunted, deity darkness was deceived by wingsnake monkey fled to the mountain raven made a plan with monkey but first needed orca's help trick orca into bringing the sun and they make humans from moss and discarded bones deity darkness is defeated but each year returns in the beginning the sea serpents had wings
– a free-form poem. I wrote this sometime around 2016 – it is an outline of some cosmological material for my imaginary world called Mahhal. I recently found it in some old notes (having forgotten about it).
Caveat: Tree #1427 “The snow came and covered everything”
This tree is a cedar visited by fresh snow.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km; snowshoveling, 1.5hr]
Caveat: Provincia de Amor
As I said last week – I’m going to try to do a low-effort post of past or current geofiction work once a week. [This is cross-posted from my other blog]
For this week, I’ve been feeling nostalgic for my years living in South Korea. So I decided to post a geofiction I did while living there, in 2015 or so. It’s not the greatest – there are aspects I can even say I feel a bit embarrassed by, but at the time it was the best I’d done so far, and I was quite happy with it.
Here’s the link to the map: https://opengeofiction.net/#map=15/-20.7997/124.2137&layers=B
It’s a little bit tongue-in-cheek, linguistically. My Korean language skill isn’t that good, so the naming is probably amusing or cringey for those who are better with Korean. The whole idea is that this is a quite small, touristically-oriented, Korean-speaking exclave of my imaginary country called Ardesfera (Ardisphere). Bear, in mind, therefore, that anything outside of Sarang-do’s borders is not my work – and there’s been quite a bit of turnover by the neighbors, too, so I don’t actually know who’s currently mapping in the surroundings nor what their concept is – it’s clearly incomplete.
Caveat: Poem #2334 “Marching orders”
ㅁ After a few days of cold, the weather shifted, got bold, and a steady snow took hold.
– an englyn milwr.
Caveat: Tree: 1426 “Snowy day along Ilsan-ro”
This tree is a guest tree from my past. 10 years ago, next week, on December 28, 2012, I took this picture in my neighborhood in Goyang City, South Korea. It was snowing.
Art and I went to town today for our shopping day, and spent some time at the Veterans center, too – longer than usual. Art normally just drops in there if he chooses to go there at all (it’s open every Thursday), but today he seemed inclined to hang out for a while.
The road to town continues to be horrible. It’s like doing a bobsled course in the car, between about 6 mile and 8 mile – pure ice.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
Caveat: 쌀떡볶이
The gift store owner, Chad, is aware of my background as a former resident of Korea. He and his wife apparently have membership in some kind of international junk food subscription service. It’s kinda of eccentric and cool.
So they bring in to me, the other day, this box full of Korean junk food – the kind you’d see at any 7-11 in South Korea. There were these one snacks in that box that I remember buying quite regularly in the store in the first floor of my apartment building: 쌀떡볶이 [ssaltteokbokki]. It was quite amazing, to get a package of these in Craig, Alaska.
So I got them and ate them, and it made me nostalgic.
Chad and Kristin are very cool bosses.
Caveat: Poem #2333 “The horse already left the barn”
ㅁ dreams take shape coalesce but don't make sense devoid of edges skip across memories and replay anxieties until finally you wake up and wonder what that was all about
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Tree #1425 “Exhalations of frost”
This tree seems to have an exhalation of frost emerging from a hole at its base.
Looking around the forest, many such holes have frost exhalations. I’m not sure what causes this – I speculate that the holes lead down to the non-frozen moisture underneath, maybe, and with the air as cold as it has been (5ºF at night), these holes exhale their moist air into the the atmosphere and it freezes. Then I wonder, maybe a small animal is living in each of these holes?
[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Poem #2332 “The ghosts at the margins”
ㅁ The dead congregated here, among trees, and your unease, even fear... it fed them and kept them near.
– an englyn penfyr.
Caveat: Tree #1424 “Witness”
This tree was a passive witness to my slippery commute.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 6hr]
Caveat: Poem #2331 “A visitation”
ㅁ The ice along the seashore spoke out loud lamenting its abandonment, alone: the tide had left it broken on the rocks. A duck approached, and clambered on the ice, assessed the scene, and looked askance, dismayed: but in the end turned tail and swam away.
– six lines of blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Tree #1423 “The view at the beach”
This tree saw a beach coated with ice.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
Caveat: 네 병이야 낫든 안낫든 내 약값이나 내라
I found this aphorism in my book of Korean aphorisms. I’m trying to do one of these each week.
네 병이야 낫든 안낫든 내 약값이나 내라
ne byeong.i.ya nas.deun an.nas.deun nae yak.gaps.i.na nae.ra
your illness-OF-COURSE recover-EITHER not-recover-OR my medicine-price-WHATEVER contribute-COMMAND
[Regardless whether] your illness is cured or not, you pay my medicine’s price.
This is how the US healthcare system works. And most healthcare systems, for that matter, but the price in the US is exceptionally high, I guess, and the insurance system is unreliable.
Caveat: Poem #2330 “Just pause”
ㅁ Everything becomes quite slow, the world rests, the weather tests... tries to show how things go.
– an englyn cil-dwrn.
Caveat: Tree #1422 “The air was cold”
This tree was down at the ice-covered beach.
The air was so cold that the freshwater running down from the river was freezing on the surface of the salty sea. Then, as the tide withdraws, it leaves the sheets of ice lying on the beach.
I’ve been struggling lately, feeling discouraged by my various projects and obligations. Not just discouraged… bored, too, I guess.
I spent a few hours today trying to start our generator. I thought it would be easy. A brief power failure this morning reminded me that it was something I wanted to make sure worked. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. It’s brand-new – I’m not sure what’s wrong with it. And it’s too cold outside for me to want to spend more time troubleshooting it (I’d rather not start a gasoline engine indoors!).
There’s a quote attributed to Vincent Van Gogh: “I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away.”
This is relatable, today.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]