This tree caught some morning sunlight stained yellow by smoke from Canadian wildfires.
These days I am quite exhausted at the end of the day. Too much going on, too much emotional energy getting used up. I’ve been in burnout mode.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km; retailing, 8hr;]
ㅁ some ravens at six-mile congregate and flap around discuss the weather
– a pseudo-haiku.
This tree was alarmed by an interloping excavator.
Richard, the excavatorer, seemed a bit on edge yesterday.
Richard does excellent work and is highly competent – he knows the “right way” to do things and works efficiently – but he is difficult to communicate with, because he has very strong opinions which he believes to be facts. Sometimes you just have to let him do it “his way” and adapt to what he’s done afterward, similar to dealing with natural disasters.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km; retailing, 8hr;]
ㅁ So Richard told me 'bout when Joe... he had a "riggin' fit": it happens when a thing don't work, so you get mad at it
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
This tree thought there might be a shift in the weather. The last few days the nights have been slightly cooler, and I noticed today that the fireweed was changing color.
[daily log: walking, 6km;]
ㅁ I trimmed some wildish plants to clear the spots where work is planned. A crawly worm got in my shirt "Get out, you bug, you're banned!"
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
This tree was unaware of the fish in the nearby sea.
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
You will have noticed the lack of Fishing Report features on this here blog, this summer. I have avoided going out fishing with Arthur through the last several months – though Arthur, too, has been avoiding, in his spectacularly non-communicative way. But now that Wayne is here visiting, you would think there would be fishing reports.
Actually, Wayne and Arthur have just now gone out fishing in the boat for the third day running. And I’ve avoided going with them. This has forced me to acknowledge a very difficult emotional truth about myself:
I hate fishing.
I didn’t used to hate fishing. I used to rather enjoy it, I think.
But nowadays, Arthur’s spectre hangs over my shoulder and whispers to me, inevitably, that I am doing it wrong. That was Arthur’s habit in the best of times – he’d tell me I was doing it wrong, or worse, just barge in and take over, because he wasn’t always great at explaining how to do it right. He was better at demonstrating. But at least in the past, his telling me that I was doing it wrong was accompanied by an effort to teach me how to do it right.
The last vestiges of that mentoring behavior evaporated last summer. It was in that moment when he announced to me, forlornly, that he’d forgotten how to deploy the downriggers on the boat. That left me doing everything, while he just watched sulkily.
And yet… he still found it in himself, later on that same trip, to tell me that I was doing it wrong. I think it broke something inside me.
So there is just no way I want to go out fishing with Arthur. Nevertheless I have neither the self-confidence in my own ability, nor the cruelty toward Arthur, to somehow go out fishing without him.
So I’ve been miserable. And I’m done fishing, I guess.
That’s too bad.
I’ll be glad when fishing season is over and the boat is back in the barn, and the people around me stop talking about fishing constantly.
ㅁ sleep slips in takes over just a moment and i can dream i'm shouting at the moon
– a tetractys.
This tree is a guest tree from my past. Farther in my past than other guest trees, this photo was taken, probably by my mother or father, in front of the house they bought in far northern California in the year I was born. That’s my dad’s Model A Ford parked in front, and the trailer it had towed out from Kentucky a few years before. He still has both the car (which still runs, sporadically) and the trailer. The cherry tree in the photo, in the house’s front yard, is long gone, replaced by quite different trees.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
ㅁ The dog had seen the baby bear, she wanted to give chase. The leash prevented fast pursuit: frustration on her face.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
This tree was on the shore while Arthur and Wayne went out in the boat to try to catch fish.
It was nice to have a break. As I’ve mentioned before, fishing with Arthur, for me, is not actually fun at all. Arthur has strong feelings about how fishing should happen, and he doesn’t have any confidence in my ability to navigate or assist. I’m still a 12-year-old kid in his eyes, often times. But with his cognitive and physical challenges, these days, he isn’t really equipped to actually be the captain of the boat. So going out in the boat with him is a huge emotional challenge. He gets mad and has tantrums, or he just gives up and sulks. Or he gets obsessed about one issue or another, like the time we spent 40 minutes circling a spot in the water because we’d dropped a bucket in the water and he insisted we try to get it back.
Anyway, I expect the dynamic with him in the boat with Wayne would go differently. Art and Wayne are peers, firstly, and secondly, Wayne is the person who actually taught Arthur much of his fishing skills and boat-craft, many years ago. So Arthur will not distrust Wayne’s suggestions or skills.
