05 Scenes From a Walk:
📷
04 Walking:
… Main Street walk… staying close to home in case H needs me…
… right now, sitting by the falls on Roundhouse property…
… when i arrived, a young, redheaded woman avoiding passing me in a narrow space… i don’t blame her…
… along the way, i photographed a statue of the goddess Kali in an antique store window… i also wrote a micro poem about it… it occurs to me that when i photograph religious statues i should look up their cultural significance and record it… this would be useful for possible photo assemblages in the future…
03 Photography:
… an article by Miss Rosen, one of the small number of women photography critics… in it, i learn about Prince Street Girls, an iconic documentary work by Susan Meiselas… the reference to Meiselas gives the article footing in photographic history, some gravity, but the Zine being reviewed is a fashion Zine… Miss Rosen presents, but doesn’t critique the effort… since all proceeds from sales of the zine are to benefit a charity serving the neighborhood of the creators, one could imagine Miss Rosen writing the piece to promote a good cause… the zine itself lacks the compelling depth of Meiselas’ work… young womanhood as imagined by the fashion industry…
02 Daily Read:
Haiku by Issa…
… one about a staring contest with a very large frog… this is a famous one i think… i look up the cultural significance of frogs and find an article on the usc.edu website that has this to say about frogs in Japanese culture…
In Japan, the frog is usually seen as a symbol of good fortune associated with magical powers. Because the Japanese word for frog is “kaeru”, which is pronounced in the same way as “return”, travelers carry a small frog amulet with the intent of returning safely home.1
… another article on frog symbolism confirms the above and adds the moon as an association with frogs, the three legged frog and the moon, the three phases of the moon…
… the frog is associated with rainfall and good harvests, and is a symbol of spring, the seasonal reference in the poem… that the artist has a staring contest with the frog presents a kind of stand off moment… is it reluctance to pursue a spiritual journey?… is it a latter stage in life confronting youth?…
… another poem about being a devout Buddhist while killing mosquitos… Buddhism argues respect to all creatures, even the annoying ones… some sects can barely walk through the landscape for fear of killing something unwittingly… yet, there are annoying creatures that can actually make us sick… we kill them regardless of our devotions… mosquitos are a spring-summer reference… the poem perhaps about spiritual journeys having difficulties…
… here is an article about insects and Japanese culture that is more general in nature…
01 First Thoughts:
… late last night, a call from L to let H know their mother had been in a car accident along with P who was driving… injuries did not seem to be life threatening, but the plan was to get them off island to a hospital… this was proving difficult because of fog… h came to bed without news of their actual arrival at a hospital… the accident was caused, apparently, by P stepping on the gas instead of the brakes… there will be discussions in the family about whether P should be driving anymore… also whether M should be living on the island at all…
… we have been watching Outlander for weeks now, about half way through the third season which is starting to seem a little campy at times… in last night’s episode, Claire returns to Jaimie, Jaimie faints dead away… cut to credits…
11 Micro Poems:
…several in one post…
_ Returning to normal– one eye on the variants._
_ Squashing ants in the kitchen– doesn’t bode well for my karma._
_ Restless dog– is it really only 3 AM?_
_ To escape the rain– I buy coffee I don’t want._
… i think that’s it for today…
10 My Photography:
📷
… rather than use pano mode, i take multiple photos and stitch them together in Lightroom… i feel the results are better?… nothing to base that on… i will have to do a side by side comparison…
08 Ulysses Discovery, Obsidian
… a Micro.blog member makes me aware of Obsidian app, it’s got a free version so i download it to see what it is about…
… my immediate reaction is that it may be too complex for me… a steep learning curve and i am not sure i need the complexity…
… i decided to see if Ulysses has some of the functionality that was attracting me and discover a functionality that i didn’t know was there, creating custom search folders which means it is easy to gather together stuff on the same subject material…
… super excited about that…
07 Walking:
… feeling rather uninspired, tired, a little depressed… lack of sleep…
… i had ambitious plans for my walk, but i can’t, not today…
… we need to solve the problem with the dogs waking me up early… messes up my whole day…
… i give up on the walk, make my way to Kitchen & Coffee… J is in the house, a cheery round-faced redhead greets me at the counter and takes my order… a woman i recognize is sitting across from me, Liz is her name i think… a waitress somewhere in my past…
… i buy coffee beans, there are none in the house, H will be unhappy about that…
… J has filled out a bit, i might have noted that before, can’t remember…
… as i was walking and thinking, i decided i would like the night off from Salon… just sent K an email informing him of that fact…
… suddenly L is J… hmmm…
06 La Veneno, Spain’s Badass Trans Superstar:
… an article about La Veneno in Hyperallergic…
… trans women interest me… it’s the one form of alternative sexuality i could fancy myself being, except i think i would make an unattractive woman and i do enjoy heterosexual life… there is a biographical miniseries on HBO about La Veneno…
05 Art Installation by Sarah Sze:
Image of Fallen Sky installation by Nick Knight
… this article in Colossal catches my attention because Storm King, the installation site, is 15 minutes from where i live… we are fortunate to live near two major art installation sites, Storm King and Dia Beacon…
04 Creation Story by Aaron Canipe
Aaron Canipe from Creation Story
