Asakiyume mita

a pantoum by Willard Espy

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:09:24 GMT

Once upon a time I had to retool a rhyming dictionary for publication in a smaller format. I thought, instead of its current boring introduction, how about an introduction that covers different styles of rhymed poetry? Well, in the end, they didn't use my introduction, but in the course of my research, I found some truly wonderful poems, including this pantoum by Willard Espy:

Consider Now The Quark
by Willard Espy

Consider now the Quark, which is
A Concept sub-atomical
No man alive has seen its phiz;
Perhaps it isn’t Is at all.

A Concept sub-atomical
Too tenuous I find to prove.
Perhaps it isn’t Is at all.
This goes for Hate, and also Love.

Too tenuous I find to prove
The Sun, the Shadow, and the Wind.
This goes for Hate, and also Love,
And other matters of the kind.

The Sun, the Shadow, and the Wind—
The Dream, the Doing, the Despair,
And other matters of the kind
I find are proven best in prayer.

The Dream, the Doing, the Despair,
And other matters, being His,
I find are proven best in prayer,
Consider now the Quark, which Is.

antibiotics: sorted

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:24:05 GMT

Now I have prescriptions for prophylactic antibiotics for all of the rest of us. Soon none of the residents of the wanderer's hut will be responsible for any more whooping cough transmissions.

Still not feeling chatty. Maybe later.

more pertussis

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:53:17 GMT

Of course the doctors didn't think the tall one had whooping cough; they did what they did to my sister and said, oh, asthma or bronchitis or... but fortunately they gave him the exact same make-you-non-contagious antibiotic as they gave the ninja girl (for the bronchitis, so called).

Well, so, three days into his treatment, this morning, for the first time, he has paroxysmal coughing, whoops, chokes, and retches.

I'd say, in fact, it's whooping cough. At least he's ~~non-contagious now!~~ whoops, wrong again. You're not non-contagious until you complete the course of antibiotics. Two more days, after today. But a_soft_world, you should seriously, seriously talk to a doctor. Don't say "I THINK I've been exposed to whooping cough"--because they won't believe you--say, "I've been exposed to whooping cough." Invent a little kid who coughed and whooped all over you at McDonalds if you need to. But get either the vaccine or the antibiotic, whichever the doctor thinks is better. Seriously.

Now I just wonder if they will please let the rest of us take prophylactic antibiotics yet, please. From a public health perspective, that seems like the best bet, right?

Bleah. I guess maybe we won't call on my parents on our trip, after all--unless I can get my hands on some antibiotics. People I talked to at Readercon should be fine, as I wasn't really breathing all over you (and I'm not sure how it works, but it may be that if I'm not symptomatic, I'm not contagious). Nevertheless, anyone who feels inclined can get the booster vaccine. I'm enough of a hypochondriac that I probably would, in your position.

Oh, I'm disabling comments because I know I people wish us well, and I mainly just wanted to put the information out there, and I'm demoralized and don't feel much like chatting. Will be online later, no doubt, with more cheerful entries.

Two Sunday panels of Readercon

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:46:39 GMT

May I just preface this entry by saying that it was a true delight to at last meet not only nineweaving and sovay, but also time_shark and his wife, as well as my new lj friend skogkatt and an LJ-er I run into on other people's pages, stillnotbored. What a pleasure!

And, I got to sit in on panels with watermelontail. Bliss! And so, without further ado, the panels.

First,

The question that started this off was, Why do small children like to hear the same story over and over again, and how does this relate to having old favorite stories (at any age) that we reread for comfort? Louise Marley (I hope I get people's names right...) started off by comparing children's reception of stories to listening to music: there is anticipation that we will hear a certain type of thing. She contrasted anticipation with expectation. In her framework, expectation meant verbatim repetition (as when you listen to a CD recording of a song), whereas anticipation was just for a general similarity or pattern.

I was thinking of how, after hearing a number of ballad tunes or shape-note hymns, I can anticipate both what sorts of melodies I might hear and what sorts of words I might hear.

Then Anne Tonsor Zeddies remarked that as writers, we want to satisfy the anticipation, yet also change things. Some parts should be recognizable, other parts should change. Sarah Beth Durst said it's fun to play with expectations--to meet them or turn them upside down.

Regarding turning stuff upside down, watermelontail said that he liked to be surprised but not fooled--no one likes to be deceived. So that got me pondering good surprise versus bad surprise. What's below the belt?