Regardless, I could tell Wayne was tired from their half day out on the water together. Simply communicating with Arthur is exhausting – the combination of incipient deafness and difficulty with language processing combine to make it a slog to interact with him.
I haven’t been avoiding going out in the boat with Arthur – if anything, he’s been avoiding going out in the boat at all. He seems vaguely aware of his issues and limitations, at some level, and so he spends a lot of time making up excuses for why we don’t need to go out fishing. And I’ve been happy to enable him. And I was happy, today, to let Wayne take it on. I feel guilty that I was happy about that. Living up here, it’s very hard to explain to the people around me that I have come to actually rather strongly dislike fishing. But that’s what’s happened. I’m sorry.
They caught a few salmon, and a ling-cod.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;]
ㅁ fish create obsessions and burning needs among visitors to this remote island in southeastern Alaska and it's all people talk about when socializing around the town
– a reverse nonnet.
This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture while walking to work in Goyang City, South Korea, in November, 2015. The route was frequent enough that I know exactly where this tree is, even 8 years later.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
ㅁ A nonnet starts from some position and unfolds itself with slow steps - a teleological, but not quite knowable - journey down a path to simple ends, with only lonely words.
– a nonnet.
This tree met a bear on the road.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;]
ㅁ Summer in rainforest: still quite a bit of rain, with a few dry days here and there; trees' smile.
– an cinquain.
This tree was beside a runway at an airport where a friend coming to visit landed earlier today. The plane that Wayne was in is the one on the far left of the photo – it had just touched down. It was raining. It’s been raining a lot. You can click the pic to see it bigger.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
The End
Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
– Mark Strand (Canadian-American poet, 1934-2014)
ㅁ The map demanded my work, took form out of my mind's murk... this mapping thing - that's my quirk.
– an englyn milwr.
This tree is about one inch tall. I think I germinated a cypress tree seed in my greenhouse. I’m not completely sure on the identity, but it’s the only thing I planted in that bucket. I will try to grow a cypress tree.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km;]
ㅁ so, eating oatmeal, sitting, looking out at clouds that turn pink and gold
– a pseudo-haiku.
This tree looked up.
I labored quite a bit today, moving a pile of stored stuff from one spot on my lot to another, in preparation for Richard coming out with his excavator to excavate trenches for plumbing stuff.
[daily log: walking, 4km;]
ㅁ our rough, gravel road hosts maybe nine or ten trucks going by each day
– a pseudo-haiku.
This tree paused under heavy clouds.
It rained a lot today. I stayed inside.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km;]
[This is a cross-post from my other blog.]
My low-effort brag-post for this week is the central part of a city called Midesapa, in the northern part of the state of Makaska. It’s a rust-belt city on a river that connects two large lakes, so in that sense it occupies an economic position similar to Detroit, but it’s a much smaller city, with maybe 200k in the metropolitan area. There is still much detailing to be added but the basics are there.
This neighborhood is found on the opengeofiction map here: https://opengeofiction.net/#map=15/-41.3257/147.3513&layers=B
ㅁ Arthur has trouble asking for help. Instead, he positions himself nearby, and cusses loudly. If I ask him not to, he'll apologize, but then forget. This routine is what works.
– a nonnet.
This tree is a guest tree from my past. I guess I mean one of those barely-visible, scraggly-lookin trees growing out of the sidewalk in front of that building. That building was my first apartment building when I moved to Goyang City, South Korea, in September, 2007. This is possibly the first photo I took there – I was still using a digital camera, then, no such thing as a smart phone. Although I lived in quite a few different buildings and locations in South Korea during my 11 years there, that building was also the last building I lived in before I moved away in July, 2018, and overall the one I occupied the longest, at around a total of 7 1/2 years occupancy. It’s the closest to a sense of “home” that I had there.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
ㅁ there's a little shift in the air, the look of trees, almost like autumn
– a pseudo-haiku.
This tree saw that I had repaired the boat-trolley.
This is the boat trolley that Arthur engineered and built some decades ago, that allows us to put the boat into the boathouse without having to use the boat trailer or a regular boat launch ramp.
I had to fix the bolt-axles for the wheels. They were badly corroded.
[daily log: walking, 5km]
ㅁ The bear walked along through flowing river water hoping for a fish.
– a pseudo-haiku.
This tree was amazed by a bear in the river.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr]
ㅁ I sat in silence. I wanted to find more words - better, stronger words.
– a pseudo-haiku.