… an all black and white project…
Seen through the lens of the South, this edit of work takes the viewer through a cosmological and primordial journey of a world created by a divinity disrupted…1
… it’s an interesting set of images with an interesting concept for their organization… the creator suggests that it is a selection from a broader body of work, pulled together to tell a story the photographer may not have specifically intended in the beginning, but there are themes and you pursue them…
03 The Daily Read, Part II:
The Haiku of Issa…
… today’s haikus are a little enigmatic…
… one about a moth finding brightness in the chamber of a woman, and being burnt to a crisp… the woman’s chamber is significant and brings the poet directly into the action… there is no need to describe the setting as a woman’s chamber unless there is an intended double meaning, that the poet is drawn to the flame of the woman and metaphorically burnt to a crisp for his labors… it does not sound as though his visit was entirely satisfactory… i look up moths as cultural symbols and find nothing substantial…
… another about scarecrows all being crooked… i look up the cultural significance of scarecrows in Japan and there is some… it is a folk deity, known as Kuebiko, representing folk wisdom, knowledge and agriculture1… Issa notes that he doesn’t know about the people in the town but the scarecrows are crooked… is this meant in a corruption kind of way?… or just a state of general disorderliness represented by lack of attention to their scarecrows, which are deities after all… or that one can expect problems with wisdom, knowledge and agriculture from the town he is entering… he identifies the town as his home town, so maybe it is about memories and formative experience… is he talking about himself more than the town?…
… another about plum trees blooming in January in other provinces… this is odd, plum trees do bloom from January into February and are considered harbingers of spring… so Issa is saying they bloom in other provinces but not where he is… since he does not identify the province he is in, i assume it is metaphorical, something about old age perhaps?… reaching the place of having little life left to offer?… an article in Wikipedia2 confirms the plum blossom as a symbol of spring and is believed to be a protective charm against evil… so the lack of blossoms is likely about old age and or lack of protection against evil… both?…
02 The Daily Read:
… yesterday i found and downloaded a book on animals in Issa’s poetry… i was expecting a book about animals as symbols of the culture… it turned out to be a book about animal ethics and what Issa has to teach us about treatment of animals… i believe that animals feel and think more than commonly given credit for, that one should always handle them with respect… i regret killing ants on the kitchen counter… i cause to be killed, or in some cases, kill animals to eat… so i am not that interested in the idea that we should never kill animals, that it is unethical to do so…
… Issa was a Buddhist1, and worried about the karma of killing insects, yet he did kill insects… my perception is that Buddhism respects all life…
… nature is constructed such that one animal is food for another… it’s a cycle of life… humans perhaps have reached the place where they think about the consequences of their actions and are capable of offering respect to animals, even as they kill them… Native Americans are thought by many to have had this down… one takes only what one needs to survive… one takes with honor and respect… one gives thanks for what one is able to take… this is an ethics of resource treatment i can get behind… i am mindful of the book Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer in which the Native American attitude towards natural resources is laid out in full…
06 Micro Poem
… another one, i am having a rich day…
My mind a bone dry creek bed– my heart a gathering storm.
05 Micro Poem:
_ Folding toilet paper– the way my father taught me._
… this one came as a bit of a surprise to me… it’s about my father who has recently been accepted into hospice care which generally means he is believed to have six months or less to live…
… to say that my father and i have a difficult relationship is an understatement, so it comes as a surprise to me that i would write a poem centered on this small thing that is a little over the border to positive nostalgia…
… as for folding toilet paper, my father is a West Point graduate, neatness, precision, discipline and economy are important to him… yeah, i resemble that in perhaps a less obsessive way…
04 Getting back to routine Dr. visits:
… yay! i made an appointment to see my skin doctor for a routine exam… big step forward!…
… the pandemic knocked me out of my routine Dr. visits… i now have a whole slew of them to schedule…
… i don’t know about you, but i have a hard time making appointments when it’s been too long and i can start to convince myself that such a visit will uncover a serious problem…
… i try to tell myself that is what routine exams are about, finding problems while they are most treatable…
… alas, it becomes an enormous struggle with fear in my mind…
… i have set myself the goal of knocking them off one at a time…
… one down, a bunch to go…
05 From our front garden:
📷
… experimenting with the iPhone 12 Pro Max… the really close ins are 12x zoom… not bad at all…
03 On Photography, Max Sher:
Max Sher, from Palimpsests, published by Ad Marginem
… i love photography books… i have a small collection and love looking through them… i have long wanted to center my own photography practice around the making of books by hand, the artist object… this seems to make the most sense as a way to deal with the thousands of images i collect each year…
… because i love photography books there are a number of reviewers that i follow religiously… Brad Feuerhelm is one of them…
… this morning he reviews Palimpsests, a book by Max Sher, an emergent Russian photographic artist…