Someone, I think Shira Daemon, but I could be totally wrong; I couldn't really see the name placards, said that when you're writing a series, it's not Campbells soup (which must be identical each time you open a can): you have, maybe, a certain set of characters and a landscape, but what happens can differ. Someone mentioned Tamora Pierce as an author who will take a minor character from one story and build a whole new series around them.

Scott Edelman linked the sort of expectations kids have of a story to expectations readers have of genres.

sovay remarked after the panel that if you have unusual childhood reading, then your sense of expectations and anticipation can be turned upside down--she had stuff like The Last Unicorn as a very little kid, when much of it was way beyond her, but it meant that the story kept on growing for her. It must have been new each time she read it.

Then the other talk I went to was on .

This turned out to be largely about shamanism, oddly (but interestingly). One extremely interesting point that one of the two main speakers made (and I am afraid I don't remember which was which, so I can't attribute any of the remarks, but their names were Judith Berman and Sarah Micklem) was that sometimes people misunderstand metaphorical language as literal belief. So for instance, with Navajo medicine, there's one curative technique that involves driving the red ants that are in your bloodstream out of your bloodstream. The anthropologist (Barre Tolkien) asked, "But do you really believe there are red ants in your blood?" And the person he was talking to said, "Well not ants, but.... ants."

One comment that got me thinking was a remark about how any culture that has shamans also has charlatans--there are the genuine article and then there are frauds. Well, I thought, same with us, indeed, with doctors. But then, how do we, culturally, know? Is it based on success? Maybe it's that simple? Or is it something else?

And a fun aside about spells, and how medieval magic would make use of Christian prayer etc., someone mentioned how because certain prayers would take a certain amount of time to say, they were used as time measures. This prompted someone else to remark on old recipes that would say things like, "The eggs should boil for the amount of time it takes to say ten Hail Marys." Fascinating.

And speaking of spells, and the performative power of them, sovay mentioned a spell in ... Akkadian?? (She can correct me...)--a love spell, but it has to be said in the presence of the target of the spell, so, as she put it, it's essentially like magical love talk/dirty talk--all about what you're going to do, etc. But by virtue of being a spell, it has extra power.

And that was my experience of Readercon.

surreal thoughts

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:21:02 GMT

It's humid, we're all tired. It's an effort to decide whether I'm thinking thoughts or dreaming dreams.

A street lamp is flickering. Flickering street lamps are ominous, like cars with one headlamp out, which always give me a feeling of bad luck. Flickering street lamps create some kind of a field around them. Things appear by them or disappear by them, because they're flickering. Flickering street lamps are like people whose breathing is labored or whose heart is going to give out. Flickering street lamps are staggering, falling.... they're dying of consumption.

Flickering street lamps mean that people have not mastered electricity yet. "You're doing it wrong!" taunts electricity, and then there's another thunderstorm and a tree comes down.

People's mailboxes often seem like people to me; I do double takes. Tonight, it was especially so. All these people, under some kind of spell, standing sentinel beside their driveways. Maybe the street lamp did it to them.

Now I'm off to dream in earnest, but it will not be very different from these thoughts I've been having, now--because it's a humid night, and there are no boundaries between worlds.

And before I forget, about Troy,¹ which we lately visited, I have this impression: many hills, many old and interesting buildings, many wide and empty roads, and lots of crows.

1. Troy, New York, not the city whose topless towers were brought down thanks to Eris's little prank with the golden apple.

chicory

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:12:14 GMT

morning sun
Originally uploaded by inatangle.

It's a fine summer morning.

Here is a chicory star.

Above is a constellation of chicory, with requisite decaying farm equipment in the background.

And here is more chicory, just in the field.

And--for something different, here is the lace that trimmed my wedding gown

For a while in summer, even now, I lose all sense of time.

reading people's stuff

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:28:56 GMT

What sartorias was writing about genuinely good writing advice (here) got met thinking about critiques and beta readers and all that.

It's fun to share stuff round, and it's very very helpful to get feedback on your work, and it's great to be able to return the favor. I find, though, that I want to be very, very careful being a critiquer or beta reader or whatever for people. Part of it is from doing copyediting for a living, where it's a fine line between helping someone improve and pissing them off and offending them--which is going to make them not want to work with you again. You want to make the work as good as possible within the client's parameters. So, too, when you're offering a critique for someone, it helps to know their parameters.

