ㅁ There's a certain type of dream I have: it visits me regularly. I call it "Mexican Bus." When I was young, I'd take the bus all over through Mexico. Now I dream bus trips, dazed.
– a nonnet.
Month: May 2024
Caveat: Poem #2857 “Jagged”
ㅁ Sleep. Jet-lagged, overwhelmed by work's routine, I've been sleeping lots: twilight through dawn's efforts. Normally I'm up at 5, but lately I sleep much later. I wake up already exhausted.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2856 “Without resolution”
ㅁ In the end, my travels depressed me. Revisiting things left behind, I had to confront losses. Decisions were taken that ended old ways. In this new life, set apart, the past rots.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2855 “Planning ahead”
ㅁ with enthusiastic diagrams I'm planning out my senescence targeted losses of things a whole, long catalog abstract memories fine procedures old journeys new thoughts plans
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2854 “The tasks”
ㅁ I had a lucid dream this morning all composed of raw emotion. I knew that I was dreaming so I set myself some tasks: experience fear; cry in despair; fall in love; know joy; die.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2853 “Inspection tour
ㅁ Back at home: I went off to inspect trees, the various ones I've planted in the ground at spots around my domain: the oak, three maples, cherry, fir these are alive. Others, not so much.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: just one more airplane
arrived Klawock (home airport). Sat behind the pilot on the small plane
Caveat: farewell to the redwoods of Ilsan
Bidding farewell to Ilsan, walking to catch the airport bus. I love to visit the very tame but quite abundant redwoods of Ilsan. These dawn redwoods (metasequoia) are planted everywhere and grow well here.
Caveat: Poem #2852 “Crossing the Pacific”
ㅁ Bands of purple line the sky up here beside our flight; below, Japan. We'll leave the sun behind us, and now insert ourselves, stealthy, like angels, into the east and darkness and then dawn. Well, somewhere just south of Kamchatka, I opted to boldly declare a new, liminal approach: an opposition to exaggerations of sentience, and instead, exist. So. Later, over the Aleutian chain, there arose feelings of regret. Baroque significations unfurled their abstractions. Inaccessible, meanings were lost; nothing left, I sought sleep.
– a poem made of 3 nonnets enchained.
Caveat: reunion with old colleagues
My former boss Curt and I had lunch with another friend of ours, Helen. She used to work for Curt as his vice principal at English Karma . She has her own hagwon now. Anyway we had lunch and reminisced.
Caveat: Poem #2851 “Return”
ㅁ I actually feel less tired - I mean... compared to my expectations. Visiting my friends, perhaps - these friends I'd abandoned - recharged me a bit, left me engaged with living... and with dreams.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Incheon landing
Landing at Incheon (Seoul). Very hazy but in the distance, beyond the first row/cluster of urbanization, is my Korean “hometown” of Ilsan.
Caveat: Poem #2850 “Awake with a start”
ㅁ Then I was so tired on the airplane. I'd doze, immediately dream, enchain strange mental symbols, overdetermined signs, archeologies of lost cities, but not real... just dust, light
– a nonnet.
Caveat: wallabye
Wallabies waving g’bye at the top of mom’s driveway as I depart back down to Cairns, to reverse my journey back to an island in Southeast Alaska, via Seoul, Seattle, Ketchikan.
Caveat: Poem #2849 “The drive down from Atherton to Cairns”
ㅁ the tropic rain made downward gestures reaching wildly from bold gray clouds to caress my car's windshield and dodge the slow wipers while the strong trees leaned and cows waited patiently in green fields
– a nonnet.
Caveat: the highest town
We were in the nearest town, stopped at library and to handle some in-home healthcare bureaucracy. This is the town visitor center, allegedly Ravenshoe is the highest elevation town in all Queensland. The library a more modern building is behind.
Caveat: Poem #2848 “Arboreal visitations”
ㅁ A flash of green, high up in the tree. Lorikeets sometimes visit, here. It seems an exotic thing, now that I live up north, up in Alaska. Eucalyptus leaves wave; a bird flies.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: a sunny afternoon
My mom’s driveway on a sunny afternoon. We went to doctor and shopping today with her excellent assistant (home helper / friend), Tasha. Driving to Atherton (main town) and back takes about an hour each way.
Caveat: Poem #2847 “Down in Atherton”
ㅁ "You're just wanting to lock me away," my mother said to me, leaving. At the home for the aged, we'd discussed with the staff various aspects of living there. I told mom, "it's your choice."
– a nonnet.
Caveat: mom’s house
My mom’s house, as seen from uphill, looking southeast from the northwest corner. About 3 hour drive, west of Cairns in the high-elevation tablelands.
Caveat: Poem #2846 “Night sky”
ㅁ Guilt lingers, manifests, and taking form, breeds defensiveness, and thus leads to anger. You can't really solve this thing. Instead, just try to ignore it. Let it fade away like dusk's edges.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: wrong side of the road
85 F in tropical Cairns, Queensland. Picking up a rental car and preparing to drive on the wrong side. Off to Mom’s house.
Caveat: Poem #2845 “As skeletons will do”
ㅁ while entire surging seas are crossed over, something's left behind; the affective anchor lies abandoned alongside so many aimless skeletons trudging around and murmuring dreams
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2844 “Geologic time”
ㅁ looking down from the zooming airplane we note each cloud casts its shadow perfectly against landscapes rumpled by the passage of a time so slow whole continents have drifted like swans past
– a nonnet.
Caveat: back at Gobong Hill
I hiked up the small Gobong Hill to visit the little temple I used to visit when I lived here: 영천사. A monk there remembered me, that American who had cancer.
Caveat: Poem #2843 “Unmooring”
ㅁ there's a detachment that arises when traveling to old places - once willfully forgotten - they're now resurrected like shadow kingdoms and there's nothing different... faded... lost...
– a nonnet.
Caveat: tacos in east Seoul
Mexican food with good friends in east Seoul. Mexican food is easier to find in Korea than in rural Alaska.
Caveat: Poem #2842 “Amistad”
ㅁ I have this one friend in Korea who often speaks Spanish with me - that's how we met long ago. That language is rare here. We met in Suwon, one cold winter, and we talked... became friends.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: 3967 days cancer free
I decided to visit my favorite place in Korea. You might think I mean this ironically, but the 국립암센터 (National Cancer Center) saved my life 11 years ago. So I feel gratitude and amazement that it is here. Yes, it is possible to feel nostalgic for a hospital.
Caveat: Poem #2841 “Solvitur ambulando”
ㅁ I'm walking, trying to do magic. If I follow these well-known paths, that I walked in times before... somehow I'll reconnect my current being with some past self who knew things: what to do.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: reindeergator redux
Stopping by the school (hagwon) where I used to teach, 카르마어학원, with my friend and former boss, 금문찬, I find that after 6 years, a piece of my whiteboard artwork has been preserved on a corner in the computer lab. This is a weirdly deeply moving tribute.
Caveat: Poem #2840 “Following lay lines”
ㅁ I crossed the geomantic ocean to visit an old, green country inhabited by those ghosts that no one remembers; but they have projects, undertakings: they make us feed them dreams
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2839 “Ode to Gyeongui-ro”
ㅁ The old highway's path once crossed rice fields and green hills; these days... all buildings.
– a pseudo-haiku. A tribute to the old highway running northwest of Seoul, the “capital road.”