… the images are de-populated urban scapes in the tradition of Stephen Shore and New Topographics… they focus on places where the new is overlaying the old… it is highly recommended by BF… i wish i had an endless pot of money for photo book purchase and to build a library to house my thus ever growing collection…
02 The Daily Read:
The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass, translations by Hass and others…
… Issa…
… todays set of poems are not as remarkable to me as yesterday’s, or are they?… they seem more pedestrian, telling flies to relax and make love (the idea is kind of gross), since the poet is going out (and therefor does not have to be annoyed by the flies, their soul (i reread and think to correct the spelling and then decide the current spelling has more poetic depth) purpose as far as most humans are concerned)…
… another poem about a counting the flea bites on her baby as she nurses them…
… a poem about paying a dime to look through a telescope, were telescopes even around in Issa’s time?… yes, invented more than 150 years before his birth… and wouldn’t ten cents have been rather dear for a look through a telescope at the time?… i wonder if Hass has updated the pricing to make the poem more relatable?… or course today it would be a dollar…
… another poem about a snail being stripped to the waist in the moonlight… as with any animal in Haiku, one has to look up it’s possible cultural significance… snails are a symbol of fertility, tolerance and perseverance… also of duality because of their hermaphrodite nature1… would this have been known in Issa’s time?…
… after some searching, an article that may explain the stripped to the waist reference in the snail Haiku… possibly referring to Saze Oni, a mythical snail creature that could shape shift into a beautiful woman… they bedeviled sailors much like the Sirens of Greek mythology2… i don’t know if this has anything to do with the snail poem…
… it is interesting that the reading of a small number of Haiku can generate so much additional reading as i look to see if their are meanings and allusions hidden from me, a Japanese culture outsider… much of the time there is…
01 First Thoughts:
… feeling better this AM… yesterday, exhausted, headache, mostly napped and cooked with some intermittent grocery shopping thrown in…
… last night, no dog woke me up in the middle… got the full seven hours i seem to need…
… news about 45 at CPAC over the weekend worries me… he won’t really run again, will he?… i think it is mostly that he is clawing his way back into the news which can’t be a good thing…
… reading Heather Cox Richardson about Biden’s speech on Friday (making business more competative) made me feel better about things this AM… it’s a race to see if the Biden/Harris administration can do enough good for the people, and convince them that they have, that they don’t return Republicans to control congress and then the presidency… my overwhelming feeling about 45 being that he should suffer a stroke or heart attack and die… if there is a god, please make it so, there is already a hell for after we die, why have one on earth?… but i don’t believe in god, heaven or hell, just the will of good people…
… a cardinal has been hanging out around our house, we hear them morning and night, we don’t see them very much but their sound is easy to identify, loud, round, piercing…
… there is a shape shifting chicken in the group of chickens that i tend… two days now, this chicken has been on the outside of the coop fencing but has declined to have me let her in… then the next thing i know, she is nowhere on the outside, but back in the coup… i suppose she knows how she got out and gets herself back in the same way… either that or she has beam-me-aboard capabilities… that would be scary…
… today i must make a skin doctor appointment for a routine exam… i need to get back to seeing my doctors…
02 The Daily Read:
Issa haiku…
… a remarkable set of poems this morning, of the six i read, all six stand out for one reason or another…
… the first pictures a dry river bed seen by the light of a lightning strike… a river bed that is about to flow with water again… a creative mind about to be released into creating by a powerful experience… a poem about summer rains?… where i live, rivers are more likely to be dry in the summer… thunderstorms and heavy downpours are more likely then too… there is also the threat of flash flooding… to much water in too little time…
… the second begs a flea not to jump, as the river is where it will likely land… i suppose it is very Buddhist to wish continued health and well being on even a lowly “nuisance” creature… i would have flicked it to it’s drowning death… of course, the poem might also be about undertaking challenges that are too big, perhaps the flea is the novice, beginner mind, that wishes to forge ahead too quickly and will be drowned if it does?…
… the third talks about how being in this world is like walking on the roof of hell, distracted by the lovely yellow flowers… a poem about not being willing to do the hard work of facing all aspects of one’s reality?… of not admitting the horrors of life which abound… of only being able to acknowledge the pleasures of life, superficial as they may be…
… the fourth is about being naked on a naked horse riding through the rain… now there is a foundational nature image… i read that the Japanese worshipped the horse as a god and “believed that the “divine spirit” appeared in the human world on horseback”1… i also read that the horse is very important in Buddhism… Siddhartha2, the future Buddha, had a white horse that was his favorite and which transported him when he escaped from palace life and began the journey of becoming a spiritual leader… and so, the image of naked human on naked horse in the rain is a deeply spiritual image?…
… the fifth is about a fly wringing its front and hind legs, begging not to be killed… again, i would struggle to be a Buddhist in such a situation…
… and the sixth is about a cat frolicking on a scale and weighing itself… this catches my attention because i wonder what sort of scale would have been in use during Issa’s lifetime?…