I tend to be pretty mild in my criticisms in part because of my history of writing letters to authors. Once something's been published, it's not open for changes anymore, and anyway, when you write fan letters, you talk about the things you like, not the things you don't. So that's a strong default mode for me. And people are always happy to know about what things work well.

But that's not so valuable before a work is published, except as encouragement.

Okay, so let's say I'm really going to try to offer helpful criticisms as well as compliments. Maybe because I copyedit for a living (so do enough corrections of commas and misplaced modifiers), when I'm reading for people, I tend not to comment on copyediting stuff unless they've asked for that kind of a close reading. Instead, I comment on overall plot stuff--things like motivations being off or not enough information about X, Y, or Z, or too much, etc.

But if a person has gone through a number of versions of a story, they may not be open to comments on that level--they may just want to know about little tweaks and things that they need to make. This is why it's so important to know in advance what a person wants.

There's also a matter of intimacy and trust. It's easier to give and receive critiques if you know and trust someone--when you know the critiquer isn't trying to be hurtful, when you know the author won't take offense. But how to build up to that level of friendship and trust?

Well, LJ is great for that. I never had any friends to share writing with before, and now I have quite few, and it's all through LJ. I love the Internet.

So what about the rest of you? Do you expect or want different levels of response at different times? Do you like giving critiques? Do you like receiving them? Does it depend? If so, on what?

the chicory in bloom reminds me

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:03:54 GMT

that it's time to post again the cover to this book:

...about a journey to the Milky Way.

The mariner navigates by chicory blossoms, which are like constellations, truly, with their stems the lines we draw between the stars.

My parents planted some chicory in their yard, and it has flourished, but to me it looks right only by the side of the road, or growing beside a decaying piece of farm machinery.

A deer stopped in the middle of the road, by the railway bridge, to stare at me today. I stared back.

"You had better get on across; cars will be coming soon," I said.

It went on its way.

Corridors of green and wild let deer and bears and fisher cats and so on to wander through towns. There are, no doubt, corridors of magic that do the same for the creatures of the Other World. I believe these two types of corridor overlap.

Pertussis

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:06:43 GMT

also known as whooping cough, or, in Japan, hundred days' cough--which gives you an idea of how long it can last.

When I was in Japan, the daughter of a friend of mine got it. My sister got it when she was in college; she had been immunized as a child, but the immunization wears off.

We think the ninja girl might have it, because she's had a cough for three weeks that sometimes gets so bad she can't breathe, and recently she's woken at night coughing and, well, whooping. That is one scary sound, let me tell you.

So today she has to get a nasal culture. The results will be back in a ~~few days~~ few weeks (uggh). Meanwhile she can start antibiotics, not to help her, since once you've got it, the antibiotics don't help much, but to keep her from being contagious. Then if she does have it, the rest of us can start taking them too, for the same reason. Anyway, we should all be noncontagious by the time we have to go to her college orientation this weekend.

Then again, she might not have it.

Time and this nasal culture will tell.

the opposite of PTSD, and other good things

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:49:38 GMT

The opposite of PTSD is when a good memory suddenly overtakes you, blossoms all around you larger than life, and you find yourself reliving some good moment. Those moments are so wonderful: you get to have your cake again. (ETA: villager9999 has the perfect name for that experience: post terrific bliss. If we add "event" at the end (post terrific bliss event), then our initialism could be PTBE)

Good things today?

Seeing a bear on my morning walk. I thought it was a giant black dog, off its leash, then realized with some consternation that it was a bear. It stared at me, I stared at it, and then it crossed the road in front of me, went from the woods on one side of the street to the woods on the other side.

Picking field bindweed and bouncing bet, which both have delicious fragrances.

(field bindweed)

(bouncing bet)

Wandering high and low through a cemetery with watermelontail and darkpaisley, picking mushrooms we later identified as black velvet boletes (edibility: good, the book says; we didn't try) (Google image below)

and trying to paint designs on our skin with walnut juice.

We discovered that unripe walnuts do not stain your skin the way ripe ones do.

Finally, I must write this, or I will forget: I learned from Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads that there is, or used to be, a belief in Canadian folklore that lightning will never strike a birch tree. I find this belief interesting because paper birches, all white, look rather like lightning, and I'd think they'd call to it rather than repel it. But maybe lightning wouldn't strike lightning, and so avoids birches.

The Captain Pearl R. Nye Collection

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:10:52 GMT

How amazing is the Library of Congress? This amazing: it permits online access to collections of recordings of folksongs, so you can listen to them and download them. This is our cultural heritage, and the Library of Congress makes it possible for us to enjoy it.

Take a minute to thank the people who established the Library of Congress, and our taxes that preserve it, and everyone who contributes to it. (Thank you!)

When I said I wanted to learn some canal songs for our trip along the Erie Canal, the extremely amazing tritoneclarinet went into research overdrive mode and discovered so much amazing stuff that I haven't been able to take it all in yet, but among the things she came up with is the Captain Pearl R. Nye Collection, recorded by John, Alan, and Elizabeth Lomax in 1938 and 1939. Here is Captain Pearl R. Nye. (I never knew "Pearl" could be a boy's name...)

(And here you can see a five-second or so little silent film of him.)

He was born in 1872 to a family of canal boaters, never married, and eventually became a captain of a canal boat himself. The canal closed in 1913, and he supported himself in other ways, among them, singing. He also collaborated on a book about life on the canal, which I shall have to look for.

(All that information comes from the Library of Congress's blurb on the collection, available here)

And the treasure trove? All the songs? Available here. There are canal songs, but other old ballads, too--I clicked on one and soon realized I was listening to a version of Little Musgrave/Matty Groves (Child 81).

We will *definitely* be singing more than "The Erie Canal" on this journey!

Preparations

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:06:35 GMT

Downloaded from iTunes:

Pete Seeger: "The Erie Canal"

Enjoying, from tritoneclarinet:

"Shove around the Jug," as sung by Jovial Crew

Requested via interlibrary loan:

The Erie Canal : A Primary Source History of the Canal That Changed America (Janey Levy)

The Erie Canal (Linda Thompson) (chosen at random from the books with this name as being not too long and adult and not too kiddie oriented--tastes just about right, Goldilocks!)

The Erie Canal Pirates (Eric A. Kimmel) (kids' picture book, LOL)

This is my contribution to our preparations to travel "from Albany to Buffalo" by bicycle on the Erie canal. Actually, most of us will be making the reverse journey from Buffalo to Albany. But wakanomori and the ninja girl--and possibly little springtime as well--will also make the journey out.

wakanomori always comes up with ideas like this. I really do believe he intends to have us bicycle to his brother in Brazil one day.

For cindabilla_cite

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:22:02 GMT

You have made me decide that, after finishing Les Miserables, I shall read 93

Kappa in Goblin Fruit

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:42:39 GMT

Goblin Fruit is up, and Joshua Gage has a poem about a kappa!

--yes folks, kappa predate in that way, too, but don't all minor monsters?

As always, there's a treasury of unearthly delights waiting for you there, including two seapoems by sovay and one poem whose genesis I remember, from watermelontail.

Story Transform!

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:52:58 GMT

Okay, my story transform is like my recipe transforms, where you substitute a new ingredient for almost every ingredient on the list.

Family: Funny, this doesn't taste like spaghetti and meatballs

Me: Yeah, we didn't have any meat, so instead of meatballs I thought we could have potato croquettes, and we didn't have any pasta, so I thought I'd use zucchini cut up in matchsticks, and we were low on canned tomatoes, so I thought I'd use black-bean salsa for the sauce instead, and there's no basil or oregano, so I used cilantro and chives. This is nonsense, though, because I always have pasta and I always have tomatoes, and I almost never have black-bean salsa

Family: D:

The story transform for "The Kappa and the Water Koto" is going to be just like that. Is it possible to like zucchini in black-bean salsa, with potato croquettes? *fingers crossed*

Setting: ~~Warring States period~~ Heian Period

Main characters:

Yuko, ~~kick-ass undercover daughter of a daimyo~~ a minor noble

Tadahiro, ~~right-hand man to Yuko's dad~~ biwa instructor!!

~~Blind troubadour~~ ( or biwa hôshi, if you want the Japanese term, but now the point is moot) Suspicious temple monk

a kappa

Objectives of characters

~~Best the enemy in negotiations; report home~~ Find a treasure

Avoid being killed by the kappa

I think this version of the story will be lighter. In both versions, the kappa gets to enjoy music. Yay!

black raspberries

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:15:00 GMT

black raspberries
Originally uploaded by inatangle.

"That night in Max's room a forest grew," says Where The Wild Things Are, but for me, it's black raspberries:

Beware, though, in this fruitful forest, strange creatures also feast.

Borg Jam

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:23:29 GMT

Red currants, last strawberries, first black raspberries, and first red raspberries of the season, we are the Borg. We will incorporate your uniqueness into

BORG JAM

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

How about this basket, which the healing angel found--ah, his corvine genes showing through... though really, that trait passes down equally from both his parents. Anyway, isn't it the perfect berry-gathering basket?

a discarded identity

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:48:18 GMT

(one of the LJ posts I told tithenai I wanted to make)

Oh Tyler Rodriguez, why did you discard your school ID cards in the woods? Did you not realize that on the brown leafy path through the woods, little rectangles of white plastic stand out like extraterrestrials? Did you fail to foresee that crows or other scavengers might pick these things up?

Well, you have only just finished seventh grade, so I guess this lapse in judgment is understandable and forgivable. It was interesting to see that you discarded two IDs, from two separate schools. From this I deduce that you moved during the school year. Who wrote the school mission statement on the back of one ID in sharpie? I hate mission statements, myself, but looking at this one, I wonder, did the principal make you guys all write it down? But the handwriting looks too feminine to belong to a boy named Tyler, so did a school administrator write it? Or maybe your sister or your mom?

I tell you what: I will not work any malicious magic on you (other than this entry), despite being in possession of these cards. In fact, I will lose them for you much more effectively than you yourself were able.

I hope you have a good year in eighth grade, whatever school you happen to be in.

fairy token

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:57:34 GMT

It seems the fair folk passed through last night; the women left these handkerchiefs behind for the human men they bewitched for the night, tokens of their affection, but try to pick one up, try to keep it, and it just breaks apart, and by noon you can't see it anymore... is there a lesson here?

Of course, among the fair folk are men, too. They can retrieve the handkerchiefs and bring them back to the women, no problem.

incoming tide, sky ocean

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:49:07 GMT

incoming tide, sky ocean
Originally uploaded by inatangle.

At the edge of the dawn lands is the ocean of morning. This is one view of it.

something divine, disappointments, happiness

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:27:14 GMT

I think this is will be a long entry. I'll put in LJ cuts.

Yesterday wakanomori, the healing angel, and I went to an ordination. I've never had a personal friend who was a priest, let alone a friend who, during the course of my knowing him, decided to become a priest and then became one. But one of the people getting ordained is a friend of mine, someone I worked with back in 2000; he is a very, very cool guy. He will be a wonderful priest.

Three men were being ordained. The ceremony was in Springfield Cathedral, a cathedral that was built in the 1860s. That got me thinking of all those immigrants, looked down on by the population that was already here (and then, how human is this: turning around and looking down on the next batch of immigrants to come along... but not all people do do this), who came as laborers and who scraped together the money to build it.

The ceremony was overwhelmingly beautiful. All the priests from the whole diocese--must have been a hundred of them--were were, and they all come in, all in white, and come to stand on the altar, which was all golden seeming, and with the music playing--centuries old music--I really felt that it could have been 1408, 1508, 1608, 1708--the timelessness of it. And I know how fallible people are, and priests as much or more so, maybe, than others (because when you're given respect and authority, your power to do wrong also increases), but these people in white up on the altar, with the singing, it was a human attempt to portray ranks of angels... it was beautiful.

And that got me thinking of how this is just one expression of Christianity. I thought about the shape-note singing and the Baptist tradition, and I thought of the gentle quiet of Friends Meetings, and Orthodox choral music ... so very many, many expressions of Christianity. And then, Christianity is just one expression of people's religious feelings. I thought of the bat mitzvah I went to. My friend's daughter read words in Hebrew. Such old, old words. So old, and they're still moving in the air today, vibrating, the way they did thousands of years ago. And what about Tibetan Buddhist monks, chanting? What about the Islamic call to prayer? I could go on and on and on.

So many different ways of reaching up. As various as people are various, as various as creation is various.

There's non-theistic love of the divine, too. Is it paradoxical? When Carl Sagan talked, in Cosmos about being made of star stuff, you could hear in his voice and see in his eyes the intense love he felt for the universe in all its glory. Beautiful.

When people bring people together in love and joy--a group shares in some joy, and it spills over and radiates out and draws others in--that event, in a way, creates God. God must rejoice to be born in such moments.

Then there was this disappointment I had recently. It was a more or less expected disappointment, the way writing rejections are more or less expected disappointments. I've had this sort of disappointment before; it springs from the imagination. Here's a story that explains it. Once I found a pigeon egg, unbroken on the ground. I imagined how, if I incubated it, it might hatch into a pigeon, and I could raise it, and then I'd have a pigeon for a pet, and be able to take it to school with me and- and- and-- ... it was a good future I imagined. So, even though the chances were that any embryo in the egg was already dead from the cold, or that the egg was infertile, even so, I put it under a lamp and kept it warm. Later I took it to school, where one of the teachers was incubating chicken eggs, and put it in her incubator. Nothing happened. I knew that this was a highly likely outcome, but I yearned after my pigeon that I had imagined so clearly.

The thing about that line of imagining, as opposed to the imagining that creates a story, is that it's tied to real life and to hopes for the future. That yearning you feel is so powerful. It can be painful, and yet it feels good, too. So much of it is based on imagination. The egg was real; the pigeon was imagination. A possible future, but just an imagined one. Of course, no future is guaranteed.

The bishop made a remark at the ordination that seems relevant. He advised, Don't cling to your vision of how things should be.

I can take that to heart. My imagination creates something wonderful, and I feel the pangs when reality will not paint itself in those colors. But life is so strange and rich. Out of disappointment, something new and different can come, if I pay attention. Not if I close my eyes and plug my ears and hum, though. I have to look and listen.

These are words of advice to myself, not to anyone else. There are people who may read this who have just experienced heart-wrenching losses. That's different from a disappointment that grew from imagination; there's no comparison. And there are others facing terrible hardships and trials. Again, I wouldn't presume to speak to those burdens.

And finally, happiness.
I get the feeling that one way I can be happy in my thoughts about other people is by imagining them happy, or by praying for them to be happy, but my style of prayer is pretty similar to imagination. Maybe it's not really prayer; I don't know. Anyway. I imagine someone, and I imagine them happy. I imagine them rested, or energetic. I imagine them getting along with their friends and family. I imagine them smiling or laughing. I imagine them getting a happy surprise. Then I feel happier, too, about them and for them. I haven't ever tried this when I'm boiling over in anger at someone, but if my feelings toward someone are just slightly tangled up (frustration, irritation, hurt, etc.), this works. It really does. It feels so much better.

Whoa, long entry. I wonder if it's my longest.

Beautiful song

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:16:44 GMT

littlemetaldrop shared this with me. The video is about 10 seconds shy of 5 minutes long. The song is called "Uninstall," and it's by Chiaki Ishikawa. It's really lovely, and the video is, too. Watch quick before it gets taken down!

wakanomori, how do we buy things from Japanese iTunes again? Let's get this song!

world in a dewdrop

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:03:00 GMT

world in a dewdrop
Originally uploaded by inatangle.

Nasturtium leaves are little goblets for dewdrops.

On a Drop of Dew
by Andrew Marvell

See how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
Yet careless of its mansion new,
For the clear region where 'twas born
Round in its self incloses,
And in its little globe's extent
Frames as it can its native element.
How it the purple flow'r does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies,
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light;
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere.
Restless it rolls and unsecure,
Trembling lest it grow impure,
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
Could it within the human flow'r be seen,
Rememb'ring still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green;
And, recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater Heaven in an Heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound
Every way it turns away:
So the world excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day.
Dark beneath, but bright above:
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go:
How girt and ready to ascend.
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna's sacred dew distil;
White and intire, though congealed and chill.
Congealed on earth: but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of th' Almighty Sun.

My firefly video was really no good, so here is one of a misty morning, instead...

how my garden grows

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:53:30 GMT

how my garden grows
Originally uploaded by inatangle.

It runs to wild, and I grow weeds. The snow peas are climbing out of the garden box and clinging to the crown vetch as eagerly as the crown vetch is seeking to enter the garden box.

The crown vetch...

And closer still...

Today the garden gave me currants and snow peas...

and yesterday it gave me strawberries...

Meanwhile, out in the world, the grass is smelling sweet and the catalpa trees are dropping their blossoms. I put some on a stalk of grass:

And also meanwhile out in the world, the fireflies are sparkling up the nighttime meadows. I have a so-so video; I might post it next.

just two things on the list...

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:44:44 GMT

Very funny cartoon from beatonna, whom I discovered thanks to redcoast

(original location is here)

ETA: slobbit, if you see this... the katana doesn't look quite right--too straight--but the general scene is pretty good, huh?