Caveat: Tree #1921 “The stoic”

This tree stood stoically under partly cloudy skies.

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“City Sanitation Dept Guarantee: Satisfaction guaranteed or double your garbage back.”

[daily log: walking, 4.5km; retailing, 9hr;]

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Caveat: Tree #1919 “The protector”

This tree is a douglas fir I planted two years ago. It’s not really doing that well, but it’s not dead. It’s being protected by a pink, plastic yard flamingo, which I’d placed last summer to protect it from Richard’s excavator.

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“If a child refuses to take a nap, are they resisting a rest? Or are they preventing a kid napping?” – the internet.

[daily log: walking, 2km;]

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Caveat: Tree #1918 “Moon meets lake”

This tree (perhaps the one in silhouetted foreground?) was beside a lake under a full moon in the part of northwest suburban Seoul known as Ilsan (Goyang), where I lived for many years. I took this picture in June, 2011.

a view of a small lake in a large park with a full moon in the sky, moon reflected in the lake, a skyline of many brightly lit buildings in the distance, some faintly visible tree silhouettes in the foreground

I’m not happy these days. I feel too overwhelmed: the store (work), complicated family issues (mother’s health), my uncle’s cantankerous Spring restlessness…

[daily log: walking, 1km;]

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Caveat: Poem #2824 “Another bus-riding poem”


On the bus, today, …

… I saw fields green with the young spring barley.

… I saw a man kneeling beside the tollway next to his SUV, which had a flat tire.

… I saw a banner with a Japanese flag and the words (in English): “Don’t give up, Japan.”

… I saw a motel designed to look like a Russian Orthodox Church.

… I saw a single broad patch of snow on a hillside of brown grass, near Gongju.

… I saw a shed on fire, in a field, with a great billowing cloud of white smoke.

… I heard “Aguas de março” sung by Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos Jobim, on my mp3 player.

… I saw a cow sleeping in some dirt.

… I saw a reproduction of a watercolor painting of Paris’ St.-Germain Square on the wall over a urinal at a tollway rest area.

… I heard grumpy old people with thick Jeolla accents pronouncing Yeonggwang as Yeom-gang.

… I saw a tall young man with tight jeans and shiny purple combat boots yelling into a cellphone and dropping his iced coffee onto the pavement.

… I heard Talking Heads’ “Found a Job” on my mp3 player.

… I saw brick farm houses with solar panels on their flat roofs.

… I read 50 pages of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.

… I saw many, many pine trees dancing under the sky, their roots sunk in the red-gold earth, looking like ink-drawings.

… I heard The Cure’s cover of David Bowie’s “Young Americans” on my mp3 player.

… I saw tiny villages packed up into narrow valleys, limned with leafless trees, where all the houses had blue tile roofs.

… I saw an angry-looking euro-dude with Miami Vice sunglasses, spitting onto the sidewalk like a Korean.

… I saw a giant statue of a squirrel.

… I ate something vaguely resembling tater-tots, with a spicy sauce.

… I saw a bridge over the tollway that had trees planted on it.

… I saw hundreds of plastic greenhouses, filled with hothouse vegetables growing, looking like large worms swimming in formation through the still wintery fields.

… I heard Juanes’ “Fijate bien” on my mp3 player.

… I saw families having picnics at the graves of their ancestors at random locations on hillsides alongside the tollway, and there were many children hopping happily, too.

… I saw a crow perched on the sign that indicated the Yeonggwang County line. I was almost home.

– a “prose poem” I wrote long ago, in March, 2011. It memorializes a bus trip from Seoul down to Yeonggwang, South Korea, where I was living at the time.

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Caveat: Tree #1912 “Best at looming”

This tree was really good at looming.

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“If you’ve been led to believe that you deserve free money for doing absolutely nothing… You may be entitled to compensation!” – the internet

[daily log: walking, 2km;]

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Caveat: Tree #1910 “전라남도”

This tree was on a mountain in South Korea. I took this picture while on a day-hike with a friend in southern Jeolla province, in August of 2010.

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“I am as unmotivated as someone who is so unmotivated they can’t even come up with a colorful simile to describe their lack of motivation.” – the internet

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 1km;]

Caveat: Tree #1907 “From the north side”

This tree (the one photobombing from the top) was on the north side of the bay.

A rocky beach in the foreground, and the waters of a southeast Alaska fiord, with a steep green shore opposite, in the distance, where some structures can be made out, including a house, a dock (with a boat)

I’ve never managed this view before. There’s a wide spot in the road, where you can stop, and a little trail down to the rocky beach, and you can look across the water at the City of Rockpit, which is my home. Currently the City hosts 4 residents – double its population only a few years ago (which is to say, our neighbors Brandt and Kim moved in next door, about a year ago).

Humorous quote found online:

To all the people that always said I’d never amount to anything because of my procrastination: / Just you wait.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 9hr]

Caveat: Tree #1906 “Tax Day”

This tree failed to pay any taxes whatsoever.

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Taxes stress me out so much. And I have to deal with taxes not just for myself, and the excitement of now being “self employed” and all the bonus paperwork that comes with that, but also, I have to make sure Arthur’s taxes are filed and in order. I’m quite annoyed with a thing called “DocuSign” – it’s a service used by accountants, financial institutions, etc, to do “online signing” of documents (e.g. tax returns). DocuSign asks verification questions to verify your identity. These are based on things like previously lived-at addresses, previously owned cars, etc. Well think about how this works for someone with memory issues (e.g. Arthur). It’s an accessibility nightmare! So for DocuSign, identity resides with memory, and loss of memory is a loss of identity. I’m not sure this is how it works from a legal standpoint, and it’s certainly not how we want things to work from an ethical standpoint, I don’t think.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 9hr]